diff --git "a/yield/test/test-001.json" "b/yield/test/test-001.json" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/yield/test/test-001.json" @@ -0,0 +1,84793 @@ +[ + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00017", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2016-033.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Johnson, Elizabeth (2013-2015): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2016-033", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2016-033", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Elizabeth (Lizzie) Johnson served in the Peace Corps in The Gambia from 2013 to 2015 in the health sector. Initially she went to Philadelphia for a half day of training; the remainder of her training took place in Gambia. Her health training was held in the village of Saaremusa. Her training group was divided according to the language they were to speak during Peace Corps service (Johnson spoke Pulaar). She learned about ten health education topics, such as hand washing techniques and malaria prevention. Upon moving to the village of Jiroff, Johnson first completed a survey of the residents. There was no health post nor clinic in her village. She lived with a host family during her two years. Johnson speaks about a typical day in her village, the foods she ate, and how sad she was to leave Gambia after completing her service. Interviewed and recorded by Barbara Kaare-Lopez, May 9, 2016. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "9 May 2016", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 57 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "033. Gambia.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Gambia. Johnson, Elizabeth (2013-2015): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Gambia", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2016-033", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2016-033-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "August 12, 2024 11:30:07 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/1876wm604wyv6eqq4vy01x201nm5x4od.pdf?odc=20231115174325-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/b777e7fe-127b-44bb-ae55-e7f39bd9969c/eff2c334-c434-4539-84d1-7e0f68985011/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI2ZmFfYTQ0ZWJmYjM1ODE5OTgwOTYxNjAzZTE0YTA2MTU3MzU3ZTUzOThjZjk2Mjc5NzdjYjc0NmYyMzJhZTU4ODBkY18vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS9iNzc3ZTdmZS0xMjdiLTQ0YmItYWU1NS1lN2YzOWJkOTk2OWMvZWZmMmMzMzQtYzQzNC00NTM5LTg0ZDEtN2UwZjY4OTg1MDExL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Denver, Colorado", + "length": "42 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed July 18, 2016, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Elizabeth Johnson Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Barbara Kaare-Lopez" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Elizabeth Johnson", + "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:04", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good afternoon. Today is May 9th, 2016. My name is Barbara Kaare K-A-A-R-E hyphen Lopez L-O-P-E-Z. I'm conducting one of the Peace Corps interviews for the archive project that Bob Klein created, and the interview will be sent to the Kennedy Library in Boston. Today, I'm going to interview Elizabeth Johnson, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in The Gambia G-A-M-B-I-A from October 2013 until December 2015. And she worked in the health sector. So now we're going to start the interview and there's 13 questions. We might cover all 13 or just, uh, some of them can be a little repetitive. So how are you today, Elizabeth?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:01:06", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm good. How are you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:01:07", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very good. And I'm using my new Zoom recorder, OK. So anyway, if you want to start and you could describe your present family situation, work, current residence, interests. As you can see, that's question number one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK. So my present family is my, I guess I don't know, it depends on what you describe family, but I have one grandparent who lives in England." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:38", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My mom and my dad are here in Colorado. My little brother is at school in Scotland." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:43", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I only got back in February. So right now I'm working as a nanny to earn money to go back to school for nursing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:01:52", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nursing? How wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:01:57", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I'm living with my parents. I really like. I don't know, like, I guess interests, like, volunteer work, soccer, running, reading. That's about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:02:10", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Do you, um, can you think back to the year before you joined the Peace Corps? For you, that would be like 2012." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:02:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:02:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what were your, what was your life like back then? And that's kind of a broad question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:02:28", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I was at university. I went to university in Scotland, the University of St. Andrews." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:02:33", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, wow. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:02:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I took international relations there. So I was taking some international relations classes. I was president of the women's football club. So that was like really important to me at that time. So basically, I think for the most part it was school and, um, what's it called? School and soccer. The summer of 2012, or wait. This is 2012? OK, summer of 2012, I got to volunteer at the London Olympics, which was really cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:03:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:03:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was just, like, really interesting to be able to be like on the inside of the Olympic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:03:16", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:03:16", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:03:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sent you over to Scotland to go to school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:03:21", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my father was born and raised in England." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:03:24", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "England, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:03:24", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He came over here for his post doctorate and met my mother. And they've lived here all or like their married life, they've lived here and I grew up here. But I guess all of my dad's family lives in the UK, so maybe that didn't make it seem like a crazy jump. But surprisingly enough, like a lot of Americans attend the University of St. Andrews. It's marketed to Americans to some extent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:03:49", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, good. Well, and here's the second question on the interview outline. Why did you join the Peace Corps? OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:04:05", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I joined the Peace Corps because especially I feel like in this day and age, a lot of people are confused about what they're supposed to do when college is over. So I had one friend who's a year older than me who did Peace Corps Morocco. So I knew that was something you could do like right out of college. And I just applied. And basically, I think I was just like, if anything accepts me, I'm doing it," + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:04:31", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:04:33", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I really like to travel and I've traveled a lot in my life, so I don't think, like, Peace Corps seemed like super crazy to me. But yeah, I just was looking for something to do after college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:04:45", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, OK. You said you had this friend that was Peace Corps Morocco. But the third question is, how did you hear about the Peace Corps and what made you decide to apply? I mean, you've sort of answered it and you might want to add something else if you choose to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:05:01", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I feel like I've heard about Peace Corps like for a while. I never like really thought about it that concretely probably until my friend went to Morocco. But I even had a second cousin who was. Was she in Nicaragua?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:05:17", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was in Ecuador." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:05:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ecuador. So I knew it was like something that people did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:05:24", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK. Did you have a specific country or project in mind when you applied?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:05:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I really was just like. I had talked to my friend who served in Morocco before I applied, and she kind of said that, I think it, obviously they've changed the application process. So it's changed a lot since I applied, which is really not that long ago, but back when I applied they said it was bad in your interview to want to go to a certain country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:05:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:05:54", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They wanted you to be prepared to go anywhere. And they think, you know, like if you fill out your application and you say, oh, I only want to go to Jordan, are you really prepared to like serve under hardship?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:06:04", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:06:05", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that's kind of where that came from. Which I kind of appreciate, but also Peace Corps applications have gone up a lot since they changed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:06:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really? OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:06:15", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Who knows." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:06:18", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your friends' and family's reaction? I know your mother's sitting over there. Family's reactions when you were accepted. Excuse me. It's the fourth question we're on, by the way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:06:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I think, well, because I. I mean, I'm sure almost many people say this, but the application process can be very difficult, mostly because you don't really know what's happening and it takes a long time to get responses. So there were like at least two times that I thought I had been rejected somehow. So when I was finally accepted and I didn't really have other plans after college, um, I was just like over the moon. I think my family was really happy because I'd been worrying about it for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:07:02", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long was the process for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:07:04", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I applied in October and I went out like the October after." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:07:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so it was a whole year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:07:10", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And it was difficult, especially being in Scotland. I had to like find the Scottish police and get fingerprinted and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:07:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I never would have thought of stuff like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:07:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:07:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so you're enrolled in Scotland Yard, so to speak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:07:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:07:26", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:07:27", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think my British family thought I was joining the EU. They really had no idea what was going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:07:31", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The European Union?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:07:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Or like the UN." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:07:34", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:07:36", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were just like confused." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:07:40", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any reservations about joining, hesitations? Or did your family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:07:47", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I think the funniest part was like that they told me, oh, you've been accepted. I got a phone call. I think people these days. Or maybe I got an email and most people get phone calls? But I looked and it was like, it was an email, and it was like, you're going to The Gambia. And I was like, I have never heard of this place before, but I'm going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:08:08", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:08:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I don't think I had any reservations, but I was like, I have no idea where I'm going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:08:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, so you only were presented with one country, I mean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:08:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I think like my first. Like after the interview they sent like an invitation to be a health volunteer. And so that's, I mean, that rules out some countries, but not a whole lot of countries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:08:30", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Now we're on the fifth question. What project were you invited to join? I know you just mentioned health, but we'll start with that. So what was the project you were invited to join?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:08:43", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was just invited for the health sector. I know some countries have like they divide up their health sector into like HIV AIDS focus, malaria focus, or something like that. But the country I went to, it's just like every health volunteer is a health volunteer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:08:57", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You're health, that's it. There's no differentiation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:09:01", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:09:01", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. How did you prepare yourself and others for, it says dislocation, sounds kind of strange, of entering two years of Peace Corps service? How did you prepare yourself and others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:09:12", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, honestly, I don't think I did like too much preparation. I remember, like, going to like, um, things with my family before I left, and people would ask me questions about The Gambia. And I would always ask my mom what the answer to that question about the country I was about to go to. So I didn't, I definitely like didn't research the country that much. I mean, I think we went out and bought some clothes and like a solar radio." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:09:43", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:09:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like, uh, maybe. Yeah, and like a solar powered battery charger. But I think mostly it was like material preparation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:09:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Now we're on the sixth question and this is about the training, your training. Where did you train? If you want to tell us about the faculty, syllabus, things of that nature. We'll start with where you trained." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:10:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I trained in Gambia. They flew us out to Washington, no. Where did? To Philadelphia for like one day-ish. Really it was like half a day of training, which was, once after two years of Peace Corps service seemed completely pointless. We didn't do anything in that half day that was really gonna change anything, but we went there and then we flew to Gambia. And then we were in the capital for like a week, mostly doing like shots and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:10:43", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, what's the capital of Gambia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:10:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So the capital is called Banjul, but like it's kind of a widespread. So we were in the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:10:50", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you spell that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:10:51", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "B-A-N-J-U-L." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:10:55", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you say it again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:10:56", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Banjul." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:10:57", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Banjul." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:10:58", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:10:59", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that's the capital of Gambia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:11:01", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The suburban spread of Banjul is called Campo and we were in the area called Kanifing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:11:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How can you, can you spell that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:11:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that's K-A-N-I-F-A-N-G [sic] but then again like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:11:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's an area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:11:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's kind of like what you'd, like within Denver there's like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:11:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Denver area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:11:24", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Washington Park. There's Capitol Hill. It's like kind of, I would, not at all like a neighborhood, but spatially similar-ish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:11:34", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. What was, who was your faculty? Was it like, for instance, Gambians?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:11:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:11:43", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any Americans?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:11:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We, I mean, like I think these days you have the country director is always American, even though ours was. My first country director was from Zimbabwe. He had been like a Peace Corps employee, had managed to immigrate to America through Peace Corps, and then come back through and be a country director as an American. So I thought at first that all country directors were host country nationals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:12:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. I'm guessing his story was sort of unique then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:12:17", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I don't think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:12:18", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He's from Zimbabwe originally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:12:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it was like very strange. Um, so, but I think, I mean, like during training like you see the country director, you see the director of management operations is usually American. And then we got like a training manager, like after my first year of service, it was an American, but really we had contact with mostly just the Gambian staff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:12:42", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Can you describe your training some? Well, for instance, like they use the word syllabus. You were in the health sector. Did you, how did they train you to be a health volunteer in The Gambia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:12:59", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess so. I mean, I would say like. Syllabus wise because like the technical studies is maybe what. So they kind of like, our main focus was language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:13:11", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was the language?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:13:12", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So Gambia I think teaches five different languages. I was with Pulaar." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:13:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, spell Pulaar for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:13:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "P-U-L-A-A-R, which it's part of like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:13:25", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "P-U-L-A-A-R." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:13:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's part of the Fulani tribe which can be found from Morocco to Cameroon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:13:32", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the name, your language was Pulaar?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:13:34", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Some people call it Fula. Like it's many different names for how to say Pulaar." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:13:41", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, not that you learned the other four, but what were the other four languages?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:13:46", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then we had Mandinka, Wolof, Sarahule, and Jola." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:13:52", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Would you mind spelling those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:14:00", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mandinka. M-A-N-D-I-N-K-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:14:05", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:14:06", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wolof is spelled many different ways. W-O-L-O-O-F." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:14:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:14:14", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Jola, J-O-L-A. Sarahule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:14:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that's a good one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:14:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "S-A-R-A-H-U-L-E." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:14:26", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. The last one was S-A-R-A-H-U-L-E? OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:14:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's not a written language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:14:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, none of them are written languages so spellings are really just like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:14:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Spellings are random." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:14:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "None of them are." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:14:39", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:14:40", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. What do I say to that? OK. Well, that would be interesting how you learned that then. Did somebody, like I know some countries like a missionary might write down the words for some indigenous language? Did anybody try to write it? You know, how did you learn it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:15:01", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's been many attempts to like write in Pulaar. I don't think I would say that there's like a big like, what's the cultural conscience of the tribe? Like, oh, let's save our history, let's write our language, so much. But especially like Peace Corps staffs have like, what's it called when you like sound things out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:15:22", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Phonetically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:15:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Have like phonetically created words in Pulaar to teach us with. But like every time we would get annoyed with how a word is spelled or something, they'd just be like, this is just how we would phonetically spell it. But if you think you should phonetically spell it another way, that's fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:15:42", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I don't know if it was really the language group. You mentioned Fulani. That was the? What was Fulani again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:15:50", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's the tribe. But like the tribe, like it's called many different things through from Cameroon to Morocco. It's not like, like I'm trying to think. I know Upper Senegal has, like, a whole other name for them. There's like different futas that the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:16:08", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's a futa?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:16:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's like homeland I think. That's, I mean, I never had the word translated to me by a staff member, but that's where they say like certain of the Pulaar people originate. There's one that's in Senegal, one that's in Guinea. I think maybe two are in Senegal? Two in Senegal, one in Guinea, or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:16:32", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All of these languages are part of the Fulani tribe?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:16:36", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:16:36", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, Pulaar is though?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:16:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pulaar is, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:16:39", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And is Fulani F-U-L-A-N-I? That's my guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:16:44", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:16:44", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Oh, interesting. If you can remember, tell us more about your health training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:16:53", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So health, like I guess. So they had a, like a training center that we would stay at sometimes. And they had. But mostly we were split into our language groups and stationed in villages. And so when you're doing language training, you just stay in the village with other volunteers. Like we each had our own host family that we would live with. And then we'd like go to lessons at our language teacher's compound. But then if they wanted to do like a health session or safety and security or cultural that all the volunteers would go to, regardless of what language group they're in, we would go to the training center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:17:33", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was the training center in the capital?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:17:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they had kind of just rented from the agricultural ministry a training center. Um, because we were in the process of building a training center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:17:47", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What village did you live in for training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:17:50", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Saaremusa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:17:51", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you'll have to spell that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:17:54", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But like the thing is, it doesn't really matter how it's spelled." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:17:58", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, well how?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:18:01", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can guess, but like, it's like anyone could spell it however they want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:18:07", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, what would you say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:18:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "S-A-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:18:11", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:18:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "R-E-M-U-S-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:18:15", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, S-A-A-R-E-M-U-S-A. OK, that was your village you lived in. And did you live there after training also or just for training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:18:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just for training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:18:27", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Training. OK. I know I already asked you. Could you expand a little on the health training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:18:36", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK. So then like sometimes when they would take us to the training center, we would do like specific health topics. So it'd be like handwashing, malaria, diarrhea, environmental sanitation, baby weighing, pregnancy. I'm trying to think of the other ones we had. Like basic first aid. So they would kind of like teach us things that you can do underneath that talk. Like so with malaria, like here's things and you can do. First it'd be like information. This is malaria. Then it would be like things you can do in your village to like talk to villagers about malaria." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:19:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:19:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they'd do that with each of those topics. I mean, I think there's probably like ten or so topics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:19:28", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, maybe there was ten. Which topics did you find out were the most relevant to teach? I assume you were doing teaching then, yes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:19:43", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, not so much. It was just like, uh, I mean, I think like kind of. I don't know how it was back when you served, but I kind of heard that Peace Corps just drops you off in a village, and it's like there you go. Do things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:19:57", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, not for me. I was, I don't need to talk about myself. I'll just say that I was with the Ministry of Health, Ministerio de Salud in Honduras, and I had a defined job. And at that time in my life, that was good. I didn't have the life experience to go out there and just take off by myself. I did not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:20:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I don't know if I did, but that's kind of what they did to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:20:22", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, so how long was your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:20:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was two months. So that's why I served only, what? Normally it's 27 months? I think I served 26 because we only have a two month training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:20:34", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Training, OK. Um. Anything else you might want to share about the training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:20:41", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just, I think it was awesome. It was like you really get to know your group of other volunteers. The people who were in my language group are like really good friends. My language teacher, I called, I've recently talked to him in Gambia. It was really, really, really hot. It was like the hottest part of the year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:21:03", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you know what the temperatures were? And I say that because I know some places don't have thermometers in their village I would think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:21:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We don't. I mean, but I know it was like 100% humidity and I had like over 50 mosquito bites twice. It was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:21:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Excuse me, did you actually count them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:21:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:21:20", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I'm sorry. I shouldn't be laughing during this taping, but obviously I am. OK. Did they have a selection process? Do you know what I mean, to see? Did everybody who was went through the two months of health training and language training, did everybody pass? Or were some people advised to leave or deselected?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:21:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they, I mean, they told us that like if you don't pass your language exams, like you might not, you might be like held back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:21:53", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:21:54", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or like if you're not becoming culturally aware, like you might be held back. Like there were, I mean, they were like watching how we were integrating with the culture. But I think for the most part, like I knew of a couple volunteers, not from my group, who were held back, and it was because of cultural insensitivity, like they just didn't get it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:22:14", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they pass eventually, do you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:22:17", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:22:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They did. OK. The last part of this question, hindsight it says, regarding your training. Did you think your training prepared you sufficiently? Was it useful, the training you received?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:22:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I feel like my friends and I have talked about this a lot because I don't think that anything can really prepare you to be just, like, dropped off in a village with like no idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:22:43", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:22:44", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, like, you have like, you've been living in this other village for a while, but suddenly you're all by yourself. And in Gambia, they tell us that you're not supposed to leave village for your first three months. Like, for the night. You can go to like the regional capital to buy toilet paper, but technically like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:23:03", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Spend the night elsewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:23:05", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:23:05", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. For three months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:23:06", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And you're also supposed to like not start any projects. You're supposed to just observe like the community. You're doing a survey the whole time, like trying to figure out what might be the biggest health need in your village." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:23:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, did they give you an outline?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:23:22", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they gave us like questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:23:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just say like go out there and do a survey. Or did they?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:23:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They give us questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:23:29", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you did a survey for three months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:23:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, I mean, but I don't think they could just like skip training, just drop you off in your village. Like it's a good that there is like an adjustment period. It's good that you get to talk to a teacher, like work on your language before you go out. But I mean, it's just like, I just don't know if there's that much you can do to be like prepared." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:23:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, I guess I could. I could give a philosophical talk on life. I mean, we get different life experiences, and they can't be prepare. You can't be prepared for everything. OK, then we'll move on to the seventh question, which talks about your initial entry into the country that you were assigned to, which was The Gambia. If you want to say more about your project, as you can see, then they say Peace Corps staff, etc. Do you want to say anything else about your project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:24:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So like the health project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:24:25", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:24:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. I guess. I don't, uh. I guess the health project to me seems, um, like it could be like better directed somehow or like completely gotten rid of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:24:45", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Gotten rid of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:24:46", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's just like, so they, I mean, you just get to this village and, I mean, I lived in a fantastic village. I adore the people that lived there. But who am I to just show up and be like, this is how you live your life, like this is what to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:24:59", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Yeah. And I'm an American living in Scotland." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:25:02", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Like, I don't know if that. And especially with health, there's not that just many tangible things that I felt like you could do. Like agriculture, there was a lot more, like create a model garden. Then you can be like, this is what's happening for real. But with malaria and like handwashing and stuff, like the people in my village haven't washed their hands with soap for hundreds of years. They're fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:25:25", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be laughing. Like hundreds of years. OK, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:25:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So like, they're fine. So like, why does me telling them that they're not fine? Like, they're fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:25:36", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they wash their hands, just like with water and use friction or anything like that or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:25:43", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like if you're in a good village, they'll use like a run. Like they'll have like a plastic kettle they have water in. And then you put your hands under it and you move them. If it's a bad village, there's a bowl of water, everyone puts their hands in the water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:25:55", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, same bowl of water. OK. No soap. You've already said that. No soap. OK. Anything you'd like to share about the Peace Corps staff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:26:07", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I think we had really good staff, for the most. I mean, like I think everyone has the staff they like and the staff they don't like, but I just think Gambians in general are incredibly welcoming. And the Peace Corps Gambia staff really took their mission of welcoming us and trying to like make us, you know, not so much like successes as volunteers, but like keep us going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:26:36", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:26:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They did a fantastic job. The American staff, like, brought their own perspective. It's kind of hard when they're, I mean, I guess they just bring like the flavor of America because they don't know the country. Like most staff these days are there for like a year at most in a post." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:26:56", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Peace Corps staff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:26:58", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Or like Peace Corps American staff because they move them around. You're only allowed to work for the government I think for five years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:27:04", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. That's how it used to be. It could still be that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:27:07", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they'll let them work in a post like a year and transfer them somewhere else. Or maybe like a year and a half." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:27:12", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh wow. Yeah, that's not much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:27:14", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I feel like that kind of hinders the Americans from getting to know like what the country is like, because they also are living in the capital with all the diplomatic amenities so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:27:29", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. What was your impression of the local people? I know you already said welcoming." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:27:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They're just like fab, I like I think Gambians are fabulous for the most part. There's also a big culture of female sexual tourism in The Gambia, so I got a lot of harassment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:27:47", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Yeah. I'm just trying to think of what to say about that. Was that legal? I'm guessing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:27:55", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think the president cares." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:27:58", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:27:59", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, we have white people coming and spending their money in The Gambia so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:28:03", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For sex?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:28:04", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I mean, like but they'll stay at a hotel. They'll go out to dinner. So it's not like that's the only thing they're spending their money on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:28:11", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, but there is a big sexual trade." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:28:14", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:28:14", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Do you know if, the only reason I'm asking this is when I was in Honduras, prostitution was legal, which I was so surprised. Was prostitution legal? Do you know that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:28:28", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. There weren't, I mean, I lived in a 97% Muslim country, so that's not really a good thing in Islam, like women are. That's, I mean, there's just, don't like, don't look at a man, don't like all those different things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:28:51", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And these women, I'm guessing, were then Muslim women in the sexual trade?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:28:57", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no. So it would be like white women coming from like Europe for the most part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:29:02", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, OK. Not the Muslim women." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:29:05", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:29:05", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:29:06", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then it would." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:29:08", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[inaudible]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:29:10", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't understand what you're saying, Mom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:29:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was Gambian men." + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:29:13", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it was for Gambian men." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:29:14", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, OK, OK. Gambian man and white women. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:29:22", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it's almost, it would almost be treated as like a boyfriend girlfriend relationship, less like prostitution. Because like the Gambian woman would like take the guy out for like meals and like put them up in the hotel with her, maybe like give him money. But it was also like, you know, more than just showing up at a brothel, like sleeping with someone and leaving. And a lot of people get married and whatnot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:29:48", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Huh. Yeah, you left me a little bit speechless. Yeah, um. You've said a little bit already about the heat and humidity. Anything else you might want to share about the physical environment there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:30:02", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[inaudible]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:30:04", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gambia. Mom, this is my interview. I just think that like Gambia is one of the least developed countries. I mean, it's definitely the least developed country I've ever been to. But like, if you're thinking of a village, like no roads, like my family had dirt floors. We had no running water, no electricity. They do have like some solar chargers. So most people have, most people, like 50% of the population has like a mobile phone or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:30:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, they do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:30:39", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:30:39", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how do they charge it then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:30:40", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With the solar chargers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:30:41", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "With the solar chargers, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "00:30:43", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, yeah, we had like two roads. No bridges across the river that split my country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "00:30:51", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. I know when I met you at the Peace Corps happy hour, you said something about the dimensions of Gambia. What were they again, the length? Because it was a small country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:31:03", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think it's like maybe 200. No, 200 to 300 miles long. And then like at its widest, at its widest, like 40 to 50 miles across. But there's a runner, a runner, a river that runs through the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:31:20", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's the name of the river?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "00:31:21", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Gambia River. So you can't just like go the short way across the country, like there's a river. You have to get on a ferry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "00:31:31", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No bridge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:31:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No bridge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:31:32", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No bridge. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:31:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My closest, the closest volunteers to me from my group were on the other side of the river, so it was almost easier to go see other people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:31:44", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK. Now we're moving on to the eighth question and like I said, some of these questions might be redundant. Your assignment. I'll try to read through these. And if you want to say more about them. The specifics of your job, your living conditions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:32:07", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are you going to read them all and then I say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:32:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, do you want, do you have anything more you want to say about the specifics of your job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:32:14", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think, like so I was supposed to be sent to a village that was really far away from the village I actually was sent to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:32:20", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "00:32:21", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, like my site, my placement site. But the village I was supposed to be sent to couldn't find a house for me to live in. So then at some point during training, they scrambled to find me another village." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "00:32:36", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you end up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "00:32:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This village called Jiroff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "00:32:39", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And spell that, please." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "00:32:40", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "J-I-R-O-F-F." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "00:32:44", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Jiroff. So you lived there. Two years or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "00:32:48", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, two years. So that village, as a health volunteer, had no health clinic, no health post, no health workers. Nothing. So I didn't like, I felt in some ways it was good, in some ways it was bad. It kind of gave me more of an open slate to kind of do whatever I wanted. But at the same time, like I didn't really have any support for health projects." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "00:33:15", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "00:33:16", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think that was, that was, I was the only person in my group who got put in a village like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "00:33:21", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No support?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "00:33:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "00:33:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "00:33:24", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or like I think a lot of health volunteers these days are like assigned to clinics or like maybe like a health worker." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "00:33:28", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had nothing. Yeah, that would be very difficult. Yeah. Anything you might want to say more about your living conditions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "00:33:36", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So all the, I mean, all the volunteers, except the ones that live in the capital, live with host families for both years. Um, so I lived with the host family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "00:33:49", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Did you, of course you didn't know any different, but did you enjoy living with a host family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "00:33:56", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think I would have felt much more isolated if I hadn't had them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "00:34:00", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Um, what was your family like, your Gambian family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "00:34:04", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was my host mom and dad, and then halfway, I mean, people come in and out and family is like a very wide definition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "00:34:11", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "00:34:12", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Africa. So then at one point my host sister came, she had twin babies. My cousin lived with us and my host sister's son and daughter and other daughter. And then one of my other host sisters, her daughter lived with us a little bit and then she took her back. And then one of my like dad's nephews for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "00:34:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have your own room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "00:34:39", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "00:34:40", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. I don't know how. Like when I was in Peace Corps training, they wanted the volunteer to have their own room, maybe a place to escape. Well, I lost track of how many people you had coming and going but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "00:34:52", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "00:34:52", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Can you describe a typical day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "00:34:56", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, so I would wake up. I would sweep. I would eat breakfast. I'd water my garden, then I'd think of something to do until 5 p.m., then I'd water my garden again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "00:35:11", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Twice a day, water your garden." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "00:35:12", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, like rainy season I didn't do that. So it kind of changes with the seasons." + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "00:35:17", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was the garden at the house?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "00:35:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I built, or me and a counterpart built one in our compound area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "00:35:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "00:35:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Tell her about the health clinic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "00:35:28", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mom. Literally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "00:35:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know, but you did that often." + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "00:35:33", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK. A typical day is not a health clinic day. That happened like twice or three times a month." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "00:35:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We'll get, I'll write myself a note. We'll get to health clinic day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "00:35:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I'd always take a bucket bath in the evening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "00:35:47", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No running water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "00:35:48", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, bucket bath. So I just would pump a bucket full of water, and then I'd throw cups of water over my head." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "00:35:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "00:35:55", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess I just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "00:35:56", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so you had a water pump?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "00:35:58", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like our village did. So I would walk to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "00:36:00", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A community water pump. Am I saying that correctly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "00:36:06", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I'd eat lunch at 2:00, I forgot that. Then I ate dinner. And then usually I would like work on reading with my cousin. And then I'd go to bed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "00:36:20", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. What kind of food did you eat? What kind of food would you eat for lunch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "00:36:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they grew. They grow rice in The Gambia. So we'd eat rice a lot. There's like a porridge with rice in the morning, or we have a lot of millet, so there's a millet porridge or a rice porridge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "00:36:37", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "00:36:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then lunch is always rice with some kind of like sauce, usually like tomato paste and, uh. What's it called like? What's that, stock?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "00:36:50", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like a broth or something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "00:36:53", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like but they have it in cubes and it's like MSG, but you just throw that in there. It's really good.\n\nLike maybe a little bit of onion. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "00:37:02", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Where did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "00:37:04", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or peanut, there's a peanut butter. Peanut sauce." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "00:37:07", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Cause I was going to ask you about protein. What did you? Peanuts. Did you buy peanuts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "00:37:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And then because we were close to the river, I'd say we'd eat fish like three or four times a week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 312, + "timestamp": "00:37:16", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A week?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 313, + "timestamp": "00:37:17", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And then they also dried fish, and you could throw that in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 314, + "timestamp": "00:37:21", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 315, + "timestamp": "00:37:24", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And then sometimes for dinner, there'd be like millet. And on a bad night, it would be millet and salt and water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 316, + "timestamp": "00:37:31", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. Did you lose weight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 317, + "timestamp": "00:37:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Funnily, most women like gain weight and then guys just like drop it like no one's business." + }, + { + "turn_id": 318, + "timestamp": "00:37:39", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 319, + "timestamp": "00:37:39", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I just stayed the same." + }, + { + "turn_id": 320, + "timestamp": "00:37:41", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know I'm asking you again about the protein thing, I mean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 321, + "timestamp": "00:37:46", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I had my parents send me a lot of protein bars, but I'm pretty sure if they hadn't like I would have been fine. I was a vegetarian before Peace Corps so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 322, + "timestamp": "00:37:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any dairy products, milk, cheese?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 323, + "timestamp": "00:37:57", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my family or my host dad had cows." + }, + { + "turn_id": 324, + "timestamp": "00:38:01", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 325, + "timestamp": "00:38:02", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So the cows would produce milk from about October, November to like March, April. After April the, like because we only get rain from like July to mid September. So after April there's nothing for the cows left to eat. So then they don't have enough to create, to make milk. So you get milk like a third of the year, quarter of the year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 326, + "timestamp": "00:38:31", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 327, + "timestamp": "00:38:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[inaudible]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 328, + "timestamp": "00:38:33", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Don't even ask me. I have no idea. I asked him that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 329, + "timestamp": "00:38:35", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I didn't even think about stuff like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 330, + "timestamp": "00:38:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mom, I would ask him and he'd be like, I have none. I'd be like, Dad, why do you have no cows? I know you have cows. He's like, I lost them. I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 331, + "timestamp": "00:38:44", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He had about 15 cows." + }, + { + "turn_id": 332, + "timestamp": "00:38:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mom! I'm sorry. This is my interview. Stop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 333, + "timestamp": "00:38:51", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure she's trying to be helpful, OK? But it's interesting once you start talking or you and me in this case. I didn't even think about things like no milk after a while because nothing for the cows to eat. I didn't think about that. OK. Anything more you might want to say about your relationships with the people of Gambia? Or you could say your village, you know. I know you talked about your host family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 334, + "timestamp": "00:39:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think I just, even like my village was just like a super positive place. I think it takes a while, like basically harassment for females. It's just like, you just have to get over it. Like that happens. It's going to happen. It's a big culture of like joking in The Gambia. So it's always better to like not, stop being so serious about all these guys coming after you and just joke with them or like make fun of them. That's always better. And I know there were days that I wasn't that good at that and I'd just get really frustrated. But for the most, I mean, for the most part like just. If you just play it off as a joke, like that's so much a part of their culture that it just works out the best." + }, + { + "turn_id": 335, + "timestamp": "00:40:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your relationship like with other Peace Corps volunteers? And before I have you answer, were you the only Peace Corps volunteer in town or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 336, + "timestamp": "00:40:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 337, + "timestamp": "00:40:18", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were, OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 338, + "timestamp": "00:40:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my closest volunteers were a K away on each side. And Gambia doesn't really, I mean, like for my village, like we have no organized transportation. So you'd just like go to the South Bank road, because there's two roads. There's the North Bank road and there's South Bank road. So that was only like a kilometer walk for me. So I'd go out there and then I'd just try and flag down a car if I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 339, + "timestamp": "00:40:44", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like hitchhike or something. Was that safe?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 340, + "timestamp": "00:40:47", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 341, + "timestamp": "00:40:48", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was? OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 342, + "timestamp": "00:40:49", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, that's what everyone did like, unless I was, because not everyone has a bicycle. So all the village people, if they're going to go somewhere, they're going to hitchhike there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 343, + "timestamp": "00:40:57", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a bicycle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 344, + "timestamp": "00:40:58", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Peace Corps gives all of the volunteers in my country bicycles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 345, + "timestamp": "00:41:02", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 346, + "timestamp": "00:41:03", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So mostly if I was going to go visit like the close volunteers, I'd just bike there. Because you can be sitting on the side of the road for like two, three, 4 hours. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 347, + "timestamp": "00:41:12", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Shouldn't be laughing. Oh my. Oh goodness. Yeah. Do you want to say anything more about your work time versus leisure time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 348, + "timestamp": "00:41:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I think it was. Isn't Peace Corps where like you're always working, like because you're always representing America?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 349, + "timestamp": "00:41:28", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if you look at it that way, yes. Yes. We're little ambassadors. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 350, + "timestamp": "00:41:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's kind of what I think. I just, I mean, especially near the end of my service, like I didn't really want to be doing any. Like I found a lot of the time when I was doing like projects or work is because I was bored and I needed something to do. So I feel like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 351, + "timestamp": "00:41:50", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you read a lot?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 352, + "timestamp": "00:41:51", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I read a lot. Like 2 to 3 books a week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 353, + "timestamp": "00:41:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 354, + "timestamp": "00:41:56", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But so I think like near the end, I would just like, really if someone like approached me and said they wanted to do something, or if there was something like I really, really wanted to do, I would do it. But I was trying not to just like push things on people that were really mostly me being bored." + }, + { + "turn_id": 355, + "timestamp": "00:42:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK. We'll move on to the ninth question. The end of your first year, if you can kind of remember how that was. Were there any notable events? I know your mom mentioned this health clinic day. Did that happen in your first year, this health clinic day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 356, + "timestamp": "00:42:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it's just like so every month, like women go and have their babies weighed and they also get immunizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 357, + "timestamp": "00:42:39", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm interrupting you, I'm sorry, where? Because you had no health clinic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 358, + "timestamp": "00:42:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So like our health clinic was the village next to us. And it wasn't actually a clinic. It was like they got some benches out and there was like some abandoned buildings that we used." + }, + { + "turn_id": 359, + "timestamp": "00:42:52", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just abandoned buildings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 360, + "timestamp": "00:42:53", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think their original built purpose was to be like the place for the women to go for the baby clinic day. But like when we didn't go there for baby clinic day, there was like nothing. No one there. And so once a month they get used for that. And then yeah, there is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 361, + "timestamp": "00:43:12", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you give health talks during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 362, + "timestamp": "00:43:15", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was like the hospital staff that would come and do the baby weigh ins gave really long health talks. So for a while I thought about, oh, I want to do a health talk. And then I was just like, I don't really want to. These guys already talk for so long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 363, + "timestamp": "00:43:30", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They come from, the hospital?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 364, + "timestamp": "00:43:31", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So the hospital was ten K from my site and there's a volunteer in that village." + }, + { + "turn_id": 365, + "timestamp": "00:43:38", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Anything you want to say about, like how they word this, joys and woes after your first year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 366, + "timestamp": "00:43:48", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm trying to, I can't really remember my mindset at the first year. We had like a mid-service training. My parents came out right around my first year, which was really cool. They were in my village for about a week and then we did some of like the tourist stuff that I wouldn't pay for on a Peace Corps salary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 367, + "timestamp": "00:44:08", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like what was the tourist stuff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 368, + "timestamp": "00:44:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was like a baboon island, or there was an island that had chimpanzees on it that you can like stay at a lodge and then go around the island in the boat. But you cannot go on the island." + }, + { + "turn_id": 369, + "timestamp": "00:44:20", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 370, + "timestamp": "00:44:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then there's like an eco lodge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 371, + "timestamp": "00:44:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. And then who runs that? The Gambians or others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 372, + "timestamp": "00:44:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's like a joint. It's mostly a venture by these British people, but they're trying to be like cooperative with the community." + }, + { + "turn_id": 373, + "timestamp": "00:44:34", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Any unexpected events during your first year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 374, + "timestamp": "00:44:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. I just, like many things are unexpected, but I don't think there was anything like that really, really rocked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 375, + "timestamp": "00:44:52", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think there was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 376, + "timestamp": "00:44:52", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I don't think I want to talk about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 377, + "timestamp": "00:44:54", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. I'm sorry I'm laughing. This is the interviewer chuckling at times. Any relationships you want to talk about? With the Gambians, your host family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 378, + "timestamp": "00:45:11", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I just think it was just like run of the mill Peace Corps. Like I love, I mean, I guess some people don't like their host family, but I like had a very family like relationship with my host family. Sometimes they really ticked me off, but most of the time like they were my buds." + }, + { + "turn_id": 379, + "timestamp": "00:45:24", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 380, + "timestamp": "00:45:25", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then the Peace Corps volunteer community. I mean, there's obviously some volunteers I didn't like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 381, + "timestamp": "00:45:30", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 382, + "timestamp": "00:45:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But for the most part, like all of the people in my group I was really good friends with and the people in my area less good friends with. But still there were some really good friends there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 383, + "timestamp": "00:45:42", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Any health problems?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 384, + "timestamp": "00:45:45", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was sick, pretty sick, twice my first year, but just kind of like high fevers won't go down with medicine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 385, + "timestamp": "00:45:53", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you know what the cause was? I mean, did you ever get malaria?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 386, + "timestamp": "00:45:57", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't, but I was on Doxycycline for two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 387, + "timestamp": "00:46:01", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doxycycline." + }, + { + "turn_id": 388, + "timestamp": "00:46:03", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I took antibiotics every day for two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 389, + "timestamp": "00:46:06", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know we had to take Aralen, but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 390, + "timestamp": "00:46:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, they were trying to make us take mefloquine, which was crazy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 391, + "timestamp": "00:46:14", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Say it again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 392, + "timestamp": "00:46:14", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mefloquine is the one that makes people go crazy, luckily there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 393, + "timestamp": "00:46:19", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you spell that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 394, + "timestamp": "00:46:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 395, + "timestamp": "00:46:22", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "M-E-T-H. Meth-elquin?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 396, + "timestamp": "00:46:22", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think there's an F, but I just don't know how to spell it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 397, + "timestamp": "00:46:27", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. You know, I don't know if you might know this. I know in Honduras they had Plasmodium vivax. I think in Africa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 398, + "timestamp": "00:46:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We're falciparum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 399, + "timestamp": "00:46:35", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And I think that's more deadly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 400, + "timestamp": "00:46:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 401, + "timestamp": "00:46:38", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean, really, people can die from falciparum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 402, + "timestamp": "00:46:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, so I would just get like really stressed out about if like, because cerebral malaria can kill you in 2 to 3 days. So if you have a fever that's not going down, like I think I am a secret hypochondriac. Like I'm not worried about like germs on your hand. But if I start feeling sick and I don't feel like I can explain why, I worry about things. But cerebral malaria is no joke so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 403, + "timestamp": "00:47:10", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And I'm just being redundant for the interview. It was falciparum that they had in your area in Africa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 404, + "timestamp": "00:47:16", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, P. falciparum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 405, + "timestamp": "00:47:18", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it was doxycycline you took every day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 406, + "timestamp": "00:47:20", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 407, + "timestamp": "00:47:21", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. You never got malaria. Did you take a vacation? I know you already mentioned your parents coming." + }, + { + "turn_id": 408, + "timestamp": "00:47:28", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK, so my friend who serves in Morocco, I think around nine months in country I went to Morocco and I met another friend from Denver in Morocco. And then that friend from Denver came with me to Gambia. I also went to the Stomp Out Malaria conference at like nine. OK, no, so maybe I went at like ten or 11. Maybe like ten months I went to Morocco, but nine months I went to the Stomp Out Malaria conference in Senegal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 409, + "timestamp": "00:48:04", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Senegal. And Gambia borders Senegal, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 410, + "timestamp": "00:48:10", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mm hmm. Yeah. I also went to Dakar before that for some sightseeing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 411, + "timestamp": "00:48:13", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting. So Stomp Out Malaria conference. OK. And we already. This says travel but you talked about your vacation and all. We're on the tenth question out of 13. At the end of your tour, which for you was not that long ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 412, + "timestamp": "00:48:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 413, + "timestamp": "00:48:32", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have, what was your sense of success, achievement, failure with your Peace Corps service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 414, + "timestamp": "00:48:41", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. [phone rings] Um, I guess I think near the end, I was so grateful for being given the time in The Gambia that I just. Even though, I mean, I don't think I accomplished anything but at the end of the day, like I'm not the one who's going to accomplish anything. Like if behavior is going to change, I think it's going to come from the Gambian people. It's not going to come from me being like, oh, sleep underneath your bed net. So that was really cool. I mean, like things that I felt really proud about. Like I got a deaf girl enrolled at the deaf school in the capital, so that was really cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 415, + "timestamp": "00:49:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh good, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 416, + "timestamp": "00:49:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For me. I had a really good garden when I left, but I'm pretty sure it's all done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 417, + "timestamp": "00:49:28", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can I interrupt you and ask what kind of crops did you grow?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 418, + "timestamp": "00:49:30", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I built like a permaculture garden, so I was using berms and swales to direct the water and create like really good, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 419, + "timestamp": "00:49:38", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You lost me on that. Berms and swales?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 420, + "timestamp": "00:49:40", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. It's like bumps and troughs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 421, + "timestamp": "00:49:44", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 422, + "timestamp": "00:49:46", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To direct the water so it stays in the ground because we have such a dry season. So you can like soak up the rainy season water and save it for the dry season. But I had like two pomegranate trees and three passion fruit trees. Peace Corps told they told me they were going to replace me. This volunteer would have eaten passion fruit and pomegranate. Did not replace me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 423, + "timestamp": "00:50:10", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Did people, um, I know you've talked about your garden, did people grow and or eat many vegetables?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 424, + "timestamp": "00:50:19", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They like would grow vegetables. They're still, you want to sell vegetables? So it's just like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 425, + "timestamp": "00:50:24", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To make money?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 426, + "timestamp": "00:50:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Like I would if I was at the market, I would buy a ton of vegetables and give them to my family so that we would eat some. But it's just like, yeah, vegetable, it's just not that much a part of the culture. Most people grow onions. That's what you want to grow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 427, + "timestamp": "00:50:40", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really? How about fruit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 428, + "timestamp": "00:50:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's tons of mango trees everywhere, all over Gambia. So in mango season, you eat mangoes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 429, + "timestamp": "00:50:48", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. I forget about the season, so I thought, well, gosh, then you ate a lot of mangoes. In season. Yeah" + }, + { + "turn_id": 430, + "timestamp": "00:50:55", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. There's banana trees. Like, I had a banana tree. I had one harvest and then it died. That can be year-round. There's an orange season, but the oranges are like somewhere between a lemon and orange. And there's papaya, and then there's like local fruit, which is baobab, bush mango. I don't even know what other stuff is called." + }, + { + "turn_id": 431, + "timestamp": "00:51:23", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Interesting. And I know you, we'll end in a few minutes. I want it to end at a certain time. We have like 9 minutes on the recorder." + }, + { + "turn_id": 432, + "timestamp": "00:51:35", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson's Mother", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Tell them about the women's garden." + }, + { + "turn_id": 433, + "timestamp": "00:51:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well I got the pump fixed in the women's garden, but like as a long term, sustainable thing, it was like a $10,000 grant to fix it too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 434, + "timestamp": "00:51:49", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 435, + "timestamp": "00:51:51", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But it's kind of like, Gambia is becoming more arid as time goes, so there's never like going to be enough water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 436, + "timestamp": "00:52:01", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 437, + "timestamp": "00:52:03", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Especially if I'm not replaced. Like, there's ways you can like make the water stuff more sustainable, but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 438, + "timestamp": "00:52:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK. And I'm looking ahead at one of these questions, you know, it says. We won't even go into question 12, through the years have you continued any involvement? I mean, you've just been back a few months. So considering that you've been back a short time, is there anything else you might want to add about your service in The Gambia? I mean, you've given us a lot of good information. Interesting. Any regrets and satisfactions, we'll say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 439, + "timestamp": "00:52:42", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. I don't know. I think, I guess almost I wish I hadn't taken things so seriously in the first year and just, like, spent more time like enjoying my village and being with the people there and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 440, + "timestamp": "00:53:02", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What would you do with the people, I mean, like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 441, + "timestamp": "00:53:05", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just like, so they like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 442, + "timestamp": "00:53:07", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking, dancing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 443, + "timestamp": "00:53:09", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, talking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 444, + "timestamp": "00:53:09", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Playing soccer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 445, + "timestamp": "00:53:10", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I played soccer with them for a bit, but it was like only guys and it's so hot there and I just really wasn't. In the end, I wasn't enjoying it enough to do it. Mostly people just like sit there and they brew this thing called attaya, which is like green tea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 446, + "timestamp": "00:53:24", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you spell that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 447, + "timestamp": "00:53:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A-T-T-A-Y-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 448, + "timestamp": "00:53:32", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a green tea?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 449, + "timestamp": "00:53:33", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it's like Chinese gunpowder tea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 450, + "timestamp": "00:53:35", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, so you drank a lot of attaya." + }, + { + "turn_id": 451, + "timestamp": "00:53:38", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think that's, that you can find all throughout West Africa. It's a really big like thing that they do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 452, + "timestamp": "00:53:45", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you like the taste?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 453, + "timestamp": "00:53:47", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kind of. It was really strong. I don't know. It's just like, that's just like what people do. That's like how you pass a day. You just like brew some attaya." + }, + { + "turn_id": 454, + "timestamp": "00:53:57", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Do you think you helped the Gambians, like provide, as they say, better understanding of the United States or whatever?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 455, + "timestamp": "00:54:08", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 456, + "timestamp": "00:54:08", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I mean, do they get to, do you think they got to know you and thought, what do they think of you and or Americans after your life there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 457, + "timestamp": "00:54:16", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that was like, that is why I feel like my Peace Corps service was like meaningful, or not. Worthwhile." + }, + { + "turn_id": 458, + "timestamp": "00:54:25", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That it was or was not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 459, + "timestamp": "00:54:26", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 460, + "timestamp": "00:54:26", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was worthwhile. OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 461, + "timestamp": "00:54:27", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because like I think especially in this day and age, like a lot of people see like American music videos and that's what they think of America." + }, + { + "turn_id": 462, + "timestamp": "00:54:34", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Uh huh. And TV shows if they get shows." + }, + { + "turn_id": 463, + "timestamp": "00:54:37", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So just like having me live in the village, like on the same level as other villagers for a year, like wearing what they wear and working. I mean, they work a lot harder than I worked but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 464, + "timestamp": "00:54:50", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 465, + "timestamp": "00:54:50", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would like go to the rice fields and, you know, like get down and dirty. And I think that was really, I felt like meaningful because it's like, no, this is, we're just the same kind of people. Like, we just do our jobs or, you know, we talk to people. We take baths." + }, + { + "turn_id": 466, + "timestamp": "00:55:12", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 467, + "timestamp": "00:55:13", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 468, + "timestamp": "00:55:15", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are your plans for the future?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 469, + "timestamp": "00:55:18", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I'm hopefully, we'll see. I don't. I feel like Peace Corps really taught me that like, you know, don't make plans too far ahead of things and your life can always change and go in a different direction. But I'm looking to become a nurse, so I'm taking like prerequisites starting this summer. But it's also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 470, + "timestamp": "00:55:41", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where are you taking the pre reqs at?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 471, + "timestamp": "00:55:43", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Community College of Denver." + }, + { + "turn_id": 472, + "timestamp": "00:55:45", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 473, + "timestamp": "00:55:46", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But also like I plan to do the summer semester as kind of like a trial. Like if I don't think it's cut out for me, then it won't have been that much money down the drain to just do a couple of classes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 474, + "timestamp": "00:55:58", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I know this is, I'm not supposed to talk about myself, but I think I told you at the happy hour, there's so many different fields in nursing that one field may not suit you, my opinion, but another one might, you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 475, + "timestamp": "00:56:13", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 476, + "timestamp": "00:56:16", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I know. Anything else? You wanted to end about 6:15. Anything you might want to add?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 477, + "timestamp": "00:56:23", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. I just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 478, + "timestamp": "00:56:25", + "speaker": "Barbara Kaare-Lopez", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How? Well, I'll just ask. What was the effect of your Peace Corps service on you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 479, + "timestamp": "00:56:32", + "speaker": "Elizabeth Johnson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I think hopefully it made me like a little bit more patient, a little bit more relaxed. Hopefully value like spending time with friends and giving time to family and." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00758", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project 1998 - 1999", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/BillicaRD/billicard.htm", + "original_file_name": "BillicaRD_6-17-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/BillicaRD/BillicaRD_6-17-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Roger D. Billica", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 17 June 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Mark Davison" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Roger D. Billica" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is an interview with Roger Billica with the Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project. Thank you for making the time with us this morning out of your busy schedule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for gathering so many wonderful things that we're looking forward to hearing about, all that you have out here on the table. We'd like to start with you explaining to us your roles and responsibilities with the Shuttle-Mir Project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. I'm the Chief of the Medical Operations Branch here at NASA Johnson Space Center, and Medical Operations Branch is the organization that essentially is responsible for all aspects of health care for every space flight. I quickly wrote down, so I could remember to tell you, what the different things are. It's actually quite a variety.\\n\\n When we say \"health care,\" we mean very comprehensively anything having to do with the human element of flight, anything that would affect health and safety, illness, injury, preparation for flight. So things that we cover in general for all programs, whether it's Shuttle, Space Station, and we did for the Shuttle-Mir Program, Phase One, are establishing what the medical standards are for the mission and performing the medical selection and certification of crews. Anything having to do with health care--pre-flight, before the mission, during the mission, and post flight. So, all aspects of that.\\n\\n The design, the development, the manifesting, the management of all of the health care equipment, the health care systems, so that includes countermeasures such as exercise activities, environmental health, as well as what someone would traditionally think of medical care activities.\\n\\n Anything having to do with crew training in the area of health. So, the medical training of the crew, the training on our medical equipment, the training of the crew of what they would expect to encounter and how to deal with this experience. And the support of the rest of the training. So when the crews were to do any sort of potentially hazardous training, the water training, the winter survival training, or anything, for example, in the water tanks or in the centrifuge or in the chambers that would require medical support or medical supervision, that came under our responsibilities.\\n\\n Mission support in general. Preparing for the mission, planning the mission, anything having to do with the human aspect such as schedules, work-rest regime, the sleep shifting, how much could be done during a duty day. We're basically the advocate for health and trying to keep a rational approach to anything having to do with what are we expecting these people to do. And planning the mission and then providing a medical support team to the mission while it's occurring, in the Mission Control Center. And we did do that over in Russia.\\n\\n So, all the functions I'm describing are typical for any mission, but we did for the entire Shuttle-Mir mission as well. Preventive health. Anything having to do with getting ready for the mission, physical fitness program to get in shape, an infectious disease isolation prior to the mission, a health stabilization program, anything just to help get them ready nutritionally, immunizations, things like that.\\n\\n And then, of course, the countermeasure program, which a lot of people think of when they think of medical support to space flight during the mission. Things that are done to prevent the negative changes that occur to the human body from space exposure, from the lack of gravity, from radiation, from things like that, that present a risk to the human, make it potentially unsafe or risky to fly, we do preventive things to keep the person healthy, keep the performance at the level necessary for mission success.\\n\\n Behavioral health, big area, particularly for long missions. The behavioral, psychological, and emotional aspects of a mission being out of country for, in some cases, a couple of years, being separated from family and home, and then being launched and left in this vehicle in space with only so many places to go for months at a time, that's a pretty big challenge for that individual. So the support to that, how to prepare them and then how to support them behaviorally, psychologically, and also, if necessary, being able to intervene if that became a little bit shaky during any of those areas.\\n\\n Physical medicine, rehabilitation medicine. We have the responsibility not only to prepare them and to maintain them during the mission, but then when they get back, to help them recover and rehabilitate physically, emotionally, physiologically, and return back to their normal baseline. They do not come back the same as when they left, and our job is to get them back to normal in that regard.\\n\\n Environmental health, establishing the environmental standards for space flight. What is safe? What is acceptable in terms of the atmosphere, the water quality, the microbiological environment, radiation, and noise, those sorts of things? We set the standards for those areas. The engineers and the design people, of course, then design to those standards. That's not our area. But then our job is then to be the health monitor, to go back and look. How did we do? How are we doing? As we talk about the missions, you'll see that that became a pretty big issue for Shuttle-Mir with some of the events, the power outages, heat and humidity, the atmosphere, the fire event that occurred. We were very involved. Then because of what we had up there, helping answer the questions, \"Can we stay? Is it safe?\" That became a pretty big issue.\\n\\n Epidemiology, tracking the trends of what happened, looking at the data, doing monitoring. What can we learn from this? What was the effect of the exposure? Have we created any increased risk to them long term after the mission from what happened to them in space? Is there anything we can learn from this mission about health issues, all of the things we've just talked about, that we then need to apply to future missions? So the epidemiology and the medical data and the trends and what to learn. We have a project team that does that.\\n\\n Then finally, using any experience in space flight to look at new technologies, medical breakthroughs, things that we can learn in terms of advanced capabilities that we can then apply not only in the space program, but then spin off back to society, that could be used. Some of the things that are on this table are some advanced technologies like that or represent some areas that we're working on that we were able to use Shuttle-Mir as a platform to continue to move forward on some new medical technologies that people are excited about.\\n\\n So, I think that's a summary that describes the category and variety of things that fall under medical operations in space medicine. It was quite an experience for us to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about your staff and what kind of folks that you have that help you get all of this done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We've got just a great staff. It involves health care professionals. The team is led by physicians who are flight surgeons. These are physicians who come from a variety of backgrounds--internists and family practitioners and emergency room doctors, etc.--who at some point along their way decided they wanted to pursue aerospace medicine as a career, and either went to the military or some other training program and then came here to NASA to be NASA flight surgeons.\\n\\n They come with those credentials and then they go through additional training to be certified as NASA flight surgeons, learning all of this about space medicine and becoming very knowledgeable in these things, and also being trained up and certified as flight controllers. So they're not only these physicians, but they're also flight controllers in the Mission Control Center, fully trained and certified for that. And they're also on flight status so that they can fly along with the crews, in terms of T-38s and getting to know and be part of the crew team. That's the nature and scope of who and what a flight surgeon is.\\n\\n We selected and sent some outstanding flight surgeons to Russia. We assigned at least one to every one of the increments, and that flight surgeon went over to Russia with the crew and lived over in Russia, stayed in the Prophylactory there in Star City, and was there during all the training. Then while the crew member was in space, our flight surgeon then stayed in Moscow and staffed with the support team in the TsUP, the Mission Control Center, and came back in time for landing and then was the supervisor of the rehabilitation program. So our flight surgeons made almost as much of a time commitment and a time away from home and I don't know what other words to use, but did the whole mission just as the crew member did. It was a significant commitment on their part.\\n\\n Supporting and working with the flight surgeons are hundreds of people. We have other health care professionals, nurses. We have a staff of biomedical engineers--BMEs, we call them--who do much of this list. Every one of these things I just told you, there's a project team or a core team of people who that's their job and they do these things.\\n\\n We also have a staff of PhD scientists in the environmental health area, who handle all the environmental health aspects--toxicologists, microbiologists, water specialists, nutritionists, pharmacologists, all of these sorts of people.\\n\\n There's a staff of laboratories, people who work in the laboratories, who are supporting the analysis of the exercise changes, the bone loss, the neurological changes, the nutritional concerns. A clinical laboratory with technicians who do that.\\n\\n We have a behavioral medicine team with a psychiatrist and psychologist, several psychologists and some support people who do that, who handle that part of the team. We have a clinic with nurses and staff who do that, and the technicians who support them. A wide variety of just administrative support and secretaries.\\n\\n It all adds up, and I'm sure I'm leaving people out, but it's a big team. It's a team that does support all the programs, but there were those who were totally dedicated to the Shuttle-Mir Program, and there were biomedical engineers who, along with the flight surgeons, went over to Russia for the entire time of the missions and stayed over there for several months and worked with the flight surgeons. Then a lot of these other people would then go over for trips, taking the equipment over to Russia, get things set up, support training. So, several hundred people, actually, on this team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As Frank Culbertson has said, no mission is routine, but I'm sure you have a pattern of how you would put together your Shuttle flights. Would you tell us about the challenges that you had to undergo to get your team prepared for the Shuttle-Mir Projects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't even know where to begin. This was a huge challenge. The last time we had done anything like this as an agency, of course, was Skylab long-duration flight, and then only went up to 86 days, 87 days, I think. I'm not sure that's the exact number, but in the eighties. And three brief missions, essentially, compared to what we did on Mir. And not too many people around from then. There are still some people around who supported that mission, but we really had to go back and dig out the records and try and remember and learn what was that experience. The Apollo-Soyuz, the only other joint mission with the Russians, and that was back during a whole different time frame of U.S.-Russian relationships. So, really not a whole lot of similarities there in terms of how that was done.\\n\\n We had to learn again how to do long-duration space flight over a couple of weeks, and it's an entirely different experience, entirely different set of challenges, just a whole different critter than a Shuttle flight. So, a steep learning curve for us there. Of course, the Russians had been doing this for years, but, again, that was part of the challenge.\\n\\n The other big thing was to learn the Russians, understand them, learn how they do business, and they do things very differently, not only just in terms of how they do space flight, but how they practice medicine. They have a whole different culture and a whole different approach to health care than we do. Some of that was just fine in that it was just a matter of finding the common language, and some of that was not fine. Some of that was things that they do that were not what we do in terms of health care or philosophy approaching health care. We had to learn how to deal with that with them in a way that we did not compromise the ethics or the standards of United States health care, in putting together a joint program.\\n\\n So, the two big categories, in summary, although there's lots of stories behind this, is long-duration space flight and how to do that, and how to work and get along with the Russians. I think we succeeded at both of those.\\n\\n Of course, the big benefit of all of this is we are in such a better position now for International Space Station. If we had not done Phase One and just went from Shuttle to an International Space Station, without this experience, I'm not sure how well we would have done. I think we would have really fumbled around quite a bit trying to learn these same lessons, where here we had a much more structured learning experience where we were put into a situation where we basically had to fit into an existing program, learn from them, bring back from what the Russians do the best, and the experience and the knowledge that we could gain from that, at the same time learn what we wanted to do differently, and do it in a way that was less risky than just going out there and trying to learn it without that framework. So, a very worthwhile experience, but not necessarily always comfortable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are the differences from, say, preparing for Andy Thomas' flight compared to what you had to do for Norm [Norman] Thagard?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you walk us through some of the preparations or even share some of the stories with us about how you prepared for Norm's first flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. When we prepared for Norm's flight, it was just a total blank sheet. We got a lot of different teams together that we had been using to get ready for International Space Station, various consultant groups looking at all of these things that I listed for you, and started putting together what we thought would be the appropriate things to do in terms of prevention and countermeasures in medical care. Yet at the same time going into that, our initial understanding was essentially we were the guests of the Russian program and we would do things the way the Russians had set it up. We were essentially going over there to support Norm, but that we would basically be guests and fitting into the Russian way of doing business. So we went over there just ready to support and help, but not really knowing what to expect what we were going to do, and we did not know how the Russians did things, and we really didn't know about the health care system or their processes or procedures, had no idea what to expect.\\n\\n We sent two flight surgeons over there with Norm, and basically just showed up and said, \"Here we are. What do we do?\" Quite a scramble. Steep learning curve, as I said. We didn't know what medical support was present in Star City, so there was just a lot of communication back and forth. \"We'd better get this over here. We need some medical kits.\"\\n\\n Probably the biggest learning experience is the Russians had their own way of doing medical selection and standards, and so I made several trips over there to meet with my Russian counterparts. They made some trips over here. There was a weariness. There was an unknown. \"Who are these guys and what are they going to do to our crew member?\" I'm sure they were equally concerned about us. I mean, it was certainly a two-way thing.\\n\\n The Russians view medical selection and medical training as one and the same. In NASA, we have standards and we select astronauts, and when they're selected, they're good to be assigned to any mission. And we do monitor them and we do some final checkouts before we okay them for mission, but essentially once they've been selected, the threat's gone and they can proceed with their training, and we support the training, but they know they've been assigned to the mission and their training.\\n\\n On the Russian side, they pick cosmonauts, but all during their training they have more than one crew training for any given mission, and all during the training the things they're going through are part of the medical selection. They're being monitored and tested and put through various things where they're tested all throughout the training. It's not until right before the mission where they have another complete set of medical evaluation and tests--it's fairly extensive--that they're finally chosen who's going to do the missions. So it's high threat by the medical establishment throughout the training period. So the relationship of the crew to the medical doctors is very different.\\n\\n The tests the Russians do, some of them are very different. There are things that we had a difficult time understanding, \"Why do you do this? What do you benefit from this? What decisions are you making from these tests?\" Some of the technologies that they had, and still have, are, for us, old technologies and things we would no longer do or no longer expose our crew members to. Lots of X-rays and lots of things like that, that we just don't do anymore.\\n\\n They have a Chief Medical Commission that it took us a long time to understand. What is this Chief Medical Commission? It's made up--essentially if we put together the equivalent of it, it would be our Surgeon General, Surgeon General of the military, the head of the National Institutes of Health, the president of Yale and Harvard Medical Schools, the head of Centers for Disease Control. I mean, all of their top medical authorities in their country that form this Russian Chief Medical Commission as part of their Department of Health of their country, basically a Cabinet-level organization. This is the group that would come together and meet and, at the selection of the crews and right before a mission, would have a week-long set of medical tests done, then present it to them. It was very strange and very different from us.\\n\\n So the first time we went through all of this experience I just described with Norm Thagard, we were sort of standing on the sidelines going, \"This is very different,\" and at the same time trying to protect Norm from any undue risks or exposures, because we'd heard a lot of horror stories about--and I'm not trying to paint a bad picture. I mean, the Russian medical people are very well trained, very professional, very smart and brilliant people, but the resources they had to work with in a lot of cases were not up to American standards. You heard a lot of horror stories about reusing medical supplies and reusing needles and things like this. So we were on edge and looking for where we needed to protect our people.\\n\\n We had heard stories about some of the other countries who had sent crew members, who were basically put under the authority of the medical doctors in Russia, and ended up having procedures done to them that we would never allow or never do, but if these people wanted to fly, they had to now subject themselves to this medical system in Russia that was very different, and a different philosophy and approach to health care and medicine. Different doctor-patient relationship. Not a same attitude toward confidentiality and privacy of data. Not a same attitude about informed consent, that you gave the patient the information and they had to agree to things. So, very different atmosphere just in terms of health care that we went into.\\n\\n We got into some confrontations with the Russians on these things, saying, \"No, you will not do this to our person.\" They had been used to other countries coming in and basically saying, \"Well, here's our crew member. We want to fly, so we've got to let you do whatever you want to do.\" Well, we had a different philosophy. So there were a lot of tug-of-wars that went on. There were a lot of phone calls, a lot of meetings. There were aspects of the Norm Thagard mission where we threatened to pack up and go home. We, essentially, as the doctors were throwing our body down in front of the crew member, saying, \"Over my dead body you will do this to our crew member,\" after having talked to our management and to our crew member, saying, \"Here's what they want to do. We don't think we ought to do it. We think this is more and beyond. This is a risk that we shouldn't do.\"\\n\\n So there were some very uncomfortable times during the first one or two missions where we reached a point of conflict that came close to ending the whole program, and had a lot of meetings with NASA management and elevated issues all the way up to the Dan Goldin level, where we had to stand firm if we were not going to allow a praesen of things that just were totally unacceptable.\\n\\n As I get into this now, the emotion of that comes back to me. There were some pretty tense times. Of course, we were expected to go solve this. \"Don't let this happen.\" And, \"Why is this happening?\" And, \"Go fix it.\" But I think there was an appreciation on the crew member's part that, \"Thank goodness the doctors are not letting this happen, and standing up.\" So a lot of trips back and forth, a lot of negotiations, a lot of writing agreements and protocols.\\n\\n So the difference was, having gone through a couple of times, we established a routine that by the time we got to Andy's mission, we knew what to expect, the Russians knew what they could do and what we were willing to do, and we pretty well had it figured out. We knew now how to do the Chief Medical Commission. The Russians knew what tests we were going to allow and what not. So it smoothed out and it became routine.\\n\\n By the last few missions, this conflict that I'm describing was gone and we had a working relationship and a comfort level and an understanding we knew how to do things. We understood what things were for the formalities that we needed to go through so that it would feel okay to the Russians, and they knew what things that they could not demand of us so that we wouldn't get in a conflict.\\n\\n That's just in how we did the health care things. Also, by the time we got to the Andy mission, we were contributing a lot of medical equipment and supplies to the missions, where initially we just sent some extra medicines and things up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about how that evolved. I know when we've had a chance to visit Mike Barratt, he shared with us the book that was put together with Russian-English, how to do everything from headache to some of those procedures that still mystify me, but it was a \"how to do everything\" book. But that was just one sample. Can you give us other things that evolved through this process that the United States contributed to the Mir?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By the end of the process, we were sending up environmental monitoring equipment, some of the equipment where we were getting ready for International Space Station. Some of that was sent up in a hurry, with some of the environmental problems that happened. I'm sure you've got all that down in history. But with the fire event and the smoke, there were some other problems where the environmental controls went out, the carbon dioxide system, the humidity controls, these sorts of things. As we had crew members up there being exposed to these things and there were questions being asked on the United States' side, \"Well, is this safe? Is this healthy?\" and the Russians had limited technology. They have some, but not enough really to satisfy a lot of the commissions that were coming together, asking some very tough questions about, \"Is it the right thing to do to stay up there? Is it the right thing to do to send another crew member up there, just in terms of health and safety?\"\\n\\n And so at some instances, with very quick turnaround, we were sending up things on the Shuttle. There were even some missions where we weren't completely sure at the time that the Shuttle docked that we would leave our new crew member up there, and we were doing some real-time testing going onboard the Mir and looking at things and testing the atmosphere and getting calls down to confirm that, indeed, the atmosphere was okay, the toxic levels were okay, and we could kind of say, \"All right. It's okay. It's good to let the crew member go on there.\"\\n\\n So, some things were real-time quick decisions. \"Let's send some stuff up there.\" So as time went on, we accumulated some hardware and equipment, and as medical events occurred on the Mir, where we realized there were some medical problems, we started expanding the level of some of the medical kits. They have Russian medical kits, they have Russian equipment, but, again, in some cases different medicines, different approaches. They don't have the same pharmacy that we do in some cases, so we would send up additional pharmacies. It got to the point on some of the missions where there might be a medical problem or a medical event that would occur, mostly minor, but still, where we would talk with the Russians. They'd say, \"Well, what do you have and what do we have?\" And that's where the joint medical book came together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It ended up at any given medical event we might use some Russian stuff, we might use some NASA stuff to deal with that event. But it evolved. It's hard to go back and point, other than to maybe some of the environmental events that occurred, where there was a definite step-up, it's more that in most cases where the Russians became familiar and we learned their system, where gradually we added some things on.\\n\\n There were some things where we met with some of our Russian counterparts right at the beginning of the activity, and we agreed that jointly here was the level of medical capability that should be in place for a long-duration space flight. That list of \"Here's what should be in place to support a long-duration flight\"--advanced life-support medical equipment, things like that--was essentially a wish list on the Russian side. They didn't have some of this stuff either. For example, a defibrillator monitor. If there's a cardiac event or a heart arrhythmia or something, that's what you'd want to have. We both sat down and signed an agreement between the Russian medical and the U.S. that this is what should be there. They didn't have it. We didn't have it. But by doing that, we had an agreement and we said to the Russians, \"All right. We'll go develop one. We're getting one ready for Space Station. Then we'll provide it to you and then you can make it part of your medical equipment up there.\" So part way through, we had one ready. We flew it up on the Shuttle and it became part of the Russian medical equipment that was available up there. So, some things like that. And we have that on the table here.\\n\\n So, different pathways. Different ways we were able to gradually expand things to, first and foremost, make sure we had a level of comfort for our crew member, but, secondly, to jointly evolve and expand our joint medical capabilities and experience to a level that both of our teams had always said, \"This is what we should have,\" but the opportunity wasn't there. You're always competing with, of course, other resources, and we have to be able to use a risk management analysis that convinces not only the medical group, but the rest of the NASA program management that there is a sufficient need to justify putting some additional medical equipment or medical capability up there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's not like you can make a house call." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They're pretty self-sufficient, aren't they." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And it's not like you can just walk in the door with a truckload of medical equipment and say, \"We're the doctors. Send this up there.\" You've still got to have a rationale and a justification that makes sense. So that's where the epidemiology and all of that comes in. What are we learning? What are we seeing?\\n\\n And there were some significant medical things that happened on Mir that I think opened a lot of people's eyes outside of the medical community where they finally were saying, \"Wow. There could really be some bad things that happen. We need to make sure that there's a medical program available to support this.\"\\n\\n So one of the things that happened as a result of Shuttle-Mir was a realization on the part of NASA management where we had been getting ready for Space Station, we'd been fighting a lot of battles saying, \"You guys, we'd better have some medical stuff up there. There's going to be some problems.\" And we're telling this to people who had not had the experience. So here comes Phase One. We get the experience and now all of a sudden everybody's saying, \"Boy, we need some psychological support. We need some environmental health monitoring. We'd better have some stuff ready in case somebody gets sick.\"\\n\\n So, finally, gosh, for the first time in years our battles, our struggles convincing our own NASA management that you needed this stuff went away--not completely. Got easier because now they're asking for us. So in a way it was kind of nice for us, because now instead of us trying to force our way in, they want us. So I think, again, it went a long way to helping the paradigms, the attitudes about what's needed for long-duration space flight for ISS. So it made preparation for ISS a whole lot easier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that every member of the crew, American and Russian, not all have been physicians. They've had to undergo some type of medical training. How was that a challenge to your group, to train folks to be gone for that long a time, to be self-sufficient? I know that if I don't feel well, I can go down to my pharmacist or I can call my doctor, but yet they may be able to call a doctor, but they may not be able to get what they need. So how did you take care of that part of the program to make them feel like whatever happened up there, they were going to be taken care of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, we started with the Russian experience. They had been doing this--and I give them credit--successfully for many years, so they had evolved a fairly solid program in terms of how to prepare the crews and get them ready. Again, they formed several crews before a mission and that crew goes through a lot of training, not only to get them ready for the skills and the technology of the mission, but also to bring them together as a crew. And they do a pretty good job of that.\\n\\n We had some challenges during Shuttle-Mir because we swapped out some crews, and so the crew that had trained together at the last minute was changed out, and that presented some challenges to those crews just in terms of learning real time, \"How do we get along with one another?\" because they didn't have the luxury of training together. Big lesson learned there.\\n\\n We also had a pretty good idea from the Russians of what sort of things that they'd encountered medically, so what sort of things were needed. There are some things that were fairly obvious that we knew to get ready for that.\\n\\n By the fact that we assigned one flight surgeon who worked with the crew the whole time getting ready and then was the doctor there at the TsUP for our crew member, I think was a huge benefit. It was a really smart thing to do, in retrospect. We did it initially just because we only had one or two docs who were willing to do it, but it makes sense. We also knew it was a good thing to do. So what it did is it made it so that crew member knew this doctor and was comfortable with him and willing to really work with him when there were problems. It wasn't some strange voice or strange person; it was their flight surgeon. I think that helped a lot when things came up, when the crew member had questions or concerns, for them to feel comfortable, secure, confident that we were going to be able to deal with whatever the situation was.\\n\\n We do a lot of telemedicine. That's how we practice medicine. Our patients are in space and our doctors are on the ground. And even those situations where the astronaut is a physician, the physician for the crew and that astronaut is still our flight surgeon; you've just got someone who's a lot better trained and their skills and their background. But the person who's responsible for the health care issues is still the flight surgeon on the ground.\\n\\n So I'm not sure I'm answering your question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have. That brings up another subject. There were several physicians that flew. Did at any time these physicians turn into be the physician in residence?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. Some of the things that happened, particularly with Jerry Linenger and some of the other situations that happened, there were calls being made by that astronaut physician that contributed significantly into the decisions about the medical and environmental situation, having that crew member being a physician, so that when we talked things over and that physician said, \"Well, I've checked the crew out. I've done a brief exam. Lungs are clear, burns are minor,\" things like that, and we can speak the same language and have that person on the scene to say with a little bit more confidence, \"I think we're okay.\"\\n\\n There were a couple of incidents where that contributed significantly to the decision about whether we could stay up there and were we good to continue the mission or not. So, most definitely, I wouldn't want to play down the benefit of having in long-duration missions one of the crew members being a trained medical person." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because they were able to help with other facts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You bet. You bet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All the different incidents that happened. We've talked about American crews, but we know we have cosmonauts that trained here as well, that flew. How did your area work with these cosmonauts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We actually ended up negotiating exchange where, since we had flight surgeons over in Russia, we had the Russians send a flight surgeon here. So all the time during the program we had one of the Russian physicians here and tried to work with them the same way we wanted to be worked with over in Russia.\\n\\n The interesting thing is, the concept of a flight surgeon, the concept of who that person is and what they do and all the things they cover, there was no equivalent of that in Russia. Russians split things up very differently, and it took us a while to learn this. In Star City, in the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, that's a military establishment. They have military doctors, but these doctors were responsible for the pre-flight training and the pre-flight selection. Remember how they're both together. That's what those doctors do, and they have their different departments. But they have doctors who do physicals. They have doctors that do the training. But then those doctors do not support the mission. That's Institute of Biomedical Problems at TsUP. So there's another whole team of doctors and a whole different organization, very separate, very different, that's the medical support team to the mission. They were not used to working together. The only time they came together was at the Chief Medical Commission.\\n\\n So you had a group of doctors who'd been training and working with the crew, the cosmonauts, in preparation for the mission, then a whole different group of doctors who did not work and know the crew supporting the mission in the Mission Control Center. They did not call them flight surgeons. They were not used to giving them the authority and responsibility, and there was no one doctor who worked with the crew through the whole thing on the Russian side. So this was very confusing to us and confusing to the Russians, because they weren't used to investing the amount of authority and responsibility into a physician, a single flight surgeon, that we're used to doing, who is the medical authority for a mission. So for us to tell the Russians, \"Well, send us a flight surgeon,\" they didn't even know what we were talking about. So essentially they ended up sending us a military physician from Star City to come over here, but then we were expecting this physician to work with us like a flight surgeon.\\n\\n So we're essentially, for the first time ever, training Russian physicians to be the equivalent of a NASA flight surgeon, and we've had, for a year at a time, we've had a series of them now, great people. We've enjoyed meeting and working with them. We've trained them up as NASA flight surgeons, and then they go back now, and now they're working back in Russia. This has been great for communication and building a rapport.\\n\\n So in answer to your question, when cosmonauts were over here, we said to those Russian physicians, \"All right. You are the flight surgeon for these cosmonauts.\" And we would have to train and explain to these Russian physicians what was expected of them, but they were expected to essentially be the medical liaison with their cosmonauts. And all the stuff that we do then, we did with that Russian flight surgeon, I think in a lot of cases surprising the Russians at the amount we expected this doctor to do, of course, supervising from our point of view. But it worked out great. We gave them an office and they're teamed up with our flight surgeons, and it went real well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a great benefit for their program, that first-hand experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it's really paying off for ISS now, because now as we get into this and we're meeting all of the international partners, saying, \"We expect whenever you have someone flying on ISS that you provide a flight surgeon,\" the Russians now know what we're talking about. So the first few increments of International Space Station, the doctors who've been over here from the Russians are the ones they're assigning as their flight surgeons for International Space Station. So that went real well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've talked a lot about the program and your staff and the team as a whole, but we really haven't talked about your personal experiences. You've worked so many times, so many years with Americans and American space and some international partners, but this has been a full-time international partnership. Share some of the experiences personally that you've felt your growth or maybe even a high point or a low point that you could share with us, something personal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For me it has been very enriching. I think it's taken me to another level of what the job is, and to go from just taking care of the NASA program to now having to grow into someone who is negotiating on an international level medical issues. We've done some things that when you step back and watch what's going on and say, \"My gosh, we're here negotiating standards, medical standards, with other countries and coming up with joint standards and protocols between the United States and Russia on how you practice medicine.\" We're not sure that that's really ever been done before, and we're setting some precedents.\\n\\n So for me initially, we sent our first two flight surgeons over there, Mike Barratt and Dave Ward, just two topnotch people, and they're over there and I'm back here having the usual misconceptions, suspicions, paranoia about the Russians whatever. Up until that time, the only people from the medical side who had ever gone over to Russia were high-level management, and I'm kind of half management, half flight surgeon. I'm kind of the interface between them. I still like to think of myself as a flight surgeon. That's my background and that's what I've done, and they stuck me in a management position. But I still work missions, so I'm kind of the point in between.\\n\\n The only doctors who had ever gone over were high-level management, who would go over, and this is not to say anything bad about them, but in their role they would go over to Moscow and meet in meeting rooms and things. So then we sent our flight surgeons over, and they're over there in the trenches. They're over there in Star City doing training, dealing with this tug-of-war day-to-day, and they're calling me, saying, \"This is not easy. We've got problems. We need help. We need you to come over here.\"\\n\\n So with some uncertainty and trepidation, I agreed to go over. They said to me, \"Now, when you come over here, you don't go to Moscow and stay in a nice fancy hotel. You come to Star City. We'll find you a room over here in the Prophy where we're training and where we're living, and we want you to stay here with us and see what it's really like.\" Because they're telling me that they've got some problems and some tough times.\\n\\n So I go, \"Okay.\" I've done a lot of travel, but never to Russia before, so my first experience was to go over there by myself. Of course, it's very different coming in. It's not the same as going to England or France or something like this. It's a different experience.\\n\\n So I end up over in Star City and they meet me, fortunately. It's getting through Customs and even just any of that, it's different. And they meet me and take me out to Star City. So I stayed out in Star City with the team for a couple of weeks and got to really know what it was like. And there I started meeting with the true counterparts--the head of medicine from IBMP and the head of medicine from Star City, where before over here we'd met a couple of times, but never on their turf. So there were a lot of late-night meetings, sitting in a room, negotiating, arguing, working out all of these things. I told you we had challenges about really getting down to the detail nitty-gritty, staying up late night. That first time we ended up writing a joint medical requirements document, and we stayed up, we worked all night.\\n\\n I was staying in the Orbita, which is their equivalent of a hotel there at Star City. Very different. And still very early in the program, so they're suspicious. They've got guards. It's military. So I'm up late at night with my team, working on this document, up at two and three in the morning, walking back through the snow to the Orbita. It's shut down. There was one night--when you leave, you left your key at the counter; you didn't take it with you. And there was one night I got back there about two or three in the morning and they had shut down. There was no one around. So there was no way for me to get to my room. So I ended up sleeping on the couch in the lobby of the Orbita that night, worrying at any moment that some guard, military guard, was going to come in and I would wake up with some guard sitting there wondering who was this American sleeping in the lobby of the hotel or something. So, just little adventures like that. It wasn't ever a problem.\\n\\n What happened that first time was, I really got to know the Russian counterparts. I got to really see what it was really like, because I was the first one of the management that actually went over there. I experienced a camaraderie of the team there in Star City and they got to know me, and I got to know them. It made a huge difference, because now when they would call back, I knew what it was really like.\\n\\n One thing that happened that was really special was, one of the Russian flight surgeons who had been over here and had gotten to know me was now back over there in Star City. Dr. Morgun, who is my counterpart, Valeri Morgun, who is the head of medical at Star City, invited me one night after everything had shut down, to come over to their training facility where they have their sauna and their pool and their workout facility. He showed me around. We had no interpreter; it was just Dr. Morgun and myself and this Russian flight surgeon. He showed me the traditional Russian ceremony of the sauna and the bath. So we had refreshments, and it was just us. We had some refreshments and it was just a whole different setting, and toasts and all of that, and little snacks and things. We started out with that. Then we went in the sauna and he explained all the tradition to me. Then we would go swim in the pool and then come back in the sauna, and swim in the pool, and do that bath tradition that the Russians have, and then retired back to a room and continued. And we got to know one another and we established a relationship which we didn't have before.\\n\\n Now, I had done Russian cultural training before all of this, to prepare, so I was prepared, but this was different. And things changed after this. I mean, this went well into the night and we became friends. So even though after that we would have tough negotiations, and I had also built a relationship with Dr. Bogamolov, who was the head of medical for IBMP, and after this, whenever they came here, we always would go--I would take them out to dinner, and we didn't do a lot of this again. This was really the only time we did this. This was my first time there. But it changed the whole relationship and we're friends now.\\n\\n As a result of that, I think it made a huge difference in our relationships. The suspicions were gone. There's still the struggles. There's still the arguments. But what I learned was that you could have the arguments in a meeting, but now there was a level of comfort and trust. It's made a huge difference. Mike Barratt and Dave Ward said this made a huge difference. It changed everything. So that was a real turning point. I've made many trips after that. I've lost count of how many times I've gone to Russia now and done this.\\n\\n The other thing I've learned was how to negotiate with the Russians, and I'm told I'm good at it. It's a different way of thinking and you concentrate. It's very draining, but I've developed the ability--and I sound like I'm bragging here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, no, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I've developed the ability to figure out what they really want. I would sit there and we'd be talking, intense several-hour meetings, and they're going on and on about something and I'm just sitting there trying to figure out what is it they really--what's the real point here? Because they don't come to the point; they talk around it, and you have to kind of figure out what is it they're really after. Then you have to figure out how to address the point without addressing it, but letting them know, \"Oh, all right. I figured out what you want now,\" and kind of deal with it.\\n\\n But I had to learn that they say no and don't mean no, and that's just on any negotiation. They start out saying no. Then that's your starting point and you go from there. They don't mean it, but they're just trying to see what the real agreement level is. We'd just go over and it was a problem initially, where you'd sit down at a meeting and they'd say no, and you'd go, \"Okay, they said no.\" And you'd leave, and they'd be thinking, \"Well, that must not have been very important. We said no and they left.\" They're ready for you to get in with it here and get emotional and pound the table and leave the room.\\n\\n We got into all of that and did that several times with them on things, sitting there and learning how to use an interpreter to make things work and not look at the interpreter, but instead be right eye to eye with them. Based on some of the earlier things I described to you, we had some really emotional \"get up, leave the room, storming, pounding on the table\" negotiations, where they were insisting that things would be done their way and I was drawing the line, saying, \"Absolutely not.\" And coming back the next day after huddling with your management. So we did a lot of that kind of stuff.\\n\\n It's been real interesting then to take that and then, as a result of it, have some international discussions where you've got the Russians on one side and the Japanese on the other, where the Japanese always say yes and don't mean it, because they're so polite and they're trying to keep everything comfortable. So here we're in the middle of a meeting with the Russians saying no and the Japanese saying yes, and nobody means what they're saying, and trying to figure out.\\n\\n So I've learned a lot about international negotiations. I've learned a lot about the Russian culture. I've gotten to where we've basically--the first time I went over there, it was like a honeymoon. They treated me great. We did the sauna thing. They showed me around. I came back from that first meeting just on an emotional high. \"Isn't this wonderful! Isn't this going to be great.\" Then went back fairly soon thereafter there and really had to deal with a lot of the conflicts, and came back with an emotional low, thinking, \"This is not going to be easy. I'm not going to enjoy this. Those dang Russians,\" you know. And then we found the common ground and now it's a great thing. I enjoy working with them. There are still struggles. There are still things we don't agree with them on. There are still things even now, getting ready for ISS. They were over here with other partners. These same people, Dr. Morgun, Dr. Bogamolov, and their staff, are the team that we're working with for International Space Station. So we're now starting over again, figuring out what's going to be the precedent for Space Station.\\n\\n I know I've rambled, but those are some of the memories and some of the experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, that's exactly what we want to hear. I'm sure it's been very reassuring to them to know that you have been with them the entire time. That's been a constant. I know that in any negotiations it helps when you get to know somebody so that you can continue on with them and not change that pattern out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think of Star City and I think of the Russian staff who supports our team over there in the Prophylactory. They're such wonderful people and have taken such good care of our staff, and because of that first time I stayed over there with them, and sometimes subsequent I've stayed with them, they're just always so delighted to see me. I get my wife to help me prepare some gifts, maybe some skin-care things or some gifts or something, so I show up. And they've never met my wife, but I always come and say, \"Here's some gifts for you from my wife.\" And so then they send stuff back. Occasionally they've sent something back and say, \"This is a gift back for your wife.\"\\n\\n It's just been such a treat with my flight surgeons and some of the people when I'm staying in Moscow, that we'll meet and then we'll go and we'll wander around Moscow just to see the culture and the tradition, and go to some of the Russian restaurants. It's just been a real treat.\\n\\n It's been a real eye-opening experience in terms of the Russian way of practicing medicine and how they have combined a lot of the Eastern approaches--the herbal and holistic and some of the other aspects and some of the things that they do and how they have evolved their health care without the technology that we have. So how then have they evolved how to take care of people without the reliance on technology that we developed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that we've learned a lot from that? You've been able to study their methods as well, to see if some could be put here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And some of the things that they do in space for countermeasures that we don't do, and we're still trying to figure out is there any validity to this or not, and is this something we need to agree to for Space Station, or is this something we want to create an exception and say, \"We'll agree for Space Station to have the capability, but you're still going to do some things differently than we do,\" and now maybe we'll learn a little bit more and see who's got the best way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's take a look." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you'll remember, as you're walking us through this, we do have audio going as well, so if you can tell us what it is as well as show it to us, we'd love to have your tour." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Let me start over here with the medical kits. What we started out with when we set Norm up, we took a couple of our Shuttle medical kits, which is what these two blue containers are, that are, oh, I don't know, cubes of eight inches square. One of them is the emergency medical kit that has in it a lot of our emergency medical equipment: stethoscope and otopthalmoscope [phonetic], the medicines that would be used in a medical emergency, that you would find in an emergency room for a heart attack or a bad problem, with the injectors. All these pouches have different medicines and things in them. It's a very tightly packed kit. It also has the blood pressure cuff and the otopthalmoscope and things to do an emergency exam.\\n\\n We basically just modified these two kits. The second one here is called the medications and bandage kit, and it's full of bandages and medicines. These are all pill bottles and things, and bandages. We just took these two kits--this is a subset of what we fly on Shuttle--and modified them with things that we thought would be more appropriate for long mission, and sent these couple of kits up with Norm. Every time a Shuttle went up, we would send a new kit, restock, and bring the old ones home, and just kind of swap them out each time.\\n\\n As the missions went on and we realized there were some other needs, we made some additional kits specifically for the Mir program that we started sending up in addition. This one, we called it the medical resupply kit, and everything in these kits is both in Russian and English. This is where one of the books that Mike Barratt may have showed you, where we came up with a book, just as we do for the other programs, that explained what's in the kits, how to use them, what medical problems that you would use them for, in Russian and English. Of course, all of this stuff not only had to go through our certification, but then it also had to go through the Russian system and for them to say, \"What is this? What's the danger?\" We had lots of discussions on that and everything.\\n\\n So some things that are in this kit, for example, the resupply kit, we've got a clinical analyzer that would do blood tests and would allow you to get tests on your blood sugar and your electrolytes and sodium and things. This was used to help monitor and diagnose how the crew members were doing. You can see this is something that a technology that we developed where it's a modification of something that's off the shelf, and here's these little cartridges, but it basically uses just a little bit of blood and you're able to run this through and get blood tests from it.\\n\\n We also have a real small pulse oximeter that we modified for space flight, that essentially allows you to check blood oxygen and things like that just from placing this on your finger and getting data. This was all miniaturized and new technology that the Russians did not have, that expanded our capabilities to diagnose and monitor things.\\n\\n There's also additional IV fluids and bandages and things that we learned that we needed. I mean, they had some heart arrhythmias up there, the crew--I can't say who and I can't get into specifics. There were cuts and there were lacerations; there were skin infections; there were foreign bodies in eyes. After some of the fire, there was some smoke inhalation. There were some other spills and things that occurred where we may have had toxic exposures. So we learned that we needed this sort of stuff. Some of those things happened with the Russian crews, some with ours, and it got to the point where the Russian crews were using our medical kits as well. And it got to the point where the Russians were asking for things. At the end of the program, they asked us to leave a lot of our stuff up there. So now that Andy's come home, some of this stuff I'm showing you is still on Mir for them to use.\\n\\n Then we had another kit that's our extended duration pack that we put together for the mission that we added even more stuff into. So again you open this up. This is all additional medicines and things that are in the kits. You see how it's designed and organized with different pallets. It's quite a packing job, actually, with things stuffed in. Then this is also our airway supplies if we had to start an airway. These are different aspects of putting an airway together if somebody needed that. This is now starting to get into emergency medical equipment and things like that, that you'd find in an ambulance, that we traditionally fly on the Shuttle. Some of this they had. Some of this they didn't have up on the Mir, so we looked at that with them and agreed that we needed the capability in space at any time to respond to a medical emergency, stabilize them so that we could transport and have a good chance of getting them home.\\n\\n We've learned that the body changes in space and there's a lot of things that are different about the physiology and how it works, and we don't know whether some of that triggers medical problems or just puts them more susceptible to it, but we have seen some heart arrhythmias, we've seen some changes. The Russians have even brought one of their crew members home early because of heart problems, not during Mir, but earlier. They've had people that once they've come home right after the mission they've had some heart problems that may have developed during the mission.\\n\\n So as a result, we agreed there needs to be a defibrillator and a monitor. So we developed an off-the-shelf defibrillator that then was modified for space flight, that real quick could be deployed and set up with the cables and get a rhythm and, if necessary, to defibrillate. This was the first time a defibrillator's ever been flown in space. It's actually now part of the Shuttle program and will be part of the Space Station program.\\n\\n Along with that, actually, you couldn't do a lot of medical procedures or couldn't defibrillate or something like that with someone just floating around. Medical restraint is an issue. So we went and we sent some of our biomedical engineers over to their mockups to look and see where would we do all of this. They designed this pallet, this medical restraint, which unfolds, that goes on the table in the Mir, the galley table, that these things actually would hook around the legs of the table and then you could strap a person in. It has insulation in it so that if you defibrillated, the shock's not going to go into the structure of the--we're not going to send the Mir into some kind of out-of-control spiral there. This is the precursor of the medical restraint that we're going to fly on Space Station. So we had to do this.\\n\\n Now, the other things that we had to do were some environmental monitoring. These are some things that have been developed. Some of this is new technology that doesn't exist outside the space program that's pretty exciting. But we had an air sample analyzer that would take air samples and then we would bring this down. We'd take several samples and bring it down and analyze it and produce a report. This played a big role in determining whether the atmosphere was safe. So these sorts of things were used, and you could get several samples. You basically turn it to the next sample you need and then just turn it on for twenty-four hours and it actually brings in air. Then turn it off and then later get the next one.\\n\\n We also have these grab samples. This is basically a bottle with a vacuum in, that after an event, if you just want to get a sample of the air, you just open this up and it gets the air. You close it and we bring it down, and now we've got air from the Mir after the fire or after something, and we can see what it really was.\\n\\n We have a combustion products analyzer with some new technology that allows us to actually get a real-time reading of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, chloride, hydrogen fluoride, and some other contaminants that would tell you real time do you have an unsafe atmosphere. This is something that they didn't have the ability to do. This was used quite often, and there were some times when we had some abnormal readings that we were able to track and say, \"All right. Let's make sure this comes back down to normal.\" So this played a big role.\\n\\n We had to put together, because of a lot of the science equipments that we were doing, it was possible that we could end up with some formaldehyde, and the Russians were very concerned about things like this, as were we. These are just little samples of formaldehyde that you would see some color changes to. They hadn't designed their air filtration system on Mir to handle some of the stuff that we wanted to send up there to do science, and so we had to come up with our own ways of monitoring, to reassure that we wouldn't create some problems.\\n\\n So these are just some of the things that we put together and designed. It's not everything, but it's an example of things that we had to then contribute, where we started out just being a guest and we ended up being a partner. Any questions about some of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's fascinating. Any questions for the medical equipment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have one. You said that you adapted this equipment to the Mir. Did you end up changing some of the equipment as well for ISS through what you learned on Mir?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We basically were already preparing equipment for ISS, and the timing is such that by the time we're done with Phase One, we had to be well along with-- [Brief tape interruption]\\n\\n ... exercise equipment, the treadmill, as a result of our experience on Mir. And we've added a resistive exercise devise which we didn't have before. So, yes, I guess there are some things we've changed and done different, but these things that I've shown you, other than maybe changing what some of the medicines are, these were well along in their ISS design. In fact, if that weren't the case, we probably wouldn't have been able to fly them on Mir if they weren't as far along, getting ready for ISS as they were. So, for us it's more just a nice testbed and proving ground that we're on the right track." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We started our conversation and you listed all these many, many areas that your group takes care of regarding Shuttle-Mir Program. Was there one more difficult than the other, or were they all equally challenging?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's two areas that we've probably grown the most in, and I wouldn't say that they were difficult, but we probably had the farthest to go, because they weren't things that we typically had to do for Shuttle. That, number one, is the area of behavioral support, the psychology support. The other area is the physical medicine and physical rehabilitation. For a week to a week and a half, two-week-long Shuttle mission, neither of those are big deals, but for a several-month mission and deployed overseas and those sorts of things, they suddenly became very important and very big deals.\\n\\n We, in the time period of Phase One of Shuttle-Mir, had to build up a program in both of those areas from scratch and put a team together. It was not only a challenge for us, but it required some changing and thinking of the management and the people back here at Johnson Space Center, because the Mir Program is going on over in Russia and it's real easy for the people here at Johnson Space Center for it to be out of sight, out of mind, and for the people over here to still have the Shuttle mentality, because they're still doing Shuttle missions and they're thinking short, quick.\\n\\n So we start coming to the people over here, saying, \"We need to put together a psychology program, behavioral support. We need to do some crew training. We need to do some family support. We need to come up with some things that will be of entertainment value and relaxation value. We need ham radio communications. We need some people to help with the training and selection of the crews.\" All of these sorts of things that fit into a behavioral and performance support program. And had to go from concept to reality and convince the management that it was needed. So that was a challenge and a lot of lessons learned, and they did a good job, a real good job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this due to a result of what you were hearing back from crew members or was this something you did as more of a preventative, or maybe a combination of both?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of the above, realizing back from Skylab, realizing from looking at some of the analog groups that we study--Antarctica, submarines, things like that--that part of our epidemiology we study other groups, what kind of problems, what kind of needs do they have, that we can then look at and apply to the space program. So we expected there to be some issues in this area. We also knew this from talking to the Russians and we learned it very quickly from the experiences as it happened. So, a steep learning curve. It grew as it went.\\n\\n The same thing for the physical medicine and rehabilitation, that before this program, we did not have a structured exercise fitness program for the astronauts. We had a gym that we supported and stuff was there, but we didn't require any of them to do any kind of structured program. They just did whatever they felt like. As we started going into this, we hired an exercise physiologist strength and conditioning coach, a trainer, who then brought on some other trainers and a physical therapist, and we put together a structured program for crew members doing these long flights, and put them into a mandatory fitness and training program that was monitored, and then led into what they did during the mission.\\n\\n Then this was the same team that when the people came back, they were very involved with getting them strong again, getting their bone density back, their strength back, their coordination, all of that, and actually put them through, as Andy Thomas is going through as we speak, a reconditioning, recovery, rehabilitation program. And none of that existed, and we had to put the program together. We called in experts from all over the country to help design the program, leading experts in rehabilitation and physical medicine to come in and advise us and help us put a program together. We now have our own program that we do, that we have a facility. The old WETF, the old water and training facility that's not used now, we now have. We've put in exercise equipment. We have a treatment room there and we have the pool that is now part of our medical facilities for rehabilitation that we do.\\n\\n So, both of those areas, I wouldn't say that they were problems, but we'd not done that before, and we had to build up programs from scratch and put them in place. Those were probably two of the biggest areas. The main problem areas were things I've already described to you just in terms of learning how to do joint medical support with the Russians. That we had some problems with and really had some struggles with, but we succeeded." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now that Phase One's closing down, are things going to get back to whatever normal was before? Are you looking at things to have a different type of normality for your department?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a good way of putting it: a different type of normality. I mean, I look forward to the break. I'm thankful that it's over. It's been a very strain and drain on our resources. We did staff up somewhat, but we have always been right at the limit of our resources here in supporting this program, and it has burned out some of our people. We've had some people leave after doing it, just like some of the astronauts, I think, got burned out and left. Some of our best doctors and some of our best engineers, biomedical engineers, after doing their part of the program, left. That was real unfortunate. I think we just used them up and burned them out. That was not our desire. So it wasn't easy on everybody.\\n\\n So, thankful we're through it, learned a lot, glad that this part's over. I think it's been a real historic part of our program and I think there will be a lot of looking back on it, going, \"Wow! That was really something special.\" But looking forward to now having a few months' break here to kind of figure out what did we learn, what do we need to do now, and giving people a break and moving on with ISS.\\n\\n But we've got four crews training for ISS. I've still got doctors and people over in Russia. So, really, it's just pressing on. The thing that's different, however, is we're not guests of ISS; we're the lead partner for International Space Station, so now it's sort of like, \"All right. We've done it your way. We've learned a lot. Now we're in charge.\" And we have a little bit more control over how things are.\\n\\n We're not under the Russian authority in terms of the medical, so there's some significant changes in how we're doing business for ISS versus what we had done for Phase One. For example, our crew members don't have to go be approved by the Russian Chief Medical Commission now. They approve their crew members, we approve ours. But as a result of Phase One, we've got joint standards. So, I mean, like I said, if we were starting now for ISS, having to come up with the joint program with the Russians and were having to go through the struggles and fights and negotiations now that we did at the beginning of Phase One, I don't know that we would be able to do it and meet the time line for ISS.\\n\\n So, there is some normalcy. There is a sense of stand-down a little bit, but not completely, because we're delivering hardware for ISS, we've got crews over there training, so I've got docs over there back in Russia, and getting ready to send Mike Barratt back again. So it's changed. We're in an international mode now, and we're not out of it. Just because Phase One's over, we're not back to just doing Shuttle flights. I don't know that I foresee us ever going back to what it was like before Phase One. When I took over in 1991, I think we had about 6 flight surgeons; we've now got 15 flight surgeons. They may be trying to cut us back a little bit, but I don't see us going back to like what it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There's literally the whole horizon out there to take on, isn't there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Roger D. Billica", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like that with your list, I'm sure it's going to grow and your contributions will be many to the program. We certainly thank you for talking with us. Again, thanks and good luck in the future." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00227", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GoetzRC/goetzrc.htm", + "original_file_name": "GoetzRC_3-12-03.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GoetzRC/GoetzRC_3-12-03.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert C. Goetz", + "location_date": "Friendswood, Texas – 12 March 2003" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert C. Goetz" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 12th, 2003. This oral history with Robert C. Goetz is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Friendswood, Texas. Sandra Johnson is the interviewer and is assisted by Rebecca Wright and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Today’s session will focus on his career with NASA at JSC between 1983 and 1987.\\n\\n I want to thank you for participating today with us. You joined JSC in July of 1983—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I actually came down in April." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In April?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In April of ’83. For one of the launches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came in April, did you start your position then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn’t start. I went back and then came back down in July." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As the Deputy Director at that time, under Gerry [Gerald D.] Griffin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That is correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also were still attached to [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that work, having that dual assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That worked fine, as I remember it. I went back a couple of times, but it worked very well. In fact, Hans Mark, who sent me to JSC, sent me down with about three different goals in mind. One was to get experience on the Space Shuttle operations. The other was to start Space Station, and to get a leading role for JSC in that endeavor. So that was pretty simple, and I thought that by coming down for a space launch, that I would start on the first of those goals. He was a Deputy Administrator at that time. I think James [M.] Beggs was on a leave of absence. He was the Administrator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came down here, did you still maintain duties at Langley or were you still—what were you doing? You said you went back and forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, between April and July, and I still maintained duties [as Director of Structures]. I wasn’t officially sent down here until July." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How prepared do you feel you were to take over the Deputy Director position at that point in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s an interesting question. How prepared was I? I don’t think I was really that prepared. I was going into a new culture, a new Center, and I didn’t realize how much that entailed. You know, I’d risen up as far as I could go, except for Director or Deputy Director at Langley, so coming to JSC was kind of natural, but I didn’t realize at the time what it entailed. That’s the best way to put it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You took part in the [NASA] Headquarters Executive Program at NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that help you at all with this transition?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. [Laughs] No. It’s one thing to learn out of books and a lot of the theory involved, and even, you know, to take small exercises, but to actually live through it is something different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you explain to us some of your day-to-day activities when you first came here and what your duties were and how they were explained to you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, [Gerald D.] Gerry Griffin was a good boss. He more or less said that what he did is what I would do and watch him, so anything that, you know, he decided to let me do, I would do, which kind of entailed mostly, you know, meetings and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have anything to do with mission planning or any sort of connection with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Yes]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that Hans Mark wanted you to get experience with the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, operations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you go about doing that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was in the Mission Control room, or either at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] for a launch and then back here, throughout the whole mission, except for when I went home to sleep, and I watched all the controllers in the Mission Control Center. We were in Building 30 at that time. I went to the backup rooms and saw what they did. So it was more or less learning on-the-job training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that interesting to you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was very interesting. In fact, that really made the time whiz by." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know when you were at Langley, some of the work you did was with the tiles and that sort of thing. Did that have any bearing on this job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, absolutely. In fact, I was at Rockwell [International Corporation] for like six weeks in 1980, when all the tiles fell off the 747 ferry flight. We were part of the team that was headed by Phil Glenn of JSC at that time. We had [come] from around the country, various structural people, structural dynamicists, and we solved the problem. You know, the densified tiles are the result of that team’s efforts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the relationship between the JSC administration and other parts of NASA, the flight controllers, the engineers, managers, that sort of thing? You were talking about the culture earlier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s another interesting question, because the [fourth] reason I was sent here, I think—this wasn’t stated at the time—was to bring some of Langley’s culture to JSC. JSC did not get along well with [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] at the time. As you remember, at the time I was here, that was while we were doing Space Station and we had the work-package breakdown, and there was a lot of fighting between Centers on the work package—who got what, so to speak. So I think I was, you know, kind of sent here to help soothe that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From what I’ve read, that was one of the things that you really advocated, was that intercenter cooperation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s correct, yes. In fact, when we started Space Station, I had a retreat over at the Planetary Science Building, or what was then the Planetary Science Building on NASA Road 1. We had mostly attendees from the other Centers. We initially set up to do Space Station, to do a baseline the first year, in [19]’84? Yes, I think it was ’84. We ran it off-site. We stocked it with computers. We had 200 people there. We had 100 from the various Centers and 100 from JSC, and we came up with a baseline at the end of that period of time, and that’s when we went out with contracts to have these work packages that I mentioned earlier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe you can explain some of the processes that you went through to come up with those ideas and to work through that process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we started with this retreat and we set out—in fact, I used to have a board that we scratched on, and we set out to set up an organization and a goal and so forth. That took about three days, with all these people, you can imagine.\\n\\n After that, the process went pretty smoothly, and Neil [B.] Hutchinson was the Project Director at JSC. He was over at this building I mentioned earlier, and he did a good job. Now, when it got down to the work package era, which was much later, [19]’86, that’s when both Centers really dug their heels in and each wanted to essentially be lead, and so there was a lot of give-and-take in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you help to smooth over that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was for JSC, myself. [Laughs] So I didn’t probably help in smoothing that over as much as I could have. Plus, I had the Shuttle\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n [accident] at that time, and my boss had quit, so it was kind of a hectic time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In that process, do you feel like there was an agreement that was eventually reached as far as the Space Station, at that time, not later on, but at that time, in the middle eighties, the two had that cooperation? Do you feel like it was ever actually achieved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not in my tenure. I think Aaron Cohen took over the Center in October in [19]’86, and I think he achieved that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since you mentioned it, let’s go ahead and talk about the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n time, and, as you said, there were a lot of changes going on. In the years prior to\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , the remote sensing program was phased out. You lost Glynn [S.] Lunney, Hans Mark retired, William [R.] Graham came into the picture, and then James Beggs was indicted. Then on January 14th [1986], Gerry Griffin retired and left you somewhat in charge for a couple of weeks as the acting director. Then just a few days before the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , then, of course, Mr. [Jesse W.] Moore was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was in Headquarters, came down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about that period of time and how those changes and those fluctuations affected the Center prior to\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , and give us an idea of what the feeling was and how it affected you in your position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was devastated from\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . The only trouble we’d had on the launch pad was ice off the tower coming down. That was deemed to be acceptable, so we went, and even though—I was not aware that there was a ring problem in the solid boosters. I can remember that I was in Mission Control Center when it launched, and I was on the phone in that little room, the glass room with the President’s office—I assumed [it] was the President’s office,—oh, most of the day. It was a long period. And that’s when we lost control, because the President [Ronald Reagan] said he was going to set up this commission, and so forth and so on. We had an Acting Administrator, who was Bill Graham. He was on vacation at the time. I couldn’t get a hold of him. So, you know, what could I do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I stayed on the phone and listened, primarily. They did most of the talking at their end. They set up this [Presidential] commission [over my objections]…." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your actions immediately following the accident? What did you have to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the first thing was to shut down all the data to make sure that it was locked up, which is the primary administrative duty that you have to do. Then we set up teams that went out and investigated what could possibly—in fact, in two weeks we had a perfect scenario, computer simulation, of what happened. There was a meeting at Headquarters—I think Bill Graham chaired it; I’m not sure about that—but all the Center Directors were there, and they went around the table with the question on the floor being how long should we be down? I remember General Lew Allen [Jr.] from JPL [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] and myself were the only two out of all the Center Directors that said let’s launch within as long as it takes to put a bellyband around that joint, and they wouldn’t accept that.\\n\\n So, as far as the accident went, I was devastated. They had reporters at my home interviewing my six-year-old. I was kind of devastated is the only way to put it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in any other public relations activities immediately following it? Did you have to give any statements?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, to the press, but I didn’t testify in Congress. Let’s see. Glynn Lunney and—there was another fellow that was here, who was head of the Space Shuttle Office [Arnold D. Aldrich at JSC]—[Jess] Moore, who was head of the Shuttle office in Washington. But they all testified in Congress. I did not testify." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To what degree were you involved in the investigation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not as much as I would have liked. I went around and saw—I had reports coming to me on what happened. I had cut off the press at that time. I was interviewed by [Samuel A.] Sam Nunn from—I guess he was Senator from Georgia at that time, plus [Dole] Meyers, who had been with NASA earlier…. In fact, Sam Nunn came on a Saturday and I had that interview in the office in Building 1. That was a lengthy stay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about that at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I’d rather not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Did you have any contact with the Presidential Commission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Only the ones that were from JSC. Sally [K.] Ride was on that commission, as well as others. They were helping out, so we tried to provide them as much help as possible, but I was not called to testify before them or anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the atmosphere at JSC as far as everyone else in trying to get people motivated and get over this problem?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The morale was extremely low, as you can imagine. Everyone was devastated. There was nothing going on except Space Station, which was just starting out, because it was almost three years that Shuttle was down. So the morale was very bad. There were a lot of people leaving. The job was to retain people, to be frank with you, and to motivate them, and we tried to do that with new programs and so forth, but it was pretty tough to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What types of new programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Space Station, primarily. We went through a planning exercise right after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , from [19]’86 to [19]’87, and as I remember, we had Shuttle, Space Station [and] advanced programs. There was a lot of things in the advance programs that were new programs and so forth, trips to Mars, the Moon, etc., that we hoped would motivate the people, and we actually started some of those. That was done under a fellow that died. Bill [William J. Huffstetler]—he was a nice young guy, too. He died of a heart attack." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that—or maybe, if it did, how the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident affected the Station Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think it affected it a great deal, the way it came out. I think JSC was destined to be lead had there not been a\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident. As it turned out, I think Marshall gained the majority of the lead. The work packages they got were really the guts of the whole matter. I think JSC’s in big trouble right now, the reason being is because prior to now, Marshall had gotten the next-generation launch vehicle for manned space flight as well as for unmanned. Well, that just put JSC in the operations game. I think that’s a mistake. JSC’s got to be on the cutting edge of any new launch vehicle as well as the operations of same." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Immediately after the accident, you implemented NASA’s accident contingency plan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about that decision and why it was you that did that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was just a natural thing to do, you know. I’m wondering what the heck to do, first, and the very day of the accident, as was told to me by [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz, who was in the Mission Control Center, and so I did it. There wasn’t any decision to be made, really. It was already in place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where was Mr. Moore during the accident?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "During the accident, I don’t know. He was in Washington [D.C.] at the time, but I don’t know where he was during the accident." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did he stay in Washington for a while or did he come down here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He stayed for a while in Washington and then he came here—I can’t remember what the date was, but in mid-summer. Two or three months later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So were you Acting Director during all that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He didn’t do it remotely?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were the Acting Director. Okay.\\n\\n Let’s go back for a moment prior to that and talk about some of your other duties as Deputy Director. You represented JSC as an Equal Opportunity Council member?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about some of your experiences on that council and some of the progress during the time you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t remember some of the progress, but we did make good progress, I remember that much. I made a speech at each of the annual meetings, and there was about four or five of them. We set goals for the Centers. I think we did fairly well in that area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I also read that you created a Center Automatic Data Planning [ADP] Steering Committee." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I might have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You don’t have any memories about that? I think it was to review the current and future ADP requirements to reduce costs. Was that just part of your general duties?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was part of the regular duties, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Center construction of facilities planning process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was an interesting one because Gerry evidently wasn’t interested in that, so I went to Headquarters a couple of times and advocated a number of new buildings and different changes at JSC. That was a very rewarding experience, not only dealing with the people in the other Centers and in Headquarters, but in getting the information from the people around JSC.\\n\\n In fact, the first thing I did when I got here, in July, was I took a tour. It took about [three] months and I went and spent hours at each organization. They told me what they did and so forth, and that was very helpful when it came time to see what their needs were as far as facilities went. So I thought that was a very rewarding part of my time. In fact, some of it didn’t come to fruition until I’d left, in [19]’87, ’88. In fact, I don’t know where it is right now, but the long-range planning guide, too, came out after I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had a part in that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Yes, I was chairman of that. They sent me a copy of the brochure. It was very nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of buildings did you advocate building and what type of changes did you make before that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let’s see. There was a Thermal Protection Facility, TPS. I don’t know if it was arc jet or what, but I remember advocating that for a couple of years. Didn’t make it the first year and then it did the second. I can’t remember all the facilities at this point in time, but there was an antenna facility and there was a WETF [Weightless Environment Training Facility] and so forth. We tried to keep the facilities actually going, and we got our share of the overall budget for the years that I was involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were there and as part of your day-to-day activities, did you have anything to do with the astronaut selection coming in during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not the selection of the astronauts at all. I didn’t have anything to do with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the budget, in dealing with NASA’s and JSC’s budget during that time period?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the budget at that time was $2 billion, I remember that, and I was very much involved in the budget allocation and how it was spent, and advocating for the budget at Headquarters, both at the Shuttle office as well as Code R [Office of Aerospace Technology] and Code S [Office of Space Science], [and] some of the other offices up there, so that took a great deal of my time, actually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Manpower planning or procurement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Manpower planning and procurement. In fact, I was the Procurement Chief for several awards and said what the various subcontractors and contractors would make for a given period of time. They were evaluated by committees, and then I was the Award Chairman or something. I remember doing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything else come to mind during that time, prior to\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , that you’d like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you feel the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n affected your career with NASA, if at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I left NASA in [19]’87. So I had made the decision to leave when Aaron Cohen became Center Director. I resigned that day and he said, well, he would replace me, but if I wanted a year to look for a job, I could. So I did. I put out a lot of résumés, and had three in Los Angeles area, and decided to go with the least [money] of the three, because it was all mostly aeronautics. It was the Skunk Works at Lockheed [Aircraft Corporation] at the time. So that’s where I went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What led to that decision to leave NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n had a great deal to do with it. Plus, I didn’t get the Center Director’s position. But I think\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n had a—I was in a very bad state of mind at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which is perfectly understandable, after an accident and having to go through what you did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was interesting. When we had a memorial and President—at that time—[Ronald] Reagan came down and spoke, Bill Graham came down, but his wife took care of making all the arrangements. That was kind of strange, I thought. They operated out of my office up on the eighth floor of Building 1. But that was a trying experience, just arranging the whole memorial and the fly-by, etc., and setting it up. He gave a very excellent speech, I thought, and we had everybody there, but I just thought it was very strange that Bill Graham didn’t take a more active role in it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you actually arrange the memorial service yourself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, myself and his wife." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The two of you together. Is there anything else about that time period that you’d like to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not that I can remember right now. I kind of block it out of my mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which is understandable. Why don’t we go back to some of the earlier part of your career. You started working at Langley right out of college?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was interesting. Well, right out of college I went to Lackland [Air Force Base] here in Texas. I was in Air Force ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps], as a pilot. Well, I wore—I still wear glasses. I’m near-sighted. At that time, you had a five-year commitment, and you had to be either—if you had glasses, you had to be a bombardier or [navigator]. I said, “No, that’s not for me. I’m going to revert back to research.”\\n\\n So I’d been offered a job at Langley in the meantime, and I accepted it, but my orders in the Air Force sent me to Wright-Patterson [Air Force Base, Ohio], so Langley had to scurry around and get me assigned there as an Air Force detailee. So that’s where I went in July of 1959.\\n\\n When I reported to duty there, I was supposed to report to the Space Task Group. In fact, you can see the picture up there on the wall with the original seven astronauts, signed. That’s my wife’s. She was the secretary—she took care of all the leave and administrative duties for the astronauts.\\n\\n But, in my wisdom, I’d heard they were going to Florida. This was July ’59. So I didn’t report over there; I reported on the other side of the field at Langley in the research area, hypersonic [aeroelasticity] research. I came down to Houston in [19]’62, when they were flying people down to check it out, and there wasn’t anything but cow pastures out there where the Center is today. And, you know, I just didn’t come. I was working with a guy that did. In fact, I wrote my first report with him. It was a classified report, so I can’t speak about it. But he came down here. [John C.] Jack Stonesifer. He was in recovery. He came in ’62, I remember that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So I imagine it looked quite different from that first view of it, and then when you came back in [19]’83." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Well, I’d been back at least once prior to that. In [19]’72, I was on a Shuttle Technical Evaluation Board, and there was four bidders, and it took us six weeks. It was the only time that I ever got overtime working for NASA. Let’s see. Who was the Center Director at that time at JSC? Not [Maxime A.] Max Faget. His boss." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Christopher C.] Chris Kraft [Jr.]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Chris Kraft. He was from VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia]. He arranged to have us all get overtime for the Saturdays and Sundays and holidays we worked during that six weeks. And we worked like one holiday—[Memorial Day]. But, that was an interesting scenario. None of the four flew, on a computer. The reason that one won was because of past experience, Rockwell. They weren’t the lead technically or low cost. Then after they’d picked a winner, then they took the best of all four of them and put them together and made a new base line that flew. That’s kind of an interesting scenario." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in [19]’72, which was about nine years before the first flight, [19]’81.\\n\\n I graduated with [Richard H.] Dick Truly [who flew on that flight. The other astronaut on that flight was John W.Young]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Dick Truly became] an Administrator of NASA…. He was an astronaut—well, he had left, I guess right before I came, or shortly thereafter. He’s an interesting guy. He was a rear admiral in the Navy, but we both graduated from Georgia Tech [Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia] in [19]’59. He was the head of the Navy ROTC and I was the head of the Air Force ROTC, plus, we were both AEs, aeronautical engineers. There was only thirty-five of us that graduated that year, ’59. He was one. He’s done quite well. I lost track of him after he went to Colorado and he was head of some DOE [United States Department of Energy] research outfit, then I lost track of him after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you first began at Langley, what exactly were you working on for those first few years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first few years I was in hypersonics [aeroelasticity]. I was working in a wind tunnel, a series of wind tunnels, as a matter of fact. But mostly out of a helium blow-down tunnel, and we were experimenting with far-out stuff. I worked on a variable [-swept wing]—did subsonic, transonic, supersonic variable swept-wing flutter study. It was one of the reports I wrote. That was interesting. That was one the first things that I did at NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you explain a little bit of what a flutter study is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A flutter study—we ran a wind-tunnel program in three different tunnels, and we tried to find the flutter points. In other words, there’s a flutter index parameter versus Mach number, and we plotted it over the whole Mach number range from subsonic, transonic, to supersonic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In [19]’67, you went back to get a master’s degree?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, at VPI. Well, I actually went in [19]’63, [19]’64. I got my degree in ’67. I took a thesis route, so I wrote a thesis and it took several years for me to write it. But I was actually there in ’63 and ’64, in Blacksburg [Virginia]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What prompted you to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was bored more than anything else. Also, I was twenty-six, and I just figured that I needed to go back to school. I went up there in aeronautical engineering, and they only offered two courses in aeronautical engineering, the next semester, so I walked across the street and transferred to engineering mechanics, and that’s what I got a degree in. But I took most of my—air elasticity, hypersonics—most of my electives in aerospace." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also worked on the aircraft tire and breaking problems on wet runways? Is that true?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in [19]’71, I became a section head of the Flight Load Section. In [19]’73 or [19]’74, I became a branch head and then I became a Director. I skipped the division level, became a Director. One of the parts that was under me in the branch and the directorate was the Landing Loads Track, at Langley. They did the grooving at the Cape, and so forth, for Shuttle. They’re a very renowned group. They were on every U.S. domestic aircraft accident investigation, because they had a little car that would go down the runways in damp and wet and icy conditions and measure the friction. So, yes, I was in that group, but, I mean, that group was under me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you also plan the Space Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests, or have anything to do with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In [19]’79, you went to NASA Headquarters, as we mentioned earlier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that come about, or that opportunity happen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was some kind of a training program. I went up there for a year, worked in Code R. I was Manager of Structures [Division] for one year. I don’t know how it came about. I got called in by the Center Director, saying he wants me to go to Headquarters, “This is a steppingstone,” etc., etc. So I went. I had just moved into a new house, so I rented the house and went up there and lived in Reston [Virginia], which was way out. But I found that the cost of living in Washington, D.C., is directly proportional to the distance that you have to travel. So I was almost out to [Washington] Dulles [International Airport] before I could find a place that I could afford." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what were your duties in that position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were primarily to advocate, to get monies out of Code R, out of Code R’s total budget, for the Code R program at the various centers. So that’s what I did, primarily, for the whole year, is advocate. We spoke to Congress, made presentations. Tried to get more money, is about the easiest way of putting it, and then allocate it to the Centers. Most of it went to Langley, Lewis [NASA Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio], and [NASA] Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California], because they were the Code R Centers at that time, and, well, [NASA] Dryden [Flight Research Center, Edwards, California]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you play a role in the Technology Readiness Assessment during that time when you were at Headquarters?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Technology Readiness Assessment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Was that when you were back at Langley?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was before I went up there. Yes, that was an interesting few years. I forget the years that was, but that was quite a bit before I went to Headquarters. The Technology Assessment Committee culminated in a meeting at Lewis, which is now Glenn, where they presented all the material and voted whether it was ready or not. Everybody thought they were ready. It was unanimous. It was in winter, I remember, in Lewis, because there was a lot of ice on the ground, and snow, and when we took off in the NASA plane, we were heading down the runway and we skidded sideways. So then the pilot said, “Well, we’re going to go around and try again.” [Laughter] And let me tell you, that time, we held on, but we made it off all right.\\n\\n There was another guy, Harry Runyan, was head of the Technology Assessment, and he retired and he left it to a fellow, David Stephens, who was an up-and-coming young guy out of Stanford Sloan [Program], and he was in an automobile accident. So I was in the right place at the right time, or something, so I got it, made a presentation and so forth, and went from there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about that process, the assessment process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was run from various—let’s see. Headquarters headed it up. There was teams of people that went across the Centers. Some were at Langley, some were at JSC, some were at Marshall, [Ames, Glenn,] some were head of them, but each of the teams had on them people from all the Centers. Each of the Centers did something, whether it was a wind-tunnel test or analysis, to see if the technology was ready for Shuttle. We at Langley did a lot of flutter studies, ground wind-load studies. That was the structural dynamics part. In the structures part, they did a lot of TPS, tile work and the arc jets, and so forth, panel flutter, and so forth. Max Faget had a straight-wing orbiter at that time, so that’s what their baseline was. It wasn’t until much later that we got what’s presently the orbiter.\\n\\n So we went through and did various technology assessments of the various configurations in each of these groups, across the board. Then they’d meet, oh, I don’t know, about once every four months or six months, and report their findings. Then they put out monthly reports. I remember that. That’s how we got to the Space Shuttle. That was a long process. That was about five [or] six years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it begin in the early seventies or mid-seventies?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, it must have. It must have been during the seventies sometime, because—well, in [19]’72, we had a technical evaluation, so it was the late sixties and early seventies. Then I went to Headquarters in [19]’79, so it had to be early." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After you came back from Headquarters, you were the Special Assistant to the Chief of the Structural Mechanics Division at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s right, yes. I forgot about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your duties in that position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, most of the time I was out at Rockwell doing the Shuttle problem, where [the tiles] all fell off. In fact, that was about the whole thing I did there. I didn’t have any—“duties as assigned”—from Roger Anderson, who was the Division Chief. I think that was just a holding pattern." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the TPS system and your work with that and the final clearance for STS-1." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, when they all fell off, we were devastated, obviously. It took about six weeks to find out that the concentrated loads were taking place at the SIP [Strain Isolating Pad] line. In fact, I used to have a tile. Anyway, by densifying that white side—and the coating was on the black side—by densifying the white side, you spread the loads out, and then it would adhere better. So the RTV [room-temperature vulcanizing silicone adhesive], which was spread on the aluminum and then the tile attached to that, was very strong after that.\\n\\n For STS-1, there was a pull test done at the Cape. Obviously, there couldn’t be any cracks in the coatings or anything like that. In fact, I was an advocate, and still am, of a more durable system, like a metallic system, which we studied back in the technology days, and that’s been proposed since, but it’s very expensive because you have to have standoffs, and you have to be able to lay these tiles so they grow at the heat cycle. They grow and contract. It’s very difficult to do.\\n\\n The X-33 [reusable launch vehicle] was the first example of when it was done. Then they had the hydrogen tank explosion at Marshall on that, which I was chairman of the investigating committee, and we found out the cause, wrote a report, and it’s been buried. NASA, in their wisdom, cancelled the X-33 program, where they could have put a liner in the tank. It had a metallic TPS system on it. It had an Aerospike engine on it. It looked sort of like this right here. Single-staged orbiter. Took off [vertically] and landed [horizontally], seven-day turnaround. But they cancelled the whole thing, after spending a billion dollars." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the cause of the explosion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Porosity in the composite tank. That’s why a liner would have fixed it, and you could have taken the weight out somewhere else. In fact, that’s the way the report wrote, but they buried the report, or they didn’t put it out for a long time, and when they did put it out, they’d already made the decision to cancel it. But that, to me, was the way to go. More durable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about STS-1. Were you able to see the launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn’t see the launch—well, I saw it on television. I didn’t see the launch of STS-1 at all. I was at Langley. This was [19]’81, so it was a couple years before I came down here…. This has all the things while I was at JSC, all the launches, except for the first five. One, two, three, four, five, then I started with this one. I think that was in April." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you do after the STS-1 launch, during that time period and before you came to JSC, at Langley? What were your duties?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was the Director of Structures. Structures at that time was made up of Structures, Materials, Acoustics, and Aeroelasticity Divisions. Four divisions. So it was about 400 people, and we had—I don’t know what the budget at that time was. But that’s what I was doing between [19]’80 and [19]’83." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Having worked at Langley for almost twenty-five years, and you did mention the difference in the culture between Langley and JSC, maybe you can explain a little bit about those cultures and tell us what the differences were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the culture at Langley was one of, you did far-out work, not near-term work, and it was much more researching. JSC was much more near-term, operational, and so forth, except for Space Station. It was interesting. We started Space Station in [19]’84. It was supposed to be $8 billion. They stopped counting after twenty. It just went wild. While I think that that was good for JSC and a growing experience, I think it was not so good in other ways." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that one of the objectives of you going to JSC was to bring some of that culture. Do you feel that you accomplished that objective?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we started Space Station, and while I was here, at least, we made progress. It wasn’t till after I left that they went after the work packages and Marshall got control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Moving into those management roles, as an engineer—and you worked as an engineer for several years before you started moving into that—how did you adopt your management style, and what is your management style?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What is my management style? Well, I guess I like a lot of participation, so I think I’m a participant manager, where I kind of gather people and let them do their own thing and, you know, guide them, set policy and so forth, but let them figure out how to do it. Actually, people don’t realize it, but when JSC started in [19]’62, the average age was in the twenties. Now it’s way up there. I won’t even guess, but it’s pretty far up there. So it’s aging, and I think that’s a shame, because the other centers aren’t like that, except maybe for Marshall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any issues coming from an engineering background into management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really, no. It was a natural progression. I went from section to branch head and on up. I think I learned as I went. I think, if you remember Management 102, it has four things: planning, execution, organization, and control as the four things. I think as you get higher in the organization, the planning gets more, the organization gets slightly more, the control is decreasing, and execution is decreasing [a lot]. So I think that’s kind of what you’ve got to know to step in from an engineering, where you do all of it yourself, into something higher, in management." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You worked under a lot of different directors, both at Headquarters over everything, and then at JSC and at Langley. Any specific memories about any of them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think [Donald P.] Don Hearth was probably the best. He was the Center Director at Langley. Gerry Griffin was excellent as Center Director at JSC. They were very similar. They pretty well let you do your own thing, and that’s kind of what I patterned myself after. The rest of them, like Roger Anderson, he was [unpredictable], and I could go on and on and on, but that’s the two that stick in my mind as being the best.\\n\\n Don Hearth retired shortly after I left Langley, and he went to Colorado, in Boulder—I don’t know if that’s Colorado State or the University of Colorado—heading up some space institute or something. He was from Grumman [Aerospace Corporation] originally. He had brought down this fellow as Deputy, when he became Center Director, who was at Texas A&M [University, College Station, Texas]. He’s probably retired now…." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After you left JSC—going to that time again—you said you went to the Lockheed Skunk Works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s correct. In Burbank [California]. And that was the lowest-paying job that I had an offer from. I only had three out of five offers [in California]. [McDonnell] Douglas [Corporation] in Long Beach [California] offered me one, [Northrup Grumman Corporation, Skunk Works, and] Boeing [Company] in Seattle [Washington]. My wife didn’t want to go to Seattle because it rains too much, so we decided on Los Angeles. You’ve got to remember, Los Angeles, the cost of living is about three times higher than here, so we had sticker shock for the first six months. But we stayed there from [19]‘87 to [19]‘94, then we moved in 1994 to Palmdale [California], where Lockheed owned all of its own facilities, and we became a company.\\n\\n Then they bought GD [General Dynamics Corporation], then they merged with Martin [Marietta Corporation]. I stayed in the same position the whole time, but it was kind of traumatic. Then we went through a year—we were going to merge with Northrup Grumman [Corporation], but we didn’t, because the government wouldn’t let us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Vice President of Engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have a couple more questions, but before I get to those, I thought I would see if Rebecca or Jennifer have any questions at this time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just had a general question. You worked for NASA for some time, and you also worked as an EEO [Equal Employment Opportunities] officer. I was wondering if you could talk in generalities about how treatment of or perceptions of minorities and women changed at the Centers over time. If you could talk about that, the hiring." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I graduated from college in [19]’59, I went to an all-boys’ school, Georgia Tech. And now, today, Georgia Tech is 50 percent women and 50 percent men, roughly, and it’s not that much bigger, really. I guess it was 6,000 to 12,000, so it gained 6,000. The first two women graduated in my class in ’59, but they had transferred in as upper students. So I’ve seen, from ’59 till today, a great change in both government as well as industry, in females and minorities. I think that we’ve got to diversify in order to stay ahead of the technology. I think there’s not enough people if you just look at the men, so you have to go for minorities and women in order to continue to grow.\\n\\n Everywhere I went, first it was quotas, which I wasn’t against, but then they did away with the quotas and so forth, and it’s still going on in great strides, and, I think, rightfully so. So I think in the last fifty years, it’s really come a long way. You’ve heard the commercial, “You’ve come a long way, baby.” [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had another question. You mentioned the densification process, and you had mentioned that there were several ideas that were floated in the early seventies. When you came across this problem with the tiles, right before STS-1, were there any attempts made to change the tiles and use one of those other processes that engineers had designed, or at least conceptually designed on paper?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really, the reason being you had to freeze in time the technology and choose it in order to build it, because it took so long. They thought they were building a robust system. When they didn’t and had to densify, go back and densify, that was the white side of the tile, where you glue it on with RTV, that took about a year. So while there was a number of stronger, if you will, lighter—in fact, that was the reason why they picked ceramics over metallics, weightwise, they were about equal, but they thought that the ceramics as a technology was further ahead. That’s really why they chose it. I think that was a mistake, in looking back at it, but I probably voted for it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us how the process of densification came about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t really know—well, I forget how many people were on the committee now, but they were working with Rockwell folks at Downey [California], for six weeks, so it was a combination of the Downey folks coming up with this densification as well as the team. So, you know, it was hard to decide whose the actual idea was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Those are all the questions that I had. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just had one. It goes back to the time when you were at JSC and Gerry Griffin announced his resignation. Between that time and the time that Aaron Cohen came on board, you were in a very volatile position because you were in the midst of these Center Directors, but yet had lots of responsibility due to the events that were occurring during that time period. Could you just share with us about those times, about how you were able to work those transitions for these Directors so that they were able to take on those jobs and maybe the difficulties of you trying to do your duties as well as helping them come on board?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Helping them come on—you mean like—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like Mr. Moore coming in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mr. Moore coming down?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then Aaron Cohen moving into that position as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as far as Aaron Cohen moving into position, he moved in to Moore’s position. Jesse Moore left the agency and went with someplace in Colorado. Ball Industries. He was kind of—I felt sorry for him, because he was in Headquarters and came down here as JSC Center Director, so we threw a party for him and tried to welcome him, and so forth. He was under a great deal of strain, no doubt about it, but we did everything we could to make him comfortable.\\n\\n I think they made a big mistake. They brought him down here, he bought a house, and then they fired him. So I think the agency made a big mistake. They should never have transferred him down here and let him buy a house and everything before letting him go. Now, those were the times—I can’t remember. He came down in the summer sometime and he was only here for like two months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time, basically the weight of the Center operations was on your shoulders to continue?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, up until that time, I’d been Acting Director, and so I tried to help him in all his daily duties. Aaron Cohen kind of came up as a surprise to a lot of people. He was head of engineering at the time; he was like a Vice President. And while he had been very active in Shuttle. He had not been active in Space Station, so I don’t know if that had anything to do with it or not. But he came on all of a sudden, in October of that year, [19]’86. So I didn’t help him at all. He’d been right down the hall, so he knew the ropes, knew what was expected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you surprised to hear that Gerry Griffin was leaving, or he had talked to you about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was just as surprised as everybody else. He actually went with the Chamber of Commerce of Houston when he left. I thought it was 1 January instead of 14 January, but I could be wrong. It seemed like it was a long time, but he said when he left that they made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, so he was going to grab it. But it came as a surprise to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was looking back over my notes and I had it under “Headquarters.” When you worked at Headquarters, you took part in testimony before Congress on the Research and Technology appropriation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any memories of that you’d like to share?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I can remember one session. I didn’t testify, but we went as backup to the head of Code R, whoever that was at the time. [Jim] Kramer, I guess. And there was only one committee member there, and he was on a platform, in the front, and he had his feet on the table, had a big cigar in his mouth, and he was reading a newspaper throughout the whole testimony. So I remember that. I can remember his name, too. He’s still there. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In that position, also did you have anything to do with the turbine-engine hot-section technology?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you explain that to us?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was started at Glenn, and that was a big, new initiative that we sold to the Congress and a hot-section turbine business because we were trying to get more money for Glenn and this was a new initiative. We had one at every Center, but that was one that we got that year, so we set up and planned it and so forth. Yes, I remember that very dramatically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back over your career with NASA, which was quite a long career, what do you think was your most challenging achievement, or the most challenging aspect of your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a toughie. I thought you were going to ask that, and I have no idea, because\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n was tough, no doubt about it. I was devastated. My morale was low, my whole feeling was down in the dumps. It took a lot to get up to go to work every day, so that, obviously, was a period of time when I remember.\\n\\n But as far as having fun, I had fun at Rockwell for those six weeks that we did the Shuttle tile. I had fun at the technical evaluation down here at Houston for six weeks. I had fun early in my career. So I don’t know which single one of those three would be the one, but I remember all of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were down, as the rest of the Center was down, after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , did you see an end in sight or did you see the possibilities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, after that vote came, where we were supposed to get back into flight in six months, where we tried to regain control, in fact, put a bellyband around the tank and, like I say, Lew Allen and I were the only two that voted for it, so that means there was five other Centers that voted against us, because they wanted to fix it. They wanted to wait the period of time it took to fix it, and we figured that would be the death. It didn’t turn out to be the death, but it sure took a long time.\\n\\n Right then and there I decided to leave, after that vote, and that vote was like two months after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , so that was before Jesse Moore came down and before Aaron Cohen became—I decided to leave the agency, because I had foreseen that it was going to be a long period of time before they got back to flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you feel is your most significant accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most significant accomplishment? In NASA or—oh, in NASA. Starting Space Station I think is probably my most significant one. Even though it’s gone out of control, I think it was started right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then, of course, it began with the goal of being in orbit by [19]’91 or [19]’92." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel the way it was started, when you began it, that if you had stayed on that track, that they would have achieved that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we would have achieved about [19]‘94, because we had originally set it challenging on purpose, and really, we had a schedule that said ’94–’95 [dollars permitting]. And it’s still only half built. Here it is 2003. It’s ridiculous." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about, that you would like to bring up, or anything that you can think of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not that I can think of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. We’d like to thank you for participating with us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Goetz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, my pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We appreciate it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00830", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/HinnersNW/hinnersnw.htm", + "original_file_name": "HinnersNW_8-19-10.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/HinnersNW/HinnersNW_8-19-10.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Noel W. Hinners", + "location_date": "Littleton, Colorado – 19 August 2010" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Noel W. Hinners" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 19, 2010. This interview is being conducted with Dr. Noel Hinners in Littleton, Colorado for the NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright. The interview begins today by Mr. Hinners discussing the Large Space Telescope project.\n\nI’ll let you talk about the Hubble [Space Telescope], and you can give us your history of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were two, I think, significant items in there as far as I was involved in decisions. One is the decision to delay starting the Hubble in the [1977] budget process. It was clear that year that we weren’t going to be able to get a full-up start. There was some opposition on [Capitol] Hill to getting a new start on it. It was driven, in large part as I recall, by the budget situation. [NASA Administrator] Jim [James C.] Fletcher proposed that we put in $5 million as a placeholder. I didn’t like that idea. It was, in today’s vernacular, a “sop” to the astronomy community. “There’s something in there, so all is well.”\\n\\n I figured in my own little head that to get that community energized we’d be better off zeroing it out. Then they would say, “Whoa, we’re in deep trouble,” and it would marshal the troops. So I advocated that we not put anything in. I don’t remember any of the detailed discussions or whether there were any, but Jim went along with that so we zeroed it out. It had, from my perspective, the desired impact of stimulating the astronomy community to renew their efforts on the lobbying front. While I like to think in hindsight it was a brilliant political move, I’m not sure I thought it through all that well. It was something that was spur of the moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s my question for you, what you based that feeling on. Was there a certain series of events that had caused you to say, “Just stop and let’s do this?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was just $5 million would let them think that all is well anyway, but it’s not. So let’s give them a message. My own thinking, get them stimulated to get into action. Zeroing it out would certainly give that message. I think it was as simple as that. Didn’t talk to anybody else about doing it first, just, “Let’s go do that.” Voila, it worked. Don’t know whether I’d do that again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your decision has been referred to as the “Black Art” decision. Do you know why it’s called that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know who put that moniker on it, but that’s, I think, a valid descriptor in the sense that none of these things have recipes for them. You have to assess the political environment, budgetary environment. Say, “Okay, let’s give this a try,” assessing the environment you’re in at the time and that luckily worked. It wasn’t obvious it would work, but it did. Whether that would work in a repeat situation, who knows? Sometimes you get lulled into thinking, “Well, it worked once, let’s try it again,” and the second time it doesn’t work. Black Art is not a bad way to put it. You can’t say this, this, this and this all led to it; it’s just internally integrate everything and give it a whirl." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Share with me the results of your decision, and how it did inspire or motivate this community to rally around moving this telescope forward?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think in that case I’d say simply the results speak for themselves. The community did indeed get very active politically. The book [The Universe in a Mirror: The Saga of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Visionaries Who Built It by Robert Zimmerman] was right on. That really describes what was happening in the political process, right on through the final approval. You’re never sure what’s going to trigger what in that environment in Washington—it may not be unique to Washington—but try something. If it works, fabulous; if it doesn’t, try something else.\\n\\n Another thing was the telescope institute. The Space Telescope Science Institute now firmly embedded up there at [John] Hopkins [University, Baltimore, Maryland] was a concept that came out of the science community. They had fought and lobbied for an independent institute to operate and conduct the science on the telescope. [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] was vehemently against it. That was, in their minds, taking away their birthright. “All those functions of the institute, the science operation of the telescope, should be at Goddard. We don’t need an institute, don’t want one, bad idea.” Normal Center reaction.\\n\\n I took a different view on that. I really believed that a program that was going to go on for decades could well use an external advocacy, and the concept of the institute struck me as a good vehicle to keep that. Certainly the science community had demonstrated through other science organization activities that they were fully capable of managing, operating a science facility of that nature. DOE [Department of Energy] had many examples in the nuclear business of institute-type things, and so had astronomy.\\n\\n That’s a little bit what the basis of my thinking was. An external advocacy lets scientists do what they can do well, and get on with life. Goddard finally accepted that. Not sure I gave them a lot of choice, but it has developed as far as I know into a very good working relationship, and became totally accepted, and now it’s just part of the scheme of things. The institute continues to do well, and they are now going to be the location for the science operations for the James Webb Space Telescope. So it’s embedded now, it’s part of the game.\\n\\n Some interesting discussion of a director for the telescope institute. Riccardo Giacconi became the first director. Riccardo is a very vigorous and sometimes controversial character. The group AURA, Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, is operating it. They did ask my opinion about candidates for the directorship. I was a strong advocate for Riccardo, even though I’d had my own problems working with him. He was like so many of these really good scientists. They’re a pain in the butt to deal with at times, but they get things done, they’re good, they’re smart. I was delighted when Riccardo became the director, over the fears of some. I think in hindsight it turned out to work very well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was a time when there was a great competition to host that institute, and attached with those were the opportunities for a scientist to be named as the coordinator [with Goddard]. One of them of course being Dr. [Lyman S.] Spitzer [Jr.], who had spent years—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At Princeton [University, New Jersey]. I was not involved in the details of that site selection. Science politics is fascinating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s very intricate for such a small community, isn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Astronomers were the first ones to start off with these decadal studies with the [National Academies] Space Science Board, now Space Studies Board. One I think that George [B.] Field led, they were concerned that with the Hubble coming on there might not be enough astronomers to deal with all the new data. It got a lot of discussion. The conclusion was that no, we should not artificially stimulate careers in astronomy. Let the opportunity present itself, and then let students make their decisions.\\n\\n I think that was clearly the absolutely right decision. Trying to artificially groom a community can be dangerous. If things don’t work out, if say the Hubble never came into existence for whatever reason, “Well, you told us there were going to be all these great careers here, they’re not.” So let nature take its course. There’s always a time lag, worked out just fine. The community has grown in response to all the opportunities, the data, the excitement of what’s happening in astronomy and astrophysics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course the career of Hubble grew a lot longer than it had originally, especially with all of its issues that it had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We initially had talked about a 15-year lifetime for Hubble, with two major servicing missions: five-year, and at ten years in. Very little thought had been given to the details of what that entails. Figuring that there’d be new instruments available in five years, seemed like a reasonable cycle to have two upgrade missions. We didn’t call them repair missions because at the time we weren’t thinking about what might go wrong. So conceptually that was built in from the start. It’s turned out to be just an absolute delight and exceeding the expectations of both the quality and quantity of the upgrades and the ability to fix things. Particularly right from the beginning when it turned out we had the flawed mirror. That was pretty painful.\\n\\n It’s now headed into—it’s about 20 years now, and it’s got a prospect of another three, five years. Who knows after that? The thinking for a long time had been to try to keep Hubble going until its replacement is up there, now called the JWST [James Webb Space Telescope]. And that still looks like a reasonable transition time. You might say, “Well, scientists will get out there and lobby to keep both of them.” I think budgetarily the ongoing operating cost, the fact that you’ve got the institute that’s going to transition over—it was built in that the birth of JW[ST] on orbit will be the burial for Hubble." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your employment opportunities changed during the life of Hubble. Have you been involved in its career as you have changed different areas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not directly, no. Pretty much after I left the AA [Associate Administrator for Space Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC] position it was up to others to carry that on. I did not have a lot of direct involvement. Before I went over to the [Smithsonian National Air and Space] Museum [Washington, DC] I was coming up on the five-year point, and had this mentality that five years is a good time. It was triggered by other things though as well. You get a bit worn out trying to figure out new ways to testify to Congress, say the same thing over but in a different way. “This is getting old, time to do something else,” so I think everything just came together.\\n\\n One of the people who had worked with me at Bellcomm [Inc.], Farouk El-Baz, had gone to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, their research arm there. Farouk called me up and said, “Mike [Michael] Collins is leaving as head of the museum, going down to the Castle,” [Smithsonian Institution building] where [S. Dillon] Ripley and the management were located. He said, “Why don’t you apply for the job?” Initially I said, “No, not interested, I don’t know anything about museums.” But that thought stuck with me.\\n\\n About a month later [I] called Farouk back up, said, “Yeah, let me look into it.” That started a series of interviews with David Challinor, who was head of this group of science museums—[National Museum of] Natural History, [Dibner Library of the] History of [Science and] Technology, [National] Air and Space [Museum], the National Zoo [Smithsonian National Zoological Park]. I interviewed with David, and it obviously went well for whatever reasons. I think part of it was they realized that having somebody with a NASA background and knowledge was probably a plus, in terms of the museum and its interaction with the outside world and internally thinking about exhibit structure.\\n\\n Then next interview was with Dillon Ripley who was the head of the Smithsonian. Interesting name, they call it Secretary of the Smithsonian. That was a fascinating interview. We talked as much about the Zoo as we did about the Air and Space Museum. He found out I had a bachelor’s degree in agriculture, so we talked about camels and elephants and the kind of surfaces they liked to be on in a zoo environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All those years at NASA paid off?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it even did in NASA on occasion, the ag [agriculture] background. We had a session—I think it was with Jim Fletcher—and we had somebody from the outside world come in to talk about some of the life sciences. This fellow was starting to talk about embryology and potential things that one might see in watching an embryo develop in zero gravity. He was talking about using chicken embryos, and I’d had a course in embryology so we got into a very detailed back-and-forth technical discussion on embryology. And I could see people looking at me wondering, “How the hell does he know anything about embryology?” So that ag background has come in handy many times. Rather unusual in the NASA environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just never know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I got us off track here, but in a sense these anecdotes are what make life. The technical stuff is chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug-a, calculate this, do that. It’s all these interactions you have with everybody around you that make it interesting, fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they offered you the position [at the museum] and you took it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, not having any real foggy notion of what the job entailed. I got over there, and I settled in. I had a deputy who’d been there quite a while; there was a good staff there. The place had obviously been up and running, and drawing record crowds. Close to 10 million people a year were going in. So [I was] just getting the lay of the land, trying to figure out what needed change, if anything, what seemed to be working, leave it alone [if] it’s going well. I found that the large challenge was more attitude in the sense that the crew there was still coming off the high of putting up this brand-new very large and popular museum, and hadn’t yet really settled down into what do we do for the next 100 years in terms of exhibit renovations, changeovers. Getting the mentality in place of, “Let’s figure out a scheme for approaching the steady state kind of operation.” It wasn’t all that hard. The people there are very adaptable. They’re innovative and amenable to saying, “Yeah, sounds like a reasonable idea, let’s take that path.”\\n\\n You had three main groups to work with, of in a sense entirely different backgrounds and functions. There’s the whole restoration and exhibits crew, these are the people who would restore the artifacts, acquire artifacts, and then get them ready for the exhibit structures. Very talented bunch of people. Then there were the researchers and the departments of the curators. These are the history experts in the field either through experience, some through education. Interesting approach of many of the curators—they want in one sense to tell the public everything. Not realizing that the public doesn’t care about everything, and even if you tried to tell them they wouldn’t understand, because you don’t speak in [colloquial] English. Getting those curators and exhibits people working together to come up with exhibit labels and descriptions that resonate with the public is an art form. Something I’d never thought about.\\n\\n We had what’s called an education department. Their function was to both look at the educational content of the exhibits and also to interact with the school systems. We had a lot of school visits to the museum. Putting together programs and hosting school groups was a major activity of the museum. So you had these three different groups of people—I forgot the security people and the building maintenance. I always said they were the most important people. Keep that place clean so every morning when it would open up again it had a fresh look to it. And security to keep an eye on things but not be obtrusive. Those people were fantastic. They really knew how to deal with, greet, and make the public feel at home in the museum.\\n\\n Getting those pieces all melded together was not all that hard. The folks there are all professionals, easy to get along with. The daily challenges, as challenges, were almost nonexistent. We had the ability to do things both from government funding, and also there’s private-side funding in the Smithsonian which you could use in order to do a lot of discretionary things that you might not be able to do under government funding. The Imax Theater was a big source of income. So when I needed more money I said, “Well, let’s see, we’re charging 50 cents a ticket, let’s charge $1 a ticket.” It’s still a bargain, and another $1 million to play with here. Don’t want to carry that too far.\\n\\n All in all it was just a very satisfying and new kind of experience. Doing things that I had no idea of how to approach, but it was easy to learn. A lot of help from the staff there. I call it my three-year sabbatical. During that time I didn’t really think about having that as a forever career. It did not have the environment I’d been in, those day-to-day challenges and adrenaline-boosting things that really really get you going. So when I got a call from Jim [James M.] Beggs asking me if I’d like to consider being Goddard Center Director, it didn’t take too long to come up with the right answer.\\n\\n Hans [Mark], very very interesting person. He had been Secretary of the Air Force, just a very sharp and perceptive person. He was Deputy Administrator to Jim Beggs. When I was at the museum I wrote an article about solar system exploration, how decisions were made, some of the politics involved in getting planetary missions approved. Hans read that, and he called me up and said, “Come on over, and let’s talk about it.” He clearly had some points he disagreed with, probably never would have asked me to come over if he didn’t.\\n\\n So I went over to visit with Hans, and we sat down and started talking. He had some disagreements with my interpretation of how things happen. It wasn’t on facts, it was more on interpretation and belief in the political process. I didn’t change my mind, and Hans didn’t change his. It got—I wouldn’t call it testy, but vigorous. Hans is like that, I came to find out. He really on purpose will push and poke trying to stimulate you and be sure that he’s getting you to say what you really think and believe, or alternatively maybe you’ll cave in. I held my ground, he held his. Interesting, but didn’t think anything much more about it.\\n\\n Then a few weeks later I got a call from Jim Beggs to offer me the Goddard Center Director job. Told me that Hans Mark was promoting me as a good person for it. Here I’d just come a few weeks before from meeting with Hans where we had at it, and turns out that’s what Hans likes. People who stand up for what they believe in and defend it, take him on. It gave me an incredible insight into Hans I would never have had otherwise in terms of how he operates." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That I’m sure helped you when you had to have future discussions with him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. I was at Goddard, and it was nothing new [that] NASA was under budgetary attack. Hans came out to Goddard for reviews, general conversations, tour around the Center. His advice at the time was to “facilitize” the Center. He had come from [NASA] Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California], was Director out there. Big wind tunnels are an important national asset, so can’t close Ames down because you’ve got these required facilities. His advice was get yourself a facility to deal with the [Space] Shuttle payloads, the Hubble, and make that part of your base operation. It makes it that much harder for somebody to close you down someday. We did go ahead and worked on getting a major facility for Shuttle payloads out there at Goddard that were large enough to handle the Hubble when it came along. Interesting advice from Hans. He’s still active down at the University of Texas [Austin, Texas]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you feel were going to be some of the major challenges that you were going to take on as a Center Director, especially at Goddard?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had no foggy notion when I started, just like all the other jobs I’ve had. But one right away I got hit with was dealing with the contract on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System [TDRSS]. It was just in the final stages of resolution of a major contract issue. We’re talking about a $1 billion contract there at the end. So working through that and understanding the world of contracts, which I didn’t get an awful lot of exposure to at Headquarters.\\n\\n Most of the big contracting was done out in the field Centers. That was a novel experience to get involved in the contract end of the business and understand the perspective the contractor brings to it and the Center view and negotiations back and forth, back and forth. Where does it make sense to give, where do you hold strong—the art of negotiation, which was totally new to me. With a lot of good help from the staff, [we] worked our way through that. I was glad we didn’t have any more of those for a while. They’re not particularly fun. It’s not doing real stuff, but part of the business.\\n\\n At Goddard there was a question of, “Where do we go with the Shuttle activity?” We started a strategic planning [initiative] at Goddard. That was the first NASA foray into strategic planning. Took close to half a year setting up groups to just reassess everything we were doing and say, “Does this make sense? Are we doing it the right way? Should we take on new activities?” Infamous clean sheet of paper, recognize and buttress the strengths of the Center, try to understand what our weaknesses might be. Really tried to take a very basic look.\\n\\n That involved also the Wallops Flight Facility [Wallops, Virginia]. Wallops was an adjunct of Goddard. [They] did the sounding rocket, balloon work down there. Folks down there at Wallops are just very down-to-earth, know what they’re doing. Leave them alone, they get the job done. I found interestingly they thought this whole strategic planning, involving everybody in it, was a crock. One of them put it to me in very succinct terms. “If you don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, just tell us what you want us to do, we’ll go do it. We don’t need a big study, we don’t need to all be involved in it.” So I got a totally new appreciation for the folks at Wallops. From their perspective, yes, makes sense. We did get some involvement with them, but it opened my eyes to the different mentality of the folks down there on the eastern shore versus the city folk at Goddard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you devise the methods for the planning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We actually published a Goddard strategic plan. It did help us, based on all the discussions and activity. The plan itself was interesting, but all the discussion that goes into it, formulation of ideas and how you implement something is the real output. It did lead us to get into the Shuttle payloads and the Space Station activity. Somebody else can judge whether that was good or bad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were long-lasting impacts from that study." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, still involved in it. Of course the Space Station underwent such evolution that what we were thinking of at the time, Goddard’s involvement, changed drastically. Some of the other Centers, mainly [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], saw us as encroaching on their turf in terms of outfitting a lab [laboratory]. One of the jobs we were going to take on was a lab module activity, interesting back-and-forth on that.\\n\\n That was the major change in direction. The other was largely a reaffirmation of the value of having a high quality science component along with the engineering, that those two working together was what really made the Center strong. Were we just an engineering Center, you’d lose that hard connection and understanding of what the science is all about and therefore not implement it as well as you could and should. You see that to this day when you work with particularly [NASA] Johnson [Space Center, (JSC), Houston, Texas]. They still do not totally understand the scientist mentality and culture. I did note earlier that when JSC did put in a Science Directorate that aided incredibly facilitating the science back and forth within the Center and acceptance of the scientific methodology.\\n\\n One of the things we did at Goddard was to take better advantage of what the Center did in terms of letting the public know what we were all about. The public affairs activity there was clearly not, in my view, up to snuff. So [I] brought a lady out who’d been at the Air and Space Museum to head up the public affairs. She did wonders, started to work with the scientists and the engineers to get them to understand the role of public affairs. She really worked that to the point where folks got to enjoy telling about what they were doing. Just a change in leadership and attitude did wonders. You’d just find that permeates everything. When there’s an issue and people aren’t cooperating and doing what you think, nine times out of ten, it’s a leadership issue, not a technical or financial problem. People, people, people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you’re thinking in that mode, share with me what you consider to be your management style." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I like to sum it up as I did in an article in ASK Magazine a year or so ago, “Management by Wandering Around” [Issue 35, Summer 2009]. I found out so much by just going into people’s workplaces. The standard way of management is you call people to your office. For a lot of things that’s a good way, it works, but I found that when you go to their work environment, whether it’s on the lab floor or in an office, it’s a totally different environment and interaction you set up. People are very open, tell you what their problems are, what their perceptions—you just learn so much. I tried to, once a week, pick a building at random and an office at random and just wander in. Word soon got around.\\n\\n First the division directors were very suspicious of this. Am I spying on them? They soon found out that I was relatively harmless and that no evil was coming out of this and that I was really understanding how they got their jobs done. It turned out to be a very profitable way of understanding how the Center really operated at what I call the working level, people who got the work done. I just enjoyed interacting with folks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think I read where you even got snowed in one night, out with the snow movers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The snow was bad, the [Capital] Beltway [Interstate 495] was totally clogged. “I’m not going home, just going to stay here tonight.” So not knowing quite what one does all night at Goddard, I went outside. Guys were out there plowing. It was a big snow. So I got in with the head of the service area there and went around with him as he plowed. There’s a real art to plowing snow. You can’t just go in and start shoving snow around. You’ll soon block the roads and your way out. It was just a fun evening, getting to know Tony, and how you coordinate cleaning the roads and the parking lots so that the next day people can get in and everything looks—cleaned it out, that’s what you’re supposed to do. It’s an art form. That’s how you really find out how a place operates. If you don’t get down there and work directly with them, you think you know, but you don’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A couple of other events that happened while you were there is of course Goddard turned 25. That was a big celebration, talking about all the great things it’s done. And you had a presidential visit. President [Ronald W.] Reagan came after the Solar Max [STS 41-C Solar Maximum satellite repair mission]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a major problem with Solar Max that the fuses were undersized, so it was blowing fuses and in bad health. That became a target mission for the repair, the Solar Max repair mission to go up, capture the satellite, change out the electronics that needed to be upgraded, and put it back in operation. That was a spectacular success with awards and so on. Really the ability of astronauts to do that kind of repair mission—this is all pre-Hubble, but it was a prelude to things that could indeed be done. There were other interesting things done with the Shuttle in those days. The launch of commercial communications satellites from the Shuttle bay, retrieval of one of the COMSATs [communications satellites]. Shuttle in those days was doing everything, trying to make its way through life.\\n\\n The Reagan visit was interesting to me, just to get a sense of his demeanor—he comes across in person just as he did in public television. Just an extremely personable, easy to talk with person. We did start to, when we were over in the Earth science area looking at some of the exhibits there, talk about the global warming. He was a nonbeliever in the possibility that human contribution of CO2 [carbon dioxide] to the atmosphere was a major contributor to global warming. He got to talking about how it’s really pine trees that exude terpenes, organic molecule. I did not choose to argue with him. He’s got his belief.\\n\\n That’s what sticks with me on that visit—just how personable. I think still of all the Presidents he must go down as the top on that. Goddard is in a good position. They’re so close to Washington. To get a presidential visit out there is a lot easier than one of the other Centers where they have to make a special trip. It also had a good side effect. You have lots of things you’d like to get done: cleaning the Center up, getting the grass mowed where it hadn’t been mowed for half a year, getting the street fixed up. When the President is coming, somehow all that stuff happens. So we need one of these every year or two to keep the Center in good shape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think you’re right. Tell us about the impact that the [Space Shuttle] Challenger accident [STS 51-L] had on Goddard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The impact was maybe long in coming. Initially of course when it happened none of us understood what that might really be. The day of the Challenger accident was just like many of these other things. Like [President John F.] Kennedy’s assassination, you remember where you were. We were watching the launch, my deputy John [J.] Quann [and myself]. We had a TDRSS satellite on it, a Goddard payload. So it’s taking off and John said, “Let’s go to lunch.” This was after liftoff.\\n\\n I said, “No, let’s watch it for a couple more minutes.” Then we just stared at that screen. Initially I thought, “Well, that’s a strange separation of the solid rockets.” It did not dawn on me that it was something catastrophic. It rapidly became evident, then very soon after the network folks replayed that scene. We were just in total shock. You don’t think of, “What do I do now,” you’re just trying to absorb it. It was not at all obvious what the impact would be. That only unfolded with time.\\n\\n It became evident that the decision to put everything on the Shuttle was a flawed decision. I noted yesterday that Pete [Edward C.] Aldridge [Jr., then Secretary of the Air Force] had already started the Titan IV [rocket] program to take that possibility into account [for the military]. That became a very smart decision, both in foresight and hindsight. It also started the thinking at NASA we too should not be totally dependent on the Shuttle as the only launch system. By that time the expendable launch vehicles were being phased down, so there was a scarcity of launch vehicles to handle all the payloads that now couldn’t go on Shuttle. That did lead to quite a backlog of payloads that were about ready to go and had no way to get to space. The overall impact of that was just a major change, a sea state change, in the view of how you need to deal with launch vehicles.\\n\\n You might say, “Why today do we have a flawed policy on launch vehicles?” I do not have a good answer to that question. For whatever reasons, we have as a nation not dealt with the launch vehicle. I shouldn’t say as a nation, because the DoD [Department of Defense] made their determination that they were going to keep two competitive launch vehicles going, the Atlas and the Delta. So today you can fly on either one. Payloads have to be designed to be accommodated on either launch vehicle, so if one line goes down, use the other.\\n\\n NASA has not subscribed to that philosophy. Some of it is understandable in this sense, that there’s probably no practical way you can have alternative launch systems of the Saturn V class or Shuttle class. You can’t afford it. And the DoD is not interested, they don’t require that kind of capability. So you’re on your own. In that sense NASA has this ongoing dilemma of how to afford a very large launch system that has low utilization.\\n\\n I brought that up with Doug [Douglas R.] Cooke [Associate Administrator for the Office of Exploration Systems Mission Directorate] a month ago at a meeting, and he admitted that it’s a problem. You can’t afford to fly it frequently enough to keep the cost down. They are looking at ways to reduce the whole ground crew that’s involved in keeping a launch system going. Good luck, it’s a tough charter. It does say we don’t do a particularly good job of learning the lessons from the lessons learned that we try to document. Circumstances change, but also the applicability of lessons learned. The circumstances changing—that worked in that situation, it’s not clear that’ll work in another. NASA and I think APPEL [Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership] is trying to use the storytelling mode as you’ll see in ASK Magazine and in their Masters Forums, to not necessarily transmit a lesson per se—do it this or do it that way—but the thought process of trying to foresee things that can happen. How would you work your way out of them, and how do you elicit from the people around you the potential good solutions that you can evaluate? It’s more using lessons learned as a way to stimulate how you operate and manage in today’s environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to make a lot of changes in your strategy due to the postponement of return to flight [after Challenger]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The large part of the Center was of course involved in building robotic missions. So the impact on that was more where or what do you launch them on. It was clear the expendables were going to come back and provide those opportunities, and use the Shuttle only for those things such as where you knew you might want to repair a satellite—to get it into an orbit that could be reached by Shuttle and design it to be repairable.\\n\\n In that sense Solar Max was not designed to be repaired, so the crew had to do a lot of things on there that weren’t easy, because it wasn’t designed to be easy. The whole philosophy of “design it to be repairable,” such as the Hubble was, became a different way of thinking in satellite design for those which would be put into an orbit that Shuttle could reach. I left Goddard in ’87, so I really did not see myself the full impact of how the Center adjusted to and worked with the changes in the Shuttle system, Shuttle payloads." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were moved to be the [NASA] Associate Deputy Administrator to focus on institutional management matters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was a dual function. Jim Fletcher asked me to come down and help with the institutional management. Part of the Challenger report [Rogers Commission Report] noted the insularity of the Centers and the close management connections between Headquarters and the Centers that from one perspective it’s too cozy. His thought was, “Let’s take a look at the management structure. Are there things, looking at the Challenger report, that we should do to change our management approach to try to avoid the kinds of things that led to the Challenger accident?” I did spend some time talking with Centers, the Headquarters AAs to think about that, and concluded yes, probably time to make a management change. Take away from the AAs their Center management responsibility, and bring that together under a Center management system that built in some separation between managing the Centers and managing the programs that Centers do.\\n\\n To me that responded to what he had asked for and the Challenger report. That didn’t go very far. The manned spaceflight mafia, starting with the Deputy, Dale [D.] Myers, and Dick [Richard H.] Truly, who was heading up manned spaceflight, wanted no part of that. That was tearing their empire asunder. In that battle I did not win. Fletcher, I suspect that he must have felt he could not take on his Deputy and the AA for Manned Space Flight. That really started me thinking, “Well, this is a losing job.” I didn’t particularly relish the job to start with, but, “I came down here to help, I’ll try to do what I can.”\\n\\n Also had a role, more on paper than anything else, as Chief Scientist. It was a dual role. In that role just provided the day-to-day input to Jim Fletcher and Dale Myers on the science part of the program. I was not trying to do the science job. Len [Lennard A.] Fisk was heading up space science, perfectly capable, and doing a super job of running the Science Directorate.\\n\\n There was a fun little sidelight to the job that gave me my comic relief. Interesting thing happened to me in that job. I had a White House fellow working for me as a staff assistant. It rapidly reinforced my belief in the good part of military training. I think I mentioned that yesterday, relative to Sam [Samuel C.] Phillips and Rocco [A.] Petrone, that their military training background provided them a management style that was no-nonsense, no bullshit. Just get the facts out. “Here are the decisions that have to be made, here are the considerations going to it,” and make the decision.\\n\\n Art [Arthur J.] Athens, out of the Marine Corps serving as the White House fellow, would say, “Okay, what meetings are coming up tomorrow?” You’d say, “This, this.” He would go to the people I was going to meet with, set the agenda, course of action, and a tentative list of decisions that had to be made. Fantastic. Go in the meeting totally prepared. You didn’t spend half the meeting trying to figure out why you were there. Click, click, click. Then he would follow up on the actions. The military does a fantastic job of training and preparing people for decision making. Their environment, you don’t have all day to send back to committees to figure out where the enemy is. So that was a wonderful year having Art there.\\n\\n The Osprey [V-22 aircraft] was just being proposed. That’s a tiltrotor vehicle. Art’s view was that thing is a disaster, it’s not what the Marines need, want or should use. It’s not fast enough to outpace the enemy fighters so you’ve got to escort it everyplace it goes because it’s too slow, it’ll only do a couple hundred miles an hour. It’s complicated. Marines don’t need complex aircraft. The aircraft lobby won out on that, and let’s see, we had five Ospreys crash, lost about 13 lives in that.\\n\\n Really relates to the whole decision process and the industry-government relationship where programs take on lives of their own and the basic requirements don’t necessarily match, yet these programs keep going. You see that all the time. The influence of both government people who are not involved in the actual implementation of the program and the industry. [Dwight D.] Eisenhower talked about the military-industrial complex. I’ve thought about that many times. It certainly in many instances rings true. These large government programs that you say, “How does that keep going?” Interesting watching this Osprey evolve and thinking back to what Art said about it back in 1988 or so. And 23 years later I think he was right.\\n\\n Headquarters two-year period—after it became evident I wasn’t going to impact the management structure—and further, I was rather bored in the job. I was used to heading organizations and leading things. That was a staff job in effect, a number three. Being number two anyplace is a tough nut, but being number three is a loser, don’t ever do it. I made my mind up, enough government.\\n\\n I had several friends who went out to industry. One in particular, Tom [A. Thomas] Young, whom I replaced at Goddard, was at Martin Marietta [Corporation]. I talked to Tom a little bit, said I’d like to at least look into the possibility. I talked with Norm [Norman R.] Augustine, who was president and CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of Lockheed Martin—Martin Marietta then. I’d always had tremendous regard for Norm. He had just a style and a way of interacting, working with people, and a brilliance that are close to unmatched. My knowledge of Tom and having gotten to know Martin a bit through the Viking [Mars] program, decided yes, that’s it. That’s the place to go. That’s when I did decide to go with them and went out to spend two years out in Bethesda [Maryland] at their corporate headquarters learning the ifs, ands or buts of corporate life before they shipped me out to Denver [Colorado], which was neat. Good move in hindsight.\\n\\n I lost a lot of immediate touch with NASA in those years then when I got out here. I came back in a different environment from the contractor perspective. That is something, in an ideal world, it would be good for a lot of people to have. When you’re in government you believe you know what drives industry and how they respond and react, behave. When you’re in industry you think the same thing about the government people. The reality is that neither of you know what you’re talking about. Which reminds me of Jim Beggs one day, a meeting we had with AAs and Center Directors.\\n\\n Burt [Burton I.] Edelson, AA, said something about industry. Jim Beggs looks at him and said, “Burt, you don’t have the foggiest notion of what industry thinks.” He was absolutely right. Until you’ve been there you don’t know. And even when you’ve been there, you see it from a particular industry perspective or a particular government organization perspective. The learning process working with both communities—and we’d seen that during Apollo with the industry background of George [E.] Mueller. He brought that perspective to it as well as the understanding, knowing the military side, though he’d never been part of it.\\n\\n That was a total mental change, which also had a downside. I did not totally appreciate what it really took at a detailed level to implement a mission in the industry environment. When we were from Martin competing for the Mars Surveyor program, we knew it was going to be a tough competition. But they all are. The ways we devised to lower cost turned out with the Mars ’98 disasters to be flawed to say the least [launched 1998, lost 1999]. I didn’t have enough experience on the industry side to foresee that—and maybe I wouldn’t have anyhow—but I clearly didn’t have the experience.\\n\\n Working with the other people in Martin who did have the experience, we jointly brainwashed ourselves into believing we had a viable program proposal. Pain of hindsight, it was very evident we did not. Tough, tough lesson learned. I can just be thankful that we survived it, which was an odd fallout advantage of the fact that we were in a program. The Mars Surveyor program was designed to launch two spacecraft at every Mars opportunity, that’s every two years, for five launch opportunities.\\n\\n We had already started building the 2001 missions when the ’98 failures occurred. Had that not been the case, my belief [is] that there’s no way we would have survived to go on and recover, because that would have been the end of that program; you’d have to compete for a new one. Coming off two failures, competing, that’s a no go. The blessing was it was part of an ongoing program which was already under contract—I recovered, went on to do things like the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Stardust, Genesis, other missions. You can say sometimes things conspire in your favor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you happier having your hands back on some projects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. You say hands on, I never did anything myself. It was always—just again as at NASA—you have good people around you and let them do the job, enable them to do the job. Interesting aspect of that, Martin and then Lockheed Martin—the NASA work is a small part of their organization. They are dominated by their DoD work. The NASA part of the business is small relative to the DoD, the profit it brings in, yet it gets an awful lot of the publicity and view of the outside world. DoD is largely classified, so nobody knows for the most part outside of the DoD organizations.\\n\\n Particularly when some of the older Viking folk left, the management was wondering, “Why are we in this business? When things go well, it’s good publicity; when they go bad, it’s real bad publicity. That’s always been a bit of an internal struggle. I suspect that must be common to the Boeings [Boeing Company] and Northrop Grummans [Northrop Grumman Corporation], ancient TRWs [TRW, Inc.] of the world.\\n\\n All this, again, is a view that there’s no way I would have understood, appreciated from outside. Working with particularly JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]—most of our work at Martin was with JPL, very little at that time with Goddard. The JPL view of life in their business world was squeeze the contractor on potential profit. From a government perspective, “Why should anybody make profit on what we do?” So the JPL business side was always pressuring us to cut down the potential—not the actual but the potential—award fees if you did the job well.\\n\\n So I decided, “I’ve got to go out there and work with the JPL management to turn this around. It’s impacting all of our negotiations.” I started with the director, the deputy and on down. That one day really turned out to be extremely useful in the long run, because I got everybody in that JPL management team to understand the role of profit in the industry and what that means to being able to implement a mission the way that NASA would like us to do.\\n\\n Going out, not knowing what the reception would be, but then coming back and saying they all listened and understood—it changed the environment. I was really struck by the openness of the JPL management to listen and to respond favorably in that situation. So lesson learned. If you’ve got a problem, go talk about it. You may be surprised at the outcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel that your years with NASA gave you an entrance with the management team there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. I knew all the people personally, and we had a trust. It didn’t mean we always gave in to one another when I was with NASA or otherwise, but we understood and knew what was driving it. It was always the great stuff we were doing. When I was at NASA and contractors would come in to talk with me, they were pleasant meetings. They’d make a point, I’d try to respond, but it didn’t have that same feel to it, because I really did not appreciate and understand what they were telling me about their environment. I hadn’t been there. Once you’ve been there, “Yes, I do understand now.” It doesn’t mean that everything industry tells you is something you ought to listen to or do, but at least see the perspective that they bring to it.\\n\\n One of the side ventures I took was working with the Space Studies Board. They undertook a long study of the relationship of human exploration to robotic. I was on the board in the late ’80s and the ‘90s. We all realized that there’s a tension there between these two worlds that could use some thinking and study to see, “What can we do to better create an environment where these two worlds can cooperate?” They’re both here, they’re both going to be here, we’re going to have to work with them, so is there a way to better work or manage that interface between the science world and the human spaceflight world? We did a—went close to five or six years in total—three-part detailed study of the relationship of the robotic science world to the human spaceflight world, and published that report. I, to this day, use that as a basis for talking with the NASA management about suggestions of ways to foster a better working relationship between these two worlds.\\n\\n The tensions are still there. Nothing has changed in that regard. But I do think we have ways formulated to better work the interfaces, how one community needs to understand the needs and desires of the other and come out with a more long-term productive relationship. In the last year I’ve gone in to Space Science and to the Exploration Office to talk about the results of that study and show them, “Here are some of the things you can do to foster a better working relationship.” Must say to date it doesn’t seem to have much traction. The dichotomy for whatever reason seems to be so ingrained that it’s hard to develop a strong relationship. Each side is very wary of the other and their motives for wanting to do things. The motives are actually fairly clear, but appreciating those and working with them is a constant management challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you share some of the results of that study, the benefits of the two working closer together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nobody disagrees. Looking at this, you can understand to some degree why there’s a reluctance. Periodically the organizations do try to come up with ways to foster a better relationship. Exploration today took one step, they put Laurie [A.] Leshin in as the deputy to Doug Cooke. Laurie comes out of the science world. I think that is the first time there’s ever been a science person as the deputy in the Headquarters Human Space Flight Office.\\n\\n Scientists know her, they can speak with her. So that’s clearly, in my view, a step in the right direction. You’ll never get over the fact that implementing science in conjunction with human spaceflight costs a lot more than if you do it robotically. That comes down then to a budget situation, who’s going to pay for it. Mike [Michael D.] Griffin [former NASA Administrator] threw that into a bit of a turmoil a couple years back. He said if scientists want to do science on the Moon, they pay for it.\\n\\n The science program is not going to come up with a couple billion dollars to implement a couple hundred million dollars’ worth of science. No way are they going to do that. So if the exploration office doesn’t pay for the science that they do in conjunction with their program, chances are very little is going to happen. Yet they don’t have the budget to even handle their own human spaceflight needs, much less the science that they might do. So there’s a major dilemma in NASA as to how to fund this human exploration program, including what you do on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "NASA also funds non-NASA ventures in science. For instance, the ground-based observatories. How were you involved with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That came up back in the ’70s in some of the congressional interactions we had with the Appropriations subcommittee in the House [of Representatives]. Eddie [Edward P.] Boland, chair of the subcommittee, talked about the astronomy budgets and said, “Your budget in NASA in astronomy is as large as the NSF [National Science Foundation] budget in astronomy.” In essence he was asking how do you reconcile who does what, and why. He also realized at the time we were funding ground-based astronomy out in Hawaii, the planetary astronomy. We needed to get ground-based information to use in designing the astronomy satellites.\\n\\n So we actually at that time formed a joint NASA-NSF working group to be sure we mutually understood what the ground rules were for why you did something in astronomy on ground-based, and then research programs in NSF or why you did it in NASA. We needed to be sure that we were totally coordinated and had a uniform story to tell to the congressional committee as to who was doing what in ground-based astronomy and the total size of the astronomy programs. That, at least while I was there, worked quite well. I haven’t really kept up with what’s happened subsequently in the back-and-forth between NSF astronomy and NASA-funded astronomy.\\n\\n That also does raise a much more pertinent issue that goes on to this day, and existed back then, which is on the environmental science and Earth remote sensing. There was a tradition early on that NASA would fund and implement the first of a new science look at Earth, a new instrument. And that when it had flown and we understood how to use the data from that sensor, then NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] would take it over and fly that instrument on their operational satellites. So early on there was a relatively clean division on transition from a science research program to an operational program.\\n\\n That, with time, became muddied as to what constituted research and what constituted operations. Part of that is because the research never really stops. Even when you have an operational satellite, that instrument is providing data of use to the research community. But the operational community is not going to build an instrument maybe to the specs [specifications] the scientists would like. They don’t need it for their use, so you ended up in a back-and-forth on setting requirements. Are they science requirements or are they operational requirements? If they’re science, you pay for it. It has led to a very tangled relationship between NASA, NOAA—and on occasion the DoD uses a lot of weather satellites—on the science content of an operational satellite. Who pays for it, who manages it? That’s going on to this day.\\n\\n The next generation of NOAA satellites is in, right now as far as I can see, rather a mess. They finally I think sorted out the roles of who’s responsible for building which ones for the science instruments. It’s just one of those interesting quagmires you get into when you take a science kind of instrument measurement and put it in an operational environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve got the National Science Foundation, you’ve got the National Academy, of course NASA has its own advisory committees—what do you feel are the benefit of listening to these groups? How well do they work together, as you mentioned, to work toward a common goal? Can you share some anecdotes of things that have worked out well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The original Space Studies Board—at that time it was called Space Science Board—decadal studies were just in astronomy. Those provided for the major missions a good blueprint. Here was an outside organization that could work with the science community, argue about priorities, vet different ideas. That created, in a sense, a nice situation for NASA. They could take that output, say, “Well here’s what the community thinks are the priorities.” Since we’re here to serve that community, makes sense to us. So they could take those results and work towards implementing the missions that got the blessing from the National Academy.\\n\\n Then when others saw the benefit of that, others at NASA and outside, that led to an expansion of these decadal studies to where now there’s one in planetary astronomy, space physics, there’s a separate solar—they proliferated. Now the AA for Space Science, Ed [Edward J.] Weiler, said, “We’ll take our priorities from the decadal survey results.” Now it’s become just a totally enmeshed mechanism for every ten years surveying the field, saying how much progress did we make, here are the new opportunities in missions.\\n\\n Those studies in fact are just finishing up now on the planetary science, are of course going to be out early next year. The astronomy one just came out a couple weeks ago. Now science is much more reliant and dedicated to following the pathways for major missions laid out in those decadal surveys. They’re comfortable with it, it provides them some cover. If the community doesn’t like it, say, “Well, you had your chance. The National Academy did these studies so we’re taking that as our input.” Takes the heat off NASA in large part from the outside world, people complaining they don’t like this, they don’t like that. I must confess it’s a pretty good system. To gather lots of input—they spend two years on doing one of these decadal surveys, digesting it, arguing about it, establishing a set of priorities. I think it’s an excellent system from my perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Somewhat different from where you were having to decide what priorities were going to make it through that budget process when you were AA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, just made our own decisions. We had input from the Space Studies Board. It wasn’t a dictum. It was interesting advice and we listened to them, sometimes took it, sometimes didn’t. For the most part we did, because the advice we were getting from our own committees was pretty much in concert with that.\\n\\n It did expand also to the Earth sciences. Academy had a major study on the priorities in Earth science. Again, they’re pretty well following the path laid out. It’s taken a bit of a change recently in those studies. The Academy committees would try to use the prospective mission cost as one of the criteria for setting priorities. Their concern has always been, rightfully, that something may be neat, but if it costs so much it squeezes out a lot of other science, it may not be a good thing. The ability of them to have good cost estimates of prospective missions—many of which were conceptual, not hard design—turned out to be a problem, because the early estimates of mission cost are notoriously low. In part because you really don’t know what you’re going to do, and you also know that if it comes out with those estimates too high it’ll kill it off before you even had a chance to pay for it.\\n\\n There was a clear tendency for the estimated mission cost to come out very low relative to what they ended up being, and that has led to the congressional request for NASA to take a detailed look and have the Academy do a study on why their mission costs end up so far out of whack with what the early estimates were, and to do something about it. That is under way now, something I’m working with NASA on with Chris [Christopher J.] Scolese [NASA Associate Administrator] to try to deal with all the input now that’s coming out of cost studies. And the Academy is doing their own independent cost studies to try to get a better grip on what some of these neat new science concepts might end up costing so they can weave that into their thinking on how to prioritize the science that can be done on the new space missions.\\n\\n Interesting process there on costing missions. It raises a topic that has to be dealt with but is—tricky is the wrong word. Complex may be the wrong word too, I’m not sure I have the right term for it. NASA could easily design things that they knew with very high fidelity what it would cost. The chances of that resulting in forefront science are slim. If you know in that detail exactly what you do, you’re probably not advancing the state of the art, or the state of the science. Reaching out into something you’ve never done before, and therefore not really understanding and knowing precisely what it’s going to cost—maybe even roughly what it’s going to cost—balancing that off against doing what you already know how to do and have done.\\n\\n The NASA tendency is, “Hey we’re doing forefront stuff, we got to keep reaching out.” Almost at times you can get a feeling that it’s “cost be damned.” But in the environment we’re working in today it can’t be. You’ll be pricing yourself out of business. So we’re right in the midst of trying to get that balance between understanding and factoring in probable cost into the priority system and then implementing missions and having them finish within the envelope of cost that you had committed to. In this budget environment we’re in, as you might guess, that’s a pretty important topic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this different from the environment that you inherited when you stepped into the AA position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We always did have to be concerned about cost. In our testimony on the Hill, I would get beaten up for cost overruns. If the missions were successful, a lot of those sins were forgiven. We’d go on and work the next one. It’s a much tougher environment today. We could get away with a lot more then. It was just a simpler overall system, the interfaces and the insight. Now, the number of people who demand detailed reports from NASA on a monthly, sometimes a weekly basis, boggles the mind.\\n\\n The bureaucracy in Washington is totally out of control. To feed that data dog, as my friend Charlie [Charles J.] Pellerin would call it, is taking an inordinate amount of time and effort. So part of our challenge now is to try to educate particularly the outside world, the OMB [Office of Management and Budget], the GAO [Government Accountability Office] and the congressional committees on the situation and what we’re trying to do to better forecast and control the cost. Right in the middle of that. This time I’m seeing firsthand, getting reimmersed in the world of Washington politics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any project or specific mission that you had wanted to undertake for the science world while you were with NASA that just didn’t get to launch, somehow it got canceled out? I know you saved a few along the way, but I didn’t know if there was something that you had hoped would have been able to make it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At that time in the ’70s it was more elements of a mission or sequence that would have to be cut back or reconfigured to make it affordable, or just not doing something that sounded real neat. For example, in the ’70s JPL proposed a set of really forefront missions using new technologies. One of those was solar sailing using a huge structure, a kilometer on a side, of very thin foil to provide propulsion from just the solar energy hitting it. Conceptually a pretty neat wonderful thing, and you could do all sorts of fun missions.\\n\\n We looked at that at Headquarters and said, “Boy, the cost of this and the unknowns.” A lot of the proposals that would come in, our decision not to do them was usually not necessarily cost-driven, but is the technology developed far enough so that you say, “Yes, I know enough that I can now do a mission using that technology”. Very frequently it was the lack of readiness of technology to implement a mission that would be its downfall.\\n\\n Another side, true to the whole cost consideration, came in the international world. If you couldn’t afford within the budget envelope that you had to do a mission, if ESA [European Space Agency] is interested in the same kind of mission, let’s join forces here. If neither of us can afford to do it alone maybe we can cobble up a joint mission that makes sense to do cooperatively and get better overall total benefit out of each of our budgets by doing a cooperative mission.\\n\\n That concept has expanded over the years. If you look now at NASA missions, it’s a rare space mission that doesn’t have a foreign contribution. Or a foreign mission, an ESA mission, that doesn’t have a US contribution. International cooperation has become close to a standard way of doing business. Almost these days don’t think twice about it. It’s just normal, accepted. There are some European proposals that won’t cost us anything if we fly their experiment in terms of out-of-pocket cost, and vice versa.\\n\\n That is taking on a new step with the future Mars program where the sample return mission was judged by NASA to be just too expensive for NASA to undertake on its own in the science budget. It recently became joint with the European Space Agency, so the future Mars program starting in 2016 is a joint program right from the start. Of course the [International] Space Station has well known international parts and pieces. We’ve really leapt into the future here, history in the making maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I think it’s been like one nonstop trip as it all weaves itself together. As we’re getting close to closing out for today, I wanted to ask you about what you believe to be some of the most significant contributions that you’ve made to the agency and/or the field of space science that you’re proudest of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It goes back to the fact that I can’t take credit for any real specific accomplishment. Other folks have done it. So what I have to believe is just that the management style I’m comfortable with and use, of creating the environment in which all these other great people can practice their trade and do their good things, is my major contribution. Enabling the others to do their jobs and get it done. I would say it’s in the management approach rather than a specific hardware or software accomplishment. That’s my comfort zone.\\n\\n I hadn’t thought much about it until just now. Taking that approach or behaving that way really makes it easy to have good people come out with their ideas and perform. I think I am not seen as a threat by anybody, and that creates an environment where people feel very open, communicate well, feel comfortable doing that. My take is you get so much more done that way than just chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug tell everybody what to do and how to do it. You get the best out of people. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, so suck it up. It’s there for the taking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are just some of your most favorite memories? You’ve been around so many great accomplishments, and part of them in your own way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This may sound odd at first, but recovering from failures and problems. My mentality is just such that, “Okay crap happened, let’s get on with life, learn from it, carry on.” When involved in mission failures, and not just the ones I’ve mentioned like the Mars or the Challenger, those who’ve put so much of their life into it can get very very down and depressed and wonder, “Why am I doing this?” So after each of these I spent a fair amount of time, concerted effort in working with the folks who were involved in those disasters, showing them that there was life after death. Because I believe that. “It happened, let’s figure out why, what went wrong, get on, take the next step.” Being able to provide to those people some hope that there is something else, this is not the end of the world—even though it may seem that way at the time.\\n\\n With the Mars failures we had some very very serious people problems. There were people we were concerned about potential for suicide. Bringing in professional help from the company was a real plus. And just talking it out, not keeping it bottled in but getting it out, talking about it, facing the facts, and not sitting around describing the blame. Get out of the blame bit. After the failure, after the lander, probably a day or two later, I called Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin up, who was the NASA Administrator, and said, “I apologize for the screwup.” Dan, in contrast to what I expected, and based on previous history of watching him—he reacted in a way I had totally not anticipated.\\n\\n He said, “I don’t want people who tried to make this happen blamed for it. I pushed too hard to make this ‘faster, better, cheaper’ approach work.” I was dumbfounded. I had totally expected Dan to chew my butt out, blame me in large part for the failures. Didn’t happen. That changed my view of Dan. I had thought of him as just being a pompous curmudgeon all the time demanding more and more of people, not worrying about whether you can really do it or not. So I developed a new perspective on at least one part of Dan Goldin, and used that internally.\\n\\n There’d been other problems at the time. The Titan had a major failure, and everybody involved in the Titan program took a hit in terms of merit reviews, salaries, bonuses, the whole bit. The indication was they were going to do the same thing on people involved in the Mars programs, and I resisted that. I told our management, “The people who worked this program did what we asked them to do. This was a management disaster, not a technical disaster per se, and they shouldn’t be punished for doing what we asked them to do.” They bought off on that. I said, “Those of us in management should take the hit.” Which we did. But the general folks there did not, and they shouldn’t have. So I felt real good about it. But if Dan Goldin hadn’t stood up and taken himself the responsibility, I couldn’t have used that lever.\\n\\n JPL took the same view. Larry [N.] Dumas, who was the deputy there, talked with me and he said, “No, we’re not punishing people for the failure. Some of our best project managers come out of failures. They learn.” That was a very interesting aspect of the whole Mars failure scenario. And those same folks, the bulk of them, went on to produce some fantastic good missions. The Odyssey, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and a whole number of other missions. So there can be life after death." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You went on for a little while and taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder, so you experienced some days as a professor as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was a neat adventure. I had known the head of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [LASP] up there, Charlie [Charles A.] Barth, for times going way back into the ’70s. When we moved out here Charlie invited me up to talk at the dedication of their new building there at LASP, renew acquaintances. Charlie was also going to retire soon, so I went on the search committee for a new director for LASP.\\n\\n The search committee was fumbling around a bit. I said, “I’ve got the perfect candidate for you,” Dan [Daniel N.] Baker. I had recruited Dan from Los Alamos [National Laboratory, New Mexico] to Goddard when I was Goddard. Dan came to Goddard and headed up space physics there, and turned out that going through the process Dan was selected to be the LASP director. When I retired, Dan said, “Hey, why don’t you come up and spend some time here with students?” LASP hires a lot of students to work on projects in their space operations. It sounded like fun, I’d known the people in the aerospace department.\\n\\n I did two things, working out with the folks at LASP. I started to become an adviser to a student group working on designing a space experiment to fly on what’s now called the New Horizons mission, which is on its way to Pluto. [S.] Alan Stern at Southwest Research Institute [San Antonio, Texas] had initiated a student project. Alan believed that the usual NASA outreach stuff is a crock. “Let’s do something real, have some students involved in building something that flies,” which he arranged to do with LASP. The students, with the help of the professional staff there at LASP, were building a dust detector experiment. I provided the day-to-day senior adviser [role] to them—working directly with the students, understanding their issues and problems, and helping them over some of the hurdles, how you build real hardware. Fantastic opportunity working with 12, 13 top-notch students, helping them understand how NASA does business, what you have to do qualify experiments to fly in space.\\n\\n The rest of the time, I started a lecture series in the aerospace department, a seminar series on NASA missions, how they get done, implemented, systems engineering. [I was] trying to give them a feel for what the infamous real world is all about and how things are done, and use that as an aid to them in implementing what are called senior projects. Colorado and a number of the other aero departments—[University of] Texas, MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts]—senior students get involved in a yearlong project, taking it from establishing the objectives to building something that works, but they’re for the most part totally ignorant on process.\\n\\n You might say NASA may be overly driven by process, yet it’s that process that helps you do things in an orderly good fashion and frequently saves your butt from doing something stupid. So my goal there was to show the students how the NASA way of doing business resulted in missions, what it takes to actually make these missions fly and succeed, and on occasion why they fail, and the things you need to be cautious about in implementing a mission that can lead to failure. Just try to give them a sense of the systems kind of thinking that goes into putting a mission together. I had a ball doing that.\\n\\n It was a shocker also. You think giving nine or ten lectures over a period of nine, ten weeks should be a snap. I thought, “Yeah, I can put those together in an hour or two per lecture.” Oh, what a shock. I ended up spending close to 20 hours to put a one-hour lecture together, combining graphics and talk. I had not ever understood what it takes to put together a decent course at a university. You think people just go in and talk. First you have to know what you’re talking about. We tend to think we know something—until you have to tell somebody else about it, you find, “Oh, I really don’t understand that in detail.” I saw it at a high level. This is probably a result partly of my never having worked on the gory detail of things but always at a higher level. You think you know how things happen. In reality, it doesn’t work that way.\\n\\n I had to educate myself and sometimes reeducate on things I’d just totally forgotten in putting those lectures together. That was a great opportunity, but I saw what it really takes to put a good set of lectures together on any topic. It’s work. The outside view that faculty just screw around having a good time and going to conferences, talking and giving a lecture now and then—a lot of hard work goes into being a good faculty member." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a great resource for those students, because you could answer questions that other people could not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, one of them came up to me and said, “Could you give us an evening lecture?” It was right after the [Space Shuttle] Columbia [STS-107] accident. He said, “It looks to us as if some awfully stupid things were done. We don’t understand it.” So they got their AIAA [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics] group together, had an evening lecture on what led up to and contributed to the Columbia accident, how things happen. The students said, “We don’t get that in the normal courses. All our faculty are career researchers. They’ve never been out in the real world.” They just loved it to have me available as somebody who’d been out there. I talked to them about career choices. A lot of them did want to work with NASA. A fair number said, “No, I don’t want to work in a big bureaucracy, I want to go to some little company where I can really do things myself and contribute.” It was an education for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a great resource." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fabulous. I’d like to have kept it up, but that drive up to Boulder in the winter, when my eyesight went bad on me, I unfortunately had to give that up. But it was fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned earlier about the advocate for having a Mars sample return mission. Would you share why you feel so strongly about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Goes back to Apollo. The bulk of what we really know about the Moon came from the analysis of the samples that were returned, and then using that knowledge and data in conjunction with the orbital remote sensing data to extend those results to the larger part of the Moon. It really proved to me that you really don’t—and can’t—understand these bodies until you’ve had the sample in the Earth labs and been able to do the detailed analysis that’s possible here that is totally impractical by sending instruments there to the surface of the Moon or planets. You can never miniaturize and send enough of all the right equipment to do that same kind of job you can do so easily in the terrestrial laboratories once you get the sample back. Just that aspect alone, there’s no way you’re going to understand this planet until you get some sample.\\n\\n Meteorite studies also have proven that out. We’d be almost in a blind if we didn’t have those meteorites to analyze and understand what asteroids and comets are all about, to complement the remote sensing. Instrumentation indeed has gotten a lot better that you can send to these places. See what we send to Mars now, relative to what you could send two decades ago. It’s phenomenal, yet it’s still no match for what you can do back here, because the terrestrial labs and instrumentation—at the same time space instrumentation has expanded, so has it back here. Terrestrial instrumentation and laboratories are always at least a decade ahead of where you can be on anything you can fly in space. Once you get those samples back they’re here to stay. We’re learning things from the lunar samples 35, 40 years later that we couldn’t conceive of when the Apollo samples came back. They have an infinite life. As new techniques are developed, let’s go back in and look at them again. Learn new things.\\n\\n The value of it is just so unquestioned in my mind. To understand Mars to the degree we want to both for science purposes and for eventual human exploration, get that sample back. It’ll just open up a tremendous new bin of knowledge about Mars that there’s no way we’re going to get otherwise. That’s the real driver. The return on the investment relative to what you can do robotically with remote analysis is just so high that the value is there. It’s expensive, but the value is there. We have to figure out, “How can I make it affordable?” It’s probably going to be another decade of plotting, scheming, conniving.\\n\\n One of the things the Apollo program was so proud of was that the astronauts collected these samples and brought them back, and it wasn’t done robotically. There’s a belief that this is a great thing for astronauts to do. So [if] astronauts go to Mars, they can bring the sample back. I understand the genesis of that thinking. And though I’ve not heard anybody express it this way, I believe they have a fear that if we bring sample back robotically it might lead to some people saying, “Well, we’ve got the sample, why do you need to send people?” Because we can get sample back without people going. So I think there’s that fear that bringing sample back could be a detractor for eventually sending humans to Mars. I never heard anybody actually say that, but I can hear the gears turning at times.\\n\\n There are other parts of the human Mars advocates who also support bringing back sample robotically. They appreciate that there’s potential content in those Mars materials that could be very hazardous. If we don’t understand that and deal with it before we spend hundreds of billions of dollars to go, it would be totally foolish. One being the high oxidation state, stuff inherently chemically dangerous if you ever get it on you or in you. Two other things about the sample that are important to know when we get it back here and use it to enable the mission to succeed; mechanical properties, that type of thing. Right now I think in sum the human exploration community would support and does support the sample return." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know you mentioned that you’re working as a consultant helping Chris Scolese on a current project. Are you doing other work as well working on any other committees or consulting with other Centers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I work with some of the industry folks with Lockheed Martin, with the [John Hopkins University] Applied Physics Lab, occasionally with Goddard on their proposal activity. That comes and goes. Working with NASA’s APPEL program, the Academy of Program/Project and Engineering Leadership—Ed [Edward J.] Hoffman runs that program, so I do work with them on putting on educational forums for the NASA folks. That’s always a lot of fun. You get a lot of midcareer NASA people who are eager to learn lessons learned.\\n\\n A lot of these forums are bringing the lessons learned and trying to get people to understand what those lessons are and where and how they can benefit from it and learn from it. That’s a gratifying experience. Occasionally work with the Space Studies Board. I’m not doing anything with them right now. I think I’m coming off into a period of decreased activity here for a while, which may be good so maybe I can clean this office up. As Diana [my wife] would say, “When are you going to clean that up?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I thought I’d ask a broad question here to close out. When I was doing some research before I came to see you, I found a statement you made that you believed while you were at Princeton you had received a very broad-based education, and that you prefer to see a broad spectrum of what’s happening in science and not narrow yourself to a specific field. Do you believe, now looking back over your career, that this type of education and somewhat personal philosophy has helped you be the success that you’ve been able to be in the field that you are in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, most definitely. I hesitate to try to extend that to a large number of people. I think it just happened to fit my personality. As so often happens when something fits you, you think this must be good for everybody. Without a whole lot of very detail-oriented people, in engineering and science in our case, these missions wouldn’t happen. I could not possibly do what they do. If we didn’t have people who could do what they do, there’s no program. So I’m hesitant to extend that philosophy. I think it probably applies only to people with a similar penchant for liking to work with other people and manage things, see the big picture, try to make little pieces fit in with it, and have a lot of fun doing that.\\n\\n How people find that as a career path is a good question. In fact I don’t have a good answer other than people experimenting, trying different things. Those who have the inclination, they just head out and try different jobs to see where they find a fit. I’d hesitate to make a college curriculum out of management. In fact that touches on a sore point in some ways, the great topic of systems engineering. Now at NASA and many other places systems engineering has become a cult, in the sense that it is worshipped as the god of creation and implementation. I’m obviously taking a very exaggerated point of view here for a purpose.\\n\\n Systems engineering, developed initially mainly by the DoD in the ICBM [Intercontinental ballistic missile] world—brought to NASA by the likes of George Mueller—is an extremely valuable activity, extremely. And it is the glue by which so many of the pieces are systematically brought together and integrated into a successful mission, so I don’t in the least devalue the value of systems engineering. It’s more how do you best inculcate the principles of systems engineering and to a degree culture it, cultivate it and teach it. The issue comes in that last part, teach it.\\n\\n Several universities have started to teach systems engineering even in their undergraduate curriculums. CU [Colorado University] is doing it now in aerospace. MIT I think does it, the University of Texas at Austin is doing it. A good friend of mine from NASA who’s on leave there is putting together their systems engineering course. You can read a superb book on systems engineering, and there are several of them. Indeed all the elements are there, except doing it. You can read all this stuff and think you’re a systems engineer and you’re not. I, and many others, believe that you can only become a good systems engineer by practicing the art, augmented by formal teaching. It’s great that there are these resources around where people have written down the basics and the fundamentals so you can incorporate those in real-life experience implementing systems engineering as a practice.\\n\\n I had an employee at Goddard, been there a year, came to see me. Had been working on a project and said, “I want to go and be a systems engineer and get a job as systems engineering on this project.” I looked at him and said, “There’s no way. If you want to be a systems engineer, you go back to doing the job you’re doing and learn how to make something out of wires and glue on the bench and work your way up.”\\n\\n The best systems engineers I’ve come across are those who’ve worked their way from a very low level piece of hardware, software, taken the next step up, putting it into a subsystem, maybe then getting more responsibility, putting a system together, taking on increased responsibility for putting these pieces together, having done it and knowing what it takes to do that, and not just book knowledge of what systems engineering is. There is only a handful probably of real top-notch ace systems engineers. It takes a mentality and experience, understanding that very few people seem to be able to pull together the way these top ones have. There are a lot of systems engineering jobs also at a lower level of implementation that require those skills, but not the total savvy being needed for a systems engineer on a major mission.\\n\\n JPL and Goddard are both making major strides on trying to integrate the hands-on experience with the academics of systems engineering and trying to assure that they’re educating the next generation of people in systems engineering. A lot of them do understand it. Orlando Figueroa at Goddard really really gets that message and has been trying to put programs together at Goddard to foster the education of systems engineers.\\n\\n Unfortunately, [in] tight budget times, one of the first things that goes are that kind of program. The hardware and software and the rest of the bureaucracy always seems to squeeze out these educational opportunities that do cost. You’ve got to invest in them, but the payoff is there. It’s a constant fight to keep that kind of thing going. Working with the academic community on how they implement the coursework in systems engineering is something I’d like to spend more time on. I’m sure that people when they come out of those don’t believe they’re systems engineers but that they’ve got some fundamentals in it, but now they need to really get out in the infamous real world and start to make and build things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there a title that you would consider, if you had to describe what you have now become? You started out as wanting to be a chicken farmer and have worked with selection of sites for the Moon and space telescopes. Now you’re talking systems engineering, you’ve helped projects that have gone to Mars. What do you consider yourself to be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I try to stay away from a “jack-of-all-trades.” In the meeting a couple weeks ago—this was on a proposal review activity—one of the scientists from JPL came into the room. The fellow who was chairing the meeting said, “Well, we’re a bunch of engineers. We need to understand the science.” I said, “No, I’m not an engineer.” But it’s interesting that when I’m with engineers they somehow by this time think maybe I’m an engineer. When I’m with scientists they think I’m a scientist." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ll have to come up with a term with the two and then slash on the management behind it. It’s been an interesting career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s been so much fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else you’d like to add before we finish for today? Something maybe we haven’t talked about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Noel W. Hinners", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s been fun. You’ve made me recollect some things I’d long forgotten." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m glad that we were able to capture them." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "nprc-oral-histories-00004", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Diana Roley", + "description": "\"So I worked with Bill Seibert and did a survey of the records. …And so that was what I did. After the fire they were put in cold or cool storage, and so I sat in those rooms and I counted off—I don't remember what the number was—but it was a statistically valid sample.\"", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/nprc-fire/diana-roley-oral-history.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/nprc-oral-histories", + "original_file_name": "diana-roley-oral-history.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:07", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "June 29, 2023" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "nprc_oral_histories", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Alyssa Manfredi" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Diana Roley" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Thank you for participating in the National Archives Oral History Project documenting the 1973 National Personnel Records Center fire and its impact on the National Archives. My name is Alyssa Manfredi. Today is June 29, and I'm speaking with Diana Roley. Starting off, Diana, can you provide a little background on your career at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was hired as the Regional Archives coordinator. I was hired in August 1992, I think. And in that job, I was responsible for the regional archives outside the Washington, DC, Beltway. That was my role. And shortly after I started, there was a termite infestation in the Fort Worth facility. And it became clear that because so many of the regional archives were co-located within the Federal Records Centers, that preservation was going to have to coordinate work with the record center system as well, because it was a facility problem, not just a records problem, the termite infestation. And so that was how I started working with the records centers. So my role expanded beyond just archival records into pre-archives. And that was how I became involved with St. Louis. Previously, I would never have even gone to St. Louis because the record centers weren't on my radar. But because of that, I went to St. Louis and did a site survey. It was probably a good five years into the job, but I did a site survey to see how the facility might be impacting the usability of the records in the long term. And that was when the B-files—the “recovered from the fire” records were called B-files—how they came to my attention was during that site visit. My background is, I went to Columbia University’s library and archives conservation program and got a degree in conservation and just sort of ended up more in the preservation administration track rather than going the treating physical records track through the jobs that I had and doing sort of large-scale conservation treatment. My internship and first job were at the Olmsted National Historic site, where we were working on the plans and drawings there, and I also got experience. Again, it's just sort of a coincidence that during my career I was involved in disaster recovery, not just teaching workshops, but in disaster recovery. And so I was very familiar with recovering records damaged by water, fire, and that sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that really helped you with the preservation that you did at the National Archives then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Correct. Correct. And responding to incidents like the termite infestation and the dealing with the B-files." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. When you were talking about the termite infestation actually you said \"pre-archives.\" Can you go into a little bit of what that is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. When records are brought into the National Archives from federal agencies, some are designated as having permanent value. But because they're in the physical custody of the National Archives and the record centers, but in the legal custody of the agencies, they still have access to them. But archivists know in advance for a fair number—now we're talking about being an archivist, which I'm not—are designated as having permanent value. And when they come in the door at the records center, they already know that they're going to be accessioned into the National Archives sometime in the future after their designation as a record that belongs to the agency. I'm not explaining this very well, but as a record that belongs to the agency as opposed to a record that belongs to the National Archives. And one of the things that—I don't want to give myself too much credit here—the things that I helped to implement was if we know that they're going to be archival eventually, we should treat them as archival records when they come in the door so that they won't be as expensive to maintain in terms of their preservation once they become archival records. Again, the records that were damaged by the termites were in the archives, but they were in the Federal Records Center. But if they had been in the archives, it would have made sense to put them in conditions that would preserve them better so that there were records in good condition to accession into the archives when that time came. And so it was one of these again, large-scale preservation was my area. It made sense to identify the record if we knew which records in the beginning of their life cycle were going to be archival, treat them as if they were archival records so it would be less expensive in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that's again, it's a matter of life cycle, that if a record only has ten years left in its life cycle and then it's going to be destroyed, well you don't necessarily have to worry about what conditions you store it in, but if it's a pre-archival record that's going to be pre-archival for 40 years and then go into the archives, it makes sense to try to, in the most cost-effective way possible, but it makes sense to try to put them in good conditions so that when they cross that magical line and come into the archives that they'll be in good condition and not expensive to actually have to do conservation treatment on. But, you just re-box it and put it on the shelf in the even better climate conditions that the archives has." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm, I see. Yeah, that's great. So moving on to more the fire aftermath questions, were you working in the Records Reconstruction Branch, as it was formerly called?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was actually working out of DC and as the National Preservation Program Officer, I was responsible for all the records outside the Beltway. So I was not responsible for anything in the College Park or Pennsylvania Avenue buildings. My responsibility was for physical records outside of Washington. And so I was doing preservation work with all of the facilities outside of DC. And so that meant teaching workshops. I had a preservation coordinator assigned to me from each facility. They weren't necessarily somebody who was trained in preservation; most of them were archivists either who had an interest in preservation or who were sort of detailed to that, and they were supposed to spend maybe 10 to 20 percent of their time on preservation activities, which I coordinated with them. Again, I would send out information, obviously after something like the termite infestation we had, with an assignment for all of them to start doing integrated pest management in their facilities, just to monitor so that we could identify these problems early, before they had an opportunity to damage records. We gave them instructions on how to monitor the temperature and relative humidity in their facilities so that the climate wouldn't have an adverse impact on the physical records that were stored. But we also had a conservation treatment lab in San Francisco, in the San Bruno facility, and records that needed intervention, needed repair, warranted repair were sent to San Francisco for physical conservation treatment. That was also part of our program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, records damaged by the termites or the burn records, would those go to San Francisco as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They would not. And that was because that facility was specifically for regional archival records and because the military personnel records were not part of the archives system—they were part of the records center system—they would not go there. Also, the burned records, it was such a large-scale project—it didn't make sense. You wouldn't ship that volume of records across the country or halfway across the country for treatment. It made sense to establish because of the volume to establish a preservation program on site there. And that was what we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Got it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's ultimately what we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So in your email you said that you had established the phased treatment program at the Military Personnel Records Center. Can you go into a little bit more detail on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Phased preservation was a standard method where you look at the needs of all the records in phases, and one of the first things you want to do is look at the whole universe and what is the lowest scale need that all of the records need, and all records, especially records created in the early to mid-20th century because of their chemical composition. They need a regulated temperature and relative humidity to have a longer useful life because it inhibits mold growth; it inhibits acid production that the paper is sort of inherently sitting in. Wood pulp paper has acid-producing components in it, and when exposed to, especially, extremes but temperature and relative humidity, that chemical reaction accelerates. And so you have sort of accelerated aging of paper and again, wood pulp paper primarily. And so the first phase that you do is you try to put it in good climate condition. The second phase would be to put it in a box that is alkaline to combat the acid as it's produced, to give the paper a longer useful life. Again, because paper has to move and flex when you're looking at it, turning the pages, going through it. The more brittle it becomes, the less useful it will be. It starts to crumble. And so that's, again, it's a well-established theory of phased conservation or phased preservation that you address the whole and then those records that warrant it, especially in archival preservation as opposed to like art preservation or conservation, where you're dealing with low volume, high value, you may not necessarily consider phased conservation treatment because you're just going to treat an individual item, do whatever it needs. But when you're looking at a large volume like archival records or libraries, you are going to do a phased approach so that everything gets put in the right condition, and then you address those items that warrant further treatment. Again, because the military personnel records, and that was part of the reason for doing the preservation, was at about that time it was determined that these were pre-archives, that they did have permanent value as a record. It was a whole records center's worth of pre-archives as opposed to a small portion of a records center. And I can't really come up with the number, but in a regular regional archives and records center most of a large portion of the records are going to be destroyed after the agency use expires as opposed to that small percentage that is going to be deemed permanently valuable. And there are archivists who can speak a lot better to this than I can as a preservation person. But at about that time in the mid-90s, it was determined that these were not just a 70-year record, these were permanent records, and therefore they met the criteria for being treated like an archival record, even though they weren't yet part of the National Archives. They were still records considered records center records. So that was the reason they didn't go to San Francisco—because they weren't part of that system. They weren't part of the regional archives system. And then doing the phased conservation, that was how we approached the burned records—they were already in climate control. I think I mentioned in the pre-interview that I did a survey once. Once we determined that these were going to be permanent records, I identified that there was some kind of treatment going to be required because of the condition of the records. They were not in usable condition in the Records Reconstruction Branch. If they had to use B-files, it was under very limited circumstances, and in many cases the records were in such poor condition that they could not be handled by the reconstruction unit. So I worked with Bill Seibert and did a survey of the records. It was to be statistically valid. You need to do a certain number of records, look at a certain number, and then you can extrapolate the condition of the whole series, the whole collection of records. And so that was what I did. After the fire they were put in cold or cool storage, and so I sat in those rooms and I counted off—I don't remember what the number was—but it was a statistically valid sample. I counted off units and then pulled out a file and recorded it. I think I had like a half-page sheet that had condition descriptors, and I would just check off what that folder contained, that it was burned and all of the upper half of the text could not be read because there was low contrast between the image and the paper because the paper had become so dark, or that the pages were fused together because of pressure and moisture and mold growth. Just a whole variety of physical conditions of the paper. I recorded all of that and then analyzed it and came up with what proportion of the B-files was going to be in, what kind of condition, and then, I can't remember, I think I've determined that it was going to be something like a 50-year project with 10 technicians working and a certain amount of equipment. And it was what the technology in preservation was at the time. And I really realized that things have certainly advanced since then, the way that images can be digitally manipulated to clarify images. At that point, we were using photocopiers. If a page was so badly burned that it wouldn't flex without cracking or shattering, we would put it in a mylar sleeve and put it on the photocopier. That was the technology that we had for making a useful copy for the reconstruction unit to use. The only way to enhance the image was to turn the exposure up or down on the copy machine to try and enhance the image that way. So obviously when you're making a plan for preservation, you can only make it with the technology that's available at the time and the cost of that. And fortunately the National Archives only asked me for a 10-year plan even though I knew it was going to take 50 years or more. They asked me for a 10-year plan, a 10-year budget, and what materials and supplies we needed to purchase. And we hired Marta O'Neill to work locally. Again, I was not living in the area. My job was outside of the regions where I was operating. And so we hired somebody local with preservation experience who could take on the project. And so all I did at that point was I gave her a 10-year budget and plan and the resources that she would need to to start the program and get it up and running." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well, if your proposed plan was 50 years for conservation, what would that typically look like? Would just be like a period of time that a file has to be like in cold storage or what would that look like as opposed to the 10 year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was the 50 years was how long it would take to address all the records, all the B-files." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. I see. Got it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And again, it's a matter of usability, how do you extend the useful life of a record? And so the plan was to put every B-file in a condition that it would be usable in perpetuity because they were permanent records or they were going to be permanent records at that point. I don't remember what date it was. Bill can—have you interviewed Bill? I don't know if he's around. But yeah, he would certainly know. He'll know the exact dates of when Congress decided that these were permanent records, even though, again, because I'm a preservation person and I married an archivist. And the way I described it was that preservation people make recommendations, and archivists make decisions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Cool. Very interesting to look at it like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because it wasn't my job to put a value, even an historical value on a record. That's the archivist's role. I can do one of 10 things. You show me a record or a series of records, I can do one of 10 things with these records or one of 20 things with these records, and each one of them has a cost associated with it in terms of personnel and material that needs to be procured. And that sort of thing. My job was to tell you all of that, and it was up to the archivist to decide that in terms of its value to history, what warrants that level of treatment. And that's one of the beauties of phased conservation treatment is it does give you a range of options with an associated cost to be able to make it, so that you can decide yes, we need to do the bare minimum for absolutely everything. And then again it's up to the archivists to decide what records warrant what level of treatment. I know there have been articles written about the preservation program at the National Personnel Records Center and the Military Personnel Records Center that talk about the treatment that they're doing. But obviously, you know, taking an eraser and a small vacuum to an individual piece of paper, it's labor intensive and there's a cost associated with that. And I think the determination was made, and this is done a lot, where preservation happens at the point of request so that when a record is requested for reference, that's when the preservation happens. So again, that's all part of the phased approach that everything gets a good climate, everything gets a good box. It's only records as they're requested. And again, it's a matter of cost. If a record is going to sit in the box not looked at for 500 years, well then why go to the expense of treating it? But when a record is requested and it needs to be used and it's not usable because of its physical condition, then you go put in the expense and treat the record and put it in the hands of the person who needs it, and then it's preserved forevermore. And one other important part of phased conservation treatment is reproduction. There are some records that should never be physically handled because they're so fragile or because they're so valuable. And therefore reproduction is the best method of preservation. And that's one of the reasons why the photocopier was one of the most important tools we had. It was very inexpensive. And yeah, it might have required some labor to put a piece of paper in a sleeve, to put it on the photocopier plate, but it was the least expensive way to preserve the information. And that's one of the distinctions that we make in archives versus art conservation or even library conservation and archives are sort of grouped together because a reproduction, the information is what's important, not necessarily the artifact. There are some artifacts that are valuable as artifacts. A DD 214, which is your separation paper—which is one of the main records that the Reconstruction Branch is looking for so that you can provide benefits to a veteran—you know, the millions and millions of DD 214s that have been created over the decades, many decades, over the centuries are not as valuable as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which are the original artifacts preserved in the best condition at any expense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I see. So when you're looking at these original records, were most of these files that you looked at salvageable? Or, like the burned records or anything that you were going through or those mostly salvageable or—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was something. The reason that they were put, they were saved as B-files was there was something. Every piece of paper had a little bit of something. If the page was, like, completely blackened and brittle, and there was a tiny sliver of information in one corner that was still readable, was still accessible. When we started this program, we didn't have the digital manipulation of images that we have now where a page that I could look at in 1998 and say, I can only see four words on this whole page and the photocopier can give me an additional four words. Now they can scan that and digitally remove all of the yellow or brown or whatever, and they can read 75% of that page now. So it's not—I'm not in the field anymore, and I don't know what preservation people think the future may hold for them—but certainly in 1998, I didn't imagine that they'd be able to get that. I knew that technologies were being developed. I knew that we would be able to get more. It didn't make sense to consider anything a total loss at that point, because now, you know, it's orders of magnitude beyond what I was able to do in those days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. See, that's really impressive. Wow. 75%." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, I just pulled a number out of the air. But there's a Prologue article. I think there was an article that was done in Prologue , like 2000, before 2010, it wasn't 2003. It wasn't on an anniversary. But there is an article that was in Prologue that was showing—and again, it wasn't that much after—what I when I was doing it was maybe 10 years after I left NARA that they were talking about that technology and that Prologue article. And as I recall, it looked like a page that was half burned. And once you saw the redone digital image, it looked like a completely readable black on white piece of paper." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For answering records requests like you were talking about earlier, can you kind of walk me through the process of what that involved and how you would preserve something to show a request like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn't involved at that point. Again, my role ended with getting the budget and getting the National Archives to ask Congress for the money, getting the space established, and hiring the people. So Bill and Marta would be better equipped to handle that question. I do know that in other projects that I worked on, like at Olmsted National Historic Site, we were going through the whole series of plans and drawings in an organized way. We just sort of went drawer by drawer because the firm stored the records in drawers. But we also, because they were creating them on different media, they did linen drawings and they did, we had drawings on linen and essentially like a tissue paper, which was browned and brittle. And we had blueprints that were produced in-house by the Olmsted firm. We were doing it by medium because it was just more efficient to treat paper together. But we also were doing it not chronologically, just physically going drawer by drawer. But if a researcher came in and asked to see something, they were working on a project that would jump to the front of the line, we would do the preservation treatment on it. Sometimes we would take a look at it and say it'll take us a month to get through this, make an appointment for, you know, six weeks from now. And we would do the treatment and make it available. The other thing that they did at Olmsted was—and again, this was back in the day when we were doing things on a copy stand, what they called it—where you would mount a 35mm camera above a flat surface with lights on the side and take pictures. And the researchers would come in with their own camera, their own equipment. But they had to; I take it back. They didn't. We would do the photographing. We would photograph it, and we would charge the client or the researcher for the print. But we also charge them for the negative. And the negative became part of the collection so that the next researcher wouldn't have to have us climb up on the ladder and take the picture again. It became part of the collection so that we wouldn't have to unroll that drawing again or photograph it again. We had a usable reproduction to provide to the next researcher, and the next, and the next. Now, when you're talking about military personnel records, again, unless it's somebody who's using them for research like an epidemiologist who wanted to see medical records of this population of men in the United States, they would be wanting to look at all medical records of all people who joined the Army in a certain year. But for the most part, the Records Reconstruction Branch—again, this is not my area of expertise—but it's my understanding that the Records Reconstruction Branch is responding to a family or a veteran. So it's a one use in a lifetime kind of event unless a family loses track of the DD 214 or whatever record it is that they need to prove their service. If they lose it and need to come back again, but for the most part, the Military Personnel Records Center is providing one use in a lifetime of a record. Again, there are famous people who served in the military and so that has a multi-use, or historical use value, and therefore it makes the most sense to do a high-quality reproduction and retire the original and let people access the reproduction instead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, absolutely. You touched on this in some of the first questions, but how did this project on the military personnel fire differ from your experience working with the preservation and conservation of the files that got destroyed by the termites in your other job, or in your other place?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly in scale and condition. The termites were just a limited scale, and we ended up doing a very low-tech treatment on them. This gets complicated, but what subterranean termites do is the termites that you see are going grocery shopping. And because the termites themselves can dry out so quickly, what they do is they build mud tunnels, so they take the dirt from underground and they bring it into the building and build a tunnel around themselves while they take the paper, which is cellulose. They're eating the paper, essentially, and they take that back to the—what is it called?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Their homes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, you know, their family. Their swarm. Their—I can't think of the word." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Colony?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Colony! Thank you. So they're taking the food back to the colony. But what they do is they build these mud tunnels around themselves. And so when you open up a box and it looks perfectly fine, and then you pull out a block of paper and there's this like, lacy pattern, because they don't go they don't go in a straight line highway. They just sort of meander their way through. And so what we did was we took all of the infected boxes. It was Fort Worth, the weather was nice. We built it like a tent kind of thing. A canopy. And we set up tables and we just pulled the paper out. We would peel, you know, because there's this sort of lacy pattern with dirt around it. We would peel the paper off, and when we came across it, a live termite, we would kill it. That was the treatment methodology that we established for that because it was limited in scope. If it was thousands of boxes instead of dozens of boxes, we might have had to do something completely different. And again, this was thousands and thousands and thousands of boxes of burned records, and when they recovered the records, they didn't necessarily, you know, they were scooping them up off the ground, that was my understanding. They put a bulldozer on top of the building and just scraped the sixth floor off onto the ground. And they recovered paper from the ground. And so it was all mixed up, and it was in all different kinds of conditions. They just sort of put it in files and put it in boxes. And some of it had gone to the vacuum freeze dryer facility. And so they were all mixed up and they were in various conditions. You could have moldy records next to burned records, next to perfectly fine records. There were some records that were in very good condition. And so it was just sort of all mixed up on the shelves in the records center there. There were some series where it was just all the same kind of condition. But it really was quite a mix. And they did their best. It is remarkable that anything was salvaged, frankly. And it's remarkable that there is valuable information in there, again, not just for the veterans and their families, but for history." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that I haven't asked about that you wanted to touch on any more details in your job or your or your coworkers and their roles?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diana Roley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I really do want to stress that it was all Bill Seibert. He was the one who brought this to my attention. He was really, really passionate about the records and the information and its value. And he advocated for me when I needed to justify being there and doing the work. He advocated for me when I needed help developing the plan and coming up with the best way to tackle it. And maybe it's part of the role of an archivist. But Bill just did it with so much passion for these records and what they represented, not not just to the veterans and their families but to posterity, that there's a preservation program there at all. It was really, really important to him. And so it became important to everybody he interacted with, including me. That was what kept me going because it was a lot of days sitting in the cold counting off and evaluating records. And I'm sure that, you know, Marta will tell you that it was a tough slog at the beginning because it can be daunting to look at that volume and wonder how you'll approach it and how you can possibly manage it in your lifetime. But, because Bill was so enthusiastic, it kind of kept me motivated. It kept me going on the project. And all I did was start it and walk away. You know, he and Marta stayed on and saw it through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Alyssa Manfredi", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great to hear about. That's so interesting and cool. That's all, I have no more questions to ask you, but thank you so much for participating in this oral history for the National Archives." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00056", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-014.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Campbell, Bonnie Jean (2008-2010): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-014", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-014", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Bonnie Jean Campbell served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Azerbaijan from 2008 to 2010 in a community economic development project. Campbell was one of 15 seniors (age 50+) in her training group and brought many applicable skills from her prior career as a librarian, researcher, and computer educator. After 11 weeks of cultural orientation and intense language study in Sumqayit, Azerbaijan, Campbell was assigned to Ganja where she worked with administrators in a vocational training center where a quarter of the students were internally displaced people (IDP) from the border conflict with Armenia. Campbell helped develop management practices through focus groups, strategic planning, accounting, and grant writing. She discusses the personal friendships that developed with her home stay family and her impact on the lives of two young people. Being outside the U.S. while listening to President Obama's inauguration speech left a lasting impression. Campbell further reflects on the difficulty she had leaving Azerbaijan and how the Peace Corps experience radically changed her life by opening her eyes to the world beyond her home town of Port Huron, Michigan. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia Wand, August 24, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "24 August 2018", + "extent": "2 digital files (audio; stereo; 72 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "005a. Azerbaijan.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Azerbaijan. Campbell, Bonnie Jean (2008-2010): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Azerbaijan", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-014", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-014-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "November 8, 2023 2:03:25 PM EST", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/j2ln1kj64g02bo1q7cj87ddh71241msg.pdf?odc=20231115174220-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/5e4a2b54-6ed9-4a1e-ba04-549369d24726/4da3403d-ca7e-48a2-a921-e7130a9d40ba/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzJhYmRfZmM4YzhiZGYxNGM2ZDUzNzRkN2ExMjRkNTE2N2JiYWE1MGUzODEyYzNiODEyYWNiZDI4YzlhYzU5MTljZjkwMl8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS81ZTRhMmI1NC02ZWQ5LTRhMWUtYmEwNC01NDkzNjlkMjQ3MjYvNGRhMzQwM2QtY2E3ZS00OGEyLWE5MjEtZTcxMzBhOWQ0MGJhL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania", + "length": "36 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 12, 2018, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Bonnie Jean Campbell Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Patricia Wand" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Bonnie Jean Campbell" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 24, 2018, and this is Patricia Wand. I am interviewing Bonnie Jean Campbell, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Azerbaijan. She served from September 2008 to December 2010 and served in the project of, what project was it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:35", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Community economic development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:37", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you very much. Thank you, Bonnie, for for agreeing to be interviewed today and for participating in this oral history project. So why don't you start by telling us what you were doing the year before you joined Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I joined Peace Corps as a senior volunteer, so I was in my late 50s. And the year before I was working, I have had a consulting business teaching computer skills to library patrons. And also I was an executive director of the County Medical Society and in charge of continuing medical education and there found their charitable foundation. So I was single. My children grown grandchildren in their teenage years and I was working very hard at being a consultant to the medical staff and also the library world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:42", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you joined the Peace Corps then later in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:46", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, actually, to add a point when perhaps I was feeling a little stagnant, I'd been doing the same thing for 25 going on 30 years. I am trained as a master's degree librarian and I was a medical librarian at a hospital and that led to the medical society activities in my career and felt like I was maybe going to be in Port Huron, Michigan, for the rest of my life. And then I started thinking about what else I could do and on a whim, a very much a whim, talking with my son and my daughter, who are both also in information technology and librarianship about jobs that were available in Seattle and other places. And my son said, well, mom, you should apply for those jobs. You're qualified for them, not more than we are. And I said, oh, I think I'll be in Port Huron. And unless I do something crazy, like joined the Peace Corps, which I had never thought about, I was. Yeah, you know, when I finished high school, early marriage, university, graduate school and work and never even I knew about the Peace Corps and and understood how important it was, but never was in my horizons. So he left the room and I kind of cocked my head and said, Huh, I could do that. I have you know, I was at a point where I could do something crazy and leave. And quite frankly, if it hadn't been for the Peace Corps application being available on the Internet and on the Web site, easy to access. I read all the materials and I immediately started filling out the information I needed to start that process. That application process didn't tell a soul. Not a friend, not a daughter, not a son. No one until I was invited, I just didn't think they would take me. I was 58 years old, faithful and 57 years old and had no idea that, you know, that I would be offered an opportunity to travel and to, you know, go someplace crazy and wild. And so that's how it happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:03:55", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did you wait then between the time you sent out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:04:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started the application, that discussion with my son was probably in February of 2008. I made my application. And by the end of May well, mid-May, I knew I was in the pike for being invited, originally invited to Central Asia. And then I think there was because of age and stuff, they then called me and asked me if I would accept a position in Azerbaijan. And I had posted a world map on the wall during that, you know, during the application time. And I said, Yeah, but where do I look in the world? I have no idea where Azerbaijan is. And I was really willing to go anywhere. I wanted, you know, something more than more than exotic in Azerbaijan met that. I wish that it was wonderful. So then I gathered my family together and told them at that point that they thought I was going to tell them I was dying of some dread disease or I had met somebody and I was going to move out of the home. But then I told them I was going away for twenty seven months to a country that obviously they had never heard of before. My daughter cried and then she was happy for me. My daughter in law was extremely excited because she then told the story how she had wanted to join the Peace Corps when she graduated from college but didn't get to me on her life didn't take her that way.\n\nAnd and so, yeah, everybody was very supportive. But yeah, that's how it happened. And so that was June and and we left for our service on oh, I think it was September 8th or early September. So it was not a long wait. You know, we of course, all the medical and everything that everyone talks about that kind of takes a long time, had to have some extra tests because I was older and a little bit heavier. So that was things that I had to kind of work through the process with. But no, no. And at no time was I thinking that I wouldn't be accepted all the way. Right. I went to Chicago, to Chicago, the university, probably University of Chicago. I can't remember now. I took my two older grandkids who were at that time and seventh and eighth grade with me. And we stood up and I said, you know, that I was nominated and they were very taken by their crazy grandmother that was going to go off to to a country they'd never heard of either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:06:14", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But now they've all heard of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:06:16", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, and they think I'm. Yeah, they think I'm pretty special." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:06:19", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. You're a pretty cool grandmother. So let's before we talk about Peace Corp, say tell us a little bit about your growing up time and where you grew up and and so that we get an idea of your personal background." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:06:36", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ok, I, I grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, which is a lot of people considered a small town, but a community of 35, 40,000, very beautiful community. I grew up in the same house with my mother and father and two sibs. I was the youngest. I'm my bachelor's degree is in music, history and literature. So I was a musician all the way through. I started piano lessons when I was four, and the music was very much a part of my life all the way through my education and my adult life. So when I you know, when I went, I decided to go to college, I went to Michigan State University, to music school there, I married the fellow that I had dated in high school. So we started our married life at 19 and had our family soon after that Vietnam War was on. He was one of the fellows that pulled a very high number in the lottery. So we kind of felt that he was going to be able to finish his education without having to go and serve in the peace and the Vietnam War. He went on to grad school, to law school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:07:48", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you also continue studying during the time they did having children?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:07:51", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I finished my well, when he started law school, I had three almost. I had just had two terms. We were in quarters at MSU at that time. I only had two terms left and my degree and we moved back to Port Huron. My parents helped us with our place to live and his parents helped us with a place to live when we needed it. And and he commuted to Detroit. And then I wanted to be a librarian. I wanted to be music librarian. And music library programs are not there's only a few in each state. And so I did my Masters at Detroit and Wayne at Wayne State University. So I commuted there as I worked and raised the kids along with him commuting to Wayne State Law School. It was a crazy time. And when we both finished, we ended up living in Port Huron. It was just the opportunities were there and family background and know assistance. So we raised our children and four year on in and they both live in Port Huron now. And my daughter is the head of the library in Port Huron. So we got librarians everywhere. And I ended up with a job at the local hospital, a health sciences librarian. And that's not a medical records person. That's a library with books and journals and did research and became very involved in the National Library Medicine Online Research, the Medline program trained in Washington, DC on it. At that time, you had to go there to become access to midline and then taught at Wayne State University's library school as an adjunct faculty in computers and automation. Because I had worked as a computer operator for the at the college at one point in town. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:09:31", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what where were you a health science library?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Port Huron." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is what is the medical school or the public library?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:09:39", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hospital, small hospital in a hospital at that time, the Accrediting Association, Joint Commission on Accreditation for Hospitals. So that would have been in 19, I started it in 1978, required a hospital to have either a librarian on staff for research or a contract with a librarian in this small hospital in Port Huron was part of a large one of the first large systems of Mercy health system. And so they hired me a few hours a week and then more hours a week. And I eventually took over continuing medical education for the physicians, licensure, you know, making the programs, not teaching, but, you know, doing that coordination and sort of built a really, I always thought a designer career because I could do really neat stuff there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:10:25", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And and were you using computers in the early on science library in ‘78 when you joined?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:10:33", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went to the National Library Medicine to train for existing deadline. At that time, only librarians could because we dialed directly into the National Library of Medicine computers for Medline, which is the index medicus online. And that was in ‘82 or ‘83. And yes, I was then online with a Texas instrument 700, you know, paper all over the place, not a not a computer terminal. So yes, I was doing research for physicians in the community hospital. So not, not, not a teaching hospital. We were a community hospital. So they would come to me with, you know, I've got a patient upstairs that is diabetic and is pregnant and what do I need to you know, what articles support the treatment. I'm looking for a new procedure or that's what that's what I did, along with having books and journals on the shelf and" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:11:27", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doing research?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:11:28", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Research for the nurses, helping them with their education administration, with making decisions. So, yeah, it was a great, a great career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:11:34", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. And you worked there in the same in the same hospital?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:11:38", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For twenty years. And then, you know, health care changed a lot. And during those twenty years and the rules and regulations for hospitals having librarians were removed. So things kind of changed. And I left the hospital and opened my own consulting business and I had" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:12:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when was that? What what year did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:12:05", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "1998. And my clients my main clients were the medical the professional medical society for the county, and I organized three hospitals to go together and fund the continuing medical education outside of the hospital, which was good because the physicians needed to choose their own educational needs, not have it influenced by the hospital administration and and then the library. I had a contract with the library to teach computer skills to adults, and that's the one that I ended up doing the most, and especially after I came back from my Peace Corps sometime in Azerbaijan, then that's the only contract that I maintain. The other ones I passed on to somebody else when I went into Peace Corps. So, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:12:56", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that sounds like a great preparation of skills to take to a country that was just ready to go with them. So let's let's do that. Let's talk now about you. You you got us through your swearing in, if you will. Then what about leaving and saying goodbye to your family and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:13:22", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's that's a hard time. I'm sure everybody has. You know, it's a busy time. I didn't have to divest myself of my home. I had I owned a home because my son and his wife and two grand boys had moved in with me a few years before that decision. And so they took over the house and the costs of the house and and, you know, so I that was all taken care of. So I know a lot of people have trouble. You know, I have a challenge with that. What to do with their house and what to do with their things. Seemed like everybody in their brother wanted to, you know, have a going away dinner. I eat a lot of food, but it still was a lot of putting things together. And I wasn't sad to go. I was very excited. I'll have to admit, the hardest part of leaving was telling my wonderful four year old Labrador retriever goodbye because he I knew he wouldn't understand that I wasn't coming home for twenty seven months, you know. But other than that, it was not. It was of course, a whirlwind of things to do. But I didn't have to close down my life quite as much as maybe other people that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:14:30", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was your Labrador retriever still alive when you came home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:14:34", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was and he was wild crazy. I mean, he would actually when I talked to the family from Azerbaijan, my son would call home every couple of months and we'd have a little chat. My dog Jack would bark when he heard me. So I don't know whether it was just because everybody was excited, because we had made this connection on the phone or not. But anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:14:54", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:14:56", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But that was probably the hardest thing. How do you tell your dog you're leaving for two years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:14:59", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So is he still alive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So all right. So you you were getting ready to leave lots of dinners and then where did you leave from?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:15:13", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We our group met in Philadelphia. OK, for the I don't know what day and a half it was, of course stressful packing all those things into your big backpacks and so forth that we needed to go. And it was you know, we were told about conservative dress. And I think the Azerbaijani women thought we were all missionaries or something because we all had dark skirts. So went down to our ankles. And they certainly didn't dress like that in Azerbaijan. They were pretty modern dressing, you know, and especially the younger girls. And the the Days Inn in Philadelphia were great. I had a roommate that I connected up with. And we you know, we she was a young woman and we really enjoyed each other during that time and then ended up rooming together when we got to Baku for our first three days in Azerbaijan, too. So I always kind of had a special spot in my heart for her." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:16:08", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were three, three days in Philadelphia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:16:11", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we probably were. I had to where I flew out of an in Michigan. You know, they ask you where is your home airport? And I prefer the smaller airport in Flint, Michigan, which is in the center of Michigan. So they flew me out of there, which wasn't very convenient because I had to go to Atlanta and then back up to Philadelphia. So I left Flint like at four a.m. or five a.m. and didn't get to Philadelphia to five p.m. And they didn't have any coffee in the conference room. I was like, I'm an adult. I need some coffee now. Yeah, I've been on a plane for the last twelve hours, so we laughed about that because that was so. Yeah. So we had roundtable discussions and the usual get to know each other, you know, all those kinds of games that you play when you're in a group that you know. And then we also I still have the envelope that they gave me at the end. Of my service, of I wrote something about myself personally and what I had hoped to accomplish and Peace Corps. Now don't ask me what I wrote because I don't remember exactly, but it was, you know, something very lofty and, you know, doing things, important things and stuff. But that was fun to get at the end." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:17:28", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you mean you wrote this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:17:30", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Inevitably, they gave it all. They gave us all an envelope. We put our name on the outside and we wrote just to ourselves, like, this is what we know. This is what I want to accomplish at the Philadelphia training and the one I cost. When I closed my service, they gave that back to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:17:43", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:17:44", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was kind of neat. Yeah. For me it was anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:17:47", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you spent a few days in Philadelphia and then they. And how many were you there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:17:59", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think our group started off at 63 and about I'll say fourteen or fifteen of us were senior volunteers 50 years or older. There were a couple to married couples that were in their probably 30s and then the rest were the, you know, recent grads or 20 something graduate student age. So so our senior group was really good. And when we got to Baku, they kind of placed us in our training clusters. There was a group of us that were all seniors together, not all the seniors that were in our cluster because we because of our sectors. But we always felt lucky that we were together in a training session together. We weren't competing against the younger people with the language challenges of Azerbaijani, which is a pretty tough language, and and supported each other and understood each other's needs and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:18:54", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you said you were 50/50?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:18:56", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think there were 14 or 14 or 15. A couple of the volunteers left during that time, but. Yeah, so it was a good group and we have stayed. I'm here today with one of my Azerbaijani friends." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:19:12", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we're doing our interview during the Peace Corps Connect conference in Shawnee on Delaware, in Pennsylvania in 2018. So for that reason, you're with one of your friends. That's wonderful that you both can attend this and continue to be stimulated and motivated about Peace Corps values. So there were a good portion then of you almost. What is that? Almost a quarter of you were senior." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:19:47", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. Probably not quite but we were and I was is a good place for senior volunteers because of the it's a post-Soviet country, the respect of education and the respect of the experience and age. We we had the benefit of that, of that. I think they they understood that. We knew what we were about, you know. Right. And I know organizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:20:10", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you were in you said economic community" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:20:15", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Community economic development. So there were, so we did our our 11 weeks of training. Well, we were three, three days in Baku and then they piled us in marshrutka and dropped us off at our host families for 11 weeks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:20:29", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Um, and what were those, was the training in Baku?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:20:33", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just three days of kind of welcoming training, almost a continuation of what we did in Philadelphia group stuff, some of the some of the immediate culture and cultural things that we needed to pay attention to how to use a squat toilet and those kinds of things that they knew we were all going to face once we got to the host family. So it was in a hotel that we were at Baku and then they split us up and sent us off to our villages or the or the not our site villages, but our training, training, training locations. And I was placed in a we would call it in the United States, a suburb of Sumqayit, which is about the third largest city in Azerbaijan in a compound with a family that had had a Peace Corps volunteer previously. So it wasn't their first one, not very much English in the in the county, in the family, and lived with them for 11 weeks until I was placed in my permanent assignment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:21:35", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And speaking of of language, what was the language that you were learning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:21:43", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Azerbaijani. Azerbaijani is a Turkish based language, very grammatical. And I will admit that I struggled very much with it and once I was placed in my home, in my, in my sight, it became very evident that the people I was working with, which were young people and in vocational training, they wanted to speak English. They didn't want me to struggle too much with the language. So I didn't do really great with it, but I got by." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:22:18", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, you learned enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:22:20", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, much enough to certainly get around. Yes. But not to carry on a business conversation or anything. I was not in some of our group did. They were very, very good at it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:22:30", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, not me, so tell us what you what kinds of things you did during training both the activities and the content of how you look, what you return?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:22:44", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we did have 11 weeks of training and for every every day we had all morning, sometimes I would say five hours of language intensive language instruction. And that language instruction also included, of course, some cultural things. And we would go to the market as a group. And once we got a little bit of language and in our language and cultural training, person would take us and we would have to order things and buy fruit and those life skill things. And then the second half of the day we met with our sector because our cluster, our training cluster, which was two, three, four, six or seven people had for four of us were four or five of us. Now, I'd have to think were community economic development and two were youth development. And they were in there because they were spouses of of of the others. So they were kind of we split up our sector training and we would go and learn activities that would help us with community economic development, with grants, with the business end of strategic planning, and also how businesses operated and organizations operated in Azerbaijan. In our language training, we did all kinds of fun things. You know, we made posters, we did skits. We we struggled. We competed, you know, and we did a heck of a lot of walking because in Azerbaijan, you either took a very crowded minibus, marshrutka, or you walked. And we we chose to walk a lot, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:24:24", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, so you you found your way around. Was it a very large city that you were in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:24:31", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not for training because I was in the suburbs, so, so know I probably had to walk a mile and a half or so to the school that we used for training. No, of course, there were all kinds of all kinds of cultural shock, you know, trash cows wandering around. My friend and I, Margaret was here with me. We we still laugh about getting lost, trying to because it was almost like a rabbit trail to get back to where we were living from a school was very confusing with all the high walls and so forth. And we walked right through a funeral tent one night because they had they had put the tent across the whole road and we didn't realize it. And then when we got into the tent, we thought, oh, where are we? You know? So yeah, but we did a lot of and we followed as senior volunteers. We followed the rules, which made our lives much smoother than some of the you know, admittedly, the younger people that didn't necessarily follow the rules. We weren't to be after dark and we weren't, you know, right in the front seat of the cars. And there was a lot of those kinds of things that we were real rule followers because we were seniors. And did, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:25:40", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It wasn't worth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:25:41", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It wasn't. And, you know, that was just the way it was. And also, you know, some of the cultural things, we didn't push against them. We tried to integrate. I wanted to be not there and be in an American compound. I wanted to be a part of the Azerbaijani culture. So. Retarded that part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:25:59", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, right. Did you enjoy training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:26:03", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean, I struggled so much with the language, the language class, and there were a variety of reasons. That was probably, you know, the hardest part with the rest of it. Yeah, I did, yeah. I mean, I was glad when it was over and we all got our assignments and, you know, that exciting part of knowing where you're going to go in the country and and so forth. And in the end, the kind of the cultural change that you have in front of your eyes when you first get to a country started to fall away and everything wasn't so, so strange or so. Oh, my goodness, look at that. Kind of got better, better acclimated and was ready, ready for service one when we swore in in December of 2008." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:26:50", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you didn't actually swear in" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Until December 2008." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Until you finished. And did most of the trainees survive through the whole 11 weeks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:27:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Our group did. We were unusual that way. We were told me as far as the expected percentage of people dropping out. I think during training we had I don't know whether we had anyone drop out during training, but we did have one senior volunteer left for health reasons. And we had maybe a couple of the young people, but we only had four or five of the whole group through the whole two and a half years actually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:27:29", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Leave. Leave early. Leave early. Right. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:27:32", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, yeah. And some of the volunteers didn't go home during the whole time. I, I pushed the button at one point and went home at Christmas after, after the first year. And after I did that I wished I hadn't, it kind of interrupted my rhythm of my volunteer activities. I was doing the projects I was working on and I if I did it again, I wouldn't I wouldn't go home in the middle of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:27:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I did. Did you do any other. Well, we'll get back to that. And again, let's talk about what happened after training. Where were you assigned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:28:10", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was assigned. So we our training was in Sumqayit, which is on the Caspian Sea, not too far from Baku, the capital, which is a total another world of cosmopolitan society and beautiful homes and so forth. Sumqayit was more of an industrial town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:28:24", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "North of" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:28:25", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "North. Yeah. Going up the Caspian north chemical plants that were defunct from the Soviet time. Now, I think being used again, a reputation of, you know, of some of the conflict with the Armenians during the, um, the Armenian Azerbaijani border conflict that" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:28:45", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which continues, doesn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:28:46", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which continues today. They still are shooting at each other over the border and still still in and just disagreement about the border. So from there, my assignment was in Ganja, which is in the west for the west end of the country, almost a Georgia border, maybe about an hour from the Georgia border. And Ganja is the second largest city in Azerbaijan. And it is a university town, an old old city. And there were five of us that were assigned there because it's a city of, um, I'll say three hundred fifty thousand people. Largest city I had ever lived in. I was placed with a woman that was a widow from the Azerbaijani Armenian conflict. And but her daughter was one of our our language cultural trainers. So she had English. And I lived in one of the nine story Soviet cement block apartment complexes that had several in our in our area that were so we probably had eighteen hundred families living in this big complex of big apartments." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:30:03", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to tell us a little bit about that apartment? What marked it in your mind as being Soviet era?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:30:15", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well well, it looks like every other Soviet cement block, you know, apartment building, the exterior of the buildings were cemented in an American's judgment, not finished, not painted, not really cared for. I think the answer to that was when the Soviet Union dissolved the people that were responsible for trash, for the water, for the electricity, for the pumps and everything that everybody had those jobs that kind of disappeared. There was a little bit of chaos. So a lot of broken concrete stairwells without lights, open stairwells without railings, you know, windows not there. The water tanks were 1950 era underground water tanks. So the water smelled like worms or fish. And, you know, so we bought our water from the water man. But once I entered the door, once I went through the door and a lot of the apartments, not all of them, but my apartment, once I went through the door, it was very much like an apartment that you would find in any housing development. Probably better. Cleaner is fixed up, as nice as she could have. I think having a Peace Corps volunteer live with her. I lived with my host mom the whole time. I did not get an apartment. I wanted to integrate. I didn't want to have an apartment where I would go in and close the door and and have an American room. So I had a I had a really good relationship with my host mom, who did not speak English. And she cooked and was and was a nurse, so she worked out of the home, too, and I made friends with all the women in the building, that was good because the nurse and nurse host mom was kind of the central focus of all the young moms. They would come to her. She was kind of the house mom for everybody. So that was a great experience. Wonderful woman, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:32:13", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you still in touch with her?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:32:17", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And I've been back to Azerbaijan since the last couple of years for her daughter's wedding. So, yeah, yeah, she's a great woman. But her apartment, I guess the thing about her apartment was a couple of things. Those a lot of those also those Soviet cement block apartment buildings of balconies. And on them, the women spent a lot of time looking out those balconies and figuring out what was going on in the neighborhood. There was no hankie panky. The kids knew that they were being seen. They were safe. Kids played in the yard. It was I always felt like it was the 1950s in in the United States. Everybody had a place. Everybody there was no homelessness in my city of Ganja. It would be an embarrassment to the family because community and family was very important to the culture. So the balcony was an important spot where you would eat out there, you would hang your laundry off of the balcony and in my host mom had remodeled the bathroom. So I had a regular Western bathroom with a shower and a toilet that flushed hot water maybe once or twice a week. So water was always, you know, sometimes it wouldn't come out of the pumps and you wouldn't it wouldn't have water, but but very comfortable. Sometimes I would shake my head and say, is this the Peace Corps? I'm in this, you know, this big city and this I could have been in a village, but I was in a big city with a very comfortable living. However, we did not have central heat. And Azerbaijan has winters very similar to my home countries, home state of Michigan. And there were many times I would leave home to go to my volunteer spot, which was also a cement block with, you know, five five layers of shirts and tights and in long johns and and winter boots and a heavy, heavy L.L. Bean coat and stay in them all day long because you were sitting in a cement block building." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:34:20", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But did you get cold underneath all those layers or were you able to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:34:24", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah, sure. Are you and you would come home and you might get under your your huge Peace Corps sleeping bag that they gave us on in the bed and just sort of stay under there for the rest of the evening because it was cold but not, you know, not terrible, you know. Yeah, yeah. At first it was probably terrible, but then it became just your life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:34:42", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Right, you coped. So what about your work? What did you do on a daily basis?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:34:49", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I was assigned to a NGO vocational training center, so I had nothing to do with the government school system. And I would compare it to our United States tech centers that a lot of the schools have. It was targeted at 14 year olds through. Well, it could have gone past the adult, but usually once the Azerbaijanis were married, they weren't doing the school thing. So I'd say twenty six year olds, when we had twenty six year olds, the school taught computer skills, English, German, sewing, knitting, cosmetology, welding, accounting. What else? Well, cosmetology was a big one. So the students came, they paid a tuition and about 25 percent of our students were IDP's from that Armenian and internally displaced people from the Armenian Azerbaijani conflict. Because Ganja was one place where a lot of the people that were expelled from Armenia that were Azerbaijanis came either home to their families area and Ganja. And we were close, close enough to the border sort of that we had a huge IDP population there. Yet even though that was 20 years or more after the original conflict when they were when they separated and Azerbaijan's and Armenians to go back to their country, too. So it was a lot of IDP's I. I think I've heard that there were probably 100,000 IDPs living yet in Azerbaijan as IDPs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:36:29", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And they would have been had previously lived close" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:36:35", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the Azerbaijan and Armenia border. They were in Armenia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:36:38", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, but then but then because of the struggle, they were displaced." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:36:42", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's a section that's a peace part of the land Azerbaijanis land that Azerbaijani say belongs to them and it's inside their their country. It's Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenians occupied it. That's what the Azerbaijanis would say. And so the Azerbaijanis that were living on that land were expelled from the Armenians that were in other parts because they had lived together up until that point and were expelled back to their country. So the Armenian country has the same kind of IDP problem, I think, too. And the IDPs in Azerbaijan really felt, feel and still feel that they won't get to go back to their land. You know, they had and their status remains kind of in flux because they have that belief and they also have some benefits as as an IDP, you know, they have some help with their housing and their, you know, their gas bills and some of their education. Is that so we our organization, the NGO that I volunteered at the IDPs, didn't have to pay tuition to go there so they could learn those technical skills for free. The other students that came and they came a lot for the English, all the other students would come a lot for the English classes. So we're taught there. And they were taught by Azerbaijani young, young Azerbaijani teachers that were trying to learn English from old Russian textbooks. And so that was one of the things that we did. We tried to upgrade their, you know, their skills." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:38:19", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, so that this was a private school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:38:23", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then it was started by the Seventh Day Adventists at the time that the that the country was formed and they had finished their mission mission, two of that kind. They were still in the country doing some ecological things and planting trees and stuff. But pretty much the school was turned over to a local NGO before I got there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:38:44", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the Seventh Day Adventist work went early after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:38:47", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Early there, they were the first in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:38:48", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Breakup of the Soviet Union. They were right. And they established first and there some of these be professional training schools. OK, so how many Peace Corps volunteers were assigned to that school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the only one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:39:06", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One, and there had been one or maybe two before me and there was one that followed me. But then the school was dissolved for a variety of reasons. On the NGO situation I was watching kind of changed politically. The government was not as receptive to foreign funded NGOs and a lot of reporting things in the school, kind of, I think, and I think the Seventh Day Avenue sold the buildings, so I just went away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:39:36", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. So you see how many students were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:39:39", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was four hundred bid 400 students, you know, not full time. You know, they weren't all day students. They were like a training center. So they would come in for their specific classes. But a lot of them took you know, they would we had tailoring. They would come in and the girls would learn how, you know, how to dressmaking make their patterns right. And a lot of times the teachers would work for two or three months without pay because the funds were that was one thing that that I hope I helped them with because I was a strategic planner for Girl Scouts and for the medical society and they didn't know how to budget. You know, they would get money, they would spend it, they didn't know how to project. They didn't know how to match their tuition prices to their need or what they needed. And the teachers had never been asked to give their input. You know, you've got kind of that Soviet mind of, you know, I'm told what to do. And it's not my job to. Decide. So with the help of a translator, because I couldn't do that by myself, we did focus groups and they were so excited to be able to input what they thought would make the school better because had never been asked that in, some of the teachers had been there for a long time and were very, very dedicated to what they were doing, but never felt like they were part of felt that they could tell management what what they what they needed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:40:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what to make. So then you were assigned there to work and as a teacher, not as a teacher, but as an administrator?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:41:05", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As a as a management development type position, I guess we would say, from the United States. So I helped with structuring a budget even and even showing the assistant director how to use a spreadsheet and how to project did a little marketing things. That's when I found out you just can't change logos and names and stuff in a country. And, you know, that was that was a learning experience for me. You know, I get great ideas and can't move them forward until you get all the permissions and so forth. And we did as part of my Peace Corps, volunteering things, I helped my counterpart, my Azerbaijani counterpart at the school, write a grant for you to. It was USAID and it was the U.N. Habitat Grant to train IDP's and also a portion of their students to do computer repair so that then they could go back to their villages or their communities or their IDP communities and open up a little computer repair shops. And we got a grant, of course, like all Peace Corps volunteers run into the money came in November, and I closed my service in December. So I never got to experience the end of it. I mean, I didn't do the third year that a lot of people do because I really felt I needed to get home and be with my family. But I think I'm not sure how it all worked out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:42:42", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a volunteer who came after you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:42:45", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was. And I don't know whether. I don't know. You know, it was one of those things that just sort of slipped through the cracks with me. And I didn't I think I was afraid to ask because I was afraid that it fell apart and I'm not sure. So I was I felt that" + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:42:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was the grant supposed to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:43:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was supposed to train 40 of our students. Half of them IDP's and half regular students to how to do computer repair. We had a really good computer repair program there and a teacher and two teachers already that we're doing it. And they were supposed to do that. And then junior achievement was supposed to be a part of the grant was to bring junior achievement from Baku, which they didn't have in Ganja, but they had to teach these kids how to run a business or do that business part and then help them with tools and equipment to start a computer repair shop. So we were all excited. We played first and didn't get accepted. And then we wrote the grant again and met the guidelines better with our plan. And I think they, you know, that was one. And then the other was to teach observation. We did at the grant that the Peace Corps allows for this for the Peace Corps volunteers right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:43:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Peace Corps partnership." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:44:01", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a partnership thing. Yeah. We were to teach Azerbaijani our students to touch type on the computers. We had lots of computers for them to work on. They were old computers, but our computer repair guy kept them all going and we had a little computer lab with ten computers on it. And we got to help them select some software that I used in the United States. You know, Miss Mavis Beacon, which is a great software for touch typing, and even though most of them couldn't speak English, they were successful at doing the exercises. And of course, Azerbaijani has extra characters in their alphabet on and vowels. But we didn't bother with that, just got them doing that. And we had some of the students get up to forty words per minute. So that was great. They'd never done touch typing ever. None of the students had so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:44:51", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So some of it was new." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:44:54", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the concept of independent learning too, because they came into the lab, signed in, we had a little lab assistant that we had a little bit of money from the grant to give that person a little bit of a stipend and signed them in and got them started. And they had to sign in for their hours and they had to do that independently. And some of them didn't understand that. Of course, you know, they thought because there wasn't a class, they didn't have to show up. And then they were upset because they didn't get the certificate. But that worked out. That was, you know, so there were lots of good things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:45:25", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Lots of cross-cultural things that you encountered. Right. So what about travel in the in the while you were in the country or nearby while you were assigned there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:45:42", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, Azerbaijan is about the size of Maine or maybe the size of Michigan. So it's not a gigantic country and actually has a, you know, a lot of busses and so forth that you can go to our rules where we were supposed to travel until we've been at our host at our our site for a couple of months. So as soon as that time got out, which was probably April of 2009, the senior volunteers decided that we were going to get together in Georgia, which is the neighboring country the Republic of Georgia, and it wasn't that far. So we all made our arrangements and found a hotel and went there and realized right away that what crazy people we were. We've been struggling with this new language, a new culture for all these months. And then we went to a country that had everything in the Georgian Hobbit language and we couldn't figure out where this stops were on the subway. We couldn't figure out which direction to go. And we laughed at ourselves, but we had a good time. So that was our theme that we traveled. That was the first out of country travel. And some of us went to Georgia several times because it was an easy, nice, you know, just an interesting place to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:46:50", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it was easy for you to get back and forth, back" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:46:52", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And forth across the border as long as we had our, you know, our peace because our Peace Corps posts there. So we had to do that permission thing with the Peace Corps post in Georgia, in ours, to travel in country. Anything that we needed to do officially, we had to go to Baku. It was probably it was a good six hours on the bus or seven hours on the bus to get to Baku because the roads were under construction and not because it was so far there were trains. I personally didn't go to Baku only when I absolutely was required to because it was just a big city and it wasn't it wasn't what I wanted to necessarily do. And I helped on a lot of projects of other Peace Corps volunteers, especially the youth development was there, you know, their Fourth of July activities at a park or taught my dancing to a bunch of girls in a in a very isolated community for one of the Peace Corps volunteers or did some things with another group that was doing grants and needed somebody to judge the grants. You know, there are the presentations of the grants. So other than coming home, I didn't travel anywhere else during my time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:48:03", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you did Peace Corps ask you to have a secondary project besides your primary assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:48:10", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think we were my understanding, and especially as a rule following senior volunteer was I was I was on twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And I filled my time. My the my expectation of myself was, first of all, well, I didn't know what I was going to be doing at this vocational training center. And my language skills weren't great. So I went to work every day at eight o'clock and stayed until four thirty. And they actually were very they stayed they worked some work six days a week. They were at the school was very they were very dedicated, the teachers. So some days I would go and I just worked on whatever I try to drum up ideas for grants and and improvements. But I also worked with other volunteer projects, like I taught speech to the Democratic speech process, class, English language clubs. We all did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:49:12", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You know, so these were in your own school? Not necessarily." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:49:16", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not necessarily that we were a big city and there were at most times there were five to seven volunteers at one time. And Ganja the city was huge. So you wouldn't see each other sometimes. But there was always something going on that we could join into or somebody would say, oh, there we worked. I worked in a helping a school that was with deaf kids. It wasn't something I saw it out. Somebody, you know, would say, oh, there's, you know, somebody there that needs help with their computers or they they need help with writing a grant or whatever. So, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:49:47", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Get busy. You helped. Yeah. And so the interesting question here, how did you communicate with other volunteers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:49:57", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had we were provided cell phones as part of our our our tools that we had. So one of the first things we did when we got to the machine was to buy cell phones and but we had to pay for our own SIM, our own contours. He recalled our time, our own minutes by the cell phones was a real trick because you couldn't buy a cell phone unless you had an Azerbaijani ID card. And of course, we didn't have one. So our LCFs our language and cultural trainers had to go with us by the phones and so forth. So that was, you know, just some of their requirements. So we were able to text back and forth with each other, Internet was available when we first got there, but it was not, you know, was dial up Internet if you had it. My school had just one dial up line when we got there. But after a bit, they were able to get better Internet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:50:51", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Better, meaning better signals. But it was still landline?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:50:56", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Still a landline, like it was still landline, but faster." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:51:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wi-Fi wasn't there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:51:02", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. I don't think our phones even would have done Wi- Fi. They were flip phones. You know, but it improved because they had they eventually you would see the the the cowboys with the sheep on their cell phones. So, you know, so it was there, you know, they hit them, right. Yeah. Eventually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:51:22", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, right. They had the micro wave connection." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:51:26", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So volunteer to volunteer we texted a lot. You know, if we were together and we were leaving some place, we weren't supposed to be out after dark. So if one person was going one way to go to their house on the other and I was going another way, we always check back with each other again. That was the senior volunteer following the rules. You know, did you get home OK back home? Especially the I felt I had a house mom at home, so I had somebody at my house. But yeah, those volunteers that were living in an apartment building by themselves, you know, I kind of always thought, you know, there's nobody to check on you. So, yeah. But safety wise, I felt very, very safe. And I was I was I'm sure there was crime there, but" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:52:08", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I didn't really feel like were there any any safety or security issues that came up for any of the volunteers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:52:15", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. A lot of the young girls were were hassled and heckled and, you know, and we were you know, we were tall, blond, you know, some of them. Yeah. Yeah. And so there was a perception that a lot of those girls were maybe Russian. And because if you weren't Azerbaijani, then you were probably Russian. And the reputation of single Russian women, maybe wasn’t as well as the other as good Azerbaijani girls. So there was some, you know, heckling that way. And if you asked some of the other ones, there'd be some, you know, stone throwing maybe by the kids. You know, just things that I always said to my group. I was like, you know, we're we're like, we have peacock feathers on and red tights. So we're always visible and they're, you know, they can't figure us out. So they so, you know, yell at us or throw stones at us. But I you know, I never personally felt like I was in any kind of a threat or anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:53:10", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Yeah, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:53:13", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They probably thought it was strange because I had hiking boots and backpacks and and cargo pants, you know, matter of fact, when I left, I gave out most of my my clothes that I brought with me. I gave them to a women's center that was learning how to cook and sell their cooking stuff. And the volunteer that was there, I was a Peace Corps volunteer, told me that the next day everybody came back to the center dressed as Bonnie, which was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:53:40", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, right. Well, that sounds like my my next question was what your sense was of your impact on this at this school and that's related to them wearing your clothes as a tribute to you and some pride." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:54:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I kind of decided early on. I mean, we're I see my Peace Corps volunteer in the band being a Peace Corps volunteer, at least in the country. I was seen as being like an independent contractor. I had to decide what was important to me and important to the community and then figure out how to do it. And no one was telling me how to go about that. And I realized that I wasn't going to be able to change the world. There wasn't time. And and that wasn't maybe even what was what I was there for. So I had sort of had a couple objectives and I felt like I had done those. One was I mean, had made friends with a young girl that had left during the Nagorno-Karabakh family. It is, you know, run during that time. And she was living in my building. So she had been raised in Russia. Azerbaijani sent back to the mission to Ganja to finish your high school because her parents didn't want her in Russia anymore. And there's, you know, some stigma to some of the stigma of the Azerbaijani girls in Russia, in Russian." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:55:05", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so her parents, her" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:55:07", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Parents were still in Russia. She was sent to she and her sister were sent to Georgia to, ah, their grandmother to finish high school because it was dangerous for them. The parents felt it was dangerous, unsafe for them to remain in Russia, and they wanted them. So when she finished high school, while I was there in danger, she couldn't get into the university. She very smart. She had gone to all of the Peace Corps things, learning English. We talked, you know, worked hard on it. But she couldn't get into the university because she couldn't pass the Russian language test. She spoke Azerbaijani, but she you know, she raised Russian and so she had to go back to Russia to go to school. But but that was her goal was to get into the university. And I felt like I had helped her at least get, you know, confidence to be able to do that and learn. And she teaches English now in Russia. So she's got an English degree. So that was important. And then there was the assistant director of the school really wanted to improve, and he was helped with that grant for the computer repair. And he got to go as part of that grant to Katmandu for the U.N. Habitat conference was for all different countries to this kind of preconference. And he was like when he was not going to do it, I said, you have to go. No, you go as a half. No, I said, so. I would love to go to Katmandu. Everybody wants to go to Kathmandu. But you go he'd never traveled out of the country because he was 28 or 29. So he had to expedite a passport and he was successful at doing that. And he fell in love with traveling. I think, you know, he just he was it was a wonderful experience for him. So that was I felt really good about that. And I make sure he moved on with his life because of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:56:52", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So you you can think of at least two people at least to be alive him directly. Now their lives are directly impacted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:57:00", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the women in my building, there were probably seven or eight women that were my age, you know, very hard working women. And the cultural thing that I think I shared with them is their perception of American families, whether we kick our kids out at 18, you know, they go out to college, they get an apartment that we don't care about our our families, you know, because that's what they see in the movies and that's what they hear. And they were surprised to find out from me that I share a home with my with my son and his family and his wife and his and my grandkids that I talk to them regularly, that I was, you know, involved in their lives, even though I was a long ways away. So that was a cultural thing that I think I brought to them. The their perception of American life was very much that, you know, we don't care about our families and we don't keep together and we don't because they don't, you know, their communities and their villages are still very, very close knit. And they don't make decisions unless the family makes those decisions together, the traditional family, anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:58:09", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah, interesting the perceptions, yeah, that are there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:58:15", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The other one was I had an English language group of older, older kids. Twenty four. Twenty five, you know, that age, not the teenagers. And we watched movies and talked about the movies and they wanted me to tell them about my kids. And I told them, you know, at that time both my children were young, we were young, married, had gone to college. And I told them all about that. And they were surprised that they had gotten married and had been married for two or three years and hadn't had any children because the cultural part of Azerbaijan, as you marry and you have family as soon as possible, that's why you get married. And I got all the way done and I and they were just sort of sitting there staring at me. I said, what is it that I've missed? You know, what haven't I told you? And they wanted me to tell them about the promiscuous ness of our teenagers and our young people in the United States, because that's what they see in the movies jumping in. We called it jumping in and out of each other's beds. I said, is that what you want me to tell you about it? So that wasn't my experience and that's not the experience of my children. But, yes, that happens, you know, but that's how they thought everybody acted. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody drinks Coca-Cola for breakfast, too. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, media and the movies that they had access to, that's what they showed them. Yeah. So I think as Peace Corps volunteers, we certainly showed them the human side of who we were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:59:38", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really are and different a different side of American life. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, you're in your second year and feeling much more comfortable, I'm sure, about your life there. Is there anything you want to reflect about about that before we talk about your leaving?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "01:00:01", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And yeah, there's something that happened in now. I hope I'm right because you know how things get to be a blur. Obama was inaugurated in 2009, right? Yeah, January 28th. OK, we had a girls camp, the GLOW camp. I know there's other countries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "01:00:20", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Camp GLOW." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "01:00:22", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A big meeting. And I think the the men were there also. There was a lot of us that went to a town called Zagatala, which is in the north of Azerbaijan and gathered to work on that. Maybe it was our excuse to go, I don't know for some of them, but we had a lot of people, a lot of us were there and it was inauguration time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "01:00:41", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that was for you went there for Camp GLOW." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "01:00:43", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, to plan to plan for Camp GLOW and for ABLE the boys camp, Camp ABLE I think it was called. That was the reason for going. But it was the inauguration time. And I meant I never really thought up to that point, even after I've been on what it really meant to be an American and to feel that patriotic thump that I'm an American. So we're in this hotel. It just was it was cold. It was February in Zagatala is north in the mountain, know cold snow. And somebody downloaded his inauguration address on to a boombox. And we had no chairs. We were in this basement of this hotel sitting on the floor. I'll probably 50 of us or so and listening to the squeaky squawky inauguration address, you know, and there were, you know, people of all walks of political life in the United States. But, of course, Peace Corps volunteers were, you know, mostly liberal people. But and after that got done, we've spontaneously stood up and saying The Star- Spangled Banner and there wasn't a dry eye in that room. And that was like I was like, oh, my God, I know what it means to love your country and to be proud of what has happened. And so that was, you know, that was a real real for me. That was a real OK, I know who I am now. Um, yeah. So that was a Peace Corps experience. I mean, that's a experience I wouldn't have had anywhere else in the world or at any other point in time in my life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "01:02:15", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "01:02:16", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it was cool. And we had all had to have voted absentee ballot because we were, you know, already in Azerbaijan in September of the fall. So that was a pretty cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "01:02:27", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's right. That was right after you did. So you left in September. The campaign was going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "01:02:34", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And we get you know, and all we got was Russian and Georgian television. I mean, we didn't you really didn't know what was going on, you know, unless, you know, unless you got it from home or worked really hard at it. Yeah. Yeah. So it was you know, we were kind of or at least for me it was that was a void time for me as far as news and what was happening. I mean, I knew he won, but but the inauguration was. Yeah, it was pretty cool. All those kids, all of us, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "01:02:59", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so how did you get news of America then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "01:03:05", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, eventually for me, eventually the school got an. Access to Internet and enough minutes to get on it that I would I would check, but not like we do here now with, you know, looking every moment of the time of what's going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "01:03:17", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So too expensive to do it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "01:03:19", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the you know, the TV that we had in my house was was all foreign language. You know, it's all Russian, pretty much Russian. Occasionally we would see a news report from the United States. You know, there was a hurricane in Florida at the time when I was there. And I don't know how many people ask me if my family was OK. You know, I'm from Michigan. So it's like, yeah, it's OK. The hurricane doesn't come all the way to Michigan, but it was hard for them to understand that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "01:03:46", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. Just like you didn't know where your vision is. They don't know. They're just Florida and Michigan. Right. That's good. That's great. OK, so if you're ready to move along, she's been coming time to leave. What was what is how did you experience that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "01:04:14", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I'm part of getting ready to leave was I was really ready to leave. And then, of course, there's the sad part of realizing that I'm going to leave, you know, so just like you would if you were leaving any friends and anything that you loved, I, I, I really loved my life there. I, I could have stayed there and, you know, lived my life there. Probably the thing that caught me the most was going to a part of their wedding, their wedding, which is called a toy in Azerbaijani process is there's always a there's a women's party, not a bridal party, more of a pre wedding, almost like the girls wedding where the girl's family comes together. And I remember there was a girl in our building that was getting married. And I went with my host mom, who, again, you know, we didn't talk a lot other than, you know, I need to iron clothes, I need to shower those kinds of things. And we went together and and the women danced in a big circle together, you know, with the traditional dances, which I truly enjoyed. And I looked over at Gulnara, my host mom, and realized I'm never going to I might not ever see her again. And she was crying and I was crying. We were, you know, dancing at this this wedding dance. So that was, you know, that was one of my last days in Ganja. And then I spent my last two weeks in Baku doing all the medical things and the close of service and so forth before I left. But I stayed my full time. I didn't close service until it was the day we were supposed to. Some of the other people went home a little bit early, not terribly early, but, you know, a month earlier, just because they didn't want to send us all out of the country at one time, just for a little joysticks and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "01:06:01", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you. Yeah. So then you came home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "01:06:07", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And within a month I thought I should have stayed, not because of my it happened happen. But I you know, my, my, my my impetus to come home was my grandchildren were in junior high. I was going to you know, I was going missing that I'd promised my kids I would be home. But after thirty days at home, everything was the same. And I, you know, I had to start working again, of course. And but at home, the probably the biggest thing was I no longer was walking everywhere. I went down, you know, for the downtown for hearing from my home is probably three and a half miles. No big deal. And Azerbaijan did that daily. I went there to see where my son was teaching at the community college at that time, went to see his room. And he was going to he handed me his car keys, says I'll just walk home. And she. Oh, you can't walk home. Yeah, I can. I'm just going to walk home. And there was nobody on the streets, you know, whereas in the house or on the sidewalks were full of people walking places. And, you know, certainly there were lots of cars, too, but people went where they wanted to go by walking. And I walked all the way home. I had. Where is everybody? They're all gone. So and all the other cultural things that kind of jump out at you, you realize and talking about Azerbaijan at length and boring people, I'm sure you know, and I still do. I mean, it's still pops into my life and my conversation a lot more. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "01:07:33", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So you can you still use it to to for good memories and also to educate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "01:07:42", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I do, you know. The grandkids will be talking about something I always say, oh you know, they're talking about well we were eating. Eggplant the other day, you know, mom made the the my daughter in law made eggplant and I said, oh, that's badımcan. And so, you know, we kind of they kind of looked at me. Well, that's what you know, that's what eggplants called in Azerbaijan, badımcan, you know. So it's was like and it's funny how those words pop out of you, you 10 years. And I and I didn't speak the language well, but those things will. Come up, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "01:08:14", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Right. Yeah. So it's been actually in eight years since you’ve been back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "01:08:18", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Eight years since I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "01:08:19", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And you went back to work for some time. Are you still working?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "01:08:24", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I officially retired last November, so I was still I was still teaching those computer skills classes to the library system. Three hundred classes a year up until last November. And then I made the decision to be done. I thought, I'm sixty seven years old. I've done my 45 years and I sold my home. To my son, he bought a small RV conversion van and I'm homeless. That's my home. And I'm traveling around the United States right now and trying to find something to be passionate about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "01:09:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so would you have done that if you had not been in the Peace Corps do you think?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "01:09:07", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I usually say the Peace Corps was the best thing I ever did other than having my family and my grandkids. That really opened my eyes. I certainly had traveled as a married woman. I traveled, we camped, we done lots of wonderful things. But I would never have ventured. I mean, we I invented Germany because we hosted I had hosted five young German professionals over the years in my home. So I always had those connections. But to step out and do that, I don't think I would have had those skills. And my friends say, you know, you're the only person we know that would be would we consider taking the Greyhound bus from Sarasota to to Naples instead of renting a car or having somebody pick you up? Yeah, well, public transportation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "01:09:53", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "01:09:53", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know an import here and there is no public transportation. So, you know, that was something that, you know, not not like a big city person would have had that familiarity. So, you know, if I hadn't had the Peace Corps, I would I am sure I wouldn't be as independent as I am and feels confident to do that as a you know, as a senior." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "01:10:14", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So so and so you you that feels like it's more confidence that it's you've got it from the Peace Corps experience. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "01:10:22", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Know, I mean, yeah, I think I'm comfortable with doing things outside of my comfort zone. Maybe that's it. And not being anxious about. Whether it's going to turn out OK, and I certainly have been in situations where, you know, I wondered when I was in Azerbaijan two years ago for the wedding when I got to Baku from on the bumbling, bumbling Russian bus. It was on forever and ever to get there with the benzene burning in the in the engine. And I got to the airport, I found out that the the Lufthansa pilots were on strike in Germany and I could get to Germany, but I couldn't get back to the United States until the next day after that screwed up all my connections with my family to pick me up and everything. And and I just, you know, worked through it and stayed in Germany for another week and went home a week later. So I would never have done those kinds of things before. I had done those that kind of travel. Yeah. In confidence to do it right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "01:11:18", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just do it calmly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "01:11:19", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yep. Just figured it out and you know, that was it. Yeah. So you wash out your clothes and go on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "01:11:25", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That sounds wonderful. So is there anything else that you want to reflect on before we close our conversation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "01:11:42", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think so. I think we've got the highlights. Yeah, I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "01:11:47", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, this has been a great a great story and congratulations on the courage you've shown to take that step to join the Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "01:11:58", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Might do it again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "01:11:59", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's not too late." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "01:12:01", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know. I know. You know, I've got a few other things I'm thinking of doing, but I keep my eye on the response all the time, looking for something that would be, you know, of interest and my skills. Right. But yeah. Yeah. I don't think I'm ready for a mud hut in Africa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "01:12:16", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you never know. You never know. I know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "01:12:20", + "speaker": "Bonnie Jean Campbell", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know. Right." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-01008", + "metadata": { + "category": "Herstory", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/PowersSG/powerssg.htm", + "original_file_name": "PowersSG_6-13-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/PowersSG/PowersSG_6-13-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "location_date": "Edwards, California – 13 June 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Sheryll Goecke Powers" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 13, 2001. This interview with Sheryll Goecke Powers is being conducted as part of the NASA Headquarters History Office Herstory Project. The interview is being conducted at the [NASA] Dryden Flight Research Center by Rebecca Wright and Sandra Johnson.\\n\\n Thank you again for taking the time to meet with us to discuss your experiences while employed with the NASA Flight Research Center in California, and we'd like to begin today by gathering some background information about you. Can you share with us where you're originally from?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Iowa. I was born and raised in Iowa, the central part of Iowa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did your travels bring you here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went to college at the Iowa State University and they had a co-op program at that time with Dryden. Well, it wasn't Dryden at that time, but they had a co-op program with what is now Dryden, and I signed up for that. Eight of us came out that first year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were you all females, or were some males and females?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two of us were females. Emma and I roomed together. Emma Jaycox and I roomed together. The guys, some of them roomed together. I'm not sure how they split up, but they had friends that they stayed with, too. At the time, I was at the end of the freshman year and there were three of us who started out in aerospace engineering at Iowa State, and Emma and I were the ones that came out here. The other girl, and I don't remember her name at all, dropped out of the aerospace program the first year and Emma dropped out after we went back.\\n\\n They always told you, when you had your freshman orientation—I don't know if you had that or not in yours—but in the freshman orientation for engineering, we're all sitting there, we're all wide-eyed, and they say, \"Okay, now look to your left and look to your right,\" and we're sort of bobbing our heads back and forth, and they say, \"Now, when you graduate, only one of you is going to be in the class,\" and that was about right. So there was about one-third of the people who started in the freshman year graduated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came as part of your co-op program, what year was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "1963." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At that time, aerospace engineering, was that a relatively new field?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was more the aeronautical, but Iowa State had gone for the aerospace engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What made you interested in that field?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I couldn't really decide what I wanted to do, and there was an article in the Des Moines Register Sunday paper about a woman who'd gone into engineering, and it sounded interesting and I liked planes. I thought that would be fun to do, and so that was why I focused on aerospace engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this your first time away from Iowa to come to some place as exciting as the NASA Flight Research Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Yes, it was the first time. Three of us flew out together, literally, in a small—it was Piper Tri-Pacer. Emma knew a guy who was willing to fly us out, basically for the cost of the gas. So it was myself and Emma and Jim, whose name escapes me right at the minute. Anyhow, we all flew out together, and we left from Marshalltown is little airport and he flew in there.\\n\\n Not realizing the size of the airplanes, I'd already packed my bags. I knew they were somewhat weight-restricted, but I figured, well, I weigh less than they do, so I can pack more than they do. But there isn't that much room in a Piper Tri-Pacer, so my mother shipped it out to me on a Greyhound bus.\\n\\n Jim Cooper was the guy I came out with. He and I were in the back seat because it was Emma's friend, so she got to ride in the front seat. We flew into Oklahoma, Oklahoma City Airport. The significance of that is, I was doing great until that time, so we got off and I wasn't feeling really good, so I just had 7-Up. I remember that I had 7-Up to drink. The rest of the flight wasn't pleasant for anybody else, me included. I didn't feel good, but luckily he had a coffee can. Poor Jim, he sat in the back seat with me. I'm busy barfing away in my coffee can, and they're sitting in the front seat. It wasn't a very pleasant trip for them, either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you got there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I got there. Of course, my mother, she was—and my father was there, too. There were tears in their eyes as they watched me take off, especially in this little tiny airplane. I don't know if you've ever seen a Piper Tri-Pacer, but they aren't very big." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were your parents involved in engineering in any way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this was a new field for them as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. My brother had gone to college. He majored in probably something to do with zoology because he worked for the Conservation Commission. But no, my mother had gone to college, actually, which was rare for her age. She was born in 1905. I was the youngest by a lot in the family. She went to college. She actually went to Iowa State, only it was Iowa State College at that time, I think, is what it was called at that time. She only went for two years. She and her sister went, but her sister didn't want to continue, and my mother didn't want to go on by herself, and she didn't want to teach. So then she went to a business college.\\n\\n My dad didn't graduate from high school. They were farmers and his father said, \"I need you on the field. I don't need you in school,\" so he never graduated from high school, even." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can understand why they had tears in their eyes then, as you fly off in a plane and then off to a land of California." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, because it was the desert. It was going to be warm and really nice. So I didn't bring any heavy coats. I came out in the end of May. I started right after Memorial Day. And of course, as you know, from being here in the desert, it gets pretty hot in the summer, but the nights get really cool, or they can get really cool, and I wasn't expecting that. And then the winters get cold as well.\\n\\n I didn't go back. I was out here for six months at that time, so I went back in, oh, it would have been right around Christmas. November. It must have been around November. Yes, it was right around Thanksgiving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You didn't go back the same way you came, though, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no. Well, the first time on the co-op program, the first and last time, you have to pay for your own transportation. The other advantage of going out with Emma and with Jim was that there was a group of us, and it turned out we lucked out with the guy because none of us were old enough to rent a car, so he was able to rent a car and we got a place to stay before he flew back. We never even thought about that, but you can't rent a car at nineteen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No. I think even till today you can't do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. I think you have to be—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it's twenty-five." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so. I think somebody else was talking about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you land close by?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. We landed at Fox Field [General William J. Fox Airfield]. You'll see a sign for it when you go back to Lancaster [California]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You kind of had a bird's-eye view of where you were going to be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we stayed in Las Vegas [Nevada]. We made it to Las Vegas the first day. By the time I got there I was really hungry, and the guy was really worried because I was eating a lot. I'd lost, kind of barfed everything out on the plane. And then we flew into Lancaster. It was dark when we flew in, naturally. It was quite a trip. I think actually it was worse for the other people. I mean, I was sick, but they had to listen and watch me, so they had a much worse time of it than I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Everybody made it, and your roommate stayed with you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We roomed together that year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you in town in Lancaster, or were you out here on—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we were in town. Earlier, they did have places for people to stay on the base, but by the time, by 1963, they didn't really have any places on the base that people could stay long term, so Emma and I stayed in a trailer court. We had our own trailer. We lucked out. We were right across from the restroom. They had a restroom area there. Because the woman told us when we rented the trailer, \"Don't flush the stool in your trailer. It's slow-flushing.\" Oh, okay. So we never did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a summer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But we were close to where they had the restroom in the trailer court, so we could just run over there, so that worked out really good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did you get back and forth to the Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, some of the other guys had a car. Actually, probably a couple of them had cars, so we carpooled with them. There was also a bus, but the bus didn't go by our street, so we were in the carpool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Give us your first impressions of the Center as you came here those first days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't really remember much about that. I think everything was just so new. The trip and everything had just been so new that—obviously, it was considerably different than Iowa, as far as the green went, as far as the humidity went. It was quite a bit different.\\n\\n The first group I worked with—at that time, the groups were more in just rooms. We didn't have the individual cubicles. So I went in this first group and all the desks are really close together because that's how they got so many people in there. So your desk would face somebody else's. It was just a lot of different people to meet. It was a fun time.\\n\\n They were adding on to the building at that time. The '63 addition everybody refers to, and of course, they had this sign up, \"Keep Out\" so we all checked it out to see what was going on in the building. But it was a good group of people I worked with then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were a lot of them co-ops or were a lot of them other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I was the only co-op in our group most of the time. Well, there were actually two co-ops. He wasn't really in the co-op program. He was in a different program, so there were two students in there. He was an older student, actually, too. How many people were there in there? Well, Al Covington was my immediate supervisor. Then there was Lovic Thomas and Jack [L] Ehernberger, Dean Webb, Harold Washington, Bob Barron, Gene Matranga, and Don [R.] Bellman. I think that was most of them. And then Frank Beverly was the other guy.\\n\\n So the first year I was here the group was working a lot on what they called LLRV, the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. Don Bellman was one of the big drivers of that. He was pushing that, and they didn't have a current model of it, so they gave me a pile of sticks—they had little wooden dowels—and the drawing, and you just cut the little dowels out and you made a model of it.\\n\\n So I made a model of the LLRV. You may have seen it on your tour. I don't know if you did or not. They call it the flying bedstead. It's a very unusual shape. Don had made the little engine shapes. I don't think he made the actual engine himself. He may have had somebody else do it. But he made the little jet rocket things that we glued on there. It was interesting. I had never built a model before in my life and here I am getting a pile of sticks and a knife and a bunch of glue and you put something together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that was something that would basically go down as a training vehicle for a monumental time in history." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. And they had a big box. It was a good-sized model. They had a big box built for it and they hauled it around to show to people. They'd actually pull it out and say, \"This is how it's going to work,\" and the engine would gimbal like it was supposed to gimbal, and making sure where all the little rockets were. So that was different. Like I said, I had never built anything like that before. Never built a model." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that model around still somewhere?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know what happened to it. I don't know. It was big. It had a big box. It was probably about two, at least two feet, maybe three feet long, and at least a foot wide, maybe eighteen inches wide. The model itself stood up—how high would that be? About eighteen inches. So it was a good-sized model. It was too big to really keep under your desk, and I don't know what happened to it. Nobody can figure out what happened.\\n\\n Somebody gave me an earlier version, an earlier model, that was built. It was much smaller. I don't know where it was, but they found it, and they knew I'd built one so they brought it to me and I kept it for a while and I finally gave it to Dill [Hunley – Dryden Flight Research Center Historian] when they started collecting their historical models. But mine was bigger. I don't know. I've asked everybody who was involved with it and they have never been able to figure out what happened to the model." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the primary focus then of the group that you were in for the first stage?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That's what I remember most about them working on. They also did a lot of the airspeed work. Terry Larson was also in that group. They did a lot of the airspeed work and he did a lot of plotting. Most people don't do the plotting anymore. We'd have dreams about these little points after a while, we did so much plotting of them. It was very tedious work, very time-consuming, very meticulous.\\n\\n Basically, you'd take a sheet of paper and it had many little columns on it, many rows, and we'd fill it all up with numbers and we'd plot all those numbers on a piece of paper. So you got really familiar with your data." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it many days of your time during those weeks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That and building the model, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any expectations of what you would be doing during your co-op term, or were these something totally different than what you expected? Well, I suppose the model, because you'd never done that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think I knew what I was going to be doing. I was kind of naive in that respect. I didn't really have any expectations. I just was coming out here to work, and I didn't know what was going to be involved with it. We had only had the first of—you hadn't even gotten into your aerospace engineering courses the first year, it's just your general curriculum, where they weed out most of the people. And then you get into the second year where you start getting into the courses, so I didn't really have a feel for what was going to be involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounded like you were ready for any surprises that came your way then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, Jim Cooper worked here, but we were the only two co-ops that came back after college to work at Dryden, of the original eight that started. The others all went elsewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the first time that Dryden had had a co-op program as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It just happened to be your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It happened to be my group. I think it was the first one with Iowa State. There were other people out here who had been to Iowa State, and graduated from Iowa State, but I think it was the first co-op program at Iowa State. It continued for a few years, but then the co-op program at Iowa State was canceled because they didn't think that Iowa State had enough minorities in their school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm glad you got here when you did. You were here for six months, was that your term, that you said?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There were three, six months, and then the last one you had to go back for your full senior year of school, so it was only like three months. I should say, Iowa State dropped out of the co-op program, too, because they kept cutting down how many they could send, and pretty soon it got to where the numbers were so small that they couldn't justify rearranging their schedule for them. But the main reason Iowa State got out was because NASA didn't feel they had enough minority students." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's too bad. When you went back that November, did you have any thoughts of staying back in Iowa, or were you looking forward to coming back here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I got into the program, so I was looking forward to coming back. I expected to come back and I was looking forward to it. I'd made friends out here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you returned, did your duties change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The overall duties remained the same. The projects would change. But basically, we didn't have the computers yet so you were doing just a lot of hand labor. Used the slide rules. Not the calculators, mechanical calculators so much. Of course, when the hand calculators came in, the hand computers came in, that was a big deal. Everybody had to have one of those. You could use those a lot, but you still were transcribing everything on paper because you didn't have anything.\\n\\n Then when they started getting the printed ones, ones you could actually print stuff out, that really changed. They started getting to the mainframes, the big computers. A lot of it, for a long time, until the personal computers really started to get on the individual's desk, you still did a lot of hand work. You don't do much of that anymore. Everybody has their own programs that they run instead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the first projects that you worked on, other than that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "X-15. I worked on that. The LLRV continued on for quite a while, and then I worked on the B-70, XB-70 and the X-15 were the first ones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The LLRV, the first summer, and you built the model and that was your group, and then when you returned, were you able to watch the progression of this vehicle, and could you share some of the evolution of that process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the next time I came back, they'd gotten to where they were actually—I think they had some of it built already so now you had to have your configuration control and your drawings to keep everybody updated on that, and I was involved with that at that time. I can't remember when they started flying it. They may have flown it when I was back at school the first time. I don't remember that. I don't remember being involved with the flights on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you didn't get to see it fly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't remember seeing it fly. I remember seeing it on the videotape, but I don't remember seeing it fly. The X-15, obviously—well, you may not be familiar with that, but they were starting their control rooms at that time. I'm not sure when they actually started the control rooms, but you could go up and they'd have a few strip charts they could watch for the X-15 flights. But then when it landed, everybody would go out either on the roof or on the lake bed so you see it come in, and that was always fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your part of the X-15? You mentioned that you had worked on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked on the base drag area. I wrote a report about the base drag on the X-15." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you give us some details of how you collected that data, and how long it took? Kind of the process of how that came about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You'd identify—well, actually, you didn't identify points, you just took whatever points you could get on that one, but the data was all recorded on film, so you needed to decide what kind of range you needed for your [pressure measurement instrument] so they could calibrate it so you'd get the best spread in your data. [What you wanted to see was the change in your data with changing flight conditions. For example, you were expecting a pressure change in the range of 0-2 psi. If the range of the instrument measuring the pressure was too large, say 0-10 psi, than your data line on the film would be insensitive to small changes in pressure, the resulting data line would be almost constant and you could only determine gross changes. However, if the range of your pressure instrument was too small, say 0-1 psi, than you would lose all the data over 1 psi. The data line would disappear off the edge of the film when the pressure was greater than 1 and not reappear until the pressure was again less than 1. The same loss of data would occur for pressures less than zero if you had assumed the pressures were positive and they actually included negative as well as positive values. The chances of negative pressure values were very likely because the pressures for most experiments were usually a differential pressure from a reference pressure. In other words, the difference between the pressure at the chosen location of your experiment compared to another pressure (referred to as a reference pressure). Maintaining and measuring a reference pressure also required skill and expertise. Using a reference pressure meant that you also needed to have a feel for how this pressure varied during the flight so you could estimate how the differential pressure would vary from the reference pressure during the flight. You could usually determine a good estimate for the required range in differential pressure. The first flight of your experiment showed how good your estimate was.] So you'd do that and then they would fly the airplane and it would be recorded on the film.\\n\\n They'd get the film back and they'd develop it and then you'd—you could either have them read all the traces off, or you could read the traces off, but before they would give it to you, they'd indicate where the traces were and they'd start the time for you, so you knew what the time was. So then you could look at the film and you could read the deflection from your reference line.\\n\\n Then you go to your calibration sheet, which showed you what that was in terms of pressure, and then you'd put that value in, so that would give you the deflection from your reference, and you know what your reference pressure was, so you could add that on there so then you could come up with pressure, the information, you had the base then.\\n\\n And then you kept track of the times, because when they came out with their final charts—this is where the airspeed group came in—they would do a master chart that would plot the altitude, the mach number, the dynamic pressure. I think they had the angle of attack on there, probably the angle of sideslip as well.\\n\\n So then you would take your time, go to the plots, and get the values from there for your mach number and they had velocity on there as well, or your dynamic pressure, to use in your calculations to calculate your base pressure. It was fairly time-consuming. And you got to look at a lot of little tiny lines, but you got pretty good at estimating where it was within a square because you could work with your—I don't even know what they call it anymore [we called it plotting paper, but I suspect that wasn’t the name on the box]—but the ones that had the English units on it [main gridlines each half inch, with 10 lighter gridlines in each half inch, or in other words, 10 by 10 per half inch] because they had bigger squares on it. You went into metrics [main gridlines each centimeter with 10 lighter gridlines in each centimeter, or in other words, 10 by 10 per centimeter] and they had smaller squares.\\n\\n So depending on how long your plot was, you could either go to the one that had big squares you could see pretty easy or go into little squares and you could get longer scales on those. And then you always could go to the eleven by seventeen sheets of paper in case you couldn't get it on the eight-and-a-half by ten sheets.\\n\\n But the plots you were working with for the airspeed were not the original ones, obviously. They would make what they called ozalid copies of those, and depending on how good the machine was, sometimes you had to kind of draw your little scales in because they didn't always reproduce that well. The ozalid ones are blue and white. You could make ozalid of copies of the ones you'd made too.\\n\\n If you wanted to do that, then it was best if you put this orange paper behind it, so then when you made your lines and your symbols, you'd have little orange stuff on the back of your paper, then that made a better copy than when you ran it through the ozalid machine.\\n\\n So usually you wound up making more than one plot because the first plot was usually more just looking at the data, making sure it was good, making sure there wasn't a problem with your sensors. Then you could come up with your more formal plot, which had the points on it you wanted that you thought were good points and that you wanted to do, and then you'd make your orange stuff on the back of it.\\n\\n You had your little symbol-makers you could make your symbols with. Some people got really excited about the size of symbols that you use because that's supposed to indicate how sure you were about your data points. If they were little symbols, obviously, you were positive that was where it was. If they were bigger then it might mean, well, somewhere within that little circle.\\n\\n The co-ops got tired of making your symbols. They looked like they were kind of—how would you put it? —the little dots weren't in the center of the circle. The little circles would be together like the guy was looking cross-eyed or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Entertainment value." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The person who wanted the plot, he didn't think that was very funny because that wasn't what he wanted. It looked kind of funny on the plot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a lot of pressure to get this done in a specific amount of time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It depended on what group you were in. No. Obviously, the airspeed group was under a lot of pressure because everybody was dependent on their plots to finish their data, calculate their data, so they had a lot of pressure on them. On something like the base pressure, there wasn't near that kind of emphasis on getting it out because it wasn't as important to continuing anything.\\n\\n So if it was the first flight of anything, then there was usually a lot of pressure to get something out because you wanted to see what the airplane was doing. But after a few flights, then it was more just filling in the points that you didn't have, and making sure that your trends were still the same. Especially if you had some points that were a little funny-looking, you wanted to make sure that you got repeatable data." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The technical report that you mentioned, the information that was contained in it, was it released before you actually published the report, or is the report more of a formalized release of your information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The report was a formalized releasing of the information. Anything that went out before, well, certainly under a lot of pressure, would have \"preliminary\" on it. Usually nothing went out of the Center that didn't have a report attached to it, or it was given as a paper somewhere. That was usually the only way the data went out of the Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about among the working members of the team, were you able to pass information informally to inform the other team members?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. There's a lot of discussion. Yes. Your supervisor would always check to see what was going on, but you'd keep him informed. But yes, there would be a lot of discussion among the people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you part of the discussion groups early on with your career here, or was there a certain level that you became more and more involved in that aspect?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it depended on importance, how big the question was. The supervisor would usually do a lot of the discussions. If the project team got together, it would depend on what level we wanted to present it at. If it was going to be just an overview, then often the supervisor would give it. If they wanted to get down into more detail, then the people who were actually working on it would often get the information.\\n\\n So it varied. Kind of like it is now. If you've got somebody coming in from headquarters, usually it's a supervisor that's going to give it. If you've got the team getting together to talk about what they're doing, then it's usually the individuals that give it. It hasn't changed that much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The technical report that you mentioned, is that the first one that you had published, or when was the first one that you had done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was XB-70, I believe, was the first one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the primary author?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was second. The supervisor was the first author on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you've had several that you've published?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, I have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And some as the primary author on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A lot of them were as the primary author." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you like that aspect of compiling information and releasing it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it's kind of a closure. You've thought about the experiment, you've decided what you want to do, you get the information, you compile it all together, and you report on it. It makes a nice closure of what you're doing. Although the report writing itself can be kind of miserable. It's a case of everybody has ideas about how words should be written down, and if you happen to kind of go along the same path as the people who are reviewing it, then it's okay. If you get somebody who doesn't quite think the same way you do, then you wind up doing a lot of rewriting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've had both experiences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I've been fairly lucky most of the time. I haven't had to do that much rewriting. Some people, have had more problems with that. They just don't happen to think the way somebody else does, and sometimes you get the controversial reports and they kind of toss it back and forth. \"Well, we don't really want to say this\" and the next guy, \"Oh, yes. We do want to talk about this.\" And so the poor author gets kind of stuck in the middle about who's going to do what. But most of the time it goes fairly smooth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Has that process changed much since your first days here, to where you are now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's changed in the way you think about writing. Back in the days of the typewriter, you did handwriting on it. You did a lot of handwriting, because most of us couldn't type that well. So you were more conscious about your words. You did a lot of literally cutting and pasting of the words because you just got tired of rewriting it, and then you'd give it to somebody else to type, and then they would have to try and decipher what you'd written, so they could type it.\\n\\n But then because they just had the plain—as you know, when you first started out, you just had the plain manual typewriter. I remember one of the senior guys telling me, \"Well, we want to make sure we change these words that it comes out to the same number of words on this page, so they don't have to retype the pages after that.\" It was that kind of thing.\\n\\n Actually, when you got the report down close to the final stages, that's the thing you started think about, because if you had like, you know, even a ten-page report, if you changed something on the first page, the reports people were very concerned about how it looked, that it should look a certain way. So if you took out a paragraph on the first page, then you'd have to retype the whole report because it would look really funny to have this—it wouldn't matter if it was the second page, but the first page would be more significant, because now you're looking at retyping all the pages. Whereas if it's the last page, you're just retyping the last page.\\n\\n And so the senior guy's saying, \"Okay, we've got to be sure you get the same number of words in here so you don't have to retype the rest of it.\" And then one of them, he was saying, \"You've got to be careful when you think of the titles. Minimize the words so they don't have to type so many of these words.\" It was a different way of thinking then, because it was just a lot of—it was labor-intensive to do this, whereas now, when you type on a computer, you just type whatever you want and then you just drag it all over the place, and you change your sentences, you change your spelling, whatever.\\n\\n So it's changed the way you think. People don't think as hard about how they're going to write stuff now because you don't have to. The same way with programming. With a mainframe, you have your box of cards, so you run down there and you leave off your box of cards. Well, you might get, if you were lucky, two or three runs a day because there were other people coming down with their box of cards to have a run-through as well.\\n\\n So when you had an error on your program, you'd come back and you'd fix that one, but then you'd go through the whole program to see if there were any mistakes in there because you knew you were only going to get probably maybe one, and if you were lucky, two more runs that day, so you did a lot more analyzing at your desk of your program. Whereas now, you just make the change and run it again. Okay, if there's another mistake, I'll make another change.\\n\\n It's a different way of thinking. It's not necessarily better or worse, it's just a different way of thinking. And that's the same way with the writing. Everything was so labor-intensive when you were doing it manually that you thought differently about how you did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How else has technology changed your job since you first came here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "More travel. As you know, we have all these ways of communicating with people, but there's more travel now. I remember, trips used to be a big deal. If somebody went on a trip, there was a lot of planning that went into it. You didn't see them go very often and so when they'd come back, especially if they went, well, overseas one in particular, but when they went anywhere, there was a lot of effort that went into the trip, and now you just kind of, \"I'm going on a trip,\" and in two weeks you're gone. So it's just a lot more travel.\\n\\n Telephones. You used to have like one or two numbers for the whole office. Now everybody has their phone. That's changed. People didn't spend much time on the phone because you had everybody else looking at you, because somebody might be trying to get in touch with them and somebody might be trying to get in touch with the boss because they were sitting all close together there, so you didn't spend much time on the phone. So that's changed. Now everybody has their own telephone and there's not that worry about it.\\n\\n Copy machines. Of course, you have to be careful what you copy in your copy machine, but you'd go down and you'd hand them the sheet. This was just to make copies. This wasn't doing anything special, but you had to hand it to somebody to make the copy. And sometimes you'd get, you know, if you really knew the guys, they'd let you in and you could run your own copies. You didn't have to wait for them. But as was then and is now, people tended to copy things that weren't necessarily—I mean, you probably really didn't need to copy.\\n\\n But they wouldn't let you do it, and if they caught you then they'd run you out of the room and they wouldn't let you back in for a while. But you didn't just go down the hallway and copy anything. When the Xerox machines came out, that was a big deal. Still you'd hand it to them and they'd copy it for you, and they'd hand it back to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about your actual data processing that you had to do, or your plotting, the technology that affected some of those tasks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the film was what you would call an analog system because it was continuous, so you have to look at the data, you could look at your line on the film, and you'd have a feel for what's increasing here, what's decreasing there. You had a really good feel for it. If you'd see a blip on there, you look and see, well, everything's got a blip here, it's probably just some weird thing on the plane. We'll just ignore those points.\\n\\n But then when you went to the computers and the digital systems, you had so much more data. It was physically not impossible but close to it to look at it. So then you started putting in the filtering programs. Well, if the point exceeds this by so and so, we won't consider that and we'll just skip those. So you got away from your data. You got more data and you got it at a higher speed, but you weren't as close to it because there was just too much there. So it was kind of a mixed field there.\\n\\n In some respects, you've got more data now than you could ever think of. I mean, some horrendous amounts of data that you couldn't possibly look at, but on the other hand, you don't really have a feel for what's happening as well. You aren't as close to it. Whatever number comes out of the computer.\\n\\n And this is the problem with if you aren't familiar with what's supposed to happen, how the data is supposed to be looking. It's coming out of the computer and my program, I know, is working right. There's a tendency to think that, well, it's got to be right. Well, maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but you don't have as good a feel for it, especially the younger people.\\n\\n The older people, a lot of them would still run a few hand calculations to make sure that everything was okay. And of course, a lot of them, they just had a feel for it. They'd look at and they could say, \"Oh, that's squirrelly. That's not right. We've got to back and check that out.\" So in some respects we know a lot more, but we don't really know as much either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a situation or were you part of a situation where that happened, where some computer data came out and you just knew there was something squirrelly with it and felt like something needed to be checked again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Any time I saw points that didn't agree with what I thought or what I was expecting, yes, I would go back and check them out. And sometimes it would turn out to be just an electrical blip in a plane or while the plane was flying, there was just a blip, yes. So I always checked those out.\\n\\n The other thing is, people do averaging of the numbers. And again, it's about all you can do when you've got so much data, but it's really easy to average in values that really aren't the ones you want there. It makes it more difficult to analyze what you've got, because there's just so much data out there.\\n\\n The X-15 flight would last maybe ten minutes at the most, so yes, you had a lot of points to plot out, but you're only looking at ten minutes and you could read it—I can't remember how close you can read it. Probably a tenth [of a second]. I don't know. Well, the lines, they weren't that far apart, but you had to find that number of points you could look at. Whereas with the digital stuff, you've got a lot of stuff there and you just have to be more careful with it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From what you're saying, it seems like there's such an emphasis on each person making sure that their work was done so exact because it affected so many other parts of the project. Well, the X-15, like you mentioned, was somewhat of an exciting project for you to work on as well. Were you on that project a while?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A while, yes. It was fun to work on that. Again, I hadn't even heard of an X-15, and then I got here—well, I think I may have heard of it, but then I discovered there were three of them. I didn't realize. A lot of the stuff, I really didn't know that much about. I hadn't followed the aviation like some of the people had. I don't know if any of our group were that really involved with aviation. We were just kind of a general interest at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that you mentioned you were one of few females that arrived here as part of your co-op program. Were there very many females that were on the Center, working at the Center, when you arrived, in an engineering or professional capacity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Bertha [M.] Ryan was here, and Harriet [J. DeVries Stephenson Smith], and Elsie [B.] McGowan would have been here. Connie [Eaton Harney], I think, came a little after the—I don't think she was here when I first came. Elsie was within a few months, within a year or so of when I came. Connie was a little bit later than that, so she wasn't here when I first came.\\n\\n Beverly [Strickland] Klein was here at that time, I think. No, I don't think she was. I think she came later, too. But for sure, when I came it was Bertha and Harriet and Roxanah [Yancey] and Mary Little [Kuhl] and Katherine, Katherine [H.] Armistead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, Roxanah had a group of people who worked as computers, but that was not going to be your role. Did people sometimes confuse that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, the computers were off in their own room. By the time I came, they were all in one room, so there really wasn't any confusion in that respect. Not really. Co-ops always complain about getting all the tedious work, but that's about all you can give to them and they expected that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your co-op program lasted several years, but then, of course, you came on as full time. Did your role change, and how did it change once you took the full-time employment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That one you had to be a little bit careful of, and it was the same way for the boys as the girls, the men and women in the program, because people tended to remember what you had been, so it was a little bit of a transition there. Not real hard, but you just had to be aware of it, that people still remembered you as the co-op, and I can understand that. As I get older, the years, they go by pretty fast. It's hard to keep these people straight and equal.\\n\\n So that was a concern, but everybody had that problem who was a co-op. You just had to remember that you were no longer the co-op, you were actually the engineer now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work with co-ops then that were part of your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure they were somewhat grateful to know that you understood what they were going through. Sometimes that helps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it does. Yes, it does help." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you got here, even as a co-op, and for sure as a full-time person, did you find someone that kind of helped you learn more about the Center, someone that maybe might have served as your mentor, or just someone that you could talk with sometimes when you had questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were more just friends. I wouldn't say they were really mentors. They were more just friends I did things with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The atmosphere of Dryden, from what we read, it was more of family, close-knit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Especially those early days. Did you find that when you arrived as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, everybody knew everybody. They had a picnic. Most of the people would go and they all knew each other. They knew their families, they knew their kids. I noticed that. You'd say, \"I'm working for so and so,\" and they'd say, \"Oh, yes. I know them\" or \"We did this together\" or something. So yes, it was still that way at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Other social activities. You mentioned that you lived in Lancaster and worked out here. Did people socialize as well after work, other than organized activities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they did some socializing. They had their softball teams and there would be quite a few of—the NASA people would be on it. They also had the basketball teams. That's about the main things. And they had people who hiked together and they fished together. So there was some of that.\\n\\n Hiking was a big thing for the group I was in. The particular people I was around, they really liked the hiking so they were always talking about their hiking trips and they'd go on their long hiking trips and they'd go fishing and they'd do things like that. That was about all they did.\\n\\n Bike-riding wasn't really a big thing then. You didn't have the ten-speeds yet so that wasn't as big a thing. Some of them had motorcycles, but usually they rode by themselves. They didn't really have those groups yet. There were some activities but you were pretty much on your own. You made your own friends and did your own things. It wasn't a formal activity type thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How often did your projects change? You mentioned you were on the X-15 for a while. Did you get other ones as you were on the X-15, or were you finished with one and they moved you to another?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You tended to finish a project at that time and gradually, maybe you would be phasing in as the other was phasing out, but you tended to be more one project, unless you were in like the airspeed group because then they would do the airspeed for all the projects, so if you were in a group that was a discipline function, then you would likely be on more than one. But there were enough people in the group that usually you just wound up working on one. They might be working on something different, but you would usually be working on the one project, primarily." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what group were you—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in the vehicle aerodynamics group. That was its name at one time. Like now, the names keep changing but that was the name for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And after the X-15, where did you move to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let's see, where did I go to then? That would have been the SR-71. I worked on that. That was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about that. Why was that one fun?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was a relatively new airplane at that time, and of course it was secret. This got everybody all excited. We've got a secret project. So everybody always enjoyed that. And it's just a nice-looking airplane. It's a really slick—I don't know what expression I want to use, but it's a very exciting airplane to look at. It looks like it can go fast, and it could, so that was—it was exciting to work on something like that. It was new, relatively new. It was called the YF-12 at that time, because it was a prototype. So that's what made it exciting.\\n\\n The XB-70 was interesting, but it was kind of a big lumbering-looking airplane. It wasn't nearly as trim and sleek-looking as the SR-71s are. Well, you've probably seen an SR-71. They're a pretty slick-looking airplane. And YF-12s looked just like them, basically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your duties and responsibilities while you were on that project stay the same, or did they change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They stayed somewhat the same. You had more responsibility or worked more independently. The supervisor knew that you could handle it so they didn't follow you as close. It was more just checking up to see how things were going than what you actually were doing, so that worked out pretty good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it more and more of a one-on-one tag-up with your supervisors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they have team meetings of everyone within your group to trade information, or did you need to know what other people in your group were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not usually. They were usually on a different project, so you didn't really need to know. If anything came up you thought was important that everybody should know about, then you'd share that, but most of the time you didn't. Some of the groups, I didn't wind up in one of those, you'd actually be the whole project. They had a YF-12 project office, but the people in our group didn't actually sit in that office. We were more of the piggy-back experiments, and so we didn't sit in with them. They were more the primary experiments. The piggy-back experiment, you didn't have to come up with as much money because, after all, I'm going along for the ride, so I don't have to pay for as much. And so our office tended to do more of that at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you located physically on the Center, what building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "4800. 4800 was the only building. Well, no, they had the heat facility. What is it called now? Something else. Structures Thermal Lab or something or other now. They'd call it the heat facility and everybody referred to it as heat facility. Of course, I thought, being from Iowa, that it was the building that generated all the heat that was sent around. It took me a while to figure out that that wasn't really what they meant by the heat facility. But that was my first—when they said \"heat,\" I thought, \"Oh, yeah, I know what a heat facility is. We've got one of those up at school.\"\\n\\n So there were the two primary buildings then, the heat facility and 4800, with the hangars on each side. The hangars were there. All the other stuff came. We had the '63 addition. They even built the ISF [Integrated Support Facility]. They've added a lot of buildings on since then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working on the X-15 and the SR-71, did you have any idea what—because you mentioned that it was secret, so did you have any idea what other people were working on? I mean, did you know about the other projects that were going on at the Center at the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If they weren't secret, you would know what they were working on. If they were secret, you'd have speculation about what they were working on. You might not know exactly what they were doing, but you could figure out, oh, they're working on that. Usually you had an idea at least what the plane was. You may not know what they were doing but you would try to figure out. You'd listen closely to see what they said. Same way it is now. If somebody knows something you don't know, you try and figure out what they're doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it was kind of a unique time for the country, because it was the Cold War time, but yet we were starting to get so much involved with the human space flight area, and the projects seemed to be somewhat diverse." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I should add that even though you wanted to know what everybody else was working on, you didn't really care to know too much because then you didn't have to worry about slipping and letting it out. We weren't involved with the space stuff as much. The lifting bodies came along, but that was—I wasn't involved with those very much at all. Other people worked on those.\\n\\n The first one was, a lot of it was an in-house effort. It was about that time that—the lifting bodies were going is about the time that Bertha [M. Ryan] left, and part of the reason—Paul [F.] Bickle was the Center director at that time, but he didn't—you know, women were okay, but you couldn't really trust them. I shouldn't really say he said that but he didn't give them positions of authority, and his secretary didn't have much authority, like the secretaries you would expect for a Center director's secretary to have.\\n\\n She didn't have that kind of authority. She kept his schedule, she answered his phones, and relayed the messages. Whereas a lot of the secretaries now, you know, they have a little more authority than that. So he wasn't really sure he wanted women in these positions that required authority and responsibility. [His attitude about women in positions of authority began changing when his daughter entered the workforce. That was a year or two before he retired.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see that change through the years since you've been here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, it's changed. It's more now that for the women, you know, true equality, I read it somewhere and I don't know who I read it from, but true equality is when the people of equal ability get to have the same chance for the job. And for women and I suspect for a lot of minorities, it's not equal ability. You have to be vastly superior before you can be considered for the job, and there's still a lot of that. It's not equal ability, so you have to be more capable than your competition. If you're equally capable, then chances are you're not going to get it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you had opportunities for advancement since you've been here. Surely, hopefully, they don't still see you as the co-op?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they don't see me as the co-op. Yes, I've had some opportunities. Most of the women that have advanced, it helps if you're more aggressive. You don't have to be but it helps a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's still mainly men at Dryden, or are the numbers starting to shift to where there are more women?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's still mainly men. There's a few women, but it's still primarily men. The women who are at the, what would be considered more the senior management level, are definitely more aggressive than a lot of women are. It's not to say there's anything bad about it, their personalities are just much more aggressive than most of the other women are." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about the engineering field? Do you have more colleagues that are females now than you've had before, or do you see that number increasing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's more. I haven't worked in that area for a while. Right now I'm in the—well, you probably don't know I'm in the management systems support office. I've been helping the Center get certified for ISO [International Organization for Standardization], so I've been a little out of the engineering field as such. But there are more women. I see more of them. I see some of them leaving as well. They're quicker to leave, I think, than they used to be, or maybe they're leaving about the same rate. I'm not sure.\\n\\n They look at it and they see what's happening and they say, \"Well, it's not the best place for me to be here. Maybe I might as well move on to another spot.\" And I expect to see some more of them leaving, the younger ones, because a lot of the people in the branch-level management now are getting to be—well, they're younger. Like younger, they're probably in their forties.\\n\\n But they're at the age where, if you're coming up, you're looking at these people and you realize, they're going to be here a long time, and if I want to advance in any of these positions, I need to do some serious thinking because it's not likely these people are going to change. So I expect to see some of the women leaving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you've been here long enough to know that the turnover route is such—does the turnover affect the projects, because of the way that the teams work together, or is it sometimes good to have new people coming in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Certainly with new people coming in you have the new ideas, the fresh perspectives. That's always good. You're losing some of the memories, some of the corporate memories, and what was done. I think all of NASA right now is in a state of turmoil as to what's going to be happening, and it's reflected here in Dryden now. There's a lot of unease.\\n\\n We're unsure what is really going to be happening, what kind of projects are going to be worked on, and what's going happen. We don't really have a flying project as such right now, so the people who are interested in working on airplanes, they're looking at this and they realize that if you actually want to work on an airplane that's flying, you have to do some hard thinking because it's not clear what's going to be happening here, which way we're going to go.\\n\\n And that's just part of—that's all of NASA right now. NASA's having a big problem right now about what they're going to do with getting the funds for the [International] Space Station, what's going to be cut, what isn't going to be cut. I know Kennedy [Space Center] and JSC [Johnson Space Center] have been going through more turmoil, I think, than Dryden even. The flight programs are getting few and far between because the money is going towards the space side, and so if the people want to be involved with a flight program, they've got to think about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How valuable is a corporate memory when you're working on flight testing and flight analysis? You know, the years that you've been here and you mentioned that long ago, that some of the people that have been here know what to look for, and if you could share some of the information or share just your feelings on how valuable it is to have that memory to build on and to share." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It goes both ways. Certainly when you have the corporate memory, people who are really good at it can look at a shape or at a particular design and say, \"This is what I expect is going to happen. This is what we have to worry about.\" The down side to the corporate memory is that, this is the way we've always done it and it's worked in the past and that's the way we're going to do it now.\\n\\n So you have the younger people coming in, and I've heard some of them talking about it, and they're all fired up. They've got all these new ideas they want to try, these new ways they want to approach it, and they run into the people who've been here a while and they say, \"We're not going to do it that way. This is the way we've always done it. This is the way we're going to do it.\"\\n\\n And it's very hard on them, because their ideas aren't bad. In fact, a lot of them should be accepted and used, but it's not going to happen, not while you have some of the corporate memory here. I know one of the younger guys. It's been a few years ago. Basically, that's what it was. He had this way he wanted to do something, and it had to do with computers, but the person he was working with at that time, and the guy has since retired, wouldn't let him do it. He was getting very frustrated, because he wanted to try these new things, he wanted to do these new things, but you simply can't do it. So the down side of the corporate memory is that you don't get the new ideas in, so the trick is somehow to get the two to merge, and that's hard.\\n\\n I don't know the best way to do that. Somehow, the people with the corporate memory have to be open to letting them try new ideas, and maybe even making a few mistakes along the way, so they can see why you want to do it a particular way, or what you have to consider when you do something like this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you had experience in some of the projects that you worked on where you were able to see this merging, that made a great breakthrough that resulted in something that benefited the project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's usually not the way we do it here. Like most places, somebody says they're going to retire and then they retire and then they decide, well, son of a gun, they did retire. Now we've got to get somebody in that job. There's a tendency to do that, but there's enough work going on that you don't want to double up on this one particular area in essentially a teacher-student type mode, and so you wind up with the person leaving and then the next guy that comes in picks it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, tell us about other projects that you've worked on. You mentioned the SR-71. Did something follow that was as exciting as that one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked on the F-111 Mission Adaptive Wing [MAW]. That was fun. It was a big project. That was a lot of fun. It was another one to do on the F-111. It wasn't the MAW at that time, but it was more base drag, more looking at ways to alleviate base drag. So it was interesting.\\n\\n The MAW was—it was a pretty big project, and I wound up being the technical chairman of the committee of the last presentation they had for the MAW, and that was interesting, working with all the different people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the first time you had done something like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It involved getting them all to get their papers written. A lot of nagging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mother hen type of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That's what the technical chairman winds up doing a lot of, because you have to get the papers all together, you have to get the presentations all together. They all have to come around at the same time. And it's checking up, \"How are you doing on this? Do you need any help? What are the problems you're having?\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a time period that you had to have all that done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. We had a time period, so you mapped it all out. This is when the symposium is going to be held. Okay, so this is when everything has to be done, and this is what has to be done, and you just set up dates by when you need to meet these certain deadlines, otherwise you aren't going to make it at the end. We made it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to travel and do presentations about some of the work that you were working on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not as much. There wasn't as much traveling as there is now. I did do some presentations at groups, but not as much as happens now. Probably about the last five years or so, it seems like they've been traveling a lot. I think that's going to end, too, because the travel money is getting tighter. NASA, to me, appears to be in—we’re in another change, and what's going to be happening after the change, nobody's really quite sure, and it's really traumatic because the old ways, the old days, are gone and we aren't sure what the new days are going to be like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thinking about those older days, is there a project or a time period that you reflect on as being one of your favorites since you've been here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably the SR-71. That was a lot of fun. You had to go down to this separate hangar because you had to keep it in a secret hangar, so you had to have all the badges to get in there. That was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to witness the flight testing of that as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. You sat in the control room and you'd see what was going on. Strip charts were really advancing by then so you had a lot of strip charts you could look at." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were a lot of people in the control rooms at the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Actually, there were quite a few. It's people on the project, so I don't know how many would have been in there. I don't know, ten, twelve, fifteen. I don't know. There was quite a few in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to see what they were doing or were you so focused on what you were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Usually you were focused on what you were doing, because your purpose at the strip chart was to see, how is your data? Are they getting the data you need? Are they getting the point you want? Is your instrumentation working okay? That was your purpose of being in there, so you could check to see when your point was taken. And because the flights were so long, you kept track of when your points and they only processed certain parts of the tape. They didn't process the whole, I think they were like three-hour flights. They didn't process the whole flight then because you didn't need it. Nothing was there that you were interested in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a time that you thought maybe this wasn't a good decision for you to be here, some time frustrating that you just maybe wished that you could move on some place?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think everybody runs into that. But I didn't move on at that time. It might have been better, it might not have. Most of the people that move on—a lot of the people that move on, move on within about the first, probably about the first five or six years, because they're starting to get enough experience, they're starting to move up in whatever they want to do, and then it becomes clear at that point whether the path they want to take is going to be open. And so if it's not, then that's when they decide whether they're going to stay and take the ultimate path or whether they're going to move on and try and find another path." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell me about your silver Snoopy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did work on the Space Shuttle. It was the first one. Was it the Enterprise?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Enterprise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My mind's going here. So it was just basically the drop test, and I worked on the airspeed part of that, so that was interesting, too. I enjoyed that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was something completely different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your first thoughts when you were assigned to that project and learned what you were going to be doing in this totally different aircraft?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, naturally, since you have the old naysayers here, there was a lot of discussion about, they can't do it, they'll never be able to land it on a given spot, can't do it. And obviously, they did do it. It was pretty exciting because you weren't sure what was going to happen, whether it really was going to do it or not.\\n\\n So it was exciting, to see that happening. You weren't sure when it went off the plane if the whole thing wasn't going to crash into the tail and knock both planes out of the sky. You can do all your studies, but when they finally actually do something, that's when you find out whether your studies are right or not. So it was exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long were you working on those studies before they actually tried it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm not sure. I probably spent, I don't know, maybe two years on that total." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to watch the testing as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was up in the control room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That must have been so exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. We got some data off the first flight, so the Space Shuttle was coming back to see if it was agreeing, so it was a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you seen it land here as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From an actual flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Almost saw it take off. My husband actually got the trip for that. He worked on the Shuttle as well. But they aborted that flight, so he didn't get to see it launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe one day soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe one day. I did see an Apollo launch, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you working here at the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The director at that time had connections at Kennedy, so a number of us planned a big trip back to Kennedy to see the Apollo launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course, I didn't see Saturn [rocket], but I understand watching a Saturn V launch was pretty impressive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I almost didn't go either. They kept delaying it and delaying it and we kept staying and staying, and finally it went off, so it was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember which one it was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't. [Apollo 17]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a few years back. That's understandable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't remember which one it was now. It was one of the night launches, though. I've got some nice pictures of it launching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you keep up with the LLRV from where it left here? I know that that was about the time that you were finishing school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn't really keep up with it after that. I'm not sure anybody really did much keeping up with it. Once it leaves here it's hard to be involved with it anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the Space Shuttle and also I believe you worked on the X-29. Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Not as much, but I did work on it, yes. I did a parameter estimation study on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was it different, or was it different, from the other projects that you worked on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was actually more a paper study. I didn't have an actual experiment on the plane, so that was different. Usually I had an experiment on the plane, but this one I didn't. Some of these things just kind of run together in your mind, actually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask Sandra. You have any—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just thinking back, the time you were here and just what was going on in the country and the dress code the women followed more so then than they do now. Have you noticed a lot of changes as far as how you're allowed to dress, or was there an actual dress code at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not a written dress code, but, yes, there was a dress code. You wore skirts to work, dresses. You didn't wear slacks. You just didn't wear slacks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that make it hard to do your job sometimes? I mean, if you're having to go out and check out planes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of the time you didn't have to climb on the plane. When I started working on the XB-70, I did have to climb on the plane, so I had coveralls that I changed into whenever I went out to check my experiment on the airplane. And probably—well, it would have been probably in the seventies is when they finally started changing the dress code and women started wearing slacks to work.\\n\\n But prior to that time, like I said, it wasn't written down but you just didn't do it. You wore hose and skirts and dresses. You didn't wear slacks, you didn't wear shorts, and that's what all the women wore.\\n\\n But when the seventies started, then the dress code changed a lot. The women working now and even the women who started working in the seventies, they don't really understand that. They never went through it and that's just the way it is, and that's all they remember and they never really understood that. You were a lot more restricted in what you did. They worried more about what you did after hours than they did now, because of your security clearance, so they followed what you did after hours, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they follow the men the same way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably not. I don't really know. But I know that a woman got talked to about after-hours activities. They actually did. They were—you were much more watched about what you did, much more concerned about what you did. So when the women started coming in the seventies, they didn't understand that. They had never been through that. I don't know if they ever will understand that. It was just a different way of doing stuff. They had a lot more freedom to do whatever they wanted to do. That was a big change, it really was.\\n\\n The men's clothing didn't change as much, because it was a point of pride or honor among a lot of the engineers out here that they wore more the casual clothes. They didn't always come in the shirt and tie. Besides that, they worked down on the airplanes and they were doing stuff, so they didn't—so that was a big point with a lot of the men, but the women were expected to be dressed up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No matter what." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No matter what." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like you were ever discouraged, as far as when you were in school or when you first started out in your career? Engineering, even at that time, wasn't a normal field for women to go into. Do you ever feel like you were discouraged at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My mother didn't want me to go into engineering because she knew how hard it was going to be. She felt, you know, there's easier things out there to take than that. Why don't you consider those? I never noticed it in the instructors as such. The problem was that I was the only engineering student in my—aerospace engineering student. There was one in architecture in the dorm. So you wound up working by yourself.\\n\\n A lot of the guys, either in the fraternities or even in the dormitories, had files from previous classes on the engineering work, so they would go into their files to check out what was going on. In that respect, it made it harder for the women because you didn't have the files. They didn't even have files of some of the tests. [The fraternities and men’s dormitories had copies of previous tests.]\\n\\n I don't know how long [how many years of tests]—but you hear them talk about it occasionally, so in that respect, yes, it was—it wasn't that they would discourage you from doing it, but you weren't playing quite from the same field that they were playing, so that did make it more of a challenge. And the instructors I had were pretty good. Most of them, it didn't make any difference to them. If it did, they never showed it.\\n\\n My advisor was, he wasn't quite sure how—he was relatively young. I thought he was old, naturally, but he was relatively young, and I think he wound up with all three of the girls, and he wasn't quite sure what to do with all these—he would have been much more at ease with the boys than with the girls. He didn't discourage you but he wasn't as at ease with the women as he was with the men.\\n\\n But no, nobody really discouraged. You never heard any voices coming out and saying, \"What are you doing in it?\" One thing though, when I graduated, there was a company in my hometown that had engineers, and my mother said, \"Oh, why don't you apply for that?\" So I went in and talked to them and it turned out they weren't interested in hiring me at all. They just wanted to talk to a woman engineer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because they'd never talked to one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's about it, yes. So you did run into that. The government couldn't do that, and most of the people here, you didn't have that impression that they felt that way. They may have but they didn't show it. Like I said, Paul Bickle, I haven't ever heard him say anything about women. Women just didn't get promoted to any positions of responsibility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So there was more of an undercurrent?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's wasn't overt. That's about all I have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we close, I would like to talk about your monograph that you did, and I think Sandra's letting me know that we might want to stop and take a break for just a second and change the tape out, but after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Referring to behavior and working attitude at Dryden]—things that have changed, and I don't know if it's just because I'm older and I don't see it anymore. When I started here, the people were more spontaneous, they seemed to do more things, they seemed young at heart, and the people now don't seem to be as young at heart.\\n\\n I know the one guy, this Terry Larson, a real character, they were talking about when they were younger engineers, they'd go on top of the hangar and they'd make their paper airplanes, and then they'd throw them off the roof. Naturally, most of them would go back in the hangar. Well, they got chastised for doing that because all these paper airplanes were coming in the hangar.\\n\\n Poor Terry, he was one of these guys, he was very good at taking a joke, but they were always pulling practical jokes on each other, and I don't know, the younger people, they seem much more solemn now. They don't seem to pull these practical jokes on people anymore. It's interesting. It's like the place is kind of old and stodgy, compared to what it was when I came there.\\n\\n There was a lot of energy. They'd come back from their hikes and some of them would be burned almost beyond recognition, but they were out doing things. And they'd talk about their flight parties and all the problems they had getting home and all the drinking. It was just a different atmosphere. I'm not saying that drinking is good, but they did a lot of those things and you don't hear those stories.\\n\\n It's like, there was an article in some magazine, I can't remember which one it was now, but one of the women engineers, and I'm pretty sure who it was, made the quote, referring to the fact that they had seemed to be doing more fun things, did more fun things. Now you see the pilot going down the street. On the back of his car he has this bumper sticker that says, \"My student is an honor student at such and such a school.\"\\n\\n It's just a completely different atmosphere in that respect. It's much more solemn. They don't laugh very much. I don't know if you've noticed that where you work or not, but it's a different type of spirit. Maybe times are more solemn now. Certainly you're more safe with seatbelts and all this other stuff they have, but the spirit of adventure, it's just not there like it used to be.\\n\\n You say it's good to have all this stuff and it is, but we've lost something, too. It's just, the excitement is not the same. It's a different group. Of course, some of the stuff, I did, too. But I remember, just recently, this younger woman with her kid. She was talking about, we were at this place, and there was more than one car, and my husband took off in the car and he took the childcare seat. Well, we couldn't go anywhere then because we didn't have a childcare seat to put the baby in. I was sitting there, \"Yes, that's true. That probably is true,\" but I remember some of the things we did, and we wouldn't have worried about any childcare seat. It's a different mentality." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's interesting, especially in our field, talking with people about how they were able to adapt to whatever situation. Well, we might have thought it would have been extremely challenging. They just said, \"That's what we just did, and that's what we had to do and go on.\" They didn't find all the reasons that they couldn't do it. They just found the reasons that they needed to do it.\\n\\n And that was one of the things that we wanted to come back and talk to you about, is the information that you put together about a group of women that did that. You put together a publication you called \"Women in Flight Research at NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center from 1946 to 1995.\" Tell me why you decided to put this effort into this publication." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it started out, I think I even mentioned in there that the Society of Women Engineers was having a meeting, and a bunch of us said, \"Hey, it would be kind of fun to go to that,\" and so I thought, \"Well, what could I write about?\" I could write about the Society of Women Engineers, I could write about the history of women at Dryden, and I did that, and then the paper just kind of expanded from that, because one of my colleagues said, \"You should put in about the film recorders\" and all this other stuff, and it was a good idea, and I did put it in there.\\n\\n Looking back, I was lucky in the time I wrote it because the people that I knew who had worked on these things were still here, so I'd just go down and ask them, \"What did you do on this?\" and they could tell me, and most of those people are retired now. It would be really hard to get that. The men. The women were already retired.\\n\\n I have a lot of respect for what the women did then. They went through a lot. They were really pioneers, but you never hear anything about them. They were a significant part. They were a substantial part of the group, but they weren't really acknowledged as that. They were just the workers. They just did the work. And I guess part of it was, too—like with my mother, they did a lot of things. They deserved to be recognized for what they did, and that's part of the reason I did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you talked with them, did they realize the contribution that they had made to the history of Dryden or did you feel they just felt they were doing their job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They did their job, and that was the response I got from some of them was, \"Well, I just did my job. I don't see why you want to write about this.\" And in fact, one of the people out here who was in a supervisory position said, \"Well, I don't see why you're writing about history. We don't write about history at Dryden.\" And of course, he went on to write histories of some of his work.\\n\\n There wasn't a lot of support for it, there really wasn't. The Center director, Ken [Kenneth J.] Szalai, supported me in it, but the support in between was kind of spotty. Sometimes you'd get support, sometimes you wouldn't, but he did support the activity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have difficulties finding the information that you were trying to document to put in here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really, because a lot of the men, in particular, were still here. I knew them, I'd worked with them, they had no problem talking to me about it, especially with the film recorder stuff. They were proud of their work that they had done at that time and they were more than happy to talk to me about how it was done.\\n\\n I knew the people to talk to. Somebody else coming in wouldn't have known the people to talk to. I knew the people to talk to and they knew me, and so they were more than willing to talk to me about it. I got a lot from Terry Larson, I got a lot from Dean Webb. Dean Webb encouraged me a lot, in writing this. In fact, he's the one that wanted me to expand it to include about how the data was actually reduced. That was a good idea, and I did.\\n\\n But it would be difficult, even for me now, to get that kind of information because the people aren't here anymore. They were eligible to retire when I was talking to them, and they have since retired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you thought about other information or have you found other information since the publication's been released that you would have liked to put in here? Like if you could do an addendum, is there information that you've thought of that would go nicely in here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not as much. I was so happy to get it out [laughter]. I have found out more about the first expresses that were published. I could add that in there. I haven't really thought that much about it. Like I said, it took me a long time to get it out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long? Estimate the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably about three years. And I got down to where I was almost ready to go. I was trying to make an SP [Special Publication] because it didn't fit in any other categories, so I thought it would be a special publication, and I couldn't get approval from a supervisor that I needed to get approval to have it as an SP, as it was. So I sent it off to headquarters. I saw an article about the history office back there, so I just sent it off to the headquarters history guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of feedback are you getting back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Positive. I got a lot of positive feedback on that one. One of the best-selling ones I've ever written. [Laughter] People actually say they read it and they like it. One of the engineers who I talked to a lot about it says he—he hasn't told me, he's told a friend of mine, who then told me, that he thinks it's a really great paper, he really enjoys all the stuff in it, and he uses it a lot.\\n\\n So I've got a lot of feedback from it. The Embry-Riddle [Aeronautical University] used it for one of their courses. I have no idea what they used it for but they used it for one of their courses. I think it probably would have been for the data reduction section that had the film recorders, and it's been referenced by a guy who wrote about film recorders. He was writing about that. It's been very pleasant. I've been very pleased with the reaction I got from people. I've got a lot of positive comments from people about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we've certainly learned a lot from it. Some of the women that you've talked about, when we talked to them about it, were very pleased that that information has gotten out. Do you have another project in the works, or are you planning another writing project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. I haven't thought of another one. Like I said, if I hadn't sent it to headquarters, it would not have been published, because the supervisor that needed to sign it simply was not going to sign off to get it published." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, at least you have an avenue now to go with if you have another idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe it's my only inspiration. I haven't come up with anything since then to write about. The women now, certainly there's been some changes going on. Maybe because I know them too well. They don't seem nearly as exciting. They're okay. I'm not saying that. They're nice enough people.\\n\\n The times don't seem as exciting now. You don't have the stories like with Lita Holleman talking about she didn't go on her trip because it wouldn't have been accepted for her to do that, even though there would have been a chaperone along. It just wouldn't have been looked upon as well. Somehow, the women now—I don't know. They don't seem to have the struggles.\\n\\n Like I said before, they don't realize the struggles that everybody has gone through to get them where they are. I don't think they understand the struggles their mothers went through, either. Some of them, you can tell, when they talk about their mother, \"They didn't really do it like they should have.\" Well, you know, they had different times. They did what they could. And like I said, I don't know. If I think of anything, I will, but at that time, it was a struggle to get it out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you talked to the women that you feature in your publication, did they remember a lot of the details? Sometimes they say it's the same thing, day in and day out, so were they able to provide lots of information for you, or did you have to piece a lot of it together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's one of those situations where the people I worked with talked a lot about how things used to be, what they used to have to do, and I came in at a time when I still could see what they had to do. I didn't do the airspeed, I never really worked much in that area. But from working with film, I knew what kind of effort they'd gone through. From fairing curves by hand, I know what kind of effort was involved. I'd heard about it.\\n\\n It was like the stories you hear when you're growing up. The tales were all there, and so when I would talk to the women, they would certainly fill in areas that I didn't know about, but I was able to more ask them specific questions because I had a good feel for what they had actually worked at and what they had actually done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it seemed like you certainly had a sensitivity since you were the second or the next generation of women that came to Dryden to do yet another field of work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It wasn't a cold call in that I didn't know what they had been through. I didn't know a lot of the people but I knew people that they knew. It's like Mary Little. I knew Mary Little. I never worked with her on anything but I knew who she was, and she knew who I was. We just worked in different areas. Roxanah—again, I knew her. I never worked with her, but I knew her. Katherine Armistead, Kay, I worked in the same general area, so I knew more about her, and then Harriet, I never worked with, either. We were small enough that I knew all these people.\\n\\n It would have been difficult for me just to call up some of the women like [Mary] Tut Hedgepeth and Beverly [Swanson] Cothren if I hadn't been so immersed in what had gone on here. But everybody that I talked to knew these people, or knew of them. It was one of these continuous things that they knew them. I don't know if that answers your question or not, but it was more that I was here and it was kind of, you know, like the tales you hear, it was a matter of sorting them out and getting the actual facts from the people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure it was a bit of a comfort to them to know that someone who understood what they did was trying to now put it down on paper for somebody else, so they didn't have to go back through all the stages of explanation, that you could certainly appreciate that. Well, we certainly have appreciated the information, and the opportunity to sit and talk with you as the—like I said—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—the group that you're involved with. Are there any other areas that you can think of that—or projects, any anecdotes of being at Dryden? How many years have you been here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thirty-eight. No, I can't really think of anything in particular. We had the old cafeteria. The old cafeteria was in 4800. It was a big shock to people when they had to walk outside the building to the cafeteria. It was bad news as far as they were concerned. A lot of grumbling about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Before, you didn't have to go outside. You'd just go down to the cafeteria and get your ice cream cones and they would scoop out the ice cream for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that kind of a time at lunch, too, that everybody saw everybody else, when the cafeteria was there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. You could see everybody there. A lot of people brought their lunches. A lot of people would take breaks in the cafeteria, so you would see a lot of different people in the cafeteria. Now, a lot of the people I don't know anymore. A lot of new people. It's hard to know when you look back, whether people were really that much closer, or were they just imagined that way? But I think they were. I think there was a—proximity-wise, you were just much closer. I don't know.\\n\\n The numbering of the building. We renumbered it many times, and you never could figure out what the new numbers were so you just, you know, who are you going to see? That's where they are. A lot of changing of names. Different directors. When Paul Bickle left—in my mind, the reason he left was because the times were changing and he didn't want to change, and that's not a bad reason to leave.\\n\\n But it left us kind of vulnerable because he hadn't been keeping up with the changes. He hadn't been making the inputs for Dryden, so when the next group came in, they were at a disadvantage. There were kind of funny ones there for a while. We had a lot of scandal.\\n\\n The director that came in, Dave [David R.] Scott, one of the women that worked as a contractor on the YF-12 was a very attractive woman. Dave Scott liked attractive women. He got her in as his secretary. That had a lot of the women upset because she was an attractive woman and she dressed like she was proud of her shape, and so she had these tight-fitting clothes, short skirts and high heels, fancy hairdos.\\n\\n The woman who was the secretary didn't care because he put her with the lawyer, but she was interested in being a paralegal anyway, so that didn't make any difference to her. And then just to make sure that all the areas were covered, he had another woman come in who did get along with the sexy chick, to do the actual work. So he had everybody up in the air. All the women, anyway. The guys, I don't know, they had different, probably, reactions. Some of the women were really upset about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite a change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Quite a change. But then he left and the next guy came in. An outsider has a hard time coming into this place, they really do. It's getting better because we aren't as small as we used to be, we aren't as much of a family as we used to be, so the people coming in have an easier time. But back then, it was really hard for anybody to come in.\\n\\n We had some outside Center directors, and it was very difficult for them. And Dave, I don't think, he didn't worry about. He had his job so he was happy. But the first black guy that came here as the Center director [Isaac “Ike” Gillam], he always felt it was because of his race. It may have been some of that but we were just a really tight, closed Center, and he was the outsider.\\n\\n So no matter what his ideas were, if they didn't agree with what the inside group wanted, there was this united front to try and not agree with whatever he wanted, so he had a really hard time. It was just, we were a very small Center, and if you've ever lived in a small town, that's what we were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the pilots fit in to all the team efforts and workings of the people that were here? Were they part of those teams or were they leaders of the teams, or just pilots?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gods is probably too high a term to use for them, but it was kind of like that. The pilots were basically the last word on anything. If they didn't like something on the plane. And there's a lot of justification for that. After all, they're the ones going out and risking their life, so they had a lot of influence, a lot of concessions, I guess you would say, for the pilots. One of my supervisors one time was all upset about what was happening with one of his planes, because they were just taking it out and using it for pilot proficiency. He never made any progress on that one because, well, so what—your problem is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work closely with them, with your work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. They'd be in the tech briefs, they'd be in the pre- and post-flight briefs. But no, you didn't work that closely. Most of the people didn't work that closely with the pilots. The crew was obviously the ones that worked really close with the pilots, they worked really close with. They knew who you were, you could talk to them, they were friendly enough, but I didn't work that closely and most of the engineers didn't work that closely with them.\\n\\n If you were involved with a simulator, then you would have worked closely with the pilots because they would have come down to run the simulator so then you would have gotten to know them better, but I didn't work with the simulators. Otherwise, you just wouldn't have a chance to be with them. But that's why it's been really hard for the Center because a lot of the flight projects have gone away. The pilots are really dismal because there's not that much—compared to what there used to be to fly, there's not that much to fly anymore, so it's been hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we certainly hope for your sake, on a personal basis and professional basis, that before you decide to end your career at Dryden that it'll swing again and allow some more excitement for your work on some projects that you really will enjoy doing before you decide not to do this anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that would be nice, but I suspect I'll retire before then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then you'll have opportunity to write more books." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. I can spend more time writing books and researching. I did enjoy doing that one. It was interesting, once I got into it. It's always hard for me to get started, get the words down and get started in those thoughts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it was definitely different than any of the rest of the reports that you had done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a different way of writing. The reports used to be quite structured in how they wanted them written, even down to the tense you were supposed to use. And so you got used to that because they changed it all, so you might as well start out with that. It was a change to go to a different way of writing. It was a completely different style." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we wish you luck on the next one and look forward to reading it, whatever it may be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are you going to write one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We'd like to. We are finishing a book that we worked with the author on the Shuttle-Mir project, so we've had our hands at helping to write and organize and do whatever. But our main job right now is just to gather the history before it's gone, or before people don't want to talk about it, so we're hoping to stay with our project as long as we can." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the numbers are dwindling rapidly, as far as talking to the ones here in the fifties, the forties. They're starting to disappear, so time is not on your side." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that may be something you can help pick up with. But we wish you luck in the future, and thank you again for talking with us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sheryll Goecke Powers", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00870", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/StaddCA/staddca.htm", + "original_file_name": "StaddCA_1-7-03.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/StaddCA/StaddCA_1-7-03.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Courtney A. Stadd", + "location_date": "Washington, DC – 7 January 2003" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Courtney Stadd" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 7, 2003. This oral history with Courtney Stadd is being conducted in Washington, D.C., for the NASA Headquarters History Office, Administrators Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright. Mr. Stadd is currently the NASA Chief of Staff and White House liaison. Today’s session will focus on his involvement with the area of commercialization of space.\\n\\n We thank you for taking time to visit with the project today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s my pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve been involved for the past twenty-five years in identifying, fostering, and developing market-driven opportunities in space. When in your career did you begin to work for an end to the “government’s monopoly on launch services”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess I first developed an interest in this area in the mid-seventies. In fact, when I was graduating from the Georgetown [University] School of Foreign Service, [Washington, D.C.] I was approached by a small group of people who were interested in looking at the economic frontier of space development, and that led to my working with a former associate dean of the graduate school at Georgetown, a gentleman called Steve [Stephen T.] Cheston, who, unfortunately, died a few years ago. He was a former vice president at Motorola [Incorporated] involved in their former Iridium satellite project. We formed what we called an Institute for the Social Science Study of Space, which was the first such interdisciplinary scholarly effort in the country to look at the both technical and social economic aspects of space development.\\n\\n In the midst of that project, we got a grant from NASA, in roughly 1977, to look at some of the economic, social, human factors associated with space exploration, and along the way I encountered the late Gerard K. O’Neill, who was a Princeton [University] physicist, who gained fame for, amongst other things, promoting the idea of space colonies. I found the prospect of space colonies to be interesting, but probably a bit fanciful in terms of it being feasible in the near term. I was fascinated, however, by the social and economic issues associated with it.\\n\\n So that began to open up my eyes as to what the opportunities were, and along the way, I was contacted by a group in California that was forming a company—at that point we called it Arc Technologies [Incorporated]; was renamed Starstruck [Incorporated]—and that company was the first to privately finance and develop a rocket for commercial use.\\n\\n So you could see in that period of time—and this is roughly between ’76, ’77, and 1981, ’82—I got very much involved in this area. In fact, in the summer of ’77, I was recruited by the National Space Institute, currently known as the National Space Society [NSS], to take over their monthly membership publication, and within about a year or so, I was asked to actually take over the organization. This was a group that was formed by Wernher von Braun. He had passed away that June of ’77. Former NASA Administrator [Dr.] Jim [James C.] Fletcher was the Chairman of the Board of the National Space Institute.\\n\\n And that also gave me further exposure to the interesting developments going on in the commercial world, although part of my charter was to also follow closely the civil part of the agency, and in fact, in many ways the NSS became my graduate work, if you will, in terms of beginning to develop a knowledge of NASA, the space agency, and the potential of the commercial space market at the time.\\n\\n So you had this interesting, I guess, at least for me, convergence of an academic pursuit at Georgetown that, by the way, culminated in the first scholarly journal—I was the managing editor of it—called Space Humanization Review, that brought together physicists, economists, sociologists to look at the various and sundry challenges and issues associated with space development. Then coincident with that, my involvement with the National Space Institute, and then—to put it in chronological order, after I left the Space Institute, I actually spent a year taking time out to think about my next steps. In that year, which was roughly ’80-’81, I established what today is referred to as the World Affairs Council. There are two of them in Washington. I formed one at Meridian House International.\\n\\n During that year, I found myself migrating more and more to space-related issues, and it was during my tenure there when I was approached by these entrepreneurs in California to help establish this new commercial launch company. By the way, one of the investors was Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple Computer [Incorporated]. So this was formed very much in the wake of the euphoria over the new computer, semi-conductor industries that were forming at that time in Silicon Valley.\\n\\n So that’s my way of responding to the initial question of how I got interested and what brought me to ultimately spend a career pursuing this area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You originally started out in private industry, and then you made a move toward public service. Could you share with us how that transition occurred?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. When I got involved with this company, Arc Technologies, subsequently called Starstruck, and it was called that because the first president of Apple Computer, Michael [M.] Scott, who put in the bulk of the investment, wanted a name that he thought could resonate with the younger generation, the so-called “Star Trek generation.” There were a number of us who weren’t exactly ecstatic over that name; we felt it was a bit too flaky, if you will. But he had the purse strings and ultimately prevailed. The company went through another incarnation, and ultimately became known as the American Rocket Company.\\n\\n But the group of us who co-founded that effort philosophically believed that U.S. space industry was suffering from what we referred to as a lack of product differentiation. That is to say, there was little diversity in the products and services being offered. Our diagnosis was that this resulted from the domination of large aerospace companies and from the monopoly of the government in purchasing those services. Remember that many of the people I was associated with back in California were entrepreneurs who came from the emerging, as I mentioned, microprocessing, semiconductor computer world, who felt strongly that entrepreneurship was the ticket to accomplishing great things. So it was our feeling that if the government would only get out of the way and allow the entrepreneurial sector to put its genius to work, that we could do great things. So our whole presumption was in favor of looking for a regulatory regime that was minimal, a licensing regime that was minimally burdensome.\\n\\n Because I had spent some time in Washington, both at Georgetown, at National Space Institute, the World Affairs Council, I was the only person associated with the company who,\\n\\n (a) had a business suit (remember this was Silicon Valley where informal attire was typical), and, (b), had knowledge of Washington. So it fell to me to go back to Washington and to carry the water in developing a licensing and regulatory regime that would be philosophically along the lines that I mentioned earlier, being supportive of this type of entrepreneurial effort.\\n\\n I also want to give major credit to a gentleman called Jim [James C.] Bennett, who was a colleague and one of the co-founders of this company, who had articulated a deregulatory philosophy regarding the launch industry, that put a big premium on performance-based regulation versus the classic certification approach that the Federal Aviation Administration historically had taken to aviation, where you get down to every single component and certify its safety, and so forth.\\n\\n By the way, that was an understandable approach, given the fact that you’re dealing with human life, given the amount of traffic you’re talking about. But in the case of this fledgling rocket industry, the view was, you’d have very few events, the existing and proposed commercial rockets did not involve flying people, and that’s why we promoted the idea. And I do give Jim Bennett credit for helping author that philosophy that it ought to be based on a performance-based regime. That is, the company in question, the company seeking license from the government to launch, the onus ought to be on the company to stand up to a general set of safety criteria, and as long as we demonstrate how we’re going to avoid posing a threat to human populations, then we ought to be licensed and allowed to conduct our business.\\n\\n Well, when I came back to Washington, it fell to me to help organize a coalition of companies. And it was an interesting time back in the early eighties. We had many more aerospace companies, I might add, than we have today. General Dynamics [Corporation] was very much in the aerospace launch business. Obviously, we had Martin Marietta [Corporation], you know. We had a bunch of companies. So, myself, along with other rocket company representatives, formed an ad hoc coalition of big companies and small companies. The larger companies were interested in ensuring that the Space Shuttle, which at that point was just emerging as an operational entity, did not end up as a de facto monopoly in the space market and thereby wipe out opportunities for commercial satellite business for the big companies. That basically was the fundamental agreement, if you will, that brought the small fledgling companies together with the larger companies to work together in trying to get the government to put in place a regulatory regime that would be supportive of this new commercial rocket industry.\\n\\n We hired Covington & Burling. The reason for that is that we were looking for a well-established law firm in Washington. I interviewed many of the top law firms in Washington, which was a pretty bold thing to do when you were a new-start company, and walking into these very fancy, well-furnished law firms, in many cases, old traditional Washington law firms. And the law firm that impressed us the most was Covington & Burling, in particular a young lawyer who’s now, I understand, a partner, a full-fledged partner, but back then was an associate, a guy called Dr. Richard [A.] Meserve, who was both a physicist and a lawyer, and probably no one is aware of this, but Richard really was the prime draftsman of what ultimately became the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act.\\n\\n This is a case I’ll have to come back later on and fill in the blanks, but there was a former Hawaiian congressman, Danny [Daniel Kahikina] Akaka, who was the original sponsor, and Diana [P.] Hoyt, who is currently working here at NASA Headquarters [Washington, D.C.], I first met Diana back in the early eighties, when she, on behalf of the congressman, was supporting legislation promoting commercial space. So, between Diana Hoyt’s support and ultimately that of the House Science Committee, we ultimately got passed the 1984 Commercial Space Launch Act, which authorized the Department of Transportation to put in place this regulatory licensing regime based pretty much on this philosophy I talked to you about earlier, this performance-based approach to regulation. I can spend a few moments, if you wish, talking about some of the debates that went on surrounding that.\\n\\n There was great interest by industry in having the Department of Commerce be the lead agency. Again, it was our feeling that the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] was exactly the opposite of what regulatory model that we wanted in place. The Commerce Department had historically housed a number of regulatory bodies—I might add, including the FAA at one point—that it had spun out over the decades. So we thought it was historically consistent to suggest that they stand up a small licensing regime for this new industry.\\n\\n Secondly, frankly, because Commerce’s charter is to promote and advocate U.S. industry, we felt that we would be in friendlier hands if it was hosted at the Department of Commerce. The former head of NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Tony [Anthony J.] Calio, no stranger to NASA—he was formerly Associate Administrator [for Space and Terrestrial Applications] at NASA back in the very early eighties, had worked here in the seventies—was very supportive of our efforts, and I got to know Tony Calio, worked very closely with him, and he managed to make the case to then Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige, who was excited by the idea of Commerce being the lead for this new industry. Mr. Baldrige had a very close working relationship with President [Ronald] Reagan.\\n\\n So we had legislation that called for Commerce to be the lead and we had managed to persuade the Commerce Department and key officials to support it. We—i.e., our colleagues from this ad hoc coalition—talked to people in the White House and felt we had support there as well.\\n\\n But then the Department of Transportation began to press its case to be the lead agency for this emerging industry. For them, they appeared to be the only logical choice. After all, they are in the transportation business. They have a multitude of modes, from maritime, railroad, highway, to aviation in which they license, and there were a number of people over there who felt that they were a better, more appropriate candidate than the Department of Commerce. Nonetheless, we strongly pushed for Commerce, again fearful that the FAA would get its clutches on it and thwart the emergence of this new industry.\\n\\n Again, this is a little-told story, but roughly in the—I have to be reminded of the time frames, but I think we’re in the maybe summer, spring, summer of ’84, there was a meeting at the White House, chaired by the President. One of the topics was the issue of who should be the lead, and then Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole told the President she thought this was a classic case of deregulation. She argued that she could oversee this industry with a small team of regulatory experts and that it was very appropriate and logical for DOT [Department of Transportation] to take on this job.\\n\\n I understand that one of the President’s aides passed a note to Secretary Baldrige asking whether he’d be open to dividing the authority with the Department of Transportation so that Commerce would have the promotional role and DOT would have the licensing and regulatory role. I was informed that the Secretary decided at that instant, no, that he felt a divided authority was a weakened authority, and that if, in their wisdom, the White House—the President—opted to have DOT take over licensing, he was not going to stand in its way. And that ultimately turned out to be the case.\\n\\n We were disappointed in Commerce, but to the credit of Secretary Dole, she had her senior staff call myself and other members of this ad hoc coalition, and they went out of the way to assure us that this issue had the personal attention of the Secretary, that she would do everything she could to assure that our industry did not fall victim to over-regulation, and that it would not fall into the clutches of the FAA, and so forth and so on.\\n\\n Whether we liked it or not, the reality was that the President had spoken. We took some solace, although we continued to be anxious about how DOT would treat us. The Congress fell in line pretty quickly, and once the President had issued his executive order, the lead agency was changed in the legislation to be the Department of Transportation, and that was the reality.\\n\\n I remember Congressman [Ed] Zschau, a former congressman from Silicon Valley, was also another key advocate for this legislation, and Congressman [Manuel] Lujan [Jr.], on the Republican side—both were on the Republican side—were great advocates and very effective at pushing this legislation. And I recall that the day the President held a White House event to announce this new executive order, the White House called those of us in industry and asked us to bring models of our different rockets, so we could array them around the President’s dais. That was a big day for us, and I remember arranging to take Congressman Zschau up to the White House, and I remember renting a limousine. I remember him coming out and saying, “Gee, you know, I’m supposed to do that for my constituents; it doesn’t work the other way around.” But we were so excited.\\n\\n I remember having our people in the company build a model, which is no trivial thing for a small company—big companies do it all the time—but particularly one that we knew was going to be in the White House. We took special care with it. So I remember being sent this model of our rocket, which was actually a hybrid propellant, and the way they cut the propellant, the rocket, the way it was sent to me, was sent to me very well packaged, but it was a bit unstable, so when I got to the White House, I remember looking for different ways to prop it up, because it didn’t have a fancy base as some of the other ones did. I don’t remember a single thing the President said during the event; I just remember looking at this rocket, apprehensive that it was going to fall over at any point during the proceedings.\\n\\n But that was a big deal for the commercial industry. It culminated two years of very hard work. It was a singular milestone in the history of commercial space in this industry, the first time the United States Government—the Congress, the White House—had formally acknowledged and formally put in place a licensing regime for this new industry.\\n\\n Although our competitor at the time, Space Services Incorporated [SSI], chaired by David Hannah [Jr.], had successfully launched their own privately financed rocket, from Texas—it also was a demonstration—we actually also ultimately launched our own. I think it was in the late summer of ’84 after several failures. In our case, we launched our vehicle directly out of the water.\\n\\n What made ours markedly different was, unlike the Space Services people, from whom I take away nothing—Deke [Donald K.] Slayton was head of the effort; as typical, Deke Slayton did a marvelous job—but in our case, everything was privately built and financed. In contrast, SSI used a Minuteman stage that was creatively—legally, but creatively—arranged by former NASA General Counsel [S.] Neil Hosenball. In a sense, what Neil arranged was a permanent lease of this first-stage Minuteman to this private company. This was very creative thinking.\\n\\n As I mentioned earlier, we, on the other hand, actually built everything, the propellants, the casings, the fairings, the nose cones, everything was done in an industrial plant in Redwood, [California], and what made that possible was using this benign hybrid propellant. In fact, the Navy had done a lot of work with it, as well as United Technologies [Corporation]. We were trying to improve the state of the art with that hybrid propellant at that time.\\n\\n I was called by Tony Calio on behalf of the Office of the Secretary, after the executive order was signed and as the legislation was making its way through, and I was asked if I might be interested in coming to join the Department of Commerce as the first person dedicated to space commercialization. It coincided with a reality that was beginning to quickly descend on Starstruck, which was that unlike the computer industry, unlike the experiences that a number of the former computer executives associated with the company were accustomed to, reducing theory to practice in the rocket business is formidable.\\n\\n This is not to say the computer industry is not complex in its own right. It is to say that building rockets, flying them successfully is, in its own right, very, very complicated. I think that when the management began to recognize how large and sustained the nonrecurring capital investment threatened to be, after they’d put in a fairly significant investment just to get to the demonstration point, to the testing point, let alone to the point where we could declare it operational, that’s when they got cold feet. That’s when they decided that perhaps they needed to pull up stakes.\\n\\n So the company was going through some churning, and as I looked at that churning, looked at where my expertise was beginning clearly to develop here in Washington, my feeling was that I could better serve this embryonic, fledgling industry here in Washington than elsewhere. So, after some deliberation, I called back Commerce. I accepted the opportunity, and sometime early ’85, as I recall, late ’84, ’85, I took the job. I showed up at the Department of Commerce as Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary for Space Commercialization.\\n\\n They housed me in the Office of General Counsel, which sounds unusual, but it bespeaks the interesting approach that Secretary Baldrige had concerning the use of his general counsel. He really looked to his legal shop to do a lot of his policy analysis and advocacy, so the general counsel shop that I entered at that point was really a hotbed of activism on behalf of the Secretary. And this was a Secretary, as you might expect of a Reagan appointee at the time, who put a big premium on deregulation, a big premium on market-driven initiatives, and, therefore, the type of philosophy that I enunciated earlier, that we had generated when I was with this rocket company, very much—I found a very fertile and congenial environment when I came to work at Commerce.\\n\\n So I feel really fortunate that I was able to operationalize that experience in industry and had the opportunity to go into government and work at a senior level, my first job, to help translate theory into policy. In that position, I worked closely with a Robert [H.] Brumley, who was at that point a special assistant to the general counsel. He ultimately became general counsel. Robert Brumley was a very interesting person -- what I would refer to as an entrepreneurial bureaucrat, pretty innovative.\\n\\n The biggest issue, we felt, in the ’84, ’85, ’86 time frame, was the prospect of NASA dominating the space launch industry, through the Space Shuttle, which at that point had been declared operational, and by that point, the agency had declared a policy of encouraging as much commercial business on the Space Shuttle as possible, in addition to the civil and some military missions that they were supporting. It was clear that in response to this perceived major subsidy by the government, that the Europeans were greatly motivated to likewise subsidize their entry into the foreign market, the Ariane rocket family.\\n\\n So those of us either associated with the rocket industry directly or, at that point, in my case, at the Department of Commerce, felt that unless we put some policy breaks on what was happening in the U.S., we would end up devastating the established expendable launch industry with players such as Martin Marietta and General Dynamics, as well as clearly resulting in the stillbirth of the emerging entrepreneurial rocket industry.\\n\\n So that theme occupied much of our time and effort at the Department of Commerce, and there were innumerable interagency meetings involving, obviously, NASA, Department of Transportation, those of us at Commerce, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of Management and Budget, Defense personnel, grappling with the appropriate policies that would allow for a viable space shuttle, while at the same time encouraging the emergence of a viable U.S. industry that could take on not only the European entry, Ariane, but take on any other foreign launch competition that at that point looked like they might be coming into being. Certainly we knew that Japan, China and the Soviet Union, at the time, were certainly potential threats, although we, at that point in the mid-eighties, did not have a handle yet on the nature and scope of those threats.\\n\\n So a great deal of time was invested in the interagency world in pushing the agency to develop a full-cost methodology for determining pricing on the Space Shuttle. We went through innumerable variations on additive costs, average costs. There were innumerable studies that were put out, both by the government, Congress as well as private-sector think tanks, regarding this whole effort. We at the Commerce Department, along with our then, at that point, allies at the Department of Transportation, were very adamant if the agency was going to continue to launch commercial payloads, that they had to do it at the full cost.\\n\\n And if you’ll allow me to provide a sidebar observation, in roughly around that time period, maybe ’83, ’84, another individual no longer with us, I regret to tell you, Phil Salin, who died of liver cancer a few years back, he was a senior executive with Arc Technologies, was a Stanford [University] graduate, and I arranged for him, working with the Republican minority at the time—and a bit of what I have to admit was a bit of rear-guard guerrilla action—managed to get for the first time on the public record an analysis of what launching on the Space Shuttle really costs. When the majority on the committee—at that point it was called the Committee on Space; now I think it’s called Space and Aeronautics Committee—when they got wind of this testimony, I’ll never forget, when I showed up at the hearing, there were maybe, I think, one or two members. Now, normally these hearings on space, there weren’t a lot of members that would show up at a normal—but this was extraordinary in how few there were, and I recall in the audience that there were an inordinate number of not only NASA personnel, but Shuttle contractor personnel sitting in the audience. People were both, I think, unhappy with the message, but I think, to a large extent, viewed Phil Salin as representing a fly-by-night entrepreneurial venture—these are my words, but I’d be surprised if that wasn’t what the perception was among the people in the audience, and certainly among the majority staff on the committee at the time.\\n\\n But there was no walking away from the fact that Phil was absolutely brilliant. He was a brilliant economist. He had spent a great deal of time in research in systematically analyzing what the costs were. He systematically, which was typical of Phil, went through all the available public information regarding the infrastructure costs associated with the Space Shuttle. So I believe that any history that looks at the dynamic or the debates between the role of the Shuttle and its impact on the commercial launch industry, by rights, needs to start with Phil Salin’s statement, which I think has held up pretty well in history. When you correct it for inflation and so forth, he got it pretty right in terms of the huge costs associated with launching these payloads.\\n\\n And, of course, the agency had no interest in charging full cost, because if they did that, it would act as an immediate, you know—discourage the interest of the commercial satellite industry immediately, so they had no interest in acceding that point about how much it really cost.\\n\\n And we got into very, very intense debates. Now I’ll shift you back to the mid-eighties, these interagency debates, where we at Commerce Department and Transportation were pushing hard for full cost. Frankly, it wasn’t until the horrible tragedy of the Challenger accident in January 1986, when things dramatically changed. In fact, in the months leading up to the Challenger, there was every sign that the U.S. launch industry was beginning to pack it in, that they saw little prospect for NASA, for the government, rethinking its policy toward launching commercial satellites, and with the prospect of competing against subsidized foreign competition, few of them saw any real opportunity.\\n\\n Unfortunately, it took the trauma of the Challenger loss to regalvanize the interagency world to go back and look at what the appropriate role of the Shuttle ought to be. So I got heavily involved in that whole effort in the months following the Challenger, when we developed a new space policy, actually, a national space policy that included a commercial section. And although we got into heated debates, again, the agency obviously was in much less of a position to argue that perhaps it was inappropriate for the Shuttle to be putting astronaut lives at risk in supporting “vanilla variety” commercial satellites, as we used to put it. Obviously, there’s nothing “vanilla variety” about launching anything, but as compared to those research-related efforts on the Shuttle that did require intimate astronaut involvement, we made the argument, among other arguments, that there’s really no real justification to put an astronaut at risk in launching satellites that could be as effectively launched by other means.\\n\\n Other arguments included that we did have an industry on the verge of collapse, and that overnight we could create a market base for this industry, and that the agency, which at that point it wasn’t clear when the Shuttle was going to be back in business—of course, we know, in retrospect, it took almost two years, over two years, to come back to business, and that during that time, we anticipated that there’d be quite a backlog of missions for the agency to work off of, and that during that interim period, rather than handing it on a silver platter to the foreign competition, let’s give our U.S. industry a chance to go after that industry.\\n\\n But to show you the nature of the recalcitrance that we were facing even up until the eve of the President announcing a new policy, the agency was still fighting this and, in fact, there was even the prospect of some of our allies in the interagency world accepting the NASA compromise, which was that NASA would phase itself out of launching this industry, over time.\\n\\n We at Commerce, led by Secretary Baldrige, refused to surrender our adamant position. Our feeling was that the agency at that point, at least in the eyes of the Secretary, had lost its credibility. He had fought too many battles, or we had fought too many battles on his behalf, before and after the Challenger accident, for him to believe that the agency, once it was back on its feet, once the Shuttle was back successfully operating, that it would indeed give up this lucrative satellite market.\\n\\n So he was adamant that the President should support taking NASA immediately out of launching the commercial satellite, unless the President deemed it on a case-by-case basis to be appropriate, and there were some other exceptions, but by and large, our view was that they should be totally out of that business.\\n\\n I still have, somewhere in my own personal archives, a copy of the options paper that was delivered to President Reagan by then Chief of Staff Don [Donald T.] Regan, and, actually, it’s an interesting piece of paper, because the President initially checked off an option that was one that we opposed. It was one that supported the phasing-in. What I have is a copy of where the Chief of Staff brought it back to him, and the President crossed out and put his “RR” next to the option that ultimately became incorporated into the national space policy, that ultimately became legislated sometime later, and that was the prohibition on NASA launching commercial satellites, subject to some very strict exceptions.\\n\\n There’s another individual who deserves her day in the sun, and that is a lady by the name of Madeline Johnson. Madeline Johnson at that point was Director of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. She had the boldness to insist on being on the White House dais when the President’s press secretary announced that the President had just decided that the Shuttle would not be launching commercial satellites, and she did those of us who advocated that position and others who were in the industry at the time a huge service, because she grabbed the microphone and declared in no uncertain terms that NASA would no longer be in the business of launching satellites, and that sound bite is what went out on the wires and, in fact, really preempted any reinterpretation that the advocates for a different policy approach might have spun, if it hadn’t been for her taking the initiative.\\n\\n I’ve always believed that Ms. Johnson, who soon thereafter left the space community, to pursue other professional interests is yet another person to whom we owe a bit of tribute. To those of us who believed in sending a very clear signal to the marketplace, she did a very important deed at that point. I have no doubt that those at NASA at the time, and the contractors, who were very much opposed to this new policy, would have done everything they could to support a different interpretation.\\n\\n By the way, not out of malice aforethought, but because they were very, very well-intentioned people, who really felt, in their heart of hearts, that the Space Shuttle was the most appropriate vehicle, and that the expendable launch vehicles were yesterday’s technology, and that the more business we could get for the Space Shuttle, that meant more launch events, and that meant, over time, that the economics would drive toward lower cost.\\n\\n I was a member of the school of thought who believed that the capital investment in the Space Shuttle and its supporting infrastructure was so huge, and that particularly in the wake of the Challenger accident, the care and feeding that it took to maintain the Shuttle, the costs associated with that, were so large that it was very unlikely that we would ever achieve the traffic model that would result in the lower costs that some of the proponents suggested at the time. And again, I also felt strongly that when it came to launching commercial satellites, it was best to have our industry do that.\\n\\n Now I loop back to a point I made earlier, which was this focus on product differentiation. There were those of us who felt that the Shuttle had a very important mission. It is impossible to imagine today the great achievements we’ve made in space in the past twenty-some-odd years, in the absence of the semi-reusable launch vehicle. Certainly the engineering achievement of the Space Station would have been impossible, or, at least, would have been far, far more difficult, formidable, in its absence.\\n\\n But with that said, we’re still a country that today, as I speak to you in the year 2003, we’re in a marketplace that is very much suffering from the lack of diversity of launch vehicles in various weight classes, and a number of us foresaw that prospect, and although we do not have the innovation diversity that we had hoped for, the past twenty-some-odd years has only convinced me more that if the Shuttle advocates had prevailed, or continued their monopoly, that it would have dealt a devastating blow to the launch industry.\\n\\n So as much as today’s industry is suffering, at least we have an industry to suffer. I would suggest that we probably would have entered the nineties with very few suppliers left, the exception being the Department of Defense, that would have sought various artificial means to ensure an expendable launch vehicle system. And, of course, the evolved expendable launch vehicle, EELV, is the Department of Defense’s answer to filling that void. But there’s no question that we would have been, I think, in even worse straits if we had followed that path." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk some about the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. You mentioned Madeline Johnson was the director. You took that position as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about your expectations of the job and what you were hoping to accomplish with that directorate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I should add that while I was still at Commerce, and in the wake of the President’s decision to take the Shuttle out of the launching of the commercial satellite business, the Secretary had supported establishing an Office of Space Commercialization. Bob Brumley and myself were the co-architects of that office. It was our feeling that there needed to be an office solely dedicated to promoting and supporting this fledgling industry, and by that I mean not only launch industry, but also the Earth-observation industry, which at that point was also embryonic. There were also some very interesting entrepreneurial communications initiatives. There was also at that point the very much fledgling global positioning system industry. So there were a number of industry sectors where we felt having a policy advocate at the Department of Commerce made a lot of sense.\\n\\n So we took a rib out of the International Trade Administration, ITA, which is the international expert arm of the Department of Commerce, and established this office, much to the chagrin, I might add, of the people who were at ITA, who were managing a long-established aerospace office. But our feeling was that that office was doing its job of care and feeding for the established aerospace industry, but that there really needed to be a voice for the entrepreneur. And, by the way, by entrepreneur, I mean not only the new-start companies, but I mean the intrapreneurs within the established aerospace companies who were seeking new product lines in the commercial space industry as well. We thought by establishing such a small office within the Office of the Secretary, we would give it a cabinet voice. And even though Commerce is very small, when you have a secretary with as close a relationship as the late Secretary Baldrige had with the President, there’s a lot that you can gain from that type of agility and that type of access.\\n\\n So I was offered the job to run that office, and I would have done that except that I got a call from the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, and they offered me to take over this Office of Space Transportation. So Madeline Johnson, for a number of different reasons, had decided to leave the department, and I was approached to take that job. I remember I went over and met both with Jim [James H.] Burnley, the Deputy Secretary of Transportation, who ultimately became the Secretary of Transportation when Secretary Dole left a year and a half later to help support her husband’s run for the presidency at the time. So it was lucky, because I was able to develop a relationship with him early on, but I met the Secretary, we bonded, we very much shared the same vision for this industry.\\n\\n I found myself, by 1986, now the head of an office that was a product of an executive order and legislation that I was originally sent to help put in place. Of course, it was a different agency than I originally had in mind, but it says something, perhaps, about the small world of Washington. But the irony was not lost on me or anyone else who knows of my role in this industry.\\n\\n I found myself in a fairly unique situation. There are people in the academic world who study space policy. There are people in the industry world who advocate policy change. But there are probably, for better or for worse, few people who are able to view it from all three standpoints, and between the mid-seventies and the mid-eighties, I had that unique opportunity. I also benefited because commercial space was so new, and there was such a dearth of people crazy enough, like myself, to try to make a living at it, that I never kid myself to think that I had any special talent or intelligence or skill; it’s just that, as in things like that in life, I was in the right place, right time.\\n\\n So when I took the job both at Commerce and then specifically at the Department of Transportation, I recognized the unique opportunity and the responsibility that I had, because I realized everything I was doing would set a precedent. No one had ever licensed a private rocket before. Today, you tell somebody that in the year 2003, and they accept it as reality, but a short seventeen years ago, when you would mention that to your colleagues in the Department of Transportation, in the other modes, FAA, Coast Guard and company, they did look at you sort of funny. “You’re telling me that the government is going to countenance private people to go off and engage in something that is potentially dangerous?” After all, what is a rocket but it’s a controlled explosive.\\n\\n But through the bipartisan support that we had on Capitol Hill—and I give credit to a number of the members on the Hill who had the vision to support the industry, President Reagan, that White House, and to Secretary Baldrige and Secretary Dole who, again, had the boldness, the vision—we set about to do just that. And she kept her promise, her deputy, Jim Burnley, kept to the promise as well, when he became Secretary, which was to not allow this office to become captive to the traditional certification approach to regulation.\\n\\n So we took the executive order, we took the law, and I had some very talented members of the team, Gerald [C.] Musarra, who’s now a Vice President at Lockheed Martin, at that point was sort of a junior civil servant at the time, I recognized early on that he is a very talented lawyer, and he ultimately became my de facto chief counsel. I give Gerald a lot of credit for being the architect and helping to translate the law, the policy, into the regulations.\\n\\n Another gentleman, Norm Bowles, was a gentleman who helped, managed operationalizing the licensing in our office.\\n\\n By the way, to show you what a small world it is, not only is Gerald now Vice President of Lockheed, but about a month ago, I had the privilege of being in the audience when the President [George W. Bush] hosted the President’s Quality Management Award ceremony at the Ronald Reagan Building, which is the highest management award you can be given by the President, and lo and behold, after not having seen him for many, many years, Norm Bowles stands up to accept an award from the President for his management of the FAA Oakland facility. We had some good people, is my point, who’ve gone on to other things in life.\\n\\n But we spent that first year, ’86, part of ’87, really putting in place the machinery to license, and if memory serves, I believe I issued the first license for Space Services, which, unlike Starstruck, had gone from its test to actually signing up a payload and had put in an application to be the first licensed company. That was a proud day, to do that.\\n\\n And we issued the regulations, the first set of regulations ever, for a private rocket industry, and we tried to hold to our promise that they would be based on what I referred to as performance-based philosophy, where we try to establish a minimally burdensome set of safety criteria.\\n\\n I might add that our efforts were controversial, so I think it’s worth taking a moment to remind people of the context. NASA was still unhappy about the policy, but one thing about this agency, it was true then, and I can guarantee you it’s true today, once the policy decision is made, they do salute the flag and implement. You know, there were people in NASA that were really making their best efforts to try to work with us, but it was clear that it was hard for them to take seriously this small band of people at DOT that were daring to get involved with an area that was theirs and the Department of Defense’s exclusive concern. And this whole regulatory business was really alien territory for an agency dominated by engineers used to working on the cutting edge of, in this case, launch technology.\\n\\n The agency is certainly not a regulatory body and, in fact, at one point in the interagency debates and, in fact, even at some point when the Congress was debating this ’84 Commercial Launch Act, there was some thought given to whether NASA ought to be the lead. In my judgment, saner heads prevailed and said NASA is a research agency; it is not a regulatory agency. Fortunately, that was the dominant thinking.\\n\\n But the Department of Defense, Air Force, also had its concerns about this new office. The Air Force, rightly, felt that they were the resident experts on national range safety, and, again, they were asking, what were these upstarts doing in this civil agency, what value-added did they have to offer. And, frankly, when I first took the office over, it was an uphill effort to persuade both NASA and, in many ways more importantly, the Air Force, because we were, more than NASA, rubbing up against prerogatives that were long associated with the Air Force in the area of range safety.\\n\\n Now, the approach I took was to, first of all, very much concede the expertise to the Air Force in this area, and to develop a partnership with them. I arranged for detailees from the Air Force to come work in our office. I tried to foster as effective a collaboration as possible. Then-Secretary of the Air Force Pete [Edward C.] Aldridge was a great help in trying to foster that environment. But I would be less than forthright if I didn’t say that there was a lot of time and effort and a lot of time—many, many, many, many months—devoted to building bridges with the Air Force, as well as with NASA. But, again, because of the safety, the idea of DOT putting together a regulatory governance model at the ranges, it meant we had to work very closely with the Air Force.\\n\\n On the Hill, I encountered some hostility from the oversight committee. There were members on the Hill, mostly Democrat, who felt that the Department of Transportation was a trespasser into an area of expertise that had been long the sole preserve of NASA, and they felt that we were driven more by mindless ideology than by practical concern. So a lot of my time and effort was spent trying to educate and trying to reach out, and I did that in a number of ways. I took the advisory committee that had already been created before I got to Transportation, and then I, working with the Secretary, populated it with as many respected people as I could recruit in industry, and those industry people were very helpful in helping advance our credibility in the community, particularly with Capitol Hill.\\n\\n I don’t know what else you want me to add." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the things that you were talking about was the range safety, which brings up the issue of insurance. How did you cover that issue? What were the debates? What was the discussion evolving with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Realize that this was a steep learning curve for the government, i.e., regulating the private launch industry. We at the Department of Transportation—now, this is where we earned our spurs. This is where we began to demonstrate why we were, if not uniquely qualified, why we brought such value-added to the table, and that is, that as an agency that since 1967 has been in the regulatory business, we recognize that anytime you mix government oversight, safety oversight, in industry, and whatever it may be, in the maritime or aviation or highway business, where you’re putting the public at some level of risk, you have to do a risk management analysis, which brings you into the liability exposure world.\\n\\n So we knew fairly early on that at some point we were going to dealing with the issues of indemnification, liability, risk management. It was brought to the fore by the leading underwriter at the time, INTEC [International Underwriters Inc.], which has subsequently been taken over by a European company. Rick [Frederick H.] Hauck, who was the first commander of Discovery after the Challenger accident, now heads up that U.S. subsidiary. The former chairman of INTEC, Jim [James] Barrett, along with Norm [Norman R.] Augustine, who was the President at that time of Martin Marietta, met with me and talked about how they were going to find it untenable to finance satellites, particularly the very expensive satellites, without some level of government indemnification. That is, they needed something that they could take to the marketplace and tell their insurers that the government was standing behind them in the event of a catastrophe. Otherwise, if they had to go to the marketplace with an open-ended exposure they did not believe that their own board of directors, who had critical fiduciary obligations, would stand for it, for that form of exposure, nor did they believe that they could afford the premiums even if they could get insurance to cover that level of exposure. Nor, should I add, did they feel that their boards would support the level of self-insurance that would be required to cover that level of exposure.\\n\\n At this point, let me give credit to Gerald Musarra. He and I drew our sleeves up, and from our deliberations and discussions with experts in the field, we ultimately proposed this concept of tiering the indemnification, so that the industry would carry a significant share of exposure, but at a certain point—and I can’t recall if it was a half a billion or a billion at this point, maybe a little more than that—the government would accept indemnification beyond a certain point.\\n\\n So we took that tiering concept. I want to give credit to the Office of Management and Budget, which felt that we made a good case. The White House did support us. And we then took that to Capitol Hill, and Marty Kress, who ultimately came to work at NASA, now retired, at that point was working on the Senate Commerce Committee, and I’ll never forget, Marty and I took a walk somewhere in early ’88, as I recall. We actually walked around Capitol Hill, around the Senate buildings, and he was on the majority, he was a Democrat, I was obviously a Republican for Reagan, and we walked around and we discussed this proposal. He talked to me about the different issues that he’d have to deal with, with his members. But ultimately from that walk that afternoon, came an agreement, and Marty was a very effective advocate for this amendment. And through our efforts on the executive branch side, his on the legislative side, we ultimately were able to get support for this amendment that resulted in this tiering, which had a sunset clause attached to it, and it has been renewed, I gather, subsequently, a number of times since.\\n\\n That clearly was critical to allowing the industry to move forward and to get the financing, the investment required to continue to launch. The industry had many other competitive challenges, but we mitigated the risk management as much as we could. It took, as in all these cases, it took give and take. Obviously, the industry would have loved the government to pick up as much of the indemnification as possible, and obviously, the government’s side wanted to be careful to what extent we were artificially supporting the industry. And I feel that history has confirmed that I think we came up with a good compromise, which has served all parties since." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we close today, could you give us an example of some of the industry’s competitive challenges that they were going through at the same time you were going through all your challenges?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Part of it was cultural. These companies had been long accustomed to being primary vendors to the U.S. Government. None of them had any commercial experience. So for them, it was really a huge, almost trauma to the system to get out and do commercial marketing, do the type of loss leader marketing and so forth, and the type of business development with new commercial actors that they hadn’t dealt with before. They were very accustomed to dealing with government. One could argue that these large aerospace companies were, in many ways, extensions of the government by culture and mindset. After all, that was, in fact, their customer base. So if I had to pinpoint the biggest challenge, it was pretty much a culture challenge for these people.\\n\\n The other big challenge was dealing with foreign competition, the prospect of dealing with subsidized competition. And the other big role that we tried to play at DOT was to help advocate on behalf of the industry to ensure that our United States trade representative recognized the importance of this industry to the extent of putting it on that person’s radar in negotiations with Europe and other countries. So I would say those probably were the biggest challenges.\\n\\n The other big challenge was convincing the government that, again, formerly had been the owner of these launch systems, to stand back and view them as launch services. I think another challenge they had was, indeed, to retrain the government to be a true customer. Although we’ve made huge strides since then, back then, that was a steep hill to climb.\\n\\n I would like to say a couple points about the office. What’s interesting about regulatory offices is that oft times they find themselves walking a thin line between bringing the level of clinical independence to regulation that is fundamental on behalf of the American public, while at the same time providing an appropriate level of advocacy and promotion. By the way, the Federal Aviation Administration has encountered this dilemma for decades, and, I would submit, most other agencies, as well.\\n\\n So, in addition to my dealing with the credibility issue of this new office, and building the regulation and licensing regimes, I also had to walk that line vis-à-vis appropriate and effective promotion. Frankly, at that time there was no voice other than the fledgling efforts of the Department of Commerce, and, of course, I had left Commerce, so there was at that point really—you know, there was a bit of a vacuum. I don’t want to make this sound egocentric, and I’m proud to say that we made efforts to fill that vacuum at Commerce over time.\\n\\n But, really, it fell to the Department of Transportation, it fell to my office to fill that void and be the advocate, so I spent a great deal of my time between ’86–’88 talking to as many of the aerospace fora as I could get to, to educate to them as to our charter, the scope and nature of our activities, as much time as I could educating the Department of Defense, NASA, Commerce, and the White House personnel, including the United States Trade Representative Office as to our issues. The Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, COMSTAC, as I mentioned earlier, was invaluable in terms of surfacing the issues that they felt required support by our office, by the government.\\n\\n And again, I constantly had to view all that through the lens of “Is that an appropriate role for us as an advocate?” And it was a challenge. It was a fascinating time, and, again, I realized that I had a really unique opportunity to help shape, form an office almost from its birth, although I do want to give credit to Jenna Dorn, who had been a director for a short period of time and Madeline Johnson. But the bulk of that effort fell on our watch really—Jenna went on to serve Secretary Dole very ably and is currently head of the Federal Transit at the Department of Transportation.\\n\\n But by the time I came on board, there was a host of challenges we had to face at that point, and at some point in the interview I could give you my observations about where I think that office has gone, both positive and negative." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ll do that. With the time today, it’s probably a good time to close, and we can start back up tomorrow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Courtney Stadd", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Great. Good. I’ll look forward to it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "nprc-oral-histories-00009", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Michael and Cindy Pierce", + "description": "\"But, early on, when I started going into the burn-file bays, every time you walked in the door, you could smell that smoke, smell that ash smell.\" ~ Michael Pierce", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/nprc-fire/mike-and-cindy-pierce-nprc-oral-history-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/nprc-oral-histories", + "original_file_name": "mike-and-cindy-pierce-nprc-oral-history-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:07", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "May 17, 2023" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "nprc_oral_histories", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Stephanie Reynolds", + "Jessie Kratz" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Michael Pierce", + "Cindy Pierce" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Okay. Let's go ahead and get started. First, I just want to thank you both for participating in this National Archives Oral History project. We are trying to document the 1973 National Personnel Records Center (or NPRC) fire that occurred in the St. Louis area and the impact that the fire had on the National Archives. My name is Stephanie Reynolds. I'm based out of the Denver, Colorado, National Archives office, and I'm assisting the National Archives Historian, Jessie Kratz, on this oral history project. And Jessie is also on the call today. Jessie, did you want to say hi?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, hi. And thanks, Mike and Cindy, for doing this really important oral history for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Glad to be here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome. We're glad to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Today is Wednesday, May 17, 2023. And I'm speaking here today with Michael and Cindy Pierce. Would one of you like to go ahead and start and just maybe tell us a little bit about your background, maybe where you're from, your hometown, your education, how you came to start at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Go ahead, Cindy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. I'll go first. I'm Cindy Pierce. I've been at the National Archives here in St. Louis for just over 20 years now. I started as an intern. I went to school at Southeast Missouri State University and got my bachelor's there in Historic Preservation. And I had to have an internship to graduate. And I luckily had someone who came from the Kansas City office to present to one of my archives classes, and he got me in touch with Marta O'Neill, who just retired about a year ago, but was working in the Preservation Lab in St. Louis, and she was willing to take me on as an intern. And I started as a student hire. I was actually paid, which was wonderful at the time. That was one of my big requirements. But I started then, and I never left. I really enjoyed the work, and I got to start off working with records that were affected by the fire right off the bat with a project as an intern. And so I've been involved with working with these records for the last 20 years. I'm originally from Lodi, California, and I came out here to go to school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm Michael Pierce. I was born here in St. Louis, in the Carondelet neighborhood of South St. Louis. I've always had a strong love of history and genealogy. And I was one of those late bloomers. I went back to school around 1998 and got my bachelor's in American Studies from Webster University here in St. Louis. Once I finished that, I started looking for a job. There were two places in St. Louis that I really would have liked to have worked, and NPRC was one of them. And I found out about the opening there in the Preservation Lab on the last day that it was posted. And I was working at a company just down the street. So I took all my application materials into NPRC that day. And a couple of months later I heard from them, got the interview, got the job. And I was there from 2002 until 2018, when I had to stop working due to disability. I always loved what I did. Still do. Still consider it a major highlight of my life because I was working to help people. You know, all those documents that we worked on, behind each one of them was a person. And that was my big thing as far as working there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wonderful. Thank you for that. Did either of you receive training from the National Archives when you were working there or currently working there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it's really an on-the-job training kind of situation we have, because there's very few places in the world really that work with fire-damaged records in the way that we do. And even though I had a background in historic preservation and working with documents that I got in school, I had a little bit of a hands-on cleaning experience. You really learn how to handle the burn documents on the job, and training on the job is a really specific part of what we do and establishing and developing different practices that are good for handling burned records and the effects that the records, the damage the records have from the fire, come in different forms. So dealing with the distortion, the mold and the soot and ash all take different skill sets." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, my undergrad and my graduate degrees were both in American Studies. It involves a lot of research. So I have known for 50 years or longer now the importance of documents doing this kind of thing. And yeah, like Cindy said, our training at NPRC was definitely on the job. The people that worked or that still work in that lab were the experts in the field. When it comes to treating fire-damaged records, people have the same sort of situation. They would come to us for information and advice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Maybe let's start with you, Cindy, and we'll kind of go from you to Michael since we started this way. Can you tell us maybe what a typical day looks like in the Preservation Department?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, over the years, we've kind of developed a way of handling things. And we found that because of the work we do with mold, we split our day up into four-hour shifts. We don't want to have exposure to the mold and soot for longer than that. And it's tedious, and it's detailed work. And so changing your task halfway through the day helps your mind to not go completely numb. And we found that it's just more enjoyable and we can still get the same amount done. So we do four hours of one task and then four hours of another task, and half of that time is usually spent working directly with burned, damaged documents. The other half is working on the digital part of restoration that we do in our lab. Over the last 20 years, we've kind of gone from being very hands-on to being a lot more computer-oriented in our approach to providing access to these records. And that's something that, you know, has evolved over time, especially during the pandemic. We made a lot of changes to our processes because we were forced to. But it's also become a really good thing. What they say about necessity promotes change and is the catalyst to making things better sometimes. And we really found that some of the changes we made, because we had to, were really good in making us better and faster at servicing our veterans. So we do a lot of re-scanning of old microfilm that provides access to the information that was lost during the fire. That's part of what we do, as well as the physical handling of the burn documents themselves. And so I might spend four hours cleaning and scanning “B-file” documents—that's all the records from the fire. And then I'll spend four hours working on the computer scanning clean documents, but documents that are supplemental to the information that was lost—because that's a big part of what the record center does is provide the information or else find the information elsewhere that would have been in those burned files." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do the burned records look like, that you're working with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A lot of them have a portion that's usually stable. It's usually the outside edges. If you think about a record sitting in a file like this, the bottom will usually be okay. And then the top and maybe the sides will be burned in like an arc. It depends on where the record was in the box. It can have ash, mold, soot. Usually you don't have mold on the same page that you have really a lot of burned, blackened material because I'm assuming, this is just me, because I don't have fire forensic experience, I'm assuming the conditions that caused the fire dried the records out to the point that they didn't have mold that grew in that same area. They put so much water on that building for so many days. It was weeks that they sprayed water into the building. It was literally running out the dock bays at the bottom. We have pictures of people with squeegees pushing the water out off the floors. There was mold damage on all six floors, and so a large portion of what we do is to remove the mold from records and then to flatten and humidify records so that they're flat and they can go into a flat file. We did a lot of that before the pandemic, and now we do a little bit less of that. We just take a quick scan and flatten it with a piece of plexi to get a good scan, if we can, and then move on to the next one. But we've developed several different procedures over the years that work really well for flattening records that were left distorted. We have some really good images on our website, and I think we have one record we call the football. It was literally a wadded pile. And we showed the steps of how you take each piece apart, and we have a dome that we use to humidify in with a little humidifier, kind of like the one you use in your house, which has a tube that goes into it and it kind of looks like a large incubator that you might see in a NICU unit [neonatal intensive care unit]. And we lay the sheets out, and they are flattened in about 15 minutes. There's enough moisture in there that it relaxes the paper fibers. We then stack the paper in between layers of blotter and put it in a book press overnight. And as the papers dry, they then relax and they're flat, and you would never know it had been distorted before. It's amazing and it's really effective. It just takes a lot of time. So we do that on things that are really, really badly distorted and it's amazing. It's fun to look at the befores and afters, and there are great images—and we can give you some of those if you'd like to use them. But it's time consuming. And so we have to kind of balance access and speed, you know, and what we can do to help the record and what we're doing to help the most veterans. And it's always kind of a challenge that we have in our department is how to do the most with the least amount of time and effort so that we can do more for more people, if that makes sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you doing this for all of the records or just as they're being requested?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a really good question, and we've always done it as requested. There's just too much. We continually have at least a month's worth of a backlog, sometimes a little bit more, sometimes a little bit less. At times, it was a couple of years when we were working on more detailed—trying to do more detailed stuff to more records. So we have enough just doing the requested records and we're trying really hard to keep up with what's being requested. And we're down to about a month, a month-and-a-half backlog. We also are doing just the records that are requested from people outside of NPRC. So the VA [U.S.Department of Veterans Affairs], those law enforcement agencies that need information, any other government agency that needs the information, we will treat the record as needed or scan it and send them a copy. The records that are worked within the record center itself are just pulled and worked by the technicians and returned to file. We do triage them to make sure that they're safe to handle. And there's a small team that works with really badly damaged stuff that can't be handled by a regular correspondence technician. And we've done that all along, and that allows them to be able to continue to work their processes and eventually we'll probably handle most of the records because they'll be requested either by the research room or by somebody from the outside that needs it for something—a researcher. We do try and treat the stuff for the research room or have that provided in a copy format if it's too damaged." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That's a lot of information there. We're going to circle back to you. This is great! This is what we're looking for. So I want to go back to Michael now and see what a typical day like was for him. And then we can talk about some of those themes that you brought up. Okay?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The typical day was really as Cindy described it. There's not a whole lot I could add to that. There are so many myths and misconceptions about that 1973 fire. I would get questions– ”How badly are they burned?” Some of them had very little burn on them at all. Some of the paper would be about as pristine as you could expect and might have a little bit of mold, a little bit of soot, a little bit of ash on it, and you clean that off. And it was ready to forward on. And then there were others, like what Cindy described as the football. I would sometimes describe it to people as paper kimchi, if you can imagine. Take a bundle of paper, set them on fire, throw in—not just with that ash and that soot—but throw some in from your barbecue grill, wet it down real good, wad it all up, and bury it in the ground for three days and then take it out and do the best that you can, trying to straighten that paper out and clean it. We really accomplished a lot as far as documents like that, because you would sometimes receive these things and you're just going, oh my gosh, especially when I first started there. This isn't going to end well. And then you look at the end product after you went through all the processes to clean it up, straighten it out, get it ready for photocopying. And I would just think, wow. You know, it's amazing. You can make out the words on this. And then when we started using the process several years ago where you could take a sheet of paper that was essentially burned black. You couldn't read anything on it, but you could use a process where you take a picture of that, run it through software—and ink and pencil lead work at different temperatures in a fire than what paper does. You can run that through a process. And in the end you're looking at a recreation of a perfect document. You can read everything that's on it. After it's gone through the software you can look at this on your computer. Some of the technological stuff, I don't understand how it works, but it just always amazes me. And so still for me, it was the realization that there were people behind these documents. There were veterans or their family members that were waiting to get home loan benefits, health care benefits, end-of-life health care benefits, being okay to go into a veterans home benefits. And for me, the ultimate thing is the feeling that I got knowing that I was doing something that would hopefully make the lives of these vets a little bit better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. It sounds like you feel a personal connection to helping those people that are requesting the records. So, very much a “feel-good job.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it was. My family's fought in every war since the founding of the Republic. And one of my grandfathers tried to enlist in the Navy during World War II, and he ended up after his physical being discharged due to a stomach ulcer. And it was really exciting because it took a long time—but one day because during the refiling process after the fire, records were misfiled—and I would occasionally submit to get a copy of his Navy record knowing there wasn't much to it. But I still would like to have seen it. And finally, one day, it had been refiled in its proper spot. The Navy records were filed alphabetically. And so it popped up. And in there was a copy of the photograph for his Navy ID. Well, and I'm looking at that. He was 27 years old and I'm thinking he has lived half his life. I have an enlarged copy of that hanging on the basement or on one of the basement walls with pictures of other family members. But I look at him, and I think he's still got that determined look. And the only thing that was different was the high and tight buzz cut, because he wore his hair a little bit longer—about like I'm wearing mine right now. So yeah, that was a personal moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's wonderful. When you both first started at the building, can you describe maybe what the building looked like? Did you still smell smoke from the fire? What was that like when you first got there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. I think it was an interesting building. It definitely had issues because of the fire. None of the systems worked properly. It seemed like there was always something that went wrong because you imagine that it was a lot of—they removed the sixth floor, but the rest of it, they retrofitted and left. The B-files definitely smelled of smoke. And they had created a space in the basement where the B-files were housed. There were no windows, but it leaked and we would get water leaks on the floor. And Mike is shaking his head because he remembers, and we used to have these long snake-like things. That's what they called them, snakes. And they were filled with sawdust and water absorbing material that would hopefully catch the water before it would go underneath the records because they were on metal shelves raised from the ground a few inches. We used to have to go around every time there was a rainstorm and check all the leaks throughout the files and also up on the fifth floor because what was the roof was not built as a roof. It was a floor. It was originally the sixth floor—sixth floor floor. Sorry, I'm getting my F's mixed up there. And it leaked constantly. And one of the jobs I had at one point was monitoring and keeping track of those leaks. And we would put up plastic and tarps and buckets and we had a real fancy one that had a funnel with a hose on it that went down into a trashcan at one time that the GSA staff had put up. And I remember trying to send them information about, okay, this one's leaking more. We got a gallon of water out of it this time. We need to check that leak. One spring we had over 20 leaks in like three or four months. And they gave us a spot award because of all the time we spent upstairs checking on leaks. I think we had over 20 incidents where we had to remove boxes from the shelves because the records had gotten wet and we had to lay them out and dry them and make sure they didn't get moldy and nasty and gross. It definitely affected the building from the outside. You can to this day—because the building is still standing—see the elevator shafts because they left them at the six-floor-tall height. Actually, I think it's above what would have been the six-foot floor because they went up so that you could get off onto the roof. And so you can see them from the street level, but you don't have any access to them. I don't know. I don't think they actually went up that high. But you can still see those sticking up from the roof line. What was your take on the building, Mike?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That entire building leaked like a sieve. The theoretical roof leaked all the time. It leaked around the windows. It leaked through the walls in the B-files—the burn-file bays in the basement. It would sometimes come up through the floor in those bays and you kind of became nose blind to it after a while. But, early on, when I started going into the burn-file bays, every time you walked in the door, you could smell that smoke, smell that ash smell. It's hard to get people to understand it and believe it unless you've actually experienced it. And then a few years ago, we started working to preserve records that were salvaged from the USS Arizona when she was sunk in Pearl Harbor. And you would open those records and you could still smell the smell of diesel fuel and fire. And there was sand in them. Sometimes there were little shards of metal in them, which led to a whole other conversation which I won't get into right now. But yet the smells from those damaged records was an experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The B-files were the only part of the stacks that was air conditioned. And so you would get a lot of smells because of that. There was a vinegar smell from the fourth floor because they had nitrates. They weren't nitrate; I guess they just had film up there that was in the heat and the cold, and it got exposed to all the elements because of not having any air conditioning. I think there was heat in the winter, but there was no air conditioning and because of that people would open the windows and they thought it would be even better if they took the screens off, and that let the birds in. And the pigeons came in and we had issues with birds. And so there was a big project to clean that all up. That took a couple of years to get that squared away before we actually moved into the new building. I remember I was one of the last ones to leave the building after we moved into the new building as the records were moved over, and they took all the records out of the B-files and the smell actually got worse. And I don't know if it was because they turned the air off, but it was so bad that if they opened that door when they were moving the shelving, it would smell. The entire basement would smell. Our lab was in the basement, only maybe 50 yards from the B-files, Mike? Yeah, about that much. It stunk so bad that you could tell when they were opening the doors in our lab because I never smelled it so much. I think it was because it was air conditioned before. And you could immediately tell that when it wasn't, because the overwhelming smell of mold and fire would just become extremely bad. One of the things we noticed, too, when we were cleaning up the bird issues and some of the other things before we moved, was the records that had been stored in the regular stacks exposed to the heat in the summertime were in sometimes worse shape than the records in the B-files that had been in an air-conditioned-controlled environment minus the burned parts. But the part of the record that was stable was actually in better shape than the records that were in the heat and left and—there was little protection from the windows, they didn't have any curtains or any film on them that I'm aware of—and so they had a lot of sun damage too in that building. Luckily, we have a nice new building that doesn't have those issues. We love it. The one thing they promised us was no roof leaks. And the first time I got in the building there was a leak, but they quickly fixed it. It was a seam in one of the—because they put it up in sections—one of the seams had a leak. And that was my first day in the new building, to deal with another leak. But I felt at home, so it was okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. Yes, it sounds like lots of problems that you walked into on your first day. Were either of you involved in the move? The actual moving of the records to the new building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we both were in some way. They had a company that did the physical moving of the records. But we tracked and monitored. And a big project that the Preservation Lab had was cleaning and removing the bird poop, because we didn't want to move it into the new building. And we sent out 13 diesel truckloads of records to a contractor to have them radiated to clean off the bird guano. And I was involved in that from the beginning—tracking and monitoring those records, making sure that the right records were pulled from the shelves, identified, placed on the shelves, and that we knew which records were out. We have so much volume going in and out of our records that we had hundreds of records that were out at the time the boxes were gone that needed to be refiled or pulled. And so I would keep track of that information and make sure that happened. And it took about four years to complete that process. I know, Mike, you were a move coordinator too, weren't you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, for a while. I forget how many weeks I was actually subbing for someone who took off at the time because their wife had a baby. So six weeks, eight weeks, something like that. And that was basically just a checklist of what they were loading onto the trucks and just making sure that they had gotten all the boxes that they were supposed to be getting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When the boxes were loaded–so these were ones that still needed some treatment done on them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think Mike's talking about the general records from the stacks. So that was the general move. The one I was talking about were ones that we identified that we sent to a contractor. So those were a little different. It was kind of happening in a parallel time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In terms of Cindy, I know you mentioned the auxiliary records. Can either of you or both of you talk about maybe that process? And what are you looking for? What types of records are helpful? Anything about those types of records and how you're piecing together the official record." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's really done by the correspondence technicians, especially the reconstruction correspondence technicians. We don't have anything to do with that. Mike probably has more knowledge of that than I do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, in a perfect world, when a service member completes their service, they're supposed to take one of the certified copies of their DD-214, their discharge document, to their local courthouse and make sure it's filed away there. Not all of them do it. And you know, with people, once they're out of the service, they sometimes have to deal with their own issues. As far as their documents, they might get lost in a move or a fire at their house and it's lost. And so I tell every veteran I know to get at least three or four certified copies of your discharge papers and then make, if you have to, dozens of photocopies of those. Put one of those certified copies or two and a handful of those copies, if you can do it, like in a safe deposit box at your bank. Take everything else that you have and distribute it to your circle, your family, your close friends, so that all these people have copies of those things. In that worst-case scenario, if you are in a position where you can't speak for yourself, somebody's got a copy of that. If you wait until the last minute, I don't know what the turnaround time is now from NPRC to get copies of stuff, but, even before, it could be weeks unless you are looking at burial benefits and then they can turn those around overnight. But, make sure you've got a plethora of copies of those documents, and get them out there to friends, family, your pastor where you go to church so that somebody has them available for you just in case." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know they use morning reports. I know there's unit histories that they can use. I know we've microfilmed morning reports. That was a big project that we did for years, when I first started—and then we've been working on for years. Right now we're doing DD-214s, a series of DD-214s, which is the primary separation document. Recently we were working on records that were from World War I that were the widows’ records, from the widows that were in the 30s, sent to Europe to visit the grave sites of the veterans, of their sons usually, widows and wives— it's mainly widows. And that was really interesting, because they had pictures of the mothers in their files, and it's just another piece of information that can fill out that story that's missing. And the correspondence technicians are really good at knowing where to go to find all kinds of information. They're very knowledgeable and skilled. And the ones that have been doing it for a long time have such a plethora of knowledge in their heads of where to find what I know. Right after the fire, there was a big push to not destroy any information that may be out there that would supplement what was lost, that all of the bases and service locations were told to not destroy anything. And that information from those places has been gathered and used for the last 50 years to try and fill in the gaps of that information that was lost. And, you know, we have 6 million records that were saved that are in our burn file base, but there were probably three or four times that that were destroyed that we have nothing of. So that's something that we are aware of and that we work every day to try and mitigate. We do have what we call R-files, which are reconstructed files. And they're usually very small and they have just the amount, just what they found in the past, working a case to try and get that veteran their benefits. And it's never going to be a full record again, but at least to show he served. Sometimes it's to get Agent Orange help. Sometimes it's, you know, all these issues that come up later in life that veterans need information about. Sometimes it's to get erroneous errors in their service, like their discharge, corrected maybe. Sometimes decisions weren't always based fairly. We have a lot of history in our country of not always being fair based on race. And you can see that in some of the records. And there's been work done to try and resolve some of those issues. And so the reconstruction work is really important for the veterans, for their families, and, you know, to try and do that. And the basis is to try and get a date in and a date out and figure out like what rank. I know, Mike, you can help me with what information they're looking for. He's the historian. I'm the objects person, if you haven't figured that out yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of the time it is benefits, but sometimes it's just getting a record corrected where they go through the board for the correction of military records, usually that would involve changing the character of discharge or ending of service. Sometimes it has to do with medals, decorations, that they weren't awarded. Quite often, like Cindy was mentioning before, that was a race-based issue back in the day. Trying to think of what else there could be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's also work done—and Mike, you have experience with this, you followed this shortly before you left I know—we were doing quite a few records for the repro—losing my words for finding POWs—and getting the remains identified. And we haven't done as much of that since the pandemic. But that was a big push before, not before the fire, before the pandemic was to work on a lot of that stuff. And those were a lot of the records that were in our lab. And I remember you saying one time, maybe a year or so after he had worked on a record, he saw where they found the information, and were able to get it to the family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I can't remember if it was either a Vietnam soldier or maybe someone who had served in World War II. And then, nowadays you've got this, you know, it's not just the documents that we have anymore as far as those remains-recovery folks that work out in Hawaii. It's the miracle of DNA. And it makes it so much easier to locate them. I forget over the years how many people that they've identified as unknown from World War II that were buried usually at Punchbowl National Cemetery there in Hawaii. And they're able to identify these soldiers, these sailors, airmen, whatever, and get them home. And so the family then at least has a real sense of closure. Sometimes it would involve maybe a plane crash that happened in the jungle that, you know, they've just discovered 60 or 70 years later, and there's still some identifiable human remains in there and they can reunite those with the family. So, yeah, it's just really cool the stuff that we can do with that now. You know, again, I don't understand how it all works, but it's just amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that whole experience working with those records? Has it changed how you view records and the importance that they contain, that they have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and probably in ways you wouldn't think. I've realized that we have a lot of wasted space and margins that we don't use. You know, when you're working with burn records, you realize if the edge is burned, I haven't lost any information, so I've still got all the information there. I can give them everything they need here and feel satisfied. Once I've stabilized that paper, once I've got it clean—and it made me realize, too, in doing recovery, when we have water leaks and issues like that, that if we address it right away, you don't know that it ever happened. If we can get to those records, get them laid out and dried and flattened, you will never know it got wet. In all the years and all of the hundreds of boxes, probably thousands of boxes that we laid out, I don't think there was anything that had any lasting damage in it, from the records that were wet over the years in that building after the fire. Now, the things that we didn't get to right away, like if there was a slow leak that we didn't know about and it sat, the mold would get in that box and it would destroy the paper. It would eat the paper fibers and loosen it. And that damage, you could tell, had been there. And we weren't always able to—we couldn't put back what was lost. But if it's there, we can salvage it. And the amazing thing that Mike was talking about with the infrared photography that we're doing now, where we separate the paper and the ink and it's not as perfect—it's not a perfect piece of paper, but you can read it. You can glean the information. And a lot of times in archives and in museums, we value the objects so much. But in this case, yes, the objects are important. And Mike always said, what are we going to do when we get down to the last record? Are we going to treat that or are we going to keep it as a burned record to document the fire? You know, yeah. As you know, he's brought that up to me sometimes, you know, do we leave something to show that there was a fire here, or do we make everything pristine again? And I think that we look at it primarily as the information is the most important thing. The paper is just the medium to carry that information. And, yes, the documents have a story themselves that they're giving, and at different times, I think different ways about it. You know, there's that constant juxtaposition between ‘save the document’ and ‘provide the information.’ We could lock these away and never let anyone have access to them. But what would be the point of that? And we constantly have to work on doing the best we can to protect the document so that everybody has access to it in the future. If we pull it and take the information, the paper is all ashy and we lose pieces of it and we stuff it back in its folder, and we don't do anything to protect it. We provide access to it one time, but then the next time they go to get that folder, the information is no longer there because it fell off on the cart, then we've not served our veterans very well. We—Go ahead, Mike." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was just going to say we're talking all the serious stuff here, but you do occasionally with some of the records that we dealt with, you have some humorous situations you would see, and it was primarily on medical records. You know, people doodling in the margins. They're writing, or they're drawing pictures of dogs or cats or birds or just, you know, like general doodles and stuff like that. And I remember, too, one record I worked on. It was a guy who was a surgeon in the Navy, and he had done a surgery on a second lieutenant—they said it was emergency hemorrhoid surgery. And the surgeon had kept like a little diary from the time this lieutenant came in until the time he was finally discharged. And some of the stuff that's in there, that he writes about—this guy was just absolutely hilarious. At one time, I remember seeing one line in there, you know, this second lieutenant is a literal pain in the ass and complaining about everything and, you know, stuff like that. And then a situation we had back in, I think it was the early 2000s—and Cindy will remember this—we had a record that we opened up. There were a lot of documents that were stuck together, and it had like a maple smell. And the powers that be in the office, you know—we needed to somehow get this analyzed to determine what the substance is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they send it off, I think, to the lab in Washington, DC, for analysis. And it came back and results of the analysis were that all the stuff that showed up were all the primary ingredients in Coca Cola. And, yeah so, you know, that was funny. And then just every once in a while you'd come across and I'd see stuff that was in the record." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The watermelon story. Were you there for the watermelon story, Mike? The buckshot and the watermelon. The guys that tried to steal the watermelons got shot with buckshot. You know, just things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, the real reason that Jimi Hendrix got discharged from the Army. He always told people that he had broken his leg during a practice parachute jump, and that was not the case at all for his discharge. And then I remembered the reason was much more colorful. And then I remember in his record, too, one of his evaluation reports. His commanding officer says, \"I don't think he's going to make it as a soldier. He kind of fancies himself as a guitar player.\" You know, just stuff like that every once in a while would make you laugh. You'd be reading through a record and, sometimes, yeah, they were really, really serious what was going on. But other times in, you know, whether it was evaluation reports or sometimes the medical records, I would just sit there and laugh and shake my head and it's like, you know, the occasional \"Hey, y'all listen to this\" or whatever. For me, it brought out the humanity of it all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do either of you feel that there is something that comes to mind that you think is your greatest accomplishment or something that just really sticks out in your career at the Archives, something maybe you came across like some of the things you mentioned, Michael, or anything that you feel like you've really accomplished something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A couple of things. The major point is doing stuff to help these veterans and their families. You know, ultimately, that's what it's all about. My personal pride is back in the day when Twitter was first becoming a thing, and they were just letting regular employees take over the Twitter page for a week. And so I volunteered to do that for a week. And at least up until that time, the NARA Twitter page got more hits than it had ever gotten. And, I'm kind of just putting up stuff that we do in the lab and then things that like I was just talking about, things that you brought up or that would come up that, you know, you would just kind of find humorous, other things, you know. Somewhere in the collection is a small record for Ernie Pyle, the World War II combat reporter who started out in Europe, and then when the war there ended, he went to the South Pacific. And he was killed by a Japanese sniper. And there was a photo in there, and it was his, I guess you'd call it, postmortem photo. It was taken from a little bit of a distance and his body had been recovered and, you know, just laid like, I think, on a rock wherever they were at. There's nothing else in the photo apart from the natural stuff but him, and it was just kind of a—looking at that, for me at least, it was just kind of a lonely feeling. And then I started to imagine how many other people during that war—it was the same thing for them in the end. And then occasionally you'd—there was a picture one time of a World War I soldier, I think somewhere here in the States, who had actually died of influenza. And they prepared the body and put him in his coffin. And it was one of those, you know, shaped like that [drawing a triangular-top-shaped coffin] and stood him up to be photographed. And the dude didn't have—they didn't have a stitch of clothing on him. And I just kind of looked at that and thought, you know, what a way to be remembered, naked in your own casket. And just stuff like that. You know, for me at least, I really started to realize that things are a lot different during war and on the battlefield, and that would occasionally really hit home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just got an email about a week ago saying we're supposed to identify those, if there's remains photographs and make sure that they're put in a place where they're not accessed so they have their dignity back. It was just something that came up in the last week or two in our office. It was interesting that you brought that up. Sorry if I cut you off, Mike." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For me, to answer that question would be the process I helped develop and start in the lab for humidifying records that are really distorted. We went from it taking 12 to 24 hours to process a batch of records to 15 minutes. And for me, that was probably the biggest accomplishment. The intern that we had at the time, Emily—do you remember Emily's last name, Mike? I want to say it was Thompson, but I don't know if that's correct. I can't remember. It's been about seven or eight years now. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thompson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thompson, yeah. Her and I worked on it for a while, establishing the process and procedure for using our humidifier and the chamber rather than using trays. And it really made a difference. We started with a small project with some JAG [Judge Advocate General's Corps] records that were mimeographed using an ink that was completely water soluble, but they needed to be flattened. And so we developed a process for them, and then we expanded it and promoted the use of it throughout all the work we did with B-files. And it speeded up the process substantially and helped us to serve more veterans. And for me, overall in my career, that's probably one of the things I'm the most proud of and feel the most accomplishment for, because I think it's made a difference overall for many years, you know, and moving forward. There's a lot that we have to do that we can influence and make differences for. And when we, in our department, for years it was ‘go and do the job, get it done, go home, do it again the next day,’ and as technicians, we weren't really given a lot of opportunities to provide new ideas, to promote things that we thought were important. And so when those opportunities came and when I was able to work on that, it really made a difference and helped, I think, myself and other people to realize that there's a lot we can do if we think outside the box. And like I said at the beginning, the pandemic really forced us as a lab—and we have some great management there now that are really working towards improving things and taking ideas and suggestions and moving forward. We're working on digital delivery of the records that we scan. We're hoping to be able to implement that soon with the VA especially, and that'll just improve our processes and make things better, and I love the idea that we can continue to improve. We can do more. We can do better, and we can provide better access to these records. Mike is probably better at answering this, but he, a few years ago, figured out how many records we had treated and made into safe files, and at the rate we were going, we would have enough work to keep us busy for about 500 years. And we'd been working on this for almost 20 years at that point. And so it made us realize overall that we needed to change the way we were doing things. And during the pandemic, we completely rethought our processes. We went from treating and stabilizing and flattening and cleaning every record that went through our lab to bringing it in, analyzing it, removing what mold we had to, making a clean scan of it, scanning the record, and putting it back. We provide access through the scans now, and we're hoping that that will be something that allows us to treat more records, to serve more veterans and still maintain the integrity of the records. It's a balancing act constantly. There are pros and cons of both approaches, but when you're talking about records burned in a fire or distorted or moldy from a fire, there's a lot of work involved, especially a collection as large as this one. The majority of archives out there probably don't have half or a quarter of the amount of just our B-file collection. And so we're looking at millions of records that we are trying to provide access to, and you're constantly trying to find new ways and safe ways of being able to do that. And that's our primary focus as a preservation department, is to provide access to the information while safeguarding the record. Because if we provide access today, but we lose information that isn't there for the next request, then have we really accomplished our mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And what Cindy brought up, it was some—I won't mention any names because they still work there, but I would call them an upper middle management person who brought up, as far as the burn files, \"Why don't we just start with number one and work our way all the way through to the end to number roughly 7 million?\" And so I did some calculations just based on, you know, nothing nearly scientific but ballpark, the average amount of time that it took us to work on a record; the average number of documents that were in the average burn record, which was 88 sheets; the average amount of time it took us to work on a record that size. And I think it actually came out to like—if we started there and ended with this one and going through, I think it was something like 698 years. So I was telling all my friends, if you're looking for a good racket to get into, get into this. Get your grandkids, your great grandkids, great, great grandkids and expand exponentially out through what would probably be well after the end of humanity, and they're going to have a job. And needless to say, it didn't happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that would be job security for sure. That sounds kind of like a mix of, like, with the upgrades and technology, you know, over time, and then especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, that and then also just having staff think outside the box has really moved us, you know, ahead further and much quicker than what it would have been before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it really has. When I think about the fire, there was the initial response right after the fire. There was the “stabilize the building, get the records out,” you know, the “tent city in the parking lot, sorting the records, getting them cleaned.” They created a registry. You know, there's a first time we went from the alphabet to, you know, numbering each record and having an identifier for each one. And then trying to piece things back together. And they did that. That was the first 20 years after the fire. And then when the Preservation Lab was established at the beginning of the 2000s or right before the 2000s, I think it had been here maybe two years before we started. That was the beginning of really treating the records and not just using them as a tool to get information, but realizing that we needed to stabilize them, that we needed to make sure that information was there for the next request. And so we worked on that for about 20 years, up until the pandemic, and then we had to all of a sudden get these records out now, and we had to stop saying we want to treat it, we want to clean it. We want to make it pretty before you can touch it. You know, we had to just rethink things. And one of the other things we realized is there's new information coming out about the way you clean mold and how much mold is left in the paper. And that's really kind of informed us that even though you can't see the mold after we've brushed it off or sponged it off, it's still in the paper fibers. And we were putting the cleaned records back into our regular stack areas. We had a designated area, but it was in the regular stack areas that are housed with air conditioning. That's like office space air conditioning. And the B-files are housed in cool storage, though they're in the 50-degree range rather than 70, you know. And we realized that maybe that wasn't a good idea. And so the rethink was if we just scan them and put them back where they were, maybe we're actually doing better for the records than we are putting them in the regular storage. Even though it looks clean, it may not be as clean. And so some of that knowledge has really informed us. And moving forward, we're working on technology and how we can better utilize technology. And I think the next 20 years or so is going to show us, like you said, how we can be inventive. How can we rethink the processes and make our approach to the access of this information even better? And as we, as an agency, deal with the shortage of space, you know, as an agency, we have to think about it. We're always concerned that all of a sudden they're going to come and go, \"Well, let's just get rid of the B- files. They're not necessary anymore,\" you know. And that's always kind of been a fear of ours because they're our baby. They are our purpose for existing—is to work with those files. And so we kind of are connected to them in a way that maybe sometimes we have to take a step back, you know, at times and realize. But we're working on trying to balance that out. And you're right. Technology is a huge part of that and staff innovation and bringing in new staff, thinking about things in a different way. You know, just last week got a new head to our department and we're excited to have Vicki on board. She's wonderful and is one of the people that's really helped us through the pandemic to change some things. And I think moving forward, I'm really excited to be a part of what we're doing now because I think we have a really good balanced approach to when we need to do more detailed treatment on something and when we need to just capture the information and send it to the requester so that they can get that information. We can move on to the next request because there are a lot of people that need this information, that need to have access to these records. It's the most actively used collection in all of NARA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you know about how many requests come in? I don't know, say, per week or so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Overall, I should know that—I know for the B-files, because those are the records that we handle, we get probably, oh, it can be anywhere between 500 to 1,000 records a week that are requested just for the files and center-wide. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's in the thousands. Okay. I mean, it's astronomical. And some of the archives technicians can probably—archival staff probably have a better idea of, overall, how many come into the building. I know NPRC puts out stats where they were for a while during the pandemic trying to keep us on track. I know our backlog was quite large. We were looking at over a 100,000 records backlog kind of thing, you know, so we're talking about a lot. We have over 600 people that work at NPRC here, and it's a large staff, and most of them are correspondence technicians that work cases every day. So it's getting a handle on that. If you're not in here, it's kind of eye opening, I think, to a lot of people to realize just the amount of work that is done. You know, this affects this collection of records, these personnel records for the military service from, mainly from the last century, affects, like Mike said, just about every family. And just about every generation has somebody who served in the military. And until they went digital, everything was here. And even with the digital, there's still some stuff that we have to do to certify stuff that the correspondence technicians work with. So it's a lot of responsibility and a lot of pressure that's put on people and they feel it. And there's a lot of tension in this building. If you talk to people and you walk down the halls, everybody's trying to get more done with less time and less resources." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, both of you, when you're talking about your jobs—it just seems very, very meaningful what you do and how you relate to your responsibilities. Michael, I know that you are retired. Do you remember what your last day was like? What was it like to leave the agency and what do you miss the most?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I really didn't want to leave, but, you know, circumstances prevailed. I guess the thing I miss most of all is most of my co-workers. And I had an opportunity just a couple of weeks or so ago—they had their spring picnic not too far away. And I made up my mind, I was going to go. And most everybody was there. There were maybe one or two that were missing that had other commitments that I would have liked to have seen, too. But yeah, most of the people that I worked with and, you know, that we work with had such a commitment to doing the job and doing it right. So, yeah, I think that, probably more than anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Cindy, I know that you are still working there. Are you looking forward to retirement, and what would you miss the most if you were, say, to retire tomorrow? What would you miss the most?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, that would be exciting. I’ve got 20 years left. Honestly, I love the work I do. I love trying to find new ways of doing things like to solve problems that keep it interesting. I really would miss my co-workers; they are great. And like we've said all along, I've always known that I couldn't do it; I couldn't be a car salesman. I can't swindle people for a living or just pawn off things, useless stuff on somebody in a shop somewhere. You know, I have to feel like I'm helping someone, that I'm serving society and that I'm giving something back. And I didn't have the opportunity—I didn't take the opportunity to serve in the military. So this is a chance for me to serve the people that did and to serve my country and to feel like I'm doing something of value and giving something to people that need it. And I think that would be something that I would find missing in my life. I like to do things outside of work, so I like to think that I would be just fine in retirement. But yeah, I would miss it too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a piece I wrote for. I think it was for the Prologue, either website or Facebook page, maybe 10 years ago. And if you haven't seen it, it's pretty short and I just called it \"It's why I do what I do.\" And they still—it's like they recycle that one every couple of years and put it back up there and, you know, yeah, I get a little, you know, I did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. We'll have to look that one up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mike's also done a lot, after he retired, with the interviews with the firefighters, that I think is really cool with talking to the rookies that were there because it's been 50 years, so they're pretty young—were pretty young when they fought it. But some of those stories are just fascinating that he got with Captain Dave." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the one I really miss not being able to interview—I had a good friend. His name was Bob Palmer. And he retired as chief of the Mehlville Fire Department up here and was down south St. Louis County and he—I forget exactly when he died, but it was while I was still working—and he had worked—he was a rookie. When he got called to work that fire—and I can't remember right now if it was one of the—if it was one of the first he worked or if it was the first that he worked. I think it might have been one of the first. And he was the first person I met because I'd always had an interest in that fire, and the first person that I had met that I was able to really get some details from. He talked about how at that time so much of the stuff was stored in filing cabinets. And as things cooled down and they were able to actually go into the areas that had been burning, he said we'd open up a filing cabinet and it would reignite. And he said—so it got to the point where you had one man there with a hose and another guy to open the top drawer on the cabinet. And as soon as they pulled that drawer open, the other guy hit it with the hose and flooded it. And, you know, stuff like that that you just realize, you know, it was just little things and quick thinking on the part of a firefighter that, in the end, saved a lot of records. And then, I think, Captain Dave found me while I was still working at the center, and we started communicating. And then we got the idea to do the—or he got the idea, actually—to do the firefighter interviews. And I think we ended up interviewing 12 or 13 of them. And probably the most important one was a guy named Andy Klein, and he was the first firefighter in the building. And I think I sent you the link to the YouTube page. Okay. And these guys, you know, when we were talking to him a few years ago, after all these years, that was still like the highlight of their careers. The thing that they remembered most—and once you kind of grease the gears with them a little bit—you know, stuff that would come back. And there was one in particular. I think it might have been the first guy we actually interviewed and I can't remember his name right now. But, you know, when we first sat down with him before we turned on the GoPro and he was like, \"Well, you know, you're probably not going to get too much from me. There's not a whole lot I can remember.\" But, you know, you get into it then and then you get the leading questions and then other questions, you know, based on stuff that they said. And then it ended up that the interview went longer than either Dave or I had expected. And, you know, it was just such a real joy and an experience to be able to sit down and talk with these guys and ask these questions. And then, you know, when you told them that you were going to put it up on a YouTube page, so all your friends, all your family, can see it then, \"Oh, really?\" And, \"Well, you're going to be a YouTube star.\" And you know that really piqued them. Yeah, so that was kind of fun to watch. But, you know, it was just great to at least have those sources that we could still get some information from." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. It's those things that you don't read about in the newspaper about the fire. You have to hear it from them. You know, those little tidbits like the filing cabinet that you just mentioned and the fire hose. So, yeah, very important information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the—every one of them, if they didn't do it on camera, they did it like while we were setting up or while we were breaking down, talked about their face masks getting so hot that they melted. That's how hot that fire was. And I think it might have been Andy Klein, and, you know, the first responders were there in like four minutes. He said going up and when they got to those six floor entrances, he said you could already—the doors were closed up—but the closer you got to the door that they ultimately went into that, you know, you're 20 feet away from it or whatever, and you can already feel the heat. And then when you do go in, it's so smoky that you're having to go in either crouched really low or down, crawling on the floor just so you can see where you were going. And there's—I know at least a few of the photographs that Captain Dave has and if you've seen those, you can tell that they're taken while things were still going on because up kind of close to the ceiling, you can see the layer of smoke. I think the best ones that were taken were—and there weren't that many of them and Dave's got them—were the ones that Bob Palmer that I mentioned earlier took because he was like, you know, \"I was a kid. I was a rookie. I took a camera with me everywhere.\" You know, he took some, not just inside the files, but the shots of some of the guys outside while they were working this fire. Some of the photographs are amazing. There's a real short blip of video. I think you can find it on YouTube if you just type in ‘NPRC Fire.’ And it's somebody that lived in that area, their home movies. And it's just a few seconds right at the start of this one. From a distance, you can see, you know, they're filming the building burning. And I've tried over the years to get video from the various news stations here in town. You know, sometimes you never hear back or sometimes, \"Oh, yeah, we probably got it. But you know, it's going to take forever to find it.\" And so, that's another source that maybe you could wield a little bit of leverage because they've all got their video archives. So it's out there somewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we're coming up on the end of the hour and a half that we set aside for the interview. Is there anything that either of you want to add that we haven't already discussed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A couple of things real quick as far as the fire. Uh, the director at NPRC has a copy of the official FBI report. If you haven't seen that yet, all I will say is I encourage you, and it's huge to get it and read it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They've been scanning it, like it's out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And also—I was looking for it before the meeting started, but I couldn't find the link— there was a guy a few years ago who wrote an article about how the fire started, and a certain individual that was working at the center at that time, and how things ultimately played out. Have either of you found that online? Okay. I'm going to go in and look for it. And when I find it, I'll send you the link. It's very interesting. And I will say that his theory and conclusion jive with what I saw in the FBI report. That's all I got." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. And Cindy, did you have anything else you want to add as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I just can't think of anything right off the bat. I know you probably got the stories about the firefighters shooting the water guns through the windows and shooting things down the aisles. But because they were rookies and they were playing with new equipment that they hadn't used before, I know Creve Coeur had a brand new water gun that they used on that fire. I think it was the first time it had been deployed, and I think some people had some fun with it. These were 20-something-year-old guys for the most part, and they were working extra shifts, you know, for weeks, pouring water on that fire. So just the thought of it just blows me away. I know all my coworkers yesterday, we were going through pictures, getting ready for stuff for our congressional visit that is in a couple of weeks. We were putting together, you know, some photographs for that. And one of them goes, \"I would have left that day and never come back.\" You know, the thought of what those people had to do to recover all that information and the effort that was put forward by our predecessors to bring us to the point we are now. We look at some of the stuff they did and we think, oh, we would never do it that way today. But they managed to save 6 million records from that fire. And the—actually all of the records that are in that center, 6 million were burned and damaged by the fire. But all of those records—we have 15 bays full of records now because those firefighters and those people fought so hard to keep that information safe and to make sure it's accessible to us today. Those are true heroes on both sides of that fire. And I just am so grateful for the heritage that we stand on for the people's shoulders that we are able to work. I have a job today because they saved those records, and I remember that every day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And stuff with the firefighters, too. Just little things. Like every once in a while, yeah, they blast each other with their hoses and—but then things, too, like all the fast food joints that were around there at the time. When they got wind of what was happening, you know, they were bringing in free food and free drinks and stuff to the guys that were fighting the fires. And, you know, just little stuff like that. It's the little stories sometimes that can be the most meaningful or the most humorous or the most, you know, just regular. You know that some of the guys told us, you know, \"We just looked at it,\" you know, \"we were doing our jobs and nobody got hurt or killed.\" You know, there was, I think, one—throughout the whole time that they were dealing with that, I think—there was one minor injury to a firefighter. And that was it out of—Dave's got the list of all the guys that worked that fire. You know, just hundreds of them. And to just have one guy with a minor injury— that was just a miracle, considering the situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, it's amazing that more people didn't get hurt and that it could have been so much worse. You know, people getting hurt or, you know, all of the records could be gone. Right? So it's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the fact that it was the Navy that didn't want to put sprinklers in that building. They were afraid they would leak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some irony there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I think that is all I have. Jessie, did you have anything else that you wanted to follow up on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, I think you both did such a good job anticipating all the questions that I kept jotting down and you answered them. So I guess—." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I saw your cat was helping you, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know. It's lunch time. But I just want to thank you guys for providing this really important service to our veterans and sharing your stories with us. And it's obvious that you both really enjoy the work that you do. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks for giving us a chance to share. It's important. We're glad somebody's remembering this fire. Mike's been asking me for months: \"What are they doing about the fire? What are they doing about the fire?\" So thank you for letting us participate. We appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And if you come up with anything else, you know where to find me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Yes. I'll reach out to you once the meeting is over. If either of you have any photos that you want to share, you know, the fire or just of yourselves that we can post along with your interview, that would be great, also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. I think you have access to all the photos I have. Mike might have some that the center doesn't have. I know you do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. I turned all that stuff over to Dave, which reminds me, he's probably already told you, but he had cassettes of the calls for the whole period, the fire calls. And a few years ago we had a friend who was an audio engineer. And we transferred them to CD. And so Dave's got that, and I'm sure some of it can be really hard to hear. But I'm sure technology has improved enough now that, you know, if you can get him to burn you copies of those CDs and send them to you, you've got something you can run them through and improve them. Improve them just that much more." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you have given us so much information today and just, you know, for things to follow up on. This is extremely helpful. We really appreciate both of you taking time out today to talk to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Dave Dubowski is your man." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He's a good one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, he's a good guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Cindy Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And he's the one that comes and checks our building. He's the closest to us, too, which is interesting that he's the one that keeps us safe. So, yeah.\n\nAll right. Thank you, guys." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Stephanie Reynolds", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thank you so much. And, yes, I'll reach out to you here shortly. All right. Thank you. Bye." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael Pierce", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bye." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00494", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/RideSK/ridesk.htm", + "original_file_name": "RideSK_12-6-02.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/RideSK/RideSK_12-6-02.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Sally K. Ride", + "location_date": "San Antonio, Texas – 6 December 2002" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Sally K. Ride" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This oral history session today, with Dr. Sally Ride, is for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Today is December 6, 2002. It’s being held in San Antonio, Texas. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. This is part two of Dr. Ride’s oral history. The first part was conducted on October 22, 2002, focused on her days with the NASA Johnson Space Center.\\n\\n Today’s session reflects her efforts with the space agency while at NASA Headquarters, [Washington, D.C.]. After serving on the Rogers Commission, you moved from Houston [Texas] to Washington, D.C., where you were involved in strategic planning. Later you served as Assistant Administrator of Exploration. Could you discuss with us those duties and how you transitioned, then, from one job to the other, and what you were doing while you were at Headquarters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One was a natural outgrowth of the other. When I started at Headquarters, I was the Assistant Administrator for Long-Range and Strategic Planning. No one was quite sure what this meant—no one had held that position before—so my staff and I spent some time defining our role. We started by reviewing all the studies that had been done, either by NASA or for NASA, over the previous ten years. We wanted to see what was lying on the shelf already, what recommendations had been made, what consistencies there were in the recommendations, and whether the recommendations had been followed. That give us the context to begin NASA’s planning activities.\\n\\n After we had catalogued and reviewed previous studies, we discussed them with the chairs of committees that had produced each one. Then, we began a process of long-range planning, which evolved into a strategic planning process for all of NASA. We worked with every Center, contacted every Center director, had each Center director identify two or three people at their Center to work directly with us and to work with their Center, to start a bottoms-up strategic planning process throughout NASA.\\n\\n Each of the Center representatives organized a process at their Center, to involve employees there in a discussion of NASA’s long-range objectives. Our initial focus was, “What should NASA’s goal—or goals—be over the coming decade?” We began that broadly to encourage a variety of ideas and encourage people to brainstorm and discuss their view of the future of the U.S. space program and their view of what “leadership in space” meant.\\n\\n That dialogue went on at every NASA Center, then results were presented to the group I chaired. Over the course of many months, we distilled the ideas down to four initiatives. We then evaluated and discussed those initiatives: robotic exploration of the solar system, “Mission to Planet Earth,” a permanent lunar outpost, and human exploration of Mars.\\n\\n We evaluated each of the initiatives in our final report and made recommendations on each. The whole process culminated in a report called “NASA Leadership and America’s Future in Space: A Report to the Administrator.”\\n\\n At the culmination of that report, it was very obvious to us that NASA didn’t have an organization that was set up either to continually refine the strategic planning process or to take a forward-looking approach to human exploration. The Office of Exploration was set up to look at long-range exploration initiatives and produce relevant studies on human exploration—whether of the Moon or of Mars. After the first round of our strategic planning process was complete, I became the first Director of the Office of Exploration." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was your report received by colleagues?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was received very well. We testified before Congress, and we briefed it widely to the National Research Council, the President’s Science Advisor, and a variety of other groups.\\n\\n There were several things that came out of it. One was NASA’s Mission to Planet Earth; another was the Office of Exploration. It also resulted in more emphasis on long-range exploration within the agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to help implement any of those plans and initiatives, or was your report issued about the time that you were getting ready to leave the agency?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was able to follow those initiatives for a while. I spent time with the technology division, working with them to understand what our report meant to them. And I worked quite a bit with Mission to Planet Earth.\\n\\n But I left the agency shortly thereafter. Most work that I did after the report was issued was setting up the Office of Exploration." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You returned to Stanford [University, Stanford, California] after you left the agency, and since then you’ve been active in a number of areas. We’d like to talk to you about some of those areas, but before we do, we would like to know if you could possibly tell us what your most challenging milestone was while you were working with the space program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think my biggest challenge was just trying to breathe right after the engines ignited on my first launch! It’s hard to say what my most challenging milestone was. The space program is wonderful in that it is a series of challenges and a series of very interesting and very rewarding experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you find it difficult to pick out one that you would consider the most significant accomplishment that you made while you were at NASA? Is there something you would like to consider that you left as a legacy for others to see?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is, because I think it depends on the way that you interpret that question. Certainly my most significant legacy will be that I was the first American woman to go into space. That’s very rewarding for me. And the more time that passes, the more I appreciate that.\\n\\n But some of things that I’m very proud of are my work on the robot arm, my work as a CapCom [Capsule Communicator], of course my two spaceflights, and the report that I did for NASA Headquarters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As I mentioned, you went back to Stanford and got very active, of course, working there. You also were very active in a number of other areas, a lot of them dealing with children. We’d like you to comment on some of those. For instance, KidSat. Can you tell us how you got involved with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "EarthKam, then called KidSat, started when I was a physics professor at University of California, San Diego [La Jolla, California]. I was talking with some colleagues at [NASA] JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]. We came up with the idea of putting a camera on board the Space Shuttle, aimed at Earth, that could be controlled by middle-school kids from their classrooms.\\n\\n The moment we hit on the idea, we knew that it was a good one. It combined just the “gee whiz” of the space program with the actual hands-on involvement for the kids. We described it as, “Giving Kids a Piece of the Space Program,” because it allowed them to feel like they were participating in a very real way. It was their camera; it was on board the Space Shuttle, and they were the ones operating it and controlling it.\\n\\n We engaged undergraduates at UCSD to translate the “NASA-ese” of mission control and the Space Shuttle for the kids, and then send the kids’ commands up to the Space Shuttle.\\n\\n It’s a tremendous program. The camera eventually moved from the Shuttle to the Space Station, and now it’s called ISS [International Space Station] EarthKam. The program has been around now for several years, and it’s really making an impact." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve also written a number of science books for children." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share with us how you were able to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wrote the first one shortly after my second flight. It was called\\n\\n To Space and Back\\n\\n , and it’s about what it’s like to go on a Space Shuttle flight. I wanted to write it for kids—ten-, eleven-, twelve-, thirteen-, fourteen-year-old kids—because I’d been doing a lot of speaking, and it was really obvious that kids are fascinated by the space program. They love hearing about astronauts, about launch, about weightlessness. The book is a good way to encourage their interest in science and teach them a little bit while they’re not looking.\\n\\n I got together with an old friend from high school, who was a writer, and she and I co-authored that book. It came out in 1986. A few years after I left NASA, a different publisher called me up out of the blue and asked me to do another book for kids—this one on the Voyager spacecraft. I liked the idea and began collaborating with a different co-author, also an old friend from childhood, on that book for Random House, She and I have since written three books with a fourth one is coming out in fall of ’03. All are for kids around middle-school age:\\n\\n The Voyager\\n\\n ,\\n\\n The Third Planet: Exploring Earth from Space\\n\\n , and\\n\\n The Mystery of Mars\\n\\n . The one that’s due out in 2003 is called\\n\\n Exploring the Solar System\\n\\n ." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of new ways to inform and educate, you became part of a Space.com era. How did this opportunity come about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was really by chance. I was at University of California, San Diego, teaching a physics course. It was spring of 1999. Lou Dobbs retired from CNN [Cable News Network] and announced out of the blue that he was starting Space.com.\\n\\n I was fascinated with the idea and talked to him find out more about it. He said, “If you’re interested, and you want to hear more about it, why don’t you come meet with me next time you’re in New York, [New York].”\\n\\n I did. As it turned out, I was going to New York three or four weeks later. The more that I talked to him, the more I liked the idea behind it. The vision at the time was to create a website that catered to everyone who had an interest in space—for whatever reason. It would be fore kids interested in the space program, people who loved science fiction, the commercial aerospace community—everyone who had an interest.\\n\\n I loved the idea of it because I knew, living out in California, how hard it was to find out what was going on back in Houston and back at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida]. Just try to do that reading your local newspaper! You just can’t keep up with the space program. So, having a website where you can just log on and get all the information about where was the Shuttle on its way to the pad, or what were the astronauts doing in orbit that day, seemed like a really good idea to me. He basically convinced me to join the company." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long were you with the company?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was with the company for about a year and a half. I didn’t move to New York. I was commuting—staying in a hotel during the week to work there. I joined the Board of Directors right away and was initially the Executive Vice President for Strategic Planning. Shortly thereafter, I became the president of the company." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite a difference of strategic planning for NASA. Now you’re doing it for a website." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was quite different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Put some of that same strategy into the strategic planning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did you leave?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I left for a variety of reasons, actually. One was that I had only taken temporary leave from the university and wanted to get back to it. (I had retained my position at the university.) Also, New York City is a long way from San Diego, where I live; I did not want to move from San Diego! I was doing a lot of commuting, and did not want to move to New York. And it was pretty clear that Space.com was not going to be opening a West Coast office anytime soon.\\n\\n I had wanted to get back to teaching and research, but the last couple months that I was there, I started thinking more and more about doing something that was focused more on girls and education than Space.com was. I started talking with my friends and several of us decided to form Imaginary Lines, Inc. That became part of the impetus to leave Space.com to get back out to California and start up Imaginary Lines." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about Imaginary Lines. We’re all very interested in how that moved from an idea into the reality that it is today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The motivation behind it grew out of the lives of the founders. Most of us are women who are either scientists or engineers and grew up as girls interested in science. We went through college in a minority in our science or engineering classes, then were even more in the minority when we entered the professional world of science and engineering. I had spent a lot of time talking with groups of girls and groups of high school students, college women, and professional women, and had become very attuned to their interests and needs.\\n\\n We were all very well aware of the issues and were particularly struck by the realization that in elementary school there are the same number of girls interested in math and science as boys, but starting in middle school, that starts to change. Girls move away from science and math in numbers greater than boys do—but not because they’re not good at it and not because they’re not interested in it. This happens for a variety of reasons, most cultural or societal. It might not be cool for a girl to be the best one in the math class. A girl who says she wants to be a rocket scientist might get a different reaction from friends and teachers than a boy who says he wants to be a rocket scientist.\\n\\n There are still lingering stereotypes—not nearly what they were in the 1970s and 80s, but, they’re still there. When you turn on the TV, any engineers you see are apt to be male, not female. When you open the newspaper, you read about male engineers, not female engineers.\\n\\n As a result, twelve-year-old girls don’t really think of those areas as possible careers. We thought that there was an opportunity here, because coming out of elementary school, lots and lots of girls like science and math. We thought if we could capture that enthusiasm, that fascination, before they lose it, then maybe we could inoculate them against some of the stereotypes and keep more of them in the pipeline.\\n\\n We thought the key to that was to create science-related events, programs, and activities that they would think were fun, that they’d want to go to with their friends, and that they’d think were cool. We wanted to show the girls that there are lots of other girls like them who have these interests and introduce them to women engineers and scientists who love what they do, and put a female face on those careers.\\n\\n That was the philosophy behind Imaginary Lines. We think that we’ve really tapped into something. We’re getting a great reaction to our events and activities, both from the girls and from their parents. We think that the time is right for this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long have you had Imaginary Lines operating?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was formed in early 2001. We got our first funding in September of 2001, so it’s just a little bit over a year that we’ve been offering programs and events. We did our first Science Festival, for example, a year ago October." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A couple of decades ago you were named in the news media as a role model for young women, and now you’ve stepped into that full action. Was there something just recently that helped you move even further into this role, or [did you] just feel like the timing was right to do this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The timing was right. There wasn’t any one specific thing that triggered it. Maybe I had just lived long enough. I thought that this was something that was really worth using my name and using the visibility that I could bring to it. It felt worthwhile. When we started seeing the reaction of girls and their parents to our programs, it started feeding on itself, and we drew our energy and encouragement from them.\\n\\n When we started the company, there were a lot of people that we talked to, a lot of people who said, “This is not a business. There aren’t any girls interested in math and science. Where are you going to find people to come to your festivals? Where are you going to find these girls? All you need to do is look around the workforce. There aren’t very many women in engineering, so there can’t be many girls who are interested in math.”\\n\\n We said, “That’s not right. We know that’s wrong.” So we’ve taken some pleasure in proving them wrong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you’ve given them a tangible person to touch, whereas before it was just an image. So they can do that. It’s got to be very rewarding for you to be able to feel the excitement from those girls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s very rewarding to feel their excitement and to see their reaction to the women professionals we bring to the festivals. One of the things we’re trying to do is raise the visibility of other women scientists and engineers on a local, personal level for these girls, and then on regional and national levels, too. We want to make the world in general, and twelve-year-old girls in particular, aware of the women who are actively involved in science and engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your life certainly is full of balancing education and advancement and enrichment for young girls, and it sure keeps you busy from moment to moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little too busy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what a challenge, from talking to students on a college level, with physics, and then coming back and talking to elementary school students on a level that they can talk, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’d be surprised. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we finish today, I was going to ask Sandra and Jennifer if they had any other questions that we hadn’t had a chance to ask you while we had you in these sessions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had a question. When you went out to Headquarters, what was it like working out there? And could tell us how different it was from working at JSC? Can you make some comparisons between the two?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not on tape. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe a different question. We were talking with an astronaut earlier this week who kept referring to how the astronaut corps changed over time, from when he started in 1978. He was talking about how, in the beginning of the Space Shuttle program, astronauts, in particular, were very involved in all the different processes, and working with the contractors. I’m wondering if it changed at all by the time that you had gone up on your second mission, and [if] you could talk about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was starting to change by the time I went up on my second mission. It was definitely changing by the time I left NASA, or even by the time of the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident. That was the period of transition. When my group came in in 1978, there was a lot of work still to be done with the contractors on the Space Shuttle itself, everything from the testing of the main engines to the developing of procedures—the malfunction procedures, the abort procedures, the Remote Manipulator System procedures. Mission control had never controlled a Space Shuttle flight, so all the procedures, including CapComs working with flight directors was in the process of being worked out.\\n\\n We were heavily involved in all those things—there was a lot of work for the astronaut corps to do. I spent over a year as one of two or three astronauts working on the robot arm. Then, as time went on, the robot arm was developed, tested, and working. All the procedures had been developed, and the arm had flown in space several times, so there was less work for the astronaut corps to be involved in between missions. There were also more astronauts being brought into the astronaut corps—so there were both fewer tasks and more people to accomplish the tasks remaining.\\n\\n The astronaut corps was slowly getting larger, and now it’s much larger than it was. I think when I was there it was around 100, maybe a little bit less. I’m not sure what it is now, but it’s around 140, 150, which is significantly larger. So fewer technical jobs that really need doing and more astronauts. We could see things changing by the time I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think it was detrimental to the corps if the astronauts weren’t as involved in the Space Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a good question. I’m probably not in a position to answer that, just because I wasn’t in the corps once that transition had been completed. I benefited from the on-the-job training and getting deeply involved in not one, but a few different projects. So I don’t know how the corps is different now, with astronauts coming not having that same experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t think so today. Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else that you would like to add about your NASA career, things that we haven’t covered? We’ve tried to cover your missions and experiments and different types of experience, but didn’t know if there was anything else that we didn’t touch on that you would like to talk about. Especially any kind of—some personal sacrifices. We did talk about your private life sometimes being talked about in the press. I didn’t know if there was other sacrifices that you had made, or maybe you had wanted to do something other than what NASA pulled you into, but yet you—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are you kidding? [Laughter] No, I think I’d only add one thing that I don’t think we touched on this last time. There was one person who was very important to me at JSC, and it was Carolyn [L.] Huntoon. When I was going through the application process, Carolyn was on the selection committee. At the time, she was a Ph.D. biochemist in charge of a small group, but was the highest-ranking technical woman at JSC—therefore deemed to be the expert on everything related to women at JSC. She was the only woman on the selection committee, and it was a large selection committee. Once we arrived, she became almost the de facto liaison to all of the women astronauts; she became a very good friend to all of us and a very important person—especially in helping us steer our way through the first couple of years that we were there.\\n\\n If we ever had any problems, we all knew that we could call Carolyn, and we did! This was even as she was rising up through the ranks at JSC and becoming a more and more important person. She was always the person that we could call, and she would always help us solve any problem, no matter how small.\\n\\n So she’s one of the very few people, that I think I owe my career to. She had a long and distinguished career at NASA that had an unfortunate end. If you haven’t talked to her yet, you definitely should." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We have, and she’s mentioned as well that—we were talking about the selection committee and her opportunity to be on there when women were made part of the system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would hate to think what it would have been like for the six women in our class if she hadn’t been there before us, been part of the selection committee, and then been there for us once we arrived. She made our lives much, much easier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good. I’m sure she’ll be glad to hear that as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ll conclude for the day. Thank you so much, again, for taking the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sally K. Ride", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, sure." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00217", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HarlanCS/harlancs.htm", + "original_file_name": "HarlanCS_11-14-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HarlanCS/HarlanCS_11-14-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Charles S. Harlan", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 14 November 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Charles S. Harlan" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is November 14, 2001. This oral history with Charlie Harlan is being conducted in the offices of the Signal Corporation in Houston, Texas, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Kevin Rusnak, and is assisted by Sandra Johnson and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal.\\n\\n Thank you again for taking the time out to spend the afternoon with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re welcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If we can start by getting a little bit about your background, maybe what some of your interests were growing up, what may have led you into engineering, and those sorts of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A couple of things led me into engineering. I think one was my interest in high school; I liked to work on old cars. Then you could buy an old car for twenty-five or thirty-five dollars that would actually run. I worked on motorcycles a lot. In those days motorcycles were real popular. I grew up in Kentucky. So the interest in mechanical items basically is, I think, part of that reason for engineering.\\n\\n The other factor that led me to get serious about going to engineering school was the fact that I’m the first person in my family who ever graduated high school. I’m also the first person that ever graduated college. So from that situation, the expectation was typically you get out of high school and you usually go to work. I was fortunate enough to go to work in a concrete block factory, which was a lot of hard work for very little pay, so that helped.\\n\\n And my father kept pushing. He said, “You don’t want to end up like I am. You need to go on to school.” So I had an interest in the technical stuff from the things I liked to do with working on cars and motorcycles and things, and then anything mechanical I liked to take apart and fix and so forth. And this prospect of working the rest of my life in a concrete block factory for near starvation wages.\\n\\n So I had my father promoting it, and, interestingly enough, the guy that owned the concrete block factory, he was on my case about it, too. Even though he had a laborer there, a lot of his laborers were even illiterate. A big part of the workforce couldn’t even write their own name. So he kept saying, “Look, you’ve been to high school. You need to press on,” and so forth. So I had some folks, good folks pushing me, and then an interest in the technical end, I guess. So that’s why I went to engineering school.\\n\\n So I went off to University of Kentucky [Lexington, Kentucky] and went to engineering school. In terms of my prospects for the future, I count that as a seminal event in my life, is the education.\\n\\n Then just to continue, while in engineering school I majored in mechanical engineering, and I got real interested in the aeronautical field. So when it came time to graduate, I was fortunate enough at the time of graduation where every engineering graduate could get as many job offers as they wanted. I happened to take the lowest paying job offer just because of the work content. At that time I didn’t have a family, I wasn’t married, so money wasn’t a high priority in terms of I wanted to go out and grab the job with the most pay. In fact, I took the job with the least pay in the aviation field, working in Navy aviation. I did it because I was interested in the work. Like I say, again, I was fortunate. If I’d had a family and a couple of kids, I might have had to go for the money more." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find that as someone who was interested in tinkering with cars and that kind of thing, that engineering education turned out to meet your expectations of what engineering was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think so. It struck me at the time that this is what I have an aptitude to do and this is what I like in school. There’s a whole lot of other things in school that I wouldn’t have liked at the time that I would like to do now. I mean, when you look back on it, I think the technical education—my goal was get an engineering degree and get out of school to where I could get to work and earn a living, so that and I liked the content of the engineering business.\\n\\n Right now, I keep thinking I think I might like to—this is serious and I’m not pulling your leg because you’re a historian, but I read a tremendous amount of history now and I’m thinking to go back and get a degree in history and a Ph.D. in history or something just as a challenge or something. That’s a whole different idea. And I still enjoy the engineering, but the problem I think with an engineering degree is—it’s a strength and a problem, I guess—you’re really focused on the engineering department and the mathematics and the physics and the chemistry and stuff, which was fine at the time because that’s what I was really interested in, but it leaves out a lot of other stuff, and you can’t go to college forever. So nowadays I look back a little bit. This idea I’d like to broaden a little bit. But maybe that’s probably typical of a lot of folks who go into engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think nowadays they try to add some interdisciplinary approaches to engineering education, but with what success, I’m not sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "How long? Well, NASA, back in 1983, sent me on a management training program for a full semester up at Harvard [University, Cambridge, Massachusetts]. I spent, in the Kennedy School of Government, I spent a semester there. Their philosophy—and I guess this is an Ivy League school kind of philosophy—is you get a four-year degree in sort of a broad set of subjects, more of a liberal arts thing, and then you go to professional school after that. In my mind, that’s ideal. But most people, that’s way, way too costly, I mean, if you go get a four-year degree and then you went to engineering school after that.\\n\\n What they look at at Harvard, and I guess the other schools, is you get their four-year program and then you select whether you want to go to business school, law school, med [medical] school, or whatever. It’s kind of a nice idea, but again, you take some guy from a small town in Kentucky whose objective clearly had to be to get through this as quickly as possible, and I did get through it in four years. A lot of kids today don’t see that, don’t have that burning need to get through so where you can get yourself a job. That was the way we were focused then. So I continue my liberal education on my own." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s good to see, though, that you do have that broader interest to keep you intellectually stimulated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it about the Navy that particularly appealed to you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was interested in aeronautical engineering. Navy carrier aviation just seemed to really be interesting. It was particularly challenging.\\n\\n So I got a job in the Navy in what they call carrier suitability, the field of carrier suitability, which is sort of the functional area where the airplane and the ship come together. I was working on the airplane side of the interface, and then we had in a division we had folks working on the airplane side at interface and folks working on the ship side of interface, and I’ll explain that.\\n\\n The ship side of interface dealt with catapults and arresting gear, landing aids, and that sort of thing that were basically a part of the ship. We dealt with in the aircraft branch the kind of things that were really a part of the airplane, like the arresting gear, and there was a lot of requirements on landing gear and we went into nose gear tow. We used to do a lot of things with new airplane models, like spotting studies. We had scale model carriers, how to best you can locate airplanes on the ship and best utilize that airplane or a mix of airplanes on a ship.\\n\\n We were into these navigation aids that the pilots used for landing. In fact, in that time frame, we called it the automatic carrier landing system was being developed, and it’s much like the autoland on the—it’s implemented differently, but it’s kind of like the autoland concept would be on the Space Shuttle. It’s interesting to note that the arguments on autoland for landing airplanes on carriers, the arguments for and against it are the exact same arguments for and against autoland on the Space Shuttle. The pros and cons were the same.\\n\\n It turned out after I left the Navy and went to work for NASA, it took them some years to get that as a part of their embedded operation. It turned out it was a really important feature in carrier aviation in the Vietnam War. When those guys would come back, sometimes shot up and all kind of problems, to have that automatic carrier landing system. The weather was bad. You’ve got to get down on the ship. You’re out of gas or whatever, or close to being out of gas. So it developed over time. So I worked on projects like that.\\n\\n Then the Navy is one of the more traditional organizations in the world. It’s hard to get new ideas there. For instance, we did studies with ships. The way they designed the carriers, they weren’t designed very well for making the air flow right over the landing area. They just liked, because it was tradition, to design those islands that stick up the same way. We did studies on that which would show that if you designed them differently, it would make the air flow a lot smoother, it would reduce landing dispersions, a lot of things like that. So that’s the kind of work I did there. It was really interesting.\\n\\n I guess you can see right now, that’s where a lot of these air strikes come from, these ships in the current war over in Afghanistan. That technology, I’m sure, has continued to improve.\\n\\n We developed a nose gear tow system, which before aircraft were launched with a catapult, but they had this big bridle system they used, which was a big cable with these big eyelets on the end. Some of them weighed a couple hundred pounds. You’d hook the aircraft up, the aircraft had the hooks on it, and you’d put these cables around the shuttle on the catapult, launch the airplane. Then what you were trying to do was recover this 200-pound bridle. At the end of the catapult stroke, it might be going 140 or 50 knots, and keep it from tearing the bottom out of the airplane when it broke loose, flailing around, and so forth. So I worked on a lot of projects like that.\\n\\n Some of our projects would end up going out on a ship. So at the time I was a young engineering and, boy, what more could you ask, until space flight came along, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How far into your career was it until space flight came along?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see. I think I worked for the Navy about three years, and I really was satisfied with what I was doing in terms of interesting work, but that was 1962 is when I went to work for NASA. So all of a sudden—we called it manned space flight then—human space flight became very, very interesting, and it was starting. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that, right?\\n\\n And I was the right age then. I was just three years into a career, so I had little bit of experience. NASA was at the time hiring everybody they could find. That was another thing. Like I said, when I got out of college you could get a job anywhere, and then when I got interested in going to NASA, they were trying to hire everybody they could. So they were just really starting to develop this whole idea of manned space flight and this sequence of programs, Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, etc., and so forth and the logic and the strategy for what those programs would do. So who wouldn’t want to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you had any interest previously in the beginnings of the space race, after Sputnik, maybe going into a space industry right out of college?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. I think I got out of college at the time when it wasn’t clear to me, at least, where the opportunities were, and this aviation work really interested me. But after about three years, it became clear, hey, this is really exciting. These folks are really serious.\\n\\n I remember one time I was working on something they called the TFX in those days. It was one of those joint services programs. It was an aircraft, carrier-based, land-based, and everything. It later sort of folded up, but—and worked with some Air Force people and also some NASA people. There were some NASA technical people from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] involved in the early end of that, talking to those guys. So the interest developed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the job come to you, or did you go looking for some involvement with the space program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there were a lot of folks I worked with in the Navy that within a couple of months had moved over to NASA. So a guy called me, he happened to have been my supervisor in the Navy and says, “Hey, would you like to come over here?”\\n\\n I said, “You bet. Sounds good to me. I’ll say yes on the phone. I don’t need an interview.”\\n\\n It turned out that when I went to work, I went to work in NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC], which was the wrong place to go to work for a young guy. NASA Headquarters is an important place. I’m not degrading it or denigrating NASA Headquarters in any way, but this guy called up. He was over there. He was a lot older than I was. He was in the right place.\\n\\n So I said, “Sure.” So I came to work over there. They had to get a waiver for me because I was the lowest grade-level person, professional in Headquarters when I came over. The guy, Dick Wisnewski [phonetic], had worked for NASA for years and he quit and then he came back and so forth. I’ve known him longer than any guy that ever worked for NASA. He’s the guy that got the waiver for me. It was kind of embarrassing. They said, “We just don’t hire folks with that grade level.” They had all those big grades up, and I said, “Hey, this is great. There’s no end to this.”\\n\\n Then I went to work up there, and after about less than two years, year and a half, I was coming to JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas]. The center wasn’t here locally, but it was the Manned Spacecraft Center [MSC], and I got to thinking that’s where I want to be. That’s where I want to be. Headquarters is the wrong—and it is the wrong place for a young fellow like that, but it sounded good on the phone. And it was a way to get started in the program.\\n\\n I never did have any second thoughts about the time I spent there. I mean, it was good preparation for seeing a part of NASA that has to exist. Those guys are the up and out, deal with Congress, deal with all the other agencies and so forth, so I got a little view of that. It just wasn’t technical enough for me. It wasn’t my idea of a place to be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what were you doing there exactly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked in a Gemini Program Office in an area that had to do with flight operations. I was really kind of a Headquarters interface with operations people, flight operations people, down here at JSC, and that’s where I went to work. I mean, I pretty quickly got interested in flight control and came down here.\\n\\n But I had gotten to meet guys like Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] and Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz and people like that. One day when Chris Kraft was up there on a meeting, I kind of got him aside and says, “I’d sure love to come down to MSC and work for you.”\\n\\n He said, “Fine.”\\n\\n So then I got an interview with Gene Kranz and got by that okay, so I went to work for Gene Kranz. So I’d worked about a year and a half there. But mainly what they do there is, what I was doing, it just wasn’t technical enough at all for me. I was interacting with folks at the Manned Spacecraft Center mainly for the purpose of collecting all kind of information for whatever they needed it for in Washington, like all kind of progress reports and management reports. So I felt like I wasn’t doing anything; I was just collecting information and so forth. But it did give me an opportunity to learn a lot about the flight operations business, where I was interested in, and I knew exactly where I wanted to go. So I mean, I personally got out a lot out of it. The work just wasn’t my cup of tea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As a person in this interface, what sense did you get of the relationship between MSC and Headquarters?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was pretty clear then that it’s much like it is now. The field centers drive NASA. There’s no question about it. The relationship between Headquarters and JSC at that time, Headquarters had even less impact and they lost more of it when guys like George [M.] Low and Joe [Joseph F.] Shea came down here, which those guys were the real horses in the beginning of the program, the whole structure and the architecture of the program. So those guys both decided to come down here where the action was.\\n\\n I worked for George Low up there. He was like my division chief, and I worked in the Gemini Project Office, which was right under him. We came down here about the same time. But he and Joe Shea, these were the guys that are some of my biggest heroes in the whole program, because very early on there was a big effort at NASA to really determine how to do the lunar landing program. As you’re probably aware and talked to a lot of folks here, there were three contending methods there: the direct ascent and the earth orbit rendezvous and the lunar orbit rendezvous.\\n\\n At this point in my life, these guys had this sort of systems engineering effort there. Shea was head of systems engineering. I think it was Bellcomm [Inc.] he worked for then, before he worked for—or maybe he was working for NASA and Bellcomm was a support contractor. Then George Low was on the other side. He was actually in the program management part.\\n\\n I just forever thought those guys—I’m telling you, they went through that systematically. None of it had ever been done before. There was tremendous amount of unknown. Today to take a program on with that kind of risk and uncertainty in it, it’s really hard to fathom NASA doing and maybe most places in the country, most organizations. But these guys went, I thought at the time, way out on a limb with all the information they had and selected this lunar orbit rendezvous mode. To me, that was one of the seminal events in the whole program when they defined the method and the architecture. After that it was a matter of, okay, we’ve got the method, we know how we’re going to approach it, the architecture, let’s build the programs and let’s do the development work to fulfill that.\\n\\n So those guys at that time were really heroes of mine, and still are. Of course, both of them are dead now. But both Shea and Low in their own right were giants in NASA.\\n\\n I think one of the reasons, to pursue your question about the Headquarters-field center relationship, one of the reasons, those two guys, Low came from NASA, George Low. He was NASA, I think Lewis Research Center [(now Glenn Research Center), Cleveland, Ohio]. Joe Shea came from industry somewhere. But those guys had a lot of capability, a lot of technical background and so forth.\\n\\n There’s a guy named [D.] Brainerd Holmes that was the head of the Office of Space Flight. He was a fairly strong person. But when you looked around that office up there, wasn’t much else in terms of really good technical plus the leadership strength. They hired a lot of guys like me that were really green in this whole business. So the whole Headquarters structure, and then when you go look at a place like the Manned Spacecraft Center and you look at a guy like Max [Maxime A.] Faget and the guys that work for him, you look at, let’s see, Walt [Walter C.] Williams was here then and then later on Chris Kraft took over for him, and there were a whole series of guys here that had more knowledge than 98 percent of the people in Headquarters.\\n\\n Now, I’ve told you about some of the real leaders up there, and they had all of this knowledge and capability. So the centers had this tremendous core capability and knowledge base and capability to make calculations and so forth. They could look at some approach or problem and do a lot of analysis and so forth. So probably that had a lot to do with the fact that Headquarters and the field centers, particularly JSC, the Headquarters never really, I never felt like, drove the whole thing or managed the whole thing. The field centers look at them like “Get us some money down here. We’ve got some things we want to do. You guys go get the money.”\\n\\n It hasn’t changed a whole lot over the years. It’s gone a little bit more in terms of the Headquarters guys have a few more controls, but it hasn’t changed much, not much at all. For whatever reason, I don’t think NASA Headquarters ever fully got themselves in command of the all of the centers in the agency. And I think that still goes on.\\n\\n George Low, Joe Shea came to work at JSC, and George Low, I think he started out as the deputy center director and Joe Shea started out in the Apollo Program Office, so they showed up here, so that pretty well gutted a lot of the leadership, the real technical leadership in Headquarters. Then it focused around the things about schedule and money and so forth up there, more than the technical leadership." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get a good sense at the time of how their leadership was working, I mean the sort of style that they would use?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was more technical leadership. It was leadership that was based on really analysis of methods and techniques and problems and so forth. By that, it was hands-on involvement. They’re right in the middle of it technically, rather than the management model where more of the technical work is done, like the engineering department and different places and it sort of gets integrated somewhere.\\n\\n So I think early on, and guys like Max Faget, that was his method. He was involved in the technical part of the programs. I think that was very early on the way most of the management was done. Even at JSC when I came here, all of the managers, some of them were pretty awesome and they were awesome because it was a combination of folks that had come from Langley and Lewis and industry, who were very senior in some areas and had a lot of experience and background and they tended to play in the technical stuff.\\n\\n Probably it was one of the legacies that NASA has not dealt with well. They’re in trouble right now, if you read this Young Report stuff, basically poor management and poor cost control and so forth. I think always the NASA managers have liked the technical issues much more than the management issues, and I think that legacy is probably there from these guys early on. They were the best at it, anyway. I mean, they had so much experience and capability and background, so I think that stays with us somewhat today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s interesting that we have this conversation today, because they just announced the candidate for the new NASA administrator [Sean O’Keefe] is someone from the Office of Management and Budget [OMB]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I think the message is clear there. All the years I worked at NASA, NASA has never really been an institution that managed cost very well, and they still don’t do it. They’ve never done it. They have a budgeting process and you go get budgets, but they don’t manage costs or know what things cost very well, nor can they predict what things are going to cost very well.\\n\\n Nor in human space flight has there ever been any interest at all in efficiency. Efficiency is not something that I’ve ever seen a big interest in. I work a lot in private industry now. Efficiency is everything out there. Get the cost down, get the cost down, so you can stay in business.\\n\\n NASA is more like warfare. When you get ready to do a program or you get ready to go have a mission, you’ve got to win the war or the battle. You’ve got to win it, so whatever it takes to win the battle in any manner. So that’s the way they use resources at NASA. You go attack it with everything you’ve got. You throw everything in the world at it.\\n\\n If you’ll look out here and if you think about it sometime, there’s a whole lot more people out here at JSC than it takes to run these programs. NASA has this big overhead and cost because if they start to get a problem in the battle, they want just in case to have all of this capability to throw at it. And the problem is, it all gets costed to these programs. If there was some way they could get the cost off the programs and get it to some other programs or someone else, but it turns out that I think that’s one of the ways—the center has always been oriented toward a single major program and taking a single major program and using all of the resources of the center to support the program.\\n\\n Example was back early on, I remember Chris Kraft was the center director, and I was in charge of Earth Resources Aircraft Branch and doing that kind of work. Kraft, they were starting the Shuttle program, and Kraft had this book of people working on other projects. Those projects, when the Shuttle Program needed it, he’d get his book out and decide who he wanted to go over there, and it didn’t matter the impact to the other programs. What it mattered was, was the support to the main program.\\n\\n That’s kind of always been the model here, to have this tremendous capability. So a lot of it’s in reserve. Some of it’s being used on a regular basis. So efficiency is not—you wouldn’t see this out in the cruel world out in commercial industry. Everybody has got three jobs out there, and then anyone that doesn’t have a job they’re needed in, they’re gone. So it’s a little different view. I’ve tried to think where did that management style come from. Military." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was my next question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Military, I think. It’s like winning wars. There’s no question about it, if the Department of Defense needs anything right now, they’re going to get it. If they needed everybody in the whole government working on that, they’d get it. I think that’s a war-fighting kind of mentality or a war-fighting management style, if you will.\\n\\n So we’ve always had here access in the human space flight programs, access to whatever we needed. If you need it, they’ll get it. It’s the resources. So the idea is to be successful. So it’s a different management style than you see in a business that’s trying to skim off a profit and take it home with them. They don’t do that here.\\n\\n I think there’s another thing that probably has affected this management style, is there’s no clear customer. With no clear customer, NASA becomes their own customer. If you have a customer out there, and you have, say, an engineering business, and they want you to complete a certain project so you make them a proposal and show them how you’d do this project and all of the things you would do to make sure and this is what it costs, then they might say, “I don’t want that, that, and that. I don’t want that analysis. I don’t want to pay for it. I don’t want to pay for that test.”\\n\\n Well, you don’t do it. So they don’t have anyone sort of on a real close loop with the way the work is done that’s a customer that’s looking at it from the standpoint of cost or whatever. It’s really big stuff, like they do in Congress.\\n\\n So I think this management style—I don’t know what this gentleman from OMB can do about it. Clearly he’s got a mission, and I think we know what it is, and it has to do with cost management, but he’s got this huge enterprise that’s got forty years of history managing its business the way it is, and he’s going to try to reorient that. He’s got a big job. He might vector it a little bit one way or the other, but I just can’t picture the human space flight ever getting out of what I would choose to call a war-fighting mode, which means we’ve got to win that battle. If they don’t, we lose everything.\\n\\n So that’s kind of mentality, is if we go blow a mission here real bad, we’re going to lose. It’s like losing the battle and losing the war. I think that’s the way it’s looked at." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see this management style as early as your first involvement with the Gemini Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It really became clear in the Apollo Program, I think. The Gemini Program, at that time when I started down here as a flight controller, I was working on the Gemini Program real early. The first mission I worked in the control center was down at the Kennedy Space Center [Cape Canaveral, Florida] at the old Mercury Control and before we moved up here, and I was so totally involved in flight control and what I was doing, that I didn’t have much interest or insight into program management at all at that point in my career here. I was really interested in the control center. To me, at that time, I said, “If I can do this the rest of my life, this is what I’ll do.” I mean, that’s where I was. So I pretty excited about it.\\n\\n I came down here to go work as a flight controller. I went to work as a flight controller for Gene Kranz, and it met all of my expectations, and for several years that’s all I thought about. I could really care less about how the programs were managed as long as we kept working in the control center, getting missions to fly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What position did you start in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started as a Booster Systems Engineer, which was the old Gemini launch vehicle. We started out down at the Kennedy Space Center. There was another guy, maybe you’ve talked to him, Bill [William E.] Platt and I worked on the booster systems console.\\n\\n We had two positions there. We had a position for a flight controller and we had a position for an astronaut. The astronaut’s job was to look at the tank pressures and monitor the tanks. The way the system worked, it had an autogenous system or you could call it a bootstrap system or whatever. The tanks were pressurized prior to lighting the engines, and then as you draw fuel out of the engines, you had to backfill the pressure. They had a system on the booster there that would mix fuel and oxidizer and generate a gas, and the gas was pumped back into the tanks there in order to keep the pressure up. Otherwise it would collapse. If you draw it out, it’s like sucking through a soda straw or something and causing the thing to collapse if you got the end of the soda straw. So they had this system.\\n\\n Then the tank pressures, the pressure requirements varied during the launch phase depending on the loads on the system, which were somewhat influenced by acceleration as well as the dynamic pressure. So it was a variable. So the concept was to get an astronaut in there so they could start to learn to live in the control center, learn to interact.\\n\\n You remember they also had the thing they called the CapCom, the capsule communicator. So the idea was that was a good way to bring the team together. So we always had a astronaut on the console with us that would monitor the tanks, and then we’d monitor the systems—the flight systems, the engines, the hydraulics system, and electrical system and so forth—during the launch phase.\\n\\n That’s what I started out doing, and I did that most of the Gemini Program, but we did bring in another guy from the Air Force. There were a bunch of Air Force guys that came in during the Gemini Program that were training for the Air Force MOL [Manned Orbiting Laboratory] program. So one of guys was assigned to work on the booster with us, and he worked with us, too. Then they all got transferred back to the Air Force somewhere when the MOL program sort of went by the wayside there.\\n\\n So that’s where I started, and that was a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of training did you have to learn the position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was two kinds, mostly self-taught in terms of learning systems, which meant we didn’t have then any real classes on the Gemini launch vehicle, but we had a lot of material, system material. What we would do, we would take this technical material and convert it into functional schematics, and that’s how you learned the system.\\n\\n The functional schematics was, I think, something Gene Kranz invented, because every system area, every area had these systems handbooks, we called them. So you would generate these drawings, and they’d go through a peer review process with everybody that knew anything about it, and then typically you would give a class to other people that were interested in the system using that material. So that was one method.\\n\\n So that’s how you learned the systems, and we got a lot of help from the contractors because they were part of the peer review process. Like Martin Company was responsible for Gemini launch vehicles, so their people would look at our drawings and basically say whether they were correct or not. But the idea, Gene Kranz’s idea was is that you go dig all this stuff out and put it on a drawing some way, and the product was a drawing, but the real product was the knowledge you gained by digging all this stuff out. And they’re still doing that now. I mean, that’s been a mainstay. Some organizations, not this one, but some organizations might pay someone to deliver them a document like that, but it’s also something else to do in between programs, when you got people that you got otherwise not involved in control center operations, you can—.\\n\\n The other way we trained, of course, was simulations [sims], the integrated simulations. You probably heard a lot about that over in the control center. We used to run launch simulations. When we’d do launch sims, we’d run them all day, and you’d just run days and days of simulations. So you’d get used to seeing the data, reacting to off-nominal data, the situations the simulation people would establish, and working with the team, the flight director and the team.\\n\\n So that and doing the systems handbook, then we also developed our own flight rules, flight rules and procedures, as far as that goes. So you developed this systems handbook, flight rules and procedures. Flight rules they still use over there, of course, and procedures and system handbooks.\\n\\n The concept behind the flight rules development is to try to envision every possible situation you could get yourself in and what the action was. Then those would be tested in the simulations to see—sometimes they sound good on paper, but they don’t work so well when you implement them.\\n\\n So you go through that whole process of developing all of those tools. You use the handbooks, the procedures, and the flight rules. So, again, the strength of that was digging it all out and going through the thought process and so forth, really learning the systems. Then the real good training was the simulations where you actually were presented with those kind of events.\\n\\n Then I was also in the operations and procedures business. I was in Gene Kranz’s branch, and at that time he had operations and procedures, booster systems, and the remote-site CapComs. So I was doing operations and procedures. That’s sort of a catchall for all odds and ends around the control center, making sure the data flows right, the ground systems configuration needs are compatible with the spacecraft kind of thing, a lot of data stuff.\\n\\n We had something called a Flight Control Operations Handbook, which was basically a compendium of procedures for the control center. We maintained that. We also maintained the flight rules for the whole organization. We were kind of the owner of the whole process of getting flight rules together. Of course, they were generated by all the different individual participants, but we would organize them and set up rule meetings and get together and talk about them and so forth.\\n\\n We also worked on launch mission rules at the time, the constraints for launch kind of thing. So that was operation procedures. It was called the Flight Control Operations Branch, and it was the kind of the general planning, odds and ends of every kind. That was where Gene Kranz started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that how you worked your way into the assistant flight director position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was one of his creations. I worked for Gene in that branch, and Gene wanted to create an assistant flight director position which was sort of a more of what I just described, someone that would—since typically he had a lot of administrative duties, was someone that would take care of a lot of stuff for him.\\n\\n So an assistant flight director position was created. It was controversial all the time. It was one of those things where the duties weren’t very clear. Some of the flight directors felt like they were being encroached upon by others. So it remained a controversial position the whole time there.\\n\\n But we had responsibility for Flight Control Operations Handbook, flight rules, and a lot of launch rules, a lot of the organization of the stuff, and when the flight director wanted to take a break or go get something to eat, keeping the operation going or whatever, that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it was one of the other assistant flight directors who described it more as assistant to the flight director, rather than the assistant flight director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s probably accurate, yes. Right. Exactly. Yes. It was controversial at the time. There was a lot of debate, and Gene Kranz was the guy that promoted it and promoted the idea, and it was under debate. Some of us that got stuck in that position kind of felt like we were in the middle of a big war a lot of times.\\n\\n I worked with a lot of folks over there, good folks, Chris Kraft and, of course, all the flight directors that were there at the time and so forth. It wasn’t viewed as a job that was a stepping stone to anything, and I think it was because of the controversy about it. Gene wanted this thing real bad, and some of the other folks didn’t, and they were all equals in the organization, like branch chiefs and so forth. Gene was a branch chief at the time, so he kind of forced it on them. It represented, I think, an encroachment upon their prerogatives and so forth.\\n\\n We had the INCOs [Instrumentation and Communications Officer], too. The INCO people, they worked in our branch. Over time, I later got to be the chief of Flight Control Operations Branch. Gene moved up and so forth, and that controversy continued, I guess. Gene was the division chief, so he was still going to do it. Gene was a strong-willed—I guess is. I shouldn’t say was; is. I know him very well, and he’s a strong-willed kind of guy.\\n\\n It was interesting, I guess. I can’t say that if I was the architect of that control center operation, looking back on it, I would have set it up that way, but that’s the way it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the Gemini Program you still had your other job for most of these missions as the Booster controller, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Then, of course, I started getting supervisory jobs, section head, branch chief, and so forth, other jobs like that in the area, in the division." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe you can describe for us what the Booster console does during a flight—obviously the launch is the critical phase for it—but then what happens after that as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hopefully you don’t do anything in the Booster job. We would participate in the countdown in terms of the readiness of the system for launch, and then when they light the fire, you hope you don’t have to do anything. You hope you can sit back and everything is going well.\\n\\n If you have to take some actions in our case, it was bad – all terminate the mission, basically. We would provide information on systems performance, if something was a little drifting off normal but still okay, to the flight director and they’d pass it up by the CapCom. But basically any action we took was abort.\\n\\n We had a little abort switch on our console, which would light a light that says “abort” in the spacecraft. Now, hopefully they’d see they were in trouble quicker than we would, and this would just be kind of okay, sort of a secondary kind of event information to them. Hopefully they had enough information to see.\\n\\n We had dual hydraulics, which the Titan II didn’t have, and if we were having hydraulic problems, seeing hydraulic pressure drop and so forth in the switchover, seeing the tank pressures deviate a little bit from normally, they didn’t have very good displays on this stuff in the spacecraft, so we could give them a little more information on it, but hopefully you didn’t give anything more than information. The action you took was all bad. It was all abort, for both us and the tanks.\\n\\n We had air-ground on our console, too, so if there was a reason to abort, it was always in a hurry, so we’d flip a switch at the same time, just say “Abort, abort” over the air-ground and give them the signal two ways, one through this electronic command and the other through the air-ground voice.\\n\\n We never did have but one real serious problem, and so most of the time you just sit back and hope it all works. So there wasn’t things to do. I mean it was all hopefully trying to hold it, provide enough information if there was some off-nominal situation to keep going. I mean, that’s the way you were oriented. Then if you had to do something, it was bad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don’t you tell us about the one situation that things were pretty serious." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we had a situation one time, and it was Gemini 76. It was a combined mission. This was really a strange situation. This was a rendezvous. We had originally intended to rendezvous with an Atlas Agena target vehicle, and the thing went in the drink on the way up.\\n\\n So then to salvage the mission, they decided to go into this Gemini 76 mission. One part of the mission was a long-duration mission of like two weeks, which is a long time in a Gemini spacecraft. It’s kind of like sitting in one seat in a small car and somebody else sitting in the other seat. You probably get tired of looking at them after a while. [Laughs]\\n\\n So the first launch came about, and they got the spacecraft in the air. That was the long-duration flight, so it was quite a little bit different operation. It was quite a challenge to go clean the pad up and then bring the other vehicle out that was going to rendezvous with them, get it on the pad, and get it checked out. What they’d done was check it out, take it off the pad, put the other one on, launch it, and then get the other one back and it had less time it had to be on the pad to get checked out.\\n\\n When we started to launch that, these tanks I told you about, that line, it’s called the autogenous line, it goes back and feeds the tanks, this takes a fuel and oxidizer and put it in a little combustion chamber and burned it, and the output gas would go back into the tanks to make up the tank pressure to keep the tank from collapsing as you drew all this fluid out.\\n\\n It turned out someone had left one of these plugs in the line. So right away as this thing started up, the tank pressure never started to make up. This stuff’s got a turbo pump. It’s really sucking that stuff out of there. I don’t remember the rate, but coming out of there a lot, so if the tank pressure goes negative, you’ve got a big fireball on the pad because it’s going to collapse. All that stuff’s going to mix and everything.\\n\\n The way it happened was, there was another strange event that happened at the same time. Like a lot of things in life, you know, there’s not just one thing simple. The tail plug fell out due to the vibration when they started up the engines. When the tail plug comes out, at least in this system, it starts the indication in the spacecraft that you’ve had liftoff. So you get liftoff, and the clock starts running in the spacecraft. They have mission-elapsed time.\\n\\n So the crew’s hearing all these engines roar and everything and noise and the clock starts running, the idea is we’ve got liftoff, right? Engine shuts down after liftoff, you’ve got to get out of there fast, because it’s all going to come down in a big fireball. So the idea is to eject fast. They had ejection seats on Gemini. Been difficult to survive that anyway, if you’d bailed out in time, but anyway, that was the system.\\n\\n So the retrofire officer is the guy that was in charge of the spacecraft clocks in liftoff, so this guy says, “Liftoff! The clocks have started!” and he starts reading the time. I’m sitting there, I know we’re on the pad, and it shuts down. So that’s the confusion you can get sometime.\\n\\n This tail plug fell out just soon as the engines lit, real early in this sequence. We’re talking a couple of seconds before, and I could see we’re still down on the pad. We haven’t gotten full thrust and hadn’t released from the pad. The idea is the CapCom says, “Liftoff!” to the crew over the radio. So everybody was well trained. Everybody hung in there. The crew didn’t eject. Everybody called it right except the retrofire officer, and he was just calling what he saw, but the time was way off. I mean, he probably should have had a little better feel for that.\\n\\n But the crew could have taken that information, because if you got to get out of there, if an engine shouts down and it shouts down right after you separate from the pad, you got to get out of there. You’re just going to be in a big fireball. But everybody reacted right. There was a lot of confusion.\\n\\n That’s the only real problem we ever had with the Gemini launch vehicle. It was a human error in terms of leaving a plug in. So very quickly they got the plug out, got it all cleaned up, and we got it launched again. It was fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure that was still quite a surprise for you at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. It was exciting. Right. That’s what you do when you’re a Booster systems guy. That’s the kind of moments you live for, right, is excitement.\\n\\n A launch was always, to me, the fun part of a mission because, like I say, once you light the engines and once you lift off from the pad, you don’t have all the choices. I used to sit through all of these countdowns on the Shuttle down at Kennedy Space Center, and you’ve got all the time in the world. If you’ve got problems, well, you stop and investigate it, go get a whole bunch of people to look at it.\\n\\n But once you lift off, the flight control is a little different game, and particularly launch phase. Earth orbit is fairly benign, you’ve got a lot of time, but the launch phase, you can’t have a meeting. You can’t call a meeting during launch phase to go talk about what’s going on. That’s why it was so much fun.\\n\\n So you had to prepare a lot, work hard, prepare a lot, lots of training, and that gave you a feel for it. We’d done so much training that I really had a feel for the timing, too. I’d seen enough of the stuff where when you light the engine and the thrust buildup, and then I was watching the engines and they started down, the thrust started down. I saw them shut down. It was just crystal clear to me that even though I didn’t have a clock reference that it was early, they couldn’t have lifted off. So that’s the thing. When you train enough, you get—that’s the purpose of training, is to get people to where you—and we had good training. Those folks over there in the simulation business were really outstanding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that particular scenario something that had come up in a simulation, do you recall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t recall whether that exact one had, but I bet we had some pad shutdowns. Let’s see. I think I saw a pad shutdown on Gemini II, I think. I think we might have had a pad shutdown on that. It was unmanned. I can’t remember. I think we might have had one on that. It may have had something to do with the spacecraft, but it shut down on the pad, I think.\\n\\n Pad shutdowns are not—you’re designed to be able to shut that whole system down. It’s not a desirable situation, but obviously there’s some failure or some reason you shut the system down, and there’s a lot of fuel and heat and pressure and all that stuff around, so it’s not desirable, but all of the Shuttle shutdowns have gone well, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else you recall from the Gemini flights that sticks out in your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think the most exciting thing about the Gemini Program to me was every flight was different. It was a learning experience.\\n\\n We had the first EVA [extravehicular activity], and it was a real learning experience, I’ll tell you, and quite a challenge. So every flight you had to learn EVA, learn how to do that. You had to learn docking, rendezvous and docking, do that. Had to get some time under your belt. We had the fourteen-day mission.\\n\\n I remember this is what they did with assistant flight directors. I remember one time when we docked with the Agena and did our dock program, and then everybody cleared out of the control center to go to the party, and they left me in charge and some other guys, and we burned the Agena and did all that kind of stuff while they were gone. That’s what assistant flight directors do. When all the fun’s over, everybody leaves and goes and drinks beer and they leave you behind to do all the burns of the Agena and whatever was left. So I mean, that’s the kind of thing you ended up doing. That’s why it wasn’t that great a job, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I can understand that. The Booster console is physically part of what they call “The Trench.” Were you part of the Trench as the social group or whatever?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Sure. The Booster—the other thing interesting I think about that, to me, it’s always been an interest to me is the evolution of technology. When I started out working down at the control center in Florida, all of the tools we used, the devices were all electromechanical, pretty classical stuff. In the Gemini Program up here, what happened was that they were going to move the control center responsibility to Houston, so we were using the old Mercury control system early on.\\n\\n So what we did was run the control center here one mission in piggyback, and then there’s a group of us—it was running piggyback with the control center in Florida. I think that was probably Gemini III or IV, so in that time frame. Then they decided, “Okay, let’s go for real up here.”\\n\\n So there was a group of us went down to Florida, and we were the backup down there. We manned-up the booster and the flight director and the flight dynamics and so forth. So we were the backup down there for here when they finally went live the first time. Then we jumped in the NASA Gulfstream and came up here and worked a second shift up here. We basically were just backup there in case they had a major failure of the control system, because we’d had a lot of them all along, getting the thing developed and getting it working and so forth. So that’s why we were down there.\\n\\n Then we came back, and all of us worked another shift up here during the rest of the mission. But they ended up after that they shut the place down down at KSC. I guess just before I left NASA, which has been almost five years now, five years at the end of this year, I was down at KSC, and I went over there to visit the old place. I think it’s not an open kind of visitors’ thing anymore. In fact, they were running a Source Evaluation Board in there, but they let me in, let me look at all that stuff. It could be fixed up, but it was pretty much the displays and all that stuff was still there and so forth. But they were all electromechanical, a whole different technology than you used here.\\n\\n For instance, that world map, the little spacecraft was on a punch of pulleys and things that pulled it across there. Of course, this is all electronic, and that’s evolved tremendously over here over time. The technology changes all the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you learn in the Gemini Program that you thought “I really want to make sure we carry this over to Apollo”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The big lessons I think we were learned in Gemini had to do with environmental control system dealing with these problems with EVA that we really had to tackle in the Gemini Program. It seemed to me that the rendezvous operations went real well, I mean that whole development sequence. They started with a real long sequence, and the last time, the last one we did, I think we called it an M equals zero. M was the orbit number where you actually rendezvoused. We did an M equals zero, I think, finally. That’s not a practical thing to do, but it was a demonstration where we launched after the target vehicle and caught them at Australia, halfway around the world. That’s not a practical operational thing. You can do it. So it went through. The whole rendezvous program, seemed like to me that went well.\\n\\n The EVA thing was really, really a challenge to deal with. That turned out to be some things that they really had to work on, the EVA challenge. The fuel cell really needed a lot of work. We had trouble with fuel cells all the time. Fuel cells, electrical system, electrical power generation, and so forth was a big issue. Navigation was an issue. Of course, there wasn’t much in the way of an onboard computational ability, and even Apollo by any kind of standards didn’t have much, but it went in to significantly more.\\n\\n So those were the kind of things we took out of Gemini. The operations techniques, the kind of thing that Gene Kranz championed and the folks in the Flight Control Division seemed to be coming together, to me, pretty well in Gemini for Apollo. That was a different mission. Lunar landing, of course, was a big change from that.\\n\\n So we learned a lot and I think we practiced it, and we launched about every six weeks with an entirely different flight agenda. It came together fairly well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At what point did you begin working on Apollo? Was Gemini still flying then, or did you wait in until the end?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see. Probably there was some overlap, because I can recall working on Apollo real early in kind of little studies about flight operations and so forth, because we had to get prepared for it in defining the control center configuration, the displays and working on systems and so forth. But I didn’t do a lot of that early on.\\n\\n There were a couple of branches in the division already working full time on Apollo in that time frame. There was a CSM [Command and Service Module] branch and they called it the LEM branch, Lunar Excursion Module Branch at that time. So they were already in place. So we would work on it some.\\n\\n No one really wanted to work on it a lot, because you still wanted to get over to the control center and work on everything. Everybody in Flight Control Division wanted to work on every flight. It was a big problem, it really was, because someone had to work on some other stuff. It was a management challenge for Gene Kranz to get everyone whipped into some kind of shape where they would actually not work every mission, because it was important to keep it going.\\n\\n I guess the other thing we decided, it was an interesting—we made a decision here at JSC in the booster systems business to turn that over to Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], and it was a deliberate decision. The Marshall Space Flight Center owned the boosters, so they established an office within Flight Control Division and brought their people over to do flight control work. We had decided that we’d recommended that that would be the best way to do. Those guys wanted to do it, (A), and they had good access to the information and so forth. So that responsibility, they reported to the JSC flight operations at least in an operational technical sense, but not in a management sense. So we stepped out of that for Apollo. They really took over the same console we had, they just adapted it. Those consoles in those days were set up to where they were modular and you just changed the modules around, how you configure them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the higher-ups in flight operations feel about giving up that console to Marshall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s hard for me to recall whether there was any controversy over it, but I don’t think there was at the time. The reticence was really—the Marshall guys, their management was nervous about it. I recall that. They were really nervous, and the Marshall guys were over here. They always felt like if they had to take some action like an abort, that it would make Marshall look bad and so forth. I mean, I could never see that. I mean, data is data and you do what you have to do with data, but there was an extreme amount of pressure on those guys, it seemed like, from their management about that, “Don’t ever make us look back” kind of stuff and whatever. They were pretty good guys.\\n\\n I worked with them all the time because I guess I was head of the Flight Control Operations Branch in that early Apollo days. They’d have to get their flight rules done and their procedures done and so forth, and I worked with those guys a lot. But they felt some, I think, unusual and unnecessary pressure from the Marshall management, and they always worried about that. I mean, it was a big worry in their minds." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they keep the astronaut next to that position as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. They just turned the whole thing over to them. It worked okay. It would work the other way, too, either way. I think now there’s a lot of thought about—on the Space Station Program, some of the experiment support is done over at Marshall, and there’s thought about pulling that back over here and consolidating control center operations. Under a different “Here’s the way we want to divide up NASA,” it might work a different way. But it could have worked either way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since now for these flights where you’re a branch chief and you’re working the assistant flight director position, how much emphasis was there still on the creation of mission rules and procedures and these sorts of things, and how was that process different for a lunar flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The process itself was not different. The rules were different because you added different mission events as well as when you started adding the lunar modules and you started adding other different equipment like in Earth orbit. It was pretty much, pretty much with the exception of the kind of things that failed and the problems you had, pretty much like Gemini.\\n\\n But when you go add the lunar part of it, then you’ve added big mission sequences, big mission events. You’ve got the issues with launch trying to get yourself on a launch azimuth that you can get to the Moon and so forth. So there’s a whole lot of other trajectory-related rules and constraints that made it a major difference. Then we were using different communications, you know, those big dishes that we were using, different communications.\\n\\n We had lunar module. We had dual vehicle operations and so forth. So it just added more equipment and more mission sequences or mission events, the process being the same, the way we did it. We basically generated the systems handbooks and/or the procedure handbooks and sat down and looked at “What can go wrong?” and “What do I do about it if it goes wrong? What’s the best course of action with this?” That’s basically the process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe you can comment on the value of mission rules as a concept and as a management tool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they’re really invaluable, especially coupled with the simulation methodology used by NASA over here, if you take the simulation methodology, which stressed rules. The simulation folks knew as much about our business as we knew about our business, so we’d write a set of mission rules for some scenario, and they’d say, “Doesn’t look like it’ll work.” So they’d set it up in a simulation, and lo and behold, you’d go try to make it work, and it may or may not work. So we had some pretty smart people on the other side generating these simulation scenarios, and we did a lot.\\n\\n NASA, to this day, is a very rare exception, won’t plan anything they don’t simulate beforehand. Astronauts over there won’t undertake anything knowing in advance they’re going to do it while they’re on the ground, that they don’t train for and simulate in some way. I mean, they just won’t do it without training or simulation. And that’s really one of the principles of success of the flight operations of this country as contrasted to that event they had on the Mir, where they were trying to fly the Progress vehicle there and they had the collision. That was an unsimulated, untrained-for event on their side. Now, we’d never do that. So our whole system is founded on some principles, that being one of the most important.\\n\\n So the rules are ways you make decisions in the calm of the office before you’re faced with this all of a sudden happening in your face. You talk about it and you go through reviews, and you get other people to look at it, and you get this big long approval cycle and so forth. Then by the time you think you got something that makes sense, then you turn the simulation guys loose, and some of them are pretty straightforward, pretty simple, nothing to them. They’re going to work, I mean. But others, they can pick up the ones that are iffy right away. First thing you know, you’re in the middle of sim and that scenario happens and you find out, by golly, it didn’t work. So you wring it out that way.\\n\\n So I think the mission rule, it’s like anything. It’s like disaster planning, hurricane planning, anything. If you don’t plan for it, you’ve got to do it real-time. I mean, your chances for success are many-fold higher if you plan for these potentialities in advance. So I think the flight rules are really, really important.\\n\\n The other thing they do, aside from the functionality of having a pre-made course of action or preset course of action that you think is the best, it allows a lot of other people who may have an interest or knowledge, I’d say an interest from a management standpoint or knowledge from a technical standpoint, to buy into that. So that typically the flight control team, once they have a set of rules set down and approved by the program office and all the management over here, they basically have management buy-in on what they’re going to do when those events happen.\\n\\n So it’s kind of like covering your tracks a little bit by making sure you have clear understanding if you get into some of these corners, how you’re going to get out of them with the management. So it takes away a lot of the what you could see could clearly happen if you—“I didn’t know you were going to do that. I don’t agree with you terminating the mission.” Well, you know, it’s what we had to do. So it gets the management in sync with the guys over here that are faced with the problem. So I think they’re sort of invaluable tools, the way NASA does it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually, that may be a good place to stop so we can take a moment to change out our tape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When we had stopped, we were talking about mission rules and their utility. I wanted to ask if you thought that that concept could be somehow in some way more generally applicable to industry or other parts of government or just in some field outside of the space program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I’m sure it could. Of course, it’s been a longstanding process in aviation. You wouldn’t want to get on an airplane and the pilot have to figure out what to do if an engine shut down, right? So there’s a lot of situations that use that kind of process. But, yes, I’m sure it could.\\n\\n I mean, all kind of probably applications now that we’re considering, responses to terrorist acts, for instance, what do you do? Last couple of days I was over on the [Houston] ship channel working over there at this place, and we were talking about set one of those big tanks off just right, and you could light up the whole ship channel. Twenty-five percent of the nation’s refining capacity is right over there. You could set fires, if you did it right, fires that would burn for weeks, probably.\\n\\n They’re starting to think about it. This company said, “We’re spending a million dollars in security now.” So they’re starting to think about things and building fences and trying to protect themselves from that kind of thing. So that’s part of that thought. “What happens if” is the next step. They’re putting in some security measures, but what happens if. “If” is, we look over there and there’s a big hole in the fence, somebody’s cut a hole in the fence, what do we do and all that kind of thing. So, yes, I think there’s probably all kind of applications for that kind of thinking so that you improve your odds of responding appropriately.\\n\\n The other thing it allows you to do is once everything you can possibly think of and then something else happens in combination with one of those events, it allows you to think about the thing you didn’t think about as opposed to the things you thought about, if you see what I mean. It narrows down what you have to go figure out what to do about—because you’re probably not going to think of everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I think that you can find a couple of examples of that in the Apollo Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe we could talk about a couple of the specifics from that program, some of the missions. If we can start, I don’t know what involvement you had with the Apollo 1 mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working with the Apollo 1 mission on mission rules, procedures, and that kind of thing, operations procedures, assistant flight director folks and so forth. It turned out that that event was another seminal event in terms of spacecraft design and how to approach spacecraft design in the program. The design with that oxygen-rich environment was not tolerant of the kind of things that can happen, electrical shorts and whatever. And that whole thing happened.\\n\\n So, yes, I was, of course, involved in a lot of the planning on how we did business. Very early in those Apollo missions, what we would do at the Mission Planning and Analysis Division [MPAD], all the folks that got together and put together really what the mission was, they would basically define the trajectory in great detail. We’d try to lay out where we wanted the tracking ships and all that sort of thing to support, and it was kind of a team effort to put together a mission.\\n\\n Then we’d turn all this information over to then it was North American [Aviation, Inc.], became Rockwell [International], and they’d go through and do just tremendous amounts of analysis to see whether the spacecraft, it was acceptable to use a spacecraft in that method. So Glynn [S.] Lunney and I were working a method, and we got them to except it, which was to put together this data book, which really basically defined all of the operating limitations and criteria on the spacecraft so that we could go away and design missions without having them go through all of this analysis. So this was a Spacecraft Operation Data Book, SODB.\\n\\n So we got the program to do that, and so that started back in Apollo 1, I think. That’s when we first came out with that idea of the Spacecraft Operational Data Book. So we talked program into getting them to do that so we could do all of our planning operations and have enough information without violating any of the constraints on a spacecraft, like keeping one side of it in the sun too long or whatever the constraint happened to be like that.\\n\\n Prior to that, everything we did, we did all of the planning, laid all the mission out, then they’d have to go through and go through it step by step and approve it. That’s the kind of stuff we worked on in Flight Control Operations Branch, that kind of flight planning and laying out the ships and the communications and the data flow and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As far as changes after the fire, what sort of mission rules or procedures or whatnot had to change because of that due to emphasis on safety or whatever?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, if you remember—I’m trying to remember what that did to the flight. I’m sure it changed a lot of detail rules on the environmental control system, because the whole environmental control system sequence of operations were changed.\\n\\n What they started out with was air on the pad and as you consumed oxygen and lost air through leakage or whatever, you made it all up with oxygen. So eventually you got to this oxygen-enriched environment, and the reason for the oxygen-enriched environment was to facilitate the EVAs because of the low pressure in the suits. The suits are like 4.5 psi, so if you tried to do that with a bunch of nitrogen in the atmosphere, you certainly raise your chances of bends. So the idea was to minimize the chances of bends. So they kept both systems, really.\\n\\n The Space Shuttle now has basically an air environment the whole time except they do change the oxygen-nitrogen ratio sometime before an EVA. It was set up to do that. But it’s still not as drastic. It doesn’t change it as much as it was changed there. Everything on the Shuttle is certified in that environment not to be extremely flammable and so forth.\\n\\n But I’m sure the systems were different. I’m trying to remember. They made a lot of changes on there at that time. Of course, it made the hatch where it opened out instead of in, an explosive hatch. There were a lot of other system changes, and I just don’t really recall them all at this point, but we worked on it about two years.\\n\\n It was kind of like after the Challenger accident. The program was open to a lot of changes. Changes went in the system that were safety-related improvements, that weren’t all of them necessarily directly related to the pure oxygen environment, redundancy in some systems and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you recall of the first manned flight, Apollo 7?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was an interesting flight. It was successful, of course. It was the first flight we were going to have onboard TV on, I do remember that, and I do remember there being a war between Mr. [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.] and the Mission Control Center over that television.\\n\\n The war had to do with they came across the United States and turned the TV on, and we got a whole bunch of noise. I can remember personally talking to George. I was assistant flight director then. Assistant flight director had a lot to do with the data flow and getting data back. So they had it set up to transmit that TV data.\\n\\n Now, today you can transmit TV data all over this planet in a heartbeat for low cost. It was like big money. We had one shot at it. So Goldstone, California, was where they captured the TV, and they sent the data back here, and it was gibberish. So something was wrong. So we didn’t get that.\\n\\n So I remember talking to George. It was going to be like $20,000 to send the TV again from out there. He’s, “Send it.”\\n\\n Okay, we’ll send it. So we sent it, but it’s still gibberish. They wanted to do the TV again and Schirra balked at that. “I’m not going to do that,” blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.\\n\\n So there become a big war on that flight. That’s why that whole crew never got close to a spacecraft again, because not only did his own personal arrogance and ego do him in, and he was probably at the point where he wasn’t going to come back anywhere, by the two younger fellows with him, [R. Walter] Cunningham and—I’ll think of his name in a minute." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Donn [F.] Eisele." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Donn Eisele. I can picture his face. Those guys, basically it ruined their career, too.\\n\\n That war went on the whole time. I can remember Deke [Donald K.] Slayton coming in the control center being so mad he couldn’t see about that whole operation. I can remember making tapes of the air-ground voice conversation where Wally Schirra was basically being defiant of what ground control was telling him to do, and it turned into a big issue. So I remember making all of those tapes of that conversation.\\n\\n I can’t remember the guy’s name, he was some general that was in charge of manned space flight up in Washington then, an Air Force general." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Rip [Carroll H.] Bolender?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so. I think that—I remember making him a set of those tapes.\\n\\n Everybody was mad at the flight crew. I can remember Lunney was—I’ve known Glynn Lunney a lot. Pretty mild-mannered man. He was not mild-mannered. So the whole thing turned into a mess.\\n\\n Wally Schirra singularly soured that mission real bad. I know whenever he got returned to the Cape, I think they landed in the Atlantic, Mr. Slayton was over there breathing down his neck. That whole thing was sad.\\n\\n They finally did get some more TV and demonstrated that the TV would work, but that was the first time we’d ever had in-flight TV, and he didn’t want to do it.\\n\\n I can remember going to a meeting with the man early on. We were involved in a lot of the planning, of course, and going to a meeting on the in-flight TV, since the flight control operations branch was big into communications, data flow, and so forth. It was a design review of the in-flight TV camera. It’s like if you look at it, it’s kind of like a pistol except that the handle on the pistol wasn’t at right angles to the main body of the camera. It was either forward or backward at an angle. I can remember Wally saying, “I won’t accept that. I want it the other way,” for no good reason. Big deal and he got his way. So they had to change that whole thing.\\n\\n So you can see at the time the ego and so forth. It didn’t make a bit of difference up in flight. I mean, there’s no weight, no anything. It’s not like anything. It was just astronaut ego. So that sort of prevailed the whole flight.\\n\\n I also remember going to—I think Gerry [Gerald D.] Griffin was the lead flight director then, and I can remember going to a pre-mission party over here at the Ramada—not the Ramada. The hotel that’s right across from Nassau Bay. That’s the Ramada now, isn’t it? It used be—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Holiday Inn?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it’s right across the street from the Holiday Inn. But we had a pre-mission party over there and Schirra coming to that. I can remember having a conversation with him, and it was really interesting when you looked at subsequent events, about how in his position he had everything thrown at him, being a celebrity, women, everything else like that, and how it was difficult for him to make good decisions about things and so forth. So having a conversation with a guy like that pre-mission and then you think, well, that guy realizes where he is, right? Then he got in the mission and acted totally out of context. I mean, he totally disregarded directions from the flight control and so forth.\\n\\n So that whole mission, the spacecraft worked fine. The new systems were proven, the changes that were call that Apollo 7 at the time. That stuff worked well, the mission planning, the flight control, and so forth. Yet here’s a guy that soured the whole thing. My belief is the whole astronaut office was mad at him because he created a situation that—it looked bad.\\n\\n Chris Kraft and the guys like that, they all lined up and says, “Guys, this isn’t going to happen again. This is not a way to run a business.” As far as I know, we’ve never had a rebellion like that since. I haven’t been involved in the last five years. I don’t think anybody is doing that stuff now. But this was just somebody’s big ego got in there. But it really soured that whole feeling about it.\\n\\n There was euphoria. “We got the spacecraft going. We got the program back. It’s been a couple of years. We’re flying again.” Then you got a total jerk, I mean 100 percent jerk, in charge of it. So that’s what I remember about that flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s interesting that it ends up Wally Schirra, who was really the guy in Mercury after [M.] Scott Carpenter’s flight that was a little bit mishandled from the astronaut end, Schirra was the guy that came back and flew the perfect mission and wanted to make sure that everything was good there and then now here in Apollo it’s almost the opposite." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t envision why the man did that, because it’s one thing to have something going with someone, but that’s pretty public. The NASA management—like I say, I remember making all these voice tapes of a whole bunch of stuff and giving them to this guy in Headquarters. You know, that’s uncalled for. Because we taped everything on the air-ground. We taped all the loops inside, so we had all that information. We could just easily go make copies of that.\\n\\n But that was one of the strangest kind of things where you got all of this work for two years, everybody knowing the program’s depending on success, getting the thing back. You had this horrible situation where three people died. Then look what happened. Here’s a guy that for most of the flight was a total jerk, and it’s interesting he took two guys down with him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, the next flight, Apollo 8, turned out to be a pretty good way to recover from that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Exactly. Right. Well, those guys were model American citizens. The only controversy I ever heard over that is from Madeline Murray O’Hare—nobody can find her now—over them reading from Genesis up there. But these guys were as good as it gets for what they did in terms of representing the program, America, their performance. Everything worked fine.\\n\\n That mission, I think George Low, the gentleman I had talked to you about earlier, had a lot to do. If you went back and read stuff, I know he had his hand a lot in getting that approved and so forth. Because that was an out-of-sequence bold step. In my mind, there were some folks back then that could do things like that, that had good vision, would do things like that.\\n\\n I don’t think NASA could have ever really do things that way anymore. I think they’ll risk ever so much, but that was a big risk. There’s no question about it. We had one manned flight with the spacecraft. We’re going all the way to the Moon on the spacecraft the next time with a system that hadn’t done that. You get that big Saturn out and haul off. Wow. To me that was a bold step.\\n\\n I think that and the success really opened up the rest of the program to proceed in an orderly manner. Had they not done that, and I don’t remember all that of the mission sequences, but there were many, many mission sequences over the years more conservative than that, and they just jumped a whole bunch of steps and combined a bunch of objectives in that. It was a bold step and paid off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it sure did. Did you become involved with that at any early stages before maybe it was publicly known?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t remember. I can’t remember. Probably. I mean, we were all working on that stuff over there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was my understanding, I guess, that a small group of people were brought in initially." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t working on that team. We all were working several missions. You’d work on several different missions in the planning stage. You didn’t just plan them in sequence. So, early on in the planning sequence, I don’t think I was working on that at that time. I may have been working on 9 or 10 or whatever." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Both of those flights are usually not regarded with as much enthusiasm as some of the big ones like 8 or 11, but 9 and 10 both had very practical objectives, proving the lunar module and then doing the dress rehearsal for the lunar landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, 9 really got the lunar module a workout in Earth orbit, and 10 really got us up again very close to a lunar landing into that sequence. We learned a lot there about working with two vehicles and getting the communications right. I remember working with—Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan was a CapCom on that mission. I was always amazed, working with Gene. I was working on communications objectives, and the communications system after that, let’s see, must have been after 9, I’m not sure. That’s when we created INCO position.\\n\\n The communications system had a lot of different modes of data, command and voice and television and so forth. You had to get the ground and the spacecraft all configured the same, or you’d have something missing there. You would have a lack of one of those probably capabilities. And it was fairly complicated.\\n\\n There was a lot of management. The time management of the communications system took a lot of time. So it could be done by ground command, but it was done, I think, on a 9. It was done with the CSM EECOM [Environmental, Electrical, and Communications Officer] and lunar module, one of the lunar module positions. And it was a mess. I remember working with Gene Cernan on some communications tests and trying to get a hold of Gene to systematically get the crew to get the switches in the right configuration and so forth.\\n\\n He was the CapCom, and we finally, I guess it was after 9, decided to create the INCO position and let one person manage the whole communications system, both the ground system and the flight system. They created that in my branch. So that turned out to be a lot more efficient. What we did was configure all of that airborne system by ground command, and so it took the crew out of a lot of switch changes and when you went from different communications modes and two vehicles, and it was really a mess. So we created the INCO position, and that worked a lot better, a lot more efficient.\\n\\n That was some of the things we learned out of—I think we really learned it out of Apollo 9, and then I’m not sure whether we had it in place for 10 or 11, but we finally got it in place, got it all figured out, how to do that, how to consolidate it. It took the crew out of a lot of burden. I mean, the burden was tremendous. I mean, it’s just routine stuff. They had more important stuff to do, is what I’m saying. They had really important stuff and then to get distracted by all of this routine switch-throwing that we could do by ground command to try to keep the two in sync." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We had talked to Ed [Edward I.] Fendell about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Ed was in my branch. What you call a character." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was certainly an interesting guy to talk to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of a kind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m struck by how many one-of-a-kind characters there were in flight operations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It attracted people like that. It attracted very strong-willed people. Gene Kranz used to tell us that one thing about this job is you can’t fade into the woodwork. You’ve got to get out there and get it done. So people like Ed, who didn’t mind—Ed was very competent as well, but didn’t mind standing up and getting things done, excelled at this work. He was a little bit of a character.\\n\\n Did you talk the John [S.] Llewellyn any?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we did, several times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He’s a whole lot of a character. [Laughs] We all hope they throw away the mold when they make them like him. He’s the guy that hollered “Liftoff” on that Gemini when it hadn’t lifted off and got everybody thinking we had liftoff. But John’s a character." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we certainly get a little bit of sense of this personality in here, but we’ve heard a lot of stories about him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As the assistant flight director, you had a chance to work with a lot of the different flight directors very closely. So I was wondering if you could comment on some of their different personalities and styles in terms of how they ran the missions and the shifts, and just provide some sort of comparison for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think the styles are like any kind of variation you find in people. Some people are more into control than others. Others are more into delegating. So there’s a whole different set of spectrum of styles you see across people that do work like that.\\n\\n The ones that are high on control, it seems probably split about fifty-fifty between the ones that are high on control and the ones that are more of delegators. I have good personal friends in both categories, and I think the preferred way—I’ll tell you, one of the guys that I always admired, always worked with, always will respect, one of my mentors, one of the guys that I couldn’t say enough things about in terms of giving me the opportunities I had over there is Chris Kraft. He was in the mode of he was the master delegator. He’d let you hang yourself, you know, but he didn’t misjudge people. He knew who could do the work, and he let them do the work. He just had a feel for people and so forth. He would push people hard at first, when he didn’t know them, just to see what their capabilities were and so forth. Once he had that figured out, he let people do their work.\\n\\n There were other guys that didn’t let anyone hardly do anything, really control. You’ve seen people like that in every walk of life. They’re just different personalities. But Kraft really had a gift. I used to just marvel at the guy.\\n\\n He was unforgiving, too. I mean, there would be a point, just to show you, when we had the remote sites out there, we always had a picture book of everybody in the remote site, the CapCom we sent out and the systems engineers and so forth. Somebody’d make a goof, he’d say, “Show me the book. Who is that?” He mostly knew everybody. He knew the CapComs, but some of the systems guys he didn’t know, and it had a little picture of who they were and everything. The guy may never go out again.\\n\\n He would let you make mistakes, and if they were honest mistakes and if you 'fessed up to them, fine. If you tried to cover them up or weren’t honest about them, you were history. I’ve seen people just disappear. A lot of people disappear out of flight ops just due to his hand. They went over to work in the program office. That’s what he’d do. I’ve seen him clear a lot of people out of there. We’d get a new program. We’d start getting simulations, people get in. Make an honest mistake, that’s okay. Cover it up or keep making it, just showing incompetence, another thing.\\n\\n But the guy was unforgiving. Yet once he had you figured that you were a square person, he let you do your work. I thought what a gift this guy has. But he also had the power to do something about the people that didn’t. What a gift. But he could figure it out.\\n\\n I remember one time I came over. This might have been something like Apollo 7. It was all the pre-launch mission rules, and we had a lot of it. I had about a ten-page document, and I go over there to his office, and I said, “I need to get you to sign this off.”\\n\\n He says, “Okay.” Okay, signs it, just like that. I didn’t go over it.\\n\\n Other guys would have gone over every one. You’d have been there for hours, going over every single one. So he had that gift of categorizing, classifying people with their capabilities and stuff. But some people never learn that. I’m not going to mention names." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I mean, some people, they’ve got to do it all themselves. They’ve got to see everything. It’s a shame, really. When you get into that kind of operation, you don’t develop people as well, and you put a big burden on yourself. You become indispensable on every thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m surprised by how even though there are a variety of personalities that all of them seem very successful once they got into that position." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At least up through the Apollo Program. I can’t comment as much on Shuttle flight directors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. I don’t know much about the last bunch of guys in there at all. There was a big war in the organization between Kranz and Kraft over who the Apollo flight directors were. Kranz’s view is they all come out of Flight Control Division. Kraft’s view was that Flight Control Division was so arrogant and unruly, that he was going to show them that they weren’t the only guys that could run that operation. So they picked, let’s see, it was Pete [M. P.] Frank [III] and Milt [Milton L.] Windler and I can’t remember who else, but from outside the organization.\\n\\n Kranz really went to the mat over that with him, and he lost that one. But there was a feeling in the Flight Operations Directorate that the Flight Control Division was a little bit out of control and kind of overran everybody else and so forth in the directorate. So that was done to tame, in part.\\n\\n Those were good guys, by the way. Windler had come out of, I think, Landing and Recovery, and Pete came out of Mission Planning and Analysis. There was always a little bit of bad blood between those organizations in terms of their view that flight control just rolls over everybody and so forth. Kraft, it was probably the right thing for him to do, but he did make Gene the division chief when he got rid of [John D.] Hodge, and made John Hodge Flight Control Division chief when I first came there. Then Hodge got into trouble with the management. I think that was after GT-9. So he did make Gene the division chief.\\n\\n I know personally, I’ve been around Kraft a lot, and he had tremendous respect for Kranz. Even though they had this war going on, he had tremendous respect for him. That didn’t interrupt the respect he had for the guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get any sense that this attitude you’ve been describing within flight control spilled over to the relationships with other directorates like Engineering?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I think the whole operations. It sure did. I think there’s a long-term resentment in the Engineering Directorate—I have a lot of friends there, too, obviously—about so many of the program management positions, so many of the top positions go to people in operations. “I mean, who are those guys?” That’s their view. “We’re over here doing this, and no one considers that.”\\n\\n So I think the engineering guys in particular have a—that’s a smoldering kind of thing over there. There’s a bunch of guys that have been over there a long time and, like I say, they harbor some resentment, like “All the good jobs go to those guys in the flight ops.”\\n\\n I heard a guy, I couldn’t believe the guy said this, but the guy has been retired. I ran into him in the grocery store somewhere, and he’s still carrying that around, the guy from engineering. He was really—he had resentment. He expressed it to me, resentment for all this publicity Kranz got after Apollo 13. This guy was pretty high up over there, and he had resentment for that. I can’t understand that. I mean, I just can’t understand anybody resenting someone that’s been successful at what they’re doing doing that. So there’s a lot of feelings there. I think they probably go on today and on and on and on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, since you brought up Apollo 13, I think that’s a good example of when you were talking earlier about how even though mission rules can’t cover every scenario, they can help prepare you for some and then leave you to concentrate on the other ones. So maybe you can give us your version of events that from flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think this is well documented in everybody’s book, in Gene Kranz’s book, in HBO and all of the movies and everything. I guess the things you can say about it was, is that it represented a significant team effort in dealing with the things that they hadn’t predefined like this.\\n\\n The fact that when you were on a translunar trajectory, that you’re going to pick the best method to abort from that translunar trajectory, all of that was mission rule stuff. Like the best time is to wait till they go around the Moon and come back, rather than try to turn the whole stack around. But doing all of the system problem-solving and so forth—and that represents I think something I said earlier about this concept that NASA has, this “in case it happens” management style of having all this capability, they could deal with that.\\n\\n They’ve got all of this capability over there in terms of the different skills, knowledges, simulation equipment, and so forth, and know how to bring it to bear in something like that, where a big part of the time, I mean, Shuttle flight after Shuttle flight is just by cookbook flight.\\n\\n But should something like this happen again, bang. So they pay a big overhead price for that. Maybe today that’s not warranted, but clearly in Apollo days it was warranted. There was so much uncertainty. There’s a lot less uncertainty now. In particular with Earth orbit flights, you can get down pretty quick.\\n\\n But I think that’s just a part of that, to bring a team to bear, to bring out all the ideas and have a method to get those guys back okay. It worked fine.\\n\\n As I say, Hollywood, they jazzed it up a little bit, but I mean the real truth of the matter is that it was good leadership that got the folks together dealing with a real crisis. Turns out they had everything they needed to get it done. It was very impressive, that whole team operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your specific involvement with that flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was not assigned as a flight controller that flight. I was in charge of the Flight Control Operations Branch and had several flight controllers over there. As a matter of fact, we really recognized one guy. This guy called up a deep space tracking network. We weren’t using it at that point. We weren’t far enough out, but right away this guy, this was kind of unplanned, but he did it on his own. He just went out and called up all those big antennas and everything and got everything. That’s the war-fighting mentality that we had. So nobody turns around and fusses at the guy. Cost him a whole lot of money, the stuff. The guy had everything up, called up right away. I mean when it happened, bang, he’s got everything up and ready to go.\\n\\n So I helped with them from—not being an active flight controller that mission, not being on the console, but we worked on more of the communication, the data flow kind of stuff, stuff that was in our area.\\n\\n But the team effort, again, NASA was good at that in those days. I’m not sure it would be as good today. The bureaucracy has spread, and there’s more fingers in the pie and more management. I’ll give you an example of that. I can’t remember which Shuttle flight it was, but they were getting ready for launch, and they had a big hydrogen leak. It was in that seventeen-inch disconnect area, and so they could pick it up on the pad. They ended up canceling the flight. They couldn’t find the leak there.\\n\\n So they established this team of people to go and do problem-solving and find that out. So what it turned out to be was between Headquarters and a program manager over here at the time, the Shuttle program manager, they were all involved in this thing. It turned out to be that some large percentage of the effort was put into making presentations for management, and they were giving briefings to the press on what was going on. In fact, they totally missed the problem. They told them it was something or some glass beads or some kind of thing going on. So Gary Johnson—have you talked to him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, we haven’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you need to talk to Gary. Gary was involved, deeply involved, in that whole electrical system back in Apollo and the changes, the investigation. Gary Johnson knows a lot about that. He was on the investigation team, and he was the electrical wiring man for Apollo, so he can really give you some insight into that stuff.\\n\\n So Gary and I go over to Aaron Cohen then, who’s the center director. We say, “Aaron, these guys are never going to get an answer to this problem, what we’re doing. This is, problem-solving won’t work.” It had gone on for three weeks like that. They were having program office meetings, and they weren’t problem-solving.\\n\\n Well, Aaron threw Gary and me right out of his office and says, “Well, I assigned that to the program manager. It’s his job,” Leonard [S.] Nicholson.\\n\\n We tell him, “This ain’t going to work. Won’t work. You’ll never get the answer here.”\\n\\n So they went on for about three more weeks. Meanwhile, the Shuttle’s not flying, didn’t solve the problem. NASA Washington finally decided, “Well, we’d better put together a proper problem-solving team, put the right people together,” put them down at Cape where the equipment was. In two weeks they had the answer and had it solved, and we told these guys.\\n\\n That’s what’s happening in NASA now. You see all of these infusions of management processes into things like problem-solving processes and so forth. So I would hate to see that happen to something like Apollo 13, if we have something like that again, where all of these guys pile in and pile on and they’re spending all of their time giving briefings, not working.\\n\\n You need strong leadership, and I’m concerned about the leadership, the operations leadership. I don’t really see it over there. The Chris Krafts are gone, the Gene Kranzes are gone, and the guys that would really stand up and fight battles and could fight battles and had the clout to do it. I’m not saying those guys can’t do it, but I just don’t see the leadership anymore that we had when those kind of things were going on, the real leadership that would get there. All the managers would converge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that’s a function of the people or the system?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Both. I think the system more than the people, but the people because the system won’t let the people exhibit leadership characteristics and traits. It’s like there’s a difference between management and leadership, and it’s management now. It’s a management process, a management operation.\\n\\n The guys that were charismatic leaders, the Chris Krafts, the Walt Williamses, the Max Fagets and those guys were leaders because they had a lot of technical knowledge and a lot of savvy and they were a result of a career of working on all of the predecessor technology that went into what we were doing over there. They had credibility.\\n\\n You don’t see that now. I mean, that’s probably one of the biggest weaknesses over there is that you’ve gone more to this management style of operation as opposed to the leadership style. You don’t see the strong leaders in the business anymore. You don’t see the leaders sticking out that people follow.\\n\\n [Former JSC Director] George [W. S.] Abbey was a leader, but he’s gone. You could say whether that’s good or bad, whether he was a good or bad leader, that’s a different question. But George Abbey was a leader. Who’s a leader over there? There’s no leader over there at the center now.\\n\\n [Acting JSC Director] Roy [S.] Estess is, of course, just holding the fort. Eventually they’ll get someone. If they pick someone from within, they likely won’t have a leader. They’ll have someone that’s a product of the current system. You need real leaders at times, folks that have the credibility and the vision to make changes.\\n\\n [Former NASA Administrator Daniel S.] Goldin, when he came in, he had some really wonderful ideas what NASA really needed. It turns out he didn’t know how to implement them in the system. He was not good down and in, but he had a lot of vision on things that needed to be done, but he just couldn’t get them implemented. He had a vision, so he wasn’t a great leader. He was a visionary, but not a great leader because he couldn’t get them implemented. He tried, and he got a lot of blame for stuff that really he shouldn’t be blamed for, some stuff he needed blamed for.\\n\\n But my point is that here’s a guy was a visionary that wasn’t a good leader. I don’t see any real leaders in the system over there. I mean, there were times when if we were standing on top of Building One over there and Chris Kraft told me to jump off, I’d have jumped off. That was a real leader, right? “Whatever it takes to do the job, Chris, we’ll do it.” I don’t see that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it’s a shame that it seems to be that way now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Leaders don’t come around very often, and NASA needs some leadership, someone that not only has a vision and can see what needs to be done to achieve that vision, but can inspire people in a way that they will fulfill that vision, to inspire folks.\\n\\n Goldin never inspired anybody. George Abbey was a leader, except he just told people what to do. He was a control guy. So he just told people what to do, so you do what he says his way, and that’s his modus operandi. So that’s not the best leadership model either. NASA really needs that.\\n\\n I hearken back to guys like Chris Kraft who had this ability to, boy, dig in and take strong stands, but you knew the guy was right. You knew the guy. He’s a smart guy. In some of this stuff, a lot of it was back when space flight wasn’t routine. We were doing things for the first time. But this guy had just an idea that if we do it this way, we won’t get in trouble, and you believed him, and he’d stand up.\\n\\n We need some folks like that over there and somebody to do program management right, somebody that can take a leadership in that area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What effect do you think having these kind of long-running operational programs like Shuttle, or like Station will be when it’s completed, has on attracting this kind of leadership?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s a good point. That’s a very good question. Because I think it’s a whole different environment than you’re talking about in a development situation, and I don’t think it would necessarily be a plus in attracting this kind of leadership.\\n\\n These are just operating programs, routine, very routine, a lot of it, very routine operations. It’s pretty much gobbling up the big part of NASA resources to do routine operations. So they’ve got this big cost, this big operational cost of routine operations that overrides a lot of these other things that NASA really would like to do, the space exploration and the things like that.\\n\\n So, yes, I would think a different type of person would be attracted to an operations kind of business, something where the business model is mostly pure operations. And there’s a need for people like that. There are people that know how to do it, make it efficient, organize it, structure and so forth. But I don’t see the visionary leadership that we had before, that we’re looking at all these programs and what kind of programs do we need and how we do them. So it’s a different kind of thing.\\n\\n You need good operations leadership, but it’s a different kind of person, I think, than you’d get than what I think NASA needs. My view is, they’ve got to somehow shed themselves of the responsibility of some of these continuing operations if they ever want to get back in and do some development and new programs and so forth. But the burden of these programs are so high, that that’s where they’re going to be stuck. So it’s unlikely to move away from here for a long time. It’s an unfortunate situation to be in, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the atmosphere like as the Apollo Program was winding down, where you’re ending this developmental program and there’s not an immediate follow-on in terms of a lunar program, but then you’re going into something like Space Shuttle or you’ve got the intermediate program with Skylab?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’ll tell you, the atmosphere in flight operations, that’s what we do is operations. So you can imagine, it’s a fairly big impact on morale and everything to kind of get away from operations, because that’s really what we all like to do is that.\\n\\n So I happened to work for a genius at the time, his name is Gene Kranz, and Gene Kranz decided that his objective at that time, because there was some significant time period between the end of Apollo and the Space Shuttle or the next program, was to involve us in some other activities that were beneficial to the center, (A), and (B), something that we could do that we might learn from and so forth.\\n\\n So one of the things he did—like I say, one of the things I learned from Gene Kranz is—and there are not very many operations people good at this. Most operations people like to work on the current program, current operations and so forth. Gene always had his eye on what’s next, and he always had some people working on it and thinking about it, and when times were slow in terms of current programs and operations, he kept people busy. That guy was a genius at that. Most other people just weren’t good at that.\\n\\n So what he did was he convinced the center that his division ought to take over the Earth Resources Aircraft Program. It turned out I happened to be branch chief of that. He made me the branch chief of that. We put a whole bunch of folks working on that.\\n\\n It had had a questionable past, so he had some selling points there. At least they could make a case that it hadn’t been run very well, the operations part of it, and then if he brought the operations team in on it, we could make it a lot more efficient and operate better. So we started the Aircraft Applications Branch. So I was branch chief of that, so we worked on that.\\n\\n We basically worked on that until the Space Shuttle started going again, and Chris Kraft got his picture book out, and our pictures were in that book because we were working one of those ancillary programs.\\n\\n But we had a lot of fun with that. We worked on that through all of the manned Skylab Program. We basically flew a lot of underflight support to the earth resources package that was on Skylab, and we had a P-3V, a C-130. We had a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter. Those three we used. We had two RB-57Fs. We used those two airplanes. Sometimes we brought in a U-2 airplane from Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California]. Once in a while we’d strap something on a T-38 or something like that, something of that nature.\\n\\n So we did a lot of—my job during the manned part of Skylab was to keep the aircraft support there. Anytime they would do an earth resources experiment, sometime we’d have a B-57 at 60,000 feet, and we might have a C-130 at 10,000, a helicopter at 1,000 feet, all lined up under there taking data and so forth to correlate with the spacecraft instrument. So that’s what I did during the Skylab Program, the manned part of it.\\n\\n It kept a lot of Gene’s people busy working on that, and we do think we did a presentable job of managing the program. We do think that. Who knows, but that was the premise under which the flight operations organization would take that. We did all the flight planning, and we had folks that flew on the airplanes. Some of them operated instruments. I had guys that flew the instrument positions on B-57s. I had guys that flew on all the airplanes. Once in a while I’d take a flight or something like that. So we did that. That was one of the ways.\\n\\n Like I say, Kranz was a genius at keeping people busy between programs. A lot of people wouldn’t do that. So that kind of kept the morale up. We were working on Skylab then, too, so I had a number of flight controllers working on Skylab.\\n\\n When Skylab started, Gene asked me if I wanted to be a flight director on Skylab, and I said no, I did not want to be one. So I decided to opt out of that. I like working on this Earth Resources Aircraft Program better. We did a lot of planning and so forth. I saw working as a flight director in Skylab as kind of like Space Station over here, for months just going to work on shift work, and it just didn’t appeal to me. I had been working on it before in terms of the communications system and so forth, so it wasn’t anything that I wanted to do.\\n\\n The aircraft program sounded interesting, and this aircraft job turned into, by the way, a division, because we took over aircraft engineering. They did some combining of flight crew operations and flight operations, and they had some aircraft engineering people out at Ellington [Field], so they put them under me. We made it a division. We had responsibility for the development of the Shuttle training airplanes. So in my mind, that turned into a better job than going over here to control center and working.\\n\\n By that time I was ready to really do something technically different, rather than just working, boring holes in the sky and that. That’s when I got into this aircraft business, aircraft engineering. We worked on the development of the Shuttle Training Aircraft [STA].\\n\\n That probably came as close to getting me fired as anything I ever did. Very close. I thought I was fired. Chris Kraft said, “I’m considering firing you.” He meant it. So that was an exciting program, I must say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe you could give us some of the details on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we had taken this program over from aircraft operations, and an engineer who was working on it came to work for me as assistant division chief, Charlie [Charles R.] Haines, good, good, good, good aeronautical engineer, fantastic aeronautical engineer. Had a personality about like Genghis Khan or somebody, you know.\\n\\n George Abbey was our directorate chief. God, George Abbey was mad at us every day. So we started this program. The first thing that happened, it was designed to fly like Space Shuttle. Space Shuttle had never flown before. So it’s a moving target. That’s okay. You understand, that’s a tremendous development problem to make this in-flight simulator fly like another airplane, but, boy, what a challenge. Not a lot of engineers get a chance to work on something like that.\\n\\n So right after we got the project, they changed the Shuttle cockpit, and, of course, if you look in that airplane, left-hand cockpits is like the left-hand side of the Shuttle cockpit, because that’s where it’s flown from. So that cost us a million dollars right there in terms of changes to our program, which was a million dollars we didn’t have.\\n\\n Then it went on and on. We ended up after a year or so about $10 million dollars over budget. Our contractor was Grumman, and so we went up there. We did a special investigation. I remember going through every single drawing, everything, trying to figure out where the work was.\\n\\n So Grumman came in here the first of one month and had a big meeting in front of Kraft. God, he was mad. Ooh, was he mad. They said, “We’re a million dollars over budget,” and, boy, he threw them out. He could swear like anybody’s sailor, you know, and he was swearing at them.\\n\\n So that’s when we went up to Grumman and started looking at, well, it turned out it wasn’t a million, it was 4 million. We came back at the end of the month and it was 4 million. The good thing was, he was madder at Grumman than he was at me and Charlie. But he was really upset when it jumped from 1 million to 4 million dollars. I cannot say in this company what he told them. You will not believe that the director of a center would tell—they had the president of Grumman down here, the president of a big—you wouldn’t believe how he talked.\\n\\n Then he talked to Charlie and me, and he says, “I’m considering firing you guys.” Ooh. And he meant it. So I think that’s probably the closest I’ve ever come to getting fired, which we probably deserved it, who knows. But we got it pulled out and working again.\\n\\n We had an interesting operation because the engineering directorate wouldn’t help us. They only wanted to work on the Shuttle. We’d have these big meetings. We’d get Kraft. We’d get the head of the engineering directorate, and he’d agree to Kraft. We needed some control system help, because it’s a complicated control system. Say, yes, we’ll help and then they wouldn’t do it.\\n\\n We’d go back to see Kraft. He’d swear at them, and they wouldn’t help us. So it was one of those kind of things. One day we laid it all out for him what was happening, and we said, “Why are you so mad at us?”\\n\\n He says, “Because you guys aren’t up here pounding on my desk enough.”\\n\\n We said, “Well, we’ve had all these meetings, we’ve brought all these people in. You’ve told them what to do.”\\n\\n He said, “I expect you guys to be up here pounding on my desk.”\\n\\n “Well, gee, boss, you know.”\\n\\n “I’m going to fire you guys.”\\n\\n “Yes, sir.”\\n\\n But we got it going finally and got them delivered. We had a lot of technical problems, tremendous technical problems, so in that sense, for an engineer it was interesting. We had problems making the control system. We called it model following, it actually followed a model of the Space Shuttle. That was a tremendous challenge there and a very complicated system.\\n\\n Then we had a lot of trouble with because the way the airplane works, you’ve got to fly it in reverse thrust to get the right glide angle for it during flight, and you fly it at pretty high power settings, like 90 percent or something, and the flaps go up instead of down, and that kills lift on the wings and so forth.\\n\\n So the first flight we flew where we put it in reverse thrust, the whole cockpit shook so bad they couldn’t read the displays, and that went on for a long time, and trying to figure out what was the matter. We knew, of course, when you went in reverse thrust, we knew we were exciting these fundamental modes of the airframe, and it was all showing up in the cockpit there, and they couldn’t read the displays, and so you couldn’t operate that way, obviously.\\n\\n So we said, “Well, okay, what are we going to do? Well, we’re going to go over here and get the experts at Langley.”\\n\\n Kraft told me go over and talk to Hewitt [William H.] Phillips. He said, “Hewitt Phillips, my old boss over there,” he said, “he knows everything there is to know about control systems.”\\n\\n So we went over there to talk to him, and he said, “Well, I need the planes for about two years to do this research program.”\\n\\n We said, “Well, this is a Shuttle trainer. We need to deliver it in six months or something like that. I mean, we’ve got to train the astronauts.”\\n\\n Then we talked to the Grumman Ph.D's., and they couldn’t figure out what to do, but they wanted a research program. We talked to all of these aviation experts around NASA. Finally there was a guy that worked for me who went to the library and sat down and did a little bit of studying, and he figured out. In the meantime, we did a lot of work, like we tufted the back of the airplane so you could see the airflow. We put smoke generators on the engine. We even found out how to do that. We called up the Thunderbirds and said, “How do you make those engines smoke?” And they told us, so that’s what we did.\\n\\n So this guy figured out the problem, what the solution to the problem was just by—it was incredible. This guy was really smart. He was one of these guys that—his name’s Royce [L.] McKinney. He was an aeronautical engineer. He’s one of these guys that was way smarter than—he wasn’t the guy that you’d go say produce a whole lot of stuff. He’s a guy you go use his brain, kind of guy, one of those type of guys.\\n\\n He sat down and figured this whole thing out. Those Grumman Ph.D's., the guys didn’t really believe him much, but he convinced them how to fix the problem, and it took about twenty or twenty-five flights of tweaking this. What he did basically was change the whole outlet configuration of the thrust reverser to where it changed the frequency level of that noise into this exhaust up above the fundamental modes of the airframe. It worked.\\n\\n Working in that aircraft, to me that was more fun than getting into something like that, than working on Skylab in the control center, although that might have led to something different after that, too. You never know where that would have been. But that’s what I ended up doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think Charlie Haines had mentioned that the STA had the distinction of being the first thing on the Shuttle Program to run over budget." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It could have been. Boy, Charlie’s got this—he’s a good friend of mine, but he’s got this acid personality. We’d have a meeting with George Abbey, he was the directorate chief, every morning at eight o’clock. We had to prepare all these charts and stuff. George would ask us a question, and Charlie would act like “That’s a stupid question.” He’d show George in every way he could that he asked a stupid question, and it just built a relationship that wasn’t a lot of fun. Every morning at eight o’clock I was exposed to this deal for weeks. I’d say, “Charlie, I know it’s a stupid question, but he’s a boss. Bosses have a right to ask stupid questions. Quit telling him it’s a stupid question. I mean, let him—because he beats us up every day. You go through this thing and tell him it’s a stupid question, or you look down your nose at him or send him all kind of signals about that, and we get beat up every single day by this guy. Charlie, when are you going to learn?”\\n\\n But he never gave up. He was one of these real very, very technically competent guys. If I ever needed an aeronautical engineer, I’d want Charlie around. A lot of experience, a lot of competence. He was good. But he’d get the boss mad at us all the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you guys having to deal with the Shuttle Program Office under Bob [Robert F.] Thompson as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, it’s interesting. Bob Thompson was, in my mind, one of the true leaders, too, in the Shuttle Program early on. He had a lot to do with pulling that together.\\n\\n I remember we went over and talked to him about that, and he says, “I’ll help you guys. I’ll call Grumman up.” We had only so much leverage at our level, and he was the kind of guy, “I’ll help you. I’ll call Grumman. Give me the information. Give me the facts. We’ll get the president down here. We’ll talk to him about it.” I mean, he very much wanted to be helpful and a part of the solution, rather than beat us up.\\n\\n Abbey was more the “beat you up” guy and Kraft was, too. Their management style was a little different. But Bob Thompson, he was a very charming man, and right away he picked the phone up, called the president of Grumman, and said, “Let me try to help you with this,” and so forth. But, yes, went very well with him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How difficult was it to get this aircraft ready to fly like a vehicle where the design is still somewhat fluid in terms of how it’s actually going to perform?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, what we did was, they had the best engineering simulation is called the SES over here in engineering, Spacecraft Engineer Simulator, whatever they call it. It was a man in a loop engineering simulator of the Shuttle, and that’s basically the way we tried to make it fly like that simulator. That had the best engineering input into it.\\n\\n Then what happened was, when they made those drops out at Edwards Air Force Base [California], they learned some things about some of the coefficients and so forth that updated that simulator, and that’s what we used as really our basis for what the Shuttle flew like. So we would use whatever the latest configuration of that was to base the Shuttle aircraft training system.\\n\\n Charlie and I used to talk about that big orange ball, and it’s never happened, thank God, the Shuttle Training Aircraft. The Shuttle Training Aircraft has been going twenty-five years now, and we’ve never had a big orange ball. But it was one of the things we really worried about because—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you explain that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Crash, basically, because of either some form of training incident, error, in terms of that or an aircraft failure, some failure in the system, because they’re diving at the ground just like the Shuttle is, at a pretty high rate, and they’re doing it time after time after time after time again, and what we did was we set up a safety pilot on the right side and the training pilot’s on the left side.\\n\\n I’ll tell you what we did. We went over to flight control to a guy I know, Charley [B.] Parker. I’m not sure Charley’s around here now, but he was a guidance officer. We said, “Charley, we need a way, a simple way, to monitor this trajectory by the training pilot, some simple rules,” and he was a trajectory guy. He was a part of the whole flight dynamics organization. So we commissioned him to go work on a set of rules that were simple enough to where the training pilot could take control of the aircraft should it get where it would be difficult to recover it should something go wrong. We call that like a dead man’s curve or something.\\n\\n So what you’d have would be, we had a real simple rule about velocity and rate of descent and so forth that the training pilot could use, and all he had to do to take command of the airplane was grab the yoke and it’s theirs. It disengages the simulation. There’s also a button on the yoke they can push, and it disengages the simulation. They have control of the airplane.\\n\\n So the idea was set up this way where if the trainee got the thing in a situation where if you had any kind of thing go wrong you might not recover it, it was the guy would override it and take it out of the simulation, or he would never put you in that dead man’s curve. You’d never get in a dead man’s curve.\\n\\n Went back to flight control, developed some simple rules, put the simple rules in, and no one’s ever gotten hurt on the thing. I don’t know about close calls. It goes on and on and on.\\n\\n But they terminate the simulation at twenty-five feet above ground level, so that’s not very high. What you’ve got to do is you’ve got to stow the thrust reversers, make sure that you’re in proper climb-out schedule and all that kind of thing, the main gear’s down for drag." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So you want to suck up the gear. So you’ve got some things to do there. The airplane is real dirty, so you’ve got to clean it all up and get it out of there. So you don’t want to get where you can’t do that. That was the idea. Thank goodness it’s never happened. I mean, we just worried about that a lot.\\n\\n So you talked to old Charlie, huh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he’s a good guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes.\\n\\n This may be a good place to stop for now because I think we’re running a little low on tape and actually it’s getting close to five o’clock, too, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles S. Harlan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t know how much later we’d want to—" + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00597", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/YardleyJF/yardleyjf.htm", + "original_file_name": "YardleyJF_6-30-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/YardleyJF/YardleyJF_6-30-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John F. Yardley", + "location_date": "St. Louis, Missouri – 30 June 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Summer Chick Bergen" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John F. Yardley" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is an interview with John F. Yardley on June 30, 1998, in St. Louis, Missouri, interviewed by Summer Chick Bergen for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project.\\n\\n Let's talk about Shuttle today, and let's begin about 1969. You were working on, I guess, what they called Phase A of the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Phase As were kind of perfunctory. Phase B is a fairly significant one, involves teaming with various people and so on. So that went on until, gosh, I guess '71, we turned in Phase B reports." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "McDonnell?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were still working for McDonnell then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and we were teamed with Martin [Company] at the time, I think. I don't know who all did Rockwell. Dave Gowan [phonetic] did and a bunch of others. I was informally told by some of my friends that ours was the best Phase B, but then we screwed up on the real one, Phase C. I think I mentioned this yesterday. They didn't believe our teaming with our West Coast division was credible. Now, they didn't think we'd be credible; in other words, the relations weren't too good and everybody knew it. Douglas [Aircraft Company] was just dragging their feet then. They weren't really much of a help, but we got some help from some of them, but the rank and file was not very enthused about it because we were going to be heading it out of St. Louis. So anyhow, that showed through on the real Phase C proposal, which is why we didn't win that, according to Bob Thompson, who went to work for me later, and the others in the review board.\\n\\n The higher St. Louis activity that had done Mercury and Gemini was not the giant activity that they were going to have on the Shuttle, and Rockwell, with the Apollo background, well, I'd say they weren't to happy with the quality because they had some problems. They did have a big team. So I think that's what really did it. That's what they said did it. [Laughter] But I guess you know they came to me later and said, \"Why don't you come to Washington and run this whole thing.\" They liked our stuff in Phase B and they liked our understanding of the whole thing at the top, but they didn't think it was sufficient in the broad sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what did you do with McDonnell after you didn't get this position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I went back to my day job. [Laughter] I was the general manager of the astronautics in St. Louis. We had the headquarters of the astronautics in Huntington Beach because they had a little more activity at the time, and we worked on the Skylab, setting that thing up, worked on the Harpoon missile. We went to the Navy and got a good start on the Tomahawk missiles and things like that, but not too much space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So someone from NASA came to you and asked you to—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The someones were the administrator, Jim [James C.] Fletcher, the deputy administrator, George [M.] Low, and Rocco [A.] Petrone. They twisted my arm to come to Washington and have dinner with them and put it to me. Actually, they sent out a guy who I knew that was one of their headhunters, and he came to me with the guise that he was looking for somebody and who did I think would be good and all that stuff. I saw through him pretty easy. [Laughter] So that's how I got into it, and, you know, it was an easy decision, because, gosh, I took a salary cut from about—I don't remember the details, but $85,000 a year plus promotions, to $37,000 a year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which was the maximum pay at that time with the government channels." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what could have caused you to take that kind of salary cut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I wanted to do the job. They also had other problems. I mean, in order to be acceptable legally, I had a bunch of McDonnell stock, and McDonnell, of course, was still doing business with NASA, and so we finally worked that out, that I in my associate administrator job would delegate all interfaces with McDonnell-Douglas to my deputy, and that got cleared by the White House and stood up. So we got over that hurdle. It was a lot of fun, the program was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it, but it was kind of [unclear].\\n\\n The other thing that bit me is in my retirement with McDonnell, gosh, I had thirty-some-odd years or so, twenty-five. The seven years I was at NASA was not counted. So that was a hit on my long-term retirement. The old man—they called him the old man—Mr. McDonnell, Sr., did make a change in rules for me in that they would give me a technical leave of absence, which would be satisfactory to the government, in which I could retain some benefits, past earned bonuses that hadn't been paid and things like this, and he passed a general rule that if employees went to work for the federal government, they would have this sort of a status. They had lawyers all working on it for the government. They would \"have their job back\" when they came back if it was available or if another job was available, provided they did it within thirty days of termination with the government. By the time I came back, he was dead. Mr. Mac died in 1980, and I got back in '81, I guess. He was a great old guy, though. I think he was the best of the icons of the industry. Certainly, like Rockwell, we had a dozen of Mr. Mac's during our tenure.\\n\\n Boeing was the other really staunch organization. Of course, now they've merged, and I hope they can get along better than they did with Douglas. [Laughter] So we got it all worked out, and it worked okay. We didn't have any problems. Nobody was raising the red flag, \"Hey, this guy can't do this because,\" blah, blah.\\n\\n The Congress, I got along well with the Congress, too, mainly because I told them the truth all the time. I mean, they were tough, some of them. The House wasn't bad. We had Bill Nelson for most of that. On the Appropriations side of the Senate, old [William] Proxmire used to give us a bunch of lectures and stuff. Eddie Boland [phonetic] was the head of the House Appropriations Committee, and he had some good questions. He'd start out, \"Mr. Yardley, last year when you were up here you said you were going to have so many hours on the engine. What happened?,\" that kind of thing. But he was a great guy. He came to my retirement party and all that. So we got along pretty good.\\n\\n Okay. Where were we? I was digressing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you got everything worked out with McDonnell, and you came to work, went to Washington and went to work for NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Moved my whole family. At the time it was five, I guess, kids, all five kids. The oldest was going to college, so she didn't come. The second oldest was already married, but she was having trouble with her husband, so we had her and her two little kids for a while. But we found a nice house. One good thing is we bought this house. Seven years later we sold it for over twice what we paid, which was just the way that the Washington housing market was. So that helped a little bit to defray some of the other problems.\\n\\n [When I left Washington, I rejoined McDonnell as president of the McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. The next major bid was on the Space Station and we won one of the major elements.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you came to Washington in your new role, what were your responsibilities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they were very broad. The three guys that I had dinner with are the three guys above me in the agency. I had known George Low ever since the merger. He was one of the Mercury guys for NASA. Fletcher I did not know. He was a card-carrying Mormon, and a really great guy. He lived it. There was other Mormons that didn't. They had a senator from Utah that used to ride our airplanes back and forth, and he drank like a fish, you know, which Mormons aren't supposed to do.\\n\\n The job really was to coordinate and direct the whole operation, wherever it might be, and it was all over the country, and it's kind of a hard thing to get a handle on. Now, there's a lot of good people working—Bob [Robert F.] Thompson, for instance. You probably know Bob. He was the Shuttle guy at Johnson [Space Center], and Johnson had the charter of being not only the orbiter people, but the systems integration people. Marshall [Space Flight Center] had all the propulsion stuff, the main engines, the solid motors, and that sort of thing, and Kennedy had the launch readiness and checkout.\\n\\n We had some problems with different things. Johnson we didn't have much problems with. [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] was very active in it, a good friend of mine from way back, from the merger. He was one of the first guys I ever met. Faget didn't get into it much. I'm not sure why. He was still there. I understand he's having problems now. Johnson was kind of strong-willed, and so they had to lean on him now and then. Thompson, [unclear], \"Marshall isn't really coming right. Why don't you give me their funds, and I'll take care of everything.\" [Laughter] But it all came out.\\n\\n So we did have to make some changes at the Cape. I forget who it was that was there at the time, but it was a general, I think, an Air Force general. He was retiring from that. So we put Lee Sherr [phonetic] down there. \"We,\" I mean [Alan M.] Lovelace asked me if it was okay with me. Lovelace at that time had moved in.\\n\\n Shortly after I got there Petrone quit and went to run a garbage company, you know, reclaiming environmentally important type of activity. Then George Low, who was the number-two man, he left for Rensselaer, to be chancellor of Rensselaer Polytechnic, so there's Fletcher without any of these guys. He checked to see if I wanted to be the deputy administrator, and I said, \"No, I don't want that job. I'm happy with my job.\" So he put Al Lovelace in there. Al was the associate administrator for science, extremely good guy. I didn't know Al very well, but he was very good, and he knew Sherr and thought he'd be pretty good, and I didn't know much about him, but I said okay. He'd run Edwards, I think, for a while. But that didn't work out. He just wasn't cutting it, and I finally fired him, and we put in Dick Smith, who was one of the Marshall top engineers for years, a non-German, and he'd been up in my shop as a deputy administrator for maybe a year, and he did a fantastically good job down there.\\n\\n We didn't really have any more troubles. Marshall was always kind a standoffish organization officially. When [Werner] von Braun was running it, it wasn't too bad. You could go in and sit down and talk to Werner for an hour and this kind of stuff, but Bill—let me think. What's his name, the guy who was running it all the time? He was kind of standoffish and close-mouthed and close to the vest, his cards close to the vest, and I kind of had to run around him a little bit to get things done. Most of the guys he had on the projects, the tank guy, Jim what's-his-name. I'm terrible with names. Then George—actually, George Hardy was on the solid and Jim was on the tanks, and J. R. Thompson, who was outstanding, was on the engine. He and Rocketdyne worked hand in glove, as I mentioned yesterday. Their only problem was they were continually improving themselves into trouble.\\n\\n I'll tell you a little funny story. I finally said, \"J. R., I want you to—\" he was out there at Rockwell—\"I want you to give me a call at eight o'clock our time every morning,\" which was five his time. [Laughter] So he'd go out and he'd get a pay phone and call me. He'd say, \"Gee, it's cold in here.\"\\n\\n I'd say, \"Why is it cold?\"\\n\\n He'd say, \"Well, I've only got my underwear on.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n They agreed that the way we wanted to go would make it work better, faster, sooner, but they sure would like to try these other things to improve it. So I said, \"After we get it qualified for 104, you guys can play your games.\"\\n\\n We had cooperation from most of the other centers that just had peripheral—like Langley, [unclear], and, of course, Edwards ran our test flight on the B-29 separation and all that out there. I was sitting next to Barry Goldwater out there. He was watching it, and we were watching before the thing. Carl Sagan was there and a bunch of people like that. But he said, \"Who's that guy over there with the pointy ears?\" It was this guy on \"Star Trek\" that had the big ears, you know. He was there. [Leonard Nimoy] So we had a lot of fun. But we would never have the chance to do all that otherwise.\\n\\n Let's see. What else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't we talk a little bit about the NASA-Air Force relationship." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Air Force was not enthusiastic about the Shuttle, because what they saw is the possibility of taking all their launch vehicle development away. Their one big customer was the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], and they were not very happy. They didn't worry about the things the Air Force worried about. They worried about \"Here's another bunch of civilians getting into our work that can't keep a secret.\" [Laughter] So between those two, we had some problems. As a matter of fact, everybody was going to go in and do it grudgingly until the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n happened. They said, \"See? We can't put our payloads on that.\" So it gave them a convenient out, and I don't think they're doing anything. They were planning on launching their whole GPS [Global Positioning System] system, now the Shuttle, on little third stages, which are called payload assist modules, PAMs, done by the West Coast McDonnell. Instead of the delta upper stage, they modified it so it would go in the cargo bay and do it, and it worked fine, but it was primarily for commercial customers and things like that.\\n\\n When the government, whoever that was, it was not NASA, could concluded in the flight, the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n flight investigation, that they shouldn't have any of these commercial payloads and they shouldn't have all this diversion, and that's what was giving us problems. Well, that's not what was giving us problems. Before that, we had to get these commercials lined up and the Air Force lined up so that the Congress would say it was worthwhile doing. But it's the normal in-fighting business. They weren't going to stop it then, and they did. The Congress, to their glory, gave us a replacement order, which was a couple billion dollars for the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . So once we were that far along, they weren't going to stop it. On the other hand, why should we risk these very expensive machines on these nickel-and-dime satellites? Well, it'll come back. It'll change.\\n\\n What else? What else would you like in that general vein?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just wanted your viewpoints on that. I was wondering if you could maybe talk about some of the problems that Shuttle had before the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident, the development and production." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The major problems in the development were the heat protection, [unclear], the main engines, and the other things were sort of not that far from what we had done before. They were new parts, but, for instance, we were using hydraulic controls on this, and we weren't using them, but the airplanes used them for a long time. We had to make them special for [unclear] and everything else. We had turbines running in the hydraulic system up to 70,000 rpm or something, that scared the hell out of everybody, but they didn't break, and they had occasions to contain them. Everybody in all systems had some problems. They weren't insurmountable. But the big ones were the tile and the main engine, because we kept blowing up engines, as I've already mentioned.\\n\\n The tile, there was something like 25,000 tiles or something, individual. Lockheed made these tiles, each made to dimensions, tight dimensions by machine so they'd fit the curvature, the outside and inside stuff, and they'd fit the other things. It was a star-spangled mess just to be able to make them and get them on. But to take them off and redo them was really too bad. However, it did work out, but we had a heck of a time.\\n\\n Down at the Cape, we decided—actually it was Chris Kraft and I, we both agreed we had enough problems with these things. The problem was they weren't going to stay on, maybe. Rockwell had used certain criteria to design them and stick them on there, and it was a suspicious criterion, so we started testing them, and, I don't know, 20 percent of them fell off under test loads that were not any bigger than the flight loads. So what we did—it was a hell of a decision, but we did—we took off 25,000 tiles, re-treated the tiles and re-put them on and proof tested all of them at the Cape. [Laughter] And we did it in one of the new orbiter processing facilities, and they hired a bunch of local people and taught them how to do this, and they had people working on those tiles—and the bookkeeping on whether the tile had been tested or was off or on was a nightmare, but it all worked. And after the first flight there wasn't a single tile gone. There were maybe a couple of dings in tiles where maybe something hit them, but it didn't bother them. So that was probably the number-one problem, and it probably cost us six months. I'm just guessing. On the other hand, everybody else was playing catch-up: \"Whew. Hope those tiles give me time to get my thing fixed.\" [Laughter] So that was, I'd say, the main problem.\\n\\n The main engine. I've already mentioned those two were the main ones, but as we found out later, one of the problems was the solid rocket motors. All those things you glue together have uncertainties about them. The solid motors, the propellants [unclear] cast in there and glues itself to the side. What had happened, as I mentioned yesterday, if you left it horizontal instead of vertical, the weight of this propellant, which was heavy, would try to flatten the thing out, and it would pull the structure with it, and it was a slow process, and once you'd tilt it back up, it wouldn't go back up right away. It'd take a month, maybe, to go back to its normal thing, and that was a problem. We really didn't solve the problem in terms of that. We just weren't following our own rules. We had written the rules that you have to have those things sitting upright for so many weeks before you install them, and they didn't do that. Of course, you had the temperature thing that everybody latched on, and [unclear] trying to prove it was the temperature, it wasn't their fault and all that. Actually, the design was okay if it was handled right, but it really needed to have a little more security so that if it's not handled right, it still doesn't do a [unclear]. So they made some changes there that were worthwhile and good.\\n\\n Let's see. What else? The landing situation never gave us any problems. We had a parachute landing we put on. We had the three-mile runway at the Cape. I can't really think of any big problems. Any system has got some problems that you have to solve during the design and development phase, the control system and the jets, that sort of thing. The software was always a nightmare because it's so complex, but Johnson did a great job on it. They did all the software, and I guess they had help from contractors, but I can't recall a single case when that [unclear]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned yesterday that during Gemini you had some problems in developing the landing gear for the Gemini spacecraft, but had technology developed to a better environment state for Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Technology on landing gears was fine. The problem with the Gemini thing was that there wasn't any good space to put it [in], so you had to stretch it up and make it twist a couple times to get it out and all that kind of stuff. It was just not a good application for it, but the Shuttle was more like an airplane, and it just had the doors open and the landing gear come out just like it would on an airplane. I think maybe they had some special tires and brakes that would take higher temperatures and that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was your relationship with the contractor for Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it turned out pretty good. \"The contractor.\" There wasn't any \"the contractor.\" Rockwell was the major contractor. I didn't have any problems with Kaslow [phonetic]. I'd been competing with them for many years. They had some good people. I'd say, in the engine department, the guy that was running the main engine there was an outstanding guy, [Dominique]—I was going to say Zucchini, but that's not right. It sounds like zucchini. I can't remember it exactly. But poor [Dominique] died a couple years after flying. He was a young guy, a lot younger than I am. But he and J. R. together did a magnificent job.\\n\\n Now, in the structures part of Rockwell's thing, I think they had a screw-up that caused [the tile rework]—if they had done that properly, we wouldn't have had that problem. They would have discovered, \"Well, we've got to do things with [the tiles],\" way ahead of time. So that was a weak spot. Of course, the aerodynamics and the design, basic design, was pretty good, but those tiles were a mess. They were lightweight and good insulators, and I don't think, in all the flights they've had, which is twenty-five, thirty, forty, maybe even more than that—I can't keep track anymore—I don't think they've ever had a tile come off.\\n\\n We actually had, for the first flight, big arguments. We had a bunch of scientists, of course, telling us what to do all the time, and this one guy insisted—he was a very well-known guy—that we develop this little “hand car” for the pilot to get out and a kit to put tiles back on on the first flight. We had already agreed, and I'd already agreed, for the little manned maneuvering unit, but that was for normal things, and this wasn't any way to do that. We did have a way to do it if you wanted to crawl around. We didn't want to use it. It was a last resort kind of thing.\\n\\n So, Hans Mark at that time—I don't know if you know Hans Mark. I believe he was the deputy administrator. I'm not really sure. He was either that or he was in charge of the spooky CIA stuff. He had been deputy, our number-two man in the Air Force. He was very interested in it, and he said, \"I think we could work something out. We're going to have spooky ships up there while you're up there, so we can get a photograph to see if you've got a problem before you let these guys go out on a rope basis to fix them,\" and having to go out, whether you fix it or not, just because you don't know if it's okay is not—and even so, there's nothing that would happen to those things. They're not in a bad environment for launch. If they're going to come off, it's that they're going to get hot and vibrate during entry.\\n\\n So they took pictures for us. They were a few miles away, and they had [unclear] and didn't see any problems, and I don't think [unclear]. That's not classified. What is this, '98, and that was '81. So, seventeen years. It must be unclassified.\\n\\n Okay. Go ahead. What's your next question?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about some of the problems that you had during Shuttle. What are some of the accomplishments that you had?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I don't know that I had any, personally. I kept getting the money. I kept getting the guys off of these engineering fun things that slow things down, like on the engine. Of course, being an extra stress man, I found out about this couple of tiles pulling free. It stirred me up, and that helped get the whole thing started. I don't know. I just gave everybody a lot of trouble, you know. [Laughter] I'd have meetings about once a month of most of the same people working in Washington, and they had grief and all, and they used to they used to nickname me \"Old Ironpants\" or something like that, \"Iron Bladder\" or something. We'd sit there all day, you know, crossing our legs and all. But they were good. I would be a tough, a little tough, because I asked some straightforward questions, and if they hemmed and hawed, I knew they didn't really know. I think a lot of people didn't like that, but they went home and did their homework, and the program was better off, and actually they'd admit it was better off later on. But I don't know how many of them liked me and don't like me. But that's what happened.\\n\\n Okay. What else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't we talk a little bit more about your interaction with the Congress. That was a big part of your job, wasn't it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was a fair part. I kind of got to know the key people pretty well. The key staffers are important, like in the House Appropriations Committee. Eddie Boland was the chairman. He had a right-hand man that was his staff man, whose name escapes me right now. But, you know, he'd call me up and say, \"How are you doing?\" I'd say, \"I don't know. Why don't we go out to lunch and we'll find out. I'll tell you what I know.\" I used to go out to lunch with him maybe every couple of months and keep him informed. You know, I wouldn't twist his arm or like that, it was just a question of he felt that he was getting the straight skinny, and he felt that we were interested in keeping him informed, and that's all he really needed. What they hate are these people that are doing this and not telling them anything, and they suspect all kinds of problems. So they didn't really give us any problems.\\n\\n Bill Nelson was a friend of ours, and before Bill, Don Fuqua was the guy. They were all for space, and they were just the Space Committee, whereas Eddie Boland was the total Appropriations Committee. So they were all good friends of ours, and they all came to my retirement party and so on, so I felt pretty good about that. And we never did stonewall them. We always told them the truth, and sometimes it was painful, but it paid off to do that.\\n\\n I can't think if any special congressional thing other than testifying and knowing, understanding what their real interests were. If something came up and if it wasn't time to test it or anything, contacting the staff guy and saying, \"Hey, we've got a problem here and we thought you ought to know it. We think it's under control, but just so you know.\" And we didn't have a lot of trouble. I guess we did okay.\\n\\n We always had a few problems. The [unmanned space] community, aerospace engineers and scientists—well, like, say, Carl Sagan, [advocated] unmanned [satellites] and so on [but were not too] successful in that. Of course, he's passed on, too, you know, Carl Sagan. He was a young guy. He probably wouldn't be more than fifty-five now. But they didn't give us a whole lot of problems. They would always be bad-mouthing us behind our back. [Laughter] [unclear], too. They said, \"If we spent the money you're spending, we'd give you all kinds of [unclear].\" However, the real thing is that the American people aren't as interested in remote things as they are with men doing these things, because they can relate to men, and it's hard for them to relate to these boxes of transistors. I think it's becoming more acceptable, because, you know, this little guy, this little rover that's going around on Mars unmanned is doing a great job. So they're coming along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think the industry could do anything about public perception more than what they've done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I don't know. It's immediately recognized as self-serving, what they say. What we actually were doing after I got back, in '81, some of my guys at Mac had been working on a promising pharmaceutical [unclear] done in space. It can only be done in space. We spent about 30 million dollars on that, and it got [unclear] of us, and everybody was all for it and which we actually flew. We got a company astronaut out of that, Charlie Walker. I don't know if you've heard about Charlie. He still works for Mac, and he's in the marketing office in Washington. He went up three times with this system to prove it worked.\\n\\n We also proved that you didn't need all that training that Johnson had been—see, they started out—this was kind of the business that this guy would have to go in for a year, a year and a half of training. Well, they finally agreed to ninety days on what is the Shuttle and what's your role and how you do these things and stuff. Unfortunately, another company—see, this is what happens when you get out of your own field—another pharmaceutical company—we were teamed with Johnson & Johnson. You'd think that that would be fine, but it turns out the Johnson & Johnson dumped us because another company was doing this without having to go in space, in a different process of genetic engineering. So they aced us, and the danger for aerospace people to try to do this was because you don't really understand the other pieces of this. This somebody else's kind of business, if you understand.\\n\\n The first thing I asked them when I got back from Washington is, I said, \"Okay, now. What makes you think that somebody else is going to do this while you're doing this cheaper and better with different technology?\" Well, Jim [James T.] Rose—I don't know if you know Jim Rose—he was the guy at the time and a good friend of mine, he said, \"We have this three-man committee around the whole loop. Every couple months we meet and we tell them where we are and ask them if there's anything going on.\" Well, if there was something going on, I don't think he's got to tell them, if they're on the other side.\\n\\n So anyhow, we quit. AMGEN is the company that was—[a genetic] engineering company. I don't know how they've done… Jim Rose, in fact, left then after [our plan] fell apart, and went to Washington as associate administrator for commercial activity on the Shuttle, and they set up centers around the country and did a lot of things, but none of it really took. Nobody was really going to spend much of their own money doing this kind of thing.\\n\\n We did one thing, I think, though, that we argue with each other about whose idea this was. It's called \"Getaway Special.\" That's the nickname. And what it was is, we had offered colleges and people like this, researchers, space on the Shuttle—it started a big [unclear]—for experiments for $10,000 a flight, which was way below the cost. But it was extra space. We had that much space and everything, and it wasn't enough weight. I think it couldn't weigh over 500 pounds. But we had a cargo capacity of 65,000 pounds. You're never going to have it loaded just right so that you can't take one of these, and we actually had three or four of them at a time in space. The schools all loved it and so on. This was probably the best way to get things done in space rather than on the ground, because these guys would understand it and they would adapt it. [unclear] not really equipped to do that. That stuff is still going on, as far as I know, and it's very successful.\\n\\n What else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can we talk a little bit about\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n ? We talked yesterday about basically the cause of the accident. Can we talk today about the repercussions of it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't really know much about that, because, see, that happened when I was gone four years, and I was very intensely interested in why it happened, because it was my baby. But what happened, the repercussions I'm not too—well, I didn't even get a copy of the report, but the thing I can remember that was a repercussion is the fact that the \"government,\" maybe Congress, maybe the Executive, maybe both, sort of made a rule that we were going to stop flying these commercial payloads, and that was the opportunity then for the CIA to get their payloads off and the Air Force to go back in the booster business, so they were all happy with that. I think that was the main repercussion that I know of.\\n\\n But it was probably good for the next period. We got a lot of flights in. I don't know how many total, but they will come back if they have—you know, I think it will change back after time whenever things are working great again. There is space available and we can recoup some of the cost by flying other people. I think it will come back, but it hasn't yet. I heard some talk about that recently—now, where was that—that they might lift that ban on flying other payloads. Not just other payloads, commercial, non-government payloads. They probably would let the Air Force do it, but the Air Force doesn't want to do it. They want to do their own thing. So I think it'll come back in time.\\n\\n Everybody's off designing new ships to supersede the Shuttle and making claims that we made years ago, which they can't do, you know, all this stuff about, \"We don't need to do any tests, we don't have to have these lengthy quality things.\" That isn't going to happen. We thought we'd get away with some of that, but we've been through it, and you just can't do it on these kinds of machines. So I don't know what's going to come of all that. NASA will probably fall in line, because they want to build another machine. They're always wanting to build another machine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you feel about privatization of the Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I don't know how to do it. Privatization—I don't think the Shuttle is in a position to be self-sustaining on an economic basis. There isn't the paid demand for it that would keep it going.\n\nSo what it does, as a government machine, is it goes ahead and flies, and flies things that need flying, and it's doing a lot of good, but the government's paying for it. I don't think it would change.\\n\\n Now, I don't know. Let's set that aside and say people would pay for it. How the government really [unclear], nobody is going to pay them 2 billion dollars for that order. You know, that's what it really costs, and all the facilities and everything else around that, I don't see it. So what the industry is working on is smaller vehicles and completely reusable and land like an airplane and all this stuff that we used to talk about pre-Shuttle. [Laughter] But it's a fiction until you get a lot better off than we are and a lot more experience. It's just a much more dangerous environment than just flying airplanes. You have a lot more things to worry about, so it gets more complicated, and I don't think it's going to happen for a few years. I think, if there's enough pressure and if they turn up enough markets, that it will pay the cost, we may see some smaller-type Shuttles. People think they've going to happen. There's some 10-million-dollar awards for the first person that flies his own [unclear]. Ten million dollars is a drop in a bucket to build these things. Now, if it was 10 billion, then you'd see really a lot of work going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've seen so much happen in your career and even since your retirement. What has made the greatest impact on you that you've seen in the space industry?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The greatest impact. I'd say the whole program, while it's had its bumps, like the Apollo fires and the Shuttle disasters, sitting here in both cases, it's the price of making progress, and what we're doing is important, and exactly how it's going to be in twenty to fifty years, I think it will probably change a lot. You know, if you look backward to see how much things came forward—the automobile—well, the airplane is a great example. The first flight in 1903, crossed the ocean on a solo in 1927, and look what it's made. It is a major industry; it's not just a fun thing for people to do. It's hard to understand.\\n\\n Actually, you could conceive, if you could technically do these types of jobs, the Shuttle sort of thing, those environments at a reasonable cost, you could have a transcontinental, you know, get from L.A. to Berlin in about an hour, a quarter to three quarters of an hour, a lot better than the supersonic transport, which never went anywhere. I thought that was kind of fun. I don't know if you've ever followed that, but the British and the French built this Concorde. Gosh, it must have been twenty-five years ago. We were doing it, Boeing was doing it under government contract, and President [Richard M.] Nixon said, \"Let's cut that out. We don't need it.\" And it hasn't hurt us a bit. Our airplanes are still winning the markets. They're getting sold. The French and the English aren't doing that much harm to our system, and there are still five Concordes or something. It's great. I flew on it once, free, but that's another story I'll tell you.\\n\\n I think if you have enough of this stuff going, it'll start to coalesce and you'll get a confidence and a cost picture which will be worth it. It'll be competitive. I'm sure it wasn't cost-competitive at [Charles] Lindbergh's level, or for twenty-five or thirty years after. I guess the first really commercial airplane was hauling passengers, maybe, in 1935. My first flight was 1945, in a DC-3. I was in Memphis getting trained as a Navy lieutenant, or ensign, I should say. My sister got married up here in St. Louis. I was down in Memphis, so I flew up on a weekend." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What direction would you like to see the space program head? We're talking about manned and unmanned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I don't know. I personally think if you put it down in a dollars-and-cents point of view, you'd probably go for unmanned, but why would we fly unmanned airplanes? Well, it isn't cheaper for that [unclear]. So once we get this down to the right volume and cost, I think that will be the winner, the manned spacecraft. So, like I say, well, it may take longer and the unmanned will be doing things cheaper. It'll win. Now, the unmanned people don't have the support that the public [unclear]. I'm afraid the manned support is getting a little less strong because it's getting so old hat. \"Oh, there's another Shuttle going up?\" So you've got to fight both those battles, but I think they'll both survive. I don't think you'll see either of them go off, and I doubt if we'll send the Shuttle to Mars. If we do, we won't get it back. But they will send these other things, and they can get them back, and they're doing some really interesting things which are innovative and cost-saving. Some of these smaller payloads and automated and picking up their own dirt instead of the astronauts picking it up off the moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you feel about the change in the space industry from solely American to the more international cooperation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think international cooperation is good, but you've got to be careful how you do it. Actually, that's been going a long time. The Shuttle Program was something called the Spacelab done by the Europeans, eleven European countries together. We had a man in Paris most of the time working that, and I went over a number of times to see him. But we had done it in a way which if it didn't happen, it wouldn't hurt us. In other words, it was an accessory instead of a mainstream piece. Now when they start out in the Space Station and they give the Russians the control center, they haven't got the money, you know, [unclear], so it's not a very smart way to go about it. Now, they have a better plan that they could do a smaller Space Station without them and have them add on the exercise gym and other things, and they'll probably wind up doing something like that. But, you know, we've had pretty good luck in the Spacelab, and it came out too complicated.\\n\\n With the Russians, we had a flight, Apollo-Soyuz. It was under my aegis, and I went to Russia once. But that was a different breed of cat. We each had our own thing that could get up and down by themselves, and then they could join and go back and forth, and that wasn't too big a deal. Our astronauts, who were Deke [Donald K.] Slayton and Tom [Thomas P.] Stafford, learned a lot of Russian and vice versa. I think it was a good program all around. It didn't do anything economically, but it showed that there was the cooperation and that we could work together.\\n\\n And, of course, with that background, they went into the docking set up for the Mir and the Shuttle, and I think that's been a successful program, in spite of the fact that they've had some problems. The Russian Mir have had some problems, and that's understandable. It's been up there two years. And we bring up a fresh, new spacecraft every time so we're not having the problems. But it's not very much in our benefit to undertake programs which have got stoppers on either side if the whole thing collapses. It's just not a good way to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to close out this interview with one question. You've done so much in the space program. What do you feel is your greatest contribution?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was managing the Shuttle. I used to think it was the Mercurys, but the Shuttle is a magnificent step forward, and they actually picked our design." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "McDonnell's design." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John F. Yardley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which Dick Chamberlain, I told you, came up and helped us evolve that. What I'm talking about, there is a gross design—where the boosters go, you sit on a tank, and all this kind of stuff. And the one that they finalized is the one that we had picked. Everybody else picked something similar, so it's not any big deal, but I think that having the opportunity to see the whole picture for seven years and stir the pot and make it work was not only fun, but important, and I'm happy I did it, even though I'm a little poorer. [Laughter]\\n\\n All my bosses, they're—Rocco Petrone is not dead, but Lowe and Fletcher are, and Lovelace finally wound up as an administrator. I have a condominium in Florida, and I bumped into him in one of the restaurants down there a couple of years ago, and he said he was looking for one, so I told him to come over and take a look at ours. So right now he lives right underneath me, and we're good friends.\\n\\n Okay. Does that give you anything that you can use?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's great. Yes. Thank you very much." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00359", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LeeJB/leejb.htm", + "original_file_name": "LeeJB_1-18-08.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LeeJB/LeeJB_1-18-08.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John B. Lee", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 18 January 2008" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John B. Lee" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 18th, 2008. This oral history with John Lee is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for joining us this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I appreciate the homework that you sent me last night. Based on the list of questions you gave me, it made me dig deeper. Going over some of my biographies, I ran into this piece which talked about the 12 technical papers that I had written. One was a TM [Technical Memorandum] called, “Earth Landing Systems for Manned Spacecraft.” It was co-authored by John [W.] Kiker, [James] Kirby Hinson, and myself. John Kiker was hired from US Army Aviation Transportation Research and Engineering Command and took over the parachute systems after I became Dr. Maxime A. “Max” Faget’s technical assistant.\\n\\n John Kiker and I both went to Turin, Italy, to give a presentation to AGARD [Advisory Group for Aeronautical Research and Development], which was a subcommittee to NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization]. I gave the presentation on the subject. What it covered was the parachute systems on Mercury, Gemini, and what we were proposing for Apollo. What was interesting about this, Radioplane, which provided our parachutes, provided the life support systems and the parachutes for the Italian Air Force. Tom Beresford with Radioplane set it up for me to go down to talk to their people on Saturday in Rome, Italy.\\n\\n Kiker went back to Paris, France, and Friday I went on down to Rome. When I arrived at the hotel that night, there was a young Italian boy who introduced himself to me. He asked, “Could you stay over until Monday to give your presentation instead of tomorrow?” I said, “Yes, I’ll be glad to do that.” He said, “I will be your guide for this weekend.” I had my own personal guide. He took me around the five hills of Rome. I got to see Rome as probably few other people get to see it. I got to go in places like his private clubs and to some of Rome’s best restaurants. I was taking lots of pictures of churches and some very famous statues. Sometimes he would stop me and say, “No no, Mussolini!” I did not know the difference but he made it very clear that they did not think much of the statues that Mussolini had built.\\n\\n The following Monday I gave the presentation to them. At that time the communists were trying to take over the Italian government. The Italians were very cautious about discussing how they stood on anything like that. After that presentation, one of the executives took me to the airport. When we were walking from the terminal building out to the airplane and when there was no one around us, he turned to me and he said, “You all beat those Russians to the Moon.” That was a real thrill to find out how the Italians felt about the US and the strain they must have been under. That made the trip very much more worthwhile. That was very interesting and exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What classes did you teach at the University of Texas [Austin, Texas]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I talked to them about the parachutes and the Earth landing systems on the three manned spacecraft. My main thrust was to show them how we designed, developed, tested a system, and wrote the final reports. At that time, the three-parachute system for Apollo was still under development.\\n\\n Now let’s go back to some of the other questions that you asked me about what sort of materials or concepts I was looking at when designing the Space Station. I talked to you about the design concept of how we would put the Space Station up with the Saturn booster, and we could do it all in one launch. I didn’t really get into developing the materials for it.\\n\\n The materials had been pretty well established. I just helped to develop the concept of putting the Space Station up with the Saturn Booster and then the Shuttle. It was a 12-man Space Station that would orbit the earth for 10 years. That was the concept for the one which we could put up with the Saturn booster. The crew could stay up there for a long time.\\n\\n This was also done under Dr. Faget’s Advanced Planning Group headed up Rene [A.] Berglund, and I was the deputy project manager and head of E&D [Engineering and Development Directorate] technical support. I had the support of the subsystem managers from the divisions. Jack [C.] Heberlig was also his administrative assistant and took care of all the finances. Both of those Space Station designs were run under a contract with North American. I cannot remember if it was still North American and not Rockwell. North American has gone through several evolutions. Now it’s Boeing. At that time their study group was at Seal Beach, south of Los Angeles in California.\\n\\n Basically most of the evolution of the Space Station came from the Manned Spacecraft Center [MSC]. I knew that von Braun had proposed putting up a revolving Space Station in order to simulate artificial gravity on the crew. That would have been very complicated. We had proved in the Skylab missions that artificial gravity would not be required. On one study we had two study contractors: one at JSC, and one at MSFC [Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. When we were putting up the Space Station with the Saturn booster, we used the solar arrays and they used the nuclear energy for the power supplies. We showed that you should use solar arrays and not nuclear energy for Earth orbit. So here, once again, I think that we out-engineered Marshall.\\n\\n Putting the Space Station up with the Shuttle and its many individual modules made it much more complicated and a lot more expensive. We have had to fly so many more Shuttle missions, and then we have had to put them together in orbit like a Tinker Toy set. That has really complicated things. As you know, it has been a very slow a complicated process. It’s taken them many years to do it, whereas we could have done it so much quicker, less complicated, and cheaper with the Saturn booster.\\n\\n During the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, I was the lead engineer from Engineering on the docking module for the flight. Once again, we did this in the same study group with Rene Berglund, and I had the same position for that as I did for the Space Station. I was responsible for the engineering part of it. This was also a study contract with Rockwell. I have talked about designing the concept, what the problems were, and how we were going to dock. At that time we had two different docking mechanisms on the two spacecraft, so you had to have a specific docking mechanism: one for the Command Module and one for the Soyuz. Once we developed that concept, it went to Caldwell [C.] Johnson in Engineering, and he designed the actual docking mechanism hardware and module. That was the difference between doing the concept design and the design and building of the actual hardware. Glynn [S.] Lunney was made the program manager, and he ran the program between the U.S. and Russia.\\n\\n The KGB was the organization that was the sleuths for the Russians. I don’t know if you’ve heard the story or not, but it’s very interesting. Stop me if have. Caldwell Johnson and Dr. Robert R. “Bob” Gilruth made a trip to Russia with a model of our proposed docking system. Caldwell and Dr. Gilruth were going to show this model to the Russian engineers the next day. Dr. Gilruth had a suitcase that he never locked because he didn’t have a key for it. They went out for dinner, and the KGB came in and took that model apart; they couldn’t get it back together. The KBG also locked Dr. Gilruth’s suitcase, so he had to break it open.\\n\\n At that time, the Russians would always have at least three people in a group, which included a KGB agent, so the group would not know who the KGB agent was and who the actual engineers were because they all acted like they were engineers. I think that was an interesting story about some of the problems they had working with the Russians. I’m sure Glynn Lunney and some of the others have told you a lot better stories than that, but that was one that Caldwell and Dr. Gilruth both told me.\\n\\n I will try to tell you some of the things that I know about the universal docking mechanism. When Dr. Faget started designing the Shuttle, he asked for a design concept using the Apollo spacecraft to fill the gap between the end of the Apollo Program and the first Shuttle flight, which Dr. Faget assigned to Rene Berglund’s Advanced Study Group. We came up with a plan to put the Apollo spacecraft into a more northerly Earth orbit. We planned to map the whole Earth in 24 hours using some of the new and most advanced classified photography equipment. Some of it was from the Air Force. At that time, the Air Force had not been able to map the United States with their airplanes. We got the approval from Dr. Faget and Dr. Gilruth to show the results of the study to NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC], which turned it down.\\n\\n They said that they wanted a plan to dock the Apollo spacecraft with the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. I think that George [M.] Low was at the NASA Headquarters at that time. I do not know this for certain, but I think he had a lot to do with this decision. Dr. Faget gave this task to Rene’s study group so we ended up developing the concept for docking the Apollo spacecraft with the Russian Soyuz.\\n\\n I didn’t have anything to do with working with the Russians. I did not travel to Russia. I probably could have gotten involved with them if I had gotten on Glynn Lunney’s team, but I wanted to stay with Max. I felt like I could learn more in one day working with Max than I could working a long time with some other people. He was so brilliant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a nice compliment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Once again I was off doing something else at that time of the flight, but I was very elated, because Donald K. ���Deke” Slayton finally got to fly on that flight. He was also a good friend of mine. The flight opened up a new era for us in spaceflight. We would now work with other countries around the world. I have talked to some engineers, and I was told that we almost lost that flight. Because of the good support by our engineers, they were able to save the flight. I had better not go into that because other people that you’ve probably talked to, or should talk to, have more information on that.\\n\\n After working on the docking module concept for the Russians, I was put in charge of the Advanced Technology Programs for the directorate. After all of the work that we had done in studies such as the Space Station, I was in a position to know what kind of technologies we should try to develop for the future space programs. That was a pretty good fit, and that was what I did for the last six years I was at NASA. Mel [Melvin] Savage at NASA Headquarters was responsible for funding the RTOPs [Research Technology Operation Procedure]. I was responsible for getting the requests from the divisions, and I would request the money from NASA Headquarters to conduct advanced research. These studies would be funded out of NASA Headquarters on contracts called RTOPs. The divisions would assign study managers who were responsible for each of the study contracts.\\n\\n One of the interesting technology programs we had at that time was to build a Beam Builder System where you would take up strips of metal in the Shuttle and then you could form them into beams that you wanted. That is you could take a flat piece of metal, and you could form it, bend it 90 degrees, or whatever form you needed. It would have been much cheaper transporting flat sheets of metal and then forming them in space. It would have saved a lot of space in the Shuttle bay. I thought it was a very good solution to putting something up where you could build it in space. Dr. [Christopher C.] Kraft was also very interested in this project. I do not know what happened to the project after I left. I know that it was never used.\\n\\n Another one was that we were trying to develop the technologies for more efficient solar array panels. We had developed chips for the solar array panels that had an efficiency of about 10 percent. We had a technology program going where we were trying to increase the efficiency of those panels to 18 percent. I do not know what the efficiency is of our present day solar arrays. One of the problems was that because of the low efficiency of the solar arrays at that time, it was not feasible cost wise. At that time we were also trying to use solar arrays to get energy from outer space and beam it by microwaves down to hydrogen fuel cells on the Earth. That was going to be one of the things where we could really help the Earth. I read somewhere lately that a company was developing a chip that would have an efficiency of around 40 percent so that should make it more economically feasible with our high gas prices. That technology is being carried out today. That was a very interesting project.\\n\\n Another one was that we had several studies on computers and its software. At that time they were trying to get industry to come up with common nomenclature in the software. When we would let one contract on software, the study manager would convince us that it would solve all of his problems. After that was completed he would come back with a new request to improve that study. At the time, I did not know very much about computers or its software. What I found out was how fast computers and its software were changing. Dr. Kraft was quoted as saying that the space program accelerated computers by 20 years. Those are examples of some of the ones that were very interesting.\\n\\n In reviewing my records I can give you a more comprehensive record of the programs that the directorate did. Here are some examples.\\n\\n MSC had built a crew habitability module. Crew Systems Division had an RTOP for studies on crew support systems. Unbeknownst to MSC, MSFC had gone to NASA Headquarters and convinced them to have this equipment sent straight from the contractor to MSFC to be put into their module. Dr. Faget gave me the job to get that decision reversed. I got with Ed [Robert E.] Smylie, the chief of Crew Systems Division. He, Frank [H.] Samonski, and some of his other engineers pulled together a test plan that showed that the hardware needed to be tested at MSC before being put in the MSFC module. It included studying electrolysis, O2 generation, solid polymers, molecular sieves, hydrogen polarizer, containment control, CO2 reduction, water reduction, and waste management. MSFC certainly did not have the capability to run those tests. I went to MSFC and convinced them of that. We then went together to Headquarters and got the decision reversed. After the completion of the test program, the system was finally sent to MSFC and put in their module.\\n\\n Some other studies included Propulsion and Power Division on antenna arrays, cryogenic cooling, and electromechanical vs. hydraulics systems; Structures and Mechanics Division on structure material processes and materials for the Shuttle. These are just some of the examples over six years.\\n\\n During this period of time there was one project called the Space Shuttle Engineering and Operations Support [SSEOS]. It was to pick a contractor for technical support to the Center. I was on the board that picked McDonnell Douglas for the job. It was my job to follow these contracts, monitor, and rate the contractor on their support for E&D. Chuck Jacobson from McDonnell Douglas was the company’s contract manager. They had an incentive contract. I kept giving then an excellent rating. Chuck was a great manager.\\n\\n I chose to retire in 1980 because I had gotten to the point, and a lot of other people had also gotten to the same point, where it wasn’t much fun anymore. We were being driven by Headquarters rather than Headquarters getting their ideas from the field Centers. The other reason was at that particular time Congress wasn’t giving any raises to the government employees. The interest rates were so high at that time that by retiring, with the COL [Cost of Living] raises, within a few years I’d be making more than I was making at NASA. I ran the figures on it, and sure enough it worked, so I retired. I told Max about it, and he showed Dr. Kraft what was happening. Both of them stayed on until after the first Shuttle flight then they both retired from NASA.\\n\\n Later on Congress finally started giving raises. Where we were working in the $50,000–$70,000 range, people are now making over $100,000 for the same grade level. I think that they are now getting paid much better. Some of the people that I knew stayed there for many, many more years, and they really made out. It would have taken me a few more years to get where they have gotten. Anyway, I’d had enough. I was tired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Time to retire." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Time to retire. [Photo below taken in 1980, the same year as retirement.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever work for any contractors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I never did. There was one time, when Rockwell wanted me to be a consultant for them. That was when they were getting ready to bid on the Space Station contract. It turned out that they didn’t get the contract on the study. McDonnell Douglas won it, so that job fell through. What they wanted me to do was be their interface with Engineering because they knew that I knew Engineering in all depths, backwards and forwards. I felt like I could have done that job with one hand tied behind me. That was as close as I got to working for a contractor.\\n\\n I’ve gotten involved in community things like being on the board of directors for the Citizens State Bank, on the board of directors and being president of the Dickinson Country Club, on the board of directors of the NASA Alumni League, and I am a member of the Space Center Rotary Club. I was in management and marketing for a while. Other than that, I haven’t gone to work for anybody, but I find that I am still very busy. In retirement, I have enjoyed hunting, fishing, bowling, dancing and playing golf." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like it. What do you consider your most challenging milestone in your career working with the space program? Also, what do you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s a hard one to answer, because everything we did, every accomplishment, and every milestone was so challenging. We were always doing things that had never been done before. We were always expanding the envelope. Putting man in space was so very, very interesting and challenging. Having been on the team that started the Mercury Project before it was Mercury and to be part of the development of the program and its hardware; having been a study manager to show that man could go to the Moon that became the Apollo Program; to be a part of a program where a man could leave Earth orbit and go to another “planet,” the Moon, was overwhelming; being a part of the development of the Apollo Program and its hardware; also to develop the concept of docking with the Russians, that was the start of a new era of international space programs.\\n\\n As I said when we did the Apollo contract studies, we had three study proposals with three different study contractors. Bob [Robert O.] Piland was the project manager for these study contracts. I was responsible for the Martin study. Bill [William] Petynia took care of the Convair study, and Bill Patterson was the study manager for the GE [General Electric] study. What was so unique about this contract was that generally when the Requests for Proposals came in, one of those three study groups would win the contract. In this particular case, North American who had also put in a bid, won the contract, which was unheard of. Of course that flipped out a lot of people. But they got it was because of their experience in having built the Bell X-1 for the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] and the Air Force. I know because I was sitting on the management evaluation committee.\\n\\n Besides that, Bill Petynia and I helped Bob Piland review and pull together all of the committee reports that went before the board. I thought that technically Martin had a much better proposal and because of some of the work that they had done on boosters. Martin also pointed out in their proposal that there would be a large cost in reliability and quality control, which it was. No other contractor had considered that. I do not think that this was taken seriously in the evaluations. At least that’s my interpretation of it. That being said, I think that it is an honest evaluation from an engineering standpoint. You have probably talked to the other people that have different interpretations on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One day while we were doing this, Bill Petynia turned to me and said, “John, do you remember how hard we thought the Mercury Project was going to be? We have no idea what’s ahead of us in the Apollo Program,” and we didn’t. So when I answer the question you posed, all of the different space programs were major milestones. All of them were significant accomplishments. I can just say, “Hey, being in the space program was a significant accomplishment!” I don’t know how to answer it better than that. I think that answers all of your questions. Do you have anything else you want to add to this morning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I have one more question that I like to ask people. What impact do you think that the Manned Spacecraft Center had on the area? You’ve been here since the establishment of the Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, where we built the Space Center, it was in a cow pasture, as shown by this photo:\\n\\n We have had a number of cities built around it and some big cities. Clear Lake could have been a city in itself, and of course Nassau Bay became a city. NASA Road 1 [NASA Parkway] was just a two-lane highway going from Webster to Seabrook. On [Texas State Highway] 146, there was a draw bridge over Clear Lake from Seabrook to Kemah that held up traffic when it was opened for boats to pass under it. This has been replaced by a very nice tall bridge. There was no other bridge across Clear Lake between Highway 146 and Texas State Highway 3 until a bridge was built on Egret Bay Boulevard on Texas State Highway 270. These two bridges helped to open up the other side of Clear Lake for the future development of Kemah and League City. Much of this development was made because of the needs for homes and additional office space for the space program.\\n\\n Cities after cities have been built up. Of course League City, Seabrook, and Kemah were already here, and they have been expanded into much larger cities. Today, down toward Galveston, they are building homes from the west side of Interstate-45, all the way to Galveston Bay, nothing but homes and shopping centers. All of this used to be open land, raising cattle, dairy and chicken farms, agriculture and things like that. So today that is helping to make it one big city from Houston all the way to Galveston. The expansion has been absolutely tremendous.\\n\\n This is another interesting story. I was on the board of directors for the Citizens State Bank under Walter Hall, and I told you about him and his five State Banks. He was known as Mr. Democrat in Texas. He took credit for having gotten Lyndon [B.] Johnson into Congress and a few things like that. He knew Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, very well. He and his wife had breakfast with them in their bedroom in the White House. That’s how close they were.\\n\\n When the word got out that NASA was going to build a facility here in Texas, they had just had the big hurricane Carla. Walter Hall told me this story. He called Lyndon Johnson and told him that the place was devastated; Johnson asked him, “What should I do?” He replied, “You get off your ass and come down here and take a look.” So Lyndon Johnson came down. They had some of his staff, the dignitaries in this area, and the press. This required twelve helicopters to accommodate all of these people for the flyover. Walter noted that there were thirteen helicopters. Walter Hall asked the man in charge why he had thirteen helicopters when he only needed twelve. He replied, “In case one of the helicopters goes out. With Lyndon Johnson, I had better have another helicopter ready to fly.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Smart idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Lyndon Johnson came down, and he looked at the devastation from the hurricane. That got a lot of action. When this area was devastated by the Hurricane, the people were also devastated. It is my understanding that when it was announced that the Space Center would be built in the Clear Lake area, the people were elated. It seemed to have helped build up their spirits very much.\\n\\n It was a real good move for us. For those of us who moved into Dickinson, Walter Hall was one of the first men that greeted us with open arms. We still had a home in Virginia that we had to sell and I didn’t know how I was going to meet my financial obligations. I walked into his bank, and Walter gave me the money that I needed to buy my lot. I said, “You don’t know me from Adam. I haven’t even sold my home in Virginia yet.” Walter Hall said, “Don’t worry about it.” So I was able to buy my lot so that I could start building my home. When my wife was able to sell our home in Virginia in the middle of the summer, we were able to move straight into our new home. Walter made it possible for us to do the things we had to do for our families that helped us so much. He and Dr. Gilruth became very good friends. Walter was able to get a lot of things done in the area for NASA, which he did. Anyway I’m getting a little off on a tangent here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s an interesting local story though. We like those. What was it like having a spouse work at MSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in a way it was difficult. We had to get babysitters and had to provide transportation for them every morning and evening. Some babysitters were very good, and some were not so good. Our children had scars from one babysitter. We finally let her go. It made it hard on the family with both of us working, but somehow we survived for many years. It wasn’t easy, but she accomplished an awful lot. She is now one of the top authorities in the world on heat transfer. She has been recognized by Randolph Macon Women’s College [Lynchburg, Virginia] for having made major contributions to the world, not just in the United States. She has really accomplished a lot. She’s a very smart lady, but it wasn’t easy on the family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else you think that we might have overlooked that you wanted to talk about today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In 1980, I retired from NASA before the first Space Shuttle flight in 1981. Dr. Faget and Dr. Chris Kraft stayed on until after the first Shuttle flight. I had 33 years in government service, including the Army Air Corps/Air Force, the NACA, and NASA. My whole career was as a government employee. The Shuttle uses the ring-sail drogue parachute for landing today that we developed back on the Mercury Project. We have used the ring-sail parachute design on all of our spacecraft so that is quite comforting, to think that I was involved in helping to develop something that has stood up that long. Here’s an image of the Shuttle using that parachute [below]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a great accomplishment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then in summary, I’ve got a slide on my computer if you want to go look at it. It is an artist’s drawing that shows from the days of the horse and wagon on the farm, to the open cockpit airplanes, to the space program, and going to the Moon:\\n\\n I love that slide. It is one that I can relate to. It represents the many changes, things that I’ve seen and participated in during my lifetime. I’ve been very lucky and blessed. I’ve gone from the days of the Depression behind horses and mules on the farm, to flying open cockpit airplanes, to encountering the first operational jet aircraft in combat, seeing the V-1 guided missile, and witnessing the launching of the V-II rockets from Germany on their way to bomb England on missions over Germany, to flying supersonic jet airplanes.\\n\\n I have participated in the design and development of supersonic jet and rocket aircraft, to putting a man in space and sending him to the Moon. I have worked with my WWII adversaries on the space program. I helped develop the concept to join with our Cold War adversaries, the Russians, in space. In the meantime, the Hubble [Space] Telescope has found new planets, galaxies, and solar systems. Unmanned spacecraft have landed on Mars and gone to other planets: Mercury, Jupiter, the Sun, and beyond. We have opened up the way for interplanetary space travel. We helped to write the books on aviation and space travel. I can’t imagine anyone having a more exciting career than I and many others who have had the experiences of working on the space program.\\n\\n I have a couple of questions for you. Is this a great country or what? We now ask the question, “What is our true place in the universe?” Think about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those are good questions." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00845", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/KlumppAR/klumppar.htm", + "original_file_name": "KlumppAR_5-9-18.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/KlumppAR/KlumppAR_5-9-18.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "location_date": "Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – 9 May 2018" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Allan R. Klumpp" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is May 9, 2018. This interview with Allan Klumpp is being conducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. I want to thank you again for allowing us to come to your home and talk to you today.\\n\\n I want to begin by talking about your background and your education, and how you first became interested in the space program. Talk about your interests early on in your education and how that led you into working at [NASA] JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I decided when I was five years old, from what my mother told me and allowed me to do, that there were two things that I was definitely going to do. One was I’m going to have one wife. And I’m going to be an engineer, because we lived right next to the flood control project in Los Angeles [California], and I could see the people working down there to construct things to avoid further major floods in Los Angeles.\\n\\n We lived in a town called La Cañada. I could see what they were doing, and Lyle Robinson [phonetic], across the street from me, and I were thinking about what we could do to make our own little flood control project on our houses’ land. We got my mother to actually buy us some concrete, so we did make our own little flood control channel there. That’s when I decided I wanted to be an engineer, to do things that were really interesting and useful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you decide to go to college?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t really. I didn’t decide where I wanted to go to college for quite a long time after that, because we changed—my mother had no idea what she wanted to do in life. We kept moving around the country, and I changed schools 17 times before I graduated from high school.\\n\\n I really lost confidence in the Oklahoma City [Oklahoma] schools because a woman took my IQ [intelligence quotient], and then she was in the back room for quite some time evaluating what it was. She came out, and she was all excited, and she said, “You just got the highest IQ we’ve ever measured.” Which I don’t think is really right, because I’ve known a lot of very smart people, and a lot of people who do more contributing to my ideas than I do to theirs. I didn’t really believe that. I just lost confidence in the Oklahoma City schools, because if I was the smartest one there’s something wrong there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You impressed them, anyway. You eventually went to MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I finally did eventually go to MIT." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After you graduated from MIT you went to Douglas Aircraft [Company] control systems?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s right, I did. I was looking for somewhere that I could go to school where I wouldn’t be drafted and could contribute, and that’s why I went to Douglas Aircraft Company, primarily because of the drafting. I had known what had happened in the Korean War and I wanted no part of wars if I could avoid it, so that was one way of doing something useful without getting drafted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It looks like you stayed there a couple years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then you went to MIT for graduate work at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, I did, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have an idea what you wanted to do and where you wanted to go after that graduate work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was always thinking that I wanted to go where the action was. That’s why I got back into going to MIT." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The action at that point was the space program. Did you feel like that was going to be where the action was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. So I was extremely lucky that I had gotten into that, but lucky mostly that not one of the people that I ever worked with ever caused a mission failure. I worked for 44 years in missions to the Moon, and missions to Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and robotic missions in the group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They were all robotic missions, no human missions. Not one of the missions that I worked on failed. I can’t claim credit for that, because if anybody had failed on a mission that I had been working on, it would have failed. Since nobody failed, not one of the missions I worked on failed, which is really remarkable when you consider how many missions actually did fail." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s true. Sputnik [Russian satellite] happened in 1957. Were you still at Douglas, or were you at MIT when that happened? Do you remember where you were?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I was back at MIT." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember the reaction at that time at MIT? You said you wanted to go where the action was. Do you remember thinking “That’s it, that’s what I want to do”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I remember that I had to have a secret clearance. I did work for a laboratory where they were doing some military work, even at MIT. That’s when I found out, when I had to have secret clearance, that my name on the birth certificate was different than what my mother had told me my name was, so I had to straighten that out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting. Right around that time of Sputnik, you were at MIT, and then you went to JPL, to the analytical design group, in 1959." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, I did. That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What made you decide to take a job at JPL?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because Dick Morris [phonetic] from JPL had interviewed me and offered me a job, which looked like a very good job, and did not involve making weapon systems. I did not want to contribute to weapon systems, considering what had happened during Vietnam [War]. During Vietnam the newspapers were full of headlines which said that there were 30,000 Vietcong killed yesterday in Vietnam. How did they know? These were killed mostly—the strafing from airplanes. I decided right then and there that I was never going to contribute to a weapon system program. I knew darn good and well that they had no idea how many of the 30,000 were Vietcong and how many were on the other side. Civilians on the other side. But they just quoted these wildly incorrect data as if it was all true, and I knew damn well it wasn’t true at all. I decided at that time I was never going to contribute to another weapon system program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a good decision. Talk about when you first went to JPL. Do you remember some of the projects you were working on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working on the project [Mariner 2] for flying past Venus and taking pictures of Venus by the spacecraft that went by them, and I designed the control system for scanning Venus when it went by. It turned out that that scan did get pictures of Venus, so that worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you working on the Ranger Program also?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was really the first unmanned spacecraft ever sent to photograph the Moon. At that time period that was quite an accomplishment. They were sending images back to Earth from that. Do you remember seeing images? What did you think when you saw those images?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t really remember, but you should know that there was an earlier mission to land a spacecraft on [the Moon]. It was called the Surveyor spacecraft. It actually landed on the Moon, with a soft landing. The reason for that program was to make sure that the dust from the Moon did not just all blow away from the engine, and that the spacecraft could land successfully. Because if it couldn’t land successfully, you couldn’t have landed the Apollo missions on the Moon. Everything did work right with that mission. I contributed a little bit to that mission, but not very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In 1960 you actually went to [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] and worked with Don [Donald C.] Cheatham and Bob [Robert G.] Chilton in the Space Task Group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I sure do remember that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The proposal evaluation team. Can you talk about that team and what you were looking at at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was reading the industry proposals for what was going to happen in missions to the Moon. There were something like 50 different industry proposals, something like that. There were many dozens of ones that we examined and evaluated as to how good they were. But it was mostly Chilton and Cheatham who did the evaluation, and the rest of us just summarized what we got out of the proposals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get picked to go on that team?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because the person who’d hired me at JPL, he was asked to go. He didn’t want to interrupt his family life and go there, and I agreed to do that for a short time because I thought it was where the action was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember some of the proposals? What was the process? Did they just come in and give their proposal over a period of time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they were all written, and we just had to read the proposals and evaluate them. I don’t remember that the evaluation was too useful, but it was mostly just summarizing what was in the proposals. That’s what we really did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was NASA thinking of using industry more than what they ended up using them as partners? At that point were they just looking for ideas from everywhere, just to figure out what they were going to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think the latter. They were really just looking for ideas from anywhere about what could be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was in 1960. But the President [John F. “Jack” Kennedy] announced in May of ’61 that he wanted Congress to divert funds to get a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. That was quite an amazing announcement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know a lot of people, it took them by surprise that that was going to happen. What were your thoughts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was amazing that we had made a commitment to do that. Right after that happened, I was asked to serve as part of the [Systems Support] Group at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC]. The JPL had a team there that was doing that work there, and I became part of that team.\\n\\n I was very interested in, primarily concerned about, the reliability of flying to the Moon and back. I did an analysis when I was at NASA Headquarters, based on the known reliability of the ballistic missile program, to compute—there were three different ways of going to the Moon.\\n\\n There was direct flight to the Moon, which was the most expensive, but the safest. There was an intermediate mission, which was never really considered very long, which was Earth-orbit rendezvous. Then there was lunar orbit rendezvous, which was easily the most dangerous. The ballistic missile analysis that I did, based on our ballistic missile reliability, was if we choose the lunar orbit rendezvous, there was only a 10 percent chance of any mission getting all the way to the surface of the Moon and back to Earth, considering how many operations had to be done at the Moon.\\n\\n It was just an enormous difference. There was about 1 chance in 10 based on the calculations that any one mission would get there to the Moon and all the way back to the Earth. But that was the cheapest way to do it, and NASA settled for the cheapest, even though I voted against it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did anyone else vote with you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember whether anybody else did or not, but that was what was chosen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember how many people were on that team? Or about how many different people? Was it a large group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "About 10 or 12 of us who were working on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Joe [Joseph F.] Shea, was leading it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, Joe Shea was very prominent in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading in one of the books—I don’t know if you remember this instance, but at Headquarters you saw a presentation. There were two slide projectors at once, and you were talking about how impressed you were at the technology at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was impressed primarily by how little it was possible—the percentage of what you could remember by having two people with two projectors at once, and you’re listening to two people talk at once. You have to look at two different screens and follow two different lines of thought at once, and that was impossible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe not the best way to get their point across. That’s interesting just because the way technology has changed. When you go back and look at that time period, when you were deciding something really important, and it had people’s lives in the balance. Like you said, it was the least safe as far as you were concerned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was the least safe, yes, it was the least safe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As a group, did everyone feel that you could get past that? You said there was a 10 percent chance that it would be safe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For any one mission there was only a 10 percent chance that you’d get all the way to the surface of the Moon and back to Earth, on any one mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But they felt that that was okay? That percentage was worth trying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They thought that they could improve the safety of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were confident that that could be improved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It turned out that that was correct. I think that the big thing that happened during the interim was that digital computers got to be far more reliable and far more capable than they were at the time that I did those calculations. I think the digital computer industry came through with big margins.\\n\\n In fact, the first computer we had doing all of our work for us at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, commonly known as MIT/IL, was a Honeywell [Inc. H-]1800 computer. My wife and I lived next door to a person who worked for Honeywell. I had put in, in my simulation for the descent guidance checking, on the correctness of the things that were computed by the Honeywell 1800 computer. They were getting wrong answers all the time. Any time that you saw lightning out the window of the lab [laboratory], this Honeywell 1800 computer was likely to stop. With my simulations at least, because I was checking the correctness of their data, it was failing tests all the time.\\n\\n But the person that lived next to us worked for Honeywell, and I asked him, “What about the safety of your computers, the reliability of your computers? They’re making mistakes all the time.”\\n\\n He said, “Tell me about it. Honeywell is in the process of paying off a farmer who raises hundreds of chickens in the Midwest, because they were using our computer to compute the optimum diet for the chickens and he wound up with 5,000 dwarf chickens.” So the Honeywell was soon moved off and replaced by an IBM 360 [Model] 75 which was self-checking, and that was the end of my program finding errors. Never again did my program stop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you went back to the Instrumentation Lab at MIT in 1963. What made you decide to go back there when you were working for NASA before that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Primarily I liked the challenge of being involved in a manned program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had it already been decided that they would be working on the software at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it had been decided. That’s why I went back there. I never returned from NASA Headquarters to JPL, I just applied to the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and was hired there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about some of those early days and couple years at Instrumentation Lab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and I’m prepared to. I had already concluded that one of the things I wanted to talk about was women’s role in that, because we had something like 300 engineers, all men, who were doing all the work on that. I thought that that was not right. Then somehow a woman named Margaret [H.] Hamilton was hired. She was brilliant, and within a year she was my boss’s boss, Margaret Hamilton. If you go to Central Square, Cambridge today and just look at the organizations that are situated in Central Square today you’ll find that there’s a Hamilton [Technologies, Inc.] computer engineering company there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that’s her." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that’s her. The only fault I find with that is that she’s done the reverse. All the people that work there are women." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Kind of giving a leg up to the female side?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Meanwhile, even though when I graduated from MIT they had only 50 women at MIT, now it’s about half-and-half. I think that women have advanced properly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, at least there’s a lot more now than there used to be. That’s very true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that in most colleges there is about half-and-half nowadays, and that’s the way it should be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When Margaret Hamilton came to the Instrumentation Lab, what was the reaction of people you worked with? Were there men that said, “No, I don’t want to work with a woman”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember that there were. In general, people were trying to be fair about things at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory. Not only about the relationship there, but also about the difference between Christian and Jewish religions. The holiday season was called the yule season, so it wasn’t either Christian or Jewish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it was very forward thinking at the time, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was, yes. I like that way of thinking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seems like it was a good place to work at that point in time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was, yes. There wasn’t any doubt about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were there at the beginning, I was reading that you worked on a pen-and-ink drawing of the simulations of what the views of the lunar surface would look like outside of the LM [lunar module] cockpit for the astronauts to train." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, I did. That’s what I was assigned to do actually. I allowed the people who used the simulator to specify what craters were on the Moon in the vicinity of the landing spot and what they looked like. I would draw pictures of what the craters would look like as you came down into a proposed landing site, where you could specify. I actually made a movie of it. It was very coarse in time, where I every two seconds during the descent drew a picture of what the craters would look like at that point. That was a pretty crude movie, but it seemed to catch the attention of an awful lot of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that allow you to be assigned to other projects because of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was just part of what I was doing on the lunar descent. You might be interested in Don [Donald] Eyles. You’ve heard of Don Eyles and his book [Sunburst and Luminary: An Apollo Memoir]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. I was reading some excerpts from things that he had written, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That is an excellent book. I’m still in the process of reading it actually because I’ve still been working on this project, but it’s an excellent book. But Don Eyles, you might want to know—are you interested in things that are primarily amusing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We always like good stories, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Don Eyles at one point—he was a member of my team. So he was translating everything that I did in a higher order language. He was translating that to the language of the Apollo guidance computer. At one point he and I had a difference of opinion about something that I thought should be in his translation that wasn’t there.\\n\\n I asked him to put it there, and we had a back-and-forth argument about it. He didn’t want to put it there, but eventually he did. But he put it in a box. The box surrounded the new code and had an explanation at the top of the box, “The code in this box was added at the demand of a Byzantine dodo bird.”\\n\\n In later years, he forgot he ever had that in there. It disappeared after not very long. It was there for a short time, but there was a Byzantine dodo bird in that box, referring to me. Byzantine means in the 15th century." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was pretty young when he was recruited, from what I read." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he was. He was very sure of himself. I’m sure you should be interested in what actually happened when he first started out. We had a simulator that was already being used by about 300 different people. He looked and started reading the code in the simulator and he noticed that there was a mistake in one place. The simulator was run by just boxes of [punch] cards. There’s about 2,000 cards in a box this long [demonstrates], and several boxes of cards involved in the total simulator, which had been developed by hundreds of people.\\n\\n He found this error, and he was so sure of himself—because he was a member of the Mensa society and still is, which is a group of people whose intelligence is way above average. He was so sure of himself that when he found the errors, he was sure that he could easily fix that in no time, and he threw away the cards. So the cards were lost. The first attempt to fix it didn’t work, the second attempt to fix it didn’t work.\\n\\n It took him a week to get it going, and finally George [W.] Cherry, who was his supervisor—he was also the person that had assigned me to work on the Apollo Lunar-Descent Guidance—came to me and asked me, “We’ve lost 300 man-weeks of time because of Don Eyles’s screwup.” He said, “I think we should fire him.”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t think so. He works so well, he’ll make it up.” George finally decided not to fire him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did he finish it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he sure did, yes. Not only that, eventually in Apollo 14, when the abort switch failed, Don Eyles figured out a procedure that the astronauts could follow so that the failure of the abort switch—which was failing over and over and over again—would not prevent them from landing. That saved Apollo 14.\\n\\n So Don Eyles did the work that caused Mayor Kevin [H.] White of Boston [Massachusetts] to award an honorary prize to the entire lab. He specified that anybody that was on the lab at the time that that was done would share in that award of good work. He wasn’t just singling out Don Eyles for doing it.\\n\\n I happened to have arrived at the lab quite a bit early the day of the Apollo 14. The descent wasn’t normally going to be started until something like 10:00 p.m., and since I had arrived at the lab at about 5:00 in the morning to do other things and make sure of something else that I didn’t think would be a problem—and it turned out it wasn’t a problem, I actually figured that out during that day.\\n\\n But by the time around 9:00 that night, I was getting pretty tired. So I went to the only place that you could actually lie down and get some sleep about 7:00 p.m. or something that day, after having been there for 14 hours. I went to sleep in the hallway that led to the ladies’ room. When I was finally awakened and told what had happened, Don Eyles had already fixed it, and the landing had already taken place.\\n\\n So I got an award from Mayor Kevin White for being asleep in the ladies’ room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For taking a nap. That’s pretty funny. If he hadn’t figured that out, they wouldn’t have been able to actually land." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They wouldn’t have been able to land, because the switch—the communication went like this. “Houston, the abort switch is on again.” “Well, turn it off.” After that happened for quite a few times, it became clear that it was failing. It took 17 minutes to go down. It was failing once every minute or two, so the probability of landing was very close to zero. If he hadn’t figured out a procedure that they could follow—so Don Eyles actually saved Apollo 14. But I claim I saved Apollo 14 indirectly by having Don Eyles still there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s right, you kept him from being fired, so you deserve that award too. I was reading that what he did would normally take a week or so to figure out, and he did it in such a short period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He had the mental strength to do something that very few people did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s pretty impressive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. No doubt about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about when you were with the Instrumentation Lab and you were working on that descent guidance and the LM steering systems. At NASA, at Johnson [Space Center, JSC], there was the Mission Planning and Analysis Division." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "MPAD, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "MPAD, they were working on that. Talk about the relationship between MPAD and the IL where you were, and how that relationship worked. Did you work with anyone at JSC or at NASA at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did, yes, I worked with Jim [James H.] Alphin primarily at JSC. I also worked with other people at JSC too, one of whom had come up with a scheme for the descent guidance which would improve the performance in terms of how much fuel it would take to do the landings. One of the JSC people did come up with an improvement to that and I supported him on the improvement.\\n\\n But the person who had to make the decision on it, Bill [Howard Wilson] Tindall [Jr.]. You’ve probably heard of him. He’s not living anymore, I understand. But he decided against the improvements that the JSC fellow had made, because it didn’t make enough difference. It reduced the fuel consumption but not by enough to really matter, and Tindall decided that it wasn’t worth changing everything around for such a small improvement.\\n\\n I must say I think that Tindall was the best manager I ever worked with. He was just absolutely right on everything that he decided should go. I thought he was even right on turning down that reworking the descent guidance to the extent that would be necessary if you actually adopted that improvement. There was no doubt it was an improvement, but not enough to be worth the cost of overthrowing everything that was there already in order to make such a small improvement.\\n\\n I thought that Bill Tindall was the best manager I ever had worked with. There wasn’t one thing I ever saw him decide that I didn’t think was right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ve heard from a lot of people about him. That he was able to listen in a meeting to everybody’s information and ideas, and then take that information and condense it down into the right decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly. Yes, that is true. I think that he deserves to be remembered for the quality of his management, which was absolutely superb." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know he was famous at JSC for his “Tindallgrams” [memoranda]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get those, too?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They’re still being circulated actually. They’re still being circulated. People that go to the luncheons, those of us who did so much work on Apollo, are still speaking about Tindallgrams decades later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s an amazing legacy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it is. It’s an amazing legacy just to have worked with so many people, not one of whom ever failed to the point that we lost any missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading, and it was attributed to you, that you said, about Apollo, that the task was a daunting one because there was no possibility you could ever try again. I thought that was interesting. When you first started working on this, you were very aware that it had to work. The software had to work. Sometimes when we talk to people they’re so focused on what they’re doing, the technical part of it, the realization of what they were really working on and what it meant to the entire nation—they didn’t really see that until after it was over. But it sounds like you were aware that it was extremely important when you were working on it. Did you have any idea about the way the world would react once you helped accomplish that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t have any idea about how it would react, but I got a definite impression about the difference between our program and the Russians’ program. Because several months before the landing in 1969, there was a worldwide meeting in Vienna, Austria, in which the Russians and the U.S. were each going to describe all the things that we worked out. We had no restriction. We could tell the Russians anything at that point, so we were given full authority to tell them everything.\\n\\n There were Russians there, and my talk to them on the descent guidance came before their response to it. The Russians were in the audience, and asking me every once in a while questions about “How does this work?” And I explained to them, and they seemed to understand everything.\\n\\n Then when it came to their turn, I started asking them the same kinds of questions about the same things. “Well, how does yours work on this?” They always said, “I can’t understand the question.” Even though they could understand my answers, they couldn’t understand my questions using the same words." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They weren’t going to share their information as freely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They weren’t going to share their information at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting that you got to go to that meeting though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I thought it was, too. But years later there was another meeting between the various nations in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia [now Croatia], which is right on the coast. It was going to be another meeting where the Russians and we were going to interchange our ideas. But the Russians were not intermixing, even though there were people from Germany and so forth. They were not intermixing with any of the rest of us. They went everywhere on their own bus.\\n\\n Then finally, at the end of that meeting in Dubrovnik, there was a time we were going to have a picnic on an island that was off the coast by five miles or something. We were all going to be together on the motorboat that was going to take us all out to that island so we could enjoy one another socially.\\n\\n Nobody had seen any of the Russians before we all got on that boat together. I asked one of the Russians, “Why is it that you’re not intermixing with the rest of us much, but you’re going only on your own bus all the time?”\\n\\n The guy who I asked that question said, “Well, when we came here to Dubrovnik they gave us only chewing gum money, and if we pooled all of our money it would not be enough to buy an aircraft ticket anywhere else.” So we got the picture that they were still being unduly controlled by their government. You may remember [Mikhail S.] Gorbachev from Russia, who was the most humane of the Russian leaders, I thought. In fact, he became so well known in the United States that people said that if he were to run for president here, he’d probably win." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In those early days of Apollo, one of the things you worked on was programming flights on a simulator, because the crew wanted to land themselves. They were wanting to do things more manually. You programmed manual flights into the simulator, and every time you did that with the crew controlling it they crashed. So you knew at that time that the landing was going to have to be a combination of that crew ability, or what they wanted to do, but you had to have that computer support." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had programmed that the crew could specify where they were landing by manipulating a stick, like the joystick on an airplane. Each time you moved the stick forward or aft it would respecify where the landing site was, either forward or aft, according to the direction you moved it. Or left and right, it would do the same thing left and right. That was very soon adopted as being the way that it was going to work.\\n\\n The only thing that I did differently than the way that it actually did work in flight was that I had it so that it would move the landing site, where it was located, left or right by about the same amount in terms of the length. The astronauts decided that they would rather have it move by the same angle, whether it was forward or aft or whatever. So that’s what actually flew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the landing point designator?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "LPD, yes, that’s right. That’s the way that worked. That was my idea. Except for changing the constants involved, it worked the way that it was supposed to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That gave the commander, as they were landing, the ability to manually make those last-minute changes in case the computer had designated a place that wasn’t necessarily a good place to land." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, for instance on a pile of rocks or something like that. You could always change where the landing site was by moving this control stick. It turned out that I wasn’t the only one who thought of that. There was another person who did think of that some years earlier. Phil [Philip G.] Felleman had thought of that earlier. I don’t know whether you know of Phil Felleman or not. He’s no longer here, he died quite a few years ago. But he said, “We had that running years ago.” I have no way of verifying or denying it, so I will just allow that to stand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was a little different though. With other spaceflight that came before Apollo, they didn’t give that much control to the astronauts. So this was a little different. It was a hybrid between allowing the computer to do it, and then letting them control what they were going to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It definitely came in handy on Apollo 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about some of the work leading up to Apollo 11. You mentioned sleeping on the couch during Apollo 14, but also working up until that first landing you were spending a lot of hours at the lab. What were your days like? How often did you get to come home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The days were long days. You know of another book by Hugh Blair-Smith [Left Brains for the Right Stuff: Computers, Space, and History]. Have you seen that book? Don Eyles wrote a book, but Hugh Blair-Smith also wrote a book.\\n\\n Hugh Blair-Smith was the most amazing help, and he was just helpful to everybody. How he managed to do it is just beyond me, because I was working in batches of software. I’d collect a whole lot of different thoughts, and gradually work out the thoughts. Before, it was necessary—with the way in which our computer system worked—to have spreadsheets with all of the work showing on the sheets. That’s what the computer actually operated with in the early days. There was no visual thing at all, it was all just on paper.\\n\\n We’d work on a large amount of software which would involve several sheets of paper being changed, and submit the entire paper, and that’s what would fly on the simulator. The next day we would get results back, sometime the next day. Because if you were working there till 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., or 11:00 or midnight—and I actually worked many days until midnight. In fact, when it came to putting that in, I oftentimes came to work one morning and didn’t come home until the next night. So it was a 36-hour, 40-hour day. The computers didn’t work so fast that you could immediately tell what was going on with your run.\\n\\n Hugh Blair-Smith, when I submitted my output to the computer, was oftentimes still there. Since he designed the computer language, he knew how to read those sheets. The next morning when I would come to work—and this happened dozens of times—I’d find his output on my desk the following morning with a note saying, “You made a mistake at this point and I corrected it and here’s the corrected output.” He was there much longer than I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s pretty amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is. The number of times that happened was dozens." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really. I guess it was good that he was finding the mistakes, that’s for sure. I imagine working long hours made it hard sometimes not to make mistakes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s true. In one particular case I took a taxi home at midnight, and the financial people at Draper Lab decided that they weren’t going to pay for taxis home, even though it was at midnight that I took a taxi home. The managers who had final responsibility even over the financial people said, “You will pay for the taxi.” So they did pay, but they had originally supplied me with a notice that they weren’t going to pay for taxis home at midnight, and they were overridden." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good, because I imagine you were a little too tired to drive at that point. Think they’d rather have you back safely the next day than worry about that.\\n\\n In 1967, I was reading that you were about midway into developing the guidance and navigation hardware and software. Your group received an unusual directive from NASA, and that was to make no attempt to avoid gimbal lock. It was a problem that you were worried about in the simulations, but they told you basically not to worry about it, and not to attempt to fix that, and to move forward. But I believe actually after you did what you were told, you went back and figured out how to fix it anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I had figured out a way to fix it. That was after Apollo 12 had flown. NASA decided that they weren’t going to use it for Apollo 13, because it hadn’t been sufficiently tested, since it had only been fixed shortly after Apollo 12 flew. They decided not to adopt it.\\n\\n But the commander of Apollo 13 [James A. Lovell, Jr.]—I knew him pretty well, and I knew he was training at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]. I called him one morning about 6:30 in the morning. I knew he got up awful early to be training. I called him at 6:30 in the morning, and I told him about what the differences would be depending upon whether it was flown or not.\\n\\n I didn’t hear what was going to happen during the telephone conversation because it was his bosses who had decided not to do that, not him really. But the morning that I called him at 6:30 in the morning, we had about a half-an-hour conversation. About 10:00 a.m. that day my boss came into my office and said to me, “Your political savoir faire has reached a new low,” because he had heard what had happened.\\n\\n Jim Lovell was able to persuade NASA to use the new program, and that’s what flew on Apollo 13. The new program did fly on Apollo 13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don’t we go ahead and talk about working up to Apollo 11? I was reading that part of what you did, there was a Guidance Systems Operations Plan, GSOP. Part of what you took part in was crew training. Were you training the astronauts on the guidance systems operations plan so that they would be familiar with it during the flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It was really amazing how that crew training went off, because the commander of Apollo 12 was by far the most capable of the commanders." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Pete [Charles] Conrad [Jr.]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pete Conrad, yes. He was absolutely amazing. He asked all of us who had written anything about what we had been doing—he asked to get copies of anything we had written, and he was absolutely unbelievable in terms of what he could understand.\\n\\n When we were doing the crew training—supposedly we were doing the crew training. When we were talking about various technical details, often after we had described one of the details of it, he would speak up and say, “Don’t you mean such and such?” and describe it. No matter who he was talking to, the answer was always, “You’re right, Pete, that’s the way it should be described.” He was amazing in his ability to understand things and make corrections if necessary. The rate at which he thought, the way that he got the answers right so fast that you just couldn’t believe that he could think that fast.\\n\\n After Apollo 12 had flown to the Moon and back I happened to be at Houston for something else. I forget what it was, but I was in one of the hangars in Houston and he walks in. Just being around somebody who had actually walked on the Moon was exciting to me. I said, “Pete, you’re not going to tell me you’ve actually walked on the Moon, are you?” His answer was, “No, it was a trick we did with mirrors.” Repeating what the public had been led by some people to believe, that there had never been an Apollo mission to the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He did have a good sense of humor from what we hear." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He did. He was a real joy to work with, at the level of Bill Tindall. Bill Tindall and Pete Conrad were two of a kind in terms of their intelligence and their ability to knock down the right answer that fast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were doing that training, was that in Houston? The crew training on the GSOP?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It took place in various places, I think both at the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and in Houston. But it hardly mattered where it took place, because as far as Conrad was concerned he was always on top of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were all the Apollo astronauts trained at the same time or was it by crew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were groups of astronauts. I don’t know whether it was all of them at the same time, but nobody ignored what Tindall or Conrad said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about for a minute that GSOP. That was a documentation of the software for the systems that they would be working with. It was large, from what I read. It was pretty wieldy and large. Documentation though is important. Can you talk about the need for accurate documentation?\\n\\n Plus you were very specialized in what you did. You were a computer programmer, software developer, engineer, and you were talking to pilots. Very smart pilots obviously, very intelligent and capable. But you were also teaching them things that wasn’t their specialty. Maybe talk about teaching them those programs and things that they would have to understand?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What happened with two of the candidates for becoming astronauts was that they asked me, and probably other people, to send them copies of what we had written. I did, and I suspect they probably got them from other people, too. Both of them have walked on the Moon now. They both made it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was quite an experience, getting to teach them the things that they would need to know to do that. Let’s talk about some of the programs that you were writing during that time. I noticed some of the names were interesting. The one on Apollo 5, I was reading the program’s name was SUNBURST, and then Apollo 9 it was SUNDANCE. And then Apollo 11, I think by that time the program had evolved and it became LUMINARY. Those were some of the program names, which I thought was interesting. Where did the names come from, do you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know. I do know what the version numbers were. LUMINARY 130 flew on Apollo 12, and was about to be repeated on Apollo 13 when I got authorization to release the one that corrected the errors from Apollo 11. So that was 131. If you want to think of it in terms of the number 13—which stupidly is considered to be a bad luck number—that’s 13 going and coming, and so LUMINARY 131 did fly on Apollo 13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As we know even today, computer programs are constantly being improved. As you were working through all these, all the way up to Apollo 11 these programs were being changed, evaluated, simulated, and everything was moving forward for Apollo 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had different revisions even as you went through the program itself. On Apollo 11, let’s talk about the launch. You got to go see the launch, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That is correct, yes. Anybody who had made a major contribution, NASA invited them to go to Florida to watch the liftoff of Apollo 11. That included my wife and me. None of our children did, but Sue and I both did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite a perk for all the hours you put in though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I did put in quite a bit few more hours than I was paid for, but to be able to participate in something as important as that was well worth it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about that experience of seeing the launch and how you felt seeing it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were in like the grandstand surrounding a football field, and we could all see and hear the launch take place. Seeing that was very exciting, and hearing it—it was making such an enormous amount of noise that it was practically ear-shattering to watch Apollo 11 take off for the Moon. That was really quite an experience. It was just like the bleachers of a football field. There must have been 100,000 people there or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The roadways, everybody was just pulled over and camping. The photos are amazing, when you look at the photos of the roads and everything around there. Quite an accomplishment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that we got there using an Avis rental car. It landed in Orlando, Florida, and we drove there. But I had already established a reputation at Avis, because several times actually earlier I had stopped at Orlando on my way to something that was going on at NASA. The first time I used Avis was an interesting experience, because the Avis rental car people never forgot me after that first trip that I used one of their cars.\\n\\n The reason why was that when I first got in the car and I had driven a few miles down the road, I noticed that the water temperature had gone up and it shouldn’t have gone up. I figured that the radiator must have been not filled. They must have given me a car that didn’t have the radiator full, and that’s the reason why it was going up. I had just come down from Boston, and I had in my bladder enough to finish filling the radiator, I thought. So I finished filling the radiator, parked next to the road." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s one way to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That didn’t quite fill the radiator, but then there was a crew that was working next to the road, right next to a stream. I parked there and got them to give me some muddy water. I filled it the rest of the way with the muddy water from the radiator. After that, every time when I rented an Avis car, they said, “Oh, you’re the guy who—”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite a reputation to have.\\n\\n One of the things your daughter mentioned, one of the stories you told them, was that there was some kind of a mix-up at one point. I don’t know when this took place, between measurements taken in metric versus imperial. Was that with Apollo or was that later on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was an unmanned mission to Mars [Mars Climate Orbiter]. I do remember quite well what happened, although I didn’t actually witness it. I remember it quickly made the rounds at JPL that there were a couple of guys that had a fistfight. Each one saying, “You caused this. You made this mistake and that mission crashed.” “No, you made it.” They actually had a fistfight I’m told. I didn’t watch it, but I have no reason to disbelieve it.\\n\\n But it turned out that neither of them did. That wasn’t a mission that I worked on, because not one of the missions I worked on ever failed. I hadn’t worked on that mission, but it turned out that I did share in the knowledge of what actually did happen. It was that in Colorado there was an aerospace company that JPL had hired to process the data that would relate how the attitude control—that’s the orientation in space—was affecting the trajectory of the rocket that was coasting from Earth to Mars. The data turned out to be wrong, and instead of entering at the right place at Mars, because the data was wrong it entered at the wrong place and the mission was lost. That’s what happened on that mission.\\n\\n What had happened was that the specification about the data that they gave us back from their analysis had to be in the metric system of units, and they didn’t pay any attention to that. Who knows why? Your guess is as good as mine. Nobody I think knows why they didn’t do that. But it was in the English system of units, and that makes it very wrong, and so that mission crashed. But fortunately I never had that happen on any mission that I worked on, and that’s just good luck. That’s all you can assign it to. I was just very lucky that never happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s go back to Apollo 11 then. Talk about when the LM actually landed on the Moon and that time, and some of the alarms that were going off. You and Don Eyles had been working for three years at that point to produce those programs to get that LM on the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know exactly what happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about that, and if you don’t mind, where you were, and how you were listening to the landing. Was that something that you heard real-time as it was happening?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. I happened to be in the room in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it was being broadcast. We kept hearing, “Another alarm.” What had happened was—and I learned that shortly thereafter, exactly what did happen.\\n\\n There was a fellow named Russ [Russell A.] Larson. Long before that I had shared an office with Russ Larson for a short period of time. He told me what happened at the 25th anniversary of Apollo 11. He told me that what had happened was that the commander of Apollo 11 and/or the person who was going to be the copilot—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On Apollo 11, it was Neil [A.] Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Armstrong and Aldrin, yes. One or the other had told him that. Russ Larson had been asked to make up the crew checklist, and one of them called him on the phone and said that we should start the abort guidance to run by turning on the switch for that before we actually begin the descent. Because if you do that and we have to abort, we don’t lose time getting the computer to change what it’s doing and return to where the command and service module—where in orbit we could reduce the time to rendezvous with the other vehicle. That would make an abort safer. So Russ Larson said that since he was being asked that by the astronauts, he just added that to the crew checklist to turn on the abort guidance well in advance.\\n\\n But then when it actually went to landing what had happened was that—the facts are that turning on the abort guidance, and running that along with the descent guidance at the same time, increased the load on the computer by 15 percent and there was only an 8 percent margin. There was only an 8 percent margin, but it increased the load on the computer by 15 percent. That’s the reason why there was all that series of alarms that came primarily during the most busy phase, which was as you approached the landing site.\\n\\n So that was causing a whole series of 1202 or whatever the number was. Those alarms were all being generated because of what Russ Larson did. That’s what he told me 25 years after it had happened, so I didn’t even know till that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe he also told you that he was afraid to talk?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. When he told me that, he said that what happened, what he did during that landing, was that he was there watching. It was set up so that you could watch on a single screen the actual trajectory and the one that had been programmed. He was watching that on the screen.\\n\\n I knew that Russ never knew—he didn’t know the difference between those. He didn’t understand how those landings worked well enough to know that it didn’t take very much. You could hardly even see the difference on a plot, between an actual trajectory and a trajectory that was going to go down under the surface and come back out after having—because simulators don’t know about the consequences of having a negative altitude above the surface.\\n\\n So he was watching that, and he thought that it looked like they were pretty close together. But I knew, had known for years, that they can look like it’s very close together—but you can fly under the surface and back out and get to the right place in the simulator, which isn’t affected by going under and back out of the surface. So I knew that he didn’t understand enough to have been doing that anyway.\\n\\n But he said that he eventually was called from where the people were actually controlling things at Houston, “Are we go or are we abort?”\\n\\n “I just gave them,” he said, “a thumbs-up signal.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, why didn’t you just tell them, ‘We’re go’?”\\n\\n He said, “I was too scared to speak.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Things did work out, but I imagine during the time when you were listening to it as they’re trying to land and those alarms were going off—I imagine that was pretty frightening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was most frightening because the slight changes of the trajectory were using more fuel than what people counted on. When they finally touched down they had only 30 seconds left of fuel in the tanks for a roughly 17-minute descent. Thirty seconds left. Nobody likes to drive a car that close. He finally did do the final descent himself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know it was pretty frightening for the people in Mission Control, so I imagine listening to it where you were at MIT it was pretty frightening there, too.\\n\\n One of the things I read in one of the articles that Don Eyles had written, that it really bothered him—because after the landing, everything was okay, but the media was portraying it as a computer error. It really bothered him that that was happening because it wasn’t a computer error, as you explained. Do you remember that, or being bothered by that, too?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never was bothered by obviously wrong reports. So I was not bothered by that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because you knew—well, you found out eventually—the true reason. But you went for 25 years without really knowing what the actual cause was. What did you think during that time before you talked to Russ Larson, in that 25-year period what did you think the problem was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Unexplained." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just weren’t sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Allan R. Klumpp", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t know what caused that. I didn’t know what actually caused it until Russ Larson told me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think what we’ll do is we’ll stop for today and then come back tomorrow. We’ll pick up on some of the other Apollo missions and go on from there on your career." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00389", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McArthurWS/mcarthurwsj.htm", + "original_file_name": "McArthurWS_2-17-17.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McArthurWS/McArthurWS_2-17-17.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "William S. McArthur", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 17 February 2017" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "William S. McArthur" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is February 17th, 2017. This interview with Bill McArthur is being conducted at Johnson Space Center for the JSC Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for having us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s a treat having you come in and visit for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s always a treat for us as well. Last time we talked just very briefly about your work with Emergency Escape and Rescue Working Group. You talked about the pad evacuation exercise you took part in. Were there other things that you were working on with that group, with Steve [Steven R.] Nagel perhaps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t work with Steve very much on that. I remember Bruce [E.] Melnick was one of the Cape Crusaders then, so I worked with him and he was on the Emergency Escape and Rescue Working Group. We did a number of things. We did this pad evacuation exercise and came up with, I think, some suggestions that enhanced the safety of the process. In the armored personnel carriers that were there, plus the bunker, we added more air bottles because initially the idea was the crew would evacuate [at the pad]. Once they ran out of oxygen in their backpacks they would then have to take their helmets off and put on rescue masks. I suggested a better idea would be to have additional bottles they could plug into and never have to remove their helmets. That way if there were any toxic gases in the area they wouldn’t be exposed to those.\\n\\n It was really kind of neat. There was a Shuttle cockpit mockup at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida], and they would move that. The KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] rescue team would move it to a remote location maybe just off the SLF [Shuttle Landing Facility], and we’d practice evacuating people out of that. That was a good exercise. As I mentioned I also got involved with the design and implementation of the suit facility there.\\n\\n The manager of the Astronaut Crew Quarters at the time was a lady named Nancy [L.] Gunter. You know how you sometimes just develop a special relationship with someone. Nancy had a reputation of being really stern and protective in this area, and she really didn’t welcome interference in her area of responsibility, which had a very well defined geographic boundary. I don’t know what I did, but for the entire time that I knew her she treated me like her favorite son. There was nothing that I needed help on in that area that she didn’t just move mountains to get it done. It made me look much more effective than I really was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great. We talked a little bit about the phone call that you got from Don [Donald R.] Puddy and how you took your daughters out of school and washing the car. What did you think about becoming a mission specialist after having been an Army aviator for so long? What were your thoughts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Those were the rules. I was qualified to be a mission specialist. At that time the division of duties, especially on orbit, were very clearly defined. We didn’t want the commander and the pilot to do spacewalks because of the risks. We’ve been fortunate. We’ve never had anyone really injured to any degree to speak of doing a spacewalk, but it is a high risk activity. It’s probably the riskiest thing that we do. The commander and the pilot never had the time to train for spacewalks, and then the concern was if somehow one of them on a spacewalk became disabled then you would have an impact of the entry, descent, and landing.\\n\\n The same thing with robotics. Very rarely did the pilot or the commander get to be the robotics operator. On a Shuttle mission there was a lot to do, so each crewmember had specific duties. There was some—I don’t want to say overlap. We wanted to have backups. When at all possible it was better to have two astronauts performing a task just to reduce the chance of making errors. On all my flights I was very busy. I thought I had the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to the missions. Again, I was qualified to be a mission specialist, and I was thrilled to be selected as one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All flights are good flights, right? I was just curious about that because your biosheet—I think it says you’ve flown forty-one different types of aircraft, and you have nine thousand hours of flight time. That seemed like an awful lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s air- and spacecraft, about half those hours are on Space Station. But that background sheds some light on why I enjoyed flying on the Russian Soyuz so much. I may have mentioned this earlier. As you’re probably aware, there are three seats in the Soyuz. The center seat is the Soyuz commander. The Russians normally call the left-seater the ??????????? (bort-inzhener) or the flight engineer, and the right seat was initially the ??????? ????????????? (kosmonavt-issledovatel). That was the cosmonaut researcher. If you look at the controls, the center seat and the left-seater have I would say 98% of the controls. The right seat has three fan switches for the ventilation fans for the suits and near its feet has a pump to transfer condensate that gets taken out of the air that circulates in the cabin. Other than that, the right-seater has essentially no responsibilities and no capability to operate any of the spacecraft systems.\\n\\n The Soyuz commander has the optical sight between his knees, and that’s used to orient the vehicle over the ground or it’s used for the final rendezvous and docking, has the two manual flight controls, and has a display. It was a monochrome display and edge keys to make inputs to the display. The left-seater has a color display, same edge keys. Then there are a number of direct commanding push buttons. Then there are some environmental control and pressurization valves and some other controls over to the left of the ??????????? (bort-inzhener).\\n\\n When the Russians started flying nonprofessional astronauts or cosmonauts in the right seat, they started calling that person the ??? (UKehPeh,) ???????? ???????????? ?????? (uchastnik kosmicheskogo polyota), spaceflight participant. The point is the center-seater and the left-seater are the ones that really fly the vehicle, or operate the vehicle, let me put it that way.\\n\\n I had the opportunity to become qualified in the left seat, which also meant I had to be trained and qualified to fly in the center seat if the Soyuz commander was disabled. Just by being the right place at the right time and the way the right seat assignments worked out, when I flew to Station I became the first American to do both ascent and entry in the left seat. The Soyuz, just like many spacecraft, the majority of the things that the spacecraft does are automated. Most of the commanding to the computers to initiate the automated activities were done by the left seat, and so again I was just very fortunate. That was really, no kidding, a mission where I had the opportunity to do a lot of the spacecraft flying tasks. I did enjoy that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s pretty cool. A number of folks who came here, who weren’t selected as pilots, but had jet pilot experience had a chance to fly the T-38s and keep their hours up. Were you one of those folks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just like all the mission specialists starting in our class, I flew in the backseat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why was that the case?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can only guess. I would only be speculating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about your class, the class of 1990? You had some interesting folks in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. There were twenty-three of us. It was really unusual. See if I can remember the numbers correctly. We had seven pilots and sixteen mission specialists. Three of us were from the Army. That was the first time more than one Army astronaut was selected and I think, if I remember correctly, the only time three were selected. We were surprised in that there was only one naval officer in the class, Dan [Daniel W.] Bursch. Like I said we had seven pilots. Terry [Terrence W.] Wilcutt was our one Marine. Ken [Kenneth D.] Cockrell was at that time a civilian. He was former Navy. Does that really mean that we had five Air Force pilots? We had Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt, Rick [Richard A.] Searfoss, Jim [James D.] Halsell, Eileen [M.] Collins [and William G. Gregory].\\n\\n Had a couple of doctors who were working at NASA at the time, Dave [David A.] Wolf and Bernard [A.] Harris. Retired Lieutenant General Susan [J.] Helms was a mission specialist. Carl [E.] Walz, Air Force. I mentioned Dan Bursch, Navy. Ron [Ronald M.] Sega. Rich [Michael Richard Clifford], Nancy [J. Currie], and me. Jim [James H.] Newman. I think Jim had come to us from Rice [University, Houston, Texas]. Don [Donald A.] Thomas, another civilian. Jeff [Peter J.K.] Wisoff, who later married Tammy [Tamara E.] Jernigan.\\n\\n We always got along really well. Oh, Janice [E.] Voss was in the class, may she rest in peace. She passed away a few years ago. That was really sad. I guess it was the biggest class since the 1978 group. I figure that probably worked to my advantage that it was a big class. I was probably number twenty-three on the list, so if it had been twenty-two, I wouldn’t have gotten selected. Then I would have taken my girls out of school so they could comfort me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I highly doubt that. Did you get a lot of media attention having three Army folks? Was there a lot of coverage from the Army and interest there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ooh, it is raining, isn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it looks like it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s hard to say. I think what we in particular started trying to do is really—especially as I became the more senior Army guy, I tried to really maintain a close connection with both the Army and with West Point [United States Military Academy, New York] to try to really leverage our potential to be a positive image for the Army, not as much outside the Army, but within the Army. I went up to West Point generally once a year to lecture. A West Point classmate of mine, Bill Fox, was on the permanent faculty in the math department. I would go up and give a lecture to the sophomores taking probability and statistics and talk about how we used tools like that to assess the risk of flying in space.\\n\\n We would go to the Association of the United States Army annual convention and have a little booth there where we would sign autographs for servicemen and women or children that would come visit. We would do the same thing with the Army Aviation Association of America annual convention. We tried to be pretty visible within the Army family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the questions I like to ask people is to talk about that first Monday morning meeting in the Astronaut Office. Can you talk about that and your memories?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gosh, I think it just blends in with every other Monday morning meeting. We always were in awe listening to whatever John [W.] Young had to say. What I remember during that time is just how happy I was to come to work every day. That was for the first year, and then you started becoming anxious because you were waiting for your first flight assignment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you talk to us a bit about your training? All the classes participate in training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Generally we would have a morning with lectures. It was an attempt to have an integrated training session so we would have someone from Engineering come and brief us on a system, and then we would have someone from then MOD [Mission Operations Directorate], a flight controller, come in and talk about and also share in giving us a lecture on physically what the system was, how it operated. Then we would have a more senior astronaut come in and talk about [the system] from an operator’s point of view. In the afternoon you’d certainly be trying to get out to Ellington [Field, Houston, TX] to fly or be studying and going through workbooks. It got into a sort of an academic type routine, if you will. We of course had several trips where we visited the other NASA Centers and NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC].\\n\\n Believe it or not, during my Army career I never drank coffee. I just did not drink coffee. Then when I went to Navy Test Pilot School, Navy Test Pilot School actually was similar in that you’d have a half day of class and then a half day flying, and then a half day writing reports. Those were long days. In college I never pulled an all-nighter. I never stayed up all night studying. I did stay up all night a few times in test pilot school writing reports. Oh, God, that was hard. To stay awake in class at test pilot school I started drinking coffee. When I came to the VITT [Vehicle Integration Test] Office here I stopped drinking coffee. When I started AsCan [astronaut candidate] training I very quickly started drinking coffee again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Long days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wasn’t so much long days. Sometimes the lectures were just a tad dry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have much of an opportunity to spend time with your family? Or were you guys pretty busy all the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, those were good family times, not a lot of travel. I traveled a lot, of course, when I was training for Space Station flight. As a matter of fact I spent more time overseas the first two years I was a NASA civilian than I did in twenty-eight years in the military. Just the way it worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was early Station too. It required a lot of training from what I’ve heard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was the director of Operations in Star City, that was six months in Star City and I came back to the States, I think, for about a week and a half in that timeframe. That was a nice long stretch. Then after that I probably spent in the neighborhood of four to five months a year in Russia. It would be anywhere from two to six weeks in Russia and then four to six weeks back here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tough schedule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a lot of travel. I’m trying to remember what my rule of thumb was. I think it was I didn’t want to be in Russia three weeks or less. If you went over there for just a very very short period of time, you were always battling jet lag. But if you went over there for four weeks or longer you would get there and really settle in, you would get shifted. You would also have time on the weekends to explore and go sightsee in Russia or go to Moscow and go to a real restaurant. There were no real restaurants in Star City. There were some things that wanted to be restaurants. They were fun, they were an adventure, but they were Spartan. They were very rudimentary.\\n\\n That was partly because the Russian economy was still in the throes of changing from the communist era, from the days of the Soviet Union, to trying to become more entrepreneurial, to have a little more of a little taste of capitalism, which was working great in Moscow. I mean, it was working great in Moscow. You go like ten miles outside Moscow. I mean, there were exceptions. Some of the larger outlying cities or large towns, they were doing okay. After all, Shchyolkovo had a McDonald’s, but that was not within walking distance of Star City." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’d be quite the hike." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now I admit I occasionally went to McDonald’s in Russia, but why go to an American fast food restaurant? It’s always nice, a little taste of home. The Russian drivers that transported us around, they loved it. They loved for us to go there. We’d maybe buy them an ???? ? ??? ????? (obed s Big Makom [or lunch with Big Mac]). It’s a Big Mac [value meal]. That’s like a number one on the menu or whatever it is. It was a lot more fun to go to see something that was more Russian, traditional. Although I’m not sure that we really saw Russian traditional so much as something that tried to be a little more western with Russian food—I’m not sure there is Russian cuisine, but whatever cuisine that they brought in from the republics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nothing like borscht or something like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, borscht, sure. The borscht on board Space Station was just outstanding; it was really good. I remember as a kid seeing some cartoon. The implication was that borscht was awful, and it’s not. It’s really good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, well, it’s cabbage I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cabbage and they generally have some pork or some meat in it. It’s well seasoned—well, it’s seasoned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the things astronauts do is they get assigned technical assignments. What was your first technical assignment after you became an astronaut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is great. My first technical assignment was the Motor Mother." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Motor Mother?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Motor Mother. I basically was the Office representative for all the solid rocket motor projects at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. At the time there were two and a half. The Shuttle Program consisted of several projects. You had the Orbiter Project, the SSME [Space Shuttle Main Engine] Project, the External Tank Project, the SRB [Solid Rocket Booster] Project, and then ground ops and vehicle processing at KSC really was very similar to another project.\\n\\n Part of the Solid Rocket [Booster] Project, it was not just the booster, but it was the solid rocket motor. The motor is the thing they built in Utah. They would put a pointy end on the top, and they would put auxiliary power, an aft skirt on it, and electronics in it. When they put it all together, that was the solid rocket booster. I was our interface with that group plus another one, the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor Project.\\n\\n Because the Challenger accident [STS-51L] was the result of a failure of the solid rocket motor—NASA went down two paths to recover. One was to redesign the solid rocket motor. That was the RSRM, the redesigned solid rocket motor. Later we changed the name to the reusable solid rocket motor. I think it’s because we wanted to forget that we had to redesign it. But, we did.\\n\\n Then at the same time, Aerojet and I think Lockheed partnered to develop the advanced solid rocket motor. What they did is they went to an abandoned Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear site in I think it’s called Yellow Creek. It’s outside of Iuka, Mississippi. They started to build a new solid rocket motor manufacturing facility. The idea being that if Thiokol couldn’t fix the problems with their solid rocket motor then we would go to this other vendor and replace the Thiokol motor.\\n\\n Why Iuka, Mississippi? The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee I think at the time was a gentleman named Jamie [L.] Whitten and that was his district. He had been in Congress since either the week before or the week after Pearl Harbor. He’d been in Congress for a very long time. He was a bit senior. He had a lot of influence. We were going to build this new advanced solid rocket motor.\\n\\n There were some neat things about it, one of which was that it promised to be able to deliver twelve thousand pounds more payload to orbit, which became really important when we decided to build the International Space Station. I was also the office representative on that.\\n\\n It was interesting. Trying to remember what group it was. National Academy of Engineering? I can’t remember. There was an organization at that time that was doing an assessment of the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor Project to give Congress an estimate of whether they thought it would be successful. I got to go along as the token astronaut who got to go around with that group of people.\\n\\n Out of that though, when I left the Astronaut Office and went to the Shuttle Program Office, the SRB project manager I think at the time was Steve [Stephen F.] Cash. When Robert [M.] Lightfoot left the Shuttle Program—Robert Lightfoot was the deputy program manager for the propulsion elements at Marshall. When he left, Steve became the Shuttle deputy program manager. As soon as I got there and then I saw Steve again, we realized that we had worked together on the Advanced Solid Rocket Motor Project starting in 1991, so we then worked very closely throughout the rest of the Shuttle Program. When the Shuttle Program ended I became the S&MA [Safety and Mission Assurance] director here in Houston, and he became the S&MA director at Marshall. It just was really a wonderful time.\\n\\n After doing that for a year I became a CapCom [Capsule Communicator]. It was a little bit unusual. Normally CapComs have flown in space [previously], so they have a little more insight into how best to help the crew on orbit. But for some reason they decided that it made sense for me to be a CapCom. I started doing that. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really good job. You stayed very engaged in the missions.\\n\\n After I flew my first mission in 1993, I came back and I became a CapCom again, and I was just stunned the second time at how lucky I’d been the first time I’d been a CapCom not to really mess things up. It was two things. One is having been a CapCom, I thought it helped me a lot on orbit, because I really understood more about the pace and the flight data file that you had on orbit, how to use it, and how the procedures integrated with the schedule that you had on orbit. That helped me out. Having been a CapCom helped me on my first flight. Then my first flight really helped me become I think much more effective as a CapCom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the first mission you CapCommed on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was STS-50." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything notable during that flight? Were you on the planning [shift], on orbit [shift]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I may have been. I remember doing [STS]-46, 47, 50. I’m just trying to remember if we had them out of sequence at that time. I think it was STS-50 because I’m pretty sure that Dick [Richard N.] Richards was the CDR [commander]. Let me see. There’s no telling. I do remember there was some issue about the potty on board. Gap [Granville] Pennington was the flight director. Dick Richards, he got really annoyed with me because I asked the crew some question about the trouble they were having with the potty, and he thought that was not the kind of thing that should have been." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On air-to-ground." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That should [not] have been on air-to-ground radio." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were able to obviously get that fixed, and everything went fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know [if] we ever had a Shuttle mission which the toilet completely broke. On my first mission we had a lot of problems with it for the first couple days. But there are backup supplies. I think it would just make your time on orbit very unpleasant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ve heard from several members of the crew of [STS]-41D who used bags and socks. It doesn’t sound [like] something that I would want to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If we put a crew on EM [Exploration Mission]-1, if we can’t develop a potty in time to do that, I just said, “Well, carry up a lot of diapers and Apollo bags.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They still make those Apollo bags?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m sure someone would be happy to start making them again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe you were also a Cape Crusader at one point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was not. I was not, they worked for me. I think it was called the Flight Support Branch. I was the Flight Support Branch Chief. The CapComs and the Cape Crusaders worked for me. I coordinated their activities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was looking at your biosheet, and it said you were in prelaunch Shuttle processing and launch and landing operations. So I assumed that was code for Cape Crusader." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was during the VITT Office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was during the VITT." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I sometimes thought I never got to be a Cape Crusader because they looked and they said, “Well, you did that as a VITT person, so we want you to do other things to broaden your [experience].” Once I became a CapCom—I had a few crews come back, and they were just very positive about the work I did as a CapCom. I always thought it was because I spoke slowly with a distinct Southern accent. It gave me credibility. They figure someone who speaks like that can’t be smart enough to deceive us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about finding out you were assigned finally to a flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I was on a PR [Public Relations trip] somewhere. I can’t remember where. Dan [Daniel C.] Brandenstein called me and said he wanted to talk about a flight assignment. So I was really happy. He said, “Are you willing to participate in medical experiments?”\\n\\n I said, “I will be happy to do anything.”\\n\\n He goes, “No, wait a minute. Don’t volunteer for everything.” He assigned me to the second Spacelab Life Sciences mission, SLS-2, which was STS-58. It was doing physiological research on the crewmembers, and we had forty-eight rats in the Research Animal Holding Facility racks back in the Spacelab. I was MS [mission specialist]-2. As the flight engineer, it turned out they were almost as protective of me as they were of the CDR and the pilot. Since I was the flight engineer for ascent and entry, I avoided some of the more intrusive medical experiments.\\n\\n I do remember having to do, I think, glucometry every day. To measure the blood glucose level I had to—and this was a fourteen-day mission, so I eventually had to prick every single finger at least once. Eventually my fingertips were sensitive and painful. It was not so good.\\n\\n I remember another experiment I did was the lower body negative pressure device [LBNP]. Matter of fact, I was just visiting with John [B.] Charles earlier this week. I guess he was the principal investigator in the LBNP. We happened to start talking about it. He said, “I apologize for that one.” It may help. The Russians have a device called Chibis. They do very much a similar thing of having you wear something with a waist seal, and they’re able to draw a partial vacuum on your lower extremities to try to induce blood to transition back from your upper body down back into your lower body, to try to simulate the cardiovascular effects of gravity. What I found with LBNP though is—and I did it every third day—every third night I would go through fluid shifting again. I would have spent some time in the bag, it would pull the blood into my lower extremities, and that night it would transition back up into my upper extremities. Then I would get to deal with the head fullness and stuffiness again.\\n\\n I wound up, just from a very personal standpoint, not being a big fan of the concept. But, I certainly would have to defer to the researchers as to the efficacy of that process. I know the Russians are big believers in it. Our crewmembers are starting to use Chibis before coming back, but I declined the opportunity when I was on Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It just looks a little painful to me. Sounds a little painful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was what it was. It was more painful doing it on the ground than it was doing it in space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We only have a few minutes. I wonder if you want to talk about the crew of STS-58, a very diverse group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh gosh. Yes, it was. John [E.] Blaha, the commander, was very very experienced. In his astronaut technical assignments, he had done a lot of runs in the simulator doing engine out scenarios. He had this uncanny insight of knowing during a sim [simulation] if we had an engine failure, for example, whether it was survivable at all. There were certain areas in the Shuttle ascent profile called black zones, and if you had an engine failure or heaven forbid a second engine failure in a black zone, it didn’t matter what you did. You were not going to survive. It was really nice having somebody with John’s experience. Also John was very conscientious about ensuring that every member of the crew had areas of unique responsibility so that everyone got a sense of fulfillment, that each crewmember made a meaningful contribution to mission success. He did that really well.\\n\\n Pilot was Rick Searfoss, one of my astronaut classmates. Golly, he relished the Earth obs [observation] stuff. As a matter of fact, he set his sleep restraint up on the flight deck with his face right by the overhead window and he had cameras right beside him. If he woke up in the middle of the night, he was ready to keep taking pictures and did a great job of Earth obs photo documentation.\\n\\n [M.] Rhea Seddon was a payload commander. What a true lady; she just was so smart and just really did a good job ensuring that the primary payload work in the Spacelab was well done. I remember while we were training, NASA leased a small business jet, a Citation II, Cessna Citation. I was one of a half dozen astronauts who got checked out in it, so we got to do a couple of crew trips in the Citation, and that was kind of fun.\\n\\n Shannon [W.] Lucid, another crewmate—and I’ll talk more about Shannon in a second—got checked out as the second in command in the Citation so she and I could take the airplane out. During one of our training events Rhea injured her ankle, so pretty late in our training flow she was not able to fly in a T-38. We had to go to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] to evaluate hardware. I think it may have been the Crew Equipment Interface Test. It was one of those big things that everybody needed to go down for. We got in the Citation, and Rhea went with us in the Citation. Rhea’s husband is Hoot [Robert L.] Gibson. Either she laid the law down, or Hoot had a lot of confidence in us that he let Rhea get into this business jet with two mission specialists flying it.\\n\\n Dave Wolf, another one of my classmates, was doing a lot of the research, was really deeply engaged in a lot of the experiments that we were doing. We’ll have to come back and talk about this mission some more next time. He and Shannon were trained, if we had a contingency EVA [Extravehicular Activity], they would have done it. This gets back to this sharing responsibilities that John put a lot of emphasis on.\\n\\n We all wanted to be the contingency EVA crewmembers, but John’s point was—I was MS-2, I was flight engineer, and that was my golden nugget. So to share the wealth, he wasn’t going to entertain the thought that I would also get to do EVA training. I had to respect that, and I did.\\n\\n Shannon Lucid, gosh, I love Shannon more than I can put into words. I’ll get back to Shannon in just a second. Dr. Marty [Martin J.] Fettman was the payload specialist who flew with us. The other two payload specialists were Larry Young, a professor from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge], and Jay [C.] Buckey, a medical doctor. Marty is a doctor of veterinary medicine.\\n\\n But anyhow, because there were nine of us, that was too many people to put in a single crew office, and John again was concerned having one payload specialist who actually got selected to fly and two who were going to do all the training and participate a lot with us but were going to be the outsiders if you will. Because we couldn’t all fit in [a single] office, I would say the obvious thing might be to put all the career astronauts in one office and the payload specialists in another office. John I think recognized that that just really wasn’t going to promote bonding with the team.\\n\\n Shannon, Marty, and I got put in a small office, and right next to us were the other six members of the crew. All my training up until that point and most of the formal training was really how to operate equipment in space, how to operate a spacecraft, how to operate the equipment you were going to have in space. When sharing an office with Shannon, Shannon taught us all how to live in space. She taught us all how to really turn your time in space into a personal and memorable experience. Where is my dove? Maybe it’s not in the office here. It should be. I have a little porcelain dove that’s in a shell—oh, here it is. We just became such close friends that Shannon gave me this when the mission was over." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, how nice. She’s such a thoughtful person." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William S. McArthur", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, she is. She taught me about having lemon drops out on the launch pad because it just helps for some reason; it’s nice to suck on a lemon drop at launch. When I got to Space Station I found lemon drops up there. I think also when she got to Mir for some reason she found lemon drops there as well.\\n\\n Marty, oh gosh. John’s daughter was Carolyn Blaha. Somewhere during training I don’t know if she’d graduated from college yet, but she was college age. She and Marty started dating. On Marty’s desk is a picture of him and John’s daughter. It took forever for John to notice. Oh, it was so funny. It was so funny. But I tell you what, my daughters were far too young, but if they had been old enough, no, I like my sons-in-law. My daughters married exactly the right people. But if I’d had a third daughter and she were old enough, I wouldn’t have objected to her and Marty becoming interested in each other. Nice guy. He was good, the whole crew was good; we were really good on orbit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We look forward to hearing more about STS-58 when we come back next time." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00402", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McLeaishJE/mcleaishje.htm", + "original_file_name": "McLeaishJE_11-15-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McLeaishJE/McLeaishJE_11-15-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John E. McLeaish", + "location_date": "San Antonio, Texas – 15 November 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John E. McLeaish" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is the November 15, 2001. This oral history session with John McLeaish is being conducted in San Antonio, Texas, for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson.\\n\\n We thank you again for letting us stop by and visit with you this afternoon, and we’d like to start today, if you would, by sharing with us some of your background information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I joined NASA, it was the Manned Spacecraft Center [MSC] at that time, in 1962. I had previously worked for the Air Force and found this really an exhilarating opportunity for me, when I joined NASA. Later I became Chief of Public Information and spent about sixteen years in that job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have interest as a younger person in journalism?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I had a background in journalism. I had a degree in journalism." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You served in the [United States] Air Force, I think from 1952 to 1959. Tell us about that time period. Did you do any field of journalism there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, I did do some journalism when I was stationed mainly at England Air Force Base, and that was I ran, among other things, the base newspaper, which was named\\n\\n The Tiger Talk\\n\\n . That was a very interesting time to me. The commander of the base was an unusual fellow. His name was William A. Daniel. He’s a little short guy. But he was something else. In fact, he had a philosophy that says don’t ever use the word “don’t.” It’s kind of like when you’d see a sign that says, “Don’t walk on the grass,” he’d say, “Use the sidewalk.” It was very interesting period.\\n\\n Then I was later stationed in Taiwan—Taipei, Taiwan—as a public information officer. So, yes, I did have some background in the Air Force." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then after you left the Air Force, or was it when you were still in the Air Force you went to the University of Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did go to the University of Houston when I was in the Air Force. I had spent most of my career at Rice [University] in Houston, and then transferred because Rice did not have a degree in journalism, and I could also fashion something called Operation Bootstrap, get a degree in six months from the University of Houston.\\n\\n Then after that I somehow ended up working at Ellington Field or Ellington Air Force Base [Houston, Texas] just prior to joining NASA. That was very interesting, because I guess I caught NASA’s attention when we had a big air show, which attracted, gosh, probably 100,000 people in one day to watch the demonstration. We had both the [U.S. Navy] Blue Angels and the [U.S. Air Force] Thunderbirds perform, plus a lot of other things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you might have attracted NASA’s attention then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they recruit you to work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was contacted by a fellow who was my boss for a period of time. His name was Ben Gillespie, and I guess Ben has long since left NASA. In fact, well, as far as I know, he may still live in Houston, probably does. But Ben was the fellow that really kind of attracted me to join them, and I never regretted it, obviously, because it turned out to be kind of a fulfilling career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were you doing at the time when he contacted you to join?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working at Ellington." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For the Air Force." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time, Russia, or the Soviet Union, had launched Sputnik, and you were part of the Air Force at that time. What were your thoughts on this whole new space era?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I found it kind of an exciting thing to do. It was quite different. I had worked in the Air Force, and I guess I had left the Air Force and lived in Dallas for a short period of time and had published a book named—it was kind of a photographic book with a lot of pictures about the Air Force. But, no, I got very excited about the prospect of joining NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When Mr. Gillespie talked to you about your potential job, what did he tell you that you would be doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I joined him. He ran what was then called the Industry Communications Department, which [Lieutenant Colonel John A.] “Shorty” Powers was the chief of public affairs at the time, and I guess Shorty had all these little fragmented departments, and we were a little fragmented department. That’s what I did first.\\n\\n Well, I guess after we were there for a period of time, well, it was much later, I guess in 1968, I think is when I became Chief of Public Information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you describe for us what it was like those first days that you joined—as in the Industry Communications? How was Public Affairs organized and the structure and what were your duties?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, as I mentioned there were a number of small little fragmented organizations that we had – the Industry Communications Section, or Branch. We had the Internal Communications Branch. There was, I guess, the Public Information Branch, which should have been much more active than I guess it was. It was just a number of just small fragmented operations. I guess that was Shorty’s style. I’m sure you’ve heard of Shorty Powers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Where were you housed when you joined the staff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where did I live?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, where was your office? Was the Industry Communications group with the rest of the group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no. Well, remember back in those days we were located in various offices throughout Houston. Our office—well, we moved from the Honeywell Building to a building named the Peachy Building. I guess it was owned by a fellow name Truitt Peachy, who I had known when I was in college at Rice. The last assignment that I recall is we were at the Peachy Building before we moved to the Center itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was the entire Public Affairs Office [PAO] in that building or was it just your branch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Our branch and I think maybe one or two others, but I don’t recall now for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there ever a time that all the branches got together for a staff meeting or briefing or communications?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, when we moved eventually to the Manned Spacecraft Center offices, we had our office, it was mainly in a building across the NASA [Road] 1 in Building Number 6, I believe—maybe you know this—which was a rather large building. Now, we were all located in that building for a period of time. Well, that was a while back, too. As a matter of fact, that’s where we were located when the Apollo 1 fire occurred. I recall that because it was a terrible night." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, while you brought it up, would you like to share those details about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Yes. Well, I guess it was a Friday night, and we were all getting ready to go to a party for a fellow named [Albert M.] Al Chop, who at that time I think Chop was the deputy to Shorty. I forget the reason for the party, maybe it was a birthday or whatever. But in any case, after all of this happened, obviously we never made it to the party. It was a horrible evening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you receive the word?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we kept getting phone calls from the Cape, from KSC, from the Kennedy Space Center, and that started it. I guess it finally evolved where we knew for sure that the crew were all dead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your position at the time? Were you the chief?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, at that time I was the Deputy Chief of, I guess, Public Information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then as that role, what were your responsibilities regarding the Apollo 1 fire? What were some of the duties that you had to be responsible for?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I became very involved in some of the news releases and answers to inquiries. When that kind of thing happens, sometimes it can become very burdensome. We had a system set up where you had to clear everything through a group of people. It became very unwieldy. We did end up doing that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had been there about three years, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let’s see. Yes. Well, let’s see. When I joined NASA, it was just before [Walter M.] Wally Schirra’s [Jr.] first Mercury mission. That would have been, what, August, I believe, of probably [19]‘62." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Mercury? No, the Gemini with Schirra as December [19]‘65." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. His first, his Mercury." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "His Mercury, October [19]‘62." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had been there several years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you have training as you went through those years to prepare you for that new role or was it a lot of on-the-job training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was mostly on-the-job training. You did not have any formal kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you become informed and educated on the hardware and the systems and spacecraft that the astronauts were using?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you tended to do that a lot through your own studies. I don’t know if you’ve seen them or not, but back in those days the contractor would put together these detailed books on the hardware. I guess McDonnell Douglas [McDonnell Aircraft Corporation] did it for Gemini, and North American [Aviation, Inc.] did it for the Apollo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Public Affairs was given a copy of those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We had copies of those, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was basically your own responsibility to inform yourself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. You’d try to do that as much as you could. I ended up even writing a piece or two for [Dr. Robert R.] Gilruth for one of the publications, I guess one of Grumman’s [Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation] publications, and then also an article where he was supposed to look out a hundred years from now and see what it would look like in 1960—well, I guess it would be 2069 or 2065 or 6 or 7, whatever.\\n\\n But, yes, it was a very interesting time because a lot of things were happening. As far as public affairs, you were really dealing with first-rate newspeople. It was like the Walter Cronkites and the Dan Rathers and so on. I had known Rather in Houston before, before he left and went on to work for the network. In fact, I guess Rather was in Dallas [Texas] the day [President John F.] Kennedy was assassinated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think so, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s when he became, I guess, the White House correspondent because of [President] Lyndon [B.] Johnson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time period when Public Affairs and you were evolving, what was the mission of Public Affairs? So many people have different ideas and perceptions of what Public Affairs was supposed to do or is doing. Could you share with us, as a Public Affairs person, what you were trying to accomplish?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in our own case I think we were trying to really get the word out as much as possible and tell the truth as much as you could. You’re right, there was all sorts of conceptions about what Public Affairs was supposed to do or should be doing, and I think that’s probably still true and maybe even more so today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find yourself, or the other officers as well find themselves sometimes not knowing what direction to give information because the press was asking one thing and internally the employees might be expecting another one? How were you able to stay on your mission and provide that information in a timely manner?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think you did just the best you can, and you tried to make it as timely as you could." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did every piece of information that came out of the Manned Spacecraft Center during those early days, did it come through the Public Affairs Office or each branch and directorate allowed to issue their own information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was mainly through the Public Affairs or Public Information Office. Not totally, but I would say in the mainstream would be there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a guideline, say, from Dr. Gilruth or any other manager that said this is how internal and external communications will be handled?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not so much through Gilruth. Gilruth tended to be more of a hands-off kind of person, as I recall, as far as public affairs. I think he was always sort of fascinated by it. But in NASA Headquarters there was a fellow named Julian [W.] Scheer, and Scheer was very much involved as far as providing direction and so on. Then Paul [P.] Haney eventually had become the Public Affairs Officer in Houston." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did Haney create a structure, a different structure than Shorty Powers once he got there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I would say he did. I think Haney was probably a little better organized. Shorty was very fragmented in the way he had the organization going. Haney was probably not a great organization guy himself. Haney became very involved as far as the mission commentary. I later ended up as a mission commentator myself, and that was one of the jobs you had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your role change when Mr. Haney took over? Did he move you into a different direction?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not sure he did at first. My boss for a while was a fellow named Howard Gibbons. He was the public information chief. Then Gibbons, I guess, got kind of moved aside, and then I became the Chief Of Public Information in—actually, I guess that was 1968." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a large staff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Reasonably sized, I’d say fifteen or sixteen people, plus the support contractor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share with us some of the equipment and how you handled to move information from the center? I think so many times when people look back on history, they forget that the technology is very historic as well. We didn’t have computers. We didn’t have fax machines. Could you share with us on how you were able to release some of that out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there weren’t computers, that’s right, that we used back in those days. We were very big on mission commentary and the transcription of it. That became very much a major project, and putting together the way to make that come out in a timely fashion was very important. Let me think. Well, it was just a very important thing, that you wanted to make sure that you had it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it somewhat labor-intensive as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. Yes, we had these transcript typists, and they would be in these little booths and hopefully typing away and putting the stuff together accurately." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that real time or did they read off tapes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was real time. They were doing it as the mission was going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that was different, you know. I don’t think they do that anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Once the transcriptions were done, then were there copies made for the press?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was the intent. The intent was to mass-reproduce them for the press. That would also include like we would have—what do they call them—during missions, change-of-shift news conferences or briefings. That would normally involve, say, a flight director like, say, a [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz or a [Christopher C.] Chris Kraft or whoever it was on duty at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And where were these held?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "These were held, as it turned out, we had moved into what used to be Building 1, which became Building 2, I think, and they were held in there, in that small conference room. I don’t know, you’ve probably seen it, I’ll bet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And during that time period because everything was new and things continued to change, how were press credentials handed out and how did you certify who was allowed to come on site to participate in those news conferences? How was that all handled?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you did a combination of things. I guess you had some that would come from NASA Headquarters [Washington, D.C.], some from [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], and some from Kennedy [Space Center, Florida] , and some from JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas]. You’d normally just certify them. Someone like myself would look at it and say, “Okay, this guy is okay,” or, “This one is not.” That was pretty much the way. It was a judgmental call, most of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have quite a few, once the missions started, since Gemini IV, once the missions started being controlled from the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room] at MSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did. I would say the peak number was probably Apollo 11, and we had maybe 1,200, 1,500 press. It was a very, very busy time.\\n\\n Then, of course, Apollo 13 was turned out into a whole different world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it did. Yes, it did. What other materials were available for the press during the Gemini-Apollo time? You mentioned that mission transcriptions. Did you also have press kits available for them at the time before?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. You had press kits that were released before. That’s correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that all under your operation as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The information that belonged in that press kit, where did that come from?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That came from a combination of places, mainly from JSC or from the MSC, whatever we were at the time. But most of it originated from with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was Public Affairs still segmented into the different areas then? For instance, did the Industry Communications give you information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. That had gone away. That had become sort of a subactivity within the Public Information Branch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The information about the hardware or about the spacecraft or space suits, the technical information, where did your staff get that information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you got it mainly from the contractors. Like the space suit, for example, was from—I’m trying to recall who the contractor was. I think it was—was it Latex [International Latex Corporation]? Might have been. But that kind of information mainly came from the contractors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever travel to the contractors’ facilities to do those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there one that was more memorable to you than others that you remember going and actually witnessing the making of the equipment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m trying to recall if there was. I went to Rockwell, or North American [North American Rockwell Incorporated] several times and had gone to Grumman at least once or twice and to McDonnell [McDonnell Douglas Corporation] a time or two." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this to gain information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, mainly. Mainly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "An understanding?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did those trips help you later when you were doing commentary?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they would help. They did help, indeed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Regarding the responsibility of Public Affairs in external release information, did you help train other employees at the MSC in what they could or could not say to the press, for instance, the flight directors or the flight controllers or the engineers, those type of people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, maybe to a limited point. It turns out the flight directors were usually pretty savvy in their own right. I don’t think you needed to give much training, say, to a Gene Kranz or to a Chris Kraft, for example, or even like [Sigurd A.] Sig Sjoberg. But, yes, you did some of it, but it was not a major thing by any stretch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But it was your office that set up the news conferences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us how that happened. When were they done as far as a mission was concerned? Was it prior and during and after?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was prior, during, and after. It was all three. We had the astronauts, we would normally set up the crew, the next crew to fly, and that was done sometime in advance of the mission, usually a couple of weeks in advance or maybe three or four at the most. We would normally do that two ways. We would have the news conference plus what we called round-robin interviews where major networks, for example, and publications would be able to interview them individually, each astronaut." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this all still confined in the news conference room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it wasn’t in the news conference room. It was more in the offices around what used to be Building 1, now Building 2. We would use some of the offices and do them that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the missions when you held the conferences, was there a formal announcement of when the conferences were going to be held?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We would normally put it out over the public information loop, just announce that the next news conference will be next change. We called them change-of-shift briefings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The interest of the public continued to increase during the Mercury and Gemini days, of course. Did that affect the Public Affairs Office? Did the public start to send inquiries, or did they want visits and tours?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think we had probably an increasing number of tours. I was not involved in the tourist program, but I think we did have a lot of tourists that came about because of the increase in interest, certainly up through Apollo 11 and I guess again through Apollo 13. Apollo 14, of course, that was the [Alan B.] Al Shepard mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Out of the special events and ceremonies and things, was any of those duties under your control as well, or was that a different area of Public Affairs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When you say duties—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you had some special events, maybe when the president came to the Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we got very involved in that, yes. I guess [President Richard M.] Nixon was there several times, and we became involved with that. The first time he showed up, though, he showed up as a candidate, and I think that was, when, [19]‘68. He showed up as a candidate and the fellow who later became his press secretary—name escapes me. I’ll think of it later.\\n\\n But in any case, he was there. I thought he was sort of a kind of low guy on the totem pole because he was on the press bus. A fellow named Bill Plant, who still works for, I think, CBS [Incorporated], was kind of ordering him around, telling him what to do, and this sort of thing. But I did ride the press bus with them, and we got involved in that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Early in the history of the program at MSC, Time-\\n\\n Life\\n\\n was granted an exclusive agreement with the astronauts to do their stories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did this affect the Public Affairs Office? Did it make your job easier or did it give you extra—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It probably gave you a few heartburns, the reason being that it’s like they had exclusive rights to stories. That was\\n\\n Life\\n\\n mainly. It was\\n\\n Life\\n\\n magazine.\\n\\n Then later I guess it was\\n\\n World Book\\n\\n became involved, too, and that was more of a Houston operation. They were set up in Houston. But we worked with the\\n\\n Life\\n\\n people reasonably well, I think. A fellow named Ralph Morse was one of their star photographers, and Ralph, we worked out arrangements where he might shoot things and also kind of function as a pool, and we would release some of his photos. So we tried to work around as much as we could." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You used the word “heartburn,” so I guess it had pros and cons." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the other media accept the fact that—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think they liked it. No, they didn’t like it. It was more like an exclusive right to interview the—well, it also evolved into the families, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your first encounter with working with the astronauts, or how did you help set those procedures up so that they would work well with the media as well as the media could at least know that the astronauts should have some privacy as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let’s see. I became involved with the astronauts in a variety of ways. One, I’d gone on some of the geology field trips with them, to Hawaii was one of more memorable ones. We went to the Big Island of Hawaii, and that was very interesting. I guess they had a couple of teams there. One was the [Charles C.] Pete Conrad group, and then the Neil [A.] Armstrong group. But you became involved in that kind of thing some.\\n\\n But over a period of time, you just kind of put procedures in place much as we had done with the air-to-ground mission commentary stuff as far as setting up the preflight news conferences. Those were kind of known to have to occur and were accepted. You dealt mainly, I guess, with Alan Shepard, because he was functioning more as Chief of the Astronaut Office for a good period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you came up with a procedure, did you take it to Shepard and worked out the details that way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s pretty much the way it turned out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was the reception from the astronauts of PAO involvement? Was it something that they considered to be an asset and a benefit or something as a hindrance and an interference?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think sort of a mixed bag, if you want my opinion. I think some thought it was very important, some probably did not.\\n\\n Armstrong I found as an extremely interesting guy. I was in quarantine with the Apollo 11 crew after they’d returned from the Moon, and that’s when he had that famous quote, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I know I kept watching things. You’d see these promos on TV where it looked like he had dropped the A. Well, I talked to him about it in quarantine. I asked him what he said.\\n\\n He said, “Well, I know what I meant to say.” He said, “I meant to say, ‘It’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,’” and that’s kind of the way we played it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that based on reading and research that there seemed to be a perception of tension sometimes between what Public Affairs suggested to happen or want to happen and what engineers or flight controllers or even flight directors would have liked to happen and, of course, in many cases astronauts. One example would be the Apollo 7 flight when Schirra canceled the broadcast of the TV. Can you share some details about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I remember that, but not in that much detail. I think that was more of a combination of Schirra becoming angry with the flight controllers. Because I think Chris Kraft may have ended up getting on the line with him, one of these private lines, and giving him hell, giving Schirra hell. Because Glynn [S.] Lunney, I believe, is the flight director that became directly involved, and I know Lunney was very upset at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’d like to move into possibly asking some questions about specific missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because you’ve given us some understanding of how the organization was set up, and as we work through this we can gather a few more details." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because what we’ve also found is there’s not a lot of history about the Public Affairs Office and how it was formed, and the procedures and where they came from. A lot of people would like to say common sense will tell us that procedures evolved because of necessity, but it’s also nice to hear from an expert that was there how those happened.\\n\\n When Gemini IV operations moved to the MOCR, apparently the duties of the Public Affairs Office changed somewhat because it was a new time for the MSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share with us the differences of what had happened prior to that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, prior to that, all of the missions were launched and controlled at Kennedy. Then when you moved and you moved the control center to Houston, well, that changed the whole world. It changed it basically where I guess you had the pre-launch coming from Kennedy, and then once it was launched, the responsibility switched immediately to Houston, which, as a consequence, meant that normally you’d have someone say, “Houston is now controlling.” It was a nice lead-in line that I would use some as a commentator, and that would just kind of tend to tell you where you were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you prepare for that role? That was a totally new role for you to do as a commentator. Share with us how that happened and what was the purpose of that and what did you want to accomplish as you were a commentator for the Gemini Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I guess I didn’t really become a commentator until later in Gemini. But on Gemini IV—I guess that may been Paul Haney who was the first commentator, I think, but I wouldn’t swear to it.\\n\\n What you tried to do was tell as much about the mission as you could. I had become fairly good as a launch commentator, and that was kind of an exciting time to me, once you became involved with particularly in Apollo where you had all those three stages and all that power and so on and you’re sitting in Houston and that’s all happening in Florida. But, yes, I think it was an important assignment and somebody should do it and do it well, and I tried to do it as best I could." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you located when you were doing the commentary?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the control center in Houston." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had your own console that you sat at?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how long was your shift that you were on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it varied. I, unfortunately, was also a commentator during the Apollo 13 explosion, and that was a terrible time. It was an awful night." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, let’s talk about Apollo 13, since you brought it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were doing your shift as a commentator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I thought I was getting ready to break shift and go home and be happy, and then all of a sudden it’s “Houston, we’ve got a problem,” came across, and that was [James A.] Lovell. And they sure had one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long were you there on this shift that now had just become extended?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t recall exactly how long, maybe ten, twelve hours, but I did finally go home and had a couple of belts of good ones and tried to sleep. Because then everything sort of switched pretty rapidly. That’s when they reactivated a pool assignment, because I guess there was a real belief that this crew may not come back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned to the reactivation of the pool assignment. Let’s step back just for a second. When the MOCR opened and the commentary was done by a Public Affairs Office specialist, where did you put the press during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were mainly in the news center over in Building 2." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were listening to your commentary?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, they would listen it there. Now, it turns out, oddly enough, and it was maybe very timely, the first time we had a pool located in the control center was Apollo 13, which turned out it gave you some opportunity for candor, and they could see that you weren’t lying." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was quite a few missions that had occurred from the first time you had Gemini IV to Apollo 13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s right. That’s correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the pool begin? How did their place happen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there was kind of a constant pressure for a pool on the part of the press, and we tried to make it very simple. We had one writer and one—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Broadcast?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "—broadcast, and that was it. We said, “Okay, you’re the pool.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And who selected those people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We let them do it among themselves. You almost had to do it that way, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they take turns for each mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, I think once they decided that things had started to go down or not become as tense as you saw on 13, the pool kind of went away again. It became a much more dormant thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find that it assisted Public Affairs officers to have that pool?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I thought it did, because again, it kind of made you appear open and like you have candor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were they located in the Mission Control Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a little side booth up in—well, I guess they’re in a different area now, I think. But in the old MOCR, in the second and third floor there was a little booth where you put them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were just left alone to view?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they have the opportunity to hear all the loops?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or were there selective loops that were in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they heard the flight director’s loop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They could see the viewing screens as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then their job was to come back and meet with the other reporters and share that information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Either that or put it on as far as the—I think a fellow named Roy Neal became very active as the pool correspondent for the television. But that got a little tricky, too, from their own behalf because you had the NBC guy. You couldn’t necessarily have him with ABC or CBS necessarily, so they tended to sort of play that out as—I guess anonymously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you facilitate the news conferences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Did I facilitate them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The news conferences or did the flight directors facilitate them? Who actually handled—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we ran them. Yes, we ran the news conferences. We would have one of our people as the moderator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a beginning and end time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So at least they would know that you were going to start and stop at the same time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess that helped everybody knowing that it just couldn’t keep going and going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find the press at that time informed before they were asking the questions because they had read your press kits? Did you find the materials that you had given them—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I found that varied a great deal among whoever the member of the press was. Some were very bright and some were not so bright." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine. When you got ready to do the commentary, did you have to do a great deal of studying on your own before that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. I’ll tell you what we mainly, or what I did, and I guess the other commentators did it as well, is I would go into simulations with the flight control team, which I found very useful, particularly in the launch abort simulations, which I suppose they still do, but, gosh, I don’t know. I’ve been away so long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you there as an observer during the simulations or did you simply practice your commentary?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, you practiced. Yes, I practiced." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that in simulations they have debriefings, so were you also part of debriefings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was not part of the debriefing where they said, “Hey, you screwed up.” Because they didn’t really pay that much attention to you. They let you do your own thing quietly, and that’s what I tried to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find a lot of differences on how your job was affected when the off-site news center was moved on to Building 2? Was it better for your department to be on the Manned Spacecraft Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think it was. I think it was once we finally moved on to the Center. It made it much easier, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During Gemini IV, of course [Edward H.] Ed White [II] did the first U.S. space walk, such a momentous time for everyone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What types of information were you able to give to the press, again, before and during and after that mission that explained? Because it was added somewhat at the last moment to do that. Were you put into the position of not having that material ready, or did you feel prepared?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I honestly don’t recall for sure if we were ready or not. I know it was kind of a last-minute deal. I think Dr. [Charles A.] Chuck Berry had something to do with it. I think you’ve probably interviewed him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I think he tended to be a fairly talkative guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Once the Apollo missions began, you were still, though, doing Gemini, because the Apollo unmanned missions were starting and the Gemini Program was still going. Did you find your staff stretched of trying to handle both those programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. I don’t think we felt stretched that much. I’m trying to recall that. We had some unmanned Apollos. In fact, I became involved in one of the commentaries on an unmanned. It was Apollo—not 4, not the first one, which went very well, but this one everything kind of went to hell. It was Apollo—I want to say 6, 7.\\n\\n But in any case, they were going to have a high-altitude abort or something and it became a low-altitude, and everything kind of went wrong. I remember sitting next to Chris Kraft, who said something like—they moved the ship, and Kraft said something like, “Well, sometimes it doesn’t pay to do anything. You just might as well leave things as they are,” and which was kind of interesting. I think it was maybe one of his philosophies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the mid-sixties when this was all going on, some of the members of the astronaut corps died in various accidents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your office handle those situations, and how were you involved in handling those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I recall very well the Elliott [M.] See [Jr.]-[Charles A.] Charlie Bassett [II] accident and also the Apollo 1 fire. As a matter of fact, the Apollo 1 fire, I ended up at [Virgil I. “Gus”] Grissom’s house, which was a terrible assignment, but somebody needed to be there to deal with the press, and I guess I was the guy who was there.\\n\\n Then in Elliott See’s case, I guess I was at the Elliott See house. That was a fellow named Charlie Basset was with him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find the press to be receptive of the mood of NASA, or did you find them wanting to be extremely inquisitive and looking for information that you were having to somewhat hold in privacy at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It varied. It varied, again, depending on which member of the press you were dealing with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a difficult time for you professionally?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. Yes. It’s not a lot of fun to be at somebody’s house whose husband was just killed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There certainly wasn’t a precedent for it at that time, either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. Now, I recall I was not involved in that one somehow when [Theodore C. ] Freeman was killed. I think a fellow named [James] Jim Shefter showed up at somebody’s house and told his wife, which became a very unsettling thing. I know some of the astronauts held it very much against him for a long time. But Shefter, I think he may have recently died, Jim Shefter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, you knew that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I knew that he had passed away. Because of that incident from him, did any of your policies or guidelines from your office change in how you handled these incidents?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think it changed. In the case of Shefter, it was more of probably a misstep on his part and it was probably not appropriate to have him show up at the house and say, “Well, he’s gone,” but I think he may have had some pressure from the\\n\\n Houston Chronicle\\n\\n , a fellow named Dan Cobb, city editor at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After those incidents, as well as the Apollo 1 fire, especially after the Apollo 1 fire, was there anything different that the Public Affairs changed in order to release information because of that incident, because of the accident?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think things became much more unwieldy in the post-Apollo 1 fire accident because they had a big protocol set up—I guess it was more with the Program Office—that you had to clear answers through them, and it became very unwieldy. That went on for a period of time, but over the long haul, I guess things worked out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that make your job more difficult?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it would make it a bit more difficult, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Several weeks before the Apollo 10 flight, there was a change in management when Brian Duff replaced Paul Haney. Did you find a great deal of changes occurred within your office with that change of management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, there was a fair amount. Duff is a very charming, very dapper, delightful guy. He’s different. His style is very different from Haney. So, yes, I would say there was certainly a change. I guess Duff has passed on, too, by the way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he has." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But, yes, he was in an interesting guy, Brian Duff. But so was Haney." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your role change with the new management, or job duties increased during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You say did it change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I guess maybe it changed some, but I’m not sure I could pinpoint any particular way that it changed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It almost sounds like your job continually evolved and grew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that one way that you would describe the first ten years or so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It evolved and grew, yes. Well, I would say it became kind of different. I had a fair amount of independence as far as the job. I ran that office for sixteen years, and that was a long time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were always situations, I’m sure, that got your attention. One of the ones that we were looking at was that on Apollo 10, Eugene [A.] Cernan decided to utter a word that most people don’t normally hear come out of astronauts’ mouths." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, I remember that. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was wondering how Public Affairs addressed that situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you put it out in the transcript verbatim, and that’s what we did. I’m glad we did it, in retrospect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any after effects of that from the press? Did they want to know more information, or did the transcript serve all the purpose that needed to be served?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the transcript pretty much handled it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any public reaction that you got in your office?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It seems to me there was some. There was some little old ladies that would call up and give you hell about something like that guy would just take advantage of me and that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, of course after Apollo 10, Apollo 11 was scheduled. As you mentioned a little earlier in our conversation, things changed as far as the Public Affairs Office because you just had so many more press personnel that you had to deal with. Could you elaborate on that and tell us how your job and just the whole Public Affairs arena began to change a little bit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, with the Apollo 11, there was just so many press there that, as I recall, we even had tents outside that had been set up to cover some of the press. We had begun to use that lobby area right across from where our offices were. I would say that there were also tents that were set up that were used also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they arrive earlier than they had ever arrived before for this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The press?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not so sure I recall them arriving that much earlier. I just recall there was a lot of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A lot more?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From all over the world?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, pretty much. Pretty much all over the world. We had the BBC and the—you name them. They were there from—of course we had ended up with the Japanese, I think, for some of the earlier missions. Of course, you also had the Velcro [Industries B.V.] and the Fisher pen [Fisher Space Pen Co.] people. They became very active as promoters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that work? Could you share with us some information about that, how they promoted it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They tended to put out little news releases and so on, and it worked pretty well. I know Paul [C.] Fisher, who I think is still alive and still runs the company." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was he there, or did he send a representative?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, he would show up himself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would he?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, he would show up himself. He’s the guy who once ran for president, I think, for the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like an interesting gentleman." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he was and probably still is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that another role that you served, working with these promoters of products that were being used on the missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. In fact, I became very involved with the General Foods’[Corporation] Tang [orange drink mix] people, which was kind of interesting because they did very well, as you know, as far as promoting Tang. I think people tended to think that Tang was just a byproduct of the space program. But I dealt mainly with their ad agency. I’m trying to recall who that was. [Young & Rubicam, Inc.]. I’ll think of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that was something a little bit different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Along with everything else that you had to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and it was a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they want to come on site to do their promotions or how did you work with those companies?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It varied. In the case of Paul Fisher kind of people, he would show up on site, and he was kind of an operator. In the case of General Foods-Tang, I’m again trying to remember the name of the ad agency [Young & Rubicam] because that’s who we dealt with mainly, and they would send in their storyboards, and we would review them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That really was something different from your everyday activity, then, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Sure. Yes, it was. It was different. It was kind of fun, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work with other departments, because Tang, being a commercial product, but yet it was going toward the food and nutrition area of the program, not necessarily Public Affairs, did you have to coordinate with these other departments as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We would normally send that out to the cognizant technical person to look over and review for technical accuracy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then it all came back to you to ship back to them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Goodness. Like air traffic controlling out of our office, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, kind off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Everybody filtered in and filtered out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you on Apollo 11? Tell us what was your role and what job you were doing at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Apollo 11, I was several places. One, I did a little bit of commentary before I went into quarantine. I was at KSC [NASA Kennedy Space Center] for the pre-launch. I did not get that close to the launch, and then I caught an airplane back to Houston, I guess to get ready to be locked up, right after I had done a little bit of commentary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this a commercial flight that you took back, or did you have an airplane that brought you back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m trying to remember. I think it was commercial, but I wouldn’t swear to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was thinking about that coordination again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. Yes, I think it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So were you in quarantine waiting on the crew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were there before they were?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were there before they showed up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you checking it all out for them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, not exactly, but that was in, what, Building 37, I guess, was where they were located." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How were you selected to be the one to work with them in quarantine?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m not sure I know. But it turned out I enjoyed it after it was over, well after it was over. I didn’t look forward to it at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your family feel about you being secluded for that amount of time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let’s see. It was a couple of weeks, I guess. Well, my wife would come out periodically and talk to me through the glass. That’s the way families did, I suppose." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any personal concerns about possible health issues?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn’t really. As a matter of fact, I even tasted a little bit of Moon dust, just to say I’d done it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a chance to watch the EVA [Extravehicular Activity] and see everything, be a part of the actual activities before you went into quarantine, or were you into quarantine before Neil Armstrong walked on the Moon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we were in quarantine. Once they had landed, that’s when they said, “You get over there.” They figured, okay, time’s up, but you did see him on the Moon in quarantine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 312, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share with us some of the conversations that you had with the astronauts? You mentioned you had gone on geology field trips with them, so you weren’t strangers with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 313, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no. No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 314, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had a chance to spend time with them. Could you share with us some of their thoughts or maybe some of the questions that you might have asked them in order to prepare some of the releases and the reports that you issued from there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 315, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m trying to recall. Yes, they were a very diverse and very different group of people themselves. Pete Conrad, who I guess now is dead, he had, what, a motorcycle accident?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 316, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 317, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, Armstrong was very quiet and very unassuming. In fact, he was an interesting guy to me, particularly in quarantine. It was kind of like he’d had had the world lifted off his shoulders, is the way you kind of sensed him as feeling. Then there was [Edwin E. “Buzz”] Aldrin, who was quite different at the time. In fact, I think Buzz became—I guess he’s officially named Buzz now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 318, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s what I hear." + }, + { + "turn_id": 319, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was quite different. Buzz, I think never quite got over the fact that he was not the first man to set foot on the Moon but the second. [Michael] Collins was very different, because Collins, he never set foot on the Moon, and he was a very bright, intelligent guy who I was always impressed by." + }, + { + "turn_id": 320, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a defined purpose or a defined mission as being part of that quarantine team?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 321, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was supposed to brief the press, which I tried to do, and I caught hell a time or two because they didn’t feel that you were telling them everything you should be telling them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 322, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you in that position of trying to choose what to tell, or did you just didn’t have a lot?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 323, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no, I had a fair amount. I thought I was putting out more than maybe some of the press thought I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 324, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was everything from you issued via print reports, or did you give broadcast or how did you handle that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 325, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was briefings. I would come in for, I guess, a briefing to the press. It was kind of like a little news conference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 326, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you came out of the quarantine area to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 327, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Remember, that was all behind the glass." + }, + { + "turn_id": 328, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you just came so they could see you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 329, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I came out, and they’d see you through the glass." + }, + { + "turn_id": 330, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s pretty interesting. Was that a set time that you did that every day or just when you felt it was necessary?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 331, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m trying to recall. I’m not sure it was a set time, but we did it several times. Then there was—I guess I had a nice private room until a young lady named Heather Owens, I believe, got bounced into quarantine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 332, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 333, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 334, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that happen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 335, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, she became contaminated some way. They were all dealing with these Moon rocks and that kind of thing, and so I lost my private room there in the last day or two, I suppose." + }, + { + "turn_id": 336, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get the couch? [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 337, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 338, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your reaction of seeing Moon dust or knowing that you were with objects that came from the Moon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 339, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I found it interesting, the fact that—I just took a little thing and just said I might as well taste it and go out first class, if that’s what’s going to happen. Turns out it didn’t, obviously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 340, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So I should ask you what Moon dust tastes like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 341, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you can. I’m not sure it—it was kind of tasteless, as I recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 342, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tastes like Moon dust, huh? [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 343, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 344, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That must have been a very special time in your life to know that you were the first to see those or be that long with those materials." + }, + { + "turn_id": 345, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, it was interesting. I guess that was mainly off the space suits that had come in. I’m trying to recall. I guess they arrived maybe before the crew, because the crew had shown up in this trailer. I don’t know if you recall or not, it was sort of a trailer that they moved in. They were playing this thing for all it was worth, as far as possible contamination from lunar soil or Moon dust." + }, + { + "turn_id": 346, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite a difference from where they had been and now they were in this secluded area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 347, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 348, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people were involved in the quarantine?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 349, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see. I’m trying to recall. Not that many. There was two doctors and myself, several technicians, and a fellow named—his last name was Graham, I believe, and he was kind of like the head technician. I’m trying to recall the doctors’ names. One later went to—I believe he’s in [Temple], Texas, and the other went to the Eisenhower Clinic [Eisenhower Army Medical Center], and he’s the one that—well, gosh. Names kind of escape you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 350, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Did you meet together as a team prior to going into quarantine to visit with these other people, or were you all cast in there around the same time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 351, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably showed up about the same time. I don’t recall that we had any big formal meeting. We might have done something one day in advance or several weeks in advance, but I don’t recall any big particular—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 352, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have very much association with the other people that were in quarantine?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 353, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, pretty much. I’m trying to recall the doctor’s name, the one that was really a very pleasant guy and I got along well with. The other doctor I think came back with the crew. He was on the ship. [Dr. William R.] Carpentier was his name. You know him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 354, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve heard that name, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 355, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was Carpentier, and if I can remember the other fellow, because that’s the one that I really had gotten fairly close with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 356, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were released from quarantine, did you have a chance to take some time off and be with your family and be somewhat on a normal routine, or were you right back into your normal day-to-day activities at the office?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 357, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think I probably took a little time off, but not much. I don’t recall any extended period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 358, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have an opportunity to take much time off at all since the time that you had started with NASA to this time, with all of the continuing missions and changes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 359, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some, but not a lot. I guess I was not that big on vacations at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 360, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were your days long as well? Did you have long hours?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 361, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sometimes. It varied, and it varied pretty widely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 362, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apollo 11, you mentioned so many people had traveled throughout the world to be at Houston to see this happen or be a part of it happening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 363, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 364, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it like for Apollo 12? Did you have that same type of interest?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 365, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably lesser so. Not as many. Again, that’s predictable, I think, because you’d already had men on the Moon. In fact, Apollo 12 was kind of—I don’t know if you recall or not, that’s where they lost the picture from the surface of the Moon, and that kind of did not help, I guess, as far as the appeal or interest.\\n\\n Apollo 11, I do recall some things that when I was in quarantine, they had a—I guess it was Armstrong’s wife at the time, they had a big sort of—well, he had a birthday in quarantine, and they had a big birthday party for him. I remember sort of—well, that’s one thing I didn’t talk to the press about, and I told them I wouldn’t, and I kept my word on that. I guess Neil came—well, he cut the cake, and did a lot of things. But, in fact, I guess he was born—his birthday, I think, must have been in August." + }, + { + "turn_id": 366, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it’s in August, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 367, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Now, you’ve talked to him also?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 368, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just recently. He was able to find time for us in his schedule. He came down for his annual appointment with the medical staff around his birthday." + }, + { + "turn_id": 369, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. Well, good for him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 370, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that’s why I knew when his birthday was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 371, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that makes sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 372, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He allowed us some time during that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 373, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, good. He was very a interesting guy, I felt." + }, + { + "turn_id": 374, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He still is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 375, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 376, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "His legacy lives on, as so many of the rest of them, especially with the publicity and the movie from\\n\\n Apollo 13\\n\\n , so many people have their own interpretation of what happened during that mission, and you’d told us earlier that you were working on the console when the words came in from Lovell." + }, + { + "turn_id": 377, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 378, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you describe the environment, the atmosphere that was in the MOCR at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 379, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was totally confused. That went just beyond my comprehension of what was going on. I kept thinking, “Well, this thing, they’ll say it’s a glitch and it will go away.” Well, it didn’t, sad to say, but it did turn out to be a great mission in terms of the flight control team. That’s when they had become the real heroes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 380, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Also, we talked about, too, of all good timing, I guess, that the members of the press got to see firsthand how that whole operation worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 381, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They did. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 382, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you notice anything, maybe a different attitude from the press because they actually got to see that firsthand?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 383, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think there was an appreciation that, “Gosh, they’re telling us the truth,” and that was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 384, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What changed with Apollo 13 as far as debriefings and news conferences? Were you having to have more because of that crisis situation than you had had in the previous missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 385, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think you had more, that I recall. But I had done some commentary on that mission, and I was not that involved in the news center. I guess I was on the shift with Kranz, who overnight became kind of like the lead flight director, which was interesting. He’s a very interesting guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 386, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you somewhat with him during this whole time so that you could report or with be him during the news conferences? Was that part of your role?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 387, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t recall if I was with him in the news conferences or not. I may have turned that over to someone like [John E.] Jack Riley, who was my deputy at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 388, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a twenty-four-hour news coverage going on during Apollo 13?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 389, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 390, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did that start for the Manned Spacecraft Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 391, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think we always had that. Yes, we also had that for missions. Even those where you had the overnight sleep shifts, we always had—in fact, that was one of my earlier assignments, I handled the overnight shift, and that was terrible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 392, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you busy during that time period?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 393, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 394, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you were on hand in case—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 395, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In case you had a—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 396, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work day and nights then when you were on the overnight shift?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 397, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, just mainly nights. You did twelve hours and twelve hours, as I recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 398, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you in Building 2, is that where you were located?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 399, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think when that occurred, we were still over in the building across the street, Building Number 6." + }, + { + "turn_id": 400, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apollo 14 was the final manned mission that Brian Duff was the manager during that time, Public Affairs manager, so you once again had another change of management. Mr. [John W. “Jack”] King stepped in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 401, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, Jack King, that’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 402, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you again have changes in your organization, or did the functions and the roles and responsibilities continue?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 403, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think we stayed pretty much the same. Pretty much the same, yes. King had come to us from Florida, the Kennedy Space Center, and Duff, I guess, well, he went on to HEW [Health, Education, and Welfare], I believe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 404, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think so. Well, on 15 from what I’ve learned is that you weren’t a commentator, you were starting to manage the Apollo News Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 405, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 406, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the Apollo News Center evolve, and what was its purpose, and what was your role with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 407, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the 15?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 408, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 409, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think I ran the news center, but I don’t recall any big difference. On Apollo 16, I became a commentator again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 410, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I also noticed that you were paired a lot of times with Jack Riley. Was that something that you liked working with him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 411, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, now, Riley and I are very close, not only business associates but close personal friends. In fact, Jack, well, he was number two guy in the office and had been that for years. He had a great sense of humor. In fact, what was the guy’s name that was the San Francisco columnist for a number of years? I’m trying to recall. He wrote something like some big promoter had written him and said that he was going to have the first topless place on the Moon, and Riley drafted the answer that said, “Dear So-and-so, bare breasts implode on the Moon.” [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 412, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Probably wasn’t the answer he expected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 413, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 414, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apollo 15 was the beginning of the science missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 415, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 416, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So your staff had to become informed on again new information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 417, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was [David R.] Dave Scott’s mission, and we got caught a little bit by surprise by some of the things they were doing with the first-day covers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 418, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you elaborate a little bit on that and how that affected your office?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 419, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, it affected us in that I guess it looked kind of sleazy. It was Scott—who was it, [Alfred M.] Worden?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 420, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[James B.] Irwin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 421, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Irwin, yes. I think Scott may have been kind of the ringleader. Well, he was the commander, so you would assume he was the ringleader. But they were selling them at like $1,500 a whack, I think, and they had a bunch of them. Yes, that had an impact. It didn’t make us look good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 422, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like your office had to do somewhat of damage control?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 423, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 424, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you manage to accomplish that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 425, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m not sure you ever accomplish it fully, but we did try to do damage control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 426, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was also a time when we had a press conference that came from space. In August of [19]‘71 on their return home, they did a press conference. Do you recall any of the information or how that was handled coming from the crew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 427, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see, that was the Scott, Irwin, Worden crew. No, I don’t recall it offhand, but I know we’d planned to do that kind of thing, and I guess it worked out reasonably well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 428, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you worked as a commentator, you certainly worked with quite different flight directors through your career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 429, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 430, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to change the way you did your role based on the flight director, or did you have a continuity of how you did your job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 431, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I tried to do it pretty much the same way, but I know I tended to maybe talk a little louder than I should have, and I know Kranz didn’t like that, particularly as far as launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 432, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any other feelings or comments from the other flight directors on your job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 433, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Not that I can recall, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 434, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the flight directors, in your opinion, in your experience feel like the Public Affairs console was a needed console in that room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 435, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think basically most of them did, including—who was it, [Clifford E.] Cliff Charlesworth. I guess Charlesworth—no, he’s no longer with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 436, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 437, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Charlesworth was one that I think was very pleasant. I would say that most of them were reasonable. I know Lunney was a very good one to work with. And Kranz. Kranz was different. He was very methodical and by the book, a very interesting guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 438, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There’s always been somewhat of a perception that there’s been a tension between the Public Affairs Office and maybe the flight controllers or the engineers or other groups on the center. Did you ever feel like there was a tension between your office?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 439, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never felt it that much with the flight controllers. Maybe to a degree it could be maybe with some of the engineers. I think that varied pretty widely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 440, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any idea why they felt that there should be a tension?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 441, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No, I really don’t, because I don’t think there should have been. I left NASA, I guess fairly early in the Shuttle Program, and that was interesting, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 442, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite a different spacecraft, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 443, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 444, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In between the last Apollo mission of 17, of course we had Skylab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 445, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 446, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Public Affairs Office now again continued covering twenty-four hours a day. However, you were having missions that lasted weeks instead of days. How did your office adjust to this new era?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 447, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you did that a little differently. I’m trying to recall. Apollo-Soyuz was very interesting, because that was a challenge. Apollo-Soyuz, because you had the two languages, you had the voice-over. Like we had—well, I’m trying to recall. We had a fellow who was an excellent Soviet interpreter, a Russian interpreter, I should say, and he would interpret what they were saying and kind of do a voice-over, and that was interesting. That was a big challenge as far as a mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 448, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did he do this out of your new center or was he doing it in the MOCR?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 449, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he was doing it in a room next to the control center. I guess it was one of these staff support rooms." + }, + { + "turn_id": 450, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you coordinated all of that information out of there as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 451, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We used that as a voice-over, and he went—it was kind of like you could hear the Russian in the background, but you could hear his voice going over it, so it worked very well. I guess that was [Donald K. “Deke”] Slayton’s mission also. He was on that. Then I know the landing, that’s when they had a problem, and I forget what the problem was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 452, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think they had problems with the chutes not opening properly, and they had inhaled possibly some gasses." + }, + { + "turn_id": 453, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was it, yes, the inhalation. I recall that because I started getting phone calls in the middle of the night on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 454, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your reaction and actions when you would get these phone calls? How did you start to get the process rolling to get this information out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 455, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It varied pretty widely, depending on who called and what they wanted. You’d go to the experts as best you could. Again, if it was you’re an important member of the press, and I guess you could say all of them were at least in their own minds were important, but—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 456, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did time serve as a bigger factor or did you try to—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 457, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You say time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 458, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, the timeliness or did you try to gather information as you can to have a complete report?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 459, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was a combination of both. You’d try and get it fairly timely, but you’d also want to make sure it was accurate as best you could." + }, + { + "turn_id": 460, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So much information to gather from so many sources in such little time must have been such a challenge that you looked at every day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 461, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 462, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or especially in these crisis situations at that. During Apollo-Soyuz in 1975, NBC approached NASA to broadcast from the Mission Control Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 463, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 464, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You helped negotiate that agreement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 465, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 466, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 467, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I guess they used the floor above or below, I don’t recall which. Jim Kitchell [phonetic] was the guy’s name who was the NBC man at the time that handled their space stuff. Yes, they did broadcasts from there, and it was an interesting way to do it. They just came in with the proposal and I guess I talked to—I’m trying to recall, maybe it was either Jack King or [Harold S.] Hal Stall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 468, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m not quite sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 469, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was somewhere in that time frame. But we put the deal together, and it worked out, I think, reasonably well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 470, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you surprised that a national broadcasting system of that type wanted to come in and start using that as their background?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 471, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No, I don’t guess I was. They had covered the space program pretty thoroughly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 472, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was it set up when they broadcast? Was it in actually the MOCR?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 473, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was in—and I forget which floor. I think we were out on the second floor and they were the third floor, but it was a separate floor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 474, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to secure special badges and credentials for them to move their equipment there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 475, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think we did. As I recall now, we had to do that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 476, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess somewhat restricted they were put in that area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 477, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 478, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that had to be very interesting. How long did they do that? Did they just do that for that one mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 479, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One mission, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 480, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course, it was the final Apollo mission as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 481, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 482, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You moved into the Shuttle time period, and there were some years that you didn’t have missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 483, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that is true, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 484, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did Public Affairs adjust to—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 485, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was kind of a miserable time, frankly. I guess we had these things at Edwards [Air Force Base, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center], where they had flown. Then you had all the tile coming off and that kind of thing, and that was different. But then finally I guess I did the first launch commentary for STS-1, which was [John W.] Young and—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 486, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Robert L.] Crippen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 487, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Crippen, yes. As I recall, that was launched on April the 12th, 1981. Right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 488, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 489, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was kind of an exciting mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 490, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that for you to see the excitement back in the space program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 491, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I liked it. I liked that a lot. I guess I also did the commentary when Sally [K.] Ride flew, and Jack Riley we used as the landing commentator on, I guess, most of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 492, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course, now it’s different that we had a different type of landing on the spacecraft now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 493, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did. Yes. The landing, I guess, was at Edwards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 494, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The approach and landing tests and other testing that was done for the Shuttle was done at Edwards. How was your office involved in releasing the information of what was going on down there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 495, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we tried to send someone there. I think I used a guy name Bob Gordon some, who spent some time there. In fact, he was covering the Shuttle Program at the time for us. The way we set up the organization, we gave people beat assignments, like someone would cover the Shuttle program, someone would cover some other program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 496, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was the majority of the Shuttle information that was being released to the press from NASA coming from your office at JSC or was it coming from Edwards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 497, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d say most of it was coming from us. Yes, most of it would be. Because Edwards was more of a facility. Plus they only had, as I recall, back in those days they had several sort of a one-man operation, a guy named Ralph Jackson who ran the their office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 498, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was Public Affairs on every center a bit of its own entity or did you get direction from NASA Headquarters on how Public Affairs needed to be handled?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 499, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think it varied pretty widely as to who you had in charge in Headquarters. A fellow named Julian Scheer, you know, made sure you ran it his way. Then you had a fellow named John Donnelly, who I guess to a lesser degree may have been that way. Then I guess recently they’ve had some that—I’ve lost track of what they do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 500, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But your office was pretty much through Haney and Duff and King. You guys created your policies and guidelines?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 501, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much, but you also conformed. I think Scheer is the one that finally moved Haney out. He kind of moved him upstairs. They gave him a strange assignment, and Haney didn’t accept it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 502, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because so many new things were happening at that time, I was wondering if there was a funnel that controlled most of the information, because you had mentioned that Dr. Gilruth really didn’t get involved with Public Affairs, but I was wondering if there was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 503, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, Gilruth, I think he found it sort of fascinating. He seemed interested, but he knew he was not—Gilruth was not a forceful, dynamic sort of guy. He was not a [Dr. Werhner] Von Braun, and he probably knew that. But he was a very charming, delightful guy, as I’m sure you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 504, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Other situations that occurred during those later years of the Apollo time and moving into Shuttle involved medical discussions as more broadcasts were being done and, of course, the press was more involved on the day-to-day activities of the missions. There were a lot of discussions about how medical information could be transferred or not transferred. How did your office deal with those privacy issues, especially during Skylab when there might have been discussions or could have been included in the transcriptions of medical discussions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 505, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m trying to recall how we did that in Skylab. Because Skylab, as you pointed out accurately, is very long-duration missions. They went from twenty-eight days to fifty-six. We operated a little different in Skylab in that we kept the news center open, but it was kind on a low-key basis. As far as medical, I think we had some things where you declared them private, as I recall, the medical stuff particularly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 506, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was your staff privy to those private conversations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 507, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. My recollection was that we were not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 508, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you basically turned that over to the flight control team and the astronauts to handle that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 509, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 510, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If they considered it to be private?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 511, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The doctors, Chuck Berry or whoever was the doctor at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 512, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Another area that you were in during the Shuttle time is reviewing and approving some press releases that the government contractors wanted to release regarding their products. Do you recall any of those situations where you were reviewing information that they wanted to release information on their own about what they were doing for the Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 513, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now, who was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 514, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The contractors that were building parts of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 515, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, the Rockwells [North American Rockwell Corporation] and the—well, I’m not sure I remember that in any kind of specificity. Well, I guess Rockwell was the prime. I don’t recall any problems with release of information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 516, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they have to check with your office before they released information?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 517, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were supposed to. In most cases I think they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 518, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that part of their contract?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 519, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 520, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That they couldn’t release things without going through you first. Another change in NASA during some of your final years was that we had a new class of astronauts for the first time in a long time. In [19]‘77 they made the announcement that we were going to have a new class. Well, they selected that class in ‘77." + }, + { + "turn_id": 521, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Included the women, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 522, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your office handle this information? Was it anything different than you’d done before? Tell us about that time period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 523, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did it pretty much the same way. I’m trying to recall how many we had in that first group. Do you have a number?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 524, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have six female and four minority astronaut candidates in that class." + }, + { + "turn_id": 525, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. That sounds right. Plus there were—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 526, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Plus, of course, the rest of the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 527, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There may been like thirty." + }, + { + "turn_id": 528, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thirty, I believe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 529, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, okay. No, we put out the releases pretty much in a standard kind of way. I do recall trying to—I was talking to Dan Rather, trying to sell him on the idea of a\\n\\n 60 Minutes\\n\\n thing with the women, which he found interesting, but I think they finally decided not to do it. But I figured that was worth a pitch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 530, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have other venues that you tried to use to promote NASA? You mentioned just then about talking to Dan Rather and trying to get this idea out to the public that they were selecting women. What other types of things did you do to help promote NASA to the public?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 531, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m trying to recall. I’m not sure I had any that was as specific as that. I remember the name of the ad agency, Young & Rubicam . That was Tang-General Foods. I wanted to say that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 532, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wonder how many times that people do remember Tang and not remember—you always remember it to be part of the space program as well. That was an interesting fact for us to find out was how a lot of that came through your office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 533, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it did. They were really first-class people to deal, the Young & Rubicams were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 534, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have people, vendors and such, that would come to you for help to get their products to be incorporated with the space program? Would people approach you first or did you just get them after they had been approved by the NASA management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 535, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably we had some that might have approached you first. I think Velcro became very active. A fellow named Harold Williams was their PR [public relations] man for a number of years, and he was local. I guess he also handled some of Fisher’s stuff. He got kind of involved in the off-beat sort of stuff, slightly different kind of contracts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 536, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You spent more than twenty years of service with NASA in Houston and have done such a wide variety of activities during your responsibilities. What do you consider to be your most challenging milestone in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 537, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most challenging milestone. Well, I’m trying to think what would be the most challenging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 538, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You could share with us more than one, if you’d like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 539, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, I found Apollo 11 very exciting and the fact the quarantine assignment was different and that was interesting. The early Shuttle missions I thought were exciting and different.\\n\\n Skylab was quite different in that it was a new challenge. Skylab, because of the length of the missions, as you pointed out, we had the news center operating, but not at full tilt twenty-four hours. We might have a couple of people on versus the full staff twenty-four hours a day.\\n\\n But as far as the most challenging, I don’t know how you decide that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 540, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your staff, did you have a lot of turnover or did you find that people wanted to work in that office and stay there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 541, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think we had that much turnover. We had some. I know [Robert V.] Bob Gordon finally quit in sort of a huff because we hired a fellow named Dave Alter, who he did not like, and that turned out to be kind of a different operation, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 542, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to add on staff when you needed it at busy times or was your budget pretty restricted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 543, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s begun to rain again, ladies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 544, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 545, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m sorry. Sorry we brought you over to all this weather.\\n\\n Yes, we were able to add staff some, I think. But it was not like you had a\\n\\n carte blanche\\n\\n ." + }, + { + "turn_id": 546, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you believe that NASA gave you a direction to have an open policy with the press, or did you believe from your experiences that there were a lot of restrictions on the information that you could—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 547, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think when you say NASA, I think if you say like Julian Scheer, yes, he wanted you to be very open and very candid. He also had a policy which I liked, whereas you always spoke for attribution. You did not say “an unnamed source,” and I liked that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 548, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there a time during your career that you think back and think the most fondly of? It might have been the early days or your Apollo days. I know you had mentioned about the quarantine time, but I was just wondering if there was a span of time that you just—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 549, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I thought Apollo days were extremely interesting. That’s when you had contacts with people like [Walter] Cronkite. In fact, I guess Cronkite even called a time or two. It may have been [General Thomas P.] Tom Stafford being on the—about the time he was getting ready to be launched for Apollo 10. I remember he had talked to Cronkite. Tom, he had a tendency to break all the conventional astronaut rules. He was an interesting guy, too. He kind of reminded you—he sounded a little bit like Lyndon Johnson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 550, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, he’s from Oklahoma. That’s not too far away from Texas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 551, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that’s right. That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 552, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you a native Texan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 553, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 554, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where are you from originally?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 555, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was born in Houston, grew up down in the Rio Grande Valley, a little town named Weslaco, and went to college at Rice [University, Houston, Texas] for three years and then finished at Houston [University of Houston, Houston, Texas]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 556, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At any point in your time did you ever think about jumping to that other side, to move into the broadcast or the print side and leaving NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 557, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. No, I never had that kind of an interest. I think I was probably well positioned in the kind of job I had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 558, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After you left NASA, did you continue in your journalism career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 559, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I haven’t really done that much with it. As you can see, we live here now and they’re kind of happy that we do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 560, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had read somewhere where you work as somewhat of a consultant with children’s books on space, is that true?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 561, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did do some of that. I’m trying to recall the name of the outfit. But I did do some. It was more of a technical review thing, where I would review some of their stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 562, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That knowledge is still back in the recesses of your mind, I guess, all those years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 563, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I guess. That was sort of fun. They didn’t pay much money, but I really didn’t need to get much from them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 564, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As we close today, can you think of anything that you would like to share with us that we might not have covered, maybe a special story or a unique memory, any anecdote that you can think of that we can add?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 565, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let’s see. Let me think. No, I can’t think of anything. You got to meet and be and around a lot of interesting people in that time frame. Norman Mailer covered the space program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 566, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your impression of him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 567, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was different, very interesting. In fact, he was somehow tied in, I guess, with a lady who worked for\\n\\n Life\\n\\n magazine at the time. Her name was Dodie Goodwin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 568, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 569, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know her?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 570, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that name, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 571, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. But I recall, in fact, we have a picture of I think it was one of the news conferences where I’m behind the glass, because we were doing it that way just to practice, I suppose, pre-mission, and Mailer is sitting out there and she is and some of the other press.\\n\\n [Referring to rain] Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. You’re going to drive back tonight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 572, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, we’re going to be here in town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 573, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, I’m glad to hear that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 574, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we are, too.\\n\\n I was going to ask Sandra as well, did you have any questions you’d like to ask?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 575, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just had a couple. During the time that you were in quarantine, what exactly did you report on? Did you report on the astronauts’ day-to-day activities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 576, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s what you tried to do as much as you could. There was a time or two I got the astronauts a little upset with me, at least in one case, I guess it was Collins more than anything else, where there was a church service, and I reported honestly the only one that showed up was Armstrong. I guess the only reason he showed up was because I had showed him a release that said we were going to talk about this. He showed up and I guess Aldrin and Collins did not, and they were not happy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 577, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they have any duties during that quarantine time that they were supposed to be doing, any sort of thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 578, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 579, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did they pass their time or how did you pass your time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 580, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they had debriefings, and I did sit in on some of their debriefings to listen to those, and that was kind of a fascinating thing to do. But it was also fascinating because you could see Collins was not—he knew he was not on the surface of the Moon, so he would be sitting there reading something like\\n\\n Aviation Week\\n\\n while they were talking about all what they had done and this kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 581, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they get to see any of the news coverage of their actual flight once they were in quarantine and any of the reactions? I’m thinking particularly the pictures that we’ve all seen of people standing in Times Square [New York City, New York] and people just watching it in awe. Did they ever get to see any of that during quarantine?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 582, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not sure that they did during quarantine. They probably did afterwards. They went on this world tour. In fact, I guess Julian Scheer is the guy who led them on that, that was quite an interesting thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 583, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also mentioned that you went on the geology field trips." + }, + { + "turn_id": 584, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 585, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you go on more than one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 586, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went on, it seems to me, two or three." + }, + { + "turn_id": 587, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your duties while you were on those trips?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 588, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To deal with the press." + }, + { + "turn_id": 589, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just the press that would be there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 590, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, those were all on the Big Island. You started in Honolulu [Hawaii], okay, and I guess that became such a good deal because the Hawaiian Village Hotel took us in and really gave you first-class royal treatment. I recall one of them—who was it? Aldrin was there, and he had some good-looking chick with him, not his wife, obviously, since she was back in Houston or wherever, but they were introducing them and that kind of got to him, and you could see that he was trying to not show up too good. But the shows were really quite good. That’s when Hilo Hattie—know the name? Well, she was a big entertainer in that era. Because this was—when—the middle sixties. Yes.\\n\\n No, that’s mainly what you did. You dealt with the press that was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 591, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it sounds like never a day went by that you weren’t doing something different from the day before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 592, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was an interesting time in my life, I’d have to say that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 593, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One thing that I didn’t ask you about that is kind of the obvious, but maybe not the most interesting, was all the paperwork that you had to do. Was there a lot of procedural writing and structuring and that type of work where you were at your desk doing administrative work or was your role such that that wasn’t a big part of it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 594, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was a part. For example, I did write the ground rules for the pool operation that we later went to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 595, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How were those received by the press?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 596, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They tended to like it. I mean, they liked the fact they were inside, and I guess it worked out pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 597, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your staff, did they travel quite a bit throughout the missions or were they pretty much housed at the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 598, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it depended on which mission. Jack Riley, for example, spent a lot of time in Moscow [Russia] before the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 599, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you end up traveling quite a bit other than those ones that you mentioned, or were you pretty much at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] or at Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 600, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was mainly at the Cape or Houston. When we used Jack mainly, he became our Soviet or Russian expert, and he dealt with some young guy over there that is probably an old guy now, named Dennis Shinko [phonetic], who may no longer be in power or doing anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 601, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any interactions with the Russians that came here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 602, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, I did. In fact, I think in the TV room in there I’ve got a thing of our joint—well, it’s the thing we used in the newsroom. It was kind of part in Russian and part in U.S." + }, + { + "turn_id": 603, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I’ll have to take a look at that and see that. What an interesting time especially since you had served in the Air Force during those cold war days and now that you were working with the Russians in the space agency, it’s quite a change of time in just twenty years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 604, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, it was quite a change. Yes, it was. In fact, in the Air Force I was stationed in Taiwan, I think I’d mentioned to you. That’s when the Chinese Communists were shelling Quemoy, and that was an interesting time, too, because they had this plan where they did it only on odd days or something. That was back in the early or late fifties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 605, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it seems like you have had quite an interesting life and met a tremendous amount of different people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 606, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. I have enjoyed a lot of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 607, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we certainly have enjoyed the time with you this afternoon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 608, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 609, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We have learned a lot. Again, we thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 610, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John E. McLeaish", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, now, I appreciate your coming by, and I hope it works out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 611, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It did. We appreciate all the information you’ve given us." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00433", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ONeillJW/oneilljw.htm", + "original_file_name": "ONeillJW_7-20-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ONeillJW/ONeillJW_7-20-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John W. O'Neill", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 20 July 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Carol Butler" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John W. O’Neill" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 20, 2001. This oral history with John O'Neill is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in the offices of Signal Corporation in Houston, Texas. Carol Butler is the interviewer and is assisted by Sandra Johnson and Kirk Freeman.\\n\\n Thank you for joining us again today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Last time we talked through a good portion of your career, and we worked up to some of the most recent activities you were involved with. So I want to pick up today talking about some of your involvement with the Shuttle-Mir program and the beginnings of that agreement with Russia over there and building that connection between the two operations groups and how you would support the people over there, the U.S. citizens working in the control center in Russia, that sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you could tell us a little bit about how that all worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, at the time that we really entered into operations development for the Shuttle-Mir program, there were so many other things going on also in the directorate that we decided to focus most of that activity in our flight director's office, as I recall, arranging that. Of course, we stayed very much in touch with that, but some of our flight directors definitely had the lead in working the interface with the Moscow control center, how we would arrange all that. We very much stayed involved with all of the requirements that were being put in place and the protocols on who would do what and how we would reach agreement on operations matters during the mission and all of that. But it was very much focused in our flight control elements and in the flight director's office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to get involved at all more on a level where diplomatic concerns came into play?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I can remember conversations with the Russian gentlemen who were the leads in their operations field, and they wanted to make sure that we understood their level of experience and expertise and that it was their program and that things would be operated in the way that they had evolved. It was a matter of recognizing their way of going about training and operations and all that.\\n\\n So it was a learning experience, and the two cultures are somewhat different. We stress training in terms of workbooks, simulator scenarios that investigate the crew response to all possible malfunctions and anomalies and all that. They certainly prepare their cosmonaut crews to handle situations, but they do it through, I'd say, in-depth system education that's broader in scope. They tend to not operate quite so much with handout written materials and all of that and computer based training as we do.\\n\\n At that time, they did most of their training by classroom instruction to the cosmonaut crews and then our people with them. And then evaluations in a simulation kind of environment, they rely on testing and evaluations of that type. So I would say they do a more basic, \"Understand what's behind the engineering of the systems and all that and then you will be prepared to operate the systems and repair things that come up.\"\\n\\n We go directly at a detailed understanding of not only the theory and the engineering behind the systems but practice on specific failure scenarios to a greater degree. So, bringing those two cultures together was interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That definitely would have presented some challenges." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And they're still doing that today. I mean, that's how they're having to work things out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved at all in setting up the agreements as to how the operations would be managed for the Space Station when that came into play?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Again, in terms of having a mission operations and NASA human space flight operations' outlook and philosophy incorporated in those agreements. But there again, we had people who were traveling a great deal to Russia and working the details of that, and of course we were working with the program, too, to provide our ideas. Most of the dealing were in working groups and committees set up by the programs, where yes, MOD did chair some of that activity, but most of it was chaired by the program and we played our role in trying to reach agreement on operations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly some interesting things that were going on during that time frame." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, around this time, too, and as these agreements were all being worked out, you became involved with the Operation Streamlining team which transitioned into the base operations office. This appeared to be a NASA-wide-type organization to begin with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was NASA-wide. I might mention that undoubtedly was the very busiest time of my career because simultaneously I was at that time the director of the Mission Operations Directorate [MOD]. I was also either on the board of Space Center Houston, which was quite an interesting thing in itself, and we were going through some financial problems at that time and having to deal with the debt service and really getting set up for a business-like approach to the long run.\\n\\n Then we were trying to get the Space Operations Management Office approach. We didn't call it that initially. The whole SOMO and later the Consolidated Space Operations Contract [CSOC] came about because of—well, I guess three or four basic reasons. Most basic, it was felt on the part of NASA headquarters and the administrator himself, Mr. [Daniel S.] Goldin, that it was time to leverage the capability that had developed in the commercial world. While NASA and the DOD [Department of Defense] were certainly instrumental in pursuing the first tracking and data retrieval from space kinds of capabilities and had developed a tremendous capability to support their programs and our programs at NASA, it had spawned an industry.\\n\\n By the time we were thinking about the space operations approach, industry was spending far more on new capability. They were spending more on research and development relative to new capability than the total NASA budget. So it seemed time to take advantage of what had happened out there in the commercial sector and in industry.\\n\\n So that was the number one idea, and embracing industry practices to streamline and become more efficient was a part of it also. There was definitely a feeling that too much of the NASA budget—and we've always had these budget problems, but we were really in a squeeze—too much of the total budget was having to be earmarked for operations support and that if we consolidated in some areas, took advantage of the economies of scale in such a consolidation, if we, instead of duplicating all necessary expertise at every center, had some centralized source of the specialized expertise that's so important in that field, that would contribute to the efficiency.\\n\\n Then, at the bottom line, we could reduce the resources required to support operations, both staffing and money, and therefore put more into the programs. It also implied—and this became the big obstacle—a certain level of loss of control in their minds at each one of the centers. The centers had every right to worry about that, and they never quite got over that concern. It was so important to most of the centers that they have near total control over their data and mission services support at their center.\\n\\n So some of the consolidation ideas and centralization ideas didn't go as far as originally intended. But still, money has been saved. The budget was definitely reduced at the beginning of the whole effort, and they have managed to continue to provide good operations support throughout. So it was a good idea in that regard. It hasn't accomplished its total goals of maybe the level of cost savings or the amount of consolidation. Maybe those weren't solid goals. I'm not sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just in conjecture and in looking at this idea, do you think it's something that, over time, will continue to grow like into Space Station and that the space industry will move in that direction in general?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they will simply because of NASA's need to concentrate on its research and development mission. If we are ever allowed to pursue new programs, particularly planetary programs involving humans and all that, that's going to require this tremendous amount of talent and that available in the agency to concentrate on those programs, and there will be more of a tendency to look at what industry can take care of in the way of basic operations support and infrastructure.\\n\\n And they'll continue to develop and lower the cost of these services. A good many of these services that used to be so specialized when NASA and DOD were developing those kinds of things are now almost commodities that you can buy, if not by the yard, I mean, you can contract for them in a pretty direct way with industry.\\n\\n I failed to mention that aspect of getting space operations started. It was felt that there was the possibility that if programs and projects were more accountable in a full-cost accounting kind of mode for the mission and data services they were requiring, then they would be more careful, they would be maybe not quite so ambitious in all the services they wanted, and that it would just be a more efficient way to approach the literal purchasing of services to support the projects. So that was in the picture, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned a little bit that some of the centers were concerned about the loss of control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there also just hesitation in general about such a different way of doing things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was, and I really want to be fair to the centers and the programs and the projects. It wasn't just that they totally wanted control for control's sake. NASA's programs are always evolving at a pace that, what you are sure are your requirements today as the program evolves, as you get results from the program, or as the development process goes forward, your requirements change. So that defeats some of the fixed price, \"We know exactly what we want, and we'll just contract for that.\" It defeats that particular approach, which is more common in, you know, the telecommunications industry. So these people were concerned about what process they'd have to go through, would the whole thing be flexible enough to support them?\\n\\n Indeed, one of the problems, if you want to term it that way, on that whole contracting arrangement is that there's been such growth in the requirements since the contract was originally let. At quick glance, if you look at the total amount of money required, it makes it look like, well, they weren't as efficient as they should be. You have to take into account what was added to the contract after it was originally put in place. So it's an interesting challenge, like most of the challenges in operations in NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then it's still a relatively young challenge that's been started, thinking of the age of the space program and all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and we took advantage early on of a lot of things that came from the DOD. For what it's worth now, the DOD is looking very hard at the experience in SOMO and CSOC, the positives and the speed bumps that were encountered, because they are considering privatizing the ranges, the eastern test range and the western test range. So they're trying to learn from NASA's experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that's good that they're able to build on that, and maybe it'll be of benefit to both agencies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've mentioned a couple of times throughout as we've been talking some of the budget challenges that came across, especially in the later days of the space program as you moved up into management. How would you deal with budget challenges in general on a management level, on a personal level? Because they did persist throughout so much of your career. Was there any thoughts you have on that or any one way that you would find most effective?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you would go through the basic budgeting process, and everyone seriously tried to get their requirements defined to be as austere and that as you believed you had to have to operate. You would work that budget up through the system and try to defend it and try to show what would happen if you didn't get that budget. Then the marks would come back and they'd be a little less, or maybe quite a bit less. So you would just plain have to defer capability.\\n\\n I mentioned that, early on when we were first flying shuttle, we had to do it with basic architecture and tools on the ground that were left from the Apollo program. It took a long time to get the money to build new ground operations support capabilities and all that. You were always very reluctant to, in any way, compromise anything that had to do with the training of crews, the training of flight controllers, and the staffing of the flight control teams. So generally it meant that new capability that would have allowed them to do a better job or a more efficient job, you kept pushing that off into the future.\\n\\n And that was just when you first got the marks against the budget. Then you would go through the year, and you sincerely believed you'd done everything you could, you just couldn't take out anymore, and then you'd get another 10 percent cut or whatever. And we'd all scramble and work with the contractors, and that's when the team really comes together, not in a defensive way. I mean, when a budget decrease was decreed, the contractors and our MOD team would go to work on it, or our SOMO team, and we took big budget reductions in the early years of SOMO. We'd work on it, and we'd prioritize and just take things off the bottom of the list. That was the only way we could approach it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a challenge that's probably going to be around for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. I think it's only going to get tougher for everyone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there any thoughts you have on how more support could be generated for the space program, either on a general public level or a congressional level for budget? Or does it need to become commercial?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we have to depend almost totally on our contractor friends because they are allowed within their operation to literally have a public relations campaign and do some level of advertising. As you probably well know, NASA is prohibited from spending money on direct advertising. So they have to rely on the public being interested enough that it will come to the web sites and whatever that NASA's set up.\\n\\n NASA's always been so open about their operation, and if you just ask, NASA, all the centers will just provide all the information they can, and they try to do it in a really straightforward and interesting and attractive way of packaging the information about their programs. But there has to be such a large element of \"Come to us, and then we'll tell you.\"\\n\\n I don't think, unless there's a problem of some kind, the public has NASA on their mind. It doesn't quite tend to come and ask about these things. So I think we need to have a more coordinated program through the contractors, who can, as I said, spend some amount of resources on that. We just need to keep what's being accomplished in the agency.\\n\\n How many times here in Houston do you see where some application of space technology is helping someone in the medical field and all that? I hope that's happening across the country. I think it may be that it's a little more in Houston because we're here and there's this close relationship with the medical center. But I guess we have to just keep trying. It's not number one on the public's interest list right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Unfortunately, and as you said, the big things that you cover in the media are usually things that are going wrong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And that goes right back to the funding problems that we do have. Unless the people in the Congress and unless the White House feels that there's tremendous public support and that there's a real constituency for space, it's not as high on their priority list as their allocating funding.\\n\\n Now, I don't want to be unfair. Overall and particularly some individuals in Congress really try to be forward looking, and they realize they have to support technology pursuits and all of that to keep the country moving. But it's tougher than it once was, certainly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hopefully, the interest in the space program, which is still there even if it doesn't come out as much, because it is such exciting and different thing, hopefully that will stick around for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I can't help but be encouraged by the reports you get from the astronauts or the people that go out on public appearances that they always draw a very large, interested crowd, a lot of enthusiasm, particularly among the young people. So interest hasn't died off. It's just not quite at the level it once was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned earlier that during the time that you were working on SOMO and being director of the MOD, you were also involved with Space Center Houston. This is one area that the public can get some exposure to the space program, but it did have some growing pains in there. If you could tell us a little bit about, first, how you got involved with the project, and then how it progressed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was on the board of Space Center Houston mainly because of my role in the Mission Operations Directorate. I was the deputy in MOD, I believe, when I was first on the board. The way the board is set up, outside members predominate, but there has to be five, I think, NASA members on the board, and the board chairman is traditionally a NASA person.\\n\\n It was important to have someone from MOD because the public tour of the center and a whole lot of what they would like to display in Space Center Houston had to do with the operations, and we fortunately or sometimes unfortunately are in the limelight because of the control center and all of that. So it was considered to be a positive thing to have someone from the astronaut office and someone from MOD on the board. So that's how I got involved right from the start.\\n\\n The people that really got the whole thing going were Bill [William R.] Kelly, at that time the director of—I don't know how well I get the name right. It isn't Center Operations—but it was the Center Management Directorate, and Hal [Harold S.] Stall, who is the head of Public Affairs, it was really Hal Stall's vision, and it took his enthusiasm and energy and dedication to keep the whole thing going.\\n\\n So at first it was, what is the concept, and can we raise the money? And it had to be outside money. There was a very definite limitation on what NASA could do. A small amount of funding was authorized by the Congress, and, frankly, it was equal with some amount of inflation to what was granted to KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] years ago when they were putting their visitor center in place. But you could only tap that funding in very specialized cases. In the end, it was only used for the improvements on site to allow visitor access and that to buildings and facilities on site.\\n\\n The rest of the money had to be raised through a bond issue, donations from major companies, and all that. So the first part of it was a big fund-raising and bond issue kind of thing. The county and all that helped by issuing the Manned Space Flight Education Foundation bond package and all of that.\\n\\n Then we embarked on finding the people that could do the planning and all of that at the facility. Fortunately, the Disney organization—I should mention that Marty Sklar, who is the head of [Walt] Disney Imagineering, the engineering branch of Disney that builds their different venues and is really on top of all the fantastic development they do at their visitor parks and all that, he was a part of the board also. But we were fortunate enough to engage Disney's interest, and they steered us to the Bob Rogers Corporation [BRC Imagination Arts], an independent design and development and concept firm that did a lot of Disney's work, and they started putting the conceptual plans together.\\n\\n Then we engaged an architect. By that time, Madison Avenue had gotten behind the bond issue sufficiently so we went ahead with the plans. At every step along the way, the board and people from the center that we would bring in and get involved advised us on what the exhibits, what the venues and everything, would be.\\n\\n It took a little longer than we planned, ended up being about a 70 million-dollar investment overall, but I think it opened in '92.\\n\\n We didn't quite have the visitor traffic initially that we had hoped for so there were some issues about servicing the debt, servicing what we owed on the bonds and all of that, but we engaged financial consultants who helped us restructure the debt and restructure admittance and all of that a little bit. So I think they're on a pretty solid basis.\\n\\n They embarked, in the management of the center, on pursuit of venues that had a little more appeal to the youngsters. It was intended all along to really educate people about the space program, and I think the center did a great job of that right from the start. But you're talking about families' discretionary entertainment money, so there'd better be a pretty large entertainment element along with the educational element, and I think they've done a good job of balancing that now. So I think they're on solid ground. I'm proud of the facility. I'm always pleased to take people over there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's pretty nice. We go over there whenever we have new interns that come in to help with the project, give them a chance to get an idea of what the early programs were like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I particularly enjoy the films that are made up of old footage and then the new film that was developed. That really helps explain a whole lot of what the program's about to people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were putting this together, as you said, there was opportunity for visitors to come on site, and they did take tram tours of various locations, which include the new Mission Control Center. Were there ever talks about access to the old Mission Control Center, or is that something that's not really possible to have the public be able to go in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there would be quite a facility expense related to that. I'm not sure what the recent planning is. Yes, from a historical sense one of the Apollo control rooms is still maintained much as it was. It's a national historic site. I mean, the displays and that aren't active in that anymore, but it's still there.\\n\\n One of the things that makes it rather expensive to provide access to any of these facilities is the access that you have to provide for people who have physical problems. It's very difficult to figure out how you can bring people in and take care of getting them to upper floors by some elevator path that doesn't now exist that won't interfere with everyday business. That's the big thing about all the tour activity, it cannot interfere with day-to-day training or operations activities.\\n\\n That's also the great thing about the tour. They're actually watching real things going on, but in order to allow the public to do that and not interfere with or distract people who are carrying out those activities is a challenge. That put a little bit of a limit on what you could do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I certainly understand. They are doing an important job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. But that's one of, I think, the really great things about Space Center Houston. There is no venue or mock-up or anything on any level that's not completely accessible, and I think that's wonderful. It's not only required, but I think that's a very, very good requirement. You really want to open it up so that everybody can see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely. They always seem like they're having fun whenever I'm over there. You can see the kids having a great time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You eventually did move on and retire from NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you've moved into consulting. You work with USRA [Universities Space Research Association] and I believe you're in USA [United Space Alliance] to some extent. Can you mention anything about some of your reasons for moving on? Was it just time to move into a new area for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, a whole lot of it had to do with the Space Operations Management Office and the impending CSOC, or Consolidated Space Operations Contract. I was already sixty-seven, nearly sixty-eight, years old when I retired, and I really felt that the people who would manage and operate the CSOC contract and SOMO, in the long haul, needed to be the ones in place when the RFP [request for proposal] was finally issued and when the Source Evaluation Board was really going through their activity.\\n\\n I was there through the issuance of the RFP for the Phase A studies, and I stayed through the completion of that, but when you are going to go for the long-haul contract, it really seemed to me that I needed to move on and turn it over to the people who would really operate and manage the contract for the long haul. So that was a big part of my decision.\\n\\n And age-wise, it seemed like the right time, although I only stayed really retired for about six months and found out I wasn't as ready to—mainly not interact with the people. I missed the people. I missed being involved in what was going on. I know I've repeated this to a lot of people, but I do have to say it's nice to not be any longer responsible for the budget or those budget cuts or for the personnel matters. But I just couldn't get away from wanting to be involved on the program. So if there's an area where I really think I can contribute and the company thinks I can contribute, yes, I work at it. I try to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been involved with at USRA? Since that's dealing with students, it must be a slightly different area for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do not have that much to do with the student activity at USRA. That is handled by Barbara Rumbaugh-Hammond. She is the manager of that activity.\\n\\n In the Houston operation they also have a small subcontract with the CSOC contract with Lockheed-Martin [Corporation] and Honeywell [International, Inc.], who are partners on that. That small subcontract mainly has to do with the providing of liaison and interface with the research communities, who are, in the end, the true customers of mission and data services and what NASA does.\\n\\n So one of the things that USRA does is they conduct periodic science working groups where the participants are well-known researchers in the different disciplines involved in space research, and it provides for interaction between CSOC management and these researchers so that they can let CSOC know what's going well and where they think something would really benefit them in the future or something that could be improved upon. So it makes for a very constructive interaction. USRA handles that.\\n\\n But USRA is involved in many areas. They operate the Lunar Planetary Institute [LPI] here. Well, they operate institutes for NASA at five other NASA centers, also. So they're involved across a wide variety of fronts. They keep an eye on new activities like the utilization and operations management process for Space Station, where some people in Congress and some people in NASA even feel that that activity would be better managed by a non-profit who is outside NASA but in close contact with the research community. So we're tracking those kinds of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that's certainly an important bond there with the research community and then, on the opposite angle, with the academic community in a different way. That's very interesting. I hadn't realized that they were involved in all of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They have a much broader base than a lot of people would think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. Hopefully, that's all working out well for you, in that you're able to work when you want to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. I end up with the inevitable conflicts of different companies that I'm working with having important meetings at the same time, like working for NASA when you were always having trouble keeping your time and schedule together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think sometimes it's hard to avoid in any job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back over your career with NASA, it took a lot of different people to make everything happen, make it all come together for the various programs. Are there any individuals that had a significant impact on you personally or that you think were had a vital contribution to the program that you'd like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you could take almost every one of the people I worked directly for: Jim [James W.] Bilodeau, who was the division chief that I worked for for many years, Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz, Warren [J.] North, who was head of the Flight Crew Support Division when I first came to NASA. And then people in program management and directorate management. I know I've mentioned Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.]. I mean, you couldn't help but be affected by his ability to stay on top of the situation and really determine what was important and zero in on it.\\n\\n I do recall that some time ago, when some of us were asked to fill in a questionnaire about what we considered to be the important traits and that for NASA management, at the very end they said, \"Well, who is your hero? What person stands out most in your mind?\"\\n\\n Bob [Robert R.] Gilruth, of course, he was the center director. You didn't have so much interaction, but we work in an environment, and I'd like to think it's still that way today, where if you had a better idea or you thought there was a problem that really needed to be addressed, in pretty short order you could be in front of Dr. Gilruth or in front of the program managers explaining what you thought needed to be done.\\n\\n Now, you'd better have some solid backing for your thoughts, but I was just so impressed that these people would take the time to give you a hearing. Of course, you went through some reviews in your organizations to make sure that these were appropriate topics to be surfaced, but when you did have any chance to interact with or observe Dr. Gilruth or the guy that I named as my hero, George [M.] Low, they were so professional and they listened to everyone at every level and gave what they had to say due consideration. They didn't tolerate frivolous things, but they were just such professional managers and just drew the best out of everyone, to the degree that you couldn't help but be impressed. It influenced how you thought you ought to operate.\\n\\n I'm sure forgetting a lot of people. I mean, golly, the Glynn [S.] Lunneys and Bob [Robert F.] Thompsons and all of those people who were so outstanding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly for such an endeavor as the space program, especially in the early days, coming up with everything fresh from the start, it did take some outstanding people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And another guy that really deserves a lot of credit, I think, for keeping things together and he had such an uncanny feeling for people was George [W. S.] Abbey. He had more to do with the shaping of the good, young management capability in MOD than anyone I could think of because he was just in touch all over the place and was constantly bringing in someone, saying, here's a guy or here's a young woman that you really need to consider, which meant you'd better really consider them. They always performed so well. He was a very good judge of people in that regard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's fortunate.\\n\\n Well, looking back over your career again, as well, what would you consider personally to be your biggest challenge and, conversely, your most significant accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As spectacular as the accomplishments were on Apollo 8 and Apollo 11, yes, I'd go back to the Apollo era, even though, you know, the first flights of shuttle were so amazing. Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 happened pretty much as planned. So I tend to think more about having to handle the situation on Apollo 13, having to handle the situation on Skylab that wasn't life threatening but it was certainly program threatening. The way that we all came together and came up with things that had never even been thought about before to resolve the situation, yes, I'm very proud of what we did there. My part was mainly on the procedures end, but on the other hand, it took that to implement what the rest of the organization, including the contractors, came up with.\\n\\n Then beyond those kinds of things, maybe most people wouldn't stress this kind of thing, but several times I was asked to, at the center level and at the directorate level, get involved in trying to restructure and do the best you could of breaking down some organization barriers and working things out so that it became a more effective organization. I'm proud of what we accomplished there in many cases. I know that doesn't immediately come to most people's minds, but you really had a lot of people to deal with and a lot of cooperation to develop, where maybe it wasn't there initially. I'm proud of our handling of those things in such a way that it didn't create a lot of animosity and everyone worked together, and it worked out fairly well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly did, and that's certainly something to be proud of in all of those cases.\\n\\n I'd like to take a moment to ask Sandra and Kirk if they had any questions for you.\\n\\n Okay. Well, is there anything that you can think of that we haven't covered that you'd like to mention or any final thoughts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Just how great it's been, the years working with NASA. I never could have imagined as we're driving into Houston coming here from Albuquerque [New Mexico], how things would unfold and how really interesting it would be and what great people I would work with. It's still so good to see them, and it's still a pleasure to look back on what we've accomplished over the years. So it's been a great run." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good, and it's very fortunate that you are able to say that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I really feel that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we appreciate you sharing those experiences and that great run with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's certainly been very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. O’Neill", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The years really got away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They do. They go by very quickly." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00058", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Tasha Thian", + "description": "Tasha Thian was the Director of NARA's Corporate Records Management for two years, from June 2014 - June 2016. She worked in records management for 18 years prior to coming to NARA.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/sources/thain-tasha-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "thain-tasha-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:17", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "June 24, 2016" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Jack Kabrel" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Tasha M. Thian" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Jack Kabrel. Today is June 24, 2016. I am conducting an oral history interview with Tasha Thian. This interview is part of the National Archives and Record Administration's Oral History Project. Welcome, Tasha. I appreciate you spending some time with us this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you, Jack. It's great to talk to you today. I truly enjoy working at the National Archives, and I look forward to your questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. The first one I'd like to ask you, just give us a very brief—in a minute or two— overview of the arc of your career at the National Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, actually, it's fairly brief. I've worked here for two years now, and when I retire on June 30, it will be two years and two weeks, I think, exactly. I came over to be the Director of Corporate Records Management June 12, 2014. I've been doing the same job for those two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Very good. Tell us a little bit about your earlier education and work experience, before coming to the National Archives and what led you to coming here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started out my career as a part-time, temporary passport examiner, which seems to have no relationship whatsoever to what I'm doing right now. Eventually, I moved into different positions, and I went into supervisory positions, and then a division chief position. I was able to move over to another division chief position, which was the Chief of the Record Services Division, back in 1992 and I held that position for about nine years. I had another position that was more FOIA-related (Freedom of Information Act) after that. Then I went into a backlog reduction-type position in records management. I love records management, eventually I became the records officer for another department. I have 18 years of experience in records management. I became a certified records manager with the Institute for Certified Records Managers. It's kind of funny because I worked very closely with the National Archives, but I didn't know about their own internal records program. I saw a presentation given on the Capstone approach and the email management system, and the speaker was the Director of Corporate Records Management. Obviously, they would have their own internal program, but I’d never heard of it before. I was curious about that. Later, that director left, I saw the position available, and it was the right timing for me. I got tired of the commute downtown, and wanted to have a work/life balance. I thought, \"Well, gee, they're being very proactive and progressive.\" Their concept with the Capstone approach was truly amazing to me, because being in the business—being in the records management business—these are difficult decisions to make on record scheduling. This concept was so advanced and unique, I was really impressed. I thought, \"Well, NARA looks like a good place for me.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Describe day one on the job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, day one—okay. That's kind of your orientation coming in. I think it's just the general impression that I have, and I think this has been almost every day when I come in to work at A2. It's kind of an experience. My commute is easy. I come in; we've got parts that are just—I mean, they're amazing. Everybody is friendly; it's very welcoming. The building is very welcoming. I'm impressed with the way other offices work, like Security and Facilities. It's a top-notch place to be. You have the management that's really top-notch as well. I think it's really an impressive place to work. I feel blessed coming in every day to work here. And it's the same thing; it's not phony. You walk in, the guards are very friendly, and people are very happy to work with you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had said that you were very impressed with NARA's Capstone approach, which is a big- bucket approach to mailing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you finally were able to settle in to your new position with NARA, were those expectations met and realistic?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I saw NARA as being—in the past. I didn't see NARA as being progressive. That it was very difficult to implement records management in an agency; and particularly, the large agency. The Capstone approach was so unique. It's so simple, it makes complete sense, and it just really alleviates the burden off the user. I was impressed with that. I'm still impressed with that. I think that to have these concepts makes them easier to implement. In other words, if you have a senior official—and generally speaking, they are making the policy-level decisions, or the major decisions for the agency, and that type of thing—if you're capturing all of their email, then without having to have somebody come behind them, and print them, and file them. Or, \"Was that a record or not?\" It's simplified it so incredibly that people can do their job. Really, records management should work in the background. If you think about it, in a lot of IT systems, when you build an IT system and they have workflows, the system automatically captures the records. Whatever that process is, there's a capture, and there's an archive that stores records, generally speaking, with an IT system. Essentially, you're taking what we call unstructured records like in the email system, and giving it structure. You're giving the records this position for it without a burden on the staff. I think that that's really a fantastic approach. I've enjoyed working with that approach because the email management system, the records management portion of it is administered out of corporate records management. I have a lot of activity with how that system works. It's impressive. We've had a lot of agencies come over and talk to us about it, and I've done presentations for the Executive Secretariat Council. When I showed it to them, I said, \"It's just amazingly simple. This is what you do.\" People are like, \"Are you kidding me?\" Because all of the effort that they have to take to either print a file, or people making decisions is totally alleviated. It really is a great concept. It’s a great marriage, where you have IT systems and records policies working together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What successes would you say that you've accomplished with your two years at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The way I look at it, it's a team approach. I'm more the conductor, and then you've got the orchestra, right? So, the staff and all the people that are actually outside of corporate records management are important players. Some of those people that really helped out, such as General Counsel (NGC), Office of the Chief Records Officer (AC), Digital Engagement Division (VE), information services, and all those partnerships came together to do a lot of different things. My staff were involved with all kinds of different initiatives that we did. One of the first things that I did was assess NARA's corporate records management program. It's tested against the CFR—the records management self- assessment criteria, and the Managing Government Records Directive. It determined the areas of weakness, and we start working on those various issues. Two years later, we have things like a very viable records management website with lots of good material on it. We've done a lot of things with the email system to have a policy directive, and a records schedule, and those types of things. We have, for the first time ever, a mandatory records management- training module for everyone. I'm very impressed with the Archivist and all of the support from senior management to put things in place. It might surprise you if you're not a supervisor or a manager, but we do have, now, that records management is part of the critical element for supervision. They're held accountable now in their ratings for records management. We have information in the supervisory handbook on records management. We've completely revamped the RIM network—which is the records and information management network—which has about 260 Information Management Officers (IMOs) and Records Custodians (RCs). We have presentations every two years, at least. Communication was a problem. We send records tips every week, so that it's very quick information, but it keeps it alive, and it keeps it where people can learn the records management concepts. We've been working on backlogs in our disposal processing of temporary records to make sure we're accessioning permanent records. We have a larger staff now, to handle various activities. A lot has changed, and I have to tell you that was through upper management support. We have three additional positions. Essentially, if you count me, there's five new people in the organization. I think it's a different corporate records management, and there is this saying throughout NARA, \"The cobbler's children have no shoes.\" I'm really hoping that, at least, they have one now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Sort of like a \"practice what you preach\" type of philosophy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was interviewed for the position, I was also interviewed by the Archivist. He did say, \"The cobbler's children had no shoes.\" He recognized it; everybody recognized it. They want corporate records management to be the model for agencies, and we are really moving into that position. Other agencies would seek us out on several different things. For example, we switched over to the new 308 series, and people were interested in our position descriptions. Several of agencies need help for systems on email management systems, and they've come to me, and come to my staff on that. I think we're really moving in that direction as the model agency. There's more to do, but I think that NARA has that ingrained in them, and they want to make sure that actually happens. Like I said earlier, when I worked at another agency, I really didn't know that NARA had its own corporate record management staff. They didn't attend meetings. Now, the corporate records management director is part of the Federal Records Council, and attends those sessions. There have been a lot of changes over the last two years that bring recognition to our program and upper management wanting us to be out there and be leaders." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It seems like there has been a lot of support behind this initiative. Could you identify any impediments that may have occurred during your two years, as far as going further in corporate records management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I really don't think so at all. I think that there has been a lot of support. The only thing that's probably challenging—and I do want to emphasize that for records officers across the government, it is an extremely challenging position. I don't think that upper management really understands how challenging it is. Really, you're a change agent. Essentially what's happening is—and particularly in the vein of the Managing Government Records Directive—you're basically saying you're retooling the whole Federal Government. The Managing Government Records Directive is really moving the government towards electronic record keeping. If you don't have systems in place already—which most don't have systems in place for things that will manage their email, for example, or manage their share drives, or manage social media, or manage digital photos, or those kinds of things—you're now saying that we have to have these IT systems. That is phenomenal, and we need to do that. It is huge to do that, even in an agency like ours, which is a medium-sized agency that has 4,000-plus seats, if you count our contractors, the government people, and interns, and volunteers. You've got a large group of people that you're going to have to switch over to these new tools. I think management has to keep in mind how difficult this job is. It's bigger than I think they're planning, if you can understand what I'm saying. For example, NARA is going to be moving to a case management system. Case management system is awesome because the new technology would just floor everybody. It's amazing. It's kind of like every office having a dream, where they can have their own mini-IT system developed for them. If you're talking about implementing that, then you're really going to have 100 different instances of case management and you need to have people working on that. You need people in records management helping every organization so they know how to manage those records. It will be extremely time-consuming to transfer over with case management, with the replacement to the shared drives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you say that one of the keys to record management is having everything being done behind the scenes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. If you can just imagine, if you were building an IT system—like Electronic Records Archive (ERA). Let's say you have ERA. ERA is capturing the transfer documentation; it's transferring the record schedule information. Within the system, you can determine, \"Is it permanent? And what will happen to those records?\" For example, the Transfer Record (TR) and the Legal Transfer Instrument (LTI) would be permanent records. If you have records schedules, what are they? Are they going to stay in the system? How would you do that? Then, you have a records schedule around that, but the system manages it. Nobody has to go in and say, \"Okay. Is this permanent, or temporary?\" You don't have to do that; its' already done for you. You just have to go in and populate the workflow. Yes, to the best that it's possible that you can automate this process, that's what should happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel that there's more to accomplish in your position? I know, technology being the way it is, will progress, and challenges will occur. As you're getting ready to leave right now, what do you feel there is left to accomplish?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's a ton of things to accomplish. I have to say that I think records management is a never-ending job. When I reach out to management or supervisors, it's kind of like human resources management. You're always going to do certain functions with managing your human assets, right? Well, records management is managing the business assets, and you're always going to be doing things to manage those business assets. You may do it differently—you may do it in an automated way—but there will always be something, such as you'd be administrating the systems, or you would execute a disposition within the systems, or you would control the records' creation, walk it down; those kinds of things. Access. What needs to be done? Obviously, according to the Managing Government Records Directive, we've got the 2019 goal. The 2019 goal is to automate everything. Even though it says permanent records, you can't really separate out the permanent records. Essentially, from now until the end of 2019, the efforts will be focused on converting everything over. There is a tremendous amount of work to be done, and for records management, like I said, it's a never- ending job, so you're either cleaning up stuff and backlogs from years ago, from people's poor habits or just because the record's life cycle is long to handle those records—to eventually converting over. And then, there will always be long-term issues of converting to the next system, migrating the data, and all of those kinds of issues." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What aspects of the job do you enjoy most, would you say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I actually—I love the people. I love working with the program. Records management is a program, and I love the different program activities. It's cool to be inventive, and work on an IT system. I've had a lot of fun with that in the past. I really enjoy it. I like to take things in a lab, and kind of figure out how it could work, and then roll it out. That's a really neat aspect of records management." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you had one issue that you would tackle—whether inside NARA, or inside corporate records management, either one—what would you choose?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think probably the biggest challenge—and it's in every agency, right? It comes down to compliance, and I've been trying to target it here as well, and it's really the managers and supervisors. I don't think they clearly appreciate their role with regards to managing the business assets. I don't think they understand that records management is set up to support them. For example, you have a records schedule. Well, the records schedule usually was generated working with their office to create this record schedule and to determine, kind of like a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), how long they keep their records, based on whatever legal or fiscal reasons, or historical reasons, for maintaining the records. I think many times, that managers and supervisors don't know that this is all set up for them; to help them manage their records. The parallel really is similar to the personnel system where we have work commitments, and we go and are appraised. We go through this whole process to properly manage our human resources. I think there really needs to be an emphasis on managing the business assets. I would like to see a more shaping towards records management, but it's your business assets. How do you use them? How do you properly manage those records? I would like to see, in the internal controls reporting, that each organization, each supervisor or manager, is held accountable and has to report on what they're doing, what are their business assets—their record assets. I think that's one way to get better compliance. They need to know they're the main driver. There's a lot of focus on, everybody has records management responsibility. Well, that's true, but the records supervisor makes it happen; and I don't think agencies get that across the board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some in the National Archives feel that we should get out of the records management business, and focus more on securing permanent records. What would you say to that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That would be a complete lack of leadership. I can't imagine something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I think people feel that it's very difficult to get the agency to comply to record management issues, and that our focus should just be on securing permanent records to the agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't see how you could separate the two, to be honest with you. I think there are things that could be experimented with, because I think the whole appraisal process is very convoluted. It takes way too long. I think that if you had people in the agencies that are certified records managers, and they can test something—that they can appraise temporary records and things like that. I think there are ways to make it easier. Part of the problem NARA has to realize—particularly in records management—and we'll take the Capstone approach. NARA created the Capstone approach. Luckily it was NARA, because if it was some other agency, I don't know how they would have pulled it off. I have to say, they treat corporate records management just like any other agency. In other words, Agency Services, often the Chief Records Officer, treats us like any other agency. I don't think other people realize that. We had some challenges on getting our Capstone list approved. Here, you have the very creators of the Capstone approach having a challenge, with another part of the organization getting the positions we proposed approved. Eventually we work through it, and it’s just any other records schedules. Other agencies can have some innovative approach, and we don't know that NARA would really support it and approve the records schedule. So, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? It's really hard to implement new innovative records management policies. I would like to see something more—in particular, in corporate records management—where we are more in the lab, test things out, and work through closely with the Chief Records Officer (AC) on these new concepts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That leads to a question I was going to ask at the end of the interview, but I'll ask it now. Where do you see NARA going, into the 21st century? That being the case of what you just said about us being on the forefront, do you see NARA as an agency that will be a leader, as far as the technology goes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would like very much to see that. We established a working group. We call it the 1.1 Electronic Records Management Working Group (ERMWG), which is, 1.1 standing for the goal in the Government Managing Records Directive, which is to manage electronically all permanent records by the end of 2019. We stood up this working group; a group of the right people, the right organizations, and came up with how we would actually capture or automate records within the National Archives. We created this document, which is just recently signed. It's the Electronic Corporate Records Management Specification. What it does is it lays out in a high level the requirements needed for these eventual IT investments for the replacement to the share drives. How do you capture email stitching? How do you capture chats? How do you capture text messages? How do you capture voice messages? What about websites? What about social media? What about special media, where you have video, and audio? How do you capture video and digital pictures? How do you capture those? We laid out this specification, which really was written in IT-speak, and it's directed towards the IT environment that says, \"Okay, we need to purchase these kinds of tools.\" Tools alone will not solve the problem. However, this is one aspect of, \"Here's the tools, or the requirements for the tools.\" And what you can do is you can look across those requirements, and you could say, \"Okay. I need to have a way to capture this, and this, and this.” Maybe there's a tool that can do multiple functions and actually save money, save time, and it can capture other things. For example, some products are out there that can capture a website, they can capture social media, and they can actually capture text messages. You can look across the requirements and you can see, \"Oh, okay.\" It doesn't have to be one product that captures everything. It could be multiple products. I think it's a very innovative approach, but what we're working on with that, too, is the records management strategy. We have a draft of that—I don’t think it's going to be ready by the time I leave— that talks about the other policy issues and the human part, where you've got the people issues, the different policies, the training, and the implementation. You have to bring those pieces together. Yes, I would really love to see NARA taking some of these—working with some vendors, do some pilot testing, and see, \"How would this work?\" Because other agencies are hungry for it. They're hungry for that Enterprise Content and Records Management (ECRM) specification. They need that direction; they need something. I know, from the Federal Records Council, which I attend, they're just dying to have anything from NARA that can just kind of show them a path of, \"How do you get to 2019? What does it look like? What does success look like? How do you deal with such a big problem, and how do you break it up?\" Our ECRM specification actually kind of breaks up the elephant into chunks that can be solved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How have cutbacks and sequestration affected your approach to creating this type of guidance?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is where NARA has to do a better job—and it is true—that automation done right saves a lot of money. Period. You know, if you look at the email system that we have, there's nobody printing and filing. It's all handled for them. I'm sure they've saved a lot of money by using this new approach. NARA was very intelligent in how they picked the vendor for this system. For example, it has low storage costs. There's only one instance of the email in the system. If you're sending around a bunch of PowerPoint slides, or you're sending around these big attachments, it's not killing the system because there's only one instance of the email in the archive. It's all the metadata that actually is there, that shows everybody that got the email, and all that kind of stuff. It's very sophisticated in how it works. It's not only that you've got the automation, but you've got the right automation, and you've got something that actually does save money because it has low storage costs. That's why that working in a lab, being very careful—because, you know, contractors, they want to make money. They want to send you something that, \"Oh yeah, I've got this big system, and it can do everything for you, and it's a miracle worker,\" but then it's millions, and millions, and millions of dollars. That's where we've got to get more sophisticated in looking at different methods. Actually, things are more advanced. Probably the biggest surprise to me in working at NARA was on the 2019 goal, where I was a little skeptical about, \"How can you solve this problem?\" Now, I know, absolutely, it's solvable. I've been looking at some of the vendors, seeing how it can work. Once you can see how it works, it really opens up your mind to these new approaches. It was even more simple, for example, in capturing social media than I could have ever imagined. For NARA itself, I think it’s key, particularly Agency Services and Corporate Records Management, to really know what's out there as solutions, and to experiment with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think a lab approach to all the records management to inform and teach them as they go out to agencies would be a wonderful idea as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so, because people are coming to you. People are saying, \"Well…What about this? What about that?\" Then, you either have people saying, \"Well, I can't commit to one.\" And another is like, \"Can you just give me a list so we can go out and look?\" I had people asking me questions. I said, \"Well, you know, here's some that we came across. Here's four of them. Take a look at them, and go see what you think.\" But to not know which four, to even give a name for somebody? We need that kind of sharing. I don't know if we have to—I mean, certainly, we've got to make sure that the contractors are not participating in those discussions, because you're assessing different projects and things. You have to be fair and open, and we definitely encourage that, because that's how you get the best deal and everything; but people are desperate, and we've got only a few years before 2019." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, very true. And the last one, on technology. One last question, the penultimate question is, is there anything more that you would like to say about corporate records management issues and technology? I know we talked a lot about it. Is there any final thing you'd like to say regarding that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just encouraging the lab concept, because I do know that we have to do some pilot testing and experimenting. There's a lot of automation issues that are going to be coming up; case management is going to be one of those. It's going to be very interesting. I think corporate records management will be embedded in that process, which is very good. Corporate records management is now a member of the Investment Review Board, so that any IT system that is purchased from now on must have the records management functionality; in other words, you can execute disposition; you can do legal holds; you can manage the records throughout the life cycle. We're moving in the right direction, but there is more to be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any final words of wisdom, anecdotes, or stories that you'd like to impart before you leave?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would definitely say that NARA wants to be the model agency. I think that's very impressive. A lot has been accomplished under David Ferriero as the Archivist. He's really committed to it. From what I see, upper management, like Jay Bosanko is terrific. He's the senior agency official for records management. I've been really impressed with the whole management team; Deb Wall, particularly. I think they are really moving NARA in the right direction. It's really been impressive to me. I've never had that kind of support for the records management program. I would just say for them to keep on doing; but it's a process. It takes a lot to be a records officer. The skill level is—and they recognize this—that they're going to have more advanced training for records managers. But it's a tough job. You have to be able to be a change agent. You have to know a lot about technology. You have to know about people and processes. It is an exciting challenge—very challenging—and at least at NARA, thank God that you've got senior support, which is fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. I think one of the most difficult problems as well is to be able to predict the future in some ways, to know where we're going to be headed with technology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's true, but things happen at lightning speed. And what a person might have done years ago—that you know, you have, now, one person probably doing three, and four, and five jobs. The only way you can do that is with automation. You think about some of the processes that really have been innovative over the last several years. Everybody has a smartphone. It just made you more efficient, right? I mean, you do a lot of—you have a lot of activities and work with that. That's where it's moving. It's moving where your mobile phone, you're going to be able to do a lot of work on the mobile phone. Things will be made easier for people. So, embrace technology, for sure, and we need to keep up with it and not fall behind. It does take a commitment, and you do need to have processes in place where, from now on, that records are captured with any type of new system. For me, my words of wisdom really is that records management is a business asset, and I think if people look at it more as being a business asset, they wouldn't think it as being foreign. Like, \"Oh, that's just what those people from NARA are requiring us to do.\" Your mission records, your mission business asset that we're trying to help you manage—and yes, of course, we at the - - have to follow the law, and all that kind of stuff, but it's really for you, and this is how you can use these records. This is how you can be transparent; this is how you can be accountable. I think that whole accountability piece needs to be there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jack Kabrel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think that we've come to an end. I'd like to thank you very much for service, and for your time today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tasha M. Thian", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. It's been a pleasure." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00867", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/RennilsonJ/rennilsonj.htm", + "original_file_name": "RennilsonJ_3-10-20.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/RennilsonJ/RennilsonJ_3-10-20.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 10 March 2020" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Justin J. Rennilson" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 10th, 2020. This interview with Jay Rennilson is being conducted in Houston, Texas, for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Thank you for joining us and for traveling all the way from California to come see us. We really appreciate it. I want to start by asking you about your background, where you’re from and your education, and how you first got involved with NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. I was born in Berkeley, California. And on my father’s side a long history of California, going back to 1865. They came originally from Scotland. I grew up in the Berkeley system, I went to the University of California, Berkeley, for about three years, and I did my senior year down at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles]. My major was astronomy, and shortly thereafter, before I even had a job, the Korean War broke out. I was in the Second World War the last year, and they said you’re never out of the Navy, so I was recalled. I spent 26 years active and reserve in the Navy.\\n\\n When I was ready to be released in Japan, I wanted to take graduate study, and I wanted to go to Germany because my interest was in optics. I had a nice German consulate official that wrote all the necessary letters. I was finally accepted at the Technical University in Berlin in the Optical Institute.\\n\\n When released, I traveled for two and a half months around the other way, so before I was 30, I’d been around the world. I studied there for over two years. I stopped my study for personal reasons having to do with my German wife’s family, came back to the United States, and through connections had a wonderful opportunity to make contact to a laboratory in San Diego, which was a part of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the time. It’s before the university at San Diego was established. That was the Visibility Laboratory, Vislab for short.\\n\\n That laboratory had been a part of MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge], and Dr. Seibert Q. Duntley, moved the whole laboratory, his area of expertise was in atmospheric optics, hydrological optics, and the interface between\\n\\n I became the optical engineer at the laboratory. We had several people who had come and worked at White Sands [Test Facility], New Mexico, together with Wernher von Braun, when they had V-2s [rockets] and they developed the Jupiter [rocket].\\n\\n One of my friends, Edwin P. Martz, at the Vislab, went up to JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] and got a job. Shortly after this, Ed Martz called me and said, “We got a great optics lab—we need to have you come on up.” We tried to get Dr. [Seibert Q.] Duntley interested in the space program. It was the early stages of NASA.\\n\\n Rudy [Rudolph W.] Preisendorfer, a great theoretical physicist, and I were very much concerned because when we watched Sputnik [Russian satellite] go over in ’57, and said, “What are we doing now?” We both wanted to get into the program, so we tried to talk to Duntley, and he said, “I know a lot about the atmosphere, the ocean, interface, but I know nothing about planetary surfaces, including the Moon, I’m not going to do it.”\\n\\n Later on, that laboratory got involved in the Gemini [Program] for visual tests. But Rudy went to General Atomics, and I went to JPL. That was the very beginning, and JPL had done a lot of work on rockets. They had developed a rocket assist during the war for heavily loaded bombers that allowed them to take off, and they felt that they were really the expert. Now the government had formed NASA and oh, great, “we’ll tell them how to run things.” This worked for about a year until they said, “Now, who’s the boss? We are.”\\n\\n But JPL was very interesting. When I joined it there were about 500 employees and within one year, we had scaled up to about 4,000. Of course everything was in trailers and some of them are still there. That’s the way I got involved.\\n\\n My desire even when I was a young boy, I was 10 years old, and our fourth-grade teacher took us to the observatory at UC Berkeley. I looked through a beautiful brass telescope on the craters of the Moon, and I was hooked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about the position at JPL. How did that relationship with NASA work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s another story. It’s interesting. Originally it was a Laboratory, and it still is a part of the California Institute of Technology [Caltech]. It was a university arrangement and they had built the Lab, not on campus, but up in the hills, where they’d done the rocket testing and everything else.\\n\\n Dr. [William H.] Pickering, who took over the directorship, was from New Zealand, great man. He was approached probably a year or two after we had organized everything and NASA Headquarters came out because they had Ames [Research Center, Mountain View, California], they had Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], they had Huntsville [Marshall Space Flight Center, Alabama], they had Houston, and they said, “We’re a little concerned that JPL is kind of out in the boonies. You’ve got a direct thing. All of your checks came via Caltech, not NASA.”\\n\\n They said, “Well, we think we’d like to bring you into the whole group since all the buildings and everything else is owned by NASA.” Dr. Pickering listened very carefully at this, and he said, “Oh, okay, well, I want to give you a little comment, that if you decide to do that today, tomorrow 80 percent of the lab will be gone.” They said, “Oh, okay.” Since that time JPL has been run by Caltech.\\n\\n But it’s been I think a very good relationship. There’s been a lot of problems in the various programs for JPL and NASA administrations. Headquarters couple times have said, “I’m a little worried about the direction.” Because this is a laboratory and if you take responsibility for an entire project, you’re going into a different organizational level. I think the lab learned a lot and we had a lot of wonderful people as leaders." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about some of those people, and when you first got there who you were working with. I know we talked about Gene Shoemaker before the interview. Also, Gerard Kuiper, were you working with him? Talk about those early days and what you were working on and who you were working with and how that was organized." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I first joined JPL it was in ’61. It was in April. The head of Space Sciences Division, which is the Division I was in, was Al [Albert R.] Hibbs. Al Hibbs was also the voice of Surveyor [Program]. He had a wonderful voice. Al was a unique individual because he had quite a connection to Hollywood personalities.\\n\\n Bob Newhart [comedian/actor], Leonard Nimoy [actor best known for his “Spock” character on Star Trek], these people showed up periodically during our missions. The reason why is that he and a group of Caltech students got together and went to Las Vegas [Nevada], and they looked at the roulette table and they figured it all out and they broke the bank. After that, he was a persona non grata. But he made a lot of notoriety especially in Hollywood, and so he kept that.\\n\\n When I joined JPL, I belonged to a photoscience group. In the photoscience group, there was about six of us. Two people in that group, Don [Donald E.] Willingham and Tom [Thomas C.] Rindfleisch, were responsible for setting up the exposures that the cameras would have to take on Ranger [spacecraft], for good photography and also where to go. They developed a wonderful theoretical parameter called a figure of merit, which was one number that you would choose as to your landing site, your lighting, and everything else.\\n\\n Now I had been trained in Berlin and done some stuff like that, and I was a little skeptical with it. But a lot of managers loved to have one number. “I want to go there. What’s the number, from 1 to 10, oh, that’s 9, that’s good, I’ll take that one.”\\n\\n Optics is not something you can simplify, but they did a marvelous job and Tom Rindfleisch left later on, he got his PhD from Caltech and was responsible for the entire digital medical facility of Stanford [University, California]. I talked with him a couple years back. He’s still alive, but we don’t know where Don is.\\n\\n The first task that I had was in the Surveyor program which we’d just let contracts to Hughes Aircraft aerospace division, and lots of experiments aboard that spacecraft, of which there were many (10), almost as many as Curiosity [Mars exploration rover] has today. “We’re going to appoint you as the cognizant scientist on the television experiment and your job is to act as liaison to the principal investigator [PI] and his team to the lab and also to the contractor, Hughes Aircraft.” That was my first job. Associated with that was a cognizant engineer. The cognizant engineer’s responsibility was basically instrumentation, what it would take, in this case cameras. He was very knowledgeable, that was [L.] Harold Allen. He passed away couple years ago. Harold was very good, and I think when you go through some of that effort, he was very instrumental in our entire Surveyor Program, which I can go into a little later.\\n\\n That’s the way I started. It was an interesting effort because the first thing that Al Hibbs told me, he said, “This is the beginning,” early stages of the Ranger Program, which was divided into three phases. The first phase was really just to see if we can get something up, do something. That wasn’t too good. The second one had a little bit more. They were going to put a seismometer capsule on the Moon, and it would measure moonquakes. Then they said, “Maybe we should have, because we know that the Soviets are doing it, they’re pushing,” they had the Sputnik, they had Yuri Gagarin [first human in space], all the way around the Earth, and so on. “We haven’t done anything. We need something for the U.S. to get excited about.”\\n\\n The first suggestion was “Well, there is a contract at Ford Aeronutronics [Division, Ford Aerospace, Ford Motor Company]. They were doing the capsule, we need maybe a facsimile camera which would rise up from this capsule and take the first pictures of the lunar surface. But it’s quiet, we don’t want the Soviets to know, we don’t want anything leaked. You are a military person.” By that time, I was a commissioned officer in Naval Security Group, which was naval intelligence. “We’re going to classify that as Secret. You go down and monitor the effort and then come back and tell us how they’re progressing, what can we do.” Hughes was also interested but they wanted to put a bigger camera on that.\\n\\n The story is of course that that second phase didn’t work. Our entire efforts to beat the Soviets failed. Of course they were there four months before Surveyor landed.\\n\\n Now what I intended to do was to monitor them, and I was involved in the Ranger Program, because by that time I had met the two other people that were involved in Ranger. As the cognizant scientist for Surveyor, my first job was to make contact with the principal investigator. During Ranger Dr. Gerard Kuiper, who was a Dutchman, and nobody ever called him Gerard, they always called him Dr. Kuiper, this is Dutch, so he basically said, “I should meet you.”\\n\\n I talked with, for the first time, Eugene Shoemaker. He was at Menlo Park, that’s the headquarters in the West for the United States Geological Survey. He said, “All right, we need to get together and meet.” I suggested a date, and he said, “Oh, I’m not going to be in Menlo, I’m going to be in Arizona at the meteor crater. Why don’t we meet there?”\\n\\n I said, “All right,” and I flew out to Flagstaff. You drive to Winslow, and from there you can walk over to the rim of the crater.\\n\\n Now Gene did his PhD thesis on that crater. He was way down in the bottom of the crater, and he climbed up, and we sat for about two-and-a-half hours just talking about what he wanted to do on the Moon. I suggested a couple things like colorimetry and polarimetry.\\n\\n Then about a day later we all went down to Tucson to meet with Dr. Kuiper. We had one other fellow from JPL, Herb [G.] Trostle, from the project office, . He was in the instrument section. He joined us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You can add that later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had a meeting with both Gene and Kuiper. The discussion was what kind of instrument do we have for a television system. Kuiper said, “I want to have something that’ll take in a lot of wide area so we can capture all of that.”\\n\\n Gene said, “Well, I have just a little bit of a disagreement with that, because what a geologist does when he’s in the field, he looks at the whole area he likes to reach down, pick up something, and look with a magnifier in detail. So, I’ve got to have something that will actually increase the resolution that I can examine closely.” That basically was only enabled by using what we called a zoom lens, a vari-focal length lens. Now you have a 25-millimeter focal length, which gives you your wide angle, and then you have a 100 mm focal length, which gives you the high resolution.\\n\\n In one optical system, we’ve got both of these and the investigators were satisfied. At the time Gerard Kuiper was in charge of the Ranger, so he was the PI, and Gene was the Co-I [Co-investigator]. Along came Surveyor, and they just flipped roles. Unfortunately Dr. Kuiper didn’t live to see a lot of our successes. But he did establish a wonderful facility at the University of Arizona, the digital building with six stories with a lunar and planetary lab, still doing marvelous work in planetary science." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The cameras and the lens and everything that they were discussing, talk about that for a minute. Was it the same for Ranger and Surveyor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about the two then and how they were developed for Ranger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The final phase 3 of Ranger and purpose was to aid Apollo who wanted to know how detailed, how many rocks, how many craters are we going to have when you get up close. We had only terrestrial information. Some of it was pretty good, but it really missed the mark, because we’re talking about several hundred meters of resolution, and what we needed was something up close. Phase three, because they’d had problems with phase two, there is a wonderful article written by [R.] Cargill [Hall], who wrote all of the history of the Ranger Program. It’s really on the whole program because it delves into everything. It also delves most importantly with the organizational problems.\\n\\n At one point, because we’d had failures in phase two, they said, “Well, okay, we need to redesign what we’re doing.” Instead of one camera coming down, they said they’d put six cameras. RCA was responsible for that. They had six cameras.\\n\\n The purpose of the six cameras, some of them were overlapped, so there was wide angle a narrow angle. At the very last second, they would take a section of one frame—these were television pictures—just before they crashed, which would give them a resolution probably on the order of a fraction of a meter. That would be just a snippet of that one area but to give an idea of how dangerous things were.\\n\\n Phase three started with Ranger 6. Everybody was alerted. The press had come in to Dr. Pickering because he thought it would be nice; local, national maybe. Then they told him, he said, “Oh, no, Dr. Pickering, we’re worldwide.” Everything was fine, it was all going great, no problem, till they were ready to turn the cameras on and everything disappeared. Pickering, I got to know him pretty well. He said, “I don’t want to ever go through that again.”\\n\\n There was a lot of pause in between to find out what had happened before they came up with 7. In 7 obviously we did it. My involvement came about because Gene Shoemaker established the Astrogeology Branch at Flagstaff. He loved Flagstaff. Of course, it was close to the crater where he did his doctorate. But it was a great place to live, and it had Lowell Observatory, and a lot of the interest for Mars, etc.\\n\\n He started the Astrogeology Branch and really is one of the founders of that particular science today. We give him honor. He set that up. He got together with Ames Research Center and Don [Donald E.] Gault, and they had developed up at Ames a special series of two guns which would fire a projectile into an object at roughly the velocity that you would have for an asteroid coming onto the Earth.\\n\\n You’d watch the effect, they would use special cameras from EG&G [Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc.] back in Boston that would capture in a microsecond the image. What they would see was a flash, it saw debris thrown up, and so on. Gene said, “We’ve got a mass that’s Surveyor, and it’s going to crash into the Moon, and hopefully we’ll see something, and maybe that display, what we’re seeing, might give us a clue as to what the material is.”\\n\\n At the time I joined JPL, it was interesting, there was only three other people that had a degree in astronomy. One was Ray [L.] Newburn, and he and I worked and established the Table Mountain Observatory which the Lab still has up in the mountains. Another one was Ed [Edwin F.] Dobies, my boss of the photoscience group with some astronomy, and Roland [L.] Carpenter, who was a guide with me at the Griffith Observatory LA when I was at UCLA. That was it.\\n\\n Gene said to me, “Well, since you’re an astronomer, and we don’t know exactly when this impact is going to go, Jay, we want you to organize observatories around the world to look at the impact to see if we see something.” We had several people. They were at Berkeley [Leuschner Observatory], they were at Mount Hamilton [Lick Observatory, California], Kitt Peak [National Observatory, Arizona], all around the world. I had telephone calls with people in Australia and a bunch of other places. It was really interesting because all these people that I had heard about when I was studying suddenly were on the other end of the line, so I had a great collection.\\n\\n The result is we didn’t see anything, it was a lot of false artifacts—they sent pictures back, we had teams going. In retrospect our purpose of course was to get good lighting so we could see the imagery, and to see something that small come out against that background would be almost impossible.\\n\\n Years later, LCROSS [Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite], nice mission, came in and they separated the payload to the upper stage for that rocket. So, they had the opportunity to see the impact of the upper stage in a dark crater and still take a picture of it, and there they found debris, and they saw a flash. That is years later. But that was my involvement, organizing all of that.\\n\\n Of course we were all members of the photoscience group, so we had a lot of interaction with everybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about Surveyor. From what I read, they were both conceived—Ranger and Surveyor—at the same time. Were you actually working with both of them when they were being developed, both programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I first joined the photoscience group our major effort at that particular time was for Ranger because we needed to have that success. I worked closely with Don Willingham and Tom Rindfleisch and everybody else in that particular group as a help, because we were all looking at the optical characteristics. The Ranger spacecraft was built at JPL.\\n\\n There was some effort that required research, going back and finding out who did this and who did that. The photometry on a lot of the observation of the Moon, believe it or not, has been done by Russian astronomers. They decided they didn’t have the big instruments, so they didn’t go further out, but they concentrated a lot on the solar system. Their remarkable research we used quite heavily in designing what we needed to have for the camera’s exposures.\\n\\n I started with that. But my major task of course was to respect what Gene and his team were developing in terms of instrumentation. The contract for building the Surveyor was let about six months before I arrived. That would be in the ’60s. Hughes Aircraft, one reason for this, was because NASA felt that Ranger had so many problems, and delayed, that they felt it would be better for JPL rather than build it themselves to have a contractor outside.\\n\\n I think there were three contractors involved, but they did determine that Hughes would be best. Hughes had a proposal to build a spacecraft, and on that spacecraft would be various instruments. They would take the responsibility for the camera, but it would be subcontracted for the optics.\\n\\n When I first joined and they gave me that task, I talked with Shoemaker about what he wanted to do, what we had to be capable of, and we went back to Hughes with my cognizant engineer Harold Allen. The first thing we discovered is that in their contract all they had was that the camera would be situated here so that they could look at all the other instruments. The instruments we had initially in Surveyor was absolutely amazing because it had a transport picking up a sample, would dump that, would do all kinds of analysis on that sample, like what Curiosity is doing. I think there were a total of about—don’t quote me on this but—about ten instruments all associated. We had geologists, we had mineralogists, we had a lot of people that were forming the committees that would engineer it.\\n\\n At the same time we were dependent upon a new rocket, which was called Centaur, and that rocket was supposed to sit on top of the Atlas and give us the necessary push to take 2,500 pounds, which was the flight weight of Surveyor initially, to the Moon.\\n\\n They had a lot of problems, and there was one delay after the other, because they were using a fuel which they had never used before, liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. When I was a young man in Berkeley at the university, we used to have a rocket club, and we’d sit down and calculate what kind of ingredients you need to get off the Earth. We said, “Well, the best is hydrogen and oxygen. Got to liquefy them.” Of course we all joked, “Boy, what an explosion that would be!”\\n\\n It took a while for them to really engineer it, and we used to have a little joke that Hughes, I think, had coined. We said that, “Oh, that’s easy, the time to launch is a constant.” Now if you understand mathematics you know you never get to the end. But we were able to develop a lot of the things that we needed for successful landing during that interval of time. We weren’t sitting around idle. We had a lot of little tools that we could use.\\n\\n Eventually we obviously were successful, but 400 pounds of that was off-loaded. We had originally four cameras aboard that spacecraft. The Surveyor has three legs, so there was a camera at every one of the 60-degree sectors, which is three, and they had one looking down.\\n\\n Surveyor 1 and 2 had that camera looking down but we never turned it on. The rationale for that is because of Ranger 6. Ranger 6 went down, and we turned on the cameras and bang, all communication was lost. They said, “Now if there’s something that might when we trigger the downward-looking camera, who knows? It could be a spark that would start the retro-rocket ahead of time or something else would happen. We’re not going to turn it on.” We never got our pictures which gave us location when we landed on Surveyor 1. But we had a great coinvestigator called Ewen [A.] Whitaker that did it all for us.\\n\\n I could go into the details on the camera, but we ended up having only one camera, and that was a limitation. But we did something with that camera which enabled us to have several firsts, which more than 50 years later we haven’t duplicated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about that, and talk about that landing, Surveyor 1. I read that you were at Goldstone when it landed, so talk about why you were at Goldstone and that experience of the landing. It was broadcast, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that one that was broadcast and caused a few nerves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was broadcasted. Now understand, we had done a lot of engineering, failure modes, a whole bunch of things like that, and when we got done, the people that were directly involved like Harold, myself, and a few others, we said, “Well, the probability is maybe 10 to 15 percent success.” There were several people in Hughes, and Gene, on the 25th anniversary, gave a nice talk at JPL, and he pointed out a couple people from Hughes that were pretty secure that we would be successful. There was not very many. I think Gene [W.E.] Giberson was initially involved in that. [Howard H.] Haglund and a couple of others at Hughes. But there was a lot of doubt.\\n\\n One of the major problems I think we had initially was that people were afraid to even talk about that. We had established about two years earlier—because our launch success was supposed to be—I think it was planned for early ’65. We obviously would have been there before the Soviet capsule and everything else. But since it got delayed, the television camera had a unique opportunity. It was a camera that was vertical. The zoom lens had a filter wheel and a mirror as a separate unit that sat on top of that. The television detector was a vidicon tube that was used in all the standard broadcast cameras at that time, was below the zoom lens, and below the shutter.\\n\\n This module, that is the mirror and the filter wheel assembly, was built by Hughes. The camera would look up into the mirror and the mirror would now tilt and turn around almost 360 degrees, go in one direction about 225 degrees and the other direction about 135 degrees. This would give you an entire panorama at two different focal lengths, so that would be either a wide angle (24 degrees) or narrow angle (6.4 degrees). You’d have to put all these images together on a template array. As you rotated the mirror so did the image, so you had to put that down in a particular orientation.\\n\\n We created a Television Science and Analysis Command, a TSAC group, which basically attempted to automatically take pictures. In those days there were a couple ways to do this. You could have a Polaroid and you’d take Polaroid pictures, you’d cut them up into small images, or you could use paper print rolls. The image you got was about 2 by 2 inches. Then you’d take that, and you’d put that down on a template array, which told you what angle and where it was supposed to be laid.\\n\\n We would try that out with a couple of groups. We would have a timer and we’d find out how fast they could take the images and put them down to have an entire panorama of that particular section.\\n\\n One of the things we did in the very early stages with the principal investigator, Gene Shoemaker, we said, “We need to demonstrate one of these instruments in the field.” Harold Allen and I got together, and we said, “What we need to do is build up some sort of a mock-up.”\\n\\n We had gone to Hughes and they said, “We can’t loan you any cameras that are being built now, sorry. But we can tell you what it takes, and you could get a commercial zoom lens and you could take a television camera and put that together and you could put a mirror on top and you could move the mirror by manual means.”\\n\\n We built a model, a structure like the spacecraft, and we went out to the desert, and we spent about three weeks in the desert camped out there at a location. We collected all this information, and we did this at JPL without any of the experimenter team involved. We said, “One of the things we need to do, nobody’s ever done this before, we got to take a whole bunch of panoramas. Now we’re going to toss that to the investigator team, all geologists, most of them, and tell us what you see.” This is the first time.\\n\\n We did that, and by doing that we said, “Well, we created now an actual model of what’s going to happen when we actually land.” We would create two teams. We’d have a stopwatch. We’d say, “Okay.” There would be a whole bunch of little stacks of images. They would be passed out to the team and the team would automatically put them down. We got really efficient, that within about five minutes after any kind of landing we had a panorama for the scientists to take a look at. We had a second field test near Flagstaff, where later the astronauts went, and we used one of the early Hughes cameras. We operated again for over three weeks and put together pans and observed stars.\\n\\n When Surveyor 1 was about ready to go, they said, “Well, okay, there’s only a 10 or 15 percent success. But in case it lands we’re prepared.” We had a problem. The control for the flight was at the Space Flight Operations Facility, SFOF, at JPL. Everything went through them. All of the commands, however, came from the Goldstone antenna site [California], which is out in the [Mojave] Desert. That was the beginning of our Deep Space Network all around the world. At that time we had Australia and we had Johannesburg, South Africa, which later was pulled back to Spain for obvious reasons.\\n\\n Now we had tried communication from Goldstone to the SFOF and it was done by microwave, and during the testing sometimes there would be a complete dropout. There was no communication. Gene said, “Jay, we need to have somebody at Goldstone in case we have a dropout, in which case when we land and there’s something we have to do, we can by telephone say, ‘All right, send this command, send that command,’ and take care of it.”\\n\\n Another engineer that had been involved with us was Don [Donald R.] Montgomery. He’s still alive, lives in Ashland, Oregon, great guy. He and I were out there for that emergency if it happened. We were sitting there watching an oscilloscope which had the signal coming back and we watched it and they counted it off, 100 meters, 50, 10, so on like that. All of a sudden, we’re landed, and there was the signal still coming in. “Hooray,” everybody shouted.\\n\\n Fortunately our link was okay. Gene gave us a call. He says, “Oh, you get on an airplane and get right back.”\\n\\n To give you an idea of the time that was spent, we had one level in the SFOF, and above that were a series of rooms with beds so you could go to sleep, because these are long missions. Gene was required, in that euphoria, to come out with a report right away. Gene was not one that would sit at a typewriter and type that. He would dictate everything. He’d walk back and forth, and he’d dictate the geology, what we were looking at from the pans, and so on.\\n\\n That was the beginning of that. I think we had been awake for maybe 38 hours, something like that, a little bit snooze back and forth, but we did create the very first preliminary science report for Surveyor 1. That was a success, and we were prepared." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a success. But unfortunately, I think Surveyor 2 had some issues, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, 2, we had three thrusters on each one of the three legs. In midcourse correction we could use those thrusters to alter a little bit of our orbital direction, and so we would give a command, and these three thrusters would not only stabilize things, but they could be oriented so they actually would increase or decrease the velocity at that particular time, depending upon where we’re going.\\n\\n It turned out when they gave the command, two of the thrusters came on and the third one didn’t, which automatically meant a roll over and again and we lost lock. That was the end of 2.\\n\\n Surveyor 4 had something we still don’t understand, because in 4 everything was perfect, we didn’t need a midcourse correction, we were going just great, everything was working, we were right on the nose to go right there. We gave the command. I think that was the command just before the retrofire, and something happened. We don’t know, it could have been a malfunction, the retro-rocket could have exploded, a whole bunch of stuff. I think we’re still trying to look to see whether we could find—I can’t remember whether Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has been able to locate it. That wonderful orbiter that’s going around that picks up tremendous detail of where we were and what we did, it’s really fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One thing I just wanted to ask about Surveyor 1, I had read that one of the first pictures, you could see the foot, and that was important for a lot of reasons. But mainly because it proved that they could land for Apollo later on, that it wouldn’t sink." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right. The biggest concern we had, the Soviets beat us by four months. But it was a small capsule. It went down, it had balloons to cushion the landing, a couple of covers that unfolded, and it bounced a couple of times, but it was fairly light, maybe 100 pounds, little bit more.\\n\\n Surveyor was going to be 2,100, a lot of weight. It actually wasn’t that much when it landed (650). Then Apollo of course, the LM [Lunar Module] was much heavier. There was still sufficient doubt as to how much support the surface was going to be. It supported the capsule, and so if it supported Surveyor, we were okay, that okayed the LM. But if it didn’t and we sunk down a little bit, then it could be that you could get the situation where the LM, when it was coming down, would not be able to get oriented to lift off or something else, and it would be stranded. We were concerned about that.\\n\\n Other issues: The camera had unique properties because it was looking up into a mirror. Now the mirror was closed in general, and we did a lot of tests. Don Montgomery—I mentioned him before—was down at Hughes a lot watching these tests. In one of the tests they had for that, the mirror refused to open. It stayed closed.\\n\\n What we didn’t know at the time, and I mentioned this a little bit to the engineers, all the engineers including Hughes and JPL, we want the mirror closed because we don’t want any dust or anything else on the mirror. That’s really important. But what we didn’t know is that the very first picture that was coming from the Moon would have given about $100,000 to Hughes as an incentive. So we leave the mirror open.\\n\\n It came down, and that was pretty good, because what happens, the thrusters are here, and we turn those thrusters off about 13 feet above the surface. Then it drops to the surface. Now with one-sixth gravity, that’s like jumping from this table down to the floor. Pretty soft. It was a little harder for the Soviets, because they had to bounce a couple times. Matter of fact, I think I talked once with one of the Soviet scientists. He said, “Well, we have to really say that yours was a soft lander because if you had somebody aboard that spacecraft they could have stepped off onto the lunar surface. If we had somebody on the capsule they would have been done.”\\n\\n But it was nice. In deference to the Soviets a lot of time when I’m talking, I say the first controlled landing, because the capsule was sort of boom, we land. But we had total control. We could have cut things off or done anything else like that directly from Goldstone.\\n\\n Once we had done this, we had a little bit of dust that was kicked up, but not much. Matter of fact, it was almost undetectable. We had aboard two special targets which we called photometric targets. These consisted of about five different gray steps around the circumference together with three unsaturated colors and then a couple little arrows to give you an idea of the resolution you were taking. One was located on leg two of the spacecraft when you looked directly at it, and another one was on one of the omni-antennas [omnidirectional]. There were two omni-antennas. When you first landed, you had very low signal because you had to orient planar antenna [high gain antenna] and the solar panel at the same time.\\n\\n What you ended up doing with that small amount of signal required that you had to use a real coarse resolution from your camera. That was about 200 lines through the whole image. You could do that with the omni-antennas. If you needed high resolution you had to orient the planar array in the direction of the Earth. You also had to have on that same gimbal the solar panel, which the sun illuminated, to bring up the power. You’re going the entire flight from here to the Moon on battery. The very first thing you need to do is to orient that solar panel to recharge the batteries.\\n\\n That was the very first effort. The first thing that happened is that—I don’t have a description but there’s a picture someplace of one of these photometric targets. Now Hughes built those, designed it. We had input. One of the engineers there, his name was Roy Blanchard, great optics guy, there was only a small number in the Hughes organization at that time. I’ll go into later on. He said, “Well, we’re going to put a pin that’s perpendicular to that target. On that pin there’ll be a series of little rings so to speak, and when the Sun illuminates that pin it’ll throw a shadow and the length of that shadow will tell you what the altitude of the sun is with respect to the target and also the direction.” You could see that pin shadow with our poor resolution of 200 lines.\\n\\n When we first landed, we had a picture first of another leg, which is leg three, didn’t have a target on it, that was the first picture. That captured it, that got them the bonus. Then they swung over and looked at that target on leg two with 200 lines. Now if you look at it very closely, you have to enlarge it, you can see the shadow. In the science team that we have—we have a science team, it was run by a space chief inside the SFOF for all the science activity. All the commands were sent by him. Like in the Apollo Program you have a CapCom. No one else talks to the astronauts except through him. We had a space chief, Jack Lindsley, who did exactly the same thing.\\n\\n When we had something we needed we would say, “Jack, send the command, take a picture, one one zero zero.” Click. That would be the end of it. We had that idea, and we sat down and we figured, “I think the Sun is about there,” and systems engineering, who has the responsibility for orienting the planar arrays and the solar panel, they were hunting around, because we had no firm knowledge when we landed what orientation we were in. We had a gyro in a general session, but we’re not really sure what direction to look. So, we gave them a couple of suggestions, and the systems engineering said, “All right, we’ll try it.” In a couple of hours, it took about I think 2 or 3 hours, and they finally acquired the Sun, which at the same time then acquired the planar array. We started getting 600-line images.\\n\\n It was a little bit of a joke back and forth—the geeks told us where to look. Anyway, it was nice. There’s cooperation that you have in a group like that. It’s a wonderful wonderful group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about that for a minute, because you mentioned being with JPL you were in that side of it, but then NASA was involved. Did you have a lot of interaction with NASA people too? Or were you just working in your groups and that was at a higher level?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes and no, we had a lot of interaction. The program director was Ben [Benjamin] Milwitzky. The science director was Steve [Stephen E.] Dwornik. I had a lot of interaction between those two, especially with Steve, because later on he moved to another area. When I moved down to the campus, I had grants. I had to live on my senior research fellowship with grants coming in. Steve was sort of monitoring those. We set up a good rapport. Ben was very much involved as well.\\n\\n When there were differences, they would come when we’d have something to iron out. We had some good project directors. We had Bob [Robert J.] Parks who really handled Surveyor initially and also, we had [Eugene] Giberson. A lot of others that were involved in Ranger continued. A lot of these guys were all Caltech grads, so they’d all known each other.\\n\\n I added more later on about that. Bud [Harris] Schurmeier was involved. They did changes when there was a failure or something like that, they would flip, but they would be down in the same office, so they were always together on that. It was good. It was a little hard maybe for NASA to understand the relationship that we had, because this is a university environment. You have laboratories, so people are talking to each other and helping each other and so on. But we had a lot of directions from NASA on making sure we have everything okay, which required committee meetings. We’d have LOTS of committee meetings. They’d go back and forth. When we had this impasse where we had a delay because of the Centaur they kept saying, “Well, don’t worry about it. All we have to do is lay down all the paperwork of all the committees and we can walk to the Moon.” But in some cases, they were very effective.\\n\\n There was one little note, and that’s probably on one of the talks that I gave on Surveyor, Al Hibbs like I said had this great connection. He had a wonderful voice when he was talking about Surveyor. He had a wonderful rapport with Gene Shoemaker. They would get together and talk. Gene had that capability of taking very complicated geological information and putting it down so everybody could understand it. He would do it in such an enthusiastic manner that when you get done listening to Gene talk, you’d like to rush up and say, “Where do I sign up?” That was his capability. We used to kid him that if Gene had an ego it was buried geologically many thousands of kilometers below the surface.\\n\\n There were a few other people that didn’t have that character. Anyway, I won’t bring that up. But Al had a good friend, that’s Bob Newhart, you remember now, this goes way way back. You probably don’t. Bob Newhart had a gig that he used to do on the radio and then went on TV where he would talk to somebody on the phone, and you never heard that person coming back. One night when we had passed all the control for the spacecraft to Australia, Canberra, and they had cut down the lights in the SFOF to save energy or something even then, he got on the intercom throughout the entire SFOF. He said, “You know, we’re going to see something tomorrow which man has never seen before. We’re going to see where the Earth blocks the Sun, it’ll be a first solar eclipse as seen from the Moon. I’m going to give Ben Milwitzky, the Program Director, a call.”\\n\\n We hear ding ling ding, and he calls him. He says, “Ben, hiya. Oh, the spacecraft is doing fine, everything is just great, and we’re just anxiously waiting for an event that man has never seen before. A solar eclipse from the Moon.” Then explained a little bit to Ben what it was. The Earth blocks, the Earth is much larger so the Sun will be way behind it. But it’ll still be important because we have an atmosphere.\\n\\n On the other end, “Well, when is that going to occur?”\\n\\n Al says, “Oh, let’s see, it’ll be about 8:00 to 8:30 your time in Washington, DC.” Then [pretending to listen] on the other end, and he said “What? You have an important meeting that you have to be at that time? Oh, geez, I’m really sorry, Ben, that’s too bad. What do you want me to do? Delay the eclipse?” So everybody of course, they just broke out in laughter. Unfortunately Al, this was all taped a lot of times when you’re on the intercom, and he didn’t have it on. He told me later, “I really should have had it on there.” That was fantastic. Of course Ben was the center of the joke, but he took it, he was a very good guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about some of the hours. You mentioned that there was some place for people to rest, because the hours were long. Talk about what you were doing and what your hours were like—you had a family I’m assuming at that time—and how much time you spent when these things were flying, when they had landed, and when they were bringing those images back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "About a year before Gene approached me and he said, “Now you’ve been a cognizant scientist and you direct this TSAC group, but Jay, we would like to make you a NASA coinvestigator on the experiment.”\\n\\n I said, “Accepted,” and then you had to pass the TSAC group to a couple of other people that would take charge of that, and they did. So, I was there as a member of the investigative team, and our responsibility was to do all this. I had Ewen Whitaker. Ewen was an Englishman. They gave him an honorary doctorate at the University of Arizona. He joined Kuiper’s group when Kuiper was at Yerkes [Observatory, University of Chicago]. He moved with that whole group to Tucson. Kuiper had the university behind him, and they built that whole facility up.\\n\\n One of the reasons of course that happens, in those days of astronomy, if you dealt with the solar system or planetary stuff you were sort of shunted aside from the rest of the astronomy groups. Because you want to look out at the galaxies and the stars and everything else like that, who’s going to worry about the solar system? Of course later on they discovered hey, that’s where the money is.\\n\\n But Gene basically felt that astronomy was an important aspect. I think we had Leonard Nimoy visit us once during spaceflight operations, but when you’re there and you’re active and you’re a part of that, your adrenaline is up. “Oh, you should go take a nap. Go upstairs,” he would say. Gene would be constantly working back and forth. What he said on one of his reports, about at least 30 hours without sleep or something.\\n\\n My wife was at home. We had three children, and she called and said, “Justin.” She always called me Justin. “Aren’t you coming home for dinner?”\\n\\n I said, “Honey, I’m sitting here at an historic moment in the entire history of mankind, and I’ve got to come home for dinner? No thank you.” That was the way that worked. It was a heady time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about Surveyor and how there was worldwide attention when it landed. What was that like? Working at JPL and working in that environment, you were very concentrated on what you were doing. This was in that buildup to Apollo because the president [John F. Kennedy] had made that announcement that we were going. Then President [Lyndon B.] Johnson was continuing that. But there was a lot of media attention. Talk about that for a minute and how much attention was on what you were doing in your group and JPL and that work on Surveyor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember matter of fact I was in a car riding to American Optical in Massachusetts at the time, because we were interested in a new optics, fiber optics, different ways for a new kind of technology. The driver turned on the radio, and there was Kennedy giving the announcement. When I first heard that, I was hmm. Because JPL has always been and still is the robotic interest. All of your missions that are out there are robotic. Wasn’t any man involved.\\n\\n We felt that was a little premature. Matter of fact, Kuiper used to say, “The problem with NASA, they want instant science, and you don’t have instant science.” If you’re going to explore something, as you do on the surface if you’re a geologist, you set up a camp.” Jack [Harrison H. Schmitt] said that. How many hours did we spend on the Moon? You just touched it. If you were a geologist, you would have put up a tent and you would have stayed there for two or three weeks to map that whole thing. We didn’t have that opportunity. So, we always felt that we were premature, we should do all our homework first, send a lot of robotics, examine what we need to do. We need to do that on Mars, the same thing. We are doing it on Mars.\\n\\n There are certain circumstances where the human being is going to be very important. Jack, thank goodness, proved that by finding orange soil on the Moon. You have a gray Moon. The very first front cover that Life magazine had when Surveyor I landed, “the true color of the Moon”. Because everybody said, “Well, it’s a gray Moon, do we have color?” We had our photometric target. We had a gold tip on one of the thrusters and you took that picture and you had to create a color picture from it, which we did. Because you have a filter system. You have three filters with different sections of the spectrum, the wavelength, you take those three, you put them together, and you have a color picture. Today that’s automatically done in a device with a little tiny sensor. But in those days, you had to do that, all three black-and-white pictures and put them together. We built an apparatus to do that as well. I was in the first national press conference to talk about that color.\\n\\n That is the direction that we had to do. I would say we had already established at JPL techniques for examining and extracting real important information from any image whatsoever. We developed a whole slew of individual apps or programs that would go back and attack every one of the digital images that you had.\\n\\n Often when I’m talking, I give a little commercial, because the Chinese have a saying that “when you take a drink of water, think of the source”. Think of the source, the Photoshop, Lightroom etc. Everything else, all of that technology came from JPL. They did it in an Image Processing Lab [IPL], and that was headed by Fred Billingsley who wrote a book on that subject. Houston and the NASA program were well aware of what JPL was doing.\\n\\n At the very early beginning we had a relationship with IPL, JPL and Houston here in the Manned Spacecraft Center [MSC, later renamed Johnson Space Center]. People like Richard [W.] Underwood that was responsible for all of photography here in the MSC was a good friend, and we worked together. They would send requests up to the IPL and it would be worked on, on the pictures. We did that throughout the entire Apollo missions.\\n\\n We were not isolated from that standpoint. We were integrated because we had this digital capability. Then later on of course after Surveyor ended, Gene came to me and he said, “I’m going to move down to the campus because I’m taking over the Division of Planetary/ Geological Sciences, and I want you to come with me. I want you to be a part of that Lunar Geology Exploration Team [LGET].”\\n\\n Together with Henry [H.] Holt who was a member, a geologist, of the astrogeology group, we were responsible for the photometry, all of the settings that the astronauts had to do for the data camera on the Moon, all of that kind of thing basically stemmed from our work in Surveyor. We just continued it on the Apollo Program.\\n\\n Henry and I provided the albedo maps that the astronauts used in their traverses. We did that on some of the equipment which today would be considered pretty primitive. We had a special Joyce-Loebl & Co. [Limited] microdensitometer and you put a film in there and you turn that on and take a very, very small part of that film and move that all the way around. You would load it, and it would be computer-controlled. That image would be done overnight, all night long. You’d get that image. Today you go click click and there it is. But in those days, we used the tools that we had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you already working in that once Apollo started with the geology? Were you already moved over into that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about Apollo and what you were doing during that time and what you remember of the landing of Apollo 11 of course and then Apollo 12 when they brought part of the Surveyor back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Probably should mention, and you probably know that from all your information, the lunar geology exploration team consisted obviously of a chairman, the astronauts, and a group of geologists and those like myself, which were astronomers, optical physicists, there were not too many of those. Henry Holt actually learned a lot of optical physics. We would have working groups occasionally with some of the astronauts. The astronauts, the ones that were on the surface, were a part of that team. Actually I think the one as well in orbit, all three would be involved in writing the initial preliminary crew observations, and so on. They were in the meetings that we would have.\\n\\n There was a selection of where we were going to go, which EVA [extravehicular activity], what craters they would look at, the names, and so on. That was all done by that team. They would then have to be implemented by a whole bunch of things. One of the things we had as involvement—because I had done a lot on the camera with Surveyor and everything else, and I had also learned a lot in Berlin—we needed to calibrate these cameras, the data cameras the ones that they had on the Moon. Just a couple of days ago I was working with the lunar planetary lab at University of Arizona, and at the time I came in, John Anderson has been instrumental for four years now digitizing all the 70-millimeter film that we have from the Surveyor, and he said, “Well, there’s an interesting fellow giving a talk tonight, and it’s about a book that he’s published called Hasselblad Compendium: A Complete Listing and Description of All the Cameras, Lenses and Accessories Made by Hasselblad AB.” [Written by Dr. Richard N, Nordin, Associate Professor, LPL, University of Arizona, 2003.] It’s about that thick. Very good. He gave a talk on that. [One of my fellow students in Berlin went to Zeiss in Oberkochen, Germany, and headed the photography section responsible for the Hasselblad cameras the astronauts used. Sweden built the camera and Zeiss the lenses, and the complete cameras were shipped from Zeiss to MSC. A few years ago I met the President of Hasselblad. Small World! The story in more detail is in one of my talks at JPL.]\\n\\n My work for Henry and I to come up with, first of all, what kind of film should we use. If you’re doing photometry, everybody said, “Well, why didn’t you choose color film for the whole thing?” First of all, the Moon is pretty gray, and except for a couple of people finding a little bit of green, that was on [Apollo] 15, and of course Jack’s orange soil, we figured that if you’re going to extract photometry you want to use black-and-white. You always have a black-and-white cassette you could load.\\n\\n That required a documentation of the samples. That is sort of unique because you want to take a picture of what you’re going to collect first at maybe a couple of orientations with the Sun behind you, and then you want to take a picture after it’s collected. The reason why you do that when you’re getting involved—and I hope I’m not digressing—in Apollo was when you have the sample coming back and you could measure these, and we actually ended up generating equipment at Caltech as well as other places and measuring it. When you do that you have a small sample, but you have a huge picture of everything else that’s there. If you can measure some of the properties of that sample, then you can make an assumption that’s similar to what else you see, that we didn’t collect, and use that. You’re expanding your knowledge with something that you have not retrieved.\\n\\n That kind of thing is very important. But it required looking at your film, finding the characteristics of that film, giving directions what kind of f number [aperture of lens] you need, distances, all that kind of thing. That came up on their cuff. You could look it over. There’s a little decal on the top of the Hasselblad cameras. I don’t know if I’m answering everything that you asked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We were just talking about your memories of what you were working on for Apollo and then Apollo 12." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, 11, we had an involvement. Gene was the only one that I remember—oh no, I think Jack was there too—when 11 first landed. Henry and I were in the auditorium because most everybody not directly involved in that location viewed and listened on a big screen.\\n\\n Now the time limit was very short they were on the surface. They were anxious to get them back alive. Consequently there wasn’t a lot of interaction with respect to the geology. I do remember one little comment after it landed and we were all enthused that Neil [A. Armstrong] did a great job, he was the most perfect guy that they selected for that job. Couldn’t be any better. We also said, “But we need a geologist on the Moon.” I remember everybody sort of laughed about that. But it took us a long time before we got one. Matter of fact, I think people probably understand that Jack was originally assigned for 18. We mounted a huge scientific effort to tell NASA, “Hey, keep your promises. You promised that you’d have a scientist on the Moon.” So they flipped. I think Cernan was not too happy about that. But afterward Jack proved that he was really” the person.”\\n\\n During the interval of time between missions, we had an interaction with the astronauts on things like the photometry, taking the pictures, a bunch of other things, and especially on the color aspects. The way that interacted is that you would meet with Jack or someone else and you would talk to them. You would not call up a group of astronauts and talk to them. That was no-no. You worked with one person. They in turn would go to the astronaut group and explain what they learned and maybe bring them up to date.\\n\\n There was a lot of field geology work with all the astronauts out in the field. Henry was out with those for quite a bit. I was not. But we had given presentations to these people of what to do.\\n\\n There is one story, which people have forgotten but I think it’s worth bringing it up. In the early stages where you had these teams, Gene initiated, and when Gordon [A.] Swann took over, together with Ray [Raymond M.] Batson, who was a cartographer at astrogeology, said that we need a new camera, we need one camera that we can take to the Moon that’s going to give us everything in terms of optical properties. It was called the Lunar Geological Exploration Camera, LGEC. This consisted of a camera and we let a contract to [C.P.] Goerz Optical Company in Pittsburgh, a Swiss company in the United States. They were going to build a 35-millimeter camera which consisted of two lenses and a telephoto in the middle. Behind each one of those two lenses, which give you a stereo view, you had 3D, you had a series of three color filters and three polarizing filters, and then you had a telephoto in the middle.\\n\\n When you get done taking a picture you would advance the film, and you had nine exposures that you could use, and you’re capturing everything you need to look at in that particular sample, both the color, the polarimetry, the photometry, and high-resolution imagery. I was a monitor on that camera’s project. We had several others who went back, and we worked with them consistently. I think that whole project was well over $1 million, I’m not sure, you’d have to look at that. That was fine. But in the end result you present something like that to the astronaut crew, and it’s like talking to the prima donna in front of the stage in the opera house. “I don’t like the way the chorus is going on. Fine, we’ll rework that part of the opera.” They said, “No way are we going to take something that complicated to the Moon.”\\n\\n It was probably just as well because on Apollo 12 unfortunately poor Alan [L.] Bean had his problems. It’s really kind of sad because Alan went on to have beautiful paintings of Apollo and in everything he did. But his spot on the Moon was just sort of sad. It started with losing his camera and they had only one camera left. When you look at some of the mounting stuff on there, it was a handle with a knurled screw that you use when you’re putting your regular camera on a tripod. I don’t understand to this day how anybody with a design like that could have let it go through with all of the testing. I would not have done that - put a setscrew into a knurled head? You know how big a setscrew is? You know how big around it is? The tool to turn a setscrew is about that long and it’s bent. Try to do that in your hand, you can’t. Those things, if they get loose and fall, the whole handle falls, and the camera can’t be attached to the suit. Throw it away. They redesigned that after 12. Thank goodness Pete’s [Charles “Pete” Conrad] camera was okay and so Al did most of that photography.\\n\\n Then he had the problem with the 16-millimeter camera, which had color when they came down from the LM. There should have been either a lens cap on that camera, or there should have been a sign in bigger letters, “Don’t point it at the Sun!” It’s really sort of sad and he probably felt very bad about that.\\n\\n But these are things that in such occasions you have a human being and they can do something about it. They can react in a quick fashion. If [on Apollo 17] Jack had not stopped to take a pan at shorty crater, stirred up the regolith through his tracks, and raised his gold visor to exclaim “there is orange soil,” and Cernan replied, “ Well don’t move it until I see it,” that probably would have been missed. You had to be there!\\n\\n We landed Surveyor 1 with a 10, 15 percent success rate. Maybe there’s something out there that’s looking out for us. I don’t know if I’ve covered enough on that Apollo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like you mentioned before we started, you worked with Gene Shoemaker and Swann and then [William R.] Muehlberger. Maybe just talk about the three of them and your interactions. Were they looking for different things? Or were they running things differently? Because Apollo 11 and 12 was for Shoemaker, Swann was 14 and 15, and Muehlberger was 16 and 17. Talk about them and working with them and what they were doing the same or doing different as the astronauts spent more time on the Moon and were able to do more geology and were trained to do that, and then that final mission when Jack Schmitt got to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were most of the time left on our own. I think Gordon, who was very involved, and of course Henry and Gordon were right in the same facility, astrogeology, so they were much closer than I was. I was out in Pasadena. The initial few years, so was Gene. But Gene didn’t want to continue after 12. I think he’d had enough of bureaucracy, he went off and did something else.\\n\\n But they all said, “Okay, now what we need would be an albedo map.” We had to hunt for information that we had. When Surveyor 1 landed, the one thing that we really needed was location, where were we on the Moon. Ewen Whitaker because he had been involved in so much terrestrial measurements, and they had created the entire lunar atlas that we used initially to pick out the various sites, was done extremely well, and used the best photography that we had taken from the planet Earth on the Moon for that task.\\n\\n But now that had to be put in an albedo map. Albedo is basically the range of low reflectance (darkness) and high reflectance (lightness). The albedo map is an indication, not exclusive, as to the kind of different materials that you have in the area. From the studies we’d done together with terrestrial work, the geologists basically said, “Well, I think that this kind of albedo range is prominent by igneous rock, in some other types.” And we would zero in on that.\\n\\n We would create the maps, dependent upon where the geologists said we’d like to go. Once we had enough information then we were relying on the orbiter photographs that brought us new information. When you look and you’re landed in Surveyor 1, there was a bright area out of there which is over the horizon. There was a couple of other rocks over there, and Ewen would look at those panoramas and he’d look at the terrestrial maps that we had, and he said, “You know, I think this is where we are.”\\n\\n When he first did that on Surveyor 1, the people that were tracking and a few others didn’t agree. He was convinced. What you do is you locate something that you really recognize, and you recognize this one and recognize that one. Now you take a line to those things and you resect, and you come back to one point. That’s where you are. He was very good at that. He could pick that out because he’d done it for years. After Surveyor 1, boom, we knew within a few hundred meters, where we were.\\n\\n Then they started flying lunar orbiters. The first at that time was Surveyor 2, Surveyor 3, and the rest. We got lots of information from that. But Ewen in addition had to do this on Surveyor 3. He pinpointed exactly where we were.\\n\\n When the initial goal of Apollo 12 was announced, they said, “Well, we want to go there.” The prime reason was not necessarily to go to the Surveyor and pick out the parts and bring it back. That was an afterthought, I guess. They said, “What we needed to do, we needed to go on the Moon where we exactly wanted to go, because the rest of the missions in Apollo we’re going to pick out a location based upon the albedo maps, based upon what we think is there, and you’re going to go there, and we want it to land within a kilometer. One thousand meters, that’s pretty far, but we want something even closer.”\\n\\n The whole idea of going to Surveyor 3 was driven largely about this point, going there. Now they said, “Now if you’re going to go there, why not look at the Surveyor, see what they have, and then bring something back?”\\n\\n There was another little aspect of Alan’s task. One of his tasks on the second EVA was to take pictures of the entire Surveyor before they took parts off. We had a unique landing on 3 which was not programmed. Remember before I said on 1 they’re coming down on these vernier thrusters, and they cut them off at 13 feet and drop to the surface. We had radar and attitude sensors, four beams. Three beams gave the spacecraft stability, and the fourth was locked to Goldstone and gave us our velocity. It would be the control beam that would turn off the thrusters at 13 feet and drop to the ground. For some reason we don’t know, we lost lock with Goldstone. The verniers, the thrusters, kept working at 13 feet all the way down. The amount of thrust that the thrusters had was about equal to the weight of the spacecraft, so it lifted off again, went over, then landed, and then it landed again. So we had three footprints from Surveyor 3. Coincidence??\\n\\n Alan went over to take pictures, and here was a nice footprint from pad 2 right beside the pad. The footprint was made by the bottom of one of the leg’s pads, made out of honeycomb aluminum. Back in the old days when they used to build airplanes, they would take aluminum foil and they would be glued, together in a hexagonal pattern.\\n\\n This way with a hexagonal pattern vertically, it was very strong horizontally of course it wasn’t. They built a lot of aircraft wings out of these things. The footpad that we had on three of the legs were built the same way. We covered those with a thin sheet of aluminum on the bottom. When they hit the lunar surface, they made imprints and that pattern, this waffle-like pattern, was there to see. Two of those imprints from pad 2 came from two of the three landings.\\n\\n The interesting thing about those imprints is that we found some particles of dust in those imprints. Dr. Leonard Jaffe, who was our chief scientist on the Surveyor program, did a lot of analyses, and said, “Now there’s a bunch of dust clumps which we can’t see from the pictures we took during the mission, Surveyor 3.” They obviously came from the regolith that Apollo 12 had disturbed. When Pete Conrad came back, I remember meeting him up on the third floor of MSC, and he came back with a happy face—they were all Navy people, which is of course was another bond with me. They were jovial naval aviators. He said smiling, “Hey, do you like the rocks we brought back? How do you like them?” He was very good.\\n\\n Of course he took a lot of chances. He rode motorcycles and that killed him. He said, “Well, I came very close.” We had a little limit that said don’t come closer than 500 meters away from Surveyor. He came in from the west and he curved around. I have a little diagram and you can take a look at that. When they did that, he came within 190 meters. He was very close, even though it was fairly high. We determined that a lot of our stuff, the dust and so on like that, was contributed by Apollo 12 coming in. You couldn’t help, because you’re going in on different material. The dust is a real different type of an environment than we’ve ever encountered. You have no atmosphere, so anything that you have seen here in what you do on the Earth is very colored by our atmosphere, and now you come in an environment, you are a total stranger, and stuff happens. Just think of individual electronic tubes and where the beam goes. That’s all in vacuum.\\n\\n We’re still learning how to handle, lunar dust. We used to take pictures of it. The irony is if you’re visiting a site that something else has laid down, like visiting the pyramids or so like that, you’d be very careful in taking pictures. Al wasn’t. He walked over and all this beautiful imprint that we had on 3, it’s all gone. But it has his footprints.\\n\\n We did a lot of analysis on all those parts that came back that were very, very instructive. A large part of that investigation was handled by JPL. There’s a book about so big on all the analyses we did. We had about I think, 40 teams looking at all kinds of things you could imagine on all these parts.\\n\\n It’s something we have suggested now that people are going out on other spacecraft throughout our exploration put something on the spacecraft which is unique material that will act as what they call a ‘coupon’. It’s not something you get from Trader Joe’s, but this is something where if you ever go back and visit that spot and you take that unique material and perform analysis on it, you’ve got traceability, and a history of their environmental life. That is sort of a test philosophy that you have, and we recommended that.\\n\\n Another thing that we recommended on this whole recovery thing, is these photometric targets. They’ve got those on almost every spacecraft now, because you have to have calibration before launch and then after launch when you’re there, wherever you are, to see whether your imaging system is okay, following the same calibration you did.\\n\\n The LGET was also responsible for the photometric and polarimetric investigations of the lunar regolith which required extraction from the data camera photography. Thus the team was worried about all the camera parameters, which required complete calibration of the data cameras that the astronauts used on all missions. We started that on 11, Henry and I. Some of the calibrations were done here at the Johnson Space Center or Manned Spacecraft Center in those days, or at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]. We had special equipment. We had all of the photography people from MSC working with us.\\n\\n We’d calibrate every parameter you can imagine on a camera, you have a regular camera, that you can use for pulling out all the important aspects of optical properties from your image. Those were really documentation, and we did that, and I think we set up a procedure that every mission that we’re going on now has that. We were the groundbreakers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In talking about the cameras, I don’t know during that time period how much changed. But now technology changes daily, and you began working with this in the optics area, late ’50s, early ’60s. Then starting with Ranger all the way through the end of Apollo. Was the technology, like the camera technology, was that changing during that time? Or were you working with what was available at the beginning of the program and then that was carried out through the end? Like they did with the computers for Shuttle, the computers pretty much stayed pretty basic on the Shuttle. Did the cameras stay the same because you knew the technology? Or was that changing rapidly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The rule that existed in those days, you’d have a technology level. At some spot in that development you stopped. Everything was frozen. Depending upon everything following, it could have been frozen for six months, could be frozen for a year, it might have been frozen for several years.\\n\\n The problem was with Surveyor there were a lot of new tools that were being used. The vidicon sensor that you had was a unique piece. It was used for most of the television cameras that were used commercially, NBC, CBS, all those people used that kind of tube. Ours was just a little different because we could not send images back at 30 frames a second because we didn’t have the bandwidth for that. We had what we called a slow scan. You have one picture in 3.6 seconds. That includes—so you have a transmit, then you have to refresh, erase old imagery that’s there, so you have something new. All of that required a slow scan.\\n\\n When we had color filters, we attempted to fit the spectral response, that is the response as a function if you go from blue to red it has a certain shape. We followed an international system of color, from an international standards organization known as the CIE, which is the abbreviation in French of the International Commission on Illumination. This is an organization that sets up standards for colorimetry. Your derivation of your RGB [red, green, blue stimuli] if you pulled out your camera and your color image that is directly transferable to this CIE system. The advantage of using the CIE system, if you take a measurement of a sample and you have now identified the color of that sample in that system, you can transfer that information worldwide and people could come and say, “Oh, this is what the color looks like”. You don’t have to have a copy of that sample.”\\n\\n That system was used and is used all the time. We had a color consultant by the name of Dr. Günter Wyszecki who was the head of the colorimetry section in the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada. He was a German. When I studied over there, he had just finished his Dr.-Ing [Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften, German engineering doctorate degree]. He was also a good friend, and so I asked him to act as consultant to JPL, and he did. That was the system that we used for color.\\n\\n During the time we were using this tube (vidicon) it was still sort of what you call magic, I guess you’d have to call this, like The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. They would take a certain cathode which had a certain spectral response that we desired. This was a company in Texas just outside of Dallas about maybe 20, 30 miles called the General Electrodynamics Corporation. They were tasked to manufacture these devices, and we would come up with an idea of what kind of response we’d like to have, and they would mix it up, they’d put it on the cathode. Then they’d measure it.\\n\\n We’d say from one, “Oh, that’s really good, that’s fine.” They make the next one. What happened? It was really hit-and-miss. Almost every individual tube that we had had to be initially reconfigured for what we were using for that mission.\\n\\n At the same time—somebody asked me this question in one of the talks—there was all new development. Get rid of that, use silicon, you don’t have to worry about these tubes. But this was state-of-the-art. We were going to fly with that state-of-the-art, because that was it. The cameras on Ranger were state-of-the-art. You had a lot of new things coming up, but they were unproven. If they’re unproven and you make a mistake what are people going to do? They’re going to point at you. “Yes, you made a mistake, see? I told you not to do that.”\\n\\n There is a delay and it is a significant delay. I think right now we’re at a position in our technology that detectors we have now will probably last for maybe another decade. Then we’ll have something new. All of archival digitization that we’re now doing we’re doing in a new format called the Planetary Data System, which is what we’re doing at Arizona. But it’s configured so that in another decade or two there’ll be a totally different format, but it will be transferable, so you’re not going to lose the valuable resource you have.\\n\\n I think we have not done—I hope now we’re redoing it—thinking enough about the archival storage that we need to do on all these historical things. MSC and all of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory have done that. They said, “Just a little bit of these samples we’re going to give out. We’re going to keep the rest all hidden and all preserved. In another decade we’ll bring out something new.” It’ll come out in spurts, which is an advantage, because you’re going to have a new generation. You have a lot of new people coming up with new ideas, and they’re going to use it.\\n\\n We always hope that when our kids grow up, they’ll be smarter than we are. Doesn’t necessarily hold true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We were going to talk to you about that, the work you’re doing now, and how it relates to Surveyor and what was being done then. You talk about the archiving. When Surveyor, when those images were coming down, you mentioned the 70-millimeter. But the original TV, as you said that slow scan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Slow scan, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Then it was preserved on the 70-millimeter film? Is that how it was done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ll talk to you about the ground data handling system. What they had, everything ran as an analog aspect. You had signal transferred on a radio wave. It came out from the sender, from the spacecraft. It would be recorded on magnetic tape. The tape would be about 1 inch wide. It required a huge apparatus built by Ampex and it would move at 60 inches per second in order to capture the entire bandwidth on that tape.\\n\\n From those tapes they would be replayed into what we called a flying-spot scanner. Now this is an electron beam that illuminates a phosphor, very very smart phosphor. It would write what they were reading from that mag tape onto film. That film was 70 millimeters in width. That’s two and a three-quarter inches. Each image would be 4 inches in length with a 48x48mm image. The remainder of the image area would have the metadata. That’s the kind of format. You could do processing on those mag tapes and also make copies of what you’re doing, processing on 35-millimeter film.\\n\\n The 70-millimeter film that Ewen Whitaker had stored on reels are about 7 inches in diameter. These were duplicate film copies made from the magnetic tape. Today we have no capability of retrieving those magnetic tapes. They’ve all gone. The equipment that used to read them is all gone. There was one little small exception which I should mention. Lunar Orbiter used a unique piece of collection film. They actually took pictures in the orbiter with a camera and with film. It was done by Eastman Kodak. When the film was exposed there was an immediate processing that they used, and it would have a chemical, film that would come in contact with the exposed film, and it would be developed. Kodak called this a bi-mat process.\\n\\n When it developed you had both a positive and a negative. Then the orbiter used a flying spot scanner and the signal was read by a detector and that was then sent like we were doing Surveyor back to the Earth. It was recorded also on mag tape. A lot of this was done through JPL/IPL because of their knowledge of image processing.\\n\\n When lunar orbiter tapes were stored, they had piles of magnetic tape, and one of the employees at JPL had an inkling that they were going to destroy them. We have people who in their wisdom, if you want to call it that, go through and they say, “Oh, this is a whole bunch of junk on this. That’s taking up space. Let’s get rid of it. Throw it away.” They’d walk through and they said, “Oh, but you got a whole bunch of piles here with film and reels. Oh, we get rid of that.”\\n\\n One time they were going to take all the archival film that we had on Surveyor and get rid of it because they needed space. I asked somebody, “Well, how big is this space?”\\n\\n “It’s 3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet.” We had somebody walk through areas of JPL, and they’d look up. We had built a prototype optical system for one of the Mariner cameras, I think it was the Mariner 9. I don’t know how many dollars were spent on developing a prototype. It was sitting above one of the cabinets.\\n\\n A manager came through and he says, “What’s that doing up there?”\\n\\n I said, “Oh, that’s a prototype for Mariner.”\\n\\n “Ah, get rid of it.”\\n\\n You go round the corner to one of these salvage people and you say, “Here’s this optical system.”\\n\\n “Well, I’ll give you 15 bucks for it.” A lot of stuff was just lost because of that and it’s a shame.\\n\\n Someone found these tapes, she took them home to her garage, she kept them. About a year later somebody said, “Somebody saved it all.” They got a group together, got some NASA funding, and they found some Ampex FR-1400s that they used for reading all these tapes. They had to get about four or five so they could borrow parts and get one operating. When they finally did, they could replay all these tapes back with now new processing equipment that they had, opposed to then, and they had really excellent results that they could compare with some of the images that the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is doing right now. So they retrieved it. But except for the good graces of somebody that realizes what was going to happen, it would have gotten lost.\\n\\n These are unfortunate stories. If you talk to somebody here that explored the Egyptian tombs, they would have been panicked. Archival information is essential. Of course I came from a discipline, the very first science was astronomy. Astronomy without archival storage is lost. You see something for the first time. Gee. “Have you ever seen this before?” You got to go back to the records. You got to go search this, and you’ve got that. So, archival information is essential.\\n\\n Fortunately I think we’ve now got to the point we don’t destroy those things. We look at some way to save it. I have a 4-terabyte hard drive, contains all 93,000+ images that Surveyor took. I can sit there, call them up any time I want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those are the panoramic images?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. They are parts of a panorama. We started this from a website I found about almost 10 years ago. I was hunting in NASA about what Surveyor had done. They missed this, and they missed that, and so on. I said, “I wonder.” Because there’s still a lot of data you can keep on film for a long long time, especially if it’s black-and-white film. I encouraged them to find where these caches were. It turned out that Ewen Whitaker realized that—obviously, as another astronomer—and had saved all these reels in a huge cabinet down below next to the mineral exhibit that they have. They have one of the largest mineral exhibits in the United States at the University of Arizona, if you ever get a chance to see that. It’s a special room that was protected, relatively climate-stable, which it had to be in Tucson. He saved all of it. So, we started.\\n\\n Some of the films were missing. We also collected at Flagstaff the same thing. Ray Batson, there were four us who were then alive, and we basically said, “We need to find out how we can digitize all this information.” JPL had done a good job on saving that. Each image that you have consists of the image itself, and then beside that on that same image is a whole series of parameters related to that image, all details that was sent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The metadata you’re talking about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The date and time, the azimuth and elevation of the mirror, the focal length, iris, shutter, etc., everything else was detailed. Including some of the temperatures that were there. That’s all in a parameter base all associated with the image called metadata.\\n\\n I said JPL had saved these reels, but they had cut these reels up into each image about 4 inches in length and put them in nice manila folders and labeled them by the date/time group. Now to digitize each one of those, taking them out of a folder, scanning them, putting them back in again, I figured would take about one and a half man-years. That was out.\\n\\n Then I hunted around and suddenly I found someone in Texas that lives just outside of Austin about 30 miles away. He has on his ranch, besides cows and so on, a wonderful high-tech facility that he’d built that will take all these 70 mm films, 35-millimeter, 16, on reels, feed them through with a light source, a high-resolution camera, a platen, and capture these things with a computer program at about seven frames per minute.\\n\\n I said, “Gee, on the graces of that, with all the pictures we’ve taken, we could probably do that in three months.” I contacted him, this is about I think it was like 2011, and he said, “We can rent it for you.” All right. How much is it going to cost? It was less than 50K. I said, “Great, that’s wonderful. Now all we got to do is find the money.”\\n\\n I ended up by writing a letter that we found this outfit and we could do that, now we need funding. I crashed a regional planetary imaging facility at ASU, which is an organization all around the entire world devoted for the imagery from space. You can go back and find anything you want. Supposed to be organized. They had a meeting in Tempe which I crashed. Because I had developed this letter, and there were four of us who were still alive, and I sent it around to all four, Ray Batson, Henry Holt, Ewen Whitaker, and they all signed it. Somebody said, “Why don’t you come up to the executive meeting when we get all done with this meeting, and present that letter?” I did. I sent it around, they all read it.\\n\\n I said, “Well, these are four experimenters. We were all part of that team. Now we need financial support and we can digitize everything, so it’s not lost.” There was a Mike [Michael S.] Kelley I think from NASA Headquarters involved in planetary studies, and he suggested, “Well, you need somebody to make a proposal to get a grant from NASA. It has to be a full-time faculty member.” One other fellow, and I can’t remember his name right now, he said, “Now Google does research and they offer funds. Try that.” We did, and they weren’t interested.\\n\\n As I was leaving a great big tall fellow with red hair came out and he says, “I’m a professor at the University of Arizona and my name is Shane Byrne, I’m an Irishman, and I got my doctorate at Caltech.” He said, “I’ll be glad to write that proposal.” So he did, it was granted, and a little comment, “This is one of the best proposals we’ve ever seen at NASA, absolutely marvelous,” they said.\\n\\n We said, “Hooray with champagne, now where’s the money?” It came finally!\\n\\n We started about a little more than four years ago. We hired one great guy that was a cameraman, photographer, a ham radio tech, etc., John W. Anderson, that had worked with Apollo. He was the one in charge of the digitizing effort. They have a clean room. We digitized all these images. Took us a little longer than three months because several people had gone through the rolls, which were available with a reader. They said, “Oh boy, look at this image, that’s really good.” Snip snip snip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh boy. If Gene were alive, they would have had it. But they did that. You have problems. A lot of it was stuck together with tape, and when you see something like that, you’re out of sequence, so you’ve got to stop and rework and bring it back. It took us about five months, but we still did everything, and how we have it.\\n\\n Now we can extract, from the technique we have, a whole slew of aspects. One particular area, now we’ve almost got to the point where John is generating every parameter that has to be associated with it. The time at which it was taken, all of the parameters, including the selenographic (lunar) location. When the camera is looking this way, where on the lunar surface is it? Selenographic location, and that’s all there, because we did stellar observations during Surveyor. As an astronomer, we always look up. We look up so not to worry about all the problems that the Earth has.\\n\\n When you do, just as the old days of the seafarers, you look at the stars and you find out where you are. You can do that and then you generate what you call mathematical rotational transformation, which automatically takes the camera azimuth and elevation, puts it in selenographic (lunar coordinate system). There’s a lot of other things you can pull out from that collection that we’re still doing. Shane, a planetary geologist and he’s our PI, guides us, have meetings periodically.\\n\\n The kind of information we’re extracting We’re putting it in a format, it goes to the Planetary Data System which is based up in Flagstaff, and then it’ll be available for everybody on the Internet. You can go in and pull up a high resolution of where you’ve landed. We have some wonderful pictures of Surveyor 7. Surveyor 7 was unique because for all of the other Surveyor missions we were really instructed to look at Apollo landing sites. Initially they were looking for Surveyor sites when they had the Lunar Orbiter, and then it went to the Apollo sites.\\n\\n The Surveyor Program was actually divided—I should start back at the beginning—into two sections. They had four missions which were devoted to engineering, to get all the information you needed if it had input into the construction and the development for the Apollo spacecraft. The LM and so on. When that was done, then you had the opportunity to use it for science. So we had a little bit of time on each one of the engineering missions, when they were all done looking at parts of the spacecraft and everything else, to use that for science, do our pans, and so forth.\\n\\n Then for 6 we wanted to do the science thing, and NASA said, “No, we need one more Apollo site.” They had four individual sites which were devoted to the Apollo landing. The fifth one, we could go anywhere we wanted, so Gene said, “Let’s go to the crater Tycho.” If you look with a pair of binoculars at the full Moon, you’ll see a crater that has a bunch of rays sticking out of it, you remember that if you look at the Moon. That is the crater Tycho, it was named after Tycho Brahe who was a Middle Ages astronomer, great guy. Gene said, “I like that, that’s really good, but we’re not going to go inside the crater because I think that’s dangerous, so we’re going to go outside.” We went on one of the rims of that particular crater, and that was Surveyor 7. Beautiful area.\\n\\n I have now a panorama that my son has done which takes all these individual images which have variations in brightness on one side or the other, because of the vidicon you had had a lot of problems. It was not uniform in the individual pictures. You had to take out that non-uniformity by adjustment in Photoshop, and then you had to put them all together in the right orientation, and you had a little bit of overlap, and you use that, you mix them all together. Then you had a little bit of artistry because he also does painting—from his mother. He ended up doing all that, and he makes a beautiful panorama, which I have. Covers about 130 degrees, it goes 93 inches in length and about 30 inches high, that big. I can stand and look at the Moon right in my hallway.\\n\\n Anyway, this is the kind of thing that you could do with that. In 6 we landed, and we lifted off, that was another first for Surveyor, this is before Apollo did when they came back. We went up so high, we landed, and we had a little of stereo on that basis. When we did that, we threw a lot of lunar dust up on some parts of our spacecraft.\\n\\n Some went onto one of the photometric targets on our omni antenna, just covered it with a bunch of lunar dust. I was thinking the other day, I said, “Now we measured that. We have exactly the reflectance of each one of the targets without any material on it. Now we have dust material. You can measure that, and you have now a transparency and thickness of that layer that you’ve got on that surface.” We didn’t do that during the mission reports. These are things you can still do.\\n\\n Took a lot of effort, and we still have the people involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s pretty amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s interesting. During the space program I was often in Houston." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s changed, hasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "More times than I would like, and [Apollo] 11 was the prime example. When Henry and I were in that auditorium and when 11 landed, and we walked out, it must have been about 1:30 in the morning, maybe 2:00, and it was like a big gorilla had jumped on our shoulders. It was unbelievable. Richard Underwood, I was talking to him and a couple of other people. I said, “Now are you Navy?”\\n\\n “Yes, I’m Navy, going way way back.”\\n\\n I said, “What did you do for air-conditioning?”\\n\\n He said, “You get up in the morning at 7:00, or maybe 6:00, and you have breakfast and you start to work at 7:00 and you work till 11:00. Then you go home and try to relax for three hours. Then you go back to work, work till 7:00 at night. That’s the only way you can exist.” You stop to think, like this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it’s a different environment. Usually if you come there’s a few times a year where the weather is really nice and it’s nice to be here. But the majority of the time it’s either hot and humid or cold and humid. We have those nice days every once in a while, but it doesn’t last unfortunately." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s overcast now too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Yesterday was lovely and then today is all overcast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was nice. We have overcast skies where we are in San Diego because in the summertime you got the marine layer comes in. People are living close to the ocean, they may not see the Sun for a whole week. A lot of times. My wife and I live inland by 15 miles or so. But we have direct view of the ocean. Every now and then we get a call from people in Point Loma that we know. “Hey, what’s for dinner tonight? We haven’t seen the Sun for a week!” But you take it into account. Of course San Francisco, I grew up there next to the city. What did Mark Twain say? “That was the coldest summer he ever spent”." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. In Texas they always say, “If you don’t like Texas weather just wait a minute.” Because it’ll change for sure.\\n\\n I just had a couple more questions and then Jennifer said she’s thought of some things. We could probably talk a lot longer on Surveyor and those images, but I know a lot of it is documented. We’re always interested in the human side of it, your experiences, and that sort of thing. I know you worked through the Apollo Program, and then you left and went on to something else. You started your own business." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What made you decide to leave working with NASA or through JPL?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s called this green stuff. When you go as a senior research fellow at a campus, you do have initial support. It’s not like a professorship. When you have a professorship, they guarantee your salary, at least at a minimum. I already took a pay cut when I left JPL, that was another reason why the JPL’ers with Pickering were going to be 80 percent gone, because they were getting a really good salary.\\n\\n But my wife understood this was important. We had known Gene from the very beginning. Carolyn [his wife] lives up in Flagstaff. Every year I see her. She’s now in a special senior home. Gene had built an absolutely fabulous home. He was awarded the [National] Medal of Science by [President George H.W.] Bush. You look out of his two-story house on the San Francisco Peaks with all the forest. You don’t see a house, you don’t see a road, it’s like standing out for the first time. He built that in stages. Gorgeous home. It was always hard to say no to Gene.\\n\\n One of his daughters lives very close by.\\n\\n Carolyn left her home, and Carolyn has an honorary doctorate. She taught astronomy. But she is a remarkable woman, not only because she obviously survived the crash where Gene was killed, but she helped on all the observations right side by side with Gene.\\n\\n When you’re in astronomy and you’re looking for detecting asteroids or other—comets and so on—you had what you called a blink microscope. You took a picture at this time, and maybe several days or months or years thereafter you get another picture.\\n\\n You put them up this way, and it has lights, and you’re looking at both of these pictures (glass plates). You can flip it back and forth. You watch when you register things that jump back and forth. The problem is that things that are artifacts on the plates also jump back and forth. So which is it I’m looking for and which is an artifact?\\n\\n If you do topographic mapping, which geologists do, they live with it, you create stereo views, and when you do that you have it in 3D space, the object that moves steps out of the entire plane. The other artifacts missed in the noise. Immediately you pick out what’s coming.\\n\\n Carolyn was good at that. She could look at that and pick up something. We often stayed in Flagstaff picnicking with the whole family, knew all the kids when they were growing up, our bad and good problems. Gene and Carolyn were doing all this on an 18-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope at Mt Palomar observatory.\\n\\n On March 25, 1993, Thursday, I called up Gene and I said, “We haven’t seen each other in a couple years, we’re going to come up to Palomar.”\\n\\n He says, “Oh, great. Wonderful.” We drove up there. Gene greeted, he says to my wife, “Oh Renate, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” She was a good-looking woman. Anyway, we sat there, and he says, “Well, it’s kind of cloudy. We picked up something last night which is really interesting.”\\n\\n I said, “What was that?”\\n\\n “Well, first of all we had a couple plates. We had these plates that had been sort of opened a little bit in that, exposures, so maybe we could just forget about it, throw it away.”\\n\\n Carolyn said, “No, let’s take some pictures.” They took pictures. They are developed and Carolyn is looking at these. All of a sudden, boom, all these little things that show up like a string of pearls. “Look at this, Gene.”\\n\\n “Oh, that’s probably an artifact. Forget about it.” He looks at it. “My God, that’s right.” That was the very first—this is the next day after they discovered the comet. David Levy, a writer and amateur astronomer and a French astronomer visiting at Palomar, P. Bendjoya, were also there. Then they had to call Kitt Peak, because any time you observe anything astronomically, you have to go to the main headquarters which is back in Cambridge and get some other observatory to confirm it.\\n\\n Kitt Peak in Arizona went to the same coordinates. “Yes, we got it.” Two days later.\\n\\n We didn’t know at the time, but all of those particular comet parts were going to impact Jupiter. In ’94 it impacted Jupiter. Gene for the first time was able to watch an impact. Of course it came by way of the Hubble [Space] Telescope, but it was fantastic.\\n\\n All of his effort, they sometimes call him the impact man. David wrote a book entitled “The Man Who Made an Impact” He was the one that started the impact studies. All the stuff that he did, so he was rewarded with that. Unfortunately he didn’t live and it’s a shame.\\n\\n Those were moments that you treasure when you go through life. I lost my wife 15 years ago. There’s a reason why you continue to live. I had a good friend from the Visibility Laboratory, worked for years, great guy. I went to luncheon on Wednesday with a couple of other people from the Vis Lab. We always get Mexican once a month. I got on a train Wednesday night. Yesterday I saw something on email that we’re going to have a celebration of life at the home of this friend. You get on the train, there’s no communication. You’d think they would have some Wi-Fi, but no.\\n\\n I didn’t know it, and then I got an email. It confirmed that he passed on with a massive heart attack the next day on Thursday. They’re happening; I’m the only one alive. I don’t know how many people are alive in the lunar geologic exploration team, that’s another question to ask. Only four of the twelve that walked on the moon. Is Muehlberger still alive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, he passed away a few years ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You got all of that. Gene is gone. Every leader of that team is gone. Henry Holt passed away. The only one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s why we’re trying to capture some of this information, I think it’s important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know, I know, that’s important. I think as Jack said once, he said to honor everybody, he says, “Remember you’re a part of that 400,000 that did it all.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Exactly right. I was going to ask you another question about Surveyor 1 just thought of. Were there any surprises with that, or any disappointments that you want to talk about, about the Surveyor Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were a lot of surprises, yes. I think the beauty is—as [Edmund] Hillary said when they climbed [Mount] Everest—that for mankind we relish challenges. We can’t exist without them, regardless of what it is.\\n\\n To the Surveyor Program, we were surprised from seeing all the dust and rocks. When we landed 7, we said, “Now we’re going to go there. We don’t want to go in the crater because there’s a lot of rocks there. We’ll see if it’s all right.” We landed, great big rocks about this big not that far away, and we landed pretty much level. My God. Now that was a surprise. And it was a good surprise.\\n\\n But the other thing we did, we happened to have a camera on the spacecraft, which was tilted. There’s the big mast and you have the two, solar panel, planar arrays. Then the camera was tilted about 16 degrees at one particular azimuth orientation. Now why was that?\\n\\n It started in ’61 and I mentioned before there was oodles of experiments that were going to go on. We had four cameras, so one in each 60-degree sector. Our stereo coverage would have been there. Complete coverage would have a down-looking camera. We really would have had fantastic coverage. Then all of it got thrown off because of the Centaur, and the weight was 2,500 pounds beginning, we ended up with 2,100. All of those other experiments were gone.\\n\\n Now you had to be able to see all those instruments and operate them, it, so that required the camera titled at 16 degrees. Now the problem you have with 16 degrees is that you have now an orientation which involves the camera to the spacecraft as well as the spacecraft to the surface. You’re going through two rotational matrices which you have to measure and determine.\\n\\n All of that was really a task. We recommended many times to Hughes, “Please put the camera straight up because it’s easier. Then we have only one rotational matrix. It’s a lot easier to do all kinds of things.” If you look at a tilted camera and you’re looking at the horizon you have a curve that looks like that, a sine curve. When you’re putting the images together as Ray Batson did, you’ve got this mosaic curve structure.\\n\\n Now you can flatten it up, Photoshop and everything else like that. But it’s disturbing. Hughes kept putting us off. I can say why, because they would have to go back, cut off the struts as mounted, and remount it. Now turns out that those struts were easy because that’s what Alan Bean did. I think his task was to cut it. He has this big huge cutter. They wondered what kind of a cutter they had. Oh, just the kind you use in your garden. They would snip, and each one of the supports that supported it were cut cleanly. You pick the camera up and put it away.\\n\\n They tried to cut one of the tapes that we had on the scoop that measured the surface mechanics and picked up soil and deposited it in several areas. That was hard to do. It didn’t click, they couldn’t cut it. All of a sudden it broke, and what happened is we had a band, that went around and was welded, or soldered I guess, to that part, and that came loose. Whether that was the environment? They were able to pick the scoop up and bring that back, and a couple of other struts. All of that was very valuable.\\n\\n When we landed in 3, we landed in a crater. It was a big crater. We didn’t know that ahead of time. About 200 meters in diameter. We landed at an angle, an angle was about something like 12 degrees. We’re tilted. It turned out we were tilted in the same direction as the camera was, 16. You add 12 plus 16, now you can see the Earth. We couldn’t see it at a narrow angle but in wide angle. One section. We saw a solar eclipse.\\n\\n Now one edge of the mirror stopped what you can still see, but it was a small image, it’s like 40 by 40 pixels. Interestingly that’s another point. JPL invented the word pixel. Anyway, we had all that. Then later on, a couple days later, we took the very first color pictures of the Earth from the Moon, the very first, that was two firsts for Surveyor.\\n\\n We also in 6 lifted off before Apollo did when they left. We landed a distance away. We photographed the Earth because we were in the southern hemisphere for 7 for a whole 24 hours watching it turn around. We looked at a whole bunch of things.\\n\\n Matter of fact, there was an interesting picture. I like to show that one. Look at that. There are beautiful cloud patterns when we analyzed the solar eclipse. Now you’ve got an atmosphere which is about 65 kilometers above and the light is refracted by the Sun through there. Like a sunset most of the blue is gone but the red and pink and yellow is there. That was our picture.\\n\\n There’re little blobs or beads we called them that you can see, because what was that? There was no cloud cover, there was no blockage, so those things Ewen Whitaker went in and evaluated. We had several years before 3 a satellite moving around the Earth from ESSA [Environmental Science Services Administration]. That monitored cloud covers of the entire planet. One in northern hemisphere projected and one in southern hemisphere. Gene knew all this, so the first thing we did when we got those pictures, he calls up the Director of that Program, he says, “I want you to send me pictures that you took at exactly this date because that’s when we saw the solar eclipse.”\\n\\n We got all those pictures. Ewen Whitaker gets in, and he draws a line on one of those projections which is the line between day and night, that’s the terminator, and all of a sudden it cuts through. No clouds, and there’s clouds. Now you look at that in terms of its latitude orientation, and you look and find out exactly where these beads are in our eclipse image. Aha, see, that’s a bright area, no clouds. Oh, dark area, clouds.\\n\\n We did all of that. If you look at the picture that either Alan or Pete took, on the way back they were about 35,000 miles away from landing, it was pretty close, and they capture a solar eclipse. They had a little bit of luck, so there’s a bright spot on one side. You can go back and take a look at those images.\\n\\n Right at the very top of that image is a little bright spot there, a gap, a spot and another gap, which is what we saw on the Surveyor 3 images. Now the problem you had in Surveyor is that our resolution wasn’t very good. If you look at a star, it was always spread. If you were standing on the Moon and looking at a solar eclipse, it would be just a thin rim, that’s all. You see that in the 16-millimeter pictures that they took before coming back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading that I don’t know when you first saw it, or it was seen. Something about there was dust on the horizon on the Moon and now you’ve been able to see more of it since." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now you’re talking about my PR sell. David [R.] Criswell who lived right here in Houston, approached me when I was at Caltech, because we had seen this phenomena on four of our five missions. When the Sun went down, we saw a bright line along the horizon, and we called this “horizon glow.” This bright line, especially on Surveyor 7, where the horizon was very close, it was like 150 meters away, followed the exact contour of rocks right along the horizon. Because we were in the southern latitude, the path of the Sun goes down at an angle. We were about minus 40 degrees southern latitude. When it does that, you can see this entire event moving sideways.\\n\\n People like Tom [Thomas] Gold and Bruce [W.] Hapke from Cornell [University, Ithaca, New York] proposed that there is an electrostatic field that gets generated as the Sun goes down, and that the dust is levitated in this field at a certain height. Now the Sun is below the horizon, and it shines through this cloud, like the Sun behind a cloud. The cloud follows the inclination of the sun’s path. So we wrote a paper and it was published in a journal called The Moon. The editor of that journal was Professor Zdenek Kopal, a great man, he worked a lot with not only Ranger but Surveyor as an astronomer and headed the Astronomy department at Manchester University.\\n\\n David and I worked together for two years with the magnetic tapes at JPL and he came up with the theory. The astronauts were clued. Gene Cernan had a couple of sketches that they had. But you’re sitting in orbit, and now you’re seeing something that might be that high (3 feet), something like that that occurred. Pretty hard to see that from orbit and pick that out, but it’s there. We saw very definitely examples from the other missions, just a little spot. In Surveyor 6, we were prepared for it took many images. But we didn’t start looking till many hours after sunset.\\n\\n Last year they had the 50th anniversary for lunar science just north of Houston. Ron [Ronald A.] Wells who works a lot with Jack because Jack does all his memories online, he has a 12th man on the Moon now series.\\n\\n After Jack’s talk, I went to say hello as. I hadn’t seen him for a couple years. We greeted each other and then I brought the subject of our horizon glow up. I said, “Well, I’m still waiting for somebody to take a picture, 50 years ago of that horizon glow. The Chinese landed.” The first thing I said when they landed, “My God, the Chinese ought to be doing this.” Connections of others to the Chinese mission were told they turn the cameras off about 18 hours before sunset.\\n\\n I come back and I said, “You know when Surveyor 1 landed, they were still taking pictures the fourth lunar day.” Each lunar day has 14 Earth days. Know how long that is? We stayed on our instrument 50 years ago and survived. You tell me you can’t survive today? I can take out my cell phone and put it in a little cavity that controls all the temperature and I can take a resolution which is 1,000 times better.\\n\\n That hypothesis is on the table. I asked Jack and he says, “Well, Jay, I know, but I can’t buy it.”\\n\\n “Why can’t you buy it?”\\n\\n He said, “Well, I looked at all the rocks out there and they all looked nice and clean, and yet there’s piles you can see right around the rock.” Because one of the things you do, if we observe this phenomenon, is watch it one and a half hours after sunset.\\n\\n Matter of fact, my son has taken all our images and made an animation. So you see that start out this way and there’s a lot of a big cloud, and then it gets smaller and smaller and drifts this way, because the Sun is going down the opposite way.\\n\\n Now you have something like that. I said, “Okay, Jack, you’re a geologist, explain it.”\\n\\n Shakes his head. “I have no idea.” So there is still something that somebody should see, because we observed it. If you’re an astronomer and you see something for the first time, you’re not going to go away. I want somebody to see that again. Why the Chinese haven’t done it I don’t know. Maybe they have. They’re on the far side, maybe they have something like that.\\n\\n But the interesting thing you have is that if it is true, and you have something that goes up in an event that lasts for an hour and a half, the Moon rotates. These particles may not come back in the same place. If they don’t, it’s an erosion process. Another possibility of what’s happening on the lunar surface. We call that the regolith, the upper layer.\\n\\n I built a special instrument at Caltech, which I called a goniospectropolarimeter, GSP. Now what this does is it sets a sample up and you illuminate that sample and you look at it from different angles, and you can change the angle of illumination completely. Then you can pass that view through fiber optics to look at its spectral characteristics, that is UV to IR, and the polarization characteristics at the same time. You’re examining all the optical properties of that particular sample.\\n\\n We used the GSP on a couple of lunar samples that came back with Lee [Leon T.] Silver at the campus. But if you look through all of the history of the crew coming back on all of the Apollo missions, the one thing that stands out more than anything else is glass. Glass stuff. Glass is a significant part, up to 30 percent, of the soil samples you get. You stop for a minute and you think okay, you’re out on the road at night looking at the road markings, and that’s my next job after Caltech and JPL, I went to work for Gamma Scientific in San Diego. That was the last time I was employed full time for an academic institution. They hired me to run the R&D department.\\n\\n One of the company things they did, they built a lot of instruments for photometric measurements, which the space industry used. I developed a couple of instruments that would be used for measuring the (retro) reflective properties of traffic control devices, not only traffic signs, but markings that go on the road. Now when you do a marking on the road, you’re putting glass spheres in together with that paint. That’s the reason why the light comes back from a bright stripe. Very important for driving. The percentage of the glass to the rest of the material is about 30, 35 percent, the same thing you get from the glass in lunar soil.\\n\\n A large part of the first discovery I’d say was when Surveyor 1 landed. The difficulty that astronauts have in visiting the unusual environment were two things, distances and contrast wipeout of all the contrast when they’re looking down Sun. That is a retroreflective phenomenon. If you have pavement markings—you can see this yourself—that might have little markings or dips or something like that, and when the Sun is shining directly behind you, all you see is a bright line, you don’t see any of the structure that’s there.\\n\\n You’re on the Moon, it’s a bright area, a halo right around your camera, your Surveyor. Everything is wiped out. To not fall or anything, the astronauts had to look right and left constantly, so they didn’t hit anything or run into a crater. Have you skied, both of you skied?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When you ski, you can have a situation called a whiteout and there isn’t any horizon, it’s completely gone, and you have no contrast. That’s a dangerous situation when you’re skiing. It’s dangerous on the Moon, because you don’t want to fall.\\n\\n So they learned this way. We had a pretty good idea because our photometric function had found the brightest part is full Moon. This is a nice curve. We’d known that for years, the astronomers had measured that. We said “This is what you’re going to see when you land, but until you had that picture and you see it from Surveyor 1, oh, it’s bright, there it is. So you have lost your contrast.\\n\\n The second thing, you have no atmosphere, everything is black, all shadows are black, unless you have something else that’s bright that throws some light in the shadow. So you have a black-and-white life. Now when you have something like that, your problem is estimating distances. The one thing that I always remember from the Apollo Program was 14 when they had Alan [B.] Shepard. Alan Shepard really wanted to be the first to orbit, the first on the Moon, etc., etc. Unfortunately Alan didn’t have quite the personality I might say, to be the first to land.\\n\\n Now the team had picked out a couple of beautiful craters, and there was one that they were really interested in having them visit. In those days before the rover, he got a little cart, golf cart, so he’d pull that with him. We were communicating through the CapCom.\\n\\n CapCom: “Alan, okay, now, do you see the crater?”\\n\\n “No, I don’t see the crater.”\\n\\n Five minutes later. “Al, do you see the crater?”\\n\\n “No, I don’t see the crater.” He keeps going.\\n\\n “Hey, Al, do you happen to see the crater?”\\n\\n “No, I don’t see it.”\\n\\n “Okay, well, cut that out, it’s too much time you’re taking.” Everything in the timeline EVA was all written down and you just skip that and go to the next event. Then we got a Lunar Orbiter picture and he’s like 15 meters away from the crater. It wasn’t his fault. You can’t judge the distance. That was a problem. That was something, a prime example.\\n\\n They found samples that had a lot of black glass in it. Now glass is there, because, stop for a minute and think. You have an asteroid or a meteorite, coming in at this extreme velocity. It hits the regolith with that kinetic energy, and it’s turned into heat. It throws things up. There’s no atmosphere. They fall down. If they’re glassy and molten, they assume a glass sphere shape as they fall. They can also be clumps, which would still be glassy. Anything that’s glassy, when you’re shining a light on it, you’re going to get light returned, even if it’s a little bit. That kind of thing, we call retroreflection.\\n\\n There was a program that Apollo brought in both 11 and 14 that was a series of retroreflectors. These were silica glass cube-corner materials. If you have glass that is made up such that each one of the three sides is 90 degrees exactly to the other light entering, it will reflect three times and go right back where it came from.\\n\\n There will be a little bit of spread because you can’t make it perfect. There is spread when it gets back to the Earth. People asked us especially on Surveyor 7, “Is this experiment that we’ve got planned for Apollo 11 going to work? It’s a lot of weight. Is that really going to be advantageous?”\\n\\n We said, “Well, not only can we help, we can look and send a couple of laser beams toward the Moon and we’ll see if we can see those.” We captured an image with our camera with two dots. One came from a laser at Table Mountain close to JPL. The other was from Kitt Peak in Tucson. There was pride.\\n\\n Now the Russians on Luna 9 with their rovers also had retroreflectors built. The French built those. We have five points right now on the Moon where we have measured the distance from the Earth to the Moon accurately to a matter of millimeters. When you think of that, it is really fantastic. That was another thing that we did on Surveyor to confirm that.\\n\\n The other thing that is interesting, there was a talk given by one of the researchers, Dr. Tom Murphy from University of California San Diego, and I asked him, “Now you’ve been monitoring this for how many years?”\\n\\n “More than 50.”\\n\\n “Have you noticed over the years if there’s a change in signal?”\\n\\n “Oh yes, yes.”\\n\\n I said, “Oh, what do you attribute that to?”\\n\\n “Dust.” So there’s dust and it’s on there. A little bit of an extrapolation. If you create an electrostatic field you’ve got something like dust that goes up and comes down.\\n\\n We went through all of the other possibilities. I have Harold Allen, who was a great engineer. He doesn’t buy that. He wrote a whole section that said he doesn’t believe our hypothesis. Said it was diffraction, a bunch of other things. David Criswell went through it, he said, “No, that’s not diffraction.” How about micrometeoroids? No, you don’t have a flux large enough to create something like that. One of the Russian astronomers aboard one of the Lunokhod [Soviet robotic lunar rover] had a photometer that looked straight up to the zenith. When he took measurements, he didn’t get zero response, which you might expect of a complete vacuum. It’s possible that not only the lunar dust that we see coming up, but it must have finer particles as it goes up.\\n\\n Somebody said, “Well, if they see something that could be maybe a kilometer in height.” Maybe there was something. We still have things to get answered. If that’s true, somebody ought to go back to that poor Soviet scientist and give him credit.\\n\\n In 1982, I formed my own company and started building instruments like that to measure retroreflective devices. They’re internationally standardized all around the world, they use them to monitor traffic control devices. There’s a whole organization that handles the subject in the United States called the Society for Materials and Testing, ASTM.\\n\\n It was interesting because matter of fact, I wrote a chapter in AIP Press “Handbook of Applied Photometry” where I use pictures from the Moon and say, “Basically here’s glass. This is retroreflective.” Bruce Hapke was a theoretical physicist at Cornell, and when we’re trying to match the photometric function, he did all kinds of mathematical structures to explain the function.\\n\\n Then years later, I don’t know why it didn’t occur to him, after the astronauts landed, he did consider the geological aspects. You couldn’t see it with the Surveyor. Until the astronauts were actually there and picked this up and looked at the soil. Now you put that together. And that’s a big component of that photometric function." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have anything that you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about? Or do you think we’ve covered enough?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "About the only thing I did mention, you were interested in the organizational aspect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, yes, that’s one of the questions I had earlier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "JPL’s history was as a rocket lab and worked with the army and the Huntsville facility under Werner von Braun. The Explorer Program (first US satellite) was jointly done with his organization and JPL. When NASA took over in 1959-60, the lab had to learn a great deal on directing outside contractors and there wasn’t training in systems admirations at the lab. To go from a laboratory used to in-house operations to directing other companies was an on-going process.\\n\\n The relationship with the Hughes aerospace group was very difficult for the first four years. I was the cognizant scientist on one of the experiments on board with no influence on the contract. Harold Allen, as the cognizant engineer, and Don Montgomery, from the systems side, were more directly involved with the hardware and later where JPL took over more control of the project. One important problem was coordinating between the two organizations.\\n\\n We eventually found a way to set up communication by helicopter flight between Pasadena and Culver City, where the Hughes Aerospace group was located. We had three choppers at the lab, and they were in daily operations. At my, Harold, and Don’s level, we interacted with at first a poorly equipped group at Hughes and we tried to urge them to hire optics people for the television camera, which they finally did in about 1964. We began to take over more direct responsibility for the hardware, such as the filters in the camera and the calibration of the TV system as well as the spacecraft. NASA stepped in on the higher level by changing some of our directors, but in actuality, because more of the upper JPL management were all Caltech grads, there was almost no friction between them, and even though offices moved the close communication continued.\\n\\n As more knowable people were hired by Hughes, we began to work more closely together with ideas shared and problems solved quickly. The best example was the use of the integration mode of the shutter and electronics of the camera. At first the Hughes engineers resisted the suggestion in turning off the electron beam in the vidicon and opening the shutter to store the photons over a long time period, up to 30 minutes, and Harold showed them how to do that and they quickly agreed. That was a major step in allowing us to capture events which would have been lost except for that integration function.\\n\\n Acting as the liaison with the PI and the lab was at times difficult because science and the engineering associated with an experiment don’t often understand what changes in the hardware are required to fulfill the desires of the scientist. We had, however, no such problem with Gene as field geologist are used to equipment problems.\\n\\n My final words are on the learning curve for working together as a team. This is sometimes difficult between experiments where there is “turf mentality” and a desire to control one’s research separate from others. We overcame that on 7 where we had a malfunction of the ASI [Alpha Scattering Instrument] release mechanism and required the SMSS [Soil Mechanics and Surface Sampler] and the TV to all work together and solve the problem and retrieve great science. The time in mission operations was for me the greatest reward of the project because of the teamwork and camaraderie it instilled.\\n\\n We had a great group. Matter of fact, there was a book, “NASA Exploring Space with a Camera. Edgar M. Cortright [NASA SP 168]. He wrote a book and a foreword by James E. Webb, the NASA Administrator at the time.\\n\\n I miss a lot of the guys. One person that I really want to acknowledge, however, is Parks Squyres. When I first started at the lab, we had a lot of optics to do. We measured the optical system that went into the Surveyor camera, detailed. He built special apparatus, light sources for test targets, a spectroradiometer for calibrations.\\n\\n For the color we had to take three black-and-whites positives, we put them together in a special apparatus to combine them and you look at that visually and photograph the result. That’s probably the first time we would call the television camera a colorimeter where we actually measured the color all carefully controlled. The color image that we reconstituted in 35-millimeter film, we would give that slide to the press and we’d say, “Okay. Now when you make copies of that in your press, take a look and make sure that it’s a good copy.\\n\\n It’s been an interesting life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Sounds like it. I want to thank you for coming today. We appreciate you coming and talking to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Justin J. Rennilson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You can use whatever you want in this interview." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00026", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2016-057.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Norris, Jeremiah (1963-1965): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2016-057", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2016-057", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Jeremiah (Jerry) Norris served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia from 1963 to 1965 on a cooperatives project (Colombia VI). He was stationed in La Plata. Through his initial work with the community, he ended up visiting El Congresso, a very remote village in the rain forest. He gained the confidence of the villagers by using his Peace Corps medical kit to treat simple maladies. Norris helped them develop a timber-marketing cooperative which is still functioning 50 years later. The initial success of the El Congresso cooperative led to the development of five more cooperatives in La Plata, where Norris and other volunteers contracted with the poorest family in town to do cooking for them. He is still in touch with children from that family. After his official tour of duty, Norris served as director of co-op volunteers in Colombia, and then worked at Peace Corps headquarters in the International Organizations division. To conclude the interview, Norris reflects on the high energy and somewhat chaotic environment in PC Washington at the time, and shares his belief that much of Peace Corps' success is individual rather than organizational and happenstance than design. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, August 24, 2016. 1 digital file.", + "dates_of_materials": "24 August 2016", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 56 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "020. Colombia.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Colombia. Norris, Jeremiah (1963-1965): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Colombia", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2016-057", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2016-057-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/2608k0mi3lam3s5v3m24lklv518l5v04.pdf?odc=20231115174318-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/1a1462bb-9d5c-44fb-89eb-743941d2eded/061a82bf-c5be-40b7-960f-20350ed5d8ae/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI2OWZfNzZiODk2OGVjMjZmZjI4NzYyMDI0MGI2ZDU4ODVjN2QzYjBjM2NkODU3ZTQ0Y2RlNjI5ZmJjMTgwYTlmNDMzNl8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS8xYTE0NjJiYi05ZDVjLTQ0ZmItODllYi03NDM5NDFkMmVkZWQvMDYxYTgyYmYtYzViZS00MGI3LTk2MGYtMjAzNTBlZDVkOGFlL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Washington, D.C.", + "length": "26 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed October 17, 2016, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Jeremiah Norris Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Evelyn Ganzglass" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jeremiah Norris" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Evelyn Ganzglass. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia, 1966 to 1968, and I'm interviewing Jerry Norris, Jeremiah Norris, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia, 1963 to 1965. He was part of Colombia VI and he worked on co-ops." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:31", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So welcome. So I'll ask my usual first question. Why did you join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:40", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was working in Chicago for the Encyclopedia Britannica and I was on their management team and one of my jobs was to arrange the retirement dinners for people who were put in their 30 and 40 years. We always gave them a gold watch as a going away present, and it dawned on me that just as their time was running out, that we were giving them a watch. This is where I could be in 30 years. And so there's got to be something else out there. And it was thankfully. There was the Peace Corps, so that's why I joined." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did you know about Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:33", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in the 1960 campaign I voted for, my vote went to Nixon. But then when Kennedy spoke." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were inspired?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:57", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's where my heart went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, good. So you applied for Peace Corps? And did you have to wait a long time to get in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:11", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, actually, it was very quick. I got a call one night at dinner. I lived in Chicago and I got a call from. It was my sister answered the phone and said it was the White House calling. And so I went to the phone and person identified herself as a recruiter for Peace Corps. She was recruiting for Ethiopia, and I didn't know at the time, but that was Harris Wofford's first program. And so I said, well, how many people will be in the program? She said, oh there'll be 300. And I said, well, thank you, but I'm not interested in being with a group of 300. So she said, would you be interested in other programs? I said, yeah. So they called other times, but not from the White House. Other invitations. And on the seventh one, it was Colombia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:03:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They called you seven times?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:03:10", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Six times and then the seventh one was Colombia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:03:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess they really wanted you, huh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:03:16", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they were, you know, they had a very active recruitment effort. And when I said how many people in the program and they said it's an all-male program, very small, only 23. I said, that's mine. I like small like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:03:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How old were you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:03:32", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Twenty nine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:03:33", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were 29. So you were among the mature people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:03:37", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was long in the tooth. I had done my military first before college and in the military. I was with a very small unit. I like small. In a big world, I like small." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:03:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, great. So you finally accepted Colombia. Where did you train?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:03:56", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We assembled for five days of orientation in New York City. We then went to Puerto Rico for 30 days of Outward Bound training. And then we went to the University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wisconsin, Milwaukee. For three and a half months of academic training, and then back to Puerto Rico to actually work in an active cooperative for a month. So we'd have a feel of what it was like. So it was a fairly long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:04:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you like the Outward Bound part?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:04:31", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Loved it, loved it. And it was a, no one knew each other until we got into that swimming pool, so to speak. Or into those arduous hikes that they put you through, but 30 days really bonded you quickly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:04:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. And was the training in Milwaukee good?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:04:56", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was very good, very good. Language training, very good. Academic training and economics, very good. And the history of cooperatives and what cooperatives, you know, the many different forms of cooperatives. So it gave us a good background for what we were to do in Colombia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:05:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then you did, I guess, practice cooperative work in Puerto Rico." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:05:24", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Puerto Rico." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:05:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of a cooperative was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:05:28", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an agricultural cooperative, everything from coffee to beans and corn, but it gave you a feel for how to manage a business. Basically, it was a management sort of a management course. So when we got to Colombia, we had I think it was five days of orientation in Bogota and then we split up. And on the day we were to go out to our sites, the Peace Corps director came in to talk to us and said, well, now you're ready to go and we'll see you in six months. For a reunion sort of a meeting. So we had figured that we had six months to do something or show that we could do something. And I was posted to to a very small village, three thousand people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:06:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the name of the village?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:06:43", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's called La Plata, in the Department of Huila, which had just gone through the long civil war in Colombia. Most of it was pacified. But all the other guys in our group went to big cities like Cali and Cartagena and Medellin. I couldn't figure out why this small town, 3,000 people, you know, sent me to. And when I got there, I couldn't find anyone that had requested a volunteer or knew anything about why one should be there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:07:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they know you were coming?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:07:24", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were two volunteers there already from a previous group, but they were working in community development. But they said they didn't request anyone, so they didn't know what that was all about. So I worked with them in community development projects for the first three or four months, and then they went home. Fortunately, in working with them, people would say, well, this is what, so this is what you mean by community development. But tell us about cooperatives, what are they? That kind of thing. That's why I started giving, you know, classes, orientation sessions on the structure of cooperatives.\n\nAnd then one day in a very remote village, not where I lived in La Plata, but in a remote village called the El Congreso, which took me hours to get up in foot, slogging on a trail up in the rainforest. These people had been displaced during the civil wars in Colombia, and they wanted to get as far away from the government as they could, so were up in the rainforest. They made their living cutting wood, making cheese, things like that. And I went up. I just liked the people up there and I gave orientation sessions on cooperatives and one day they said, let's do it. And 50 years later, one of my partners returned, and it's still operating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:09:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what kind of a co-op was it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:09:25", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Marketing cooperative." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:09:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Marketing what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:09:30", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Marketing timber and lumber that they cut. They all individually, before I worked with them, they all individually took their lumber out to the road head, took it down to the nearest city, and made deals with middlemen. But now we could put it all into one package and get a better price and negotiate for a better price on the lumber. And then the first thing we did was a company store, rice and coffee and sugar and salt, and things like that. Started off with four or five items and pretty soon we had 25, 30, 50 items." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To buy cooperatively?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:10:15", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it became a cooperative store, which the women liked a lot, because they didn't have to then go into the nearest town, which was always very difficult. But to have it still operating after 50 years was quite." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:10:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:10:32", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And then, we built a physical building for the cooperative where they could mill the wood instead of doing it individually, do it by power saw. Make cheese, which they started to do, process cheese. And what we had. About six months after I was there, two other volunteers came to my site and they were community development volunteers. And they were under CARE, supervision of CARE contractor. So they had access to food from CARE, surplus food. So we brought that into El Congreso and we would, we would say with the cooperative board, one gallon of cooking oil for six broad feet of lumber. So we traded food." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:11:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, nobody had. Did they not have money or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:11:47", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Money was pretty scarce, but food was, you know, the CARE food had huge value to it. Cooking oil is very expensive. Flour was expensive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:12:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because it had to be shipped in, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:12:06", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but here they could. They're cutting wood anyway, so why not trade the wood for food?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:12:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then what did you do with the wood?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:12:16", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Built the building." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:12:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, built the building. And what was your role in all of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:12:22", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was, you know, after they formed their own junta, I was just an advisor and I'd take the money to the bank back in La Plata. Do arrangements for shipping in more food so they could trade it for wood until the building was up and running." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:12:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:12:48", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then, I didn't realize that since it probably was the most inaccessible geographic area because it was up in the rainforest, that once I got that cooperative started, people would come to see me in La Plata and say, why are you going all the way up there? Come to our town and we'll have a horse for you and all those kinds of things. So one cooperative soon expanded to five in different parts of Huila." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:13:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So were they, was this a totally new concept to them, cooperatives? They had never really heard of doing working together like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:13:37", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had heard of them from prior to World War II. Some Germans were out there, but not in the village where I worked, but in Huila itself. But the Germans formed the co-operative to the point where they could then take all the money and disappear. So it had a bad reputation. The concept had a bad reputation. And that's what the Germans did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:14:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So explain to me what the difference is between your job working on cooperatives, I guess it's more specific then community development. Where do those come together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:14:18", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, community development would be like doing schools, doing farm to market roads, doing bridges, small bridges." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:14:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it's infrastructure development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:14:28", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Infrastructure, yeah. And we did, with the other two volunteers. They were very, two very unusual people because they didn't care if they were working on my project or I was working on their project. It was all safe. And so we managed to do schools, a couple of schools. They did a very nice bridge project. One of the guys was a civil engineer, so, he knows construction, knew how to use cable and make a bridge out of their cable and whatnot. And we did, in the town where we lived, then we did a credit cooperative." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:15:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the credit cooperative, I mean, that's a whole banking system, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:15:28", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's banking, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:15:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you knew you knew how to operate that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:15:31", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was part of the training we had. So I knew, you know, the debits and credits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:15:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "101." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:15:36", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was one step ahead of them, perhaps. But I was, I guess I was enough part of the village to know that if we did the credit co- operative and had it based at the church, when they came in on Sunday for marketing and to pay up their dues, they weren't treating the cooperative, they were treating the padre if they weren't paying up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:16:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you linked the two together, very clever. So you stayed in, where did you live, in La Plata or did you move?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:16:17", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Lived in La Plata." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:16:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The whole time and then you went up to El Congreso?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:16:21", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That took a bus ride of about 50 minutes and then went through a road head. And then you had a slog in about, depending on the rain, three to five hours on foot to get into El Congreso." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:16:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how often did you go up there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:16:40", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't. I never counted the times, but I was up there as." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:16:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like once a week or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:16:46", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sometimes twice. I'd stay up there sometimes, overnight. And it's also where I, as you know, the Peace Corps medical kit was a huge advantage, and I never knew the power of medicine until I had the kit, and I'd take part of it up into El Congreso. And usually with mothers who had splitting headaches and shivers and treat them. So that became sort of my entry to the village. You know, it wasn't just co- operatives, it was health care." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:17:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any medical personnel around there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:17:40", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:17:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not even in La Plata?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:17:44", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had two doctors in La Plata, two medical doctors. One had been trained to when they were bleeding patients, he still was bleeding patients, a throwback to the Vienna School of Medicine. And then there was a young doctor who, unfortunately, was too much into the drink, but you wouldn't want to. As volunteers, we swore we would never." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:18:16", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Go to him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:18:17", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If we were injured, we would make sure we got to Bogota." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:18:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what about your book, you talked about the medical kit, what about your book locker?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:18:31", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The book locker, as you remember, was we had, all three of us had a book locker. And fortunately, most of the books were separate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:18:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Different ones?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:18:44", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Each were different ones. And when new volunteers came or volunteers came to town, we were trade books back and forth because we had no TV and no radio. A telephone was at a, you had to go down to a central station even to use a telephone. And there was no, uh, there was intermittent electricity in the town. So at night, what to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:19:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Read." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:19:16", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. It was a liberal education and those were good books, good works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:19:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you leave any of them behind left?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:19:25", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Left them all behind, yeah. One of the things when the two new volunteers came and then the other ones left. Since we all had an allowance, you know, for food anyway, we decided to take our, uh, tried to contract with a family to do our meals and then pay the family. And we ended up, we picked the poorest family in town and she had 11 kids. Her husband was a day worker when he could get it. And we contracted with her to do our meals, and we agreed on a price. And so instead of doing it and some were buying food ourselves or doing it in what passed as a restaurant, we came with the family. And one of my partners married one of the, the youngest daughter. And when they returned, they went. He was from Chicago, and he returned to Chicago and became a professor at the University of Illinois, and she earned two master's degrees in teaching in Chicago school system. So the family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:21:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Benefited, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:21:08", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but they all reached back to help each other, which was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:21:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:21:14", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So out of that family of 11, one became a medical doctor, still practices. One became the vice mayor of Cali, second largest city in Colombia. She did the double master's in Chicago. And they have, the other kids are doing, teachers and whatnot, but they're all doing well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:21:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you picked the poorest family in town and they all did so well. Do you think it was the relationship with you guys, was it the money, or what was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:21:51", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, money certainly helped because she had no money. But it was the association of being with them every time we were in town and every time any of the volunteers came by. Or any. We only had one staff visit in all the time I was there, from Bogota, and he came when I wasn't in town and he was very angry that I wasn't there. But he never sent any message that he was coming here, just expected me to be there. So I think it's just the association and being with them on a daily basis and being part of a family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:22:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was your Spanish really good at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:22:38", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My Spanish was, I started off horribly and ended off even maybe worse, if that's possible. But I was always able to communicate with. I got my eggs in the morning the way I wanted them, when I traveled. The Spanish used in that part of the Colombia is not Colombian Spanish. When I went to Bogota, it was like a bag was lifted. I said, this is really easy to understand, these people. Where I lived, they cut off the end of words because they speak very, very quickly. It's bastardized language. But in Bogota, it's the king's Spanish. And I understood perfectly in Bogota." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:23:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you spent two years in La Plata doing all of that. What did you? I guess teachers had summer breaks, but did you travel during your vacation time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:23:41", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Only once in the first six months, I went for five days to some island off the coast of Colombia in Cartagena, where we had our first conference. But I didn't, no, I didn't take a vacation. I worked straight through. And then I became a staff member." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:24:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Colombia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:24:08", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Colombia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:24:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doing what? This was after your service was completed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:24:12", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was, uh, the director of our program was, just as our program was ending, he was asked to leave. And so they asked me if I would stay on and be the director for the new group of co-op volunteers coming in. So I did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:24:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how long did you stay there then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:24:44", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I stayed until they could find another director. I stayed as staff for eight months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:24:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how was it different being staff as being a volunteer, you get a different perspective on the issues, don't you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:25:04", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. And the new group that came in were 36 strong, so they were spread all around the country. And so I had a, you know, every day you're someplace else because, you know, trying to give support to them. So I got a chance to see Colombia from that perspective because I was going to be on the move and I had carte blanche on an airplane, paid, to move around quickly where I couldn't use a bus or a jeep. So that was that was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:25:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you enjoyed that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:25:48", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did, I did enjoy it, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:25:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But it sounds like you provided more support than you got." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:25:54", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, maybe I was lucky that I didn't get the kind of support because the director of our program was into birdwatching and he had never traveled abroad before. He'd just worked in co-ops in the U.S. and was very senior in the U.S. He was a good, a good man, but he. Things got beyond him where he couldn't be a contribution anymore, if you know what I mean. We knew more about this situation than he did, and he didn't seem to be that interested in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:26:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Co-ops?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:26:32", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "More birds, you know. Which was kind of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:26:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So Peace Corps pulled him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:26:41", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Peace Corps asked the contractor to pull him. And he wasn't helping us at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:26:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said the contractor. So the director was not a Peace Corps volunteer, Peace Corps staff person?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:26:54", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he was. Colombia had contracts with different groups like CARE, and this was with the [Cooperative] League of the USA in Chicago, which was the manager that runs all the cooperatives here in the U.S., so they contract. He was not a considered a Peace Corps staff member, but a contractor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:27:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then you worked for him as a volunteer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:27:23", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. And I guess most of the people in that group resented that because it was an unusual group. Probably of the 23, maybe 18 or 19 had master's degrees." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:27:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All the volunteers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:27:42", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of our group, yeah. Had been around a little bit, you know, they weren't just fresh out of college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:27:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I mean, you were 29. That was pretty old." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:27:56", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Oh yeah, I was the oldest and the others were 26, 25. But they had, you know, graduate school behind them, work experience. One of my best friends was working at Ford Motor Company. Another guy was, he had a PhD in economics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:28:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really, huh. That's pretty unusual, though, because most volunteers were straight out of college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:28:24", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At that time. Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:28:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that make a difference, do you think? That they had all of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:28:31", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it did, in terms of our ability to absorb the culture quickly, to absorb know what a co-op is, and to try to communicate that where our boss couldn't do that and didn't seem to be that much interested in doing it. He enjoyed being in Medellin, which was a major city of Colombia with his family, he had a daughter and his wife. But it was mainly he was interested in the birds of Colombia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:29:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, not a good match then. Did you become friends with any Colombians and maintain contact with them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:29:17", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:29:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the family clearly that cooked meals for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:29:22", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Oh, they come here to Chicago a lot. And we see, you know, their kids. One of them married a volunteer out of Central America recently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:29:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you're still in contact?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:29:41", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:29:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, wow. That's good. And after Peace Corps, did you travel in South America or hop on a plane and come back? How did that work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:29:52", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, because I was moving on to a staff position, I had to go to Washington to be stamped, I guess, or to be certified by the Peace Corps staff in Washington. And when I was there, they said there's a person who wants to see you. She's an office director. She was running the Office of International Organizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:30:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:30:23", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At Peace Corps, so I went to see her. Her name was Diana MacArthur, and she said she's about to take her first overseas trip. And, you know, I'm going to Colombia, would you be my escort officer in Colombia? So I said, yeah, sure, I'd love to show you Peace Corps Colombia. And when I got back to Bogota, the Peace Corps director called me in and said, he said, Jerry, I'm going to give you a chance to pull out of this. I said, why? He said, well, do you know who this woman is? I said, she's the Director for International Operations. He said, no, she's the niece of LBJ. She's mean, she'll burn your career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:31:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I mean, she had the reputation of being mean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:31:33", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And would ruin your career. So I said, no, I'll do it. So I did it. And on the last day, as I was taking her from the airport back into Bogota, we were out at a site visit, the car in front of us hit a dog and she was a real dog lover. Oh, she said, Jerry, stop the car, stop the car. We've got to help the dog. I said, no, no, you can't do that. That's someone's dinner tonight. They'll take care of it. So I thought that any chance I had of going to Washington was out the window. But I think it was about seven days after she returned home, she sent me a telegram saying that she just convinced Sarge to give her another staff position, and she offered it to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:32:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about that? And then you came to Washington?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:32:44", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "After I finished, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:32:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what did you do at Peace Corps then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:32:48", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was a program officer on her staff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:32:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For international organizations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:32:58", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I learned a lot from her. She was a good, a good boss." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:33:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "See, so reputations aren't necessarily deserved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:33:06", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't think so. She was good. In fact, when I, I was so surprised to get the offer. I didn't respond for seven days and one day at the office, she rang me up from Washington and I could just see her sitting at her desk, drumming her fingers. I am not used to being..." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:33:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good. So did you work internationally, I mean, across the world in that position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:33:43", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:33:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or did you get to travel to other places?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:33:47", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah, and then when she left, I went to other offices within Peace Corps, so that's where I met Margaret, in the Office of Public Affairs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:33:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Uh huh. And how long were you at Peace Corps then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:34:03", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Five years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:34:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And after Peace Corps, what happened then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:34:12", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "After Peace Corps, I was offered a job with the newly formed International Peace Academy in New York City, as their director of administration. So we went to Vienna, Austria, for the first training program of the academy. And it was headed up by a guy who was the peacekeeper, he was in charge of peacekeeping at the U.N. An Indian major general. And he became the first director of the academy. Very good contacts all around the world. So we did that for a year. And then we lived in New York City." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:35:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they were the academy was to train peacekeepers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:35:14", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was to train people in the arts of mediation and negotiation. So in our first training program in Vienna, we had young journalists from all around the world that could conditions. And he could do first-hand experience from his peacekeeping in the Congo and Indonesia, places like that around the world. But both Margaret and I missed desperately missed Washington. And so we came back to Washington." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:35:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you've stayed involved in international issues throughout." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:36:02", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And we came in during Nixon's term, when anything doing with the Peace Corps was not very employable. And one of Margaret's site partners, Joe Kelly, was with a brand-new company that just got a huge contract from Health and Human Services, and they needed an evaluator. So Joe rang me up and asked me to come over and to interview, and I said, well, Joe, I don't know anything about health. And he said, but you do know the importance of a verb in every sentence." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:36:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that's how you got that job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:36:54", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:36:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you're international and health expert. Is it international health or health for most? And that's how you got into health or did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:37:05", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that's how I got into it, doing the with Joe Kelly's outfit. And then there was a person at USAID, a former Peace Corps director in Indonesia, who was a close friend of the president of the unit I was with, family health care. And he set the standard that there's got to be another way for AID to contract for health assistance. You know, consulting firms, because everything was done through the American Public Health Association. So he said, if I could get you a contract, would you be willing to take it? So my boss answered, yeah. It happened to be Korea, South Korea. But 30 days from takeoff to landing, we had to come up with a plan for health reform in South Korea. And so, along with Stan and his vice president, Stan asked me to go with them. Margaret knows Stan very well, Stan is an excellent medical doctor. He can't write though, he wanted someone write this up. And so that's where we wrote it up in 30 days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:38:33", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it was implemented?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:38:35", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Would you believe it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:38:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it worked?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:38:40", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He'd sent another team out there to undo it, what we did, and the team came back, said that's it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:38:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:38:52", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah, South Korea, it's still my, I've worked there a lot of times since, but it's still my favorite country. Because once they get an idea, get out of their way because they'll run right over you. They're very hard workers. It was to, when we went out there, the health system was 85 percent public and 15 private. And today is absolutely flipped, 15 percent public and 85 percent private." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:39:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do they have national health care? National health care through the private doctors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:39:33", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but it's mandated that everybody pays. Even if you're out there in a rural village. The only other tax that's put on a home in a rural area is the defense tax and military tax. So now it's a health tax every month, so they all bought into it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:39:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good. So are there any other stories you'd like to tell about your Peace Corps experience in Colombia or staff? Staff in Colombia, staff in Washington, you've played multiple roles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:40:09", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, did you work in Peace Corps Washington?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:40:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:40:17", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a, um, it was a 16th century Italian court scene." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:40:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Explain that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:40:30", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was an assassin behind every pillar and two more to take their place. Peace Corps had the reputation of some bright shining star on the firmament because Sarge had direct appointment for 500 people without going through the Civil Service system. As Foreign Service reserve officers. That was unheard of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:41:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's the way Peace Corps was set up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:41:06", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When Kennedy, you know, because Kennedy and Shriver set it up, they set it up that way. But that was enormous political. And so the directors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:41:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were most of them former volunteers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:41:22", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, when we got there, they started to get former volunteers when I started to come out. Most of them were, you know, if you knew somebody in the Kennedy administration and then LBJ, like my boss being, you know, the niece, they got it. And if you wanted to remove someone, you didn't have to go through any kind of, or you just, you're finished." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:41:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when did that change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:41:51", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know when it changed, but that was, I mean, I was the victim of it. I was in one office and the deputy director came down to our office, went to the light switch and turned it off. He said, you have 30 days to find something else. And that was merciful because normally it was just, you're out. So I got, on the 29th day, I got another offer, but that's how it worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:42:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was there an advantage, do you think, just for a quick start up? That's probably why they did it, right? For a quick start up to get people in and not have to go through the whole Civil Service system? Was there a positive side to this? Or was it all negative?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:42:50", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think it harnessed a lot of raw enthusiasm which they needed. A lot of can do. Nothing's impossible. We'll get it done. And that enthusiasm ran the Peace Corps for maybe up until Joe Blatchford came as director appointed by Nixon, and he was a real, real disaster. I mean, the first thing he did was to redecorate his office and to get a new car. So it was things for him, not the spirit at all. I mean, Sarge had an old jalopy, you know, that he used. He didn't even hang pictures in his office, put them on the floor and lean them up against a wall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:43:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn't have time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:43:49", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Didn't have time. Sarge interviewed everyone that came on staff. And I was sorry I was the only one that didn't get that because he said, oh, if he's there already, let him go. But he interviewed everyone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:44:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was really a team that he felt close to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:44:06", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. And he had, you know, really good people, Frank Mankiewicz, you know, coming on. And when I went in, I had a, because Frank was the Latin American director, I had to go see him and he's the last person to sign off on my being on staff. And I went into his office and we shook hands and he said, I thought you were younger. And I said, I thought you were older." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:44:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. Well, I guess under the Nixon administration, as you said, Peace Corps was not a top priority." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:44:55", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was sad. And then they melded it in with the ACTION and. But I have, in all the years I've been in Washington, I make it a point not to go near the Peace Corps building." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:45:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:45:15", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because that was a different time. This is their time, whatever it is. But even the building changed, and we were on 806 Connecticut right across from Lafayette Square. I'd look down, my office looked down on the White House. I wasn't back more than 10 days when all of a sudden I was standing at the White House next to this big Texan called LBJ. And Bill Moyers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:45:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For what, signing legislation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:45:52", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a birthday party or something. And poor LBJ was trying to. It was my first time I ever saw a president. He was trying to, the steward was trying to get him some coffee, and Moyers was trying to get a speech up under his left arm for his next appointment, moving him along. And he was trying to go like this and his right hand was just swollen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:46:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Being president is not an easy thing. You keep going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:46:24", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Moyers finally got him moving into the next door. Before the door opened, he said, the guy on your left is this, the guy on your right is this. And when that door opened, showtime. Bill, how in the hell have you been? How's the family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:46:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was a very good politician. He was a very good politician. You know, you have to like people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:46:52", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Outside of Vietnam, I mean, what he created, you know, with Medicaid, Medicare, Voting Rights Act." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:47:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A lot of accomplishments." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:47:02", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:47:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But he was, I mean, I never met him, but he was quite a character. Yeah, good. So let me ask you, I mean, I don't want to cut it short, but I usually ask people to reflect on the three goals of the Peace Corps. One is to provide technical assistance where requested. Do you think you and the other volunteers really helped in the country?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:47:35", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was marginal. I think that it's not that it was done, wasn't done organizationally, it was done individually. And unfortunately, it was happenstance more than planning, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:47:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Is that part of the enthusiasm gap?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:47:57", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so. Yeah, I think so. But that's my view. Every time I traveled when I was working for USAID or any contractor, I always tried to meet with Peace Corps volunteers. And down through the years, I would be disappointed when I would say to one, what do you think of Director Blatchford. And they'd say, who? I'd say, you know, the Peace Corps director. What's his name again? They had no connection with him at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:48:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe that's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:48:45", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But Sarge [Shriver] was, you can't, you couldn't talk Peace Corps without Sarge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:48:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sarge. right. That's different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:48:51", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But there was no interest there, either. And I felt, you know, especially when I see them working for USAID, I get very disappointed in the in the global AIDS program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:49:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Former volunteers, you mean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:49:15", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Active volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:49:16", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh active, are working now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:49:19", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly in Africa and they work for PEPFAR, the president's emergency relief program for AIDS. But they're working alongside contractors who are making, you know, $180,000 a year and have all the privileges. But when they were recruited, they weren't recruited to work in AIDS, global AIDS. Just that when they got in there, there was a health program that converted to AIDS, that's what it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:49:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it's basically cheap labor now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:49:53", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cheap labor.\n\nAnd I can't blame the volunteers for wanting to do it because they see that as a step into USAID, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:50:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a very different experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:50:02", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very different. Yeah. So what's in it for me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:50:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But maybe the, I mean, these countries are so much more developed now. Maybe liberal arts graduates can't help a whole lot without specialization." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:50:17", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was having lunch with a, she was a director of the National Bank of Rwanda. And as we went around the table introducing ourselves, someone said, you know, Jerry over there used to be in Peace Corps. And she stopped the meeting and she said, why don't you send me volunteers that can work on my national finance program? She said, you send me these volunteers in health and in education, but then, you know, I can't finance health and education unless I get my national accounts together. And you have, this country has those people, why can't you give them to me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:51:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, because it's also hard getting finance people to go into the Peace Corps, probably, at that point because you can get other jobs, or maybe the enthusiasm isn't there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:51:15", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the things I tried to promote unsuccessfully, but they shouldn't have to go for two years in today's communications." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:51:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, they don't anymore. There are all kinds of short-term options in Peace Corps now for professionals, for bankers, for doctors, can go in for shorter periods. So I think they've really taken that idea and are implementing it. I don't know how big the program is, but I know they're doing it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:51:44", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Called resource voluntarism." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:51:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I guess resource volunteerism, which is great because you get a different set of people involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:51:54", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I don't think, you know, they keep going for numbers, but I don't think we need numbers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:52:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, the numbers are very small now compared to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:52:04", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "7,200. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:52:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So let me ask you about the other. Second goal of Peace Corps is to promote better understanding of the U.S. Do you think Peace Corps volunteers have done that in countries around the world?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:52:26", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they have, in some cases. At the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps, the government of Korea invited all volunteers who ever served in Korea to come back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:52:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's incredible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:52:52", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Turns out he was educated by Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:52:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, well. So that's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:53:00", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's good. But in terms of, I mean, Colombia is not that far away from the U.S., but I remember one day going up to a village. They met me with a horse and there was a young man that was going to guide me into the village. And along the way, he said, where are you from? And I said, I'm from the United States of America. There's a long silence. And he said, is that as far as Bogota?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:53:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So nowadays he would know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:53:41", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hopefully he would know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:53:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He'd have a cell phone and he'd know all of that. So the third goal of Peace Corps is to promote better understanding of other peoples by Americans." + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:53:55", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now, I think that may have been the one that we did well. Because I don't see how you could be abroad, living abroad, and not have a better understanding of these different cultures and people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:54:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And virtually everybody I've interviewed somehow has stayed very active internationally, whether it's professionally or in other ways. So we need more Peace Corps volunteers to learn about the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:54:37", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When you see those that have gone into the Congress, you know, people like Sam Farr, and the effect they've had. Very positive effect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:54:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Chris Dodd as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:54:55", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Chris Dodd. And our, who's the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:54:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, Tom Petri, was a congressman from Wisconsin, Republican congressman, he was in our program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:55:05", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:55:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He's now retired, but he was in Congress for a long time and always spoke about, you know, pretty conservative, but when it came to Peace Corps, he was always talking about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:55:18", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I went to Somalia, I asked Marty for some references and he wrote me a very good letter. And when I got there, I didn't know that this guy was the combination, commandant of the city and FBI and CIA and everything else combined. But because of Marty's letter, he gave me an audience. And USAID was trying to put a child survival program into Somalia. So I asked him, why did you ask for this program? And he said, we didn't. What we wanted was we needed tanks and machine guns and airplanes. But what is it you call it again? I said, child survival. Yeah, they said I have to have some of that too. Oh dear." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:56:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a funny note. Should we end on that note? That's great. Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:56:22", + "speaker": "Jeremiah Norris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. And who's interviewing you Evelyn?" + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00609", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WilcuttTW/wilcutttw.htm", + "original_file_name": "WilcuttTW_10-19-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WilcuttTW/WilcuttTW_10-19-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Terry W. Wilcutt", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 19 October 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Terrence W. Wilcutt" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is October 19th, 2015. This interview with Terry Wilcutt is being conducted in Houston, Texas, for the JSC Oral History Project and for JSC’s Knowledge Management Office. Interviewer is Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you for joining us again today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’re going to talk today about your first mission if you don’t mind. Your first assignment was as the pilot for STS-68 in 1994. When did you first learn about that assignment and how did that come about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I probably learned about it the night before they were going to announce it. That’s usually what they did. The Chief of the Office at the time I think was Dan [Daniel C.] Brandenstein. I don’t remember when he came in and asked me if I would do the mission. That’s what they do, they come in, and basically what I got for all my missions was the same thing. “We’re going to announce the crew the next day, we’ve selected you as the pilot.” It’s like right out of the movies. “Are you willing to accept the mission? Are you willing to do that?” Of course no one that I ever heard of ever refused one of those. We’re all thrilled.\\n\\n Then of course the next thing you want to know is, “Who am I flying with and what are we doing?” They give you that, then the next day they make the announcement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a feeling before that, who you’d be flying with, before they said?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I think some of the folks in my class tracked mission by mission and looked at how many seats might be available. But frankly there were so many different combinations and possibilities, I never worried about that. I was happy that I’d been in the [Astronaut] Office about four years—by the time we flew it was four years. That was much better than some of the classes in front of us where the manifest had been slow enough that there was a long time before people flew their first flight. My particular class was pretty lucky about that. The manifest got us into space earlier than normal, which is a good thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was a Mission to Planet Earth flight. Talk about the training because of the Earth observation and the amount of photography that you were going to be doing on that flight. You also were splitting your time, it was running 24 hours, so you could do [the Earth observations]. If you want to talk about that training and how much you knew about that, because [Mission to Planet Earth] flew earlier that year, the first mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "STS-59 flew a few months earlier than us. Gosh, it was busy, but it was just a great flight. The training was magnificent. A lot of Earth observations, a lot of camerawork. I don’t remember the total, but 15,000 sticks in my mind. We took an incredible amount of photos. One of the things that everybody enjoys when they go to space is looking out the window. We were being paid to do that. It was just wonderful. Plus, our altitude was lower. I think we were about 115 miles up from Earth. You’d have to check that, but it’s pretty close to that. The Space Station missions are up around 200, Hubble around 300. Being that close, there was a lot more detail available. It was just great.\\n\\n I met just some of the most dedicated Earth observations scientists that you could imagine. It was a thrill getting to know them. Those people I’ve respected and loved my entire career since I met them. They were just so knowledgeable. It was important that we be able to recognize certain sites on the ground. We just went through thousands and thousands of photos that had been taken from space to recognize these critical points where they had people on the ground to take measurements to serve as truth data later on after we finished. It was great.\\n\\n Training was busy. The other thing about being on split shifts when we got to space, all we had was the Orbiter. We didn’t have a lab to go with. Being on split shifts, usually there were only three of you up at a time, except for the little overlap period between the shifts. That meant just three people to share all the room in the Shuttle instead of six or seven, which is a lot of elbows and knees and feet floating around. It was just great.\\n\\n Training was great, the mission was great, and the people I got to fly with were great too. Good thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those experts that you were talking about, did they come here to train you? Or did you go to different sites to train where they were?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They came here to show us the pictures, and then we went off to different sites too. We made a trip to the Sierras [Sierra Nevada Mountains, California] during the winter, up to Mammoth Mountain, to Death Valley, where they would explain what they were looking for for science. It was just fascinating. I don’t think anyone could go through that training or work with those people or listen to them talk about the science without becoming an Earth obs fan and scholar. It was just great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they trying to compare from that previous mission, STS-59, because it was different times of the year too? So were you looking for different things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of it, that’s right, the radar could tell you a lot of things about what was going on in the Earth. It could determine the moisture content in the snowpack to predict how much water Southern California would have or anyplace else in the world that depended on snowmelt. The moisture content in crops, moisture content in the soil, so you could predict crop yields. See below the surface of the Earth if it’s particularly dry sand, look for earthquake fault zones. I think originally they had hoped to get a spring measurement in [STS-]59 and then we were going to take a fall measurement on 68. Then they would compare it and see if you could determine any differences using the [Space] Radar Lab [SRL-2] of the state of the plants." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about the photography. Did they train you on specific types of cameras? Or was it the normal cameras that the Shuttle always carried? Or were there some specific things that you did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think a couple of them they normally carried. Gosh, I don’t remember the name, it’s been so long, the really large [format Linhof] camera that we mounted in the window. Then we would position to catch the shot of the ground. Then we used a regular Hasselblad and then a 35-millimeter also. Mostly the 35-millimeter was for in-cabin shots. With Earth obs it would be the Hasselblad and then the large format camera." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In ’94 this was all film, correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, all of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a lot of film to take up with you and bring down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was. If you’ve got it, we felt we should burn it up. I’d be surprised if we left any film that was left unexposed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you been interested in photography before that? Or was that something that was new?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just the usual family shots. Certainly I hadn’t been interested in photography from space, but the photographers we had, they were great teachers themselves. They certainly impressed upon us to take a lot of pictures and that you don’t get to go back and redo it, so take a lot. You learn how to take pictures so the ones you bring back are good, because that’s what you’re going to remember on all your missions was the good time you had with your friends and whatever you took a picture of. Plus, the scientists were depending on us to take good photos of the Earth. It was good training and I think all of us took it to heart." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were those the NASA photographers that were teaching you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember who any of those might have been?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of them, Don [C.] Carico. He was one of the instructors. I can picture the other ones, but I can’t think of their names right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there anything about that mission other than it was your first mission and you were the pilot? Anything specific about that mission that stood out in your mind about any of the experiences? Maybe that first time actually finally getting to space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of it was something. I think we were the last pad abort that they had, on that mission. The main engines lit and then they light six seconds before liftoff to give the onboard computers time to make sure they’re working perfectly before they let the solid rockets light. Our main engines lit, and then less than two seconds before liftoff the onboard software detected a problem with one of the engines and shut it down, so we got to experience a pad abort. Once you light the engines they have to be removed and cleaned up, prepped for reinstallation, or you have to take someone else’s engines to put in. I think that’s what they did for us was they took the engines from the next mission while they refurbished ours to give to them. We launched a few weeks after the original planned launch date.\\n\\n Of course the ride to space was pretty phenomenal. That was just like you would expect it to be with over 7 million pounds of thrust. The simulators can only do so much to make it seem like you’re in that environment. The Orbiter during solid rocket flight, the first two minutes, there was a lot of vibration, more than you would think. You’re just so happy to be there that it was just one of those “Wow, feel that!”\\n\\n Then after two minutes of course the solids are finished, they’re kicked off. Then three main engines the rest of the way. That was smooth as glass. Inside the Astronaut Office we talked to each other about what surprised us. Jim [James D.] Halsell in my class had flown just before me. He had come down to my class, and he said, “Here’s the things that surprised me.” Frankly, it was just as he described it, every single one of those things. Including the 3-Gs [force of gravity] through the chest the last 30 seconds, what that was like, and then when the engines cut off and now you’re weightless, what that felt like, and then some other things during the mission. He did me a big favor, but the office always takes care of each other like that, so it was a good thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any problem with weightlessness or any problems feeling ill?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I’m one of the fortunate people that I don’t get ill when I go to space or when I come back. It’s not anything you can take credit for. You’re either born with that or you’re not. Again I’m one of the lucky ones that didn’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about those teams and who you were on the team with and how you all split up the work and maybe passed on information from one team to the next." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They build in turnover, you have presleep and they have postsleep. You go through those activities. At the same time there’s of course allocated time to turn over, hey, here’s where we are, this is what’s coming up next, this is what happened today. That worked well. We worked two shifts. My shiftmates were the commander, Mike [Michael A.] Baker and Jeff [K.] Wisoff, and then the other crew was Steve [Steven L.] Smith and Tom [Thomas D.] Jones and Dan [Daniel W.] Bursch. The crew was just filled with people that are just some of the nicest folks in the office, so it was a lot of fun. Very dedicated professional crew. It was truly enjoyable.\\n\\n It was busy though. I think during the sims [simulations] when we were simming crew shifts, the other folks would be around there getting the benefit of what we were doing in the sims. When you’re up there and there really is only three of you and you’ve got to take care of the Orbiter plus do maneuvers plus run the cameras, then it was busier than what I thought it would be. Maybe that was just being in space. It was just different. But we kept up with it and were glad to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You landed in California, didn’t you, at Edwards [Air Force Base]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We weren’t supposed to. Bad weather at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida]. I think low clouds. They took us into California. Of course we didn’t care. Somebody was there to greet us and take us back to Houston. That was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Whether it was a lake bed or a runway didn’t matter to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was pretty." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is pretty out there. Is there anything else about that mission you can think about or anything specific that you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. We had some other things that were good experiments. MAPS, Measurement of Air Pollution from Satellites, that measured carbon monoxide around the atmosphere, so you could determine the source of it. It doesn’t do you any good to sign treaties that say, “Hey, we won’t put any more carbon in the atmosphere than this,” if you can’t measure it and see whether they’re violating the treaty or not. That was a success.\\n\\n I think we had a protein crystal growth experiment, which was a big thing at the time, structure-based drug design. Most flights I think had that payload on there, it was a nice thing to be a part of. Then we had a small plant growth experiment on there. Then Steve Smith and I had an experiment, something to do with balance or motion sickness in space that we attached a lot of electrical leads to ourselves and looked at different targets or moving things to see what that would do to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you tried to make yourself have motion sickness?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I remember, it did, but it didn’t bother either one of us like that. If you do it after you adapt, I think it would probably have less effect than if you did it as soon as you got up there. The people that do have problems with that, that seems after the first day most of that is gone and they’re okay.\\n\\n Then there was a balance experiment where they put you in something like a phone booth and the floor tilts or jerks and you’re blindfolded to see if you can maintain your balance. You do that pre flight and then post flight to see how your balance has been affected when you come back from space. That was another interesting experiment.\\n\\n I heard something on the radio today where they were looking at—I think it was one of the researchers on that experiment has developed a scale that you stand on and it can detect the fine movements you make to maintain your balance, and it gives you a score. If you get a poor score, you don’t seem to have as much balance. Say you’re an elderly person with balance problems, then that might be the day that you want to take a cane with you or use some other device to keep your balance. It cuts down your likelihood of taking a spill and perhaps breaking a hip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Something you would have every day that you could test yourself on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a fallout from that lady’s work here at JSC on that balance experiment. It was pretty interesting to hear that just this morning driving to work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is interesting. It does make you feel, I would imagine, like the work you’re doing and that NASA is doing in space does have applications on Earth, even though sometimes people don’t realize exactly how it affects their lives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think you see that all the time. It just takes so long to get those things to market. But it does, almost everything we do up there has some benefit down here on the planet. It’s a good thing.\\n\\n But the mission was a tremendous amount of fun. We did good work. I’m just happy that in my career I got to do an Earth science mission, because of course the other ones were to Mir [Russian Space Station] and to [the International] Space Station. I feel good about doing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Even though you had that math background, Earth science was important to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Like I said, they make you a believer. They’re so dedicated. Gosh, the Earth is so beautiful up there. To spend a whole mission looking at it, trying to take data for scientists and engineers was very rewarding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I would imagine you’re getting paid to actually take pictures from up there, that would be pretty good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t want to keep you. It’s a little after 2:00. If you want to we can stop and then we can let you get on with what you were going to do today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Terrence W. Wilcutt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then we’ll talk again soon." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00050", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Rod Ross", + "description": "Rod Ross came to the National Archives in 1977 as an archives technician for the Office of Presidential Libraries. He was an archivist for the Nixon Presidential Materials Project from 1978-83, the White House Liaison Office from 1983-84, and the Washington National Records Center in Suitland from 1984-86. While in Suitland, Ross led the National Archives Oral History Project from 1985-86. After two years as a supervisory archivist in the Library and Printed Archives Branch, Ross moved to the Center for Legislative Archives where he worked as an archivist until his retirement in 2017.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/rod-ross-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "rod-ross-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:16", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL A RCHIVES AND R ECORDS A DMINISTRATION", + "date": "August 6, 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Brenner" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Rod Ross" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Rebecca Brenner from the National Archives History Office interviewing Rod Ross, part II. Today's date is August 6, 2015, and we are in room 400 at Archives I. So, could you speak to your involvement with the Oral History Project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Oral History Project, actually, we could either talk about my involvement with the National Archives leading up to the Oral History Project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Whichever starting point you think is best." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it puts it in context. So, I was with the Nixon Presidential Materials project and I had the brilliant idea for an SAA session to have an update about where things stood. And it turns out that, as the GS-6 in the office, I really wasn't the appropriate person to speak and they already had that idea covered. But Trudy Peterson, who was on the program committee on the SAA that was going to have a program about founding fathers of the archival profession, basically came to me and said, “Oh, you were interested in doing something for a program. How would you like to do a paper on Ernst Posner?” And since I needed, I guess I was already in a kind of the equivalent of the CIDS program, you know the archival training program and I needed a paper, Maygene Daniels, who was my supervisor basically said, “Why don’t we substitute the SAA paper that you'll do, or did, for the required archival paper?” So back in 1981 I gave the SAA presentation and then it got published in the American Archivist. Then went on to do something on Leland and it too was published in the American Archivist and then a spinoff of that was a American Historical Association presentation that I gave that Bert Rhoads had organized on Waldo Gifford Leland and the preservation of documentary resources. So with those as background, I was asked to do an article for the 1984 issue of Prologue that was for the 50th anniversary of the National Archives. And that Prologue article then was republished in a handout that the Archives gave away for a good number of years, Guardian of Heritage. So, just as Trudy Peterson had been involved with my getting into the writing field, she had been an assistant to George Scaboo, Deputy Archivist under Robert Warner, and this was about the time, in the mid-1980s, that the National Archives was successful in getting legislative re-establishment of itself out of GSA as an independent agency. And basically the Archivist Robert Warner wanted to have oral history interviews done with those people with the National Archives that had been most active in the quest for independence, so there was a feature, an entry in the staff information bulletin, and oddly both Jessie Kratz and myself have searched in vain for what I definitely remember there in 1984, announcing that I would be head of National Archives oral history program, and that was how I learned about the program and my appointment. So I was working at the Records Center in Suitland at the time and in effect I could have lots of time release, I could have lots of cassette tapes, and I was pretty much on my own. Since the discussion, the marching orders were, do basically the people on this list and retirees. And I expanded that just a little bit. So the first, who was a technician at the Washington National Records Center since I wanted to have something of an overview of the staff. Last week, when I signed the legal agreement giving rights for presumably this presentation as well as last week's, it was a form that I'd be interested in having tiny bit of a discussion on how you came up with the text of the form, because I came up with my own form for these close to oral history--" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "General Counsel Chris Runkel came up with my form." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's what I should have done also. Kudos to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I didn't do that, Jessie did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, kudos to Jessie, if it could have been well aware that I basically had moderated a form that Presidential Libraries used for oral history interviews. And I should have run it by the General Counsel's Office and did not. So my hat is off to you on that score." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually, the only reason I know that is when I handed the form to Chris Runkel when I interviewed him, he said, “Oh, I made this.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, so you think that Jessie asked him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Jessie sent me all the information that I needed. Maybe it was someone who asked him originally, I'm not sure, but it's that one in the oral history file in the Y drive. I just printed several of the form to use." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Excellent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you signed it last week does it becomes public domain?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, so the way the current form is read, one really wants to be careful of what one says if one is a current employee. So of the people that I interviewed, oddly, there is a kind of relevance for today. You know, recently you may have heard also the Archivist of the U.S. at the last town hall meeting giving an update on what was what. And one of the what was what is it appears there will be yet another attempt to legislate out of existence the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. And in doing one of the initial oral history interviews, it was with Charlene Bickford, who has a role as the with the First Federal Congress project as an editor. But she was one of the key people in the lobbying efforts to retain funding for NHPRC. So I'm not sure how much is her oral history interview, others who also similarly were influential. Page Putnam Miller was one of the people that I interviewed who was the liaison for basically lobbying activities for the Society of American Archivists. So of the people that were on the list, Mary Ann Chaffee—so this is by memory so I might not have things exactly right. Mary Ann Chaffee, Stephen Daniels, Stanley Falk, Edward Gleiman, Page Putnam Miller, Marion Morris, Tom Persky, and Ira Shapiro. And these were people who either worked in congressional offices as staff people or were agency historians, or in one way or another played a role for the National Archives independent movement. And basically the project sort of just petered out. You know, there were archivists like Gerry Haines who I interviewed, John Porter Bloom who I interviewed, but there was an immense number of former archivists or even current archivists that were on tap. You know, I expanded my purview to interview a fellow with IRS and a fellow with Justice Department because both had been prominent, not always in a complementary way, for the National Archives in the way the independent legislation got created." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I might ask, when you were managing the Oral History Project, what was your process of identifying people to interview?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good question, and I don't have a good answer. So, there was the initial listing of people that were initial memo and then just using my own judgment. So one of the things that I did was grandfather into that collection an interview that I had done. My wife and I had been at Sara Dunlap Jackson's apartment and I done an interview with her two years earlier in 1982. So, basically I grandmothered that interview into the collection. But in some ways my beginning with the National Archives was a high point in my career. Because I was basically the GS-6 office gopher in the Office of Presidential Libraries, and as such was rubbing shoulders with the top people in the agency, so I had some idea who the key people were. And just having an interest in history, there were people like Jimmy Walker, who was the key African American genealogist, and in effect the key genealogical expert for the National Archives; so I wanted to include him. Harold Pinkett in the founding generation of archivists and the key African American Archivist of the initial years of the agency, so I wanted to include him and the opportunity came up to do a second follow-up interview to the one Phil Brooks Sr. had done with Bob Bahmer, the fourth Archivist of the United States. Bob Bahmer and Wayne Grover having brought on Bert Rhoads as basically their successor. And I interviewed Bert Rhoads the former Archivist, and that was the one that George Scaboo had said, “Oh, there's lots of unused secretarial help in the National Archives, getting transcriptions won’t be any problem.” And in point of fact his secretary did the transcription for the Bert Rhoads interview. But for the other ones, my hat is off to you, Rebecca—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] That's what interns are for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For not only taking on this project but doing transcripts as well. So I was basically collecting cassette tapes, and cassette tapes sitting on the shelf are of little or no use, so I took advantage of two interns. And they created transcripts by disguise, so multipage basically summary what was spoken of so that one could basically follow in order, so then if one wanted to then hear the actual text basically to make one's own transcript that at least became a doable project. So eventually I stopped and nobody seemed to notice, and that was the end of the project. So if that seems like if my career at the National Archives if we're simply focusing, when we had a brief discussion. Yes, we will focus on that, we will not focus on my Black History Month presentations and arrangements with the Illinois State Society, other than those that were filmed by C-SPAN. And we won't talk about things like through the Illinois State Society putting on the program and the Lithuanian embassy after going on a Jewish heritage tour of sorts to Lithuania in 2012. But rounding out the National Archives picture I came back to the Oral History Project in a sense. A year or two ago I had applied to membership in a club here in Washington, the Cosmos Club, and Meyer Fishbein in his late 90s was my second sponsor. So there was a kind of direct link that Ernst Posner had been Ira's sponsor and Ernst Posner, you know the esteemed German refugee that I had first done my publication on. It sort of all tied in together, so in re-listening to the Meyer Fishbein interview I arranged with Jessie Kratz to basically do a program at Archives II that became a National Archives YouTube, “Meyer Fishbein Remembers,” so it was a very warm, not too many people in the main theater there of the National Archives but a very warm time for Meyer speaking to a whole new generation of archivists. There are two other sort of National Archives-related things that in very, very recent years I've done. One was a 2013 Prologue, Pieces of History bit, “Death Takes No Holiday: Full Military Honors at Arlington in 2014.” And that really highlighted the work of Bill Seibert, chief of archival operations at the National Archives in Saint Louis. A fellow in my building had died, Odis Quick, I learned about it in kind of a roundabout way and found that his body was still, months later, in an Arlington funeral home. And I ended up signing off on the papers for the cremation. And through Bill Seibert got paperwork that would allow burial in the columbarium at Arlington—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[interposing] That's like straight off a West Wing episode." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, sometimes if only one person hears you, that's all you need. And the one person who heard me was Claire Kluskens, who's the genealogy expert here at the National Archives, and she took it really upon herself to locate the heirs of Odis Quick, and by golly she did. And, you know, so there were two sisters who were nieces of Odis Quick. One in Colorado, and one in California, plus there was a cousin of theirs who had converted to Islam and was living in Mali. So the two sisters here in the United States basically came to Washington. They took care of disposing of the apartment, the co-op apartment, and some months later they decided they were not going to opt for an Arlington Cemetery ceremony and instead quietly did a dispersal of ashes. So if anyone is curious to the follow-up that Prologue article, the Arlington Military Honors never came to be. So there was one more fairly recent sort of National Archives military-related thing I was associated with and that was being a YouTube for Memorial Day, Memorial, say 2015." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we get to YouTube, there was one more publication I wanted to ask about, didn't you write something of use on congressional records for Western History?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you speak to that for a second?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, so let's go back, because I wasn't sure whether we wanted continue, since I'd done a little bit of speaking at the last interview on my career with the Center for Legislative Archives. But I'm delighted you raised that topic, because I in fact at one time did want to talk about that. So if we talk about publications that I've been associated with at the Center for Legislative Archives; if we start out with the Guide to the Records to the House of Representatives, that the National Archives published, that guide in 1989 for the Bicentennial Congress, and then a companion work that Bob Coren was pretty much the sole editor and compiler for the Senate equivalent. So I was working with the Library and Printed Archives Branch and decided I wanted to leave. I had talked to Trudy Peterson, who sort of serves as my guardian angel, while she ended up her career at the Archives as an Acting Archivist of the United States, and wrote a support letter for the Cosmos Club application for me. So, I went to Trudy and basically said, I think I want out. And, by an odd coincidence, the day before somebody associated with the Center for Legislative Archives to-be, had told her that they needed more assistance for writing chapters for the House guide, so I went on initially a detail, I served as author for the chapters on the District of Columbia Committee, on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the Space Science and Astronautics Committee, and for the last committee I found it gratifying because during my two-year career as a legislative assistant, in the 94th Congress to a one term Democrat from Illinois, Tim L. Hall, I was his liaison for that committee, so I had a chance to sort of see things from both sides. So my first publication of sorts with the National Archives relating to the Center was that guide. The second one was my publication in the Journal of Western History in the Serial Set “A Source for Western History,” which was my excuse to explain what the serial set was and its wonders. So that I still continue to think of that as, if I'm going to cite one single publication, that would be the one that I would think would be the greatest contribution, period. So there was a follow-up publication, so the Serial Set article was in 1994, the follow-up publication was in 1999 in the Journal of Government History, and that was basically a discussion of the Su-Docs. The Superintendent of Documents Library Classification System, since I had been working with Record Group 287, Publications of the U.S. Government, and then in 1988 that record group's responsibilities were folded into the newly created Center for Legislative Archives and I basically moved along with it. So I moved from being on detail with the Center to going off for a month to Ann Arbor having a Bentley fellowship and having my topic on Early Administrative Histories in the Age of Computers that actually got published in India. So when I came back, I was sort of now a part of the Center for Legislative Archives, and I switched from doing projects to basically reference, and that's been my career with the agency ever since. So knowing something about government publication was which was now a part of the responsibilities of the Center for Legislative Archives, I was happy to be available to do that article, it was an issue that I think Kris Wilhelm had an article in that same magazine on legislative materials relating to the creation of what eventually became the Department of Defense, and Richard McCauley, the historian with the Center, had something about the history of that movement. So that particular article of mine looked at this two-year period between the demise of the War Department and the Navy Department before the creation of the Department of Defense that 1947-48 time period. There was something called the National Military Establishment, because it was a very small entity it was able to talk about the totality of the records, the publications that were associated with that Su-Docs class. So that largely is for publication at the Center. In 1992, I was part of OAH program on Indian-related records and basically talked about the things in the Serial Set as well as this marvelous collection from the mid-1920s; there was a Senate investigating committee that looked into the Indian question in the United States. And half of all Indian-related record the Center has a part of that collection of materials. So the final thing I want to talk about relating to the Center responsibilities was I came up with a paper in 1994 for an Illinois history symposium on records relating to documents in the House and the Senate before the Civil War that highlighted the history of Illinois, and from that I ended up having this as a slide presentation, I ended up giving the slide presentation to the Illinois State Society. Went to a board meeting to explain what I would be doing, essentially never left. So, much of the things I'm most proud of are actually activities I've done with the Illinois State Society. Which you had mentioned that for this interview we could talk about C-SPAN presentations, and I was especially prominent in putting together Black History Month presentations and I soon realized that there would be hardly anyone from the membership who would go to such things, that if I could basically put on presentations for other groups, it would be the other group's activity. So one of the first such things with the National Archives volunteers, and there had been a Prologue article on Ida B. Wells Barnett, who had ended up her career in Illinois, so basically had the Prologue author speak about Ida Wells Barnett and had that open to the Illinois State Society. Then I hit into doing things with the U.S. Capitol Historical Society and especially Matt Wasniewski as House Historian. So, one of the C-SPAN programs that's filmed is my giving an introduction to a historian in the office, Laura Turner O'Hara, in February 2011. That was her talk on Senator Hiram Revels, who had an Illinois education, he went to a kind of preparatory school associated with my college, Knox College, in Galesburg. And then a year later there was a program that I put on John Willis Menard, who had he been seated would have been the first African American in Congress. And Philip Magnus talked about his early career, especially going to Belize and then—you look like you don't want me to finish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm really interested, but it just occurred to me that I'm not on topic. So, if I could ask you to move on to the Memorial Day Video." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, let me just finish John Willis Menard and say for that C-SPAN program. So there are three things that if you Google C-SPAN and Rodney A. Ross come up, I end up reciting a love poem as a kind of transition between the two persons by Menard. So moving on to the Memorial Day program, which really fits in with this interview series, because Jessie Kratz, the Historian, had talked about doing an oral history interview with me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And from what I've heard when you interviewed with her originally you talked about what you were going to do for the Memorial Day project, so if I could ask you what you did for the Memorial Day project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, again, this becomes interesting. So basically, instead of doing the oral history interview, she had arranged for John Heyn, H-E-Y-N, to tape the presentation and she had agreed to let me basically redo, recreate the 1978 text of a talk I gave in my hometown in Batavia on men from Company B of the 124th volunteer regiment and their service in the Civil War, largely using records and especially with guidance from Mike Musick, who was the Civil War expert at one time here in the agency. So it was 18 minutes, it was not terrible, but it was not anything for appropriate for a YouTube presentation, and subsequently John Heyn and I both spent a whole lot of time. Both my re-working the text, my liaison Amy, with the curator at the Batavia Depot Museum for photos from Batavia and the YouTube that we finally, finally ended up with was something entitled \"Memorial Day 2015: Why it Matters.\" So it started out with the presentation that I had written for the Archivist, introducing me, indicating that I would highlight one National Archives record, if you Google me, Rod Ross Memorial Day, it's easy to find the YouTube." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I've watched it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And one thing that John wanted to do was do it outside by the G.A.R. monument that is kitty-corner from the National Archives Building. And eventually there was a wonderful spring day, the magnolias were in bloom, we did it outside at noon-time filming. And I'm very, very happy with the result. Since it basically did tie in with my things with the Illinois State Society, since one of the key things I've done with the Illinois State Society is not only bring about a remembrance of John Willis Menard but especially one of the most prominent Americans of the late 19th century, John A. “Black Jack” Logan. So if you listen to one of the verses of the Illinois State Song, it refers to Grant and Logan and Lincoln. So, Logan's key credit is as commander of the Grand Army of the Republic he issued to the general order establishing the end of May for what became Memorial Day, Decorations Day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what exactly was that document that you used?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The document was a record from the compiled service order—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[interposing] What's that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, in terms of military paperwork, especially in this case, Civil War military paperwork, there were hundreds of thousands of soldiers, North and South, in the Civil War, if not millions. I'm not sure whether it would have been the Adjutant General's Office established a way of grouping together paperwork on individuals, and there was one fellow from Company B of the 124th Illinois Volunteer Regiment who was killed at the time of the siege of Vicksburg. So, basically I got the page that had his name and then killed Vicksburg and the date in 1863 and that was the document, was the featured document. So it was sort of like, yes—and there was a picture of the Civil War Monument in Batavia something dedicated in 1918. It had his name. So I don’t have a picture of him and I don't have his signature, but it was like bringing an unknown soldier to life. So yes, and part of the tie-in was the Memorial Day observance, and ended up quoted part of that general order that relates to it being incumbent upon comrades to honor their fallen comrades. “Their soldier lives were a reveille of freedom to a race in chains and their deaths a tattoo of rebellious tyranny in arms.” I found it dramatic and I ended my presentation with that dramatic reading." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any other presentations that you want to highlight that you've done that are telling of the National Archives as an agency?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, there's one more that relates to workings of the National Archives, sort of, and that was a presentation last June, a year ago, June 24, 2014. That was a presentation of the Afro-American History Society and that was in Archives II and it was filmed by the society, so it's not a National Archives YouTube, but it has been filmed. A close friend of mine, a neighbor, is Dr. Ezra Naughton, who was born in St. Croix, and his talk entitled \"The 1848 Emancipation of a Slave Population: US Virgin Islands as a Mirror on America.\" So it was a National Archives group that hosted that presentation, you know the National Archives does have a record group for the Virgin Islands, and so I think that counts. There have been a couple of times that I've done introductions of speakers, there was one twice this year, as a matter of fact. William Marvel had a talk here in the theater, \"Lincoln's Autocrat: The Life of Edwin Stanton,\" and then last month in July, Anthony Pitch talked about his book, Our Crimes were being Jewish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I went to that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, you heard me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I've read it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, I've known Tony Pitch for a number of years, and I'd once told him that I wouldn't be able to go to a presentation he was giving because I had put together a field trip for myself to go to the Eisenhower and Truman libraries, which I did. Because I had arranged for my sister-in-law's mother, Joyce Wagner, to speak at the Eisenhower Library on her self-published memoir: \"A Promise Kept.\" So as a Holocaust survivor, survived two years in Auschwitz, she ended up in her book quoting General Eisenhower and his becoming overwhelmed with emotions on seeing those survivors and those who did not survive the death camps, and the ones the Americans liberated were not really the death factories that Auschwitz and other places were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you help Anthony Pitch with finding documents here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was instrumental in his using some quotes from Joyce Wagner. The first time I worked with him was on his War of 1812 book. And for that there was, I think, a House of Representatives investigation into the war and I had provided those to him. So that was the beginning of my assistance to him. I did not work with him on his second major book, that of, They Killed Poppa Dead on the Lincoln assassination." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'll end with the same question I ended the last interview. Are there any other anecdotes or words of wisdom that you want to share before we conclude?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rod Ross", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I appreciate having the chance to do this follow-up interview. And I guess there is, if I'm talking about oral history interviews, there was one that doesn't count that I'd done for a labor oral history interview project at Roosevelt University in the early ‘70s with one of father's first cousins who left Zarsas, Lithuania in the same emigration group as my paternal grandfather, which does sort of tie into a National Archives record, because subsequently I found the passenger manifest for that emigration group and it's interesting that none of the names jived. So my last name is Ross, and by the time of the 1910 census my male relatives and my direct ancestors were using the name Ross. But the passenger manifest gives the name as Resch, R-E-S-C-H. Now, my grandfather was Louis, he's listed as Laib on the manifest. It helps bring to life an individual story of the story of America. So I was happy with that effort when I worked with the two years in what was a proto- Ronald Reagan Presidential Library’s office, last two years of Reagan's first term, I did a number of oral history interviews with staff members that are findables there at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. So rather than talk about other aspects of my life, I will close and thank you very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Brenner", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you very much." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00191", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GarmanJR/garmanjr.htm", + "original_file_name": "GarmanJR_3-27-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GarmanJR/GarmanJR_3-27-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John R. Garman", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 27 March 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Kevin M. Rusnak" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John R. Garman" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 27, 2001. This interview with Jack Garman is being conducted in the offices of the Signal Corporation in Houston, Texas, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Kevin Rusnak, assisted by Carol Butler.\\n\\n I’d like to thank you for taking the time out to speak with us this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re most welcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And if we can start out, tell us about your interests and experiences growing up that led you on to the science and engineering path that eventually took you into the space program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think I’m a Sputnik kid. You know, I was just entering high school when all that started, and finishing high school when the Mercury Program put a couple of very famous people into space. As I went into college, I guess my parents had always encouraged me to be an engineer. It’s a wonderful thing to do, but it’s kind of masochistic if you’re a young person, to go through all that education. But in those days the pay was quite good, too. So I went into engineering school at the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor, Michigan].\\n\\n It was somewhere during the college years when the Gemini Program was kicking off. I was in college from like ‘62 to ‘66, and somewhere in there a lot of news articles were popping out, of course, about the space program, and I was very much attracted to that. I remember that in that last year of school, when you start interviewing for jobs, about three out of four interviews I went to had something to do with the space program.\\n\\n The fellow at the time, John [P.] Mayer, who headed the Mission Planning Analysis Division [MPAD], was a University of Michigan graduate, so every year he insisted on sending someone up to that school to do interviewing. Then and now, I think, NASA couldn’t afford—the government couldn’t afford or didn’t pay for trips for interviews very often, but they didn’t really need to. They didn’t really need to. So I remember interviewing, and it was the lowest paying job, I remember, and I had no idea where Houston, Texas, was. When you’re raised in Chicago and go to school in Michigan, you know, everything in Texas is somewhere south of Dallas. I got in the car and drove down.\\n\\n Michigan, in those days, they didn’t offer any undergraduate degrees in computers, none. So I went into an engineering curriculum at Michigan called physics, engineering physics. I used to laugh that I’m a physicist of some kind. I’m not. But that curriculum allowed a minor, a specialty, if you will. In those days, and I think it’s still true, engineering degrees are usually rock solid. There’s really little choice in what you take. They’re usually five-year, and I wanted to get through in four, so I crammed my way through.\\n\\n But the notion of being able to take a specialty in computers was neat, so I did that. So during my junior and senior year, when you finally take the courses that you can focus on in college, I ended up in grad school classes with all the double-E, you know, electrical engineering and those types of folks, who finally got a chance to take something in computers as grad students, and I was in there as an undergrad. I used to laugh at that. As I say, I’m no physicist, but that was the degree I got." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of computer technology are you learning on at this point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With an engineering school, it’s kind of from one end to the other. We were taught programming, of course, a Fortran style. They had a language called MAD, Michigan Algorithmic Decoder. It was an offshoot of Fortran that we all used, and that was wonderful. Today, of course, folks sit in front of a keyboard with a CRT [cathode ray tube] screen and type their programs in if they’re programming, and in those days we also sat in front of keyboards, but they were called keypunches, stacks of cards, and we’d type away and out they’d come. Walk up to that mysterious room where all the folks, in those days and maybe these days, too, with the very long hair and beady eyes sitting behind the counter running the mainframes to collect our decks of cards and spit us back our reams of paper the next day. That was great fun.\\n\\n In engineering school, we also got into the bits and bytes. So I took a lot of lab courses where we were putting stuff together, you know, transistors, flip-flops, the whole nine yards. I knew I never wanted to build computers, but it’s kind of like if you’re a good driver of a car, you know what’s under the hood even if you’re never going to repair it yourself. If a mechanic is going to do something to it, you can be a smart customer, you know exactly what they’re talking about. I think it’s the same thing in computers.\\n\\n That experience is clearly what got me into operating systems. I didn’t know it was called that in those days. They didn’t have a name for it. But the software that resides closest to the hardware and interfaces with the applications is called operating systems [OS], and it’s kind of the glue that holds things together. If you want to do something, it’s kind of fun to be in the middle, so that’s where I was. That was what attracted me.\\n\\n When I came down to NASA after that, they didn’t have anybody that knew anything about computers. It was really funny. I was twenty-one when I walked in the door, for a few more months. There was an interesting side story. I can’t remember the fellow’s name. Maybe it’ll come to me. In those days, Ellington Field still had the old white buildings with green roofs, wooden barracks kind of buildings from World War II, and the then Manned Spacecraft Center used a lot of those buildings as overflow. So all new employees—and there were a lot of new employees coming in 1966—all the new employees were sort of mustered in in that facility, in those facilities.\\n\\n I remember, and you’re kind of excited, you know. You’re young. You don’t know where the heck you are. It took me six months to figure out I was as close to Galveston as I was to Houston, by the way. That’s kind of embarrassing, but it’s true. You know, it was kind of “Alice Through the Looking Glass.” You get in the car, you drive down, and you start going to work. Your eyes are wide, because I walked in, and they were finishing the Gemini Program. It was still flying. So everything was very awe-inspiring.\\n\\n But I’m sitting at this long table with a bunch of other new recruits. I say that because it was very military-like in those days. I’m sitting there with a bunch of other new recruits, and there’s this face across the table that I knew I recognized from somewhere. Well, you know, we introduced ourselves to each other, and “Where’d you go to school?”\\n\\n “I went to Michigan.”\\n\\n “So did I.”\\n\\n “Oh. What degree program did you go after?”\\n\\n I said, “Engineering physics.”\\n\\n He said, “So did I.”\\n\\n It turns out we’d been through school all together and never known each other. We’d passed back and forth in classes, and this young man was recruited the same way I was.\\n\\n When we got there, the job we’d been hired for didn’t exist. They’d interviewed us to work in MPAD, Mission Planning and Analysis Division, on a hybrid computer. Now, computers weren’t real fast in those days. So the notion of analog computers still existed. They still used them. Capacitors and other electronic devices behave mathematically quite well and you can run currents through them to, in an analog way, do mathematical equations. So you’d sort of create a hybrid computer, part digital and part analog, to do a lot of the kind of work that NASA wanted to do. So they’d decided to buy a huge hybrid computer, and the money fell through. Bob [Robert C.] Arndt was his name. Bob and I were both hired for this job.\\n\\n One of my mentors, a fellow named Lynn Dunseith, who has since passed away, Lynnwood C. Dunseith—Lynn was head of the branch. Directorate, division, branch, section was the structure in those days. He was head of the branch, and the branch had two sections. One was for onboard computers, Apollo, and one was for the big ground computers, mission control.\\n\\n Bob and I went wandering in, and he sat us down and told us, “You don’t really have a job. Welcome to Houston.” We’re wondering where the heck this was leading. He says, “Fear not. You’re hired. In fact, what we have to do is figure out where to put you now.”\\n\\n So we had the great pleasure of interviewing throughout that division, on the fly, to decide where we wanted to work. Lynn told us both, he said, “Well, your decision is going to be real easy.” He said, “You’re either going to work on onboard computers or ground computers. From there on, who knows? You’re new, you’re young, we’ll put you where you can dive in where you please.”\\n\\n Well, I chose onboard computers. That excited me, you know, the computers that fly. Bob chose the ground computers, and we hardly ever saw each other again. It was kind of funny. I have no idea where he is now, but we were kind of like ships passing in the night at school. We’d rendezvous when we’d come in, and then we go our separate ways and hardly ever see each other again.\\n\\n Diving into onboard computers, the section was called the Apollo Guidance Program Section, and I can remember many of the names, not all of them, but a fellow named Tom [Thomas F.] Gibson [Jr.] was head of the section. There were a couple of relatively—to me at twenty-one years old—senior people floating around, generally folks that had just come out of the military, by the way, and there were like thirty of us in a section. Today there are directorates that are that size. There are certainly divisions that size. So this was a huge section. In fact, within a couple of years, there were several reorganizations that sort of put things back in perspective.\\n\\n As I recall, what had happened was, it was before I was there, I came in May of ‘66, and I think back in February of that year the software program for the Apollo onboard computers had gotten in deep trouble. As you might expect, they had the entire computer operation in what was then the Engineering Directorate, still under Max [Maxime A.] Faget, I think. It wasn’t working. Most of the software expertise was with the folks that were doing mission control and the ground systems, and that was all in MPAD in those days. So they decided to lift the software portion out and move it over to the Mission Planning and Analysis Division in this—I think it was called Flight Operations then, but MPAD was part of a large group that included all the flight controllers and mission planning, in other words, all the operations as opposed to the engineering. They had the very military style organization of engineering in one group and operations in another.\\n\\n So all these folks—well, many of these folks—were transplants. They’d just been reorganized. I didn’t know that. You know, you’re young, dumb, you don’t know. They all had new bosses and they were all figuring out how to fit, and we had this big influx of, I don’t know, maybe a dozen of us that came in in that ‘65, ‘66, ‘67 period. So there were too many people. There were lots of folks, and therefore lots of time. Go send us to school. Go send us to the contractor.\\n\\n Well, they did two things for me which were really, in retrospect, wonderful. I’m not sure they knew what they were doing, but they did it. The onboard computers for Apollo were designed and programmed by what was then called the Instrumentation Lab of MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts]. It’s now called the Charles Stark Draper Lab. But they didn’t do the building. A subsidiary of GM [General Motors], I think, Delco actually built it. They provided hardware training and some software training classes.\\n\\n The notion of making sure everybody understood all the innards of everything being built in Apollo was very important in the space program, and so they poured a lot of money into training programs. So they sent me off to a school. I think it was here. I don’t think I had to travel very far. It was in Houston, I mean. But very soon after I came on board, I was gone. I was in classes for four or five weeks. But you’ve got to picture, here’s a young kid coming out of school who’s just left a long series of hardware kind of classes and really into computers at this point. So while I was drinking from the fire hose, I had no trouble swallowing. I mean, I just picked up everything that they were trying to dump on me.\\n\\n So when I got back to the office after that, I truly didn’t realize it at the time, but I was an expert. I mean, I knew more than most of the other folks. I don’t mean generically, but I meant if one of the people was an expert in one area, I knew just about as much as that person did in that area, very much a generalist as a result in those onboard computers. So for that reason, they immediately made me a group leader. Somebody divided the organization into groups and made me a group leader for something or other.\\n\\n But I started traveling, then, up to Boston to visit the Instrumentation Lab, and, boy, they’d send us up, I don’t know, every other week we’d go up. Looking back, it’s really kind of funny, because these folks—you know, I’m twenty-one, twenty-two maybe by this time, clearly very wet behind the ears, and you walk into these offices where these folks that are in their thirties, which were quite old to me in those days, are working like crazy, and here comes this young thing with a NASA badge, on saying, “I’m in charge, and I want to know exactly what you’re doing and why,” because that’s what we’d been told to do.\\n\\n “Sure. What would you like me to tell you?”\\n\\n I didn’t have the slightest idea what to ask, so they’d tell us whatever they wanted. Some of these Instrumentation Lab folks were really good. They were more like—well, it being part of the school, they were more like professors. They wanted to teach and help you learn what they were doing and why. Others viewed it as interference, you know, “Get out of my way. I’m trying to do the job.”\\n\\n I think my interest in operating systems and that part of the business that they pointed me into made it easier, because this is the kind of work that these folks had created basically from scratch, so they loved to talk about it. You know, it’s an invention almost. So that was training, too. I learned a lot about Apollo there.\\n\\n They put me in charge of the AS-501 [core] ropes. We had a phrase that we called “rope mothers” back in those days, not meaning to be sexist at all. You know, parenting the development of the software. Why ropes? Well, the onboard computers in Apollo had hard-wired memory, not in today’s chip sense at all. It was all core memory, but the bulk of the onboard computer memory was woven. If you take a magnetic core and you magnetize it one way, it keeps it, and if you magnetize it the other way, it keeps it. That’s your one or zero and a bit. One core per bit, that’s a lot of magnetic cores and a lot of power, and it’s very expensive in a spacecraft.\\n\\n So they came up with a way of creating one core that would have many bits. What they’d do is reverse the invert the way they did the ones and zeros. They’d run a stream of wires, and on a sixteen-bit word, they’d run sixteen wires through a core. Well, if it was a one, they ran it through the core; if it was a zero, they ran it around the core. But if you can picture a bundle of sixteen wires several miles long and series of cores, millions of them, with these wires going through or around and then one extra wire that would be used to flip the magnetic polarity of the core, what would happen is, if they wanted to know the value of a particular word, they’d find out what core, what entire core, represented that word, flip it, and all the wires that went through got a pulse and all the wires that went around got no pulse, and that’s your ones and zeros all at once. So you get about sixteen times the compression.\\n\\n The problem is—and literally, they looked like ropes. I mean, they’d bundle them up and put them in a box so they looked good, but as I recall, the myth, probably the fact, is that Raytheon did this, built these core memories, these ropes, and they did it in the New England area because that’s where a lot of weaving took place, a lot of fabric industry, and they literally used—I mean, what they told us was that these were all little old women that would weave the ropes. I trust it was more mechanized than that. I actually remember going to see it once, and I don’t remember—the myth got ahead of the fact, I’m sure.\\n\\n But the striking part of it was that when it came time for a software development cutoff, it was real physical. I mean, once they started weaving, it was very, very difficult to change anything, as you can imagine. I remember once or twice they actually tried to do it, but if they did it wrong, they’d have to start over, basically, and this was very, very expensive.\\n\\n Software development was not very mature in the mid-sixties. There was not a lot going on. The notion of modules, subroutines, and any form of abstraction, which is the way you think about software engineering today, either didn’t exist or they were very far-out concepts. All programming was basically done at the ones and zeros level, assembly language programming. Assembly language was about as modern as you got, you know, the notion of having another computer that would translate semi-English words into the ones and zeros that another computer would understand.\\n\\n The Instrumentation Lab folks had some mainframes that did this, and the computer programs for the onboard software were all in assembly language and all very well annotated. That is, they put comments into the listings. But that was about as far as it went on documentation.\\n\\n There was very, very little in the form of requirements, and testing was a new concept. This was where I think my colleagues who had military experience in development sort of met the academics who had the push the state-of-the-art or practice experience in almost a collision, and folks like me were caught in the middle. Testing is the name of the game when you’re playing with mission safety, critical kind of systems. So the idea of having to test and retest and every time you make a change test again was foreign, understood conceptually, but it was a lot of busy work, a lot of overhead from the Instrumentation Lab folks’ standpoint to go through and actually document, write down all the tests which you’re going to run, write the test results, review them, and if you made another change. “And do tests incrementally? What are you talking about? Let’s build it and test it.”\\n\\n So the idea was to go ahead and test—the idea that was created was to do—I think we called them levels of testing. We did. My god, I’ve forgotten all that. Level 1 through Level 6 testing. You had to carry it all the way into the Shuttle Program, as a matter of fact. Very much, as I recall, on a military model, although I’m not sure the military was that far ahead of NASA at that point.\\n\\n But I remember that as—and again, I’m very young, I don’t know a lot of people, I’m just doing my job. When you’re in your mid-fifties, as I am today, looking back there, you feel like you can talk with some authority, but I didn’t know what was going on. I’m just a kid working back in those days. But I remember the conflict. I remember the arguments. And when you’re in the middle of it, you’re not quite sure which side to take, you know. It gets to be one of those “I can see the reasons for both sides. It’s so slow to have to test. Let’s get on with building it.”\\n\\n Anyway, that was clearly one of the contributions of my colleagues. Stan [Stanley P.] Mann was one of the key ones, I remember, M-A-N-N. He was a [US] Naval Academy [Annapolis, Maryland] graduate, as I recall. I think he’s still in the area here. Anyway, Stan and the other folks really pushed hard on the levels of testing and won over, and it ended up, I think, being one of the instrumental things that made onboard computing work for the Apollo Program.\\n\\n The other real mentor in my life was around in those days, a guy named Bill [Howard W.] Tindall [Jr.], who, unfortunately, also has passed away at this time. Bill was one of these never really wanted to be a manager, just wanted to get the job done, one of the real heroes of the Apollo Program, actually. He was a technical assistant or something under John Mayer in those days in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division.\\n\\n Bill had an activity that was called data priority. I still don’t remember why it was called data priority, but the notion was—I guess because Mission Planning and Analysis Division dealt with data: how do you figure out what the right way to handle and move data around is? He ended up getting in the middle because of the problems of the onboard software development.\\n\\n It was somewhere in this time frame that we reorganized, and Lynn Dunseith’s branch with two sections became a division with a couple of branches. I think it was called Flight Support Division, maybe. And come to think of it, he wasn’t even division chief; he was like deputy. They had a military fellow named Clements, maybe, Henry [E. “Pete”] Clements, I think maybe was the division chief. Again, I was pretty low. I didn’t pay much attention to those details. I knew I worked for Lynn Dunseith.\\n\\n What was funny was they kept Bill Tindall over in MPAD, and he was basically the guy in charge of onboard software development, and we were in another division at this point. As long as—I’m losing it on the reorgs. Soon thereafter, there was another one, and Jim [James C.] Stokes [Jr.], who had been heading this other section for ground computers mission control, ended up heading the division, and we were the only folks in his division that weren’t working for mission control. That is, his entire division was working on mission control software and operations and so on in support of all the flight controllers, and we were this one section. I think we were still a section, yes, somewhere in a branch in that division working on onboard software. So we had sort of two bosses and weren’t really sure who was in charge sometimes.\\n\\n But I remember clearly, in looking back, there was no question who was in charge of the onboard software. Certainly, as we started approaching the Apollo 11 time frame, it was Bill Tindall, and I remember long, long, long meetings up at Instrumentation Lab going through the software.\\n\\n Digressing back just for a second, this “rope mother” business, what they did was that the flights were fairly close together. They were planned to be close together. So when that happens, you have the overlap effect. That is, you’re working on several flights at once, because the time to prepare, particularly if you’re going to weave ropes, is longer than the time between flights. And so to keep track of the parallelism—you’re working in various stages on many flights at once—they would assign someone to be the “rope mother,” the person that was accountable for making sure everything got done right on each flight.\\n\\n What was interesting was that this AS-501, or SA-501, as they called it, if you were a Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]—have you heard that story? Apollo-Saturn. You know, the Apollo Program, [Wernher] Von Braun was very, very strong, of course, in those days, and it was the Saturn that was the Apollo Program, of course. Well, no, it wasn’t; it was the spacecraft that was the Apollo Program. Well, let’s fight about it. Well, let’s call it both; let’s call it the Apollo-Saturn flights. So if you were in Houston, it was AS, followed by a number, was the flight number, and if you were in Huntsville, it was SA.\\n\\n That kind of rivalry has carried on for years. It’s good rivalry. I think NASA was put together purposefully that way. If you create some competition, generally progress goes faster. It’s created some big silos that maybe we’ll come back and talk about later that, they really should come down over time, but in those days it was great competition, and there wasn’t a lot of overlap. I mean, if you were working on the Saturn Program, it was different than working on the spacecraft.\\n\\n Anyway, I was the “rope mother” for this Apollo-Saturn 501, which was an unmanned flight. It was the first launching of that huge, thirty-six-story launch vehicle. That’s what got me in the control center. If you think the folks in charge of the software didn’t have a lot of computer and software experience, you can imagine what it was like for the flight controllers. They didn’t. Moreover, the onboard computers in Apollo were guidance computers. Their function was not computing as you think of it today, even in an aircraft. I mean, there’s guidance and navigation in those computers, but no flight planning, nothing like that. Basically what those computers were doing was flying the vehicle. That’s what it was for.\\n\\n So, people who’d grown up in flight systems of any kind were used to analog flight systems. So this was still a flight system to them, not a computer system, and there were computers in it, but the notion that the world was changing had not gotten through to any of us. I mean, you can’t predict the future easily, but the notion that this was a computer surrounded by wire and plumbing had not really gotten through. It was wires and plumbing with a few computers in it, okay? The spin was the other way. So computers were a pain in the neck. They would not work. There would be software bugs. “What is all this stuff? I just want it to work.” The real problems are in propulsion or in—you know what I mean by plumbing. I mean pressure vessels and stuff like that. That’s where the real macho kind of space biz is, and, “All this computer stuff, get it out of my hair.”\\n\\n So in this flight control world, flight controllers are sort of a different breed in NASA. They almost all had some sort of piloting experience, meant to be that way. They had to pull in some folks that were much more academic in those days, people that knew something about trajectory management and guidance and so on. In fact, they buried all those types down in the front row in mission control. They called it “The Trench,” and they buried them down there, almost literally, the flight dynamics officer, FIDO, the guidance officer, GUIDO.\\n\\n Anyway, they didn’t have a lot of folks who knew much about computers, so they said, “We want some support.” In those days we were all in the same directorate, so I and a couple of other folks got loaned to go sit in what was called the staff support room, or SSR, and support them. You got a picture. Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz was very active in those days as one of the flight directors. Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] was head of it all. It was very much a do it by the numbers. Everybody knew it would be a lot of crisis management.\\n\\n So as I look back, they wanted people that were fairly young in there because they were obedient. Experience didn’t mean a lot, because there was no experience in that business. A lot of the day-to-day work was pretty boring because you were following the book, but these folks wrote their own books. That’s what was fun. They’d write their own procedures and rules and then follow them, okay? It was kind of like writing a play and then having to go through rehearsals to act in it, but you wrote the play so it was fun, okay? More fun for them.\\n\\n But we don’t understand all this stuff, so we got these folks to come in, sit in the support room to support us. They don’t salute as well. [Laughter] I and colleagues like me from MPAD, or ex-MPADers, as it were, were all, even then, we knew we weren’t flight controllers, so we were kind of rogues in that environment. But we knew our stuff. We knew our stuff very well. So I ended up spending a lot of time sitting on a console and watching the onboard computers.\\n\\n This is a good point to interject a technology story. In those days, the icon for a computer was a tape drive. You all, I’m sure, are maybe too young to remember that, but anytime somebody had a caricature of a computer, it always had a box with two eyes, you know, the two tapes that would spin. Today, an icon is a CRT, the screen, but in those days it was tape drive. You see the old movies, you first see the old movies, what did you see in a computer? You saw a row of tape drives, and then you’d see the console with all the lights blinking, which were usually meaningless.\\n\\n So when you walked into mission control, that’s what you saw down on the first floor, was all these big IBM mainframes with the spinning tape drives and the lights blinking and all that. But when you went upstairs into the control rooms, they had CRTs, televisions. You could actually see this stuff. That’s absolutely—it doesn’t mean anything to anybody today. That’s how computers work today, right? But in those days, if you spent your life in front of a keyboard typing punch cards and when the computer ran, you got it back on paper, to be able to see things happening on the screen in real time was absolutely awesome, particularly if you knew anything about computers.\\n\\n Well, for someone like me, it was doubly awesome, because I wasn’t watching what was going on. I wasn’t watching the computer screen to look at trajectory data or plumbing pressures or systems. I was looking at the computer to see inside another computer. It’s kind of like having an X-ray machine. It’s kind of like going through medical school, to be trained on the human body, but before the time of X-rays and then suddenly being able to see, live, you know, with an X-ray or something, what’s going on and saying, “Oh, yeah. I learned all that. That’s how it works.” We could actually see inside the onboard computers for Apollo and we got to help tell them what kind of displays to write for us.\\n\\n Well, looking back, the awesome wasn’t very deep. Those computer displays that we saw, the mainframe that ran the whole of mission control was only one—they actually had two. The had a primary and a backup, and they ran in tandem so one field, they could swap over to the other. The MOC they called it, the Missions Operations Computer. That computer’s pretty slow. Mainframes, even back in those days, could do a lot of things at once and were very, very capable of pumping a lot of data in and out, even as much as any desktop computer can do today, much more, but in raw compute power, they’re very weak. A big mainframe was not much more powerful than today’s desktop computers, certainly didn’t have the memory of today’s computers.\\n\\n So if you can imagine the programming they had to do to drive hundreds of displays and do all the calculations at once, first of all, it ran pretty slow, and, second, computing resource was hard to come by. The way they got more throughput in those days was to offload things. I mean, the computer was to simply output numbers, not try to paint pictures, and they’d do that with other devices that the computers talked to. So like the world map that’s in the front of the control center, in those days the world map was a painted slide of a world map, and the trajectories were basically an Etch-a-Sketch. Have you ever seen those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s how it worked. The computer would literally sort of etch, drive a pen. They’d etch on something that projected the trajectory. They looked like sine waves on a locator projection. So the computer didn’t have to do very much, just plot the line and it was done. Same thing on the displays. The displays we looked at were just columns of numbers, and all of the names—you know, if you’d want to have a text that said what the number was, like time, it was on a slide, it was literally printed on a slide.\\n\\n So when you called up a display, there’d be this Rube Goldberg affair they were very proud of. The computer would display its numbers on a CRT, okay, and here’s some columns of numbers—just picture it, columns of numbers—and then a slide would come in over that and another camera would take a picture of the two together, and what we saw on the computer screens was the composite. Well, that’s the best we did in those days.\\n\\n I remember in the Apollo 13 movie that Tom Hanks was in, I remember folks asking, as they saw these flight controllers sitting there with their slide rules, “With all the computing power, were you using slide rules?” Yes. Absolutely. The computers couldn’t do anything. You couldn’t interact with them. They just pumped data onto the CRTs. It was very much the paradigm of the mainframe operation in any batch environment where, instead of getting printouts, it came live on the screen, but it was continuous, and it was difficult to change except to select different things to look at that were pre-programmed. So, yes, we were all issued circular slide rules and did our things.\\n\\n Anyway, that technology absolutely amazed me, enthralled me, and the ability to stare into a computer. Bear in mind, we sat through hundreds of simulations before any flight, and you know it’s a simulation, so it’s all a game. Well, when I sat in mission control for the first Apollo-Saturn flight and it kicked off and I suddenly realized I was looking at a computer that literally was out in space—and out in space is still new—it got to be awesome again. It was absolutely amazing.\\n\\n Have you seen the movie Matrix? Anybody that stares at this years later is going to laugh at me for this, but there’s a scene in there. That movie was the notion that the real world is a virtual world, everything’s driven by computers, and there’s one scene where there’s a fellow staring at this sort of waterfall of numbers on a screen, and the main character says, “Well, what are you looking at?”\\n\\n He says, “I’m looking at that virtual world.”\\n\\n “You can stare at those numbers and actually see it?”\\n\\n “Oh, yeah. There’s a young woman walking,” or something like that, and he’s just staring at numbers. That was deja vu for me on a much small scale, because we couldn’t get them to put anything on the screen out of the computers except octal numbers. A lot of the progress of the computers was based on what were called flag bits, you know. Buried in a sixteen-bit word, every bit meant something. If it was a one, it meant the computer had progressed past a certain stage in process. I mean, it doesn’t matter what. Hundreds of these things.\\n\\n So if you knew the computer programs and you had sort of memorized all these flag bits, you could stare at these octal numbers, and a single octal digit is a combination of three binary bits, so you have to do the conversion in your head. You can stare at these octal numbers, and they’re absolutely meaningless. I mean, the label on the screen would be flag word one, flag word two, and we’d stare at these columns of numbers and say, “Yeah, the computer’s doing this, the computer’s doing that.” People would walk up and say, “You’re weird.” [Laughter] Well, we knew exactly what we were looking at, and it’s completely a foreign language to anyone else walking up. Anyway, that deja vu was kind of funny for me in seeing that movie.\\n\\n Apollo, yes. Well, sitting in the control center, we learned something quickly, and that was Murphy’s Law. If things can go wrong, they will. Software was certainly a new ingredient in spacecraft in those days. It was wonderful because in some ways you could change it so you didn’t have to rewire everything if there was a design problem. You could get in there and change the software, not stay the same because we had to weave the ropes or something if we had to make a change.\\n\\n But we would figure out we could do some reprogramming in real time of the computers. While the bulk of the memory was this hard-wired, there had to be some of what was called erasable memory, the kind of memory you’re used to in computers today. Otherwise, the computer wouldn’t have any space to do calculations, right? Well, they were smart enough to put breakout points in the software code. Usually in these flag bits, the software would remember where it was, and it would jump out to look at the value in memory to decide where to go next. That was done mostly for reliability. That is, we didn’t have redundant computers. There was only one computer in each spacecraft, the command module and the lunar module, just one computer, and it was designed to be internally redundant. That is, any component could fail in the computer and it would still work. Not any component, but it was meant to be ultra-high reliable.\\n\\n I’ve totally lost my train of thought. Has that ever happened to you? You’re in the middle of describing something and it goes south on you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, the breakout points. So the software was designed so that it would memorize where it was so that if it was interrupted and didn’t know what it was doing, it could jump back and restart. It was called restart. All calculations were done in a way that as the software progressed through—a lot of software is cyclical, of course—but as it progressed through any cycle, it would memorize by writing data in this erasable memory where it was in such a way that if it got lost, it could go back to the prior step and redo it. This was the way it could recover from transient failures, or “I got lost.” In mainframes they call it AB-END, abnormal ending. In the mainframe, doing batch programming, if the software throws up its hands and doesn’t know what to do, it just flushes the program, does a dump, and says “AB-END.” You don’t do that when you’re flying a spacecraft; you just keep going. So the notion of restart was in there.\\n\\n Well, by having to put all that in erasable memory, there was a degree of reprogramming that could be done. I remember very clearly that we had to argue to allow astronauts the ability to actually key in octal numbers into erasable memory. The computer interface in those days was a device called the DSKY, display and keyboard, and the paradigm used was verbs and nouns. There was actually a V key for verb and an N key for nouns. So maybe a verb would be “display” and then a noun would be what you were displaying. No letters, of course. It’s all numbers. But with two-digit verbs and two-digit nouns and there was, I think it was three five-character displays, that’s it, three because in navigation you were living in a three-axis world. So like velocity, there’d be X, Y, Z. There’s always three of everything.\\n\\n Anyway, computer inputs and displays were this series of verbs and nouns. Either the computer would put up a verb and a noun to tell you what it was displaying, or the astronaut would key in a verb and a noun to say what he or she—it was all “he” in Apollo—was trying to do.\\n\\n We all worked very hard to get them to put in the old verb twenty-one, noun one—I still remember the verb and noun—which was the notion of keying into memory, into a specific memory location, in the erasable memory, a specific value. That was horrific, of course, because you could destroy the computer that way if you keyed in the wrong value. Let me point out that it’s just computers. Remember, this is a different world. I mean, an astronaut could also grab the wrong switch and destroy the vehicle. Come on. If something goes wrong, you want to have the ability to go fix it. That’s part of the notion of having human beings in space. So that happened.\\n\\n But then over time, we would create all these little hip-pocket procedures that would solve problems that no one had ever thought of. As I look back on that, I’m horrified, because we’d have them written on the back of envelopes. The consoles had plastic like you have on a table today. We would stick these things under the plastic on the console, and during simulations we’d use them. You know, “Well, tell them to do verb twenty-one and noun this to go fix that or that.” They’d go do it, and it would work, and it got to the point that they got mad at us. They literally got mad at us, because, “How many of those do you have? Have they been tested?”\\n\\n “No. We just figured it would work.”\\n\\n Now, remember, we’re young and we’re stupid, right? I mean, we were just trying to do the job. So the notion of erasable memory programming, EMPs, got to be very, very popular. I hope I’m on the right program. With Shuttle and Apollo we ended up doing them both, but, yes, it was Apollo. It most certainly was Apollo, yes. I’m looking back. Because Ken [Thomas K.] Mattingly [II] was one of the champions of erasable memory programming.\\n\\n So after a while, even that got formalized. That is, you’d have all these extra little things that you’d do that we’d document and test in all the simulations beforehand, and they’d actually get incorporated into the crew’s checklist. But when you’re thinking of workarounds and fixes, that’s a never-ending thing, right? No matter what happened, we’d always have a few dozen more little fixes in our pocket. I mean, in the hardware world, people didn’t think anything about that. You know, you try to document everything, but, yes, if you had this kind of failure, well, let’s try throwing that circuit breaker before we do this to do that. They didn’t think of that as a procedure that should have been tested before launch. You were just smart enough to understand the plumbing and to forget that’s the thing to do. Well, it’s the same thing in computers, but, remember, they’re scary, and there’s very few people that understand them. “You’re looking at what on that screen?” You know, it’s kind of mysterious.\\n\\n This is probably a good point to jump into the Apollo 11 experience. It was amazing. We had lots of flights leading to Apollo 11. I wasn’t in on the crews or anything like that. I was just watching, sitting in consoles between flights, doing simulations.\\n\\n Remember, this notion of restart I’ve described, where the computer can go back, during simulations in mission control, because I sat in a back room, in a support room, I was never a “flight controller,” I say with quotes. There was another group of people in the flight control game in those days. These were the folks that were the trainers. They would think up the problems, the failures to cause. You have to picture in those days that as you got close to one of these “going where no man has ever gone before” kind of flights, they didn’t want to put in failures that you couldn’t recover from. That would be both demoralizing and it would make the papers. I mean, even simulations made the papers. So they were pretty careful going at realistic things, and they would predict how the flight control team would react and what they should do to correct the problem, and generally they were right. Maybe the flight controllers would come up with something even more clever than the trainers though of, or maybe less, and they’d do a debriefing after every simulation and really walk through it carefully to see if they’d done their job right. This is another form of testing, isn’t it? You’re testing that the people part of the system is working.\\n\\n Well, because I was a back-room guy, they didn’t think it was cheating to come to ask us for what kind of failures they could put in to make the computers not work, because, again, there weren’t a lot of people that knew about computers, much less the onboard computers. So we would help make up failures and then pretend we didn’t know what they were. Okay? And it wasn’t that bad. We’d suggest one kind of failure, and they’d, of course, doctor it up and make a different so we didn’t recognize it. I mean, we were being tested, too.\\n\\n But I clearly recall helping them come up with a couple of semi-fatal computer errors, errors that would cause the computers to start restarts. Well, it was one of those or a derivation of one of those, it was just a few months before Apollo 11, I’m quite sure it was May or June—and I’m sure you know by now exactly when—that a young fellow named Steve [Stephen G.] Bales, a couple years older than I was, was the Guidance Officer, and that was the front-room position that we most often supported because he kind of watched the computers.\\n\\n One of these screwy computers alarms, “computer gone wrong” kind of things, happened, and he called an abort of the lunar landing and should not have, and it scared everybody to death. Those of us in the back room didn’t think anything of it. Again, we weren’t in touch with the seriousness of simulation to the real world. “Okay, well, do it again.”\\n\\n But Gene Kranz, who was the real hero of that whole episode, said, “No, no, no. I want you all to write down every single possible computer alarm that can possibly go wrong.” Remember, I’m looking at this as, “Well, we should have thought up a better failure,” and he’s looking at it like, “This stuff can really happen,” partially because he didn’t understand the computers, but partially because he’s absolutely right. He’s looking at the forest and not the trees. So he made us go off and study every single computer alarm that existed in the code, ones that could not possibly happen, they were put in there just for testing purposes, right down to ones that were normal, and to figure out, even if we couldn’t come up with a reason for why the alarm would happen, what were the manifestations if it did. Is it over? Is the computer dead? What would you do if it did happen, even if you don’t know?\\n\\n So we did. We did. I still have a copy of it. It’s handwritten, under a piece of plastic, and we wrote it down for every single computer run and stuck it under the glass on the console. And sure enough, Murphy’s law, the onboard computers ran in two-second cycles, which is horribly long in today’s computer world.\\n\\n The notion of navigation and flight control is such that kind of like if you were walking down the street, you open your eyes to see where you are once every two seconds, and you see the hallway around you and the ceiling and the road ahead, and then you shut your eyes and then decide where to put your feet. Okay? So there’s no obstacles ahead of you and you haven’t reached the end yet, so you figure you can probably take three steps before you get to open your eyes again. In other words, you kind of interpolate and figure out how many steps to take. So you take three steps. Then you stop and open your eyes, look around, shut your eyes, and go.\\n\\n That’s exactly how the navigation and flight control work, okay? Read all the parameters, do the calculations, and pump out the next two seconds’ worth of commands for which way to point engine bells and throttles and so on. It didn’t matter if you were in the command module with a service module behind you doing a burn. Or, more importantly in this case, in the lunar module, with that descent engine continually burning and having to continually adjust. Because, remember, they’re like a helicopter, only they’re riding on top of a plume, right?\\n\\n Are you about to change that, because I’ll pause if you are. Yes. I need a break first. Why don’t we just take a break.\n\nSo Gene Kranz had asked us to write down every possible computer alarm and what could happen, what might cause it. The computers, as I was starting to describe, are running in these cycles, two-second cycles, for calculating how to drive the engines. When it got to I forget what distance from the lunar surface, the conclusion had early on been that more precision was needed so the computer programs would double their speed, they’d run once a second. Okay? You know, as you’re getting closer to the ground, the lunar surface, you don’t want to coast for two whole seconds. You want to get a little more precision.\\n\\n Everybody knew the computers would be a little busier as a result of that. As I recall, there were some things it stopped doing to make up for that, but the fact is, what’s called the duty cycle of the machine, that is, how much spare time it had, would drop when it went to the one-second cycle. I believe all the testing had shown that it was maybe running at 85 percent duty cycle when it went to the one-second cycling.\\n\\n One of the test alarms that was in there was one that said if it was time to start the next cycle of calculations—open your eyes, look, calculate, and so on—if it was time to start the next cycle and you were still in the prior cycle, there’s something wrong. This is like when you have too many things to do. It’s called bow-waving all those tasks; you’re not going to get them done. That’s not good.\\n\\n So the computer would restart. That makes perfect sense. Flush everything, clean it out, look at those restart tables, and go back to the last known position and proceed forward. Overload was not a situation that had ever been tested, ever, that I know of, but because that design of restarting in the case of unknown problems was done so well, an overload is a perfect example of an unknown problem, and it turns out it did recover.\\n\\n Well, the reason for the overload wasn’t known for another day or so, and a day is a long time when you’re landing on the Moon. As they got down to the point where it switched to the one-second cycling, one of these computer alarms popped up. This is Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and they’re standing in this vehicle. They’re the first people to land on the Moon, and one of these computer alarms come up, they get this four-digit code for what the alarm is, 1201, 1202 were the two alarms, as I recall. The only reason I remember that is a couple of my friends gave me a t-shirt that had those two alarms on it when I retired. Those were the numbers, all right.\\n\\n In that system, as I recall, in the vehicle, when one of these alarms came up, it would ring what was called the master caution and warning system. Now, master caution and warning is like having a fire alarm go off in a closet. Okay? I mean, “I want to make sure you’re awake,” one of these in the earphones, lights, everything. I gather their heart rates went way up and everything. You know, you’re not looking out the window anymore.\\n\\n So this computer alarm happened, and Bales said, “What is it?” So we looked down at the list at that alarm, and, yes, right, and if it doesn’t reoccur too often, we’re fine, because it’s doing the restarts and flushing. It can’t happen, but because Kranz had told us to, we said, “All right. Theoretically, if it ever did get into overload, what’s going to happen?” Well, the computer’s going to have one of these alarms. It will clean the system of all the tasks that it needs to do out so any that are in there twice because of the overlap will be reduced to none, and then when it restarts, it’ll only put one of them back. Right? So it’s self-cleaning, self-healing, as long as it doesn’t continually happen. Right?\\n\\n Well, there’s a two-second delay, just for starters, okay, you know, the speed of light. So obviously it’s not recurring so often that the vehicle’s going unstable. So I said, on this back-room voice loop that no one can hear, I’m saying to Steve, “As long as it doesn’t reoccur, it’s fine.”\\n\\n Bales is looking at the rest of the data. The vehicle’s not turning over. You couldn’t see anything else going wrong. The computer’s recovering just fine. Instead of calculating once a second, every once in a while it’s calculating every second and a half, because it flushes and has to do it again. So it’s a little slower, but no problem. It’s working fine. So it’s not reoccurring too often, everything’s stable, and he does his famous, “We’re go, flight,” or whatever it was.\\n\\n When it occurred again a few minutes later, a different alarm but it was the same type—I forget which one came first—I remember distinctly yelling—by this time yelling, you know, in the loop here—”Same type!” and he yells, “Same type!” I could hear my voice echoing. Then the Cap Com says, “Same type!” [Laughter] Boom, boom, boom, going up. It was pretty funny.\\n\\n What was really eerie was that afterwards, after they had landed—I have to say something about the landing before I go into that. For us, it was over at that point. That is, there’s nothing anybody can do in the control center. I’m sure you’ve heard by now many, many stories, that they’re running out of fuel, and [capcom] Charlie [Charles M.] Duke, “We’re about to turn blue,” and they landed. Everybody’s holding their breath.\\n\\n But the most phenomenal point to me, watching that, was we’d watched hundreds of landings in simulation, and they’re very real, and on this particular one, the real one, the first one, Buzz [Edwin E.] Aldrin [Jr.] called out, “We’ve got dust now,” and we’d never heard that before. You know, it’s one of those, “Oh, this is the real thing, isn’t it?” I mean, you know it’s the real thing, but it’s going like clockwork, even with problems. We always had a problem during descent. A problem happens, you solve the problem, you go on, no sweat. Then Buzz Aldrin says, “We’ve got dust now.” My god, this is the real thing. And you can’t do anything, of course. You’re just sitting down there. You’re a spectator now. Awesome. Awesome.\\n\\n Right after the landing, of course, everybody that has anything to do with computers is all over, trying to figure out what the hell happened. I remember Dunseith came in. We had plugged in an extra tape recorder just to tape our voice loop, and I remember Lynn Dunseith came in and asked us to play the tape, because nobody in the front room could hear the back-room conversation. They were just doing the flight director’s loop. He said something like, “Oh, my god,” and he went walking back into the front room. It was pretty funny.\\n\\n Evidently, in the heat of the moment, all the attention was focused on Steve Bales and not on me and my colleagues in the back room that were helping him, and I think that was what Lynn was doing, he was walking back out to point out that it’s a team effort and all that stuff, which Steve Bales did, no problem, it was. The reason I raise that is we had no idea—you don’t realize until years later, actually, how doing the wrong thing at the right time could have changed history. I mean, if Steve had called an abort, they might well have aborted. It’s questionable. That is, those guys were so dedicated to landing that they might have disobeyed orders if they didn’t see something wrong. But nonetheless, you know, paths not taken, you have no idea what might have happened. That was an extremely, in retrospect, one of those points where you were right at the—you were a witness in the middle of something that could have really changed how things went. So it was very good that there were people like Gene Kranz and Steve Bales and others that kept their heads on and thought about it.\\n\\n It turned out the hardware guys figured out the problem up at the Instrumentation Lab. There was a grounding problem on the rendezvous radar. The rendezvous radar was used when you ascend to go back up to rendezvous, and they had, I think, left it on or something. There may still be an expert around that can tell you. But the way computers did their input output—at least these computers did it—was to read the analog world, like the position of a radar antenna in this case. They had analog and digital converters that would take a measurement based on voltage of a position and convert it to a number, a digital number. But today those kind of things are written directly into computer memory. In those days, no such thing. What happened is that every time the analog measure moved enough to change one bit, the analog and the digital conversation was simply the act of interrupting the computer and having it involuntarily add one or subtract one to a particular memory location. All right?\\n\\n So the things of channels or I/O in that sense it wrote directly into memory, which today is called DMA, a direct memory access, but it’s not done that way. It’s done via hardware. If the radar or something moved one bit down, it would subtract one; one bit up, it would add one.\\n\\n Well, because they had the radar turned on in the wrong time, there was a grounding problem, and the analog and the digital converter wandered. It’s called white noise. It averaged zero, which is what it was, but it would wander up and wander down, wander up and wander down. So the computer was continually being interrupted to add one, add one, subtract one, subtract one, subtract one, add one, add one, subtract one, add one, subtract one, continually, at a high rate. In fact, it consumed 14 or 15 percent of the computer’s time.\\n\\n So when they dropped from a two-second cycle to a one-second cycle, suddenly there was this extra involuntary load on the computer meaninglessly adding ones and zeros and minus ones to some of the cycles that caused it to run out of time. It was running at 101 or 102 percent duty cycle, meaning there wasn’t enough time to do everything. So sooner or later, it caught itself wanting to start another cycle before the prior cycle had finished. It flushed, that cleaned everything out, and because it was just marginally over 100 percent, it would run along for several seconds before it finally caught up and flushed again. Hence, the problem.\\n\\n Well, you can imagine—you can imagine—that made everything fine for the Apollo 11 landing. I mean, they got the problem solved, we’ll switch this right, this won’t happen again. But what else could be in the vehicle that would cause the computers to run over 100 percent duty cycle to the point where they couldn’t survive? It would restart so often that it couldn’t do it. This starts a search for problems that went on for years.\\n\\n In fact, jumping ahead, in the Shuttle onboard computers, we actually ran tests where we kept stealing cycles from the machine until it failed, to find out what that point was. We’d steal cycles. And the Shuttle onboard computers, because of that Apollo experience, were designed to be fault-tolerant on that kind of cycle. We’d steal upwards of 60 or 70 percent of the computer cycle, and the displays would freeze—they have real CRTs on the Shuttle—the displays would freeze because that wasn’t high enough priority. The highest priority thing is driving the vehicle, and the displays would freeze, things would start falling off, but it would keep driving the vehicle, and finally, at an incredible 60 or 70 percent stealing, it would finally fail. That’s graceful degradation, okay? That was the notion. But that’s unheard of in onboard digital computers. Onboard digital computers reviewed is gears, okay? Cycle, cycle, cycle, if things turn, they repeat like a clockwork that continues to go, and you’re supposed to pre-program this stuff so that it can’t run out of time, just make sure there’s always margins.\\n\\n Well, that’s where I learned how to give presentations, of course. After that, this young fellow who was one of the few people that could actually explain what had happened, didn’t have to wear a NASA badge. The Draper Lab folks could explain it, but they didn’t talk English very well. And I mean that in the kindest sense. There’s this notion of you learn how to translate when you talk to a group of people that speak a slightly different language and don’t necessarily understand. You learn how to listen to the experts who do know what they’re talking about and translate it into the language of the other folks that need to understand it, and I found myself in that position quite often in this computer jazz. So I ended up giving lots of presentations to very senior people. It scared the living bejeebers out of me, but it’s where you learn to give presentations and talk.\\n\\n We spent a lot of time, of course, making sure that kind of problem would never happen again. It didn’t. As I say, when we went into Shuttle, it became a great debate, which I’ll talk about in a minute, on how to make sure those kinds of problems don’t happen. But they etch deeply. Those kind of near misses etch very, very deeply into your mind when you see how close you can come to really doing some bad stuff.\\n\\n The other adventures in Apollo were, well, the lightning strike on Apollo 12, you know, during launch. No problem. The computers restarted, right? The onboard computers, the ones in the spacecraft, I mean. Apollo 13, that was everyone’s nightmare, you know, the long nights, but there were no computer problems per se. The notion there was to get the lunar module computer, which was designed to guide the lunar module to land on the surface of the Moon, to instead become the push vehicle to push this stack. Never even thought of. Actually, it had been thought of. It had been thought out a bit, thank god, but the notion of using the lunar module to push the whole stack, rather than the service module, was a profound change that they worked through in real time.\\n\\n But again, that was mainly a testing issue. It was not changing what were called the e-loads, erasable loads, the parameters that we put in that erasable memory that you couldn’t hard-code. There were enough of those that you could virtually re-program the onboard computer by doing that, and that’s what was done, and that was largely the navigation people, the flight control people, and all the Instrumentation Lab folks checking all that out. So I was pretty much an observer in the Apollo 13 experience, as nervous as anybody else.\\n\\n Bill Tindall was the hero there. He ended up calling endless meetings, almost twenty-four hours a day, not the kind of meeting that you think of in a bureaucratic sense. I mean brainstorming meetings. “Have we really thought of everything? Is there anything more we can do?” That movie was good, but it took many, many people and they compressed them into one, because you can’t capture in a movie all the folks. So it was inaccurate in that sense, that you have lots and lots of people, each experts or semi-experts in their area, sitting around these tables arguing and trying to figure out if everything was being done correctly, if they’d thought of everything possible, as that movie portrayed, not knowing what the answer was, in many cases, until almost too late.\\n\\n Apollo 14 was the solder ball or whatever it was, switch, abort switch. That’s one of those—you wake up and have a—what do they call it in war? These long days of boredom and tedium punctuated by moments of pure, stark terror. That’s how I remember Apollo 14, because Apollo 11 just happened and it was over. Apollo 14, we’re sitting there getting ready to—they turned on the lunar module for the first time, still attached to the command and service module, and the crew’s over there, starting to get ready to separate to go do the landing. Right?\\n\\n By this time—you remember my notion of staring at all these numbers on the screens? By this time, they’d figured out how to put what we call event lights onto the consoles. They don’t do it anymore, but they did then. These are small lights that we put printed labels on, had colors, that were driven by these bits, some of them hardware, a lot of them software. So rather than trying to read all the actual digits, you just had these banks of lights all over your console—I had hundreds of them—of every significant event or item or error, and if it was a problem, we’d color it red; if it was a caution, it was yellow; if it was something good happening, we’d color the light green. But all these lights.\\n\\n So instead of staring at bits on the screen, there’s this mass array of lights, and sure enough, the labels are all there, but after a while you don’t care what the labels are, you remember them positionally, right? Just like on the typewriter. Most folks, if you erase all the letters on the main keys, you can still type just fine as long as you can figure out where to place your hands. You learn positionally where things are.\\n\\n So now people would walk up to a console and say, “What do all those lights mean?,” and we’d say, “Well, this is what’s going on.” We could just tell by the patterns of lights. Well, it’s hard to miss a red light, and this particular event light was on many consoles because it was the abort switch, you know, on or off. It had a lot of meaning in software, it had a lot of meaning in hardware. And they would throw the abort switch purposefully during a test to make sure it would work, so it wasn’t terribly odd to have the light come on and go off. I wasn’t the guy tracking the testing of switches. And I forget who saw it. It doesn’t matter. I mean, everybody saw it and said, “The abort switch is on. Is it supposed to be on?”\\n\\n “No.”\\n\\n “Why is it on?”\\n\\n You start talking on all these back-room loops, these voice loops where you could talk to each other, and the call up to the crew, “Would you verify abort switch off, please.” Of course, the crew—that’s code. They know that something’s not right, because by this time we’ve gone through the checklist and know damned good and well it’s not supposed to be on at this point, and the crew knows it, too.\\n\\n “It’s off.”\\n\\n “Would you toggle it, please.”\\n\\n They toggle it, and when they turn it off, it goes off. They turn it on and turn it off, and it went off. Well, you know, that doesn’t help a bit. [Laughter] Oh, I don’t remember whether they toggled it or they hammered it or they did something, but it went off. It went off. I think they actually hit the console. I think that’s what happened. I guess toggling didn’t work, but hitting it did, and that’s where they started concluding it was a hardware problem.\\n\\n So if the conjecture was that it was a solder ball or something loose in there, which I guess turned out to be the case, I don’t think they ever knew for sure, because by the time the vehicle gets back, the solder ball’s—the vehicle doesn’t come back, you know. It’s gone. But assuming that was the case, they concluded quickly that they’re at zero G right now, and the act of lighting the engine suddenly puts gravity, artificial gravity as it were, and whatever is in there loosest is going to start flying around again and could absolutely do it again inside the switch.\\n\\n A fellow named John Norton, he’d be a good one to get hold of if you ever can, TRW in those days. I don’t know where he is now. He was a genius. Like many geniuses, he had trouble communicating with management, okay, but in the computer game, he was a genius. TRW had many roles in those days, but part of it was continuous independent assessment of what was going on. John’s task was to look at all the onboard software code and do what is today called code inspections. It’s a normal part of testing. It wasn’t done in those days, except that John Norton did it.\\n\\n The way he’d do it is, he’d take this awful assembly language and translate it back into his own version of a readable higher order language. The Norton Document, as we called it, that he put out for every version of every program, all typed by hand—no word processing in those days—was our Bible. We actually used it the same way somebody might use a Fortran listing or higher order language listing of a program to analyze their program.\\n\\n Now, bear in mind, that isn’t necessarily reflecting what the program is. I mean, if you write in a higher order language, C++, ADA, whatever, you’re looking at an untranslated version of the actual ones and zeros. It’s a computer program that translated—or in this case, a fellow’s head—that did the translation. So it’s risky to be dependent on that. But, you know, we’re dumb. We figured that was close enough, and that’s what we used. That’s what we used to come up with these erasable memory procedures I talked about earlier, too, which made it a little risky. They always worked because John was always right. He never made a mistake. Well, he made a couple. That’s a story he can tell you someday, maybe.\\n\\n As soon as this happened, we opened up our Norton Documents and started looking for flag bits, remember, hard-coded stuff. The first thing we determined was that the minute the engine lit, the minute it lit, it would be shut down and it would abort, because that’s the way the computer was programmed and that’s hard code. It would assume that the crew just—first it cycles and reads it environment every two seconds, including all the switches, and it would read the switch and say, “Oh, time to abort. I’ll do exactly what I’m told,” and separate the descent part of the vehicle and ascent and fire right back into the command module. No, we don’t want to do that.\\n\\n On the other hand, if there was a way to disable it, then how do you abort if it’s time to abort? I mean, this is a Catch-22. We immediately figured out a way to disable it. Remember verb twenty-one, noun one? The way to abort would be to key in verb twenty-one, noun one, to put the bit back. Okay? And a couple of us, we had that on the table within ten minutes, but that’s very dangerous. You know, if you’re aborting, you may be spinning. It may be impossible for the crew to hit that many keys correctly, and they’re right, that’s not the way to do it. I suspect that would have, they would have taken the chance, but not if there’s any time.\\n\\n So we kept digging, we kept digging right there. Well, we had a direct line, voice line, to the Instrumentation Lab, right to the console in those days. Those were very expensive in those days. I can’t remember his name, young fellow out there who got right into it, right with us, and started digging really deep. My memory, and he figured out—about the fifth iteration, we came up with something that worked. It was pretty foolproof, and that’s what was used.\\n\\n I think more entertaining for this was my own sense of what was going on, because I’m sitting there in the back room, there’s a team of us, and we’re staring at this, and we’ve got all these—remember, computers were just things that display stuff in those days. We’ve got these documents just all over the place now, papers flying, the Norton books open. We’re animated and talking, “What about this? What about that?” talking to the Instrumentation Lab, talking to other people in the control center.\\n\\n I looked around, and standing behind me were about ten people. Every icon of the space program was standing behind me. I mean all of them: Gilruth, Kraft, all of them. Tindall, Dunseith, everybody. It’s like a private turning around and seeing all the four-stars standing behind them or something. It scared the you know what out of me, because I woke up that we were in serious trouble at this point.\\n\\n See, they’re in lunar orbit, and they have only so long before they have to abort and come back. Not abort in the flash sense, but you can only sit there for so long. So we only had like two hours. That’s the worst nightmare of all. Right? I mean, like Apollo 13, give me a day or two. But this is like two hours. That’s all we had. I may be wrong. Maybe it was four hours. I forget. It doesn’t matter. But it was a short time that we had to come up with a solution.\\n\\n And worst of all, we had too many solutions. It was a risk-gain thing. We had, do this one, but they have to key Verb 21, Noun 1 to abort. Do this one, but maybe it’ll happen anyway. Maybe this one isn’t as good and there’s a probability it’ll abort by accident, by, by god, the abort switch will da, da, da, da.\\n\\n Eyles. Don [Donald.] Eyles at the Instrumentation Lab figured it out, and as soon as he identified it, everybody went, “Yep. That’s it.” You know, when you’re all searching for the same answer and somebody has the “Aha!” They tested it, read the procedure up, stuck it in, and the landing went on and everything was fine. But, boy, you talk about those moments of terror. They were kind enough, as I recall, to get out of the way, because when you know you’re being watched, you don’t always work better, you sometimes work more nervous. But that really was, that really was one of those—worse for me than Apollo 11 was, because there was too much time and too many people watching us.\\n\\n I don’t remember offhand any other major problems, all sorts of minor ones in onboard software in Apollo, but nothing that made the papers, so to speak.\\n\\n I will share one other event, if I can flash back first, things that you remember forever, you know, when you’re in this. Aside from that Buzz Aldrin “We’ve got dust now,” call, which woke me up, the other one that hit me was before Apollo 11, it was Apollo 8. It’s not a big deal, but for several of us it was one of those “Oh, my god, we’re really doing this” kind of moments again.\\n\\n The onboard computers worked on a coordinate system since the Earth is the center of an X-Y-Z coordinate system for doing navigation, calculating gravity, all those kind of things. Apollo 8 was the first time we’d sent a vehicle all the way to the Moon. It had to have people in it, too. Right? But it was the first time. Just to go around the Moon and come back, that was the flight that was done over Christmas and all that. We had one of these event lights on the console. We had a few in those days. The event light was set that when the vehicle got closer to the Moon, it would switch coordinate systems. Instead of coasting away, you’re suddenly falling to the Moon. At the point where the Moon’s gravitational field is stronger than the Earth’s, you’ve gone over the top of the hill and you’re starting to fall.\\n\\n For navigation purposes, the computers would do a—I mean, you’re coasting, no big deal, you’re just coasting on the way to the Moon, but the onboard computer for the command module would do this big switch, would recalculate everything and switch to a lunar-centered coordinate system, and that was a light.\\n\\n At two o’clock in the morning or something on the way to the Moon, you have nothing to do. Long moments of boredom waiting for something horrible to go wrong. So we were guessing the exact point at which the light would come on. Now, navigationally, we knew exactly the point that the vehicle was actually going to cross this threshold, as accurately as they did navigation in those days, but we’re down to a gnat’s hair here. We’re trying to figure two-second cycles, how long it will take, the transport time. We’re trying to take bets on exactly when that light’s going to come on on the console, you know, the lag time for the telemetry to come down and all this. Yes, we’re a little nuts, but what do you do? It doesn’t matter who won the bet.\\n\\n The light came on and we all stared at it and said, “My god. Do you know what we just saw? We saw a human being for the first time that we know of, ever, being outside of Earth’s gravitational field.” Right? Because what that light meant was that they were falling towards another planet, body, up there. So that another one of those—you know exactly what you’re doing, you know exactly what’s going on, but when something actually happens, you get that sort of gut, “My heavens, it’s real. They’re falling towards the Moon.” And that was pretty awesome, pretty awesome at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, as you’ve mentioned, for these missions, you’re, of course, in the staff support room doing these. Can you describe that environment, the typical kind of mood? You’ve mentioned that there were these long moments of tedium followed by spurts of excitement, but just the sort of general atmosphere, a kind of description of what it looked like, felt like, that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. There’s both the humorous end and the serious end. The humorous end would be that in those days we didn’t have computer graphics like we have today. You didn’t have Excel or Lotus to draw diagrams for you. What computers spit out were columns of numbers. So if you wanted to visualize something, a plot or a graph, it was usually done by hand. Okay? So you’d have somebody sit there, take long rows of numbers, and painstakingly plot them on plot paper. So all of the analyses—in fact, in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division, for years, there was a group of, oh, I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty young women—they were all women; this was still a very sexist time, by the way, as you’ll see in a moment—young women who did this. That’s what they did. They plotted. They were called math aides. Okay?\\n\\n And this was very serious stuff, by the way. I mean, you can imagine how easy it is to misplot something. Okay? If that’s used to make a decision on how we’re going to do something, it can be very serious. So accuracy in manually plotting and creating plots was extremely important. It really was. Some folks were very good at it. Some of these young women were very good at it.\\n\\n But during the missions, they’d select some of the best of these young women to be in the control center. They actually badged them and they’d be there, because they’d have these big tables with an overhead television camera looking down on them so that if we needed something done in real time during the mission, they could sit there and plot something for us, and we’d call it up on the screen, using the screen as a standard television, and talk about it.\\n\\n But of course the other reason that they were in there was that the average age in mission control was about twenty-nine, maybe twenty-six, and they were all quite pretty, and they loved to get us coffee and do things like that. During Apollo 8, I was attracted to one of them who later became my wife. So that’s the humorous part of that. You wonder how many times that kind of thing went on, all those little side stories about the space program, that we met in mission control during Apollo 8, got married right after Apollo 11, which was pretty funny. Raised two daughters. She went back to work and ended up joining NASA again as a NASA person, rose very quickly, which was sort of entertaining in the later years. We’ll get back to that. Stick to the chronology here maybe.\\n\\n The staff support rooms weren’t carpeted like the main control room was. They didn’t have the big screens up front. Although in the one I was in, which was called the flight dynamics staff support room, the trench staff support room, if you will, we had plotters, which were very expensive, with a camera so we could point it at a plotter, an X-Y plot, you know, a vertical device with a pen that could plot on a sheet of paper. We didn’t use them a lot, but that was very expensive gear for those days. So that was about the only unique outfitting in the staff support room.\\n\\n The control center had very, very tall ceilings, and everything was raised flooring, and I mean real raised flooring. It was like two or three feet down below the floor. So if you look at the old control center today, it’s like a five-story building but it’s only three stories because each was so big. So you’d get into these staff support rooms, and you’d get this feeling like you’re in a big cathedral or something, because the ceiling is way up there. You have these rows of consoles. They’re all standard, whether they were in the main control room or a staff support room. There were two rows of consoles in there. One of these plot tables was over on the side with the camera, with the young lady sitting there and these plot boards way up in front laid out kind of like the main control room is with its big screens out in front.\\n\\n A human-interest thing on that was that we’d be in there all sorts of hours, pad tests, simulations, what have you, and we had these communications panels. They were analog, not digital like they are today, but the same idea, where you’d have, in those days, a white button that you would punch and it would flash on the voice loop that you were talking on. Then there were amber-colored ones for ones that you could listen to. So for many loops, you had two buttons, both the amber one for listening and the white one to talk. So, for example, the air-ground loop, very few people had a white button for air-ground, the Cap Com, maybe the flight director, and a couple of others, but we all had the amber button. We listened. The flight director’s loop the same way.\\n\\n In fact, if you were in the staff support room—I think later on we got the flight director’s loop. We kept getting these strange problems that we’d explain, and it got very clumsy for the flight director to have to either go off his loop or listen to. We finally got the flight director’s button, I think, in later years. In fact, they moved the position into the front room. It’s called DPS [Data Processing System] today. They moved it. It’s an interesting transition story from Apollo to Shuttle, which I’ll jump into in just a second.\\n\\n Anyway, in the staff support room, there was a volume control on these loops. The volume control, the amber. Okay? So the notion was that the loop you were talking on, even if you had just the talk button, what you heard was a constant volume on that, relatively loud. All the amber ones that you could listen to—you could listen to many loops at once—you could turn that volume down. The idea being that if someone was talking to you on your loop, it would come in loud so you wouldn’t miss it. The other thing the human mind is good at besides pattern recognition and my notion of all the numbers or lights, is listening to many conversations at once. You do it in a room all the time. You can be talking to someone and hear a side conversation and jump over to that and then jump back to your conversation. Right? You can do that.\\n\\n Well, you can imagine that, with nothing else to do, we’d want to hear everything that was going on. So we’d have half a dozen different loops running in the back of our head and listen to all of them at once while we’re carrying on a conversation, while we’re watching lights and displays. It was mesmerizing. People could sit there for hours and feel like, when they left, they’d just awakened. It’s kind of like driving. You know how you can get deep involved with your driving and sort of forget, “Did I really come here? What path did I take?”\\n\\n “How many stop lights did you go through?”\\n\\n “I don’t know. They were green, weren’t they?” You know, you just lose it. You’re conscious and you’re working, but you’re kind of mesmerized.\\n\\n Anytime we were in the middle of significant operations, it was kind of like that. You’d sort of lose it. You were totally immersed in all these voices in your head, all these lights and displays in front of you. In our case, and anybody that did a system that was far, far away, you also continually have this mental image of what’s going on that you’re trying to put together in your head, because it’s not real, what you’re staring at, it’s just numbers.\\n\\n Some of us, because we were in the staff support room, we had a speaker on the console, too, so we could have a third thing. We’d plug into one voice set and then with the speaker on the console connected to another set of buttons, we could turn on more voice loops. So that you had the plug in your ear with the lower volume listening, the speaker with another set in your other ear, and the loud one, which is you talking, back in the same ear. Oh, it was weird.\\n\\n Particularly funny was that we’d talk to people to get things done. “My CRT’s broken. Could you get someone to fix it?”\\n\\n “Are you sure? Things are running slow here.”\\n\\n There was a bunch of console positions that had to do with just running the control center. These were staffed by people from my own division. Remember, I was in the division where we worked onboard computers, a small group, but the rest of them were all mission control, and I didn’t know half of them. Over time, you’d get so you’d recognize voices and call people by their first name. “Hey, Joe. How are you doing today?”\\n\\n “Yeah, doing fine.”\\n\\n “Are you on console next Saturday for the big test?”\\n\\n “Yeah. See you then.”\\n\\n You know, you talk back and forth and have no idea what they look like. You work in the same building, pass each other in the halls every day, and had no idea who they were until at some meeting, “Oh, you’re Joe. How are you doing? I’m glad to meet you. I’ve been talking to you for years.” It’s one of those really eerie experiences that happens when they set up a system that’s supposed to totally immerse you in what you’re doing, and you don’t really get to see all the other people around. Every once in a while you do.\\n\\n What else can I tell you about staff support rooms? There was a lot of concern about too many cooks will spoil the broth. Right? They were very careful about letting people into the MOCRs, the Mission Operations Control Room. I remember clearly, if you had a green badge, you could get into the control room. If you had a pink badge, you could only get into the staff support room. They guarded it fairly well, particularly during critical phases like landing. They’d actually have guards there. Otherwise, it was just honor system. I mean, pink was pretty visible if you were walking into a room. You just didn’t go in.\\n\\n It didn’t really bother anybody, except that every once in a while it was pretty important to just say, “Look, let’s sit down and talk,” and in the main room, they’d just stand up and turn around and talk to each other. I’m sure you’ve seen this in pictures and so on. They’d stand up and talk. But you couldn’t do it if you were in a room down the hall.\\n\\n So early on, all of us with pink badges didn’t worry about it particularly, but after a while they started issuing these green temporary badges. In other words, they’d issue me and the team of five or six of us on this—AGC support was what we called ourselves, Apollo guidance computer support position, and the AGC support position was the lead and had to get two or three of these green temporary badges, and that made life easy. We’d just stick one on and walk into the room and we could talk.\\n\\n I remember for a lot of people later on, it was one of those things that, “Do you get a green badge or a red badge?” For people that didn’t sit at the console, that they would come in and do things, like the young ladies, the math aides, they all had green badges. I mean, how can you take coffee into the—that’s not nice. How can you take a plot into the main room if you don’t have a green badge? So it was one of those kind of games. I guess that’s a way of saying there was a sort of ranking or a class system. But it didn’t really work, because some of the best experts were the ones that weren’t in the main room. It was sort of an odd kind of a hierarchy. Control was in the control room. The decision, the power to make decisions, was in the main room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that relationship work between the guys in the front room and those of you in the staff support room or directly supporting them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wonderfully. Remember, we’re all about the same age. In Apollo, nobody’s ever done it before. There was no question that everybody had a different job. There was very little overlap. And we’re all very goal-oriented. We’re fighting this battle, is what it boiled down to, how to get people to the Moon and back several times. So I recall the relations as being great, wonderful. People would debate and argue and yell at each other, but it was always in the debate and argue and yell.\\n\\n Now, looking back, I now visualize, I can remember, there was politics all over the place, people trying to get promoted and all that, but when you’re twenty-one to twenty-five, you don’t think about that, not when you’re a witness. So I think a lot of experiences are colored by the old you are and who you know. So at the bottom level, where I was, it was wonderful. There was no competition per se. Everybody’s on a team. Everybody’s afraid we’ll get in trouble from the bosses somewhere, so they always try to do the right thing.\\n\\n I remember once—there was no fence around the center in those days, and I remember once I decided to take a hike and just walk as far as I could go, and I ended up at the lake past the West Mansion, you know, east of the center. I ended up walking all the way to “Mud Lake” [Clear Lake] because there were no fences on that side. When I got back, I told somebody in the office about it and how it was really neat just to go hiking out in the woods and the prairie and so on.\\n\\n “Oh, boy, are you lucky you didn’t get caught. You’d have gotten fired.”\\n\\n I said, “Really?”\\n\\n “Yeah. Yeah. You’re not supposed to go walking out like that.”\\n\\n You know, you’re twenty-one or twenty-two years old, and I didn’t know all the rules. I didn’t care what all the rules were, and nobody told us. Anecdotally, just sharing that you have a completely different perspective on the way things work. “Fired? Give me a break.” I didn’t care. They didn’t want you out there getting hurt, getting lost, doing things, of course, “You shouldn’t do that.” What the heck.\\n\\n Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, just before we move on, I wanted to ask, as you’re immersing yourself in Apollo, your specific missions and the job that’s going on, did you ever take time to kind of stop and look around at what’s going on in the rest of the world? Are you paying any attention to larger events that are going on outside the space program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the Vietnam War, for sure. I mean, most of us working there were either—there were three kinds. There were folks who were already through the military. There were folks in the military, either in the National Guard on reserve or we had some military folks actually stationed at the center. Or there were folks like myself who had gotten a deferment. You know, NASA said, “We want them to work here, not in the military.”\\n\\n They’d write a deferment letter, and the deferment boards—what do they call them? The draft boards, they didn’t care who you worked for, government or otherwise, but they’d have a certain quota of young men to call up, and they’d rank them in order of need, and if you were working for NASA in those days, you were generally pretty low on the list.\\n\\n Growing up in Chicago, I was in a huge draft board, so I was lucky. It was by the numbers. If the quotas were normally sized, as they generally were, then I ended up escaping. But we had several folks that didn’t. They’d be in a small draft board. I remember one fellow in our group, a fellow named Sam Ankney, Walter Sam Ankney. It was ‘67 or ‘68, I guess, and he got called up. He got drafted. He was from a small draft board in Oklahoma or something, and they just ran out of names. So we had a party to toast him goodbye, all this kind of business, and off he went. He was back two weeks later. He failed the physical. [Laughter] So we had another party. Welcome back. He stayed with onboard computers all the way through Shuttle, all the way on into about—in fact, he just retired a couple of years ago, still working the same, but Shuttle onboard computers by that time, I remember.\\n\\n But, you know, when you’re totally immersed in this thing, that old notion of you live to work as opposed to working to live. No, I don’t remember too much about other events. I mean, we’d read the newspaper and watch television like anybody, but most of the party conversation was either what young people talk about or work, not current affairs or anything like that. But again, I was a computer geek, so maybe it’s always like that for folks that get into something they’re pretty passionate about.\\n\\n BUTLER: If we could pause.\n\nNow maybe is the time to talk moving from Apollo into Shuttle. Skylab happened in there, too, of course. My involvement wasn’t very deep because I’d been moved on onto Shuttle.\\n\\n Let me talk about the times first. You’d asked me earlier about watching current affairs or what was going on. No. So it was a rude awakening after Apollo when the nation went through the “Is that all there is?” kind of problem with the space program, and we were faced with something called a RIF, a reduction in force. For those of us that had only been with NASA for five years, four years, three years, the government in those days, and still largely today, if it has to do reduction in force, it’s based purely on seniority, how long you’ve been with the government, whether you’re a veteran or not. Most of us weren’t.\\n\\n So that was traumatic. That was very traumatic for young people, wondering if we were going to lose a job. In retrospect, it wouldn’t have mattered. We’d have gone on to something else. As I’ve watched contracts get re-competed and I see contractors lose a job because their company didn’t win, the ones that are any good, it was the best thing that could have happened to them. They move on to something better. But it doesn’t help the trauma. It doesn’t help the trauma at the time.\\n\\n I remember one of my good friends, still around, still works for NASA, a fellow named John [W.] Jurgensen. Jurgensen was one of my colleagues on the consoles throughout the period. He ended up being RIF’d. They hired him back soon, as I recall, but in a different location at a lower pay, and he worked his way back into the system over time, but it was pretty nerve-wracking for folks. I think it was that sense of “Look at what all we did for the country. Why is the country doing this to us?” kind of thing. Maybe some of that. Not in a real negative sense. I think everybody understood what was going on, but it was what happened.\\n\\n Well, I’m sitting there going through these Apollo flights. Let’s see, the last one was in ‘72. The agency had decided, through it downsizing and everything, they decided to move on to Space Station at that point. Of course, they couldn’t get funding for Space Station, but one of the ingredients of Space Station would be a vehicle that would be a taxicab to go back and forth. Like what do you call a taxi? A shuttle, something to shuttle back and forth. So they called it the Space Shuttle. The notion would be to get to low Earth orbit cheaply, reusable components, rather than all this throwaway, you know. Apollo’s thirty-six-story building leaves and the only thing that goes back is this little command module at the top. Now, let’s see if we can’t do it, using [current NASA Administrator Daniel S.] Dan Goldin’s phrase, “faster, cheaper, and better.”\\n\\n So they did the usual, let a contract. Rockwell won it, what was later called the Space Division of North American Rockwell, but it was North American Aviation when they first won. Many of us were moved immediately into that program, myself included. I continued doing some support in the consoles, as I recall, but the award was the summer of ‘72, was when the first Rockwell had won, North America had won. We went out for our first big meeting to talk with them. Talked about organizing at NASA to do Shuttle onboard software in my case.\\n\\n But what was going on in the mission control was that, remember I said we were support, we were never flight controllers, and after those Apollo missions, Gene Kranz concluded correctly that it was pretty important that he get some flight controllers that were computer experts so they could do that. So during the last—oh, I don’t remember exactly when, but they started lending me people. I remember clearly the people at Dunseith asking me, “Are you sure you don’t mind?” It was like they were taking my job away.\\n\\n I’m saying, “Why should I mind?”\\n\\n “Well, you’re really good at this stuff.” He didn’t want me to go over to be a flight controller, see.\\n\\n “No,” I said. “I don’t want to be here.” After you do enough of this, what you end up doing is following somebody else’s procedures and spending your life punching buttons and staring at screens. By the way, that is a derogatory way of—you can say the same thing about people that do computer programming. All they do is stare at numbers and write code and do stuff and make it work. I mean, there’s a derogatory way of talking about any job, but it wasn’t my turn-on. I was happy to start migrating out of that.\\n\\n So, yes, they took some folks from the Flight Control Division and had them sit with us during the latter Apollo missions at this AGC support position, and then when they reconfigured for Shuttle, they created a data processing system, or DPS, position in the front room.\\n\\n One of the fellows that went through that, I don’t think he worked with me in Apollo, but he ended up going through the DPS positions, a fellow named Randy [Brock R.] Stone, who’s now the head of MOD [Mission Operations Directorate]. Several of them. Ron Harbrow [phonetic] was another one, a guy that just retired, that was the EVA manager, astronaut. He went through the DPS position, too.\\n\\n But bear in mind, except for the Skylab Program, which was basically from a computer standpoint the same thing, it was just using the Apollo spacecraft in lower Earth orbit, and I had nothing to do with the Skylab vehicle itself, except for that, what was happening was flying a, sort of in the background, Skylab while the main work force was trying to build the Shuttle.\\n\\n Skylab happened, I think, within a year or so after the last Apollo flight. Then they had one more last gasp, the Apollo-Soyuz mission, remember. ‘74 maybe. Then that was it. No flights. No flights until the first Shuttle flight in ‘81. So the agency went through this period of spending money like crazy but having, quote, “nothing to show for it.” Okay. That’s good in some regards. They spent a lot of time redoing mission control and stuff like that, fixing things up, getting ready, but I do recall it was real problem years for the agency from a money standpoint because the customer’s the public, and like movies, they want to see action, and they weren’t seeing a lot.\\n\\n Okay. Well, the interesting thing about Shuttle coming in was that after all the Apollo experience with software, Chris Kraft, who by this time was center director or deputy center director, still under Gilruth, had concluded that if you wanted visibility into the development of any program, what you want to do is hold onto the software.\\n\\n Well, if there’s hardware problems, the first thing they’ll try to do to fix the hardware—I mean in design—the easiest thing to change is the software. Once you start cutting metal, it’s hard to change hardware. Software is easy to change. So if there’s a problem, you’ll see it because it’ll come in as a change to software. Probably the most difficult part of the Shuttle would be the software because it was designed to be a purely fly-by-wire vehicle, all digital.\\n\\n So when North American wanted in the Shuttle Program top to bottom, he forced innovation that is a movement of the software contract, which IBM was subcontractor, out and directly linked to the government. So the software was the one component of the vehicle, of the Space Shuttle, that North American was not responsible for. It was GFE, government-furnished equipment.\\n\\n I love controversy, love being thrown in the middle, and there we were, right in the middle, because you can imagine, here’s a bunch of government engineers that came off of Apollo, and IBM’s now working for us and formed this division called Spacecraft Software Division, SSD for short. A guy who had—I don’t think he’d done a lot of software work before, but a really brilliant fellow named Dick [Richard P.] Parten was plucked out to be the head of that. He had been, at that point, I think, heading the institutional computing operation in Building 12. This was ‘73, I think.\\n\\n So they pulled the contract out, formed the Spacecraft Software Division, and plucked a bunch of us in—that was already in it, but to really be in it—and off we went to go work with Rockwell—I’m going to call them Rockwell; they change names sooner or later—to work with Rockwell on building the onboard software in the computer they were building. Well, IBM was building the computer, too. The contract for the hardware, the IBM computer hardware, was a different branch of IBM, and it was through Rockwell. The software was another branch of IBM through the government.\\n\\n Now, that created some interesting times. There’s always a debate on some subject, you know, “Do it this way. Do it that way.” The Shuttle onboard software, the debate was whether to use synchronous or asynchronous operating system. I’ll explain it shortly and then give you some of the adventures that went with it.\\n\\n Asynchronous is what Apollo was. Asynchronism means that a computer responds to interrupts or activities on a random basis and goes and does what it’s supposed to in order of priority. It’s how you think; it’s how you work. If I feel a tickle in my throat, I can keep talking and still grab a cup of coffee. I don’t have to think one step at a time. It’s sort of like thinking in parallel.\\n\\n Synchronous operating systems are clockwork. You allocate time slots to processes, and when it’s time to do a process you let it go, and priority doesn’t mean a lot because there’s a serial order to things, as in gears and clocks.\\n\\n The only digital fly-by-wire system that had been built, other than what the Apollo Program had done, it was largely a digital, too, but truly fly-by-wire, no hydraulics, if you move a stick, you’re not doing anything except moving switches, the only prior one had been the F-18, as I recall, fighter aircraft, that had been done by North American Aviation. So the folks they had for Shuttle were all refugees—I’m kidding—were all veterans of that program, as we were refugees from Apollo.\\n\\n Well, this is kind of like two different religions meeting, because we’d been through this experience of what happens when the unknown happens and a computer doesn’t fail gracefully if it’s a synchronous system, it just crashes. Yet behavior in a computer system that’s constructed synchronously is totally predictable. You can test it down to a gnat’s hair. When you work with asynchronism, the exact path that a computer takes, what instruction executes in what order, is never the same. It’s random. It’s not predictable. This drives people who want to test to a gnat’s hair berserk. Literally it drives them crazy. There’s the joke about how to drive an engineer crazy, tie him down in a chair and have someone open up a map and fold it the wrong way. That’s exactly that sense of driving people—you’ve got to be nuts. You cannot test software that’s built asynchronously. You’ve got to be nuts. You cannot build software that will degrade gracefully under unknown failures. And this debate went on for years.\\n\\n Well, the IBM folks came from a mainframe environment that always ran asynchronously. That’s the way it was done. We came from an environment, with the Instrumentation Lab, that had built an asynchronous operating system, that worked under some pretty wild conditions, not just the Apollo 11 one, which was spectacular, but lots of other cases. It had survived failures and went right chugging along, can’t AB-END. And the Rockwell folks came from a very successful fighter aircraft that worked. Okay?\\n\\n Well, when you’re GFE’ing the software, the government wins, except that another real name in this game is a fellow named Sy Rubenstein. I don’t know if you’ve found him, had a chance to talk with him. I think he’s still around. I do. But I’m not sure. I remember his having some medical problems. But Sy was the grand architect of all the avionics in the Shuttle, all of it, Rockwell, and he was smart, willing to work through all sorts of political hurdles to get the job done, including this damned GFE software from the government. I remember lots of long debates with him and his folks, but in the end, the government compromised.\\n\\n There were five computers in the Shuttle. They called them general purpose computers, or GPCs. They were not general purpose, but that’s what they were called. In the beginning, the five GPCs were set up such that four of them would be redundant and do the flight control and navigation, the thesis in Shuttle being “We’re not going to build ultra-reliable hardware. We’re going to use cheaper hardware this time and just be redundant, and we’ll be FOFS.” Have you ever heard that term? “Fail op, fail safe,” FOFS. So it takes four.\\n\\n If you have four—I’m holding four fingers up—if you have four and one device fails, the other three can vote it out. You know who’s right. Well, you’re still operational with three, because if you have a second failure, you can still vote it out. But on the second failure you only have two. You’re safe, but you can’t take another failure because you don’t know who’s wrong. So the whole notion on Shuttle was to try to have quad redundancy to get fail op, fail safe. It’s kind of hard to do that on wings. There’s some pretty fundamental things you can’t do it on, but in general, on systems that could fail, they had quad redundancy.\\n\\n For example, there were accelerometers, things that measure acceleration. They didn’t go to quad redundancy on accelerometers. What they did was have software that would take the inertial measurement unit that measured attitude, and by calculating as the vehicle moved, by calculating how fast the vehicle was moving, rotating, you could calculate acceleration. So that was used as the fourth accelerometer in terms of being quad redundant there.\\n\\n Why am I telling you this story? Well, because it turns out that you can have quad redundancy on computers so that any hardware failure you’re going to be fine on, but you don’t have quad redundancy on the software. You have identical software in four machines, and if there’s a bug in that software, as we proved many, many times in the Shuttle Program, all four machines will obediently do exactly the same thing, vote each other doing exactly the same thing, right into the tubes, because there’s a bug.\\n\\n Well, Shuttle flight software was extremely carefully and expensively done. There were not many bugs. Didn’t happen. In an asynchronous environment, okay, here it comes. In an asynchronous environment, the order of processing is unpredictable, and, moreover, you end up having parallel processing. It’s not really parallel, but the computer stops doing one process to go do one of higher priority and then jumps back to continue the other, so it’s as if it’s parallel.\\n\\n The bugs that would happen in the end were not the kind of bugs that you think about, a plus sign instead of a minus sign or an “IF-THEN-ELSE” that isn’t right. They were purely asynchronous kind of issues. If, in fact, this event happens before that event and simultaneously the crew hits a button at this point, then because of this interrupt-driven environment, the subparameter is not passed between the two parallel processes correctly and you’ve got a bug. They’re endless, very, very difficult to find.\\n\\n So Sy Rubenstein talked the program into building a backup flight software system their way. Their way. So the fifth computer, which had been designed to run payload and systems management kind of stuff during ascent and entry, was instead allocated the notion of running backup flight software.\\n\\n Now, a backup system in the Apollo or any normal vehicle sense is a completely alternate system. That wasn’t the case here. It’s the same computer. In fact, any one of the five computers could be designated the backup computer. Okay? Same requirements, same algorithms and equations, driving the same hardware. What was different? Same programming language. They used the HAL [High Order Assembly Language] language to do it. They used a different compiler on a different host computer, but it was still the same. What was different? The operating system. They built it synchronously. They built it absolutely synchronously.\\n\\n So the probability then of one of these timing kind of bugs happening, while vanishingly small, to be really bad, in the premise it was vanishingly small, but if it did happen, it became diminimus that it would happen in the backup too, because it was a totally different operating system. It just ain’t going to happen. And it doesn’t. It never has. It never has.\\n\\n So we went through the expense of building a completely different version of the flight software, and Rockwell got their wish, all right, they got to build the software, too. They got to build it, too. In retrospect, it was the right thing to do, and I’ve had Sy Rubenstein years later tell me, in retrospect, asynchronism was the right thing to do in the primary. You know, things tend to evolve to the right answer or a good answer over time.\\n\\n The interesting thing in the Shuttle onboard software development was that it ran out of resource very early on. That is, I remember clearly in the ‘78, ‘79—the first orbital flight was in ‘81 as I recall, April of ‘81—I remember clearly that when we added up all the code and all the processing time required to do all the software, we were at 200 percent or something. When you’re running this in simulation, you can artificially make the memory of the computer bigger and all that, but it wouldn’t fit. So we went through scrubs, continually scrubbing or reducing requirements. In fact, Fred [W.] Haise [Jr.], who was one of the Apollo 13 astronauts, he led one of the more infamous scrub teams in the Shuttle Program as we approached the first orbital flight. This is a point to mention something.\\n\\n By the way, that may be a good ending to that theme of discussion, that the Shuttle onboard software was built three or four times in the primary because of scrubbing and built yet another time in the backup to have this alternate form of processing to make sure there were no bugs.\\n\\n But a segue here into software engineering for Shuttle was that we did it in higher order language. It was the first time we’d ever done it. What I’m going to tell you, the punch line, is that we would have never succeeded had we not done it in higher order language, because when you scrub software, it’s real easy to say, “Let’s take out that function,” but when you try to find that function and all of its entrails buried in assembly language, it is almost impossible. You end up creating more bugs and more problems. When you’re working in a higher order language, it’s much easier to change software. So the notion of using a higher order language, which today is, you know, “You’ve got to be kidding. Nobody does assembly language.” Well, some people do. It goes without saying today, but in those days software still weighed something. It was expensive. That is, you know, weight and memory and electricity and all that flying a vehicle, it was a big deal.\\n\\n So part of our Apollo heritage was a company. John Miller was the founder. He’s Air Force Academy grad in the forties that grew up in the Instrumentation Lab, I think on the hardware side, formed a company called Intermetrics. Today it’s called Averstar. They have an office here. There were two key guys, a fellow named Fred Martin and another one named Dan Likely [phonetic]. I think they’re both still around. Their notion was to take the Apollo experience that they’d had in software engineering and so on and make a company out of it.\\n\\n Our notion after Apollo, and NASA had a program for research called RTOPs, Research Technology Operating Plan, it was the name of the form we had to fill out to do research, RTOPs. And I was asked to do RTOP on software engineering. So I wrote one to go do a higher language for the next program. This was during the Apollo-to-Shuttle transition. Intermetrics won that contract and proposed this HAL language, and we went out and did it, went out and gave them a contract, and it was another one of the GFE components.\\n\\n What was amazing was that we had in ‘72, ‘73, at the beginning of the Shuttle Program, what we had now was Rockwell building the—with IBM building the computer hardware, building it, literally, they chose an off-the-shelf AP-101 computer that was used in fighter aircraft, but they had and they built a whole new input-output processor around it so it was a different computer. We had IBM Federal Systems Division doing the flight software, and that was through the government side, and then we had Intermetrics building this compiler that they were going to program the software in, that was also a government contract being GFE’d through IBM. Okay? I mean, talk about getting us in the middle, getting the government in the middle.\\n\\n What was even more amazing was that, for whatever reason, this computer that was selected had no operating system. The AP-1 did not come with an OS. I mean, this is like buying a new computer chip and having no operating system. So there was nothing. It was an absolutely naked computer when we bought it. IBM said, “We’ll design one. We’ll build on.” Ended up, we called it the Flight Computer Operating System, or FCOS. I became lead on that, of course, after the Apollo game.\\n\\n In the game of software, compilers’ languages speak to operating systems. That’s the most intimate relation. Operating systems are software that actually run in a computer when the computer’s running, whereas compilers generate the code that runs in the computers. So when compilers compile, they’re not running in the computer. Although nowadays, a lot of compilers run in the computers they actually generate code for. But in the host target sense, it certainly was in the case in the Shuttle; the host for the compiler was the IBM mainframe and the target was the GPCs.\\n\\n So the idea of having these higher order languages became very compute-intensive, as you can imagine, because you’re talking about trying to translate something that more or less English into target code for a GPC, talking to an operating system. You don’t replicate operating system software. A lot of it’s simply calling the routines that exist in the operating system. What operating system? It didn’t exist. So we ended up, from ‘72 through ‘74 or so, building in parallel the compiler, the operating system, and the applications. This had never been done before. It was stupid to try to do it that way, but we were already late by the time the contracts were awarded. So that’s the way it was done. And on top of that, trying to build it in such a way that we could have computers running redundantly, running exactly the same code, voting each other, hundreds of thousands of times a second in what we called sync points, synchronization points.\\n\\n In late ‘74, ‘75, it was Christmas one of those two years, we were finally required to deliver some software to the vehicle at Palmdale for testing. Why? Remember, we weren’t going to fly until the Approach and Landing Test [ALT] in ‘78, first vertical flight later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I could stop you for a second, we’ve got to change out the audio tape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was talking about the notion of building all these things in parallel, the compiler and the operating system, building the computer hardware, by the way, at the same time, to the applications. The other piece I neglected to mention is that we’re building the test facility at the same time. We called it the Software Development Lab. We ended up using the leftover mainframes from mission control. They were actually in the Mission Control Center. I forget the numbers. I guess they moved—these were IBM-360s. They moved to IBM-370 mainframes by this time in mission control. All this stuff’s going on in parallel.\\n\\n My point at that break, that earlier break, was that we were called on to deliver some software to [Rockwell in] Palmdale [California], where they were building the vehicle in 1974 or ‘75, I can’t remember. Why? Well, because this vehicle, the Shuttle vehicle, is basically all driven by computer, it turns out they couldn’t test the vehicle without computer software. In retrospect, it’s just patently obvious. I mean, you know, just think of a PC. How do you check out a hard disk without putting software in to make the hard disk work, right? It’s obvious in retrospect, but remember, the mind-set here is aircraft of yore, spacecraft of prior days, where these systems were designed with test points that you could test them. There’s a lot of testing they could do without the computer, but in the end, they had to have some test software.\\n\\n Well, you can’t even build test software unless it runs on an operating system. We’re building things in-house. In other words, you wanted to take a drop of where we were in developing the software, add some simple algorithms that they wanted just to do testing with, and deliver it to them. And we did, and it didn’t work. It just flat didn’t work.\\n\\n And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, based on a requirement that had not been identified in the first place, software became the driving factor in the development of Shuttle. If you can’t test the vehicle, you can’t finish building it. If you don’t have the software to test the vehicle, you can’t test it, so software became the long pole. Of course it was the long pole. It wasn’t Rockwell’s fault. The software was GFE, which added to the political game. “We told you we should have done the software in the first place.”\\n\\n On top of that, we couldn’t get this game of synchronization to work. Not only could we not get software to work, we couldn’t get multi-computers voting, couldn’t get it to work. I can remember when we counted the number of successful sync points in the hundreds. Bear in mind, the software that runs today on the orbiter synchronizes thousands of times a second. So this was pretty rudimentary kind of problems.\\n\\n I was in the middle of it, as were a lot of people. We ended up getting some serious help from senior management. And when you’re in trouble, you end up getting serious money, too. You know, it’s a shame to think of it that way, but there’s two ways to get more money: be successful or fail. If it’s not working and you’ve got to make it work, you pour more money into it. If it’s very successful and you want to do more, you pour more money into it. So don’t ever be in the middle of mediocrity. You might get paid. No, don’t go there.\\n\\n Anyway, it all came through, of course, but that was a couple of very painful years, as I recall, particularly for people like Dick Parten. I’m still—what am I? I’m thirty years old in ‘74, so I’m still relatively young in the game and doing my thing and having fun at it, but I do clearly remember the pressure. I remember Dick Parten and I having an argument once, which we did often, friendly arguments. He was absolutely one of these “I want a schedule, I want a plan, I want all the steps laid out.” And I would look at him and say, “You know, we have no idea how to do some of this stuff.” The problems had not been solved in building an operating system that could do this synchronizing between machines. “You’re asking me to schedule creativity.”\\n\\n And he’d look at me and he’d say, “Yep. That exactly what I’m asking.” [Laughter] You know, “Set yourself a damn time limit for when you’re going to solve these problems and get them solved.”\\n\\n How do you do that? You know, because you sit around and you’re trying to figure out how to do it. But that’s exactly the position everyone was in, whether you’re sitting at a console on Apollo 14 with two hours to solve a problem before you can land or you’ve got a year or so to solve a problem and you don’t know the answer. That’s the way life works. If you don’t know the answer, you’ve got to figure one out. I guess it’s what makes engineering and science fun, part of what makes it really neat stuff.\\n\\n Anyway, we did, we ended up figuring out. A lot of very smart people at IBM and among our colleagues at NASA figured out answers to all that stuff and got it working.\\n\\n The sidelight in here that I want to talk about is this Software Development Laboratory. There really wasn’t such a thing in Apollo. They had the computers that did simulation mainframes, they did their assembly language assembling on big machines. The crew trainer for Apollo, you know, the simulators that the astronauts train in, actually ran an interpretively simulated Apollo guidance computer. ISAGC it was called. A fellow named Jim [James L.] Raney, who was around for a long time, I think he’s still around somewhere, created that, ended up working all the way through Station, in fact, on onboard software.\\n\\n But in the Apollo days, the onboard computer was so slow and the mainframes were so much faster, they’re slow today, but compared to the onboard computer there’s a big gap between the speed of a mainframe—these were Univacs they used in their simulator—a huge gap between the speed in mainframes and the slowness of the onboard computer for Apollo, that they actually loaded the listing, the assembly language listing, of the onboard computer, and it would interpret that listing and run it.\\n\\n Why? Because software changed so often that they couldn’t afford to keep changing the simulation. As a result, it actually helped debug the software. As often as not, the simulation was wrong. The simulated Apollo guidance computer running this interpretive thing of the listing of the computer program would do perfectly, and the simulator couldn’t handle it, and it was a simulator problem. But as often as not, it was also a software problem.\\n\\n Well, in Shuttle, they went one better. They actually put GPCs, real GPCs, into the simulator and surrounded it with a box, whose name I can’t remember, that fooled the onboard computers into thinking they were actually flying when, in fact, they were sitting inside a simulator and could be stopped, reloaded quickly. You know, simulations, you run to a point, stop, reset, go back, go on, redo, and stuff like that.\\n\\n Now, they couldn’t do a lot of diagnostic work, but here we weren’t actually loading the listings, we’re loading the code, and because the GPCs are running in real time, the fact that the GPCs were much faster computers, and the difference between the mainframes used to simulate in a simulated environment and the onboard computer was much narrower, but we distributed the load. You have the real GPCs just running their real software. So the simulator just had to keep up with real time, which is what simulators have to do anyway. So that worked out okay. Very complicated.\\n\\n The same thing was done in the Software Development Lab. The Software Development Lab, the device there was called a Flight Equipment Interface Device, FEID, which we pronounced, of course—any acronym longer than three letters NASA pronounces. You heard me say NASA. I didn’t say “N-A-S-A.” I said “NASA.” It pronounces. Three letters, we say it. Software Production Facility, “S-P-F.” And we pronounced that; we called it “spiff.” But the FEID, F-E-I-D, we pronounced it.\\n\\n The FEID was the same idea. It was a box that you plugged in the actual GPCs, and on the other side of this box was the mainframe, where we ran the compiler’s developer code, but, more importantly, ran all the simulation to simulate actually flying the vehicle to test the flight software. Okay? Now, this is all digital. In a crew trainer, there’s a lot of real gear. This is all digital. There’s no cockpit. It’s all simulated.\\n\\n Moreover, we didn’t have to go on real time. There’s no people there to keep up with. So simulations could run much slower than real time and often did. Why? Because the idea of testing software would be, maybe I want to track a variable in an equation, and I want to see it every time it changes, on a printout or somewhere. Well, the FEID was constructed so you could do that.\\n\\n Now, bear in mind, I’m looking at a HAL listing, and here’s the name of a variable maybe called altitude. And they actually spell it out: altitude. “Hey, that’s English. I can read it.” Where the heck that variable was in the computer memory is lost in the notion of compiling, first to binary code and then in this world of asynchronism—well, actually, we did static memory allocations so you knew where it was, but when it changed value, it was not predictable.\\n\\n So the idea of the FEID was that you could put triggers in and it would actually freeze the computer, put it in suspended animation, reach into its memory, and pull variables out, pull parameters out. Well, this causes it to run slower than real time. So can you see the distinction? In a simulator, in a crew trainer, same idea, real GPCs, but you’re not stopping it except maybe to restart a send. You’re trying to run in real time. Whereas in this Software Development Lab, we’re stopping it all the time.\\n\\n Well, not only did we have to deliver software to Palmdale and had to check out the vehicle, we had to deliver software for crew trainers as they were building the crew trainer, to help check out the crew trainer, much less trying to make it work at all using these FEIDs. The time spent solving those problems was endless. Now, bear in mind, that was my first experience in development. When I came into Apollo in ‘66, it was all designed, right or wrong, and everything was trying to make it operate. I got into Shuttle kind of on the ground floor, and so I got in the middle of all these fun things of trying to solve problems.\\n\\n So we have a Software Development Laboratory, we called it. The host machines are old IBM-360s that ran the control center, the real-time computing complex, or RTCC, as they called in the control center for Apollo, we inherited those computers and built this thing called a FEID to plug these GPCs into, and we’re trying to deliver software out to all these other places.\\n\\n There was another facility called the SAIL, Software Avionics Integration Laboratory, had the same idea. It also used a device like a FEID with real GPCs, but it had real gear. Its notion was not necessarily that it had to run real time, but it could partial tests. It wasn’t trying to do everything. They’d try to pull in real hardware and make sure—you know, hardware built by that subcontractor or that subcontractor or this one, put it all together to make sure it runs together. That was the purpose of the SAIL.\\n\\n So we’re sitting there from ‘75 through ‘78 or so, having to send software, not real software, test software, to three or four different locations, first to help develop the facility and then to help develop the hardware or the vehicle itself. That was another of the detractors from focusing on actually building the real flight software.\\n\\n I’m a little out of order here, but if you can add it up at this point, you can see the challenges that were faced here. Remember, 200 percent, the code didn’t fit, had to continually scrub it? All right? Trying to develop whole sets of software to send out to laboratories that needed it to exist themselves. Plus, underneath all this, trying to develop the actual software that’s going to fly. All right? It was really entertaining times, and it’s amazing it was pulled off. Now, I recall people saying the same thing after Apollo. I wasn’t deep into the development enough to realize why they say, “I can’t believe we did all at,” but the same thing on the Shuttle, I can’t believe we did all that.\\n\\n In the approach and landing test flights, yes, that’s Fred Haise flew that, and it was after that flight he got into the scrub for the first vertical flight, all the software scrubbing. Fred Haise, I was in the control center watching that, not at a console, just plugged in on that one, and the instant separation happened, off the back of the 747, you know, fired the explosive bolts, one of the computers failed.\\n\\n Boy, you talk about heart rates rising. See, we were still—there was no issue on our part that one of the other three computers would take over. I mean, that was fine. None of us really knew for sure that we didn’t have generic problems, that whatever failure happened in the first computer would immediately happen in the second, third, and fourth, which would have been a disaster for the Shuttle Program. I don’t think we had a BFS then. Yes, we did. They had a backup flight system, but it was—oh, you didn’t want to go there unless you had to. Anyway, that was shaky, but it worked. Amazing, you know. You plan for the unknown and a failure, and it was, it was a hardware failure, and things work like they’re supposed to, and you go, “Wow. Okay. That’s good. That’s good.”\\n\\n The adventure of Shuttle, the next place I found myself sitting in front of audiences I didn’t want to sit in front of, was on the first orbital flight, STS-1. You remember I said that the backup flight software was designed completely different than the primary, synchronous versus asynchronous. The backup flight software system was never in control unless they threw a switch to put it in control. It had always to be ready to take over control. So it had to continually listen to what was going on in the vehicle to keep up. How do you listen to another set of computers? You listen to the bus traffic, to the LAIO. You can’t use those computers. They may be wrong. You can’t hand the primary computer—hand any parameters to the backup because they might be wrong. They might be failing. But you can listen to the raw data.\\n\\n So when the primary computer asks for a value from an inertial measurement unit and the data comes floating across the bus, the backup computer could listen to that and pull the data in. To do that, it has to know when the primary’s going to ask. Said another way, the backup and the primary have to be synchronized. The primary operates in an asynchronous world. The backup operates in a synchronous world. This was like trying to mix oil and water. Okay? It was done by brute force. It worked, except that. Except that. There was one minor little big, and I’m not going to bore you with the details of the bug. I don’t even think I could remember them all. But there was one bug that was one of these weird probabilities, one in sixty chances, that if you started up, first turned on the primary computers and within a certain time period then turn on the backup computers in the orbiter, they’d never synchronize. The backup would not be able to hear the primary correctly.\\n\\n Never found the bug. Why? Because it was like a one-in-sixty chance, and in all of the SAIL runs, computer simulations, FEID runs, and all of that, you don’t turn on the computers and start from there. You start from a reset point. A reset point may be hours before launch, but building these simulation resetter initialization points is like a tree. You start with the trunk, and you run a while, and you build a branch for one for this, and another one for that and another one for that, and you build off that one, but they’re all based, just like parentage, on the same trunk. And the particular trunk, or two or three trunks, that were used were not the one in sixty that caused the problems.\\n\\n Murphy’s Law. The first orbital flight of the Shuttle, they turn on the computers for the first time to start the countdown and hit the one in sixty chance, hit it cold. As we start coming down, the countdown things are not working quite right. They’re not synced up. There’s problems. So it’s another one of those “Are we going to fly or not going to fly?” Of course, this is good, we’re sitting on the ground. Still, this is very embarrassing. This is not good. This is the first orbital flight and software is the problem.\\n\\n What was the problem? They held up the launch for two or three days, as I recall, and I think it is the only time ever that software has caused an impact to a NASA flight like that, that it’s caused a shift or caused a major change. Yes, I found myself talking to newsmen and all that kind of stuff after being up all night. We finally figured out what the problem was, and then of course the fix was real easy, right? Turn the computers off, turn them back on. One in sixty chance, and, sure enough, didn’t hit it. It’s not a problem that could ever reoccur. See, once you’re synced, it’s not a problem ever again.\\n\\n So, absolutely Murphy’s Law. If things can go wrong, they will. One of those wild adventures. I clearly remember staying up all night in a conference room. I don’t think we had to post guards, but it was close to it, to keep people out so that we could talk it out. You know, you kind of know what the problem is, and you start trying to focus in. It’s an absolute classic brainstorming session with people drawing on the blackboards and trying to figure out how to do this or that, what the issue was. It took all night.\\n\\n Once it was explained, it was too late, of course. The two-day slip was simply the turnaround. Once you decide not to launch, you detank the vehicle and start the countdown again, and everything went fine. STS-1.\\n\\n The adventure on the Shuttle, of course, was the launch and landing. That’s the hard part. Computers can’t stop, they can’t fail, you’ve got to keep going.\\n\\n After Challenger, we all know the dangers of launch, but unlike the Apollo Program, where the computers in the spacecraft where the people sort of monitored it, Saturn had its own flight computer, the instrumentation unit. For Shuttle, the same onboard computers actually control everything, launch all the way up. The Marshall folks didn’t like that very much. They wanted their own computer system, but—well, there’s some reason for that, the same reason that Rockwell wanted backup flight software. If there’s more components, there’s a higher probability of failure because any one of the components can fail. There’s a smaller probability of failure because you can focus separately, you don’t get things mixed up with each other. So it’s a real trade on systems reliability.\\n\\n Anyway, while the main engines of the orbiter, of the Shuttle, do have their own computers, all they do is—I shouldn’t say “all they do.” It’s very complicated what they do, but they control the engines and that’s it. They manage the flow of fuel and when to turn them off, when to turn them on, stuff like that. But all of the guidance, which way to point the engines, what throttle level and all that, comes purely through the onboard computers of the Shuttle, which is another reason it had to be built four times, because all the logic that people wanted to put in to cover all the instances just didn’t fit.\\n\\n Okay. One other adventure in Shuttle that was interesting. It’s how I started moving into mainframes. At this point I’m all onboard computers, what you’d call mini or micro computers today. They’re avionics kind of things. Well, you can tell. I mean, we used mainframe computers to do the compiling and the simulating, and we’d inherited all these old Apollo RTCC computers, and we realized as we approached STS-1, the first orbital Shuttle flight, that if the agency was into anything like what is said—by the way, they were talking about flying fifty-two times a year back in those days, a flight a week.\\n\\n It didn’t matter whether it was fifty-two times a year or eight times a year. The fact is, the parallelism that I talked about earlier was enormous. Determining what payloads to carry in the Shuttle and all the work that goes in and all the flight software parametric testing that has to be done, we’re talking a long lead time. I remember sitting down one day, again with Lynn Dunseith, and saying, “We’ve got a problem,” because the flight-to-flight, I mean, we’re building software and the parameters and the testing, and everything’s driven towards this first orbital flight. Get it done. All right?\\n\\n The problem with Shuttle was—and in Apollo it was one flight after another, but it was going to end. The problem with Shuttle is, it never ends. It’s going to go on forever. It’s still going on. There’s not just five or six developmental flights and then we’re done. We’re supposed to get up to many, many flights a year. So I remember drawing diagrams for them that said, “All right. All right. Let’s lay out launch dates,” and I’d put a point on a calendar, you know, a big picture, a big piece of paper with calendar across the top, a three- or four-year calendar, and you put, “Let’s not even bother with fifty-two flights a year. Let’s just put one every other month.” So six points in a year scattered evenly across a chart. Now, let’s draw a line back from that launch date. When is the software cutoff? When is the this cutoff? When is the that cutoff? And we came up with like an eighteen-month lead time.\\n\\n Well, if you’re flying every month, that’s eighteen parallels. If you’re flying every other month, it’s nine parallels. Right? If it’s an eighteen-month lead time. Wow! The load on simulators to run that many tests simultaneously, the load on crew trainers and everything, unheard of. Hadn’t even thought about it. I’m not accountable for having thought of it. I mean, I was one of the people that thought of. A lot of people woke up to the volume problem we were facing.\\n\\n So we said, “We need a bigger computer.” Well, in 1978 or ‘77 or whatever, we realized—every once in a while you think ahead. So we’re still in the middle of the trauma of doing the software, but we’re looking ahead. When a bunch of engineers say they need a bigger computer, the people that have money say, “Yeah, right. You always need a bigger computer. Sure. Prove it.” So we proved it.\\n\\n “Nah. We don’t have enough money.”\\n\\n Also there’s a local representative named Brooks, Jack [B.] Brooks, in this area, who in the mid-sixties had gotten mad at IBM and got a bill passed called the Brooks Act, that caused the government to go through all sorts of competitive operations before it can invest any money in computers. So the act itself was fine, but the overhead for getting any major expense on a computer was humongous, all sorts of planning and cost analysis and business cases.\\n\\n So all of a sudden, I was out of the avionics SPF, Software Development Lab business, and we were charged with building the IT plan, information technology plan, for buying a new mainframe and construction of facilities. Where are we going to put it? We decided we’d stick it on the third floor of Building 30 in the admin wing, and we got the third floor, build raised flooring in there, and stick it in as a new computer facility, which became called the Software Production Facility. It still exists in the same location.\\n\\n Complicating things worse was that DOD was getting interested at this point in a flying secure missions, so we had to build part of the facilities secure so it could do classified operations, you know, radiation-proof so you can’t sit outside and see what the computers are doing inside.\\n\\n So all of a sudden, a bunch of us were in the middle of acquiring and building a data center. That’s what it boils down to, a big mainframe data center. See, heretofore we’d been using leftover Apollo stuff, right? The raised flooring was there, the operators were there, the computers were there. We just used them. All of a sudden we’re building a new data center, and that was a migration for a number of us, but if you can picture my own experience, I’ve been working these onboard computers for years and all of a sudden I’m a mainframe guy. And as we’ll talk about later, then I became a PC guy, desktop computing. NASA’s been really great that way. I mean, you talk about getting—I like to say to people, “I’ve been in computers my entire career with NASA.”\\n\\n “Oh, and always on computers?”\\n\\n “Yes, but what a variety.” One end to the other, all over the place. Great fun.\\n\\n Anyway, as most things happen, perseverance wins out, and we got the computers and built the facility. Of course, it wasn’t big enough, but it turned out that it didn’t need to be because there was no way to fly Shuttles that often. The SPF was sized about right, and I think it survived any major upgrades for a long time. More automation, I think, was the thing that drove it to get bigger over the years, not a capacity thing, because if you only fly eight flights a year and you thought you might fly as many as fifty-two, you come out pretty well sized, even if you were guessing conservatively or being forced to go conservative.\\n\\n What else on Shuttle? Shuttle was pretty much over for me soon after the first flight. I remember I’d known a lot of people that they get in charge of something and get very closely attached to it, and they lose sight. It became an empire to them. I remember in the Software Production Facility, one day I was giving a tour or something to people and was very proud of it, it’s the new data center, lots of money, lots of people, operations big time. I remember I was patting one of the mainframes, and I looked at myself and I said, “You have got to get out of here.” [Laughter] So I said, “I think it’s time for me to go do something else. I’m getting this relationship with the gear that I don’t want. I’m beginning to feel like I own it.”\\n\\n So I got out of the Spacecraft Software Division. I think I’d become deputy division chief, and John Aaron, whose name I’m sure you’ve known, he was division chief by then. I got out of that and went up to the directorate staff to start working future projects, in particular the Station program. Now, this was in ‘82, long before Station was a program.\\n\\n There’s one other point I’ll raise on Shuttle, and then I think we can say we can put the Shuttle discussion to a close. One of the interesting things that happened when Spacecraft Software Division was first formed was, what kind of people do you gather in a division like that? There were a bunch of us geeks, and I say that in the best way. When you are one, you are one. But we knew the systems, we knew operating systems, we knew compilers and all that, but we weren’t experts in navigation or guidance or electrical systems or what have you.\\n\\n So Dick Parten was given permission to go pick whoever he wanted to start this new division, and one of the characters he picked was John [W.] Aaron. John had been the EECOM, electrical environmental communications officer, in Apollo 13 when all the electrical—the blowup, but it was basically an electrical problem, like no electricity, hit him, and he was pulled over.\\n\\n Boy, you talk about an adventure for a young man. He knew nothing about software. Okay? Nothing. And ten years later he was head of the division that was still building the stuff, which was very good. The only reason I bring that up is there were several people—Bill [William A.] Sullivan is another one. He was a guidance, navigation guy. Jim [James E.] Broadfoot was another one. I think he ended up being brought in for systems management. I was the operating system guy. Bringing these people in from different disciplines to form a new program like that had that real spirit of camaraderie and “You know things I don’t, and I know things you don’t, and let’s see if we can’t share and figure out how to do this.” That worked very well.\\n\\n In closing the discussion, I have to be real clear on one thing. It’s real easy to talk in an egocentricity standpoint. I’m talking about the NASA people. I know I’ve mentioned IBM and Draper Lab. The view when you’re sitting where they were sitting is completely different. I know it was. I’ve talked to them. They were very happy to work with some of us because we were good customers and helped. We didn’t hinder. If something went wrong, we shared the accountability, we failed as well as them. But in many cases it’s not that way at all. The government people are just in the way. They make us cross T’s and dot I’s, hard to get the job done, it’s very difficult.\\n\\n It would be good to talk—I’m sure you have, but it would be good to talk to some of them in this, too. IBM no longer exists. IBM exists, but the Federal Systems Division, which had the core of the people that built the onboard software for Shuttle, was sold off. IBM sold it off to first Loral, and so Loral picked up the onboard software continuing contract. Then when the space flight operations contract—USA [United Space Alliance], when USA was formed, USA picked that up, and those people all moved over to USA, what was left of them, what was left of them. I don’t have any names offhand for you, but some of those folks are still around and they’d be good to talk to.\\n\\n So I think that’s a good closing point for now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thanks again for your time today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John R. Garman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You bet." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00271", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HawesWM/haweswm.htm", + "original_file_name": "HawesWM_8-1-18.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/HawesWM/HawesWM_8-1-18.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "W. Michael Hawes", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 1 August 2018" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "W. Michael Hawes" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 1, 2018. This interview with Michael Hawes is being conducted at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. I want to thank you for coming back and visiting with us again so we can get through your long career with NASA, and then your continued career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s tough to be an old guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hey, don’t say that. I think we were born the same year, so I’m okay with that. Last time we were talking about the Reston [Virginia, Space Station Program] Office and it being closed. But there were a few other things that were happening around that time we didn’t really touch on, so I want to go back.\\n\\n Part of it was the collapse of the Soviet Union in ’92, and President [George H. W.] Bush, the first President Bush, and NASA began negotiating with the Russians. The talks in that time period, beginning to work with the Russians again, and maybe see if they would be interested in working with the Space Station.\\n\\n That gave rise to what eventually was the [Space] Shuttle-Mir [Russian space station] Program, and then of course ISS [International Space Station]. Talk about those negotiations, and if you were involved with any of that at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were a couple ways that the Reston office was involved. Most of that was being led from NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC], and one of the principals that I recall was Arnie [Arnold D.] Aldrich.\\n\\n Arnie, when he was at JSC [Johnson Space Center], had been very involved in Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project], and so it made sense that Arnie in his role—and at the time Arnie was actually head of Space Station. He was in a position called the Associate Administrator for Space Development. They had gone through this development and operations split, with all the Shuttle stuff being in operations, and Space Station was considered development.\\n\\n Arnie had a team of folks that started discussions with the Russians. The way that we at Space Station got involved is that they did look at “Could we simplify this assembly process and fly multiple elements of Space Station on a large Russian booster,” or something. There were a few discussions of that. They did conclude the deal which led to first Sergei [K.] Krikalev flying on the Space Shuttle, and then what emerged into Shuttle-Mir.\\n\\n Sergei was going to fly on the Shuttle, and then we were going to fly on Mir. The first U.S. astronaut for Mir was Norm [Norman E.] Thagard. NASA started to build up a little bit of infrastructure in Moscow [Russia] to support Norm, although it was pretty basic in that era. I remember some pretty simplistic stories. Ultimately, it got built up much more.\\n\\n We went through the first docking with Mir. Then the Russians had actually designed a docking adapter I think we called it, or docking module, which gave a greater separation for the Shuttle. We carried that up on a Shuttle flight, installed it, and docked to the Mir. That continued then, on through the rest of the crew stays. During that time, you had the fire on board with Jerry [M.] Linenger. And then you had the collision with a [Russian] Progress supply ship during Mike [C. Michael] Foale’s time.\\n\\n The Reston office was really just in terms of “Can we simplify Space Station assembly and do more with that?” Then that morphed into the change of administration. The first deals for a flight on Shuttle, a flight on Mir, were cast during the George Bush—in Washington [DC], as you know, there’s Bush 41 [41st President] and 43 [43rd President]. Oddly enough, they refer to each other that way. At least 43 in a conversation referred to his father as 41, which I thought was weird.\\n\\n Then we went into the transition with the [President William J.] Clinton administration. At that time Space Station had cost overruns, it was a big debate during the transition. The new administration team pretty much said, “Here, NASA. You go give us options on Space Station.” They specified a series of cost profiles. That led to the whole Space Station redesign activity. A bunch of us in Reston supported the redesign activities, on different teams that were set up to do that.\\n\\n There was another activity then that also led to increasingly looking at “Can we do this jointly with Russia, can we bring them into the international partnership?” Again, we had folks that were involved in the beginning of moving from Shuttle-Mir to “Can we bring them into the Space Station Program?” Long story, but over time that led to the whole specification of Shuttle-Mir as Phase 1 of the Space Station Program, and learning how to deal with the Russians as the primary objective.\\n\\n By the time of the accidents involving Jerry Linenger and Mike Foale, I had gone through a transition of being out of Space Station for a little while and back in. I was now the Chief Engineer for Space Station at Headquarters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time, like you said, there was a lot going on. In ’88 I think the first agreements were signed that brought in the European partners." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Initial partners—Europe, Canada, and Japan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then when the negotiations started with the Russians, and when President Clinton came in, he wanted to bring Russia in. Basically he told NASA, “They’re going to become a full partner.” Talk about that and how the other partners reacted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If you go back and remember the bigger political environment—as Russia was transitioning from the Soviet Union, into the confederation of Soviet states, and then into Russia, there were a couple of notable instances of U.S. companies going out and employing a bunch of now available Russian scientists and engineers. The activities of NASA got cast in that same sense of, “Here’s a good thing.” We can build an alliance with Russia, the Cold War is pretty much done. We can go ahead and get some of their expertise in the space arena, and we can also hopefully help mitigate issues with arms control and tech [technology] transfer. If they are part of our program, then they are not part of someone else’s program, some rogue state’s. You had all of the political swirl going on.\\n\\n The détente—if you will, to use an old word—with the Russians was really very much driven by the Vice President’s [Albert A. Gore, Jr.] office. Remember, at that time as we started with the Russians there was this Gore-Chernomyrdin [Russian Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin] Commission. NASA was one of several entities that were involved in that. It was all about building ties between the U.S. and Russia in cultural aspects, and science, and space. Space Station was probably the one thing in all of that that worked through the years. You had a redesigned Space Station; you had a beginning of an entrée with the Russians, which ultimately had to be formatted as all of the existing partners inviting the Russians to join. It wasn’t just a U.S. unilateral action.\\n\\n At times to some it probably felt that way, but in fact according to the MOUs [memoranda of understanding] it had to be the partnership inviting the Russians to join. There were lots of discussions and trades as to “How does that benefit the whole partnership?” That also drove some of the technical decisions relating to how the Russians came into the program.\\n\\n But it was a major initiative of Vice President Gore, and particularly one of his key advisers, Leon [S.] Fuerth. I think Leon is actually still at George Washington University in Washington, DC. My visibility was when any NASA issues would get raised through [NASA Administrator] Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, the Administrator typically went to Leon Fuerth in terms of discussion and resolution.\\n\\n As we move down that path, all of that political background exists. NASA is trying to formulate “How can we incorporate Russia into the program?” And there are trades, we set some ground rules. We were not going to force Russia, for instance, to change their power standard to meet what the ISS was. There were a number of things technically where we were going to accept the configuration that the Russians brought, which was fundamentally their Mir configuration. In fact when we started dealing with them, the module that ultimately has become the Zvezda Service Module [SM], the flip side of it was marked “Mir-2.” You could walk through it in the factory, and depending on which side you walked past you would see SM or Mir-2 on the side of it.\\n\\n It was also apparent I think to many of us—I don’t want to make an unattributable statement—we were going to have to put a significant amount of infrastructure in Russia to quickly incorporate the Russians into the program. To the point of what today seems almost way too simplistic. Phone lines, fax lines, just all kinds of basic items—up to, including staffing.\\n\\n As we started to build up through Shuttle-Mir—and I wanted to go back to that. In this timeframe Shuttle-Mir, which had started as its own kind of program, transformed into Phase 1 of the Space Station Program. What was I think really critical in that transformation is Dan Goldin laid out a series of objectives—I think there were three—for Phase 1 of the Space Station Program.\\n\\n First and foremost, he listed learning to work with the Russians. Second was learning about long-duration spaceflight. Then third, ultimately, was a science program that we would define and operate through the course of the Mir flights. Each astronaut had their science program that was unique from what the Russians were doing as well.\\n\\n Casting the objectives in that path, so that it was first and foremost about learning to work with the Russians, really set the tone for how the U.S. side was approaching their tasks. It really was, and it helped build the relationships, it helped build the procedures and processes behind it. There are some really challenging discussions and debates in that both politically, programmatically, and technically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you give examples of those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I found a funny thing in my desk just the other day. It was politically expedient for us, the U.S., to say that we had the first element of Space Station. But the way that that was executed was that we, the U.S., paid the Russians to build the FGB [Functional Cargo Block]. So it was characterized as a U.S. element. In fact, in the archaic Space Station assembly sequence language it became flight 1A/R to recognize that it was American but it was built by the Russians.\\n\\n That actually was a very successful development, and it did show us that because of the financial situation of the Russian program, when they actually had funding they could do very well. They were very timely and they could respond to problems. So that was a very positive mechanism. Then everything beyond that was mostly their contribution, at least in terms of the other Russian ISS elements. Ultimately, later we got into paying for Soyuz seats and all of the business as we understand it today. There’s probably a tortuous path through all of that, too.\\n\\n But again, those objectives really let us focus on building the relationship, understanding how the Russians worked. We had folks over there supporting the Mir flights that were really the vanguard of that team. Folks like Bill [William H.] Gerstenmaier spent months in Russia. I think Bill was there for Shannon [M. W.] Lucid’s tour. We really were building up that knowledge.\\n\\n I would say we had a heritage of working with Canada, Japan, and Europe. It was through multiple programs for years and years. We had had 10 years just as a Space Station Program of working with them. There was an awful lot of background that we really had already resolved how to work with those partners. Accelerating the learning of bringing the Russians in I thought was really a positive. Not that it was without its potholes in the road, but it was a positive. The Shuttle-Mir Program itself of course had its challenges, like I said with the accidents when Jerry and Mike were on-board. That raised the whole visibility of the program in a political sense as well.\\n\\n Literally the day that the collision happened with Mike, I was directed to provide a daily report on Mir operations to the White House by 8:00 in the morning. So we built a whole process, which then ultimately became the ISS Daily Report that Jesco [Hans Heinrich Max Freiherr] von Puttkamer put out for years and years and years. That’s how it started. It started on the Progress collision while Mike was aboard.\\n\\n The Mir of course got harder and harder to maintain. It was pretty clear that the Mir was going to reenter [the atmosphere]. We had a whole involved process of planning on our side for Mir entry. Obviously the Russians were in control and were doing it, but we had a whole government process that I was reporting to folks in the White House of how that process was going to be enacted, what the timing looked like it was going to be. We actually had meetings for several months that we would provide status to staff over in the White House. Obviously Mir landed in the ocean without incident. By that time our focus had really shifted to the full ISS partnership." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There was a change of course when Reston closed and they were going to move the main focus to JSC again. Were you ever tempted to come back to JSC? I know you said in the last one that when you moved to Virginia your wife felt like she was a Virginian now. Was there any doubt in your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think there was a little bit of a doubt. But it also had been a really challenging timeframe. I think for several of the folks—it was okay to take a pause. I think I mentioned last time I had arranged to go off to program management training in the DoD [Department of Defense], the Defense Acquisition University now it’s called. That was a six-month course. So, I wasn’t even envisioning coming back to Space Station per se. I went off and did the training, and I came back. Arnie Aldrich was my AA [Associate Administrator] at Headquarters when I went off to school. That organization got collapsed again and I came back into an integrated Code M, Office of Space Flight, with Jed [Jeremiah W.] Pearson [III] as the boss.\\n\\n Amongst all those turns I came back to a reformulated Code M, and ended up working in the Chief Engineer’s office. And at one point in time I was also the Chief Engineer for the Office of Space Flight. But as people changed around after Jed, Dr. [J.] Wayne Littles from [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] was named Code M AA. Dr. Wayne had been the NASA Chief Engineer, and as he was assigned to take over Office of Space Flight, he determined that he wanted to have a Space Station Chief Engineer. Actually they called us senior engineers at the time. I was basically assigned as the Chief Engineer for Space Station for Headquarters, and did that for a couple years (1995-1999) until I moved up to be what was then called the Deputy Associate Administrator, or the Program Director, for ISS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in picking the contractors for ISS or that process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Tangentially. When we started back in Reston they had already put out the RFPs [requests for proposal] for a program support contractor and four work package pieces. I was part of a team that went around and basically read all the proposals. What we were looking for was consistency and common content amongst the proposals.\\n\\n The program support contract had already been selected. That was Grumman [Aerospace Corporation] and a whole series of teammates. The work packages were still in competition, they had not been selected yet. Work Package 1 was Marshall, and it was [The] Boeing [Company] and Martin Marietta [Corporation]. Work Package 2 was here at JSC, and it was McDonnell Douglas [Corporation] and Rockwell [International]. Work Package 3 was at Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] and Work Package 4 was at then Lewis [Research Center], now Glenn [Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio]. I want to say at one point Work Package 4 was TRW [Inc.] and Rocketdyne [Division of Rockwell]. But TRW dropped out, and so they were basically a sole source kind of selection.\\n\\n I had a role in reviewing the common content, but I wasn’t selecting or anything in that role. Then later on, in my operations assignments in Reston, I had a whole series of folks that were of that program support contract, which over time we changed into an engineering and integration contractor. The theme at the time was that the government was really going to drive integration, and we would have a support contractor that would help us do that. As Space Station managers in Reston changed, it evolved into a stronger and stronger theme of, “No, we need the contractor to be not just us telling them what to do, but to have a much stronger engineering and integration role.” So over time we morphed all that together.\\n\\n When the redesign happened (1992), we also went through the President’s blue-ribbon panel that was chaired by Dr. Charlie [Charles M.] Vest from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge], they really took on the Space Station management structure hierarchy. One of their big messages was “You need a prime contractor. You have all of these peer contractors that don’t listen to each other. They have to run everything up to a series of NASA project offices. You have a program office overall that can’t force decisions.”\\n\\n There were lots of challenges that they saw in the structure, so they recommended that NASA pursue a prime. There was a whole process of going back and forth—and again I only saw pieces of that tangentially—that ended up with Boeing fundamentally being selected as the prime. You could probably pick reasons why any of the others were candidates or not candidates. I don’t really want to get into that, but Boeing ended up picked the prime.\\n\\n I’m trying to think of the years, but I want to say probably the whole ’93, ’94 kind of timeframe was all about formulating that contract to where ultimately we had a Boeing prime contractor. Over time—and I can’t remember the timing of that—Boeing actually went out and merged with McDonnell Douglas and bought the Rockwell space business. The content that was associated with the Goddard work package had actually dropped out of the program.\\n\\n So Boeing ended up as the prime de facto because they actually bought the other pieces of the program, but it also led to a pretty dramatic restructuring of the program. Where we used to have these project offices at each of the Centers, those were dramatically reduced, and the program came back to JSC. You still had some pieces of Space Station offices, but it wasn’t as hierarchical as it had been in the past. It was really much more driven from JSC.\\n\\n At that point, like I said, we were more settled in the Virginia area. I wasn’t really looking to come down to JSC and do the same kind of thing that I had been doing in Reston." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that whole time period, ’92, ’93, there was a lot going on politically with the Station being redesigned, everything that was happening with the changes in administration. But also there was going to be a vote in Congress. Representative [Timothy J. “Tim”] Roemer introduced a bill to cancel the program, and it ended up being saved by one vote. Talk about that specific time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Roemer never liked the big science projects. He was at the time a pretty influential member, and he had some strong allies. In fact one of them was [David R. “Dave”] Obey from Wisconsin, who was one of the key appropriators. This was in the whole confusion of ’92, ’93. NASA was off doing these studies, and they came out with a singular option. The Vest Committee reviewed it, blessed it, recommended it to the President. We negotiated a funding profile with the Office of Management and Budget that was basically a capped funding profile.\\n\\n That was the way that the plan emerged, but in the midst of this Roemer introduced a bill basically to withdraw funding for ISS. At the same time, in the same political venue, the Superconducting Super Collider was going through Congress. They had already dug quite a bit in Texas to lay in the Super Collider, and it did not survive.\\n\\n NASA, I think responded to the political interest of adding the Russians—which at the time was not just a White House interest. It was broadly embraced by a lot of Congress, both parties actually. Again, it was in the context of the fall of the Soviet Union, and “How are we going to embrace the Russians and help stabilize where it might be on the world scene?”\\n\\n We also had the other international partners, and those international partners were actually asked if they could come and testify to the Congress. They each have laws about how they can do that, so they each had different roles that they could play. But some of them did in fact testify. I think the strength of the original partnership was probably a strong portion of what saved the Space Station in that era, by the one vote.\\n\\n Then at Headquarters, we really went from there to a much more focused outreach. Not just to our standing committee members, but a broad swath of Congress. In fact that was one of the roles that I played. I did lots of congressional briefings, just education. “This is what the Space Station is, this is how the partners play, these are all the launch vehicles involved.” You could just see over the years—I think the next vote was positive by like 20-some votes, and then 70-some votes. But, Roemer kept offering his amendment, but over the next couple years it finally became so that it was not an issue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned, bringing the Russians in and being more positive dealing with international partners—the other partners, what were they testifying to? The importance of this as a worldwide program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The importance of it to their programs, to their stakeholders. The importance of the role of U.S. leadership in the program, how that was really the enabler for their programs as well. I think it helped convince some members." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Bringing the Russians in, and especially during Shuttle-Mir there were issues like you said, there were accidents. Those safety concerns, because we were able to get past those accidents, did that help to convince people that it was going to be something that could be safely done for ISS?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was. Dan Goldin had a special study team go off and look at those issues, and interview all of the astronauts that had flown on Mir, and found that there were really different attitudes amongst all of them. They were really very different people. But he asked for that, and I helped with that little study before he committed to send Dave [A.] Wolf and Andy [Andrew S. W.] Thomas, who were the last two that were going to go after Mike [Foale].\\n\\n I think the Russians viewed the U.S. commitment to look at all the processes, understand their procedures and what they had done to ensure safety as a huge vote of confidence. Confidence maybe is not quite the right—it really was a statement of a partnership. I think that that did really help cement the partnership at that time. There were times when it got challenged later on, but at that point it was viewed from their side, I’ve been told, as a very strong positive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Shuttle-Mir was important, and a lot of people tend to forget that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They forget that. Like I said, we had a long history of working with Europe, Canada, and Japan. A couple of science fields kept up a dialogue with the Soviet Union through that whole time, but the main space infrastructure hadn’t talked to the Russians since Apollo-Soyuz. And they had developed in different ways, different paths. They had different tools. I mentioned some of the technical things. At the time, we were testing the Space Station modules for leakage by overpressurizing from the inside. You bag the element, you overpressurize from the inside, you then test and see if anything leaks on the outside. To the Russians that was unacceptable. You had to put it in a vacuum chamber.\\n\\n We argued and argued and argued, and they just dug their heels in. The translation is basically “No, the metallurgy is different.” We ended up activating one of the old Apollo vacuum chambers in the O&C [Operations and Checkout building at NASA Kennedy Space Center] in Florida. The lab [laboratory] and the airlock went through that vacuum chamber.\\n\\n We had debates about windows. Windows are—in my view, everything I’ve heard—really hard to design. You look at U.S. elements, and there’s not a ton of windows. You look at Mir, there’s windows all over the place. The Russians just accepted that the human spirit needs windows. It really wasn’t an issue of how hard it was, there were going to be windows. Whereas our system was just drawn from “Well no, that’s really hard.” We want to have as few windows as we can. We had a big fight about having an optical quality window for observing in the floor of the U.S. Lab. It’s there, but it was a hard design thing. So, we did learn something.\\n\\n The other thing that we learned was to that second objective, learned about long-duration spaceflight. Everything that we had been doing on Shuttle, timelined out to the minute. Highly optimized, everything that you’re doing. I had been raised in that system. Then when we started dealing with the Russians some of our team were just kind of like, “I don’t understand it. They’re not even at their consoles.” The Russians would say, “Well, it doesn’t change quickly, and if it does the crew has got to take action. We’re not going to save them if it’s changing instantaneously.”\\n\\n So, again, there was some learning of just approach and attitude of how are you going to do really long-duration flight. I think on the NASA side we exercised some of that as we built up Space Station. There was a point in time where Mission Control dropped down to just a couple of folks, when it was an uninhabited early Space Station configuration, at nights and weekends when it wasn’t changing. If something started to look awry you called extra people in.\\n\\n We definitely learned different approaches and different attitudes from watching how the Russians did things as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you spend a lot of time in Russia during that time period?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never did any extended tours in Russia. I would go for events and major meetings. My first trip was in ’97. Probably from that point to 2001 I might go four times a year, depending. I went for the FGB launch, I went for the Service Module launch. I went for periodic general design reviews leading up to those milestones, and then I had regular meetings. When I was program director I had regular meetings with my counterparts in Moscow. I’ve been there lots of times, but I never did a long stint like Gerstenmaier did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know in the early days working with Russia, some of the people that went over there during Apollo-Soyuz, and then the early days of working for ISS, they talked about the differences in the two time periods, but also differences in the way Russian engineers work compared to American engineers. As Chief Engineer did you notice any differences? You were talking about things you learned, like in Mission Control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We learned some different approaches. One of the things that we did was build—we called it a lexicon. It was literally, if we say verification, what does that mean to a Russian engineer? If we say validation what does that mean, if we say certification. We tried to go through a whole process of just understanding our common engineering-speak. What’s the equivalent of that to a Russian? We found some little variations of that that you had to be careful of. Of course we were doing everything through translators, and that started up our whole translator corps, interpreter corps. It was challenging to learn the nuances in how we used words to mean slightly different things.\\n\\n We also saw things that I think we probably knew. The Russians didn’t have the high-speed computers that we did, so they tended to have really finely tuned algorithms that didn’t need as much computing power. They had very clever mechanisms. But then with launch they build really powerful engines, so they can brute-force a lot of things where we’re taking ounces out of a design on the U.S. side. They’re like “This rocket can carry anything” kind of thing.\\n\\n We definitely saw different approaches to things, and we had folks involved with them at different levels. Something like the FGB where we were the funding source, they responded quickly, they got their parts quickly. Things that the Russian government was paying for, like the Service Module was delayed a couple years, solely for funding. In those cases, you might get a different story every time you’re there. It’s all just kind of dancing around the fact that they don’t have the money, and so they’re operating much more slowly. I would say we learned a lot on all aspects. The political side of it, the programmatic side.\\n\\n One of the stories—I was going down a path and got distracted. Naming the first [ISS] commander was a big deal. I think because of our commitment to fund the FGB, and I think our own need, we were firm that it had to be an American. The Russians as well felt, “Well, that’s really interesting, but you guys don’t really know that much about long-term spaceflight, you don’t really know that much about space stations. So we think it should be a Russian.”\\n\\n We went through that for quite a while. The thing that I found in my desk is a little laminated miniature of the protocol. On the front in English, on the back in Russian, signed by Wil [Wilbur C.] Trafton and Pyotr [I.] Klimuk—who was the head of Star City [spaceflight center outside Moscow] at the time—stating that Bill [William M.] Shepherd would be the commander, and that future commanders would be named based on the preponderance of the hardware at the time. This protocol established the flow for the first several expeditions to Space Station. Even naming our crews and their commanders was a contentious political challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When the Russians came in, they came in as an equal partner." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Russia came in essentially as an equal because they had that history of human spaceflight and launching their own crews, having their own space stations. I think there were probably a variety of emotions from our other partners. Some of them, like the Europeans, were interesting, because through the Cold War the Europeans had continued to work with the Russians. They had actually flown astronauts on Salyut [space stations] and Mir previously, so they felt like they were in a pretty good position to continue to deal with the Russians on those kinds of things.\\n\\n In fact, the Europeans had a side deal that they provided the main computer for the Service Module to Russia as part of an arrangement. So we actually had U.S.-paid-for computers in an FGB, European-provided computers in a Russian Service Module. We did a whole series of tests to demonstrate that all of those could talk together when they got lashed up in space, which is one of the miracles of Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It truly is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It all worked when it got put together, without ever having been together before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You touched on it—there were delays because of the funding Russia had. Were there contingencies in place to deal with these delays, or did you just deal with them as they happened?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say that we dealt with them as they happened. We would go to Russia for meetings and they would lay out their current schedule. It would be probably as favorable as they could make it, and it would show the Service Module being just a few months delayed. But that would happen each time we would go and do that.\\n\\n If you go back and relook at the early Shuttle manifest around that time you’d see the FGB launch, then you see STS-88 with the node docking to it. Then you continue to see outfitting flights that we would go and visit and do things, and maybe bring a small component, until we got to the Service Module. If you look at that period between STS-88 and the Service Module, it’s about a year and a half. I can’t recall it now, but there’s three or four Shuttle flights in there that were basically just visiting and bringing outfitting and supplies. We filled in that time doing things that we felt could be get-ahead steps with the ISS configuration as it was, with just the FGB and the node." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just waiting for that next part to come up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Waiting for that next step. Then when the Service Module flew, it was really rapid-fire after that. The Service Module flew in the summer of 2000, and by I want to say the next winter we were flying the U.S. Lab, and then just continued on for several missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see the first launches of Zarya [FGB] and the Unity [module]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. Yes, I was in Russian mission control, or TsUP [RKA (Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities) Mission Control Center], for the FGB launch. I was in Moscow, I didn’t go down to Baikonur [Cosmodrome, launch site in Kazakhstan]. I was at KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] for the STS-88 launch; I was at Baikonur for the Service Module launch. Yes, continued on through several." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you describe what it was like to know that all that work, for all those years working toward this—like you said, seeing it actually up there and how it worked together, but seeing the launches themselves I would think would be somewhat emotional." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seeing the launches was definitely emotional. I would include Shep’s launch in there, even though we didn’t see much of it because it was all foggy. I’d been to lots of Shuttle launches, I had done a fair amount of things on Shuttle. I hadn’t been to a lot of launches but I’d been to several, so I was kind of used to that.\\n\\n I will admit, the first time I went to Baikonur and realized that I’m watching a Soyuz launch from the same [launch] pad that launched [Yuri A.] Gagarin [first human spaceflight] and launched Sputnik [first artificial satellite]—by the way, the same pad—that’s a sense of history that was unique to me at the time.\\n\\n Whether or not I felt a huge amount of accomplishment? I could have just been tired. It had been a long slog getting there. At the time you either went to Moscow and Baikonur several days ahead, or you got to Moscow, barely recovered, got on a plane to Baikonur, went through the whole launch process, got back on the plane to Moscow, and then recovered in Moscow. They were just really ruthless trips.\\n\\n For Shep’s launch we were actually held in Moscow for a few hours because of fog, and then they decided to take off anyway. It was still foggy. The landing was interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s kind of a difference because in the U.S., with bad weather, you’re not going to launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Basically you would keep trying to ask the Russians, “Well, is there any weather you wouldn’t launch in?” And they would pretty much say no. I said, “You’ve got to have some wind limits.” They were like, “Well yes, but they’re so high, it doesn’t really happen.” There’s some pretty hefty winds in Baikonur. It’s high steppe, it can be pretty brutal.\\n\\n But they design systems—when you think about it, the Soyuz booster was their ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile]. So it can’t be bothered by weather, and it’s very rapid to erect and integrate to get ready for launch. That’s a fascinating process to watch in and of itself. By the time it gets trained out, and they start the compressors to start moving it up—it’s about half an hour and it’s done and ready.\\n\\n So yes, I wasn’t surprised that they launched in fog, because their view is it’s pretty much automated. The crew and the machine are going to take it where it needs to go. The ground is not going to help it any. Yes, you saw a little bit of flame at Shep’s launch and that was about it. Which was funny, because that was also the one that Pizza Hut [restaurant chain] had paid for the logo on the side of the rocket and you couldn’t even see it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Again talking about some of the funding issues with Russia, in 2001 the Russians were going to launch [space tourist] Dennis [A.] Tito to ISS. You were involved with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just a little, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, talk about that, what the objections were and why. I think you were the chairman of the ISS Multilateral Coordination Board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was. The Russians had been, for a while, trying to formulate a tourism base in space. They actually started on Mir, they were trying to do it. There was a company actually formed by Jeff [Jeffrey] Manber. Jeff does NanoRacks [LLC] today. It was called MirCorp, and it was going to do the tourist flights. At the same time, another company who’s also still active, Space Adventures [Ltd.], was working with the Russians to try to do a tourist thing on ISS.\\n\\n When the Russians approached us about flying Dennis Tito, we had technical concerns. We didn’t really have agreements on what ultimately we called our crew Code of Conduct in terms of behaviors. We had some fundamental safety questions, “Is this person going to be really trained? If there’s an emergency, is he or she frankly going to be deadweight? Are they going to be able to participate in their own safety if there’s an incident on board the Space Station?”\\n\\n There were political considerations. There were folks on the U.S. side that felt strongly that the U.S. taxpayer had not paid hundreds of millions of dollars for a facility for tourists. This was a laboratory, this was meant for science. So we had all of those actions going on. The other partners had their own reservations, and didn’t really have a strong support for the Russian plan from their own stakeholders in their countries.\\n\\n We worked with the Russians trying to say, “No, it’s not the right time.” The reality in my view is that they may have been flexible on the time, but the fact of the matter was they needed money. So even though the partners said, “No, we don’t think this is a wise idea,” the Russians pretty much said, “No, we’re going to do it.”\\n\\n Then we had a follow-on assessment done by General [Thomas P.] Stafford. He was already doing some ISS regular studies, and so we asked Stafford’s team to look at the situation and make recommendations as to how we can improve its safety and execution if we’re going to do this. They gave us a whole series of recommendations about training and procedures that they felt could mitigate some of the concerns about risk to the Station and its inhabitants, so we put those in place.\\n\\n There were still contentions and issues down to the day of Tito’s launch, and just before his launch—I’m trying to remember the timing, was he going to launch on Monday?—of course there was still contention. We disagreed with it, so none of us were going to the launch. I think the Russians moved the launch from like Friday to Monday. And on Saturday, all three of the hard drives in the computers in the lab failed. I think the Russians actually thought we were spoofing them.\\n\\n I remember very clearly being on the phone with Tommy [Thomas W.] Holloway at one of my son’s soccer games. And then getting on the phone with my counterpart, Mikhail [V.] Sinelschikov, while Tommy was trying to talk to his counterpart as well. Saying, “This is a real failure. We don’t have a solution yet, we really don’t think you should launch.” To which the Russian response was “Well, it takes a couple days to get there anyway, so we can launch and you’ll have it worked out.”\\n\\n We did, but it was just a fascinating experience. We figured out what made the hard drives crash, put procedures in place, and then we ultimately upgraded the memory on the Space Station to a different technology. But it was an interesting time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had read that even the Soyuz commander, [Talgat A.] Musabayev, and [Yuri M.] Baturin refused to enter required preflight training when NASA representatives told them that Tito couldn’t come in, because there was still some issues." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were issues. They had come to JSC for one of their normal training sessions, and they had brought Tito. We had said, “Hey, we haven’t agreed to this so we’re not going to train him.” They said, “Well, then you’re not going to train us.” I think the political fight was at the highest levels, and most of the rest of the system was just trying to make things work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tito actually went before Congress, before a congressional session. I think you were there, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we both did. I had tried to reach out to Tito a couple times in this process—mostly really just to understand what was driving him and why and how—and were there timing issues with him. If I could have him convince the Russians that “No, I could wait a month.” We never connected before the flight, but we had tried to connect a couple times. Mind you, I was totally on my own. Nobody would have sanctioned that at all. I would not have been viewed well.\\n\\n After the flight—and actually Dennis had been home for a good while—Congress basically wanted a hearing on tourism. I was assigned to be the NASA person at the hearing by the Administrator. I clearly was meant to be the unthinking dinosaur representing NASA. It was Dennis Tito and Buzz Aldrin and Rick [N.] Tumlinson I think was the fourth. All focused on the “Space tourism is the reason we’re here, everybody needs to fly, this is wonderful” theme.\\n\\n I did manage to speak with Dennis that morning, we met for breakfast. And I took a handful of people out to LA [Los Angeles, California] and we met with Dennis to do an actual mission debriefing. We spent a day with him out in LA. “What did you learn, how did this process work out for you? What was the MirCorp versus Space Adventures, how did that work?”\\n\\n We got some comments on them, about his whole training experience. How it was so hard, what he thought other people after him were going to have to do. I thought it was a pretty good discussion. But in the hearing, at that point it was all about “Tourism is wonderful, and so we’re going to try to continue the tours.” Actually, in the middle of the hearing I got a handwritten note from the chairman of the committee, Sherry [Sherwood L. “Sherry”] Boehlert, basically saying, “Mike, we know it’s not you.” Okay, but also it was during the summer, so I brought my kids. Somebody back at NASA Headquarters asked my daughter what she thought—so 2001, she’s what, 12 years old—and she was almost in tears. Her comment back to the person was, “Those men don’t like my dad.” Which I thought was pretty funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "She’s seeing what it was in her view." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In that era, I can probably say that no, Dana [T.] Rohrabacher did not like me. But yes, it was an interesting time, one of my two wonderful fruitful testimonies to Congress.\\n\\n To follow from there, the next one [space tourist] that came along, Mark [R.] Shuttleworth—as soon as Mark really decided he was going to do that, he reached out to NASA. We had gotten over the fact that the Russians were going to have to continue, and we understood their financial need too. So we actually had a Space Act Agreement with Mark to provide extra services for his mission. So we flipped from “No, you can’t do this” to “How can we enhance your mission?” I think we probably had similar agreements with Greg [Gregory H.] Olsen and some of the folks that followed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you came up with the criteria, right, for these tourists?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We came up with a Code of Conduct which said, “This is how you behave on orbit, you follow the commander.” In that case they all had to sign up to “Yea, verily.” We were able to do that after Dennis’s flight and get that approved. We approved it first through what was the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel. At the time Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt was the head of the Astronaut Office, and Charlie led it. Then we took it to my Multilateral Coordination Board to bless it. Again, we got some positives out of the experience. We built a process that I think could safely handle the tourists that came to follow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were the astronauts okay, “Yes, let’s have tourists” or “No, don’t?” Or was it just dependent on the person?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think you would probably find different opinions depending on the person, but I think in general they felt that, “We understand why the Russians need this from a financial standpoint, and we understand we’ve put protections in place that keep us all safe as crew.”\\n\\n Some of them worked better than others with the whole crew. Dennis was very much with the Russians. Other tourists I think over time were a little better integrated into the full crew. Some of that was their personality, some of that was the crew. I can’t recall a singular no, we shouldn’t do this kind of view from the crew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just wondering how much it would affect what the crew was supposed to be doing during the time that the tourist was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that was part of what we worked with on the Code of Conduct and the timeline. If the Russians were going to enable this, the activities were going to be in the Russian modules. It wasn’t going to use the Lab unless we agreed to it, it wasn’t going to use another partner element unless it had been agreed to. We built all that process.\\n\\n I do recall another funny thing. Charlie was one of our principals in the debate with the Russians about “Should we really do this?” In the middle of negotiations Charlie got emotional and started ranting in Russian at the Russians. I had to pull him and said, “Charlie, your team needs to know what you’re saying.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s funny. But he could do it, so he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Charlie has excellent Russian language skills." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine a lot of them that flew did.\\n\\n The U.S. budgets changed a lot, depending on the President, administration, things that happened with the Station Program. Talk about some of those changes and how that affected the Station, especially over those early years, and the budget in general during that time period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We got past the one vote, and then part of what I think let the program be successful for the next I think three years—we had this flat budget agreement with OMB [Office of Management and Budget], $2.1 billion a year. You can’t build a development program on a flat budget, but we had basically agreed to squish things and let the schedule move.\\n\\n Then it came to a point in time where it was obvious that it wasn’t going to make it. We changed some leadership at Headquarters. I want to say Joe [Joseph H.] Rothenberg came in as the Associate Administrator [for Space Flight], and we went and argued for higher funding for Space Station, because there wasn’t any other place to get it. Shuttle was trying to maintain itself, was trying to do upgrades. So we went and argued for other budgets. Didn’t make people happy. At one point Space Station took a chunk of money from Aeronautics, which made a lot of enemies actually, and some that we probably didn’t realize at the time that didn’t really serve us very well.\\n\\n We continued to have cost growth issues, and it really hit around the time that they flew the Service Module. We had been in a waiting mode, and then when we had to really start flying the US elements we saw some cost increases that weren’t apparent. Those led to a spike in our request that led to a cost study that was chartered out of what was then a Space Station Advisory Committee, that was essentially part of the NAC [NASA Advisory Council] structure.\\n\\n Tom [A. Thomas] Young chartered that. He was the chair of our Advisory Committee, and he chartered that first one, and that was conducted by a person by the name of Jay [W.] Chabrow. It highlighted the issues with cost and showed that schedule delays were building up a wedge that was going to be unexecutable. For the ISS era, that was the first big cost indicator of having some problems.\\n\\n As we got a little further along, just about the time of the Clinton to Bush 43 transition—so this was still all within the Clinton team. I think they had bought off on Space Station, they had supported it, they were getting the foreign policy initiatives that they wanted. Actually that was all very successful.\\n\\n Just as that era was transitioning, we were asked, “Okay, tell us what it’s really going to cost. Don’t give us this year-by-year ask for a little bit more, little bit more.” We went through an exercise—myself at Headquarters, Tommy Holloway down here (at JSC), the Boeing team, everybody. At the time the encouragement was, again, “Don’t sugarcoat this.”\\n\\n So the number was big. The number ended up being $4.8 billion. That happened essentially, and I think some people felt “Well, we’re going to transition from Clinton to Gore and we still have the same buy-in.” Well we didn’t. We transitioned from Clinton to Bush with a $4.8 billion projected cost growth. We didn’t have that built today, but that was the projected runout to get to what we called assembly complete.\\n\\n Obviously that kicked off a whole other round of cost assessments. Kicked off a whole other Tom Young led cost study, kicked off deleting the Hab [Habitation Module] out of the structure, a whole bunch of other elements. It was a pretty painful exercise. But within that context, to me, the difference that that made—if you look at the cost overrun when we transitioned from Bush 41 to Clinton, that was on the order of $400 million to $500 million. It caused this whole redesign, add the Russians, everything, but we hadn’t flown. When you get 8 years later to this new transition, we have a number 10 times what that had been, but we were flying. We had the Lab up, we had the airlock up. We were making progress. So if they bought into the Space Station, they could trim a bit around the edges. That was the context to me.\\n\\n Dan Goldin announced he was retiring, and Vice President Dick [Richard B.] Cheney decided to send Sean O’Keefe to NASA. Sean seemed to be kind of his cleanup financial guy, looking at roles that Sean had played in the past. So Sean basically came in with like, “Okay, you have a $5 billion problem to solve.” He took the Tom Young recommendations and did a bunch of stuff organizationally.\\n\\n I went on sabbatical, Tommy retired. Somehow Gerstenmaier guided the program through the bumps to get back on track in a few months, and keep us flying and finishing out the rest of the hardware elements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it full-cost accounting, is that what Sean O’Keefe brought in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sean brought full-cost accounting, amongst several other aspects. He actually had a whole plan of trying to find ways to contain cost on Space Station. One was look at the configuration and was assembly complete really the line? He invented a milestone that we ended up calling core complete, which it wasn’t everything, but was what you really had to function for long-term. If the other things floated in schedule, that was going to be okay.\\n\\n He had a whole team of folks off dealing with the international partners. What he had charged Bill Gerstenmaier—and, funny enough, at the time Mark [S.] Geyer—with was, “Bring me the best systems engineering answer to the rest of the assembly sequence.” Mark was one of the principals on this international partner team that we started, as was Tom [Thomas E.] Cremins, who’s your Chief of Staff now, and Melanie [W. Saunders], and Donna [M. Shafer].\\n\\n It was the Multilateral Partner [Program Planning] Team, so the initials were MPPT, which quickly we called “Muppets.” Then people didn’t like it because they didn’t think it had enough gravitas. But somewhere Sean heard it and he started using it all the time. He would talk to Mark about the Muppet team. So they said, “Okay, that’s fine.” Mike [Michael F.] O’Brien and I were Waldorf and Statler, the two old guys in the balcony. The rest of the team all had Muppet names, but I won’t divulge any. I don’t think I even knew Mark’s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Off tape we’ll talk about the names maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I remember specifically there were five major swim lanes, if you will, of things that we were going to do to relook at the configuration and formulate a plan that was going to help us improve the cost control of the Space Station Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s interesting how they worked through that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I would say the working through it part Bill Gerst is probably the best source for how we really got through that piece. I literally was out for six months working on my doctorate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I was going to ask you about that. You got your doctorate, and back in was it ’96 you’d worked on your master’s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. When I did the Defense Systems Management College course, at the end of that course several local colleges came in and said, “Well, you just completed 9 credit hours of 36 for a master’s in engineering management.” That’s kind of an interesting idea. So I went ahead and went to GW [George Washington University, Washington, DC], mostly NASA-sponsored, and finished out the master’s. Then just kept taking courses figuring, “Well, if I stop, I’ve stopped forever. If I keep taking the courses it’s still a future decision.”\\n\\n After the Space Station financial issues, they were going to reorganize the Space Station Office at Headquarters anyway. Pretty much they said, “You can do other jobs. We’d like you to do this, but we have some people in mind, and we have a path that we want to do with this reorganization.”\\n\\n So I took that opportunity to say, “Well, actually what I’d really like to do is maybe take a year sabbatical and try to finish my doctorate.” That was totally acceptable to Fred [Frederick D.] Gregory at the time and Sean, so that was the deal that I went out on. But that ended up terminating the day of the [STS-107 Space Shuttle] Columbia [tragedy]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course my next question was the Columbia accident, if we want to talk about that for a while. Just the experience of that day and what your memories were. ." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was officially on sabbatical—well, quasi-sabbatical, because Fred’s deal was that I would still come to the office one day a week just to be available to help with Space Station things and transition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that when you were Special Assistant to the Associate Administrator?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. What they did is they created a position for me called special assistant. First it was to Fred, and then during that time while I was out Fred transitioned into the Deputy Administrator role and Bill [William F.] Readdy took the Associate Administrator job. Most every week I was in for a day by our terms.\\n\\n I had not been involved in the mission. By that point I was in the throes of doing dissertation research and I was not as focused on that. I knew about it from my previous time, but it also wasn’t a Space Station mission so I wasn’t as attuned to it as some of the others. I hadn’t even been in the office for [STS-]112. The whole foam piece coming off, denting the aft skirt box—I wasn’t really even aware of that history. A lot of the events that transpired during the mission—I hadn’t talked to anybody, I wasn’t even aware of any of the controversies, because nobody had reached out, and I was oblivious, doing my own thing.\\n\\n I was up early that Saturday with my son. He had a soccer game. It was probably about 30 miles away from home, so we had been at that early. As I walked into the house coming back, the phone rang, and it was one of my colleagues from NASA Headquarters who was asking my advice, should he come into the office. I was like, “Well, I’m not sure. What’s up?” He just said, “You need to turn on the TV.”\\n\\n I turned on the TV and of course it was replaying the scenes of an Orbiter not coming to land at KSC. I advised him that yes, he probably should go into Headquarters, because I would imagine that there was going to be an all-hands-on-deck situation. Then I called Readdy and just said, “Where would you like me to be?” He was still on the tarmac with the families and said, “Probably Headquarters.”\\n\\n I went to Headquarters and stayed for a long time. Given that I had been through—it was shocking, it was shocking. Nobody ever really expected anything on entry. I didn’t know any of the mission, the foam piece, and the debate about whether the wing might be damaged. I showed up at Headquarters. Fred was actually there, Bill [William C.] Hill was there. Folks were gathering at what we called the Action Center at the time, which was a room that Headquarters had set up with some comm [communications] lines and display screens to do the mission following that we needed to do. We actually had one for Shuttle and one for Space Station back in that era. That led to wiping out the walls and combining them into one room, which is still in use up there today.\\n\\n Folks were gathering up in there, and people just started. “What do we need to know? What do we need to warn people? Who is operating?” It emerged that local police were taking care of things. A couple of us had the idea—things like the APUs [auxiliary power units] have some really nasty gunk in them. We need to warn people that this equipment, if you find something strange on the ground, it may well be hazardous. We can’t tell you what it is, but we know that there’s some stuff that’s really nasty inside the orbiter.\\n\\n We kicked all those things off. We had a contingency plan that actually back when I was Chief Engineer for Office of Space Flight we had formulated as a response to [STS-51L] Challenger [accident]. That contingency plan had a standing investigation board, which became the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB]. The thing that Sean did was he added Admiral [Harold W. “Hal”] Gehman [Jr.] to it. But the other people, by position, it was one of the NASA Center Directors this and this. We had that. That was implemented that day.\\n\\n The NASA team picked Dave [David A.] King as the initial senior executive out in the field. But we didn’t know where to send Dave. So when he got on the Marshall plane, he knew he was headed west but didn’t have his destination. We debated that while Dave was in the air, and ended up telling them to fly to Barksdale Air Force Base [Louisiana]. We hadn’t really had an awareness of what was going on in East Texas.\\n\\n It emerged over hours—this is all emerging over hours—that FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] and the other government agencies had decided to settle down in Lufkin, Texas. We had Dave at Barksdale, and we were thinking that that would be a receiving site for material. But very quickly, I think the next day, hopped him over to Lufkin where the rest of the agencies would be.\\n\\n Dave became the lead executive over all of that in-field recovery process. Then we augmented him over time with Mike [Michael U.] Rudolphi and [G.] Alan Flint. Ended up being a rotation of folks, because the first few weeks Dave seemed overwhelmed. It was just constant, because stuff was going on every single day.\\n\\n That day we were making those decisions. Sean was reaching out across government, getting word to the White House, helping get things prepared for the President to make a comment, getting Secretary Tom [Thomas J.] Ridge to declare the accident a catastrophe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Federal disaster." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, federal disaster. That enabled FEMA to actually go in and pay bills and take care of things. None of us had a clue how important that was, but it was obviously incredibly important.\\n\\n That’s all the memory I have of the first day, just everybody in the room brainstorming and taking their individual little pieces of what those had to be. Reads [Readdy] and I talked, and one of the things that he asked me to do was go and get all the Challenger stuff, talk to folks that I could reach. I talked to Dick [Richard H.] Truly and Bob [Robert L.] Crippen and J. R. [James R.] Thompson [Jr.] about that same early process. We already had an investigation board, so it wouldn’t be quite like the [William P.] Rogers Commission [Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident].\\n\\n Sean was familiar with that plan, so he was already vested in that plan and didn’t feel a need to create something unique. But did, from his Navy days, have a relationship with Hal Gehman, and chose to name Gehman as the chair of the board. Every day was just spent starting to lay out all the pieces. We had obviously a whole bunch of volunteers from JSC that could get to East Texas quickly.\\n\\n We had Jerry [L.] Ross and a bunch of folks that started formulating what an air search would look like. Initially we had the National Guard, that wasn’t going to last very long. Then the FEMA folks started talking about this Incident Command [System (ICS)], and firefighters. We were looking at each other like “What are you talking about?” But we quickly learned about this whole incident command structure and how it worked. In February, we were at a point where there was a workforce that was ready, willing, and able, and not tied up, because that’s the low point for forest fires in the country. They established five camps along the route, and over time formulated the plan to literally walk a mile both sides, and fly I think 10 miles both sides to look for material.\\n\\n Then we set up the receiving points. We ended up pulling the Orbiter-cognizant engineers from the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] into the receiving points, because it was actually the Cape folks that knew the hardware. You could bring in a piece of debris, and they would say, “Oh yes, that’s that.” Started tracking it. We had to work with folks on getting a common geolocation scheme. We felt that the geolocation would be useful in the investigation. We had to work on the rotations of the teams.\\n\\n Then we started in a process of every week, every two weeks sending leadership down, enacting the whole Space Flight Awareness team, and having folks out in the field with the teams, just being there. We also sent this [JSC History] Office down with Roger Mellott, a psychologist that was doing a lot of NASA training. Bill and I had worked with Roger a lot, and asked Roger to go do that, with Rebecca Wright. I still have the disk of all those interviews." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we did a lot in a very short period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes we did, yes we did. The formulation of all of that was really amazing, how well it came together, or maybe effectively came together, so that we had activities going—of course the search for the remains was its own process. We learned a lot about federal agency jurisdictions.\\n\\n Our folks were obviously very, very protective of the crew and very focused on the crew, but they also had to learn that remains are the role of the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], so you have to deal with the FBI. Everything had to also have an EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] person with it, just because of the potential toxicity of things. Then, as you know from the history, just amazing stories of the local folks that helped with the whole process. I don’t get into that because I cry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Most people do. NASA has this experience working with international partners, working with other people that are interested in spaceflight, the people that have that focus. This was an experience working, like you said, with all these agencies—the FBI, the Forestry Service, local people, local police, the EPA. These amazing incident camps that would come in, and I went to several of those. They were like small cities that came in and moved in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were, they were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It all happened so fast. Like I said, this was a new experience, working with all these different agencies and organizing all that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an interesting thing, too. Within a couple days—it was about when they started talking about the ICS and the firefighters, and that was probably a couple weeks—we had a tag up with the agencies every morning, but it was at the senior leader level. I figured out about that time, and went to Bill and said, “They’re all having a meeting without us beforehand. I don’t know that they appreciate whether we should be there or not, but all you’re hearing is what they’ve already sorted out.” So we ended up going back and inserting ourselves into the earlier meeting as well, to understand more at the working level what was going on.\\n\\n It was obvious that all of these folks were just reporting up to their bosses, the one that we were tied in to. They weren’t actually making the decisions or recommendations, they were just reporting up to the bosses. That gave us better visibility into what they were really talking about and how this process worked.\\n\\n We also had a person, Amy [K.] Donahue, at Headquarters, who was a colleague of Sean’s. She had had some experience with the ICS structure in the past, so she was actually one of our ties to that whole process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know you had copies of the oral histories. Weren’t you working on a lessons learned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working on a lessons learned with Roger, and we ended up culling them down to a set of talking points. We developed it into a presentation that I used for a while. In fact, I used it in my teaching at GW a little bit. But we never actually published it in a formal sense. Shortly after that Roger passed, and so there wasn’t really any path to collect all of those pieces together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it more lessons learned for NASA on what to do after an accident like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was both. It was lessons learned for NASA, but it was also leadership training kind of reflections. Using some of the incidents that we became aware of through the recovery and really could point to.\\n\\n For instance, one of the people that advised us to first invoke the ICS—I won’t remember his name now, but he was the guy from the Texas Forest Service. Frankly, folks just blew it off for days. But regardless of being listened to, he kept helping doing whatever it took, whether it was just getting copiers, whatever. He just kept at it, then all of a sudden, “Here’s this incredibly brilliant idea, we need to exercise the ICS.” And within 48 hours we have five camps spread across East Texas that are implementing the search process, and they know what they’re doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was interesting, I think, one of the aspects that we learned, and I think a lot of people at NASA learned, was the community and the ownership that they felt and the pride that they felt, in being able to help NASA. How much it meant to them, and how much awareness they had on what NASA was doing. It instilled a lot of interest. I know NASA has followed up with that too by going back to East Texas and talking to students and doing some different things to keep that interest and that focus going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Before I retired I’d been back to Hemphill [Texas] a couple times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But that involvement that they’ve kept going I think is important, especially to foster that environment. Because a lot of the stories we heard were people were talking about if you had a NASA shirt on—we even experienced that, because we would wear that. The reaction to people, “Is there anything you need? Just tell us what you need.” That sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re right, the local people—I was pretty familiar with East Texas, so I can’t say I was surprised, just knowing the people up there. I had friends that lived in Arkansas, so I used to drive [Interstate] 59 up through Lufkin [Texas] and all those towns for years. The treatment didn’t surprise me. But everybody really bought into the recovery mission at that point, when we really could state it as a recovery mission.\\n\\n There were some interesting things about it. From a NASA standpoint, it still hurt that you had lost friends. You did not want to deal with it that way. But the searchers and everybody—they asked us if we could make t-shirts. I still have a Columbia recovery sweatshirt. It was not something that NASA would have started, but it was because the folks that were working with us that owned the recovery mission really needed to feel a part of it in that way.\\n\\n The other thing that I want to give Sean credit for is I think several of us involved in Columbia—we were much lower in the structure at Challenger, much more peripheral to what was going on in Challenger. But I think many of us had a sense that the Agency wasn’t very forthcoming.\\n\\n Literally, from day one, Sean directed that he was going to talk to the press every day. When we started we actually started twice a day. We would talk in the morning as we learned stuff, and we’d talk at the end of the day just as they might need to meet their publishing timetables. I think actually we wore them out within probably about four weeks. They said, “You’re not making enough news, we can drop back to once a day.” Then over time it just kept dropping back. But I think the Agency was forthcoming.\\n\\n Also, in terms of the legal aspects dealing with the families, he had Paul [G.] Pastorek dealing with the families. Usually through intermediaries just because of the sensitivity of things, but they were taking responsibility for dealing with the families. I don’t know how any of that turned out, but certainly I saw their actions in trying to make that happen quickly. I was really pleased as a NASA employee that we really were reaching forward, we were telling folks what we knew.\\n\\n I ended up getting a lot of weird little jobs in that timeframe, doing different things. Since I hadn’t been involved, they asked me—usually it was a conspiracy of Readdy and Pastorek that would figure out what they needed me to do. Paul wanted me to advise his lawyers. Since I hadn’t been involved, he wanted me to listen to all the Mission Management Team recordings. “We have these allegations of people being ignored. You know the business, you know how this works. You’ve lived in that world before, but you didn’t do this.” So I listened to many of the Mission Management Team recordings.\\n\\n What I fed back is from what I heard. You had pretty unanimous opinion about how the material behaved, from the subsystem manager through the program management. It wasn’t as if there was a fight and somebody was shouted down about what they believed. Most of the time you had the same shared opinion of how the material reacted.\\n\\n And obviously they were wrong, everybody in that chain was wrong. We didn’t know that much about how the material—but I didn’t see a lot of dissent, and I didn’t see people being put down for their opinions in how that was going on. Later on I helped Paul and his staff prepare NASA folks for the eventuality of having to testify to Congress.\\n\\n Just all kinds of processes, in terms of helping put the first processes in place, and then as the CAIB stood up I got assigned to help the management panel of the CAIB. So I was working with John [M.] Logsdon and Dwayne [A.] Day and others that were putting some of those pieces together. Then I was assigned to do a similar translation with the Stafford-[Richard O.] Covey team that was then looking at our implementation of that. One of the critical pieces was “How do we reach out to other government agencies for potential help?”\\n\\n Frankly, those processes weren’t exercised properly, so I rebuilt all those processes with help from others. Keith [T.] Sefton in the Office of General Counsel, Roger [D.] Simpson in Code M. We basically wrote new memorandums of agreement with all the government agencies that we dealt with. We had to get many more NASA employees cleared in terms of if you’re going to deal with any information from that community, you need the appropriate clearances.” NASA had let a lot of clearances go, so we rebuilt that whole structure of if we ever need help from that community, we know how to go request it.\\n\\n We know what to do with it, we have people that are cleared to deal with anything they can get out of it. We also teach people how to deal with sensitive information, so there’s nothing revealed externally to any of those interactions or relationships. The special assistant tag had a lot of different jobs assigned to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Other duties as assigned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Many other duties as assigned, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the reports that you were giving to the press and how you’re not making news anymore. Of course other things were going on in the world at that time, with the response to 9/11 [terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001] in 2003 right after Columbia came down. Yes, there was a lot going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say I was pretty inwardly focused at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I can imagine. I think a lot of people were. We may not get to talk about all of it, but in the time we have left—President Bush’s [2004] announcement for The Vision for Space Exploration, ending the Shuttle Program, finishing out ISS, and then creating some type of spacecraft to return to the Moon and on to Mars, which obviously you are very involved in now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I am now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But at the time—do you want to talk about that announcement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the time there was a NASA team—Bill Readdy was involved with it, Sean certainly was helping push it—that was formulating an exploration program. It was interesting.\\n\\n In my view, Sean did a lot of entertaining things. When he came in he pretty much would just tell large groups of people, “Stop fussing about destination. It’s not about destination. It’s about exploration. Just stop, calm down.” Then I think probably a lot of people were shocked that here’s the guy telling us to calm down, and he gets the President to announce a vision to go on to the Moon and Mars. I think Sean had that in the back of his head probably all along, but it was galvanized by the accident and the way that the CAIB I think stated, “We don’t think the risks of spaceflight really are balanced by the mission of just going to low-Earth orbit. We think that they’re commensurate with a mission exploring much beyond that.” I think that there’s a hook there. There’s this background team that has been working—and remarkably quietly—with the White House team to formulate what becomes the Vision for Space Exploration.\\n\\n That gets put in place and rolled out. Now you can contend a lot, that it got rolled out without an explicit budget to go with it. They brought [Admiral] Craig [E.] Steidle in from outside to start to formulate the Exploration Program. Readdy assigned me as one of his deputies basically to be the interface to Craig’s team, which was funny, there’s another Mark Geyer tie. Mark and I have bounced off each other for years. Mark had come up to be part of the systems engineering team with Steidle’s team. I was the Code M human spaceflight liaison into that world.\\n\\n At that point, there were still multiple options. There was an existing issue that we knew with the Space Shuttle Program, and there were a defined series of flights to finish assembly. We argued that it was more than OMB wanted to support. So, literally, I still have pages that I used to brief in Washington all the time that showed two shaded out flights at the end that weren’t budgeted, but in NASA’s view were fully required to support the ISS. I think AMS [Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer] may have been one of those at one of those times too, that we argued fully that as a science payload AMS merited—but we also had the challenging complication. We had built this process after Return to Flight where you were going to have a Shuttle ready as the rescue. The timing of all these places, all of that factored into all that too.\\n\\n Bill created a deputy for program management and integration tasks, which ended up doing a whole bunch of cats and dogs as well, so that’s what I became. The interface to the exploration group was one of those tasks, but also doing Shuttle-based assessments was part of that task as well.\\n\\n As we were transitioning, Bill had convinced Sean that we really needed to do a full-up assessment of a Shuttle-derived launch vehicle for exploration. Without the Orbiter but using the external tank, the SRBs [solid rocket boosters], and a shroud with a boat tail that could carry elements of an exploration vehicle.\\n\\n I was named to do that, and right in that timeframe Sean left and Mike [Michael D. Griffin] was named very quickly to replace him [as NASA Administrator]. As Mike came in I was actually doing a trip to Russia with Steidle, helping introduce Steidle to all of the Russian folks. Mike came in and pretty quickly started rearranging the deck chairs. We were still working on Return to Flight, so we hadn’t put any of these other processes in place yet. We were on the way marching to [STS-]114 with Eileen [M. Collins] and company, and Mike kicked off his ESAS [Exploration Systems Architecture Study] study pretty quickly, and he also told Readdy and me to stand down on the Shuttle-derived study. Basically Mike just didn’t believe that architecture was ever right, so we pretty much were told to stand down.\\n\\n That doomed any Shuttle variant continuing on into the flow, which a lot of people still have issues with. Some with strong opinions that we should have built from the Shuttle and maintained that infrastructure, and we would have been better off. We are where we are now.\\n\\n There were a lot of things that were troublesome that came out of it. Having a gap in our own launch capability is one of the things that came out of it. We did have to argue—but Mike successfully argued for those flights that we weren’t going to do, he argued for AMS, he argued for a Hubble [Space Telescope] repair mission. But we also had to pull funding from other places to get that done, so that harmed Exploration.\\n\\n But we got the Exploration Program started. We got what was then the CEV [Crew Exploration Vehicle] awarded. We had done the prior studies, I was still on the NASA side doing all of that. Then obviously when the new [President Barack Obama] administration came in they decided they had other ideas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think probably that’d be a good place to stop, because there’s a lot of other things that were going on at that time we don’t have time to talk about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s true. That’s probably a good place to stop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I appreciate you coming in today, and we’ll continue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "W. Michael Hawes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00984", + "metadata": { + "category": "NACA OHP National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 2005 - 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/wynnewa.htm", + "original_file_name": "WynneWA_6-3-14.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/WynneWA_6-3-14.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "William A. Wynne", + "location_date": "Cleveland, Ohio – 3 June 2014" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "William A. Wynne" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 3, 2014. This oral history session is being conducted with Bill Wynne at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project, sponsored by the NASA Headquarters History Office. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Rebecca Wright. I want to thank you again for joining us today and driving out here to meet with us. We really appreciate it. I want to start by asking you a little bit about your background, and how you first learned about the NACA, and when you started working here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I first heard about NACA through friends who were working here. I had a friend, a neighborhood kid, who was an engineer—Clint [E. Clinton] Wilcox—who had graduated from Case [Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio]. Clint was working here, and then later on—it was after the war [World War II] that Mary Howard lived across the street, and I was pals with her brother, Bob [Howard]. Mary Howard was working here, too. She was a computer person, they used to read the monometer boards. You probably heard about those. They used to do that by hand and eye and do all the calculations. They were computers, but working before computers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were human computers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, so that’s how I heard about NACA. I came home from the war and I had this little dog—which became world-famous immediately, soon as we got back to the States—and I didn’t know what to do, but I was hoping to go in something to do with the dog. My wife, Margie, and I got married during this period. We had been engaged before I went overseas, so we decided, well, we’re going to get married. She had me put in an application at NACA, and she said to me, “Don’t tell them anything about the dog, Bill. Don’t show the scrapbook.”\\n\\n We had a competition going here. My book, which is Yorkie Doodle Dandy, is something that she contributed to, and the subtitle is Or, The Other Woman was a Real Dog. You can get the gist of what competition’s going on here. I went out and I put the application in, and there was a fellow named Ray Labadie who happened to be the personnel man. I was filling out the application. I finished, and he said to me, “You have any hobbies?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, yes.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, what is it?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, I have a dog act.”\\n\\n He says, “Well, put it down.” I hadn’t filled in hobbies, so I put down that.\\n\\n After I went to Hollywood [Los Angeles, California]—I was working dogs in motion pictures—I had my foot in the door at one point. Owen Crump, who was a big producer with Jack [Jacob L.] Warner of 420 military films on how to fly airplanes—everything was included in those 420 films. Jack Warner was a colonel and Owen was a lieutenant colonel, and they were in charge of this whole thing [First Motion Picture Unit]. Ronald [W.] Reagan was part of that, and they had all of these actors working these parts.\\n\\n Owen saw my dog, and his wife said, “Why don’t you put the dog in this picture?” He said, “It’s too valuable to be in this picture. I’ll put her in my next picture.” We went to Hollywood after we were married, and Margie didn’t like it at all. We were jammed into a house with five families, one in each room, in a five-bedroom house.\\n\\n Housing was terrible after World War II—you can’t imagine. Everything was bad. There had been no production of washing machines, dryers, nothing was available. Cars took a year before they started coming out, and they were on the showrooms and some dealers were asking $200 under the table for the privilege of you getting on to the top of the list. There were all kinds of shenanigans going on.\\n\\n Margie being unhappy, I told her to go home. I put her on a train and I said to her, “We’ll make a deal. If I get a contract here in Hollywood, you’ll come back, right?”\\n\\n She said, “Right.”\\n\\n I said, “Now, if I don’t have a contract and NACA comes through with a job offer, I’ll come back.” Right about January, it was the first part of January, my mother got a telegram for me to report to work here. She said, “Well, he’s in California.”\\n\\n “Well, can he get here by next Monday?”\\n\\n She said, “I don’t know.”\\n\\n So we talked on the phone, and I said, “Yes, okay. I’ll try to get back.” I left on Tuesday and I drove like a madman and I arrived back on Saturday morning. Then on Monday I came and showed up to work.\\n\\n In order to get back—we’re going to jump a year ahead at this point to explain what happened. I get a call from Ray Labadie after I was working here about three months, and Ray said to me, “You know, Bill, we have a show that we put on here, we have a big production. We have a big chorus, we have dancers, we have a ventriloquist, we have all these different people. We go to nursing homes and things. Would you be a part of that?”\\n\\n I said, “Sure.” I went out with them a few times, and one day we met in the hall and we were talking. He says, “You know, Bill, how you got hired, don’t you?”\\n\\n I said, “No.”\\n\\n He says, “Well, I had nine different aerial photographers that had more experience than you did, but I wanted your dog act.” That’s how I got hired at NACA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually, when you get people with serious hobbies, usually they’re good workers because they’re into other things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. It’s dedication, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, so you really get a good employee out of that. To go back, I came back [to Cleveland], and I was going to be in flight icing research. We had a [Consolidated] B-24 Liberator and a [North American] B-25 [Mitchell aircraft], and I didn’t know anything about it. I was being broken in by Dick [Richard] Holst, who was in the photo lab [laboratory], and Dick [Richard] Loomis. Dick and Holst had flown in the military. Holst, in fact, had bailed out over France because his plane iced up on the way back.\\n\\n He was a photographer in a photo plane, in an [Douglas] A-20 [Havoc]. Dick had bailed out and he went through a group of trees, threw his arms up over his face, and landed on the seat of his pants, the parachute still suspended from the tree. Dick was going to break me in, and they didn’t want to fly in this because they said it was too hazardous and it wasn’t a condition of their employment when they were hired. I come out and Dick goes on with me on the second day. We get caught in one terrific—everybody is grounded here at [Cleveland] Hopkins [International Airport], so we’re going to go out and look for ice.\\n\\n We go up, and we find ice everywhere. We go up over Traverse City, Michigan. I don’t know whether we went to Canada at that point. You can’t imagine how—you’re flying in daylight and [it’s like] you’re flying at night. When you get into one of those clouds, everything is black. You cannot see anything. We had to take pictures of the antennas. They had antennas hooked from the wing to the tail, and they would pick up globs of ice like this [demonstrates], and then they would break off and they’d be spinners, and finally the antennas broke. We got kicked all over the plane. It was really a rough flight.\\n\\n We took pictures, we landed at Traverse City, we ate up there, and then we came back and we’re going to make a pass at Cleveland Hopkins. We come along and we look out and we’re right alongside the [Cleveland] Bomber Plant. With that, Eb [William V.] Gough [Jr.], who was the Navy pilot—he has a story unto himself. Eb went with the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] years later, but he was chief test pilot here at that time. Eb took the plane and we just took off. He gunned it up, we didn’t set it down, we went to Columbus [Ohio]. We got into there, the hotel was all filled up with some sort of big conventions, all over town. They put us on cots in some sort of hallways to sleep for the night, and we came back to Cleveland by train." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was your introduction." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was my introduction. The pilots had to let a weekend pass because the weather was so bad, they couldn’t fly down. They finally went down and they brought the planes back six days later.\\n\\n I covered those missions for a couple of years, and I did other photo work. As I say, we traveled around. It was a question of where they were going to put Tony [Anthony] Krisak and me. Tony was another one that was with me. There’s a long story there, and it’s complex so I’d rather not get into it, but he couldn’t pass security after working there about five years. When the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] moved in, we were going into security. To make it brief, the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] showed him a picture, and they asked him, “Do you know who these people are in this picture?” There were two, and he says, “Yes, that’s Joseph Stalin [dictator of the USSR] and that’s my uncle.” He says, “Well, your uncle was the president of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia.”\\n\\n I don’t know how Tony had ever passed because he was an OSS [Office of Strategic Services, World War II intelligence agency] man, and his hair was gray at 22 years old. He had been in an accident, driving a general at Aberdeen Proving Ground [U.S. Army facility, Maryland], and there was a huge explosion right then, and he had amnesia for quite a while. He was working here when I got here. He was already going in as an aerial photographer. He also rode planes with German officers. He could understand German, so he would listen in. He was a guard. That was part of his work.\\n\\n All of a sudden, he has this clearance problem, and that wouldn’t be resolved for a couple years. A cadet at [United States Naval Academy] Annapolis [Maryland], I believe, fought it and the Supreme Court said, “No, they can’t keep him from having his job.” Tony told them to take the job and shove it when they called him. He was so mad about it. That’s a story of one of our associates who flew flight icing research, and he flew it for three years. I flew it for about two; I got a broken eardrum and I was grounded. I still have the broken eardrum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that from flying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From the flight icing research. You get up there with a cold, you can’t clear your ears, and something might give, and it did. I can’t hear as well out of it. I’m going to the VA [U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs] and see if they can do something for me on that ear. We flew for two years. At two points—I was on the B-24, and Tony was in the 25—we flew into conditions where we got 7 inches of ice in 70 seconds and lost 70 miles an hour on a stick setting.\\n\\n We got down with it and we got photographs, so those photographs were used. There’s a picture of Abe [Abraham] Silverstein holding a block of ice about this big [7 inches thick] that we took of the starter housing of the jet engine that we had slung under the 24. We had a jet engine—I think it was a Westinghouse 24C [also called Westinghouse J34] jet engine under that part—and they broke that off. Also, all the inside in the cell, the stator blades were there, and there were ice formations that looked like melted wax. All like a very peculiar set up.\\n\\n I have to go into another story to continue that. During the Korean War, I was working a lot with the ice tunnel and the ice tunnel people—great guys. I would take pictures for them, and we were all part of this icing thing. Now there’s two stories here. The jet engines had what they called—they put a retractable screen up around the inlet to keep birds and debris from getting into the jet engine. The National Guard in Pennsylvania, 25 of them took off one day, and out of that 25 planes, 7 of them either had explosions or the engines flamed out or had all kinds of things due to ice. What they found was that those screens actually iced up to keep the airflow from going, and that’s why the engines overheated. Some of them were flame outs, exploded, and so forth. What they did then, they made retractable battle screens. They could press a button and these screens would come out, so they wouldn’t get battle debris into the engine inlets. That was during the Korean War.\\n\\n Another thing that happened was they had problems with de-icing boots. It wasn’t on the propeller, it would be on the wings—but they had problems with these. We were testing those de-icing boots. I went down to Wright Field [Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio] and I got some advice from the fellows down there that were into heavy research in the photo department, and we got a couple of gun cameras surplus from World War II. They were small and very set focus—they’re kind of a simple camera—but they were self-contained and you could slip a film cartridge in. It’ll hold about 50 feet.\\n\\n They rigged up two of those with strobe hookups because the icing cloud—in any cloud, any moisture—the droplets are 100 [times their] diameter apart. It’d be like having a tunnel with golf balls hanging from strings. You got the picture, how that looks? That’s what happens. As these drops get bigger, then they still are approximately 100 times their diameter apart. In order to photograph this thing—you’re photographing through a cloud, and if you flash at a cloud straight on, you’re going to get a big glare, and you’re not going to get penetration. Using a strobe light at a 45 degree angle, we put this close up with a mirror about 6 inches away. I was able to photograph by using strobe lights that would go through these droplets, and get enough image so that we knew what was going on. They were able to make that correction for the de-icing boots in the Korean War.\\n\\n I’m just giving you some of the things that icing ran into. We continued the program, and we had two types of ice. I don’t know if you got any information on this at all from anybody, but there was anti-icing and there’s de-icing. [For] de-icing, [Lewis A.] Rodert, from what I was able to gather, had hot air pipes like you would have in a furnace in the leading edges of the plane. We didn’t have a way to get that kind of hot air, so we had a putt-putt that was a heater that supplied the hot air. You could brute force the ice off there.\\n\\n But when that happened, we also got another problem, which was under heavy icing conditions. As you were melting the ice off, the big chunks—there was “runback ice,” and it would get in the ailerons and the rudder. The things would get frozen in between. In one case, Gough and whoever was with him in the 24, they had to shake the stick as we were in a slow dive in order to get the controls to break loose. That icing actually got into the steering mechanism because of what they call runback ice. The de-icing equipment was really good, you could brute force it off. As I say, the conditions that we flew under, you just wouldn’t believe. When we found ice, we just kept going back and forth, we kept making runs in order to accumulate data.\\n\\n The ice tunnel—the guys in the hangar actually developed a rotating cylinder device that was a series of cylinders tapering down with discs. They could shove that up through the airplane roof, and then this thing would rotate, and they would pick up the amount of moisture in the cloud that they could measure. So they knew what kind of moisture they were flying into. They got really some great research on this particular project. That was part of the things we were involved in. You just missed Porter [J.] Perkins, he just passed away. He was 92. He was involved with icing all his career—50 years. I worked with Porter later on, another project that I’ll have to tell you about.\\n\\n After we got out of that type of program, the photo lab became very involved with a new program, the crash fire program. You’ve probably heard about that. We were getting planes—[Fairchild] C-82s [Packet] mostly. We did have a couple of [Curtiss] C-46s [Commando] and a couple of other planes, but the C-82s were twin-tailed cargo planes that were considered obsolete for the Korean War. They were a little desperate for the Korean War. Just after World War II—they might have been part of World War II; I never saw one in my experience over in the Pacific [South West Pacific Area, WWII]—they had a contract with all of these contractors down in Georgia, and these C-82s were just rotting in the fields. They just had them sitting around, and they had to get those in a flyable condition to get them here to Cleveland.\\n\\n They came in here and they didn’t have instruments, they didn’t have radios. Their contract was to deliver the plane. Each pilot got so much to bring the plane in here. They would come and they would set this plane down, and they’d have to go out and tow them in sometimes. They just stalled out on the runway after they were coasting in on the taxiways. They finally had to take some apart, and they trucked them down to Ravenna [Ohio], where we set up a strip. At the landing strip there, they took the nose wheel off and they put a slipper—we called it a slipper—a clamp that goes around the rail, and goes down and guides the plane. That way they could pull the engines in the full power-back, and at the same time get the plane up to full speed for takeoff.\\n\\n Then we ran it into a barrier. Say we got the plane up to 82 miles an hour, we had a barrier of dirt and railroad ties that sheared off the wheels. Then, they had 1-foot thick logs with 6-inch [long], 1-inch thick spikes. Those spikes would rip open the gas tanks, so that we were setting up a mechanism of crashing, like hitting trees and fences. That was part of the experiment that they did at the beginning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was remote control, right? There wasn’t anyone in those planes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nobody was in the plane. They just set it up and we had an instrument box that had all the instrumentation. Thermocouples everywhere, over every situation, to get the heat, all the locations. It’s too bad you don’t have a lot of time because this is very complex. We crashed a lot of planes—I think they crashed 57. I was gone for the last three or four years on that.\\n\\n Among the things they did, the most unique was they created an inerting system. They found a way to take fire extinguishers and put them through either jet engines or reciprocating engines, so when that plane had an impact, in 1/15th of a second they cut off all the fuel sources and cooled down all the surfaces by this fire extinguisher. You’ve got to get the temperature down below 400 degrees [Fahrenheit] because that’s the flash point for fuels. That’s what they did, just so they could find other sources that we didn’t know about that would cause [fires]. That’s why they developed the inerting system, to cut out the usual ways you could get fire, to [find] the unusual ways we’d get the fires.\\n\\n These guys really did a terrific job on this, but it didn’t work out. When they finished the program, FAA didn’t want to go with it. They were getting pressure from the airlines. The airlines didn’t want to do it. It was going to take 40 pounds per engine, and that would be four engines. That’s the weight of a person. Their excuse was it was baggage or a person they were going to have to give up for the weight. The real reason is economically, it’s better off if you’re dead. This is a realism in industry.\\n\\n I’ll go back. Ford [Motor Company] had trucks—they had a gas tank alongside the sides of their trucks. They lost about 162 people, but it was cheaper to pay off the insurance and cover them than it was to change all of the Ford trucks. It becomes economics. The same way with airplane crashes. At that time, it’d be cheaper to pay off the insurance if they’re dead rather than if they’re alive and survived and got banged up and so forth. As far as I heard, United [Airlines, Inc.] was the only one that was willing to go this route, but the others didn’t want to do it. It’s a matter of fact answer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just go back for a minute and talk about the icing. When you first started, you were talking about the film. The photography was still images? It wasn’t film, moving film?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, most of the icing was still pictures. We have very little footage, and it doesn’t show much. It’s just showing the plane flying through the air. With the still pictures, where you got the action, with the flames and all that, then motion picture was the only thing.\\n\\n Then we had other problems which we had to overcome, and among them were all the cameras we bought. We bought three Mitchell [Camera Corporation] cameras, and this was really a funny thing because these were 16-millimeter [film], Hollywood-type motion picture cameras, but they had 35 [millimeter film] they used at the studios. Early television used to go 16 on this route. One of these cameras cost $4,000. At that time, I was only making about $3,500 a year. One of the engineers said, “$4,000? My God, you can buy a Cadillac [luxury vehicle] for that.” Well you can’t take a Cadillac and make pictures with it. This was a beautiful, wonderful working machine.\\n\\n You saw my pictures that I sent you. I invented a camera timer for them because here’s what happened. Those cameras we bought had irregular running motors. The Hollywood type of motor was synchronized to go 24 frames a second. Silent films were 16, that’s why they’re so jumpy when you look at them. The motion pictures are 24, and television is 30 frames a second. The cameras were rated at 128 frames a second, and the first thing you know, the engineers are going crazy. The crash takes place and the flame comes out over here that shows on this camera, and it shows at a different time over in this camera, and at a different time over in all the cameras.\\n\\n I designed a timer that would go to the front of the camera. I took a gun sight from World War II, $1.50 surplus at Pope’s [Variety Wholesalers, Inc.], so I got three of them. John [L.] Pollack was an optical physicist. John designed it so that a Veeder-Root [Company] counter would be underneath and project up into infinity, and we could put that down in the grass just as the plane was going over. The plane would be on top of it, but the grass was where the timer was. The timer went from 1/10th of a second, to a second, 10 seconds, 100 seconds, 1,000 seconds, like that. The first one on the right reads tenths. [For example, 0001.0 second.]\\n\\n That would be determining how fast that camera was going, and if it showed, say, 11 frames, it was going 110 frames a second before turnover. If you counted 12 frames, it was doing 120 frames a second. You’ll have a curve that I enclosed in there, it covers 2 seconds. Those cameras were all running separately, and each one was dropping as much as 15 frames in 1/10th of a second. When the film was going around and it starts to go fast, the claw and the plunger is making each film—this camera, as I say, was a superb camera because it stopped every frame to give it a shot. They were sharp. [But when film rolls slowed down, there would be a jolt causing 15 frames a second drop in speed.]\\n\\n That’s what they needed, stuff to illustrate in the reports, to blow up these 16-millimeter frames. It was essential. We found out that all these variations were taking place in these cameras, so that’s why we developed a timer, and that got into a lot of hassle. It took us a year to get it. I gave it to an optical physicist and he took off on his own path and it didn’t work. Everybody got sore over there, and they gave me Bill [William H.] Gowan [Jr.] to expedite everything. We got the machine shop, we built the dang things ourselves. We had to have Veeder-Root Company reverse the numbers into mirror images, something they never had done before, because we were projecting into a mirror and it’s reversing. By putting mirror images in them, they straightened out the numbers so the engineers could read them. They were having trouble, looking upside down and backwards at these numbers.\\n\\n All these were things that we had to overcome. After that, we put a flashbulb. When that plane made an impact, there was a photo flashbulb put up high, and all the cameras zeroed in on when that flashbulb went out. That zeroed each camera so they knew where everything happened, all the way around, and they were fine. It took a year and a half, two years, before we got to that point.\\n\\n Then we’re going to get to the [Piper J-3] Cubs. We were going to crash three Cubs. We got an animatronic dummy from Wright Field, I think it was a $45,000 dummy. Had an accelerometer in its head and an accelerometer in its chest. We were going to take a small little Piper Cub, and we’re going to crash that into the hill. We had to turn it sideways because when a plane comes down in a spin, it’s going to hit with the nose and the wing and the wheel at the same time. It’s just the way it comes in. In order to simulate that, they had this barrier that was at a 45-degree angle so they hit simultaneously.\\n\\n We’d use a 4,000-frames-a-second camera, which was a Fastec [Imaging Corporation, high-speed film camera], and not particularly sharp. That particular camera, 4,000 frames a second, in the balance of the color film of the period, like 200 [speed film]—if we pushed it another f [focal]-stop [aperture size] in processing, it was still not adequate to see the details. They put a grid up, 4-inch grids. They had a dummy in the front which was a parachute-type dummy, very rigid fellow, but this animatronic dummy had the tensile strength in the arms and the legs and everything of human bones, so that’s what made it so expensive. It was designed particularly for crashes.\\n\\n As they slammed this into the hill, the first guy took the beating, but we decided the second one needed a shoulder harness to hold it back. I had an idea for a design to illuminate this thing. All the data’s over in 4/10th of a second because you slam this thing into the hill, and then all your data’s over within less than a half a second. In order to illuminate it, I had the idea that I told [G. Merritt] Preston, who was the head of the project. I had this idea of how we could make the lighting in there. He says, “Well, let’s do it the next time.” The first time, they got no data at all visually. They got data with their electronics, but they didn’t get any visual data at all.\\n\\n What I did was I set up, using focal-plane bulbs—which have a very long duration, 1/10th of a second. The other flashbulbs that we used that were standard at the time were about 1/50th of a second, and then we had a high-speed one which was 1/200th of a second, before strobes. In the old focal-plane shutters, they had to have a long one because there was a shutter with a slot that went up in front of the film. You had to illuminate that whole thing.\\n\\n Scottie [Scott H.] Simpkinson, you can look him up online, was very much involved with the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] role. Four of these guys went down to the Cape. [Gerard J.] Pesman, Preston, Dugald [O. Black], Abe Silverstein of course. There were about four of them that went from the hangar down there. I was already gone, so I wouldn’t have had a part of it.\\n\\n I designed 24 positions where I overlapped the part of this thing, and I would shoot off 96 flashbulbs in 1 second. By using 4 positions of 24 each, when the pointer hit that one, four bulbs went off along eight lines. They just went off like this—bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing—because they were stacked 24 to a section. One of the engineers says to me, “Ninety-six flashbulbs? My God, that’s $25 worth of flashbulbs.”\\n\\n I said, “Yes, but you got a $40,000 dummy, not counting the plane in this.” You kind of lose perspective. He’s thinking of buying it out of his own pocket.\\n\\n The plane would trigger this thing about 10 feet away. I sent you a picture with the plane in position. Scottie designed this thing where this comptometer was going around a full 320 degrees in 1 second, and as it was going around, when that was triggered by the plane, any one of those could start. It didn’t matter which one it was because they were all going to work in rotation. In one second, we fired off all those flashbulbs and we got beautiful slow-motion pictures.\\n\\n The point of having four was to make a shadowless light so they could see the movement against this grid they had in the background, so they could do the motion. It got the whole motion, and that was why we had to have the four positions, to give us shadowless light. Otherwise, if you took one flashbulb, it’d give you a shadow. You did two, you’d get two shadows. So I put in four, and their shadows are imperceptible, really, because they are all wiping each other out.\\n\\n If you ever see the film on it, it’s just beautiful the way it came out. Bam, the thing flies up in the air, and then in slow motion you can see what’s happening. Two of these dummies—the dummy lost his head at least once. It’s bouncing around in the plane, like on the impact, when the neck obviously wasn’t strong enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were the cameras mounted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had the cameras for this Cub right at a 45-degree angle. We’d have them just like that, shooting right here [demonstrates], because we had the whole part of the plane stripped away so you could watch the figures from a side view. We just didn’t work with the way a plane was; we had to open up the plane to show them seated. One of the recommendations was shoulder harnesses. Apparently, they didn’t use shoulder harnesses in those days yet. That was one of the things, plus there isn’t much you can do because you’ve got to make the airplane fly and it has to be light enough. You’re going to make it too strong, it’s not going to fly, it’s going to be too heavy.\\n\\n Later, Porter Perkins—they wanted to determine radar, what you see on the radar screen in a way of a storm ahead. We had to measure the drop size in order to do that, and we had to be able to count drop size. Porter asked me if I could do this, so again, I’m in research—I’m not even working in a photo lab anymore hardly, only to develop my stuff that I’m working on. My boss, Frank Kish says, “Hey, Wynne, you were hired to work for the engineers and you got the engineers working for you.”\\n\\n Nobody was able to do this because college-wise, you got a bachelor’s and you were just taking pictures like you do for a newspaper or magazine. Here, this means we’re also technical. In photography, it was so technical they had never even had an assembled test when these guys were all hired. They hired you and paid you on your experience. There was no test that you could take. The engineers they could give a test, but they couldn’t give a test in photography because it’s so vast. You really found out how vast it was.\\n\\n It turned out that I was doing the particular work—and you’ll find that I was a lousy student in school. I was 20 years old when I got out of high school. I was in an orphanage, running the streets afterward. That’s where I got all my inventiveness. I was running with another fellow, a young kid, whose dad was a whacko inventor. He had a dirigible [airship, or zeppelin] he was going to put in on Lorain Avenue [Cleveland]. He built a hangar there, and people burned it down in the neighborhood—it’s right in the middle of housing, [West] 122nd [Street] and Lorain.\\n\\n It’s probably still there—it’s a six-family apartment. He made it out of brick and they blew it up one night, dynamited it. So after that, he made it into an apartment. My buddy was his son, and this kid was pretty inventive. He did a lot of things. The first time I ever saw photography, he was developing in a darkroom and I thought, “Oh jeez, this is too much work for me.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Little did you know, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That’s where a lot of the creativity that I had—plus you’ll find that when I had this dog overseas, I was starting to train it and I built all the equipment that I had. I had her walking a tight-wire blindfolded; spell her name out of letters. I built a little scooter out of an orange crate. That’s where a lot of the thinking goes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask you, the fact that you were so inventive and you figured out how to do all this—when you first started, did they have any training for the photographers? You said they didn’t take a test, but there was just on-the-job training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the guys were training. They come in here, and they were specializing. Generally, about four or five of us were more general, we did everything. We did the small cameras. We had guys—Freddie Lingelbach and Bill [William A.] Bowles mostly did 8 by 10 [inch] stuff. We did 8 by 10. Marty [Martin] Brown was doing 8 by 10. He was doing all the construction work. They all pretty much had their specialties, and then a few of us, Dick Holz and Dick Loomis and all—Dick was doing movies because he had been in movies for the Marine Corps, in the Marine Air Force.\\n\\n We’re learning and teaching off each other, and then we’re trying to meet the needs. The needs were pretty advanced in some things, like the Schlieren photography [process for photographing flow of air and fluids] for the wind tunnels. They were already into that. That’s a German thing. They used splitter glasses and knife edges to cut out all the extra rays that you’re going to get. You know when you take a light bulb and it goes out, all the rays? They took knife edges and they just got down to one ray. That way you get extreme sharpness in what you’re doing. That’s what this Schlieren [process] did.\\n\\n The Schlieren has a lot to do with the interferometer, which is what [Albert A.] Michelson developed to record the speed of light. He recorded the speed of light. What he did is he took a flash, straight ahead, but with mirrors. He took that same flash and he bounced it off this mirror and a mirror over here and a mirror over here and a mirror over here and brought it back, and they could see there was a difference in the time when the light arrived from the same flash. They thought light was instantaneous, but he found that there was a speed of light.\\n\\n The Schlieren’s a little bit derived from that, but only in the way that it was set up, not so much as for the purpose. The engineers were already into that, the optical engineers that I was working with, John B. Pollock, and them. We had to photograph a raindrop. Found out that a raindrop is very elusive. You take a light and you flash it at it—raindrops are a ball. They get to a quarter-inch [in size] and they split up because it’s air, the surface tension breaks. The surface tension holds them together into a little ball form.\\n\\n To get that little rascal in a photo, you had to be pretty tricky. I found out that you had to surround the thing with light in order to get the ball. I used a bounce light in order to get the light on all sides. If you took one flash, you got a tiny blip of light. If you took a sidelight, you got a little crescent shaped blip. If you took another sidelight, you got another blip. I worked out photographing the raindrop in an aerial camera. I was using water and just dropping it down, and I would photograph it as it fell, trying to figure out the lighting system.\\n\\n At that time, I didn’t think anybody else was doing it, but later on a couple of engineers from a university somewhere filed that they were the first to photograph raindrops. I had already passed that point because I’ve got to get multiples, and I’ve got to get it in an airplane and fly through the storm. To get the drop was just part of what I was trying to do. I finally was able to get the raindrop. Now, in as much as they’re 100 [times their] diameters apart and I’ve got a slot this big to keep them in focus, I find that I get one drop in 25 shots, so that’s a tremendous expenditure of film. So I have to find out a way then to get multiple shots.\\n\\n I used a dark field. I had them buy some black velvet, and purchasing went crazy, buying black velvet. I had the black velvet, and I got myself a studio because I’m controlling everything. I’ve got my lights bouncing around sideways, and using a dark field illumination I could get 100 shots off of one sheet of film using an aerial camera because the velvet was killing off the flash. It got to a point of saturation where it would start to fog, but you could still determine the other thing.\\n\\n I figured we could do it with 50 shots. We’d get two drops that are measurable, and that’s what we’re really after. I worked on that program and I was getting allocated money, about $4,000 at a crack. I’m writing my time off of this work number. Everybody had what number this is—the engineers, if the photographers did it, they used that number for their time. The money was taken out of that budget. I don’t know how NASA works now, but I suppose it’s about the same. That’s the way we did it, and so three times I got the $4,000. Abe and Porter were okaying it, and we were making headway.\\n\\n They transferred it to the hangar, and so they assigned Bill Swann to work with me. Bill was going backwards. He took strings and he had beads, and he was going to put this down in this slot and photograph—well, I already went through that. I already had the pictures. I didn’t know what to do because it was going to slow it down. I had the photos, I had the whole system worked out, then we were going to have to build a piece to go into the airplane.\\n\\n Bill stepped in, and about that time, I got the offer to go to the Cleveland Plain Dealer [newspaper]. They hired me because they knew of my work here. They ran a couple things on the crash fire program. We had the color [photography], and I also had sold them a couple of stories. I threw a camera over the high-level bridge in Cleveland called the “suicide camera,” 120 feet of tow rope with a bungee cord. I had this camera taking pictures of what a suicide would see on the way down, and they bought it.\\n\\n One day I went in there, and it was on Columbus Day. We were off on Columbus Day at that time. They said to me, “Hey Bill, would you consider working for the PD [Plain Dealer]?” I said, “Oh gee, a news photographer? I don’t know.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, you wouldn’t be—.”\\n\\n I said, “Nights?” I couldn’t work nights—I had six, seven kids at that time—but I couldn’t afford to stay here any longer. It was really in a bind because I was getting $4,400 a year, and the Plain Dealer was offering me one-third more to start, and there was a contract underway which really got another $15 a week, and so I couldn’t afford to stay.\\n\\n I had my dog act, and I was carrying myself through those years. I had a television show. I’d take an hour annual leave and I’d run to the television station, put on a costume for a children’s show, and would do my dog act. My dog did 42 weeks live and never repeated a trick. This is what I did, and the dog’s getting older now, and I’m not able to do these things. I’m doing the theater, Saturday matinees, I’m doing different theaters, the kids’ shows especially. Nightclubs, I did everything. I did Fourth of July fireworks for cities, like Bay Village and Cleveland Heights.\\n\\n The dog’s getting to be about 12 years old and I got to start figuring out something else. I couldn’t really afford to stay. I used to say you had to be independently wealthy to work for NACA. The money really wasn’t there. You’re getting half of what industry gets, but it was such a great research place. People were fantastic. It was really great, but it’s just, can you afford it? So I decided to take the job.\\n\\n Burt Mulcahy, I told him I was going to be leaving. He said, “Gee, Bill.” He figured it out, “it would take you six years to get what you’re going to get, but what I want to do is I’m going to hold your job open for six months, and I’m not going to hire anybody. If you have an SOB to work with, you can come back. We’ll be glad to take you back. I’m going to give you a blank application. Anytime you fill that application in, you can come back.” That was what they could do. The problem is, at [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] they had a fellow who was only a high school graduate. I was trying to find it in the book they’ve got. It’s about that thick [demonstrates], the 75-year history [Winds of Change: Expanding the Frontiers of Flight: Langley Research Center’s 75 Years of Accomplishment 1917-1992].\\n\\n I was trying to find it in that book. This guy was the one that really created the first proof of supersonic, and he did it by making a little wing alongside the airplane, about that far [6 inches], where he created the compression they needed. They actually clocked supersonic. When the plane went in to do a dive, the plane itself didn’t achieve it, but when he put this thing alongside it, the force of compression did it. He got the supersonic, and they proved it at that point.\\n\\n They went crazy at Langley trying to figure out how to get this guy a raise. Finally I guess they did it, and they got him classified as an engineer because he didn’t have the background. At NASA, education’s everything, you’ve got Ph.D.s a dime a dozen here. That was the problem, probably, with me. They couldn’t figure how to do it, even though I was doing research on my own practically.\\n\\n I have to tell you what happened to the camera. They kept working on it, and apparently they got it to fly. [Eb] Gough called me up and he says, “Well, we got that on the airplane, but we got long streaks instead of pictures.”\\n\\n I said, “Yes, that’s right, Eb.”\\n\\n He said, “You mean, you knew that it was going to be long streaks? A raindrop was going to be 27 feet long?” I knew it because the strobe was too slow. He says to me, “You knew this?”\\n\\n I said, “Yes, I knew that.”\\n\\n “What were you going to do?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, you’d either have to build a machine, or buy one if they have it available.” It’s a budget thing, what are you going to do? Well, they dropped it. They dropped the project. Years later, I thought of a way that I could slow this thing down. Instead of having a millionth of a second flash, which would be rather intensive considering I was using bounce light, I could slow it down 10 times. I could slow it down from a 27-feet smear, so it’d be 2.7 feet a second. How would I do that? I was going to change the angle.\\n\\n In other words, when you have a man running in a track like this [side angle view], it takes 250th of a second to stop that. When you take the man and run him to you, it only takes 1/25th of a second. I was going to change the angle of taking the picture of the raindrop from this to this [demonstrates]. That would have put us in the range of being able to afford a decent flash system. But they didn’t go that far, so they just let it go. I understand that they’re still working on that idea. The idea was to fly the plane into a rainstorm and somebody else has a radar screen, and what do you see for density? Then, this is the drop size you have with what he’s looking at. That was what that whole thing was about. But I had to leave it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You got to do what you got to do to feed the kids, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You got to do what you got to do. I’ll tell you about some of the people—Abe had what’s called Abe’s Boys, did you ever hear of that? Abe had his favorites. They were all bright people, and they moved in the same type of circle that Abe did. He was in the scientific circle. He had Bruce Lundin, maybe Uwe [H.] von Glahn. Uwe was in the ice tunnel. I can’t remember everybody, but Ben [Benjamin] Pinkel and Irv [J. Irving Pinkel], all these different people. They were favorites. He used to have a whole saying, he said, “An engineer never should get married. He should be married to the job.” Abe got married, eventually. It was a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like they allowed you to be so inventive, and they supported you financially when you were coming up with these things. It was more like a blank check if you needed to get the work done, “Here’s the money.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they had to get it done. The crash fire program was failing because the data wasn’t accurate, and then, using my timer, it was accurate.\\n\\n I got to tell you another one, this is really important. They finished, I think it was called the Jet Propulsion [Static] Lab [Laboratory]. This is just before I left, and I left in November 1953. They had a meeting, and they hadn’t run it yet. The Jet Propulsion Lab was going to circulate the air around, but instead of using just a wing or a plane, a physical body with Schlieren’s and flying out air foils, they’re going to run an engine in there. One of the engineers asked, “What would happen if we have a flame-out and we’re circulating a combustible mixture around this tunnel”—which was going to be a sizable tunnel—“would we get a detonation or an explosion?”\\n\\n Wow. I mean, you would kill people. In a volume that they’re talking about, this tunnel would probably be 10 to 12 feet in diameter. Mel [Melvin] Gerstein, Dr. Mel, was in fuels and lubes [Fuels and Combustion Division], and he was in charge of this project. They borrowed a [U.S.] Bureau of Mines—a 300-foot casing, ¼-inch thick, 2 feet in diameter, and they’re going to set it up with a right angle curve with an expansion tank about 20 feet long. So you’re going from 2 feet—when you want to slow the wind down, you got an expansion tank before you exhaust it out. They’re going to put a flare in there and shoot off a flare, and the instrumentation guys were going to put capsules with speed flash recorders.\\n\\n In other words, there’s a wire like this [demonstrates], and it measured the flame growing through there, the speed it’s going through. These probes were about that long [6 inches], and they fit into this pipe that they were going to do this, at 10,000 feet altitude. Just as they’re about to do it, Abe said, “You better get the photo lab in there.”\\n\\n Gerstein said, “We don’t need it, it’s all instrumented.”\\n\\n He says, “You better get them. You’d be surprised what those guys might come up with.” We got called out, so I took my camera timer out there. We set up, and we ducked around one of those concrete pillars, and when that thing let go, when they hit that flare with this mixture—going down this pipe, you could have heard it up on Kamm’s Corners [neighborhood on the west side of Cleveland], sounded like artillery shells going off. When they finished the run, it had taken a 2-foot disc, 400 pounds per square inch, blowout valve. They had little holes in it with aluminum, and it was 1-inch bolts. Those bolts were wrenched right off and that disc was on the ground. In one frame of the camera—I was using a Mitchell camera with my timer—one frame had the flame at both ends, that’s 20 feet apart.\\n\\n When the instrument guy said it was 320 feet a second, I said, “BS. It’s much bigger than that.” Oh, no. Well his probes were bent over; there was enough force to bend the probes over when it was going. I said, “I want you to cut a hole every 20 feet in that pipe, 1-inch.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, we can’t do that. That belongs to the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, they told you to do what you wanted with it. They just said that they weren’t going to be within a mile of that place.” I said, “I want those holes cut.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, how are you going to get the altitude pressure [10,000 feet] so it don’t go down?”\\n\\n “We’ll put little sponges,” I said. “Get some three or four-inch sponges and just set them on top there.” They’re hard sponges. I said, “They’ll pull in, and then, when the pressure changes, they’ll pop off.”\\n\\n Then we made another run. I clocked it, and we got up to 1,122 feet a second. That is—detonation is above the speed of sound, 750 feet a second at sea level. We’re getting 1,120. A detonation is not repeatable. An explosion is—you can take so many sticks of dynamite or TNT [trinitrotoluene], and you know exactly what you’re going to get. The atomic bomb is a detonation. It is not repeatable because it’s so wild, and it’s above the speed of sound. That changed everything. Mel goes over and tells Abe, “I can’t believe those guys caught that, that fast.”\\n\\n “I told you,” Abe said.\\n\\n Mel told me this. He said, “Abe said, ‘I told you.’”\\n\\n That was a $6 million building, and at that time, that’s a huge budget. They changed the configuration to two sections, one where they were going to work on the engine over here in preparation, and make their runs in this one. When that series of tests was done, they could shift over here and then put another engine in, of a different type, and they could set it up. That’s what they did. I guess it’s still being used that way. This is what, 50 years? That changed the configuration of the building and the way they handled it. That was my contribution, over and above just taking pictures." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were hired in as a photographer, did you have any idea that you were going to be doing—to go in on your second day and be in this life-threatening situation of flying in that icing plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had to eat. I got all these kids, I come from California, we’re in desperation out there. We hadn’t really gotten anything solid. I was getting $13 a day for working as a dog-handler in motion pictures. Your daily rate—and there’s feast and famine in that business—but if I had a contract, I would have been like Rudd [Ruddell B.] Weatherwax with Lassie. He was making $1,000 a week when the dog worked, and $500 a week when he didn’t, had a five-year contract. We’re back making $50, $60 a week.\\n\\n It gives you an idea what the proportions are, but I had the dog that could do it because she could do everything. Even now, I got three screenwriters competing to write a screenplay, who was going to get to do the screenplay. I signed with an agent and a lawyer. This picture, if it’s done right, it’s such a great little story, you wouldn’t believe. A little, four-pound Yorkie [Yorkshire terrier] went through the war with me. She ate our food—it would kill a modern Yorkie in three months with pancreatic or kidney problems. We used to eat this G.I. [Government Issue] food in the tropics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you end up with a Yorkie in the tropics?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was found in a foxhole in New Guinea by my buddy, and I bought her from a guy. He gave it in a motor pool for $6.44 American, £2 Australian, so he could get back in a poker game. We didn’t know what we had—a Yorkie was so rare, there were only 65 pups then registered in the AKC [American Kennel Club] when I brought her home. She’s the one that’s popularized the breed. She has six memorials in the United States and one in Australia. There’s one right down here in [Cleveland] Metroparks, eight miles down the road. Everybody goes there because Smoky’s in a little GI helmet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I’ve seen that picture. It’s just such an unusual thing, to think of a Yorkie being in a foxhole." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We found that out at the end—you’ve got to read this book. Don’t jump ahead because it’s a surprise ending." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, I can’t wait." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We don’t do anything unless it’s a surprise. This story is so amazing, and nobody was interested in World War II for 50 years after the war. We talked about it in the photo lab because everybody was a veteran at that time, except for the bosses. They had been here before, but everybody coming in were all vets [veterans], and we never talked much. We talked a little bit about it, here and there.\\n\\n Everybody was sick of the war. Civilians were because they had rationing, two gallons of gas a week, four gallons if you worked semi-government work, and if you were all government, you got unlimited, what they called a C [ration] card. I don’t know the ins and outs because I was over there, but everything came to a stop. Production-wise, food was rationed, you only got to get meat once a week. You had to go to the butcher shop and wait in lines. People were just so tired of it, they just didn’t want to get into it. I had this neat story, just let it go. And then the 50th anniversary came, and all these second, third-generation people want to know about World War II, and that stimulated the interest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great, I hope it works out. I was going to ask you, too—during the 1980s, you came back and worked for a while here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I had retired from the PD about a year and a half, and I got a call, asked me if I’d like to work part-time. I think Ernie [D.] Walker, whom you’re going to be interviewing, was the head of the photo department. That’s how I came back. I came back for four years and worked 1,000 hours a year. We were limited, then. You lose one buck off every two from Social Security at that time. So I was off all winter. I didn’t have to drive from Mansfield [Ohio] in the winter, and so it worked out real nice. Then, they wanted me to go to the next one in the fifth year, and I said, “No, I’m going to write my book,” so I wrote. I took off and took a computer class." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Figured out what to do, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was about 74 years old, and I wrote the book." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did they want you to do when you came back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was doing the photo lab, photo work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not as dangerous as before, I hope." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no. Just regular projects that they had, and I was able to do a couple public relations type [activities] because I’d been doing photography at the Plain Dealer for 31 years, and I knew public relations pretty well. So I was able to help them that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you were working so much with the engineers, not so much in the actual photo lab, but you developed your own film, your still and movie film? Or did you send it back to the lab?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We could develop—not in color, and we did color. Sometimes we did color in the photo lab for the crash fire program. We asked—Eastman Kodak [Company] and all these companies are all geared to commercial, and that’s what they developed. They weren’t into research, so we would come and ask them to do certain things. One, they had an aerial film that was beautiful, but 32 speed against 8, from Kodachrome [color film]. Thirty-two is quite a gain, that’s two f-stops, and you either can speed up the camera or stop it down more.\\n\\n We asked them to give us 300 rolls of Fastek-type—the sprocket holes have to be perfect—and run that at 4,000 frames a second. In a second and a half, you’ll run through a roll of film. There’s 4,000 frames to 100 feet. It would run about a second and a half, all the film’s gone, because it’s building up the speed, and then it’s going to go to 4,000. That adds a half-second to it. We asked them to spool the aerial film onto 16-millimeter film, and then we were able to use that faster film in some of our experiments where we were crashing the planes. We were asking Kodak to do something that was not in their production at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they willing to do that, those companies that you would have to ask?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If you bought enough—we had to buy 300 rolls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you buy enough of anything, they’re willing to work with you, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and you know, Agfa-Ansco [Corp.] was taken over by the United States in World War II. I think Uwe von Glahn, who worked in our ice tunnel, his father and he came over from Germany, and he was president of the Agfa Company here in the United States. I don’t know what happened to him, but the government took over [the company], and then we used to get government directives to use some Agfa film because they already owned it and it would be cheaper, budget-wise.\\n\\n We had problems. The engineers would take, say, 100 pictures on a run during the night. You’ve got to understand, the wind tunnel, when it ran, took as much power as the City of Columbus [Ohio]. In order to get the power, we ran 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning, and we’d get it from the Tennessee Valley [Authority]. We needed a power auxiliary—they couldn’t supply it all here—to run that wind tunnel.\\n\\n They were doing all these 100-sheet shots of 8 by 10. When they would develop them, we had a kid who was going to college, and he would just develop those film. Then Marty Brown would get it when the kid wasn’t able to work. You take the film and you take it in the dark, and you take 100 sheets. We got Dektol, which is a paper developer, and we dissolved it 4:1, so that gives you 5 minutes to get that film. You get all the film in there, you got to get it wet all over, and then you shuffle them. You can get through them twice, and on the second run, you start throwing them on to the shortstop, which stops the alkaline, which is developing it. The shortstop is an acid. It stops it, then it goes in the acid fixer, and that takes out the unexposed silver halides. It turns it to metallic silver when you’re in the developer, the silver halides. It’s like bananas in a gelatin. Blown up—it’s a really good visual for you.\\n\\n Eastman had a beautiful anti-curling backing, and when you take a sheet of film and you put a gelatin on it, it’s going to warp. You got a celluloid here. Then, in order to counteract that, you put in anti-curling backing on it, of another gelatin, in a thinner layer, and that keeps the film flat. Agfa did not have that perfected, and the kid would be developing this film—it was going, and all of a sudden their films would start curling around his hand, and he’s trying to get them off, and they’re coming up out of the developer. They’d run all night long to get the data, and here the data is all getting messed up in the developer because of the dang anti-curling backing.\\n\\n Eventually, Agfa made a swap. They had a beautiful dye-coupling process for color film, and Kodak always wanted that, so they made a swap. Kodak swapped the anti-curling backing formula for the color dye-coupler. These are things that you learn that happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting. You mentioned going to Wright-Patterson at the beginning, with the icing, and talking to photographers there. Did you do that throughout your career here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was just the one-time deal. That was on a special thing because that was their project. That’s the Air Force, and they were having problems with their planes in the Korean War. They were willing to help us with that. We had the tunnel, they didn’t have the tunnel. We had the only ice tunnel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wondered if you ever worked with other photographers, like you mentioned the Langley photographer, at the other NACA Centers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I never worked with anybody else. We were all working independently. Ernie will probably tell you about Cearcy [D.] Miller. Have you heard of Cearcy Miller? He was the one that worked on knock in an engine. He actually photographed knock, and he would shoot a million frames a second. It took him 25 years, he worked on this thing for 25 years. A million frames, but only in 5 feet. He could take a section, and they photographed on a mirror the fuel coming across, and then the burning of it. Ernie will probably tell you about Cearcy because he was a good friend of his. I never knew Cearcy very well. Ernie did make friends with him, but I did not. Ernie, you’ll find, he did some developing himself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s just amazing to me, the contributions that photography made to these projects that most people don’t have a clue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My big thing is that because of this, there were a lot of shortcuts in photography that science never knew about, but there was a dislocation because it had no academic connections. The only academic connection they would have would be the invention of the strobe light at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge]. A doctor [Harold E. “Doc” Edgerton] had three scientists that worked with him, and they came up with these big capacitors where they could shoot off a boom, and then it had to take a time to charge.\\n\\n That was the only really scientific thing going on, the strobe lights, which they were able to commercialize on. Everybody, all the photographers, you use a little strobe in your little camera. All that stuff was from that development, but that was the only connection. I thought there were other things that we were doing that photography might have been the shortcut [to getting data], and they were going about instrumentation.\\n\\n Everything was instrumentation. That’s all you had to do, going to do it all on instruments. A lot of times it could be done visually. They had to have visuals for their reports. If you got a shockwave where the discs are suspended, when they run a rocket, did you ever see photos like that? There’ll be a series of shockwaves, but that’s visual. I’m sure there were other ways that were shortcuts that were never looked into because nobody really knew enough about it. As projects were thrown at me, I took that project on myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, and as you said, Abe Silverstein knew what your group could do, and he would suggest that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he said, “Those guys, you’d be surprised what they come up with.” They got their solution in the second run, but they spent six months afterward designing instruments to clock detonations, flame speeds. It took them six months using my data to do it. They keep going back to the instruments, and there were shortcuts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It would have been so simple. Comparatively simple, anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, there’s a place for everything. Am I running over time on you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, you’re fine. I was just going to ask you one more question, then I was going to see if Rebecca had anything for you. The question I have doesn’t really apply from ’47 to ’53 so much. When you came back in the 80’s, the technology in photography changed so much over time, and compared to now, of course, it’s changed a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It didn’t change that much, yet. They hadn’t gotten into digital yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Digital kind of revolutionized everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Digital did revolutionize everything because it shortened everything. It can give you quick pictures, it’s got fine-grain. I’m a black and white person. You’ll find in my photography—I’ve got a whole history of photography. I was considered one of the top ones in the world, by the top man in the world, Kurt [S.] Safranski. Kurt Safranski, in 1934 had Der Dame magazine, and he used to do all kind of experimental work. He owned this magazine—no words, just pictures, juxtaposed to each other to show correlations. That was his idea.\\n\\n When they started Life magazine, Kurt was hired as their first picture editor for 10 years. He discovered and brought over Alfred Eisenstaedt, who was one of the top ones in the world at that time. [W.] Eugene Smith, [Henri] Cartier-Bresson—he just had all these people lined up. I met him. I go to New York City and I get to meet Kurt. I bring my portfolio—don’t know the guy from Adam—and I’m sitting in the office and he calls me in. He’s kind of a chubby man, older, and he says, “Oh, you vant to be a photographer, eh?” I said, “Yes,” so we sit down and he’s turning the pictures.\\n\\n I had a picture, a story that I did. A horse is crying at a funeral. Jim Matowitz had died, and he was the head of the Cleveland [Mounted] Police. They won three world championships as part of the Mounties. He hired all the men and he had all the horses for 32 years. He dies, so I’m going to the funeral. They’re all in Saint John’s Cathedral [Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist], and I’m looking around and I’m looking at the horses, and they looked like they were talking to each other. They were sighing, jumping up and down, so I thought, “Well, gee, I’ll start taking pictures,” and I got one with a tear coming down its face.\\n\\n I wrote a little essay to go with it. Kurt Safranski’s looking, he says [with a German accent], “Vat, your horses, de are crying. Ho, ho, ho ho.” He starts laughing like that, “ho, ho, ho, ho.” All the girls started to form around him in the office—this is in New York City—“Mr. Safranski, what are you laughing about? We’ve never heard you like this.” “Oh, the man, he’s a cartoonist with the camera,” he said, “he shoots ironies.” All through my portfolio, “Whew, you are going to be world-famous, every magazine going to vant you.”\\n\\n I’m on cloud nine. Here’s a guy that discovered—he’s telling me what I was, and I didn’t even know myself. I do shoot these ironies because I ran the streets, and I recognize the situations the other photographers never recognize because they come through some sort of different background, and I come from running off the streets. I see things on the street they never even notice, and they’re always ironies. They’re myself in the situation. This guy recognized it, and I thought, “Oh, boy.”\\n\\n Then he wanted to hire me and put me on salary. He had Howard Chapnick—Howard was an accountant—become his new business partner. A typical accountant, he would say, “Well, gee, Kurt, I can’t see where he’s any better than the other 30 men we already got on salary.” That kind of went out the window, but he says, “You send me the cartoons.” I sent it to him, and he never got them, but I had the thrill. I went home on cloud nine. Here was a guy that understood me. Then a year later I went up to Magnum [Photos], and they wanted to hire me. They had Henri Cartier-Bresson as a founder and Eugene Smith, and if you paid $1,000 you became a member. I’m sitting in the office, Inge Bondi from Sweden or somewhere, and she gets a phone call.\\n\\n Photographer’s calling from Chicago, he says, “How you doing?”\\n\\n He said, “Well, I’m just about wrapped up, I should finish up by tomorrow.”\\n\\n She said, “Well, why don’t you drop everything and go to New York? We have to have somebody up there do a day’s work, can you do that?” I’m sitting over there, I got nine kids, and I’m thinking to myself, “No way.” I turned down show business—Smoky, we really could have hit it big, but we wanted to stay local. So there again, that was another time. At the time, Magnum was the agency, so I knew where I could have been." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have to work with your circumstances." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I had a broken family, so I wasn’t going to leave those kids. You can’t hold a marriage together, gone six months at a time. The National Geographic [magazine] people do that. They go out six months, come back six months. You don’t have a marriage. It can’t last." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, you can’t do that. It’s like he said, if you’re going to be an engineer, you need to be married to your job. The same thing with those type of photographers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, well, the engineer, you could be at your own location. That works, but the other ones I see a lot, they’ve just become tramps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to see if Rebecca had any questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve just got two easy ones. When you were here at the Center, did you also have to take pictures of the dull and the mundane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. You might have two people getting an award over here at the Ad [Administration] Building." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did the everyday photography, too?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t do too much of that, but they’re doing a lot of that now. I even sent you a copy of the first issue of The Frontier [newsletter], volume 1, issue I, because I’m in there. They did a story on me. That’s how I happened to be there.\\n\\n Now you know why I left, too. We got that in, we got how I started. I don’t know—you got a lot of stuff you didn’t expect, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s all good. Did you have another?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, one more. Did you have a favorite camera that you liked to use, your go-to camera?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have a little Leica [C-2] that’s got the cover off. I bought a body for $20. I used it at the Plain Dealer in my pocket, and I took a lot of my great pictures because it was with me. It had a 25-milllimeter lens, which is very rare to find. You have 20s and you 50s and 35s, but this was a 25, which is half of a 50, so you get a 6-foot person, 6 feet away. I didn’t have to do much calculating with that. I just set the thing on shoot, and I shot a lot on the fly. I’d see things and I’d take a picture. My collection’s at CSU [Cleveland State University]. I had 51 boxes, and we’ve been going through them for a couple of years. I’m trying to write another book and I got my whole family two weeks ago, and they all picked out the pictures they want. They’re all going to CSU, and we have a contract where the family can get scans for 25 years, any ones they want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great, that’s great that you have that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I thought it should have a place to go because too many photographers, you never see their work. It disappears. I know Perry Craig gave his to the Cleveland Public Library, and a couple of the others. You got some little straggler stuff, but we have whole collections that nobody’s getting. Andy Crafert, Dudley Brombach—I don’t even know what happened with his and Dudley’s collection. He was a photographer for about 45 years at the Plain Dealer.\\n\\n This is history, it’s all being recorded. You go back, and it’s the changes of the city, anything. It’s all historical. We thought we’d better get it over, so I’m going to do some themes with my photo essays. The horses crying at the funeral and the camera over a bridge and the hazards in the life of a worm. You got to get down pretty low, there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I would love to see those. That’s great. I appreciate you coming today. We really appreciate you sharing your history, and is there anything we haven’t talked about that you wanted to mention about the NACA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I can’t think of anything. We covered pretty well what I had gone through in my head. I talk more like a street kid—I hope I cleaned it up today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did wonderful. We just thank you for coming. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William A. Wynne", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, very good. Thank you so much for asking me." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00232", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GreeneJH/greenejh.htm", + "original_file_name": "GreeneJH_12-8-04.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GreeneJH/GreeneJH_12-8-04.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Jay H. Greene", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 8 December 2004" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jay H. Greene" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 8th, 2004. This interview with Jay Greene is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas, and is a continuation of his interview conducted on November 10th, 2004. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Rebecca Wright and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal.\\n\\n I’d like to start today by just talking about the 1972 period when you went to work and moved on to the Shuttle Operations Section in the Flight Dynamics Branch, and if you can share with us about your initial duties at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess that was when I had Flight Dynamics Officers, the FIDOs, and the RETROs [Retrofire Officers], and I’m trying to remember whether that was post-Apollo or getting ready for Skylab and then ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project]. We always had FIDOs and RETROs, and they were always at one another’s throats. I don’t know why, but the RETROs were in charge of backward burns, and the FIDOs did forwards burns, and so I guess it got enough heated arguments, I decided we’d get rid of the RETROs, and we did that. Made a lot of people very aggravated. So we had Flight Dynamics Officers and Trajectory Officers after that, and the Trajectory Officers assisted the Flight Dynamics Officer. I can’t remember much more of note back then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You moved on to the Range Safety Coordinator in 1973 and ’74." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s just something I did. I was tasked by I guess it was [Robert F.] Bob Thompson was the [Space] Shuttle Program Manager, and there was a theory. There was a letter actually signed between the Air Force and NASA. It was actually between the Range Safety guy, who was “Davey” [David M.] Jones, General Davey Jones, and [Dr.] Kurt [H.] Debus was the Center Director at Kennedy [Space Center, Florida, KSC], and they both signed this letter that agreed that since the Shuttle was going to be virtually as safe as [Boeing] 707, there was no need for range safety destruct system on the vehicle.\\n\\n That lasted for a while, and then we decided—we, NASA, decided—that because of the unknowns during the entry phase for the first Shuttle flights, we’d put ejection seats on. We did that, and the ejection seats, although they weren’t designed for launch, could have been used, and in the Air Force’s mind, we could have bailed out of the vehicle that was as safe as a 707. Based on the decision to put the ejection seats on for entry, they rescinded their agreement not to have a destruct system on the Shuttle.\\n\\n So we implemented and designed the destruct system, fighting all the way to not have to do it. As a matter of fact, I was fired from that job, because I couldn’t get them to not put a range safety system on. It was inevitable it was going to be there. And that’s where we are today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you were fired from that position." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I get fired from a lot of jobs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Laughs] Did they put someone else in that position to keep fighting it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. Yes. Who’d they put in? [Rodney G.] Rod Rose. Rodney Rose, and though he spoke more eloquently than I did, he failed just as dismally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned in the last interview that you became head of the Flight Dynamics Section, and that was around 1974, about the same time, I guess, that you were fired from the other job, and then Section Head in 1976. Do you have any specific memories about that time period or anything you’d like to share?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. Not really. We had a good bunch of people. A lot of the landing and recovery guys came over to work with us, Ron [Ronald C.] Epps and [Michael] Mike Collins and some other people. [Charles F.] Chuck Deiterich was part of that group. No, nothing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then you moved on to Branch Chief in 1980?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I guess that’s when [Kenneth S.] Kenny Kleinknecht took over the combination of Flight Crew Ops [Operations] and I guess it was Flight Operations back then. Had [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz running Flight Ops and George [W. S.] Abbey running Flight Crew Ops, and in addition to the trajectory stuff we’d always done, I picked up some of the flight crew procedures and training stuff. These are the guys responsible for the crew checklist and procedures during ascent and entry. Another good bunch of people and some interesting work; initial phases of planning how you fly a Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any specific memories? You said it was an interesting time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. Not really. About that time, though, we were beginning simulations for the first Shuttle flight, and in addition to the other stuff, I was the ascent Flight Dynamics Officer for the first two Shuttles. Long years, long hours. In preparation for STS-1, we simulated I think the number was 1,843 hours of ascent simulations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Definitely a lot of simulation hours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about that first flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We simulated for a long time, and I think we probably scrubbed two or three times before the first launch. Everything was going good; we got down around within five minutes, maybe, maybe two or three minutes, of zero. We had a flight rule that said we needed two C-band radars and an S-band, and the C-bands were what we called skin trackers. They didn’t have a beacon that they pinged. They painted the vehicle and looked for a return signal. We had never skin-tracked ascents before. We had one S-band, and it was useless by itself, but with the two C-bands, it was supposed to give us a pretty good solution. Two C-bands alone, if they stayed locked on, would have done well for us.\\n\\n So we had a flight rule that said if we lost the S-band, we’d scrub the launch. We counted down, we started the APUs [auxiliary power units], and wouldn’t you know it, the S-band tracking station went down, and after arguing and arguing and arguing for years that we needed the two plus the one, I said, “Let’s go without the S-band,” and we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did you feel that it would be okay to do that at that point, since, as you said, you’d been arguing—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I got very smart in the last thirty seconds, and I guess the logic I used was that if we had the C-bands, we’d be okay. If we didn’t have the C-bands, the S-band was useless. So two C-bands was the right answer. We launched, and the vehicle started going up on the plot board, and the plot board sort of bent over and leveled out, and the trajectory didn’t. The pen just kept—we lofted. Went extremely high in altitude, and it looked like we were going off the plot board.\\n\\n We were all concerned and had no choice. The guidance was doing what it was doing, and active guidance didn’t start until second stage, till after you got rid of the SRBs [solid rocket boosters]. We rode it out, and we were really, really high, and I think the crew made mention of it; I knew they knew about it. Guidance took over, and everything worked out fine, but it was a little scary for the first two minutes of flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine it would have been. Can you talk about some of the changes to the Mission Control from the time, of course, of Apollo, and then the changes that were made to accommodate the Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much kept the same structure. The systems guys changed, because the systems were different. The trajectory guys, we kept on doing what we’d been doing since day one. The main engines were an added complication that we didn’t have on Apollo. The F-1 engines, the engines on the Saturn V were pretty straightforward, but there was a lot of thrust variations that could take place on the Shuttle engines that would affect the trajectory and what you do. Also, on Apollo, if you ever got into trouble, you could always shut down the engines and separate and fall back in, land in the water. We had recovery ships all across the Atlantic.\\n\\n On the Shuttle, though, the plan was always to get the Shuttle back either to orbit or back to the runway, and so we had some—and guys still do have some—pretty complicated processors that would, as we went along in the trajectory, compute what the available abort modes were. We had to come up with the air-ground calls that would let the crew know what to do just in case we lost com [communication], and how to initiate the aborts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it still operate the same? When you talked about Apollo last time and the back room and the support, and we talked a little bit about the calculations that had to be done, in being almost ten years difference in time, and of course, technology had made some leaps by that time—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not many." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not many. [Laughs] Did you still have that same relationship with the back room and those calculations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We had those guys down in the first floor, and they would run the computers, and they’d make the inputs for us. We didn’t get to the point that every trajectory operator had a keyboard and can control his own computations. That didn’t happen till after—well, it didn’t happen till midway through the Shuttle program, probably." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Around that time, you moved into training to be a Flight Director. Can you talk for a minute about what that training involves, and how you came to the decision you wanted to do that, or if you were asked to do that? Just some of the circumstances surrounding that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fortunately, back then you didn’t have to apply for a job. You’d sit around your office, and one day George Abbey would walk in and say, “Guess what you’re going to do.” Throughout my career, George has come in on many occasions and said, “Guess what you’re going to do.” I don’t know if I was fired during some of those or not. I don’t think so.\\n\\n But he came in one day, and he said, “We need some more Flight Directors, and I want you to do that.” That wasn’t a request, and so I moved down. We didn’t do formal training. It was all team up with somebody who was there. In my case, I pretty much followed Tommy [W.] Holloway for a while. I got to—let’s see; STS-6, the first flight of\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , was my first flight assignment, and I specialized in ascents. At least initially, I specialized in ascents. I came back and did them toward the end of my stint there.\\n\\n That was about the most challenging job you can ask for. The flight day pressures were one thing. The simulations were mental exercises that were as challenging as anything the agency has to offer. There were two things going on. One was the goal to train the crew to work with the Control Center, and at the same time train maybe a dozen different operators in the Control Center to the max extent possible. So instead of having one failure, which is about the most you’d expect during a launch, they’d try and give everybody something to play with, and the Flight Director would have to coordinate everybody’s problems and come out with a solution that got the crew safely to orbit or resulted in a successful abort and recovery of the crew. During the course of a day we’d run maybe eight launch-abort sims [simulations] is what we called them, and every sim had maybe eight, maybe ten different faults that the “Sim Sups” [Simulation Supervisors] would put in, and so by the end of the day you had somewheres between eighty and a hundred problems that you dealt with. It was a challenge and a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you worked with Tommy Holloway initially, STS-3 and 4. Can you tell us a little bit about backing him up? What you were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was watching more than anything else. Every once in a while I’d take a run myself, but it was pretty much watching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that all the Flight Directors choose a color for their team. Is there any story behind or any reason behind the emerald, or was it because green was already taken?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. Yes, and [Clifford E.] Cliff [Charlesworth] wouldn’t give it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Besides the simulations, and I know that was a lot of hours, and that’s what you indicated, is there anything else that Flight Directors were responsible for when they weren’t actually on a flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We ran the flight techniques meetings, and those were the meetings where we would talk operational issues in preparation for a flight, be it procedures or flight rules or how to respond to failures, what limit lines to use, what limits to set, and they were an offshoot of something called data priority, and the data priority meetings were what we did during Apollo, and those were [Howard W.] Bill Tindall’s [Jr.] meetings. I say that because I met his wife and his two daughters last night. First time I’d seen them in about fifteen years. Bill had this way of getting people in a room and hashing things out and coming to a consensus or dictating a consensus, and that’s how we developed all the procedures we had for Apollo. So that followed on into Shuttle.\\n\\n As I say, I did the ascents for a long time. I did all the rendezvous flight techniques, initially, developing the first rendezvous techniques that we used during the Shuttle Program. We didn’t know back then how much we would be rendezvousing. The Shuttle was built without an active rendezvous navigation system like Apollo had, and I remember I went forward to the program with a proposal that we put a beacon on the target vehicles. Bob Thompson, who did a hell of a job as Program Manager for the Shuttle, said, “I don’t know why you want that. This vehicle wasn’t made to rendezvous.” Little did he know that virtually every flight we flew, through the hundred first flights, was a rendezvous flight, be it Space Station or satellite repair. But we developed the techniques for how you did rendezvous." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At what point was that? Was that before the Shuttle actually started flying or was that after?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No, that was after I was doing ascents. I think the first time we tried a rendezvous was on STS-10, and it was a classified mission. Then we might have done some stuff on [STS-] 11. We were leading up to the SolarMax [Solar Maximum Satellite] repair mission, which I was fortunate enough to have the lead on. SolarMax satellite was built to be repaired on orbit. We were going to go up and rendezvous with it, and [George D.] Pinky Nelson was going to go out in the payload bay with the manned maneuvering unit on his back, that little jet pack. He flew to SolarMax, and he had a docking mechanism mounted about at his waist level, and he was supposed to line up and snare this satellite. He lined up and bounced off, and he bounced off two or three times, trying to get hooked up.\\n\\n It turned out there was a little thermal standoff about yea high [gestures] that wasn’t in the engineering drawings, and that prevented the mating of the two devices. So he flew back to the payload bay, and he was hanging on. He was out there with [James D. A.] Ox van Hoften, and [Robert L.] Bob Crippen decided he was going to try and grapple the rotating spacecraft using the arm. There was a rather hairy ride for the guys hanging on in the payload bay. Bob got a little overexuberant, and we finally called him off and had almost no propellant left. I mean, he just hosed it out.\\n\\n So we stood back, and we waited maybe a day or two, planning on how we were going to come in with a minimum propellant usage plan. Then the second try, went in, and he used almost no propellant. We grappled the SolarMax, put it in the payload bay. Spent two days with the guys going EVA [Extravehicular Activity], and they did some major repairs, redeployed the thing. Beautiful mission, although it didn’t start that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which flight was this, just for the recording?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was SolarMax, which was STS-41 Charlie [41-C], and it was 41 Charlie because nobody wanted to call it its numerical number. It was STS-13, and so those superstitious people changed the whole Shuttle numbering plan to avoid having an STS-13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s go back for just a moment and talk about, as you mentioned, your first mission as a Flight Director was STS-6, and it was the maiden voyage of the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . What are your memories of that flight and in this position for the first time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It felt good. We did the count maybe three or four times. We had a hydrogen leak problems on the vehicle, if I remember, and it took a while to get the vehicle tight enough that we could fly it. Aside from that, like most of the ascents, it was benign. You do all the training and training and training, and you’re prepared for all these contingency situations, and you get there and you fly a nominal, and it’s almost like magic. Most of them are like that. Some aren’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During Apollo and Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, you were used to dealing with a relatively small crew, two or three people at the most. Then with Shuttle more people were flying. Did that affect anything in the Control Room or as far as dealing with more people or on the simulations or anything?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. Not really. We dealt with the pilot, copilot, and one MS [Mission Specialist], and they were the flight crew we dealt with. They operated as a unit, and we treated them as a unit. We never said, “CDR [Commander], go do this,” or PLT [pilot]. The call was to the crew, and they did their own work management on board, so no, the crew size didn’t affect us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get to know the crews as well as you did during Apollo time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Better. Better. Better for a lot of reasons, and we had arguments, not arguments, disagreements. I would spend hours with Glynn [S.] Lunney, and he always advised that we were getting too close to the crews. I think what happened was in the early days, during the early Apollos when Glynn and Kranz were Flight Directors, if they had a beef, they’d go up through Chris [Christopher C. Kraft] and it’d all get settled, and the crews went up through [Alan B.] Shepard [Jr.] and [Donald K. “Deke”] Slayton, and it’d get settled. As Kraft and Shepard and Slayton moved away, neither the Flight Directors nor the crews felt they had the power that perhaps they needed for the job, and so we figured, well, this was a good time. Let’s work together and see if we can get issues solved. The relationships, I think—I don’t know about now, but back then—between the flight crews and the ground crews was extremely close, extremely close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some of those first missions, the first few—well, they carried some significant firsts on board, including the first woman, Sally [K.] Ride; and then [Guion S.] Guy Bluford [Jr.], the first African American; the first time we flew with a European on STS-8. Those missions were groundbreaking in their own way. Do you have any comments on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was external to what we were doing. Sally was a good person, and they flew a good mission. The fact that she was a woman really didn’t enter into it very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there beginning to be women in the control room at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There had been since early Shuttle, early Shuttle. You see, when I first got there, there were no women’s restrooms, and then one day they suddenly appeared without any warning signs. The first day, I walked into one. I’d been using it for ten years, and somebody changed the name without telling me. But that all worked out really well, really well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about 41-C. The next one that I have down that you worked on was [STS-] 51-D, and that was the one with the flyswatter. Can you share your memories of that mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t work that mission initially, and we let this LEASAT [Leased Satellite] out. LEASAT is—Syncom or LEASAT, it’s the same satellite; two different names for it. And nothing happened, and so we backed off, and we formed teams. There was one theory that there was a trigger that maybe got stuck and didn’t allow the firing mechanism to operate. It wasn’t a rendezvous flight, and so we had to put together rendezvous procedures and teletyped them up to the crew. We used the teletype machine to do it back then.\\n\\n Then we had to develop this thing that we could put on the end of the arm so that the arm operator, if we got close enough, could try and hit the trigger and activate the timing mechanism and fix the spacecraft. So we got all that up to the crew, and we got up close. I guess it was [Margaret] Rhea Seddon was the arm operator. Rhea got the arm out, and she swiped at it about three times and hit it pretty good, and we figured that maybe that was enough playing with a live bomb, so we backed off and left it on orbit. The little thing on the end of the arm looked like a flyswatter; it was a hoop. So that the flyswatter mission.\\n\\n So that happened, and the crew deorbited, and the Navy had this dead spacecraft on orbit, and 51-I was coming, and it was pretty much a not-much-doing flight. So the guys who were flying that flight lobbied. They went out to Hughes [Communications Services, Inc.] and talked to Hughes about bringing the spacecraft home, and that wasn’t too palatable, but we figured we’d go out and talk about it. So we went out to Hughes, and we had meetings for—well, we met for two days.\\n\\n I was late getting out there. I was on an attempted murder trial, which was sort of interesting. I didn’t want to miss this meeting, and I was on this damn jury, and this guy was guilty as hell, and we should have put him away for life, and we had a little old grandmother who was knitting, believe it or not, and, “Can’t do that to a man.” And tried to explain to her that if he was competent, it would have been a murder trial instead of a robbery trial. But anyway, I had the bailiff taking my tickets, and every hour he changed my return reservation, my reservation out to L.A. [Los Angeles, California] So I think we gave the guy seventy-five years.\\n\\n I made it out to the meeting on the West Coast, and we met in the bar at the LAX [Los Angeles International Airport] Hilton, and there was about four members of the crew and a couple of EVA guys. During the course of the day what we talked about, which was bringing the vehicle back to Earth for repair, turned into why don’t we see if we could repair it, and the Hughes guys put together a scheme. We sat in this bar, and the EVA guy—I forget his name, but he had a sketchpad, and he drew the tools we’d need if we wanted to do this. We went back to Hughes; talked about it. I made a phone call or two, and I was able to cut a deal, and Hughes wrote us a $10 million check to bring home to Houston, just to see if we could go do this. I’ve never been given a $10 million check. Usually given a lot of $10 million checks, but I’ve never received one before.\\n\\n So in the course of four months—four months—we went from a concept to building the hardware to do the repair to figuring out what exactly the onboard procedures had to be, what had to be replaced on the failed spacecraft. And in four months we flew, fixed it, put it in service. I think it was a fleet of four, and this was the only one that operated the way it should have after we fixed it. It was an incredible, incredible job. That was the one where this thing was about the size of a Greyhound bus, and the arm was broken, and so we did most of it with the crew holding onto the satellite while another crewman was working on it. It was phenomenal.\\n\\n At the end of it, we had to spin it up, because that’s how you stabilize one of these, and we had Ox van Hoften on the end of the arm; he held the thing. He spun it up manually, and every time he’d spin it, the crew would have to catch up with it and spin it some more. He’d hit it four or five times. I won a bet of a quarter from Cliff Charlesworth, who bet we wouldn’t do that. That was one of the neater flights we’ve ever done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever talk to Bob Thompson after all these rendezvous?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not about that. Not about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned earlier a DoD [Department of Defense] mission. You said that was the first rendezvous. Can you talk about the differences in preparing for a DoD mission and a normal mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they were classified. That was primarily the difference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As far as running the simulations and everything, it was just more—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, except that the simulations were as classified as anything on the flight, and the room was closed, and the procedures were confidential or secret or more. You dealt with a smaller bunch of people, because just “need to know” and classification limitations. We had a very good relationship with the people we dealt with in the Air Force. They all acknowledged that the service they got was better than they expected, and they all wanted to continue it. You know, there’s been a lot of talk, the Air Force versus NASA. A different bunch of people in the Air Force. Anybody we touched, we had super dealings with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "About this time, you were working as a Lead Flight Director. Can you talk for a moment about what the determining factors were, choosing a Lead Flight Director for flights? Was it depending on what the flight was supposed to be doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was one group that was primarily ascents and entries, and that’s probably the biggest time-critical—but they were fixed procedures that you’d tweak every flight, but pretty much the same old stuff. Lead Flight Director would coordinate a totally different mission every time we went, be it a rendezvous, a Spacelab, and would be required to coordinate three shifts of activity over a seven- to ten-day mission, and was responsible for mission success for that mission. So it was a different set of talents. It was almost a different job. And you get picked for what assignment you had, based on what your background was. [STS] 41-C was the first real big rendezvous flight, and I did all the rendezvous work, and so I got the lead. Then I got into the satellite repair part of it, and having done all that, [STS] 51-I became a natural, and so I picked that assignment up. Other guys specialized in Air Force missions, because they had the contacts with the DoD and the right clearances and knew the right people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any certain criteria for choosing your team for any given flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. You had veto authority, but pretty much left it to the organizations to put their best people in whatever shifts they were put on. Manning was left to the organizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The next mission that I have that you worked on was [STS] 61-C." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bill [Clarens William] Nelson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any specific memories about that mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bill Nelson. That’s the now senator from the State of Florida. He was something else to work with. He wanted to go to dinner one night. Got a call from his aide, who said—he was a congressman—“The congressman would like to have dinner with you.”\\n\\n I said, “Where?”\\n\\n He said, “Chi-Chi’s.” Remember Chi-Chi’s?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I said, “I’d rather die than go to Chi-Chi’s.”\\n\\n So he said, “Well, let me talk to the—.” So he talked to the congressman; he calls back, he says, “Congressman says wherever you want.”\\n\\n I forget—the Juarez Bar and Grill is where Pappasito’s is now? I said, “Why don’t we meet at the Juarez Bar and Grill?”\\n\\n So he said, “Okay. How do I get there?”\\n\\n I said, “It’s right across the freeway from Chi-Chi’s. It’s easy.”\\n\\n He says, “Well, tell me more.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, it’s on the Gulf Freeway between Bay Area [Boulevard] and NASA-1 [NASA Road 1].”\\n\\n He said, “Okay.”\\n\\n Well, they showed up three-quarters of an hour late, because they couldn’t find the Gulf Freeway exit off of I-45 [Interstate 45 south of downtown Houston is commonly called the Gulf Freeway because it is the direct route from Houston to Galveston, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico]. That was sort of a hint as to how the flight would go. That was also the flight—this congressman had a propensity for finding the camera and getting his face in front of it. That carried on prelaunch when he discovered that the mirror in the White Room outside the vehicle was a one-way mirror with a TV camera behind it, and he’d spent all sorts of time primping and prepping. So we got him on orbit one day, and it was really a routine flight, and we convinced [Robert L.] Hoot Gibson to give us a lot of downlink, a lot of television time.\\n\\n He said, “Okay. We’re going to have lunch, and we’ll leave the camera on.” And they turned the camera on on the flight deck, and the whole screen is Bill Nelson. He’s eating.\\n\\n So we said, “Hoot, we’d really like to get a little middeck.”\\n\\n Hoot put us off for a while for specific reasons. Eventually he said okay, and I had a guy, the INCO [Integrated Communications Officer] who would command the cameras from flight deck to middeck, and I said, “INCO, switch the cameras,” and he raised his hand and he started coming in, and by the time he pushed the button, Nelson had gone from the flight deck down to the middeck, and he was sitting in front of the camera again. So we watched in amazement.\\n\\n Finally I said, “You know, we’ve never used—.” We had a capability that was never used to do a split screen, use two cameras and put one on either side. So I told the CapCom [Capsule Communicator] to tell Hoot that we wanted to do a split-screen DTO [Demonstration Test Objective], just to see if he could be in two places at the same time.\\n\\n Hoot knew what we were doing, and he said, “We’ve never done that before.” So we had our little game. After the shift, we had to do a postshift press conference, and guy wrote for the [Houston] Chronicle [newspaper] was Carlos Byers. I think he still writes for them, although he’s not the space reporter anymore.\\n\\n Carlos drags me outside the [Press] Briefing Room, and he says, “I know what you guys were up to.”\\n\\n And I said, “I wasn’t up to anything.” That was 61-C." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking about those postshift press conferences and, as we mentioned before, some of the firsts during those first flights and then, of course, Bill Nelson, did you have to deal with the press quite a bit after each one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, constantly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was that like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I always enjoyed it. I had some big ones, like when Pinky Nelson bounced off, it was like flies on something, and the Press Briefing Room filled up, and they didn’t think we’d be able to pull it off. They could smell the kill. Generally they weren’t big deals, and we had some training on how to talk to the press." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that coordinated through PAO [NASA Public Affairs Office]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, sort of. I forget the guys who gave the course. They were ABC [American Broadcasting Corporation] execs. As a matter of fact, they were so good, they were leaving us to go to Johnson & Johnson, and teach Johnson & Johnson how to put a pretty face on the Tylenol [acetaminophen] problem [product tampering in 1982]. We got into that after there were a couple of incidents where some of our guys didn’t quite answer questions correctly and got into some trouble with the press." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you like to take a break for a minute?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When we left off, we were talking about STS 61-C and that flight. After 61-C landed in January, ten days later the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident occurred. If you would, please share your memories of that with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[STS] 61-C, number one, wasn’t supposed to land as late as it did. They had trouble getting off, and they had trouble landing because of weather, and I forget who it was that quit, who left the Flight Director Office. I was requested to do the launch of the next mission, [STS] 51-L, and so I just stopped supporting 61-C, and I went and simulated with the 51-L guys. It was a routine launch. It was another TDRS [tracking and data relay satellite] mission.\\n\\n A couple of days earlier we attempted a launch, and we scrubbed because we had a government-supplied handle that went on the hatch of the vehicle, and they couldn’t get it off. Had they gotten the handle off, 51-L might not have happened. Somebody else might have had it happen to them, but not those guys. We also scrubbed on a beautifully clear day, based on a bad weather forecast.\\n\\n Then we got in the day of 51-L, and there was discussion—not a lot of discussion—about the icing on the [launch] pad and the cold temps [temperatures]. The shift prior to mine had worked the problem, and they concluded that as far as the Orbiter [\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n ] was concerned, we had no concerns about the weather. We didn’t know about what was lurking on the SRB [Solid Rocket Booster] side.\\n\\n So we launched, and we went throttle down, throttle up, woops. [Frederick D.] Fred Gregory and [Richard O.] Dick Covey—I was on the Flight Director console; they were the CapComs. I was just working the room, and there was a TV [television] monitor to my left, and I never saw the TV monitor. I did see Fred and Dick. I saw both their jaws drop, and there was the cloud. We got the report that they were tracking multiple pieces, and kept on hoping that some part of the vehicle would come out and everything would have a happy ending, because it was supposed to and it didn’t.\\n\\n I was especially close to that crew, especially close to virtually all of them. Very close to Judy [Judith A. Resnick] and Dick [Francis Richard Scobee]. So that’s what happened. I gave a press conference about two days later, and that was tough duty. That was tough duty. But the press was on our side, and they were supportive. There were actually some good human beings out there. So that was 51-L in a nutshell." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Immediately after the accident occurred, and you said that you didn’t see the monitor, as far as the control room, what were the first things that you did as Flight Director once you knew that the accident had occurred?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We secured the room; nobody in or out. We secured the communications. We got everybody getting their data together and writing incident reports. We worked for a long time trying to get the search and rescue guys to enter the area. They were worried that there was debris that was falling for an hour after the accident, and they didn’t want the choppers anywheres near it, which was understandable in the light of day, but at the time was disconcerting, that we could have had guys out in the water and they didn’t want to get close to them. That’s pretty much what we did. Released the operators. Was very calm, cool, and collected; went home and completely broke down. It was a rough day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the days following—of course, you mentioned the press conference—what were your duties immediately following the accident?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "None. None." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement with Sally Ride’s report [Leadership and America's Future in Space]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By October 1987, you became Chief of the Safety Division." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to move on to that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I decided, for a lot of reasons, that I’d had all the fun I wanted to have in the Control Room. I went on and I did a couple of months, a few months, half a year—who knows; something like that—working a lunar exploration group, and then I didn’t like that and needed something more challenging. [Charles F.] Charlie Bolden [Jr.] was running the Safety Division. I took over from Charlie.\\n\\n Charlie did people, and then I brought engineering rigor in, and we developed a pretty good safety operation, and we developed a Shuttle Safety Review Board. We reviewed the hazard reports, not only for the Orbiter, but for each of the other elements, and it took us about a year. We visited all the sites. We had membership from all the sites. I probably learned more about the vehicle in that year or two than at any other time in my career. It was a great education.\\n\\n But after doing safety for two years, I got a call. I had a buddy at KSC who was my counterpart. He came in at about the same time I did, and he had a strong engineering background and understood they needed safety guys, but why me, Lord? So he called one day, and he says, “We’ve got a problem.”\\n\\n I said, “What’s the problem, Bob?”\\n\\n He says, “You know, if we stay on this job much longer, we’re going to have to read the manuals.”\\n\\n And I said, “Good put.” So I forget who I let it be known that I was ready to get out. I left there and went to the Shuttle Program, working for [Leonard S.] Nicholson. I did that for a while, and it got me into program management, and I learned a lot in that that year, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to share with us some of the things you learned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, budgets and schedules and resources. It was a whole different thing than anything I’d ever been used to. That didn’t last too long, because one day George called, and this was after the first President [George H. W.] Bush decided we’d go back to the Moon, this time to stay, and on to Mars, is what he said.\\n\\n George said, “We want you to go to Washington [D.C., NASA Headquarters] and be a Deputy AA, Associate Administrator for Exploration.” See, they named this guy [Michael D.] Mike Griffin as the AA, and I had worked some stuff we can’t talk about with him. He used to be part of the Star Wars guys, General [James A.] Abrahamson’s guys. He was their head of technology. Well, Mike got named as the AA for Exploration, and I became his Deputy.\\n\\n I turned George down twice for that job, and I figured I had beat him. Then he had the audacity to have Chris Kraft call, and they were both singing the national anthem and waving the flag and so I went to Washington, and I did that, two years. We put together a proposal on how we’d go back to the Moon, and we only had about a $10 million budget. It wasn’t much. At the end of two years, the budget got canceled, the program got canceled, all my friends got canceled, and I was back at the Johnson Space Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time period, did you work with the Department of Energy [DOE], discussing nuclear power and propulsion?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did some of that. When [Daniel S.] Dan Goldin came in, among other things he put together these study groups to how NASA would team with Department of Energy on about ten different areas. I was given cochairmanship with a guy from DOE, and we ran a board on nuclear power and propulsion, something I knew absolutely nothing about, but if you surround yourself with the right number of Ph.D.’s and nuclear physicists. We did that and put together what I think is still a dynamite piece of paper; it was about fifty pages in length. And Goldin never read it, because he said it was too thick. So there you are. Still a dynamite piece of paper." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was it working with the Department of Energy and working with another agency like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had a very good relationship, very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you in the D.C. area the whole time, or did you commute back and forth?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Commuted. Commuted. I commuted when I was in D.C. all the time, which wasn’t a bad deal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, in the early ‘90s, you moved to Engineering Directorate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s after Exploration went out of business. I needed a place to escape to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your role in that directorate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had a Technology Group, and it was ahead of its time—or behind its time—and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I sat there and waited for the next time George came to call. Eventually he came, and he said, “We need an Orbiter Project Manager.” I did that for a few years. That was an amazingly good feeling, owning four Shuttles. Going down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and visiting them and actually feeling ownership and responsibility for them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the duties that you had in that position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was technical, schedule, and budget for the entire Orbiter fleet, and a very close working relationship with our contractor, which was North American Rockwell [Corporation], and then later, Rockwell. Very good friendships; very close relationships with the guys at the Cape, contractor guys, government guys. A very fulfilling position." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the move after that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "George came to see me again. Yes, I probably antagonized a lot of people, because I was dead opposed to the [Team] USA Concept [for Global Space Commerce] and the effects it would have on the Johnson workforce. I was right, but they decided it was time to put me somewheres else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What concerns did you have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That we’d turn the technical responsibility for Shuttle engineering over to a contractor, and they might or might not have been able to assume those responsibilities. We did great damage to the NASA workforce, and they couldn’t assume those responsibilities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You went on to work as Deputy Manager for Technical Development for the ISS [International Space Station] Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you like to talk about that for a moment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was great fun. George knew that that station was in deep, serious trouble, and he asked me to go over and see what I could do. So I went over and did things and made things happen, and we got a pretty good Space Station up there. So I feel very proud of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How closely did you work with the contractors that were involved in that program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very closely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you describe some of the issues that you worked on or encountered during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We worked on every piece of hardware, on the node, on the lab, solar arrays, the ECLS system, Environmental [Control and Life Support] System, com system. I was able to go down the Cape and climb in the lab before it launched; climbed in the node before it launched, and was able to just do 360s, and wherever you looked, there was a story about that piece of hardware or that piece of hardware. It all came together, and it’s working far beyond anybody’s expectations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk for a minute about working with the international partners?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t. My job was to get the American elements and get them launched. We had things like we put in an altitude chamber at the Cape. We didn’t put it in; we took the old Apollo altitude chamber at the Cape, and we used it to leak-test the node and the lab. So we reconditioned that whole facility, and it works great. Found pieces of it lying in the grass field behind the building, and we had to recondition it. We went in there the first day, and we wanted to take over the facility. We looked at it, and god, it was dirty. When we toured it, there was the ASTP paperwork, blueprints folded out, and the facility was abandoned in place.\\n\\n As we were leaving the facility, another group was coming to look at it, and that was the production crew for Armageddon [1998 movie], and they wanted to use it. That was their weightless training facility. I talked to the guys at the Cape. I said, “Hey, we’ve got to get this place cleaned up. Maybe they’ll be willing to pay for the cleanup.”\\n\\n We tried that. They came back and said, “Nah, they like it dirty.”\\n\\n But we did that. We instituted integration testing, where we took all the modules and moved them closer together and verified alignments and wired them together. We flowed fluids between them. Did a lot of neat stuff that made Space Station a success." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it like seeing it launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wonderful. Wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also received some prestigious awards for your work on Space Station, the Distinguished Service Medal for NASA, the Stellar Award for the Rotary, and a Silver Snoopy [Award] in 2000. Would you like to talk about any of those awards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "None of them had any money. [laughter] So I got a nice piece of rock for the Stellar Award. That was nice. That was nice. Distinguished Service Medal, that’s usually an end-of-your-career award, and I think people gave it to me hoping it would be. And the Silver Snoopy wasn’t—I don’t know. But that’s nice to have, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From that position you moved into your role as Chief Engineer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you describe what you do in that position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I advise the Center Director, primarily. I have a group that’s a Systems Management Group that does cost and schedule analysis and systems engineering support for the center. I have a group that does the ISO [International Organization for Standardization] support for the center. As a result of the CAIB [\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n Accident Investigation Board], there was a move to get what they called independent technical authority going. We waited for [NASA] Headquarters and waited for Headquarters.\\n\\n We implemented an Independent Technical Authority [ITA] organization. I have about seven engineers working there, all highly talented people, and they’re dispersed to the programs in the onsite organizations, and we have signature authority on all Shuttle and Station change paper, as a result of this ITA. We’re still fighting Headquarters on how it ought to be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In 2002, Director [Jefferson D.] Howell [Jr.] established the Engineering Review Board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and that’s something I use to technically review whatever I feel needs to be looked at." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is your favorite part of this job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The one you have currently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Getting ready to retire. Trying like hell to do that. I don’t know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n accident happened while you were still working. What were you doing that moment, and what are your memories of the\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n ?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was up in the [JSC] Center Director’s viewing room. We heard the com outages. At first, didn’t think much of it, and then the Flight Dynamics guys reported failure to lock on with the C-bands. Remember, the C-bands are skin trackers, and they don’t require an active system, and the fact they couldn’t lock on said nothing was there. Another bad day. Although, personally, I wasn’t as close to this crew as I was to the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n guys, but it’s been tough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In light of your experience going through\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n in the Control Room, were you able to provide any sort of guidance or support for anyone?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. They did all the right things, and it was a different situation. It was a different situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in any of the recovery or the investigation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Peripherally. Peripherally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything you’d like to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During your career, since it’s run quite a few years, you’ve worked with a variety of different Directors and also NASA Administrators. Do you have any comments about any of their management styles or any of those people in particular?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kraft, he was probably the best. [Glynn S.] Lunney was a good man to work with. Worked with Crippen a lot, [Richard H.] Dick Truly. Good people. Dan Goldin, not so good. The current Administrator [Sean O’Keefe]—don’t tell anybody I said this—not so good. We’re lacking a leadership organization with a lot of space experience like we used to have, and it’s going to hurt." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What would you consider your favorite position while you were here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the [International Space] Station job. I liked them all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which of these positions do you think were the most challenging?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Flight Director, Orbiter Project Manager, and the Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Laughs] I get the feeling you like to be challenged." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My bicycle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, talk about your bicycle. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I ordered a bicycle about fifteen months ago—no, seventeen months ago—from a little mechanic in Chester, Connecticut, and when it comes, I told the Center Director seventeen months ago, I’m leaving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are your plans for your retirement, other than riding your bicycle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m going to ride my bicycle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you going to ride it anywhere, or is it just around here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jay H. Greene", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just around here primarily. For what this guy charges, I’ve got to ride it a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we stop, I’m just going to ask real quickly if Rebecca or Jennifer have any questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, we appreciate you being here." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00898", + "metadata": { + "category": "Earth System Science at 20", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/ESS/WicklandDE/wicklandde.htm", + "original_file_name": "WicklandDE_3-26-10.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/ESS/WicklandDE/WicklandDE_3-26-10.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Earth System Science at 20 Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Diane E. Wickland", + "location_date": "Washington, D.C. – 26 March 2010" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Diane E. Wickland" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 26th, 2010. This oral history is being conducted with Dr. Diane Wickland who is currently the manager of NASA’s Terrestrial Ecology Program and has served in this position since 1987. This interview is being conducted at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, as part of the Earth System Science at 20 Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. We both want to again thank you for stopping your day and coming in to visit with us. We’d like for you to start by telling us how you first got involved in your field of expertise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve always been interested in plants. I grew up on a farm. Of course there were the crops and the garden, but the wild plants, the wild flowers and weeds, were always somewhat more interesting to me. When I went to college it didn’t take me long to find botany as the field I wished to specialize in. My questions then became more sophisticated, like trying to understand stress in plants and why some plants are weedy and common as opposed to rare and hard to grow.\\n\\n That took me into ecology as opposed to other aspects of botany. It was interesting, I was just making that choice at the same time the first Earth Day occurred [April 22, 1970]. All of a sudden ecology became a word people recognized and knew about, even if they thought it meant environmentalism as opposed to a scientific discipline. When I started out, it was an esoteric, not well understood field, but my career started moving along at the same time the environmental movement started becoming very visible and active.\\n\\n I did my graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and studied vegetation growing on abandoned—the word they used in the literature was derelict—mines. Heavy metals are toxic to many plants, and yet there were some plants that were thriving in these otherwise barren settings. I studied the ecological setting for those plants and was in particular interested in understanding which species responded to stress and what combinations of plants were different and unique there.\\n\\n I didn’t connect up with NASA until I was nearly done with my PhD. One of the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory [JPL, Pasadena, California] named Barry [Barrett N.] Rock was doing research in a field called geobotany in the mineral exploration world. Geobotany means exploring for mineral deposits by using signals you might see in plants. Such signals might be the effects of stress that the plants show or potentially the species of plant that grows there and is more tolerant of those situations.\\n\\n He discovered my work at one of the professional society meetings, and we started talking because he was interested in the heavy metal stress and the sites I was doing in North Carolina. That developed into an opportunity to apply for a postdoctoral [postdoc] position through the National Research Council [NRC] program; at that time they administered it for NASA. It was a NASA-funded postdoc but administered through the NRC. We still have a postdoc program, but a few years ago they changed the contractor and it’s no longer administered by NRC.\\n\\n So I applied for a postdoc. That was an interesting time too, because I was just getting my PhD right after Ronald Reagan was elected President, and funding for environmental science, generally speaking, was just crashing. It was very difficult to find a job. People around me, myself included, applied for hundreds of jobs. I was very fortunate to have made that connection with Barry Rock and have the opportunity to apply for that NRC-managed postdoc. I got an offer. I might have gotten another postdoc offer; it was in the works when I accepted the other one. But I was happy to find a job. I was also happy to find a job that was going to be so stimulating.\\n\\n I had not done any remote sensing-related research in my training, so getting into remote sensing was a new aspect for me. Talking to Barry initially, and colleagues of his at JPL later on, it just seemed like wow, you can look at ecosystems from larger scales, larger perspectives. You can do regional and continental studies, and also some of the new remote sensing technologies that were allowing you to do more than just identify a vegetation type. You might be able to say something about its chemical composition, or, in my initial areas of interest, stress. That was all pretty exciting, and it seemed like it might be a good career move and an opportunity.\\n\\n At that time there weren’t very many ecologists at NASA, either at the [NASA] Centers or certainly at Headquarters, so that was also an interesting thing—an opportunity to have an impact, pulling two different things together. That’s how I got started. Then the only major shift in that trajectory was after a couple of years, probably too brief a period of time, I moved into management and stopped doing my own research. The program I manage, the scientists I interact with, the research directions we’ve defined are all still pretty much relevant to that broader set of issues, global ecosystems, how they’re changing, how they respond to change, what aspects of these systems can you measure from space. That’s what the program does. I’ve pretty much stayed engaged in the things that I’ve been interested in, but it scaled up rather fast both in the scale that remote sensing can address and my span of influence as a manager as opposed to a scientist." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading some of the information. I know someone commented that they feel that you’ve been successful because no matter where you’ve been you’ve kept the heart of the scientist. I took that as the programs were still stirred by your concern of gathering scientific information. Do you feel like you were able to put projects with the people that you managed, those projects that made such an impact on the areas of research that you wanted to do as a scientist, before you took to management positions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do, I do. In fact some of the people out there now are doing things I couldn’t have even imagined would have been possible. It’s interesting. Back in the late ’80s I would have said categorically you can’t remotely sense biomass. You can’t identify species from space. And we’re doing a bit of that right now. I could stand by my “you can’t identify species,” because you can only do it in certain settings and for species with certain properties, but remote sensing has advanced even well beyond what I could have imagined. That’s an interesting perspective I have as well.\\n\\n The field started before I came here. I’m not going to take credit for getting ecology and vegetation science front and center in NASA’s contribution, but I will take some credit for growing it and solidifying it and making sure we got the best scientists and the best projects moving forward. That all started a little bit before I joined NASA, and in particular joined Headquarters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you feel were some of the components that you wanted to inject into this field to make it grow in a path that would continue actually growing and pulling in the information that you wanted? For instance, the scientists that came to work for you, what were some of the aspects that you were looking for in their work that would help build your program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a good question. You’re looking for creative ideas obviously. You’re looking for scientific rigor. When I first learned a little bit about remote sensing I think the broader ecological community was very skeptical about its utility because the possibilities had been oversold in the early days. Sometimes when you get a new technique, it can do everything, it’s wonderful, it will change the world. And when it doesn’t do all that, people get skeptical and they don’t believe what can happen. So I think insisting on scientific rigor and not overpromising or overhyping the findings was something I was looking for.\\n\\n To that end you really need to get mainstream ecologists into the program. Mainstream ecologists, just as I started out, probably didn’t have much remote sensing training. Matching them up in research teams with the people who understood the biophysics of remote sensing and were familiar with the satellite systems was something that was important back in those days and is still important now. It’s one path towards getting into the field. Although now, I think more ecologists will have the opportunity to get trained in graduate school-type courses in remote sensing if they’re interested in it, even being encouraged to do so by their advisers. So it’s a little different, but back then it was really important.\\n\\n There were some programs at the NASA Centers that were very effective in doing that too. That was the sort of thing that I encouraged as much as I could. By doing so I think we brought some of the best ecologists, ecosystem-level ecologists, into the field to make sure the science questions were sound and the scientific analyses and interpretations weren’t overblown or delivered out of context with the scientific understanding, because a remote sensing specialist might be able to make an interpretation, but they can’t fit it into the ecological understanding of the day. Those kinds of partnerships, fostering those things, were pretty important early on.\\n\\n The other thing was just making sure we were able to recognize the best ideas and the best fit to what the capacity of remote sensing was at the time. That’s not so much me as a good peer review process, getting the right people in so that you get good insight into character and quality of proposals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned not all Centers had ecologists." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your capacity, or in your role at Headquarters, how were you able to reach out to all the Centers at NASA, or was that part of your goal? Were you trying to reach out to those that already had programs in place, or were you trying to get Centers to expand their ideas of how they could involve your goals into their goals?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little bit of both. Three or four Centers have programs that are compatible with biological-ecological processes in Earth science. Their programs have waxed and waned over the years in terms of how many people on staff they might have had and how deeply engaged they were. It’s really hard to grow things at NASA Centers unless the NASA Center also makes some kind of a large-scale commitment. It really rather depended sometimes on the people and which direction their interests too them.\\n\\n I think I’ve been more successful building expertise and involvement in the NASA program in the broader community than at any one NASA Center. JPL, NASA Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland], NASA Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] are the main players in this area. There’s been some work over the years at Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi], at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] and at Kennedy [Space Center, Florida], but at Kennedy, just one or two projects maybe. They do a lot of controlled environmental systems research for the manned program, and controlled environmental studies are interesting for other research questions related to terrestrial ecology.\\n\\n If you asked the Centers, I suspect they would probably say I’m not as friendly to building capacity there as maybe they’d like, but I think we’ve made pretty good use of the people on staff. I think we’ve had the ability in some places, especially at Goddard and JPL, to hire some people that added strength and depth to that part of the program.\\n\\n How much the Centers engage is also connected to what remote sensing technologies are being developed and/or used, because when we’re doing something that plays well to their in-house expertise then they have a lot more to offer.\\n\\n An example right now is we’re beginning to prepare for a decadal survey mission called DESDynI—stands for Deformation, Ecosystem Structure and Dynamics of Ice. It’s a lidar and a radar instrument working together, and JPL has a very strong radar program. In the past couple of years JPL’s funding from my program has probably doubled, or maybe even more than that, because they can really help us begin working on algorithms and answering questions about how best to deploy and utilize the technology. A lot of mission trade studies are still going on. When we weren’t developing a radar mission, those scientists weren’t quite so central to every solicitation that I have. Not that they weren’t doing work in that area, there just wasn’t quite such an emphasis. So that’s evolved and waxed and waned over the years as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How has the evolution of remote sensing and the changes in technology impacted your work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s just had a huge impact. We went from a period of time from when I joined NASA, until the launch of the first EOS [Earth Observing System] platform, the Terra [satellite], when all we really had in terms of our own US remote sensing assets were Landsat [satellites] for some analysis of land cover, and the AVHRR [Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer] sensor where you could do a two-band ratio called a vegetation index. Sometimes we used thermal channels. So we had two tools and maybe four or five different bands of spectral information to work with for two decades.\\n\\n Then all of a sudden we had multiple instruments with dozens and dozens of different spectral bands and different spectral information. We had passive microwave. We had multiangle observations. We had observations of atmospheric gases that allowed us to trace the effects of forest fires. All of a sudden we had a whole bunch of new tools. We were able to better quantify the intensity, temperatures if you will, of fires. That enabled us to map the areas of different kinds of fires, for example, forest fires versus grassland fires. We were able to do many new things with these new tools that we were unable to attempt in the past, because we just didn’t have any other information than those two satellites and their few bands.\\n\\n So there’s just been this huge blossoming of the things you can do with remote sensing, as well as the different types of data that you can put together. Either complementary information from two different satellites to understand something more fully, or completely different information that you can bring multiple independent sources to a single question and gain more leverage on it that way. It’s really changed a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about computer modeling?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Computational capacity has, of course, also really made a difference. Modeling is a particularly good tool for the NASA program because remotely sensed data, being synoptic and global in its scope, can drive global models and large regional models. It is a rich data source for modeling. From the beginning, I felt investing in modeling was really crucial. We spent quite a lot of time and effort developing models that were compatible with remote sensing inputs. We now have quite a few models out there that do that. Of course computational capacity has increased a lot, so that you can model dynamics and over longer periods of time, with reasonable amounts of computer time.\\n\\n Back even in the ’90s if you wanted to run a year’s physiology in an ecosystem model you were running a model on a big computer for a couple of months. Now they can do it on thier desktop in a couple of hours. It just opens up the kinds of questions you can ask. So that’s definitely been part and parcel of it.\\n\\n Even more than just the modeling, in terms of how computational capacity has also changed and aided what we can do, is the fact that remotely sensed data is also large-volume data. Because it’s global, because it’s synoptic, because you may be getting finer spatial resolutions and many spectral channels, it’s large-volume data. Again, what used to take months or years to do now you can do in a day or a week. Being able to process and extract information from these huge volumes of data is now much easier, and that enables whole new sets of questions to be asked, even simple ones that you just couldn’t get at.\\n\\n We’ve had Landsat for the longest time of any of the ongoing satellite series, but a global Landsat mosaic was initially impossible because of limited computing capacity, as well as, I think, just physically collecting the data from the ground stations. It is now something that you might do once every decade over a short period of time. It has changed from a huge effort over many years, to something we might be very close to doing on an annual basis. Right now we’re not quite there yet. It’s just simply the computational capacity and the ability to ingest and digest large amounts of data." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is it easier to share this information now than when you first started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. The Internet and the data system capabilities that have been developed over the years, in particular with the EOS project, have revolutionized how people access data, use data." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like it increases the advancement of discovery or of analysis, because you now have better tools and the ability to share globally that you didn’t have 20 years ago?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, absolutely. The scientists have, almost at their fingertips, access to whatever they need to tackle the next question. There are notable examples to the contrary, but for the most part they don’t have to spend too much time pulling in a new data source and prepping it to run their model or do whatever analysis they’re going to do. You can just go get it, and in some cases just use it. It’s not always that simple. Nor do I believe it should always be that simple, because it’s still a complex data type and you really need to understand the data, and what you’re doing with it, so as to make sure you don’t do silly things.\\n\\n Too easy may not be a completely good thing, but scientists will still clamor for more tools and services to make ever increasing amounts of data and different data types readily available and readily useful. We’ve learned a lot of hard-won lessons over the years in what works and what doesn’t there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the mid ’80s, as you were getting started, the Earth System Science [ESS] concept was being talked about. In ’88 the Bretherton [Diagram] came out and the report “[Earth System Science:] A Program for Global Change” and the ESS program. Where were you at this point? Were you aware that these discussions were going on? What did you think about the concept of these scientists now starting to work closer together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was not engaged in the NASA program at the very beginning of all of that, but my first boss here at Headquarters, Bob [Robert E.] Murphy was. He’s told me many a story about the beginnings, and there probably are many stories about the beginnings. But I came in pretty early on, so it was just fascinating to watch the whole thing unfold and blossom.\\n\\n I was excited from the beginning. The idea of doing Earth System Science and the satellite measurements that went with it just seemed like it was a winner from day one. Yes we need to do this; yes this is going to be really important and useful. Looking at the Earth as an integrated system was a no-brainer. This is it, you can’t think of any more important scientific goal for the field. The science in particular—it was just yes, of course. And the only thing that you say is wow, could we really pull something that integrated and complex and large-scale off. So just wow.\\n\\n I was at JPL as a postdoc in 1983. At that point in time, I don’t think Earth System Science was yet the buzzword. The buzzword was global habitability. I’m sure you’ve probably heard other people mention that. According to my friend Bob Murphy, that arose out of a couple of different lines of thinking, within NASA mainly, with heavy influence from the planetary part of the program. They talk about things like life on other planets and other systems, the habitable zone around a star. So there was some thinking that we should study the habitability of planet Earth. I think there was probably some growing recognition that environmental pollution and other things going on may be changing the system in some way, such that it makes it an even more compelling set of questions. That idea was floating around when I hit my postdoc.\\n\\n I also remember going to a talk at JPL somewhere in the middle of that timeframe, probably ’84, from Shelby [G.] Tilford, who was the division director for whatever the Earth Science Division was called then, about “System Z.” This was a grand integrated satellite that became the EOS program. It started out as System Z. I was pretty wowed by the scope of that. I think I remember talking, sitting around the lunch table at JPL with some of the geologists there, and they were pooh-poohing—it’s too grand, it’s too ambitious, how could that ever get pulled off and so on. Not everybody was instantly thrilled, but I was impressed. I was impressed with the vision, and I didn’t have too much of a basis for assessing the practicality that early in my career anyway.\\n\\n Those were my two first exposures, one, to the science, and two, to the satellite missions that NASA was envisioning that went with it. According to Bob Murphy, and the things I’ve gleaned from talking to other people, when we started talking about global habitability outside of NASA it was greeted with the “not invented here” reaction—why should we be interested in this? I think the people who wanted to really make a splash, create momentum for this big program, learned very quickly. Again I’m speculating because I wasn’t there firsthand, but this is the way it looked to me based on the things I’ve heard from other people in retrospect.\\n\\n The NASA folks very quickly said, “Okay, we’ve got to sell these ideas in a different context. We’ve got to go do our homework with the other [national] agencies and the scientific community. We’ve got to do our homework internationally with our space agency partners and the international scientific groups—in particular the International Council of Scientific Unions, ICSU. After a couple more years of talking over these ideas of studying the whole Earth and using synoptic measurements, remote sensing, in combination with process studies on the ground and in situ networks, we could really begin to understand how the Earth functions and how it might be changing. ”\\n\\n That began to take off. Simultaneously the seeds were laid for the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program [IGBP] that embraced the concept of Earth System Science and the research elements that were more biologically aligned. Very quickly there was a turf issue with the World Climate Research Program, WCRP, because they already had staked out the climate side of it, but the seeds were planted for those two programs to take on Earth System Science.\\n\\n At the same time NASA, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] and NSF [National Science Foundation]—it was a multiagency effort—commissioned the Bretherton [Earth System Science] Committee that wrote the “Earth System Science” report. It was in the early days of thinking about that committee’s work that I think the term “Earth System Science” really started being more used.\\n\\n Once that report was matured and people started briefing it out, even before it was published, Earth System Science really became the focus within the US research community. Global change started becoming the term that was used more internationally, but those two phrases started really characterizing a whole set of ideas. The Bretherton report and the planning for the satellite missions that would address the science in that report were developed in the mid to late ’80s. They engaged a really broad crosscut of the research community in the US and also internationally in one way or another.\\n\\n We’ve done a lot of our planning in more recent years through the National Academy of Sciences, but Earth System Science wasn’t started that way. It was a group that was commissioned by the several agencies and then reached out to the broad community and pulled people in, and was really more bottom-up and grassroots than things that come out of the Academy. I personally think that was the reason for the success of those programs. One, you got really broad input and perspective so you knew the community’s interests and best thinking was engaged, and two, you had the whole community buying into the idea and the imperative to tackle such a large program. In retrospect I’m even more impressed with the process than I was at the time because back then I was quite young.\\n\\n I attended many of the Bretherton committee���s meetings. Not all of them but more in the later stages—it seems like it was developed over a couple years. I don’t actually remember how long it took." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it did. They actually started in ’83. That was their first meeting and they published that first report in ’88." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That makes sense. I came to Headquarters in February ’85 I believe it was, as a detailee from JPL. I got to sit in on a lot of the meetings. I saw it happen. Later on I participated in some of the EOS instrument panels. It just seemed to be the right way to plan something like that, to really broadly engage the community and take the time needed to work the issues, refine the questions, and really really get a solid plan together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your expectations after hearing [about the plan]? Like you mentioned you were young. As far as you knew, this was how all things were planned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly, exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not knowing that this was very different from how most things were put together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I can’t really comment if that was the first time a major program was planned like that, but it was certainly my first exposure to that kind of planning. I don’t know what my expectations were. At Headquarters you hear enough of the people talking strategy and worrying about politics. We were originally planning for the satellites in the EOS series to be deployed by the Space Shuttle and have them serviceable. Of course, after the Challenger [STS 51-L] accident, that all changed quite a lot. The politics of selling and securing the resources—you knew there were people who were worried about it. I guess because I didn’t know how big a challenge it was, I expected it to succeed. I thought the science was so compelling and that the community was so behind it that how could it not happen?\\n\\n From looking back now over the ups and downs, I realize that I probably would have been a lot more worried if I’d had this perspective then, but at the time it seemed like everything was positive, that there was just a lot that suggested it should succeed. In the international community the development of the IGBP was enormously exciting and supportive too. The other space programs were beginning to think about their contributions, and it just seemed like it should work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Giving those examples, what are some of the key elements or decisions, events that occurred that you believe provided that current direction and the correct direction for the Earth System Science?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the earlier days I really don’t know. I don’t have too much insight there. I think there was a growing recognition that probably got spawned by the environmental movement and Earth Day, that we’re changing our planet in bigger ways than one could have imagined people were able, and what are the implications of that? I think that was a key element to nonscientists, and even scientists, but nonscientists buying into the fact that we really needed an integrated program to study the Earth system. That if you have concerns about it changing, maybe you’d better learn as much as you can.\\n\\n I think that was a pretty key ingredient. It was probably also important to keep it very scientifically focused, as opposed to focused on solving those environmental problems, because you can take the high road with science and avoid some of the political quagmire that follows when people care passionately and differently about environmental issues. Avoiding some of that, not all of that but some of it, was helpful. Keeping it scientifically focused, I think, was good for the politics, as well as good for bringing on the international community. Recognizing that the Earth is changing, I think, was a key ingredient for keeping the importance of it front and center.\\n\\n I don’t know what other early events might have made a huge impact on the decisions there. I guess the fact that we were initially encouraged. You know how NASA is when it’s trying to maximize its impact in an area. One of the things NASA was encouraging everybody was to use the Shuttle as much as possible. The decision to go that path, or the pressure to go that pathway, to use the Shuttle deployment and have missions be serviceable for the satellites, meant that we were going to have a big platform with lots of instruments and all our eggs in one basket. But really large satellites with many instruments, complexity and cost usually have associated big issues.\\n\\n There were a whole set of things that happened because of the decision to go with a large platform, or in the end a set of rather large platforms. This probably had a really huge influence on some of the technical issues we had to address, some of the problems we encountered, both in the near term in developing the mission, as well as in the longer term in terms of trying to continue it. That decision [to go with Shuttle deployment] probably shaped what happened in the NASA part of Earth System Science, the satellite part of the program, a lot. I don’t know if we would have gone that direction without that pressure.\\n\\n But I wasn’t that close to it. At the time it seemed like that had a huge impact. Of course it also delayed some things after the Challenger accident. There was always budget scrutiny, and there was always political interest. I think we had three different reviews by the National Academy of the integrated program. There was a heavy focus on the satellite missions and the data system for EOS because they were very expensive. Politicians, decision makers in the executive branch, had a lot of questions like the following: is this the right way to go, are these really cost-effective, are we really going to get the science? So three Academy reviews were sprinkled through the 1990s. I think one was called restructuring and one was called rebaselining. I can’t remember what the other one was called, but it was “re” something. They managed to avoid the word descoping, but in all cases the program got tightened up and some things were dropped from it in order to meet the budget expectations of the day or to address anything less centrally important. Those continuous reviews also shaped the program. Not in a major way, but in ways that did matter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that forming time, and you were still at the beginning of it, can you share with us your memories of bringing in international partnerships, or the discussions that were held with international colleagues, and how they felt about NASA taking this lead in developing this whole concept?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t necessarily involved in any of the key higher-level discussions, but in my own experience with my international colleagues was there was a lot of excitement. I think in many ways people were pleased to see the US and NASA taking the lead because of our perceived large resource base, but also having a program where everyone could contribute and participate. There was a lot of excitement. I think I encountered a little skepticism about whether we could really pull it off. My interactions were more at the working level, either with the international scientific community or program managers at my level, or maybe a level above.\\n\\n One thing that happened a lot back in those days—again it’s very different from now—is that we briefed anybody and everybody about Earth System Science, EOS, a particular aspect of it, whatever. Back in those days we didn’t have [Microsoft] PowerPoint files and computers, we had these transparencies called viewgraphs. We had probably 50 different presentations customized to different aspects of the program, as well as a couple different broad overviews. It was not unusual for somebody to walk in my office and hand me a stack of viewgraphs and say go give a talk to this group or that group. I once was sent to a meeting in Italy. I got asked to add it to something I was doing in France. Sometimes NASA actually paid me to go just to do that talk. The outreach was very active. We touched a lot of audiences. Any scientific meeting you could get a paper on the agenda, somebody did. We just spread the word, created interest. I think some people had some skepticism about how successful it’d be or how easy we thought some aspects of it would be, but I never encountered a situation where somebody thought this isn’t the thing to do, or there isn’t a role for me to play in this program, even if they were from another nation or had other interests.\\n\\n I didn’t interact much with people in the developing world back then, so I really don’t know what was on their horizon. I do know that the developing world is really well represented in the IGBP, so the program that came out of IGBP was very complementary and supportive. Presumably at that level it was okay, but I was mainly interacting with Europe and Japan, and some colleagues in South America." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any apprehension that data wouldn’t be shared?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. This is because we had this vision of a huge big data system that was going to serve everybody and anybody. I never encountered any ripple of concern about not getting access to data. I think the data system aspects of EOS in particular were the things that we were having the most trouble with, and that people viewed as the highest risk maybe if we could really pull the data system off. I think that view was shared other places as well.\\n\\n The main concerns I encountered were when I did interact with people from the developing world, because the tools and techniques to analyze remotely sensed data are oftentimes a little bit beyond their capacity to either afford or obtain the right training to use, or just get a computer with enough number crunching power to analyze the data. They would express concerns about being able to take it in and use it. On the other hand, they were excited about the data products being created, because in the developed world people are able to go out and measure things in the field, and have intense networks of observations. In the developing world that’s even a harder thing to do, so for them to survey and inventory their own resources was a challenge. Remote sensing actually offered a leap forward in capacity if they could become trained and have access to the infrastructure that would enable them to use it. There were concerns about whether this very sophisticated and large-data-volume data was going to be useful to those who had needs, but little capacity to access and analyze it. There was a lot of that.\\n\\n Then there was a lot of skepticism about whether we were really going to pull off this data and information system. I may have been more worried about it than many, but after the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission we flew in the late ’90s, I had more reason to be concerned. We did that in cooperation with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. They’re the intelligence side of the government. We had an agreement those data would be available. Then after we flew the mission they reneged and said no, the high-resolution data can’t be made available outside the government. I thought that was going to do us enormous harm, nationally and internationally. Especially internationally, especially in the developing world because they don’t have any topographic data, many nations don’t, or it would cost them a lot of money to do it with aircraft, which was the methodology otherwise. Now there’s a product out there, and they can’t get it. So it was nasty, but the fallout wasn’t as large as I thought it would be internationally.\\n\\n I didn’t run into a lot of concern. I ran into more skepticism about could we really have this huge big data system that would provide products and services as advertised." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you feel have been the results now that this concept has been in place for 20 years and information has been shared, and people feel more of a unity of working on this? What do you feel have been the greatest impacts on your field, and of course on Earth System Science as a whole?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the biggest impact is that we documented significant changes occurring on this planet that are not natural system variability or natural system change. They’re things that people did and are doing to the planet. We’ve observed it. We’ve quantified it. We’ve demonstrated trends, changes in rates, acceleration of certain phenomena. We’ve actually documented that.\\n\\n Back at the beginning we had the sense that things were being changed and there were impacts, but we really didn’t know how large, how important, or what the implications were for the future. Now of course, by documenting the scale and scope and nature of some of these changes, we have a better sense of their implications. Of course we’ve also been developing the models, and have been attempting to make predictions or develop scenarios that could give us some sense of what the future would be. We’ve provided all that context.\\n\\n Despite all the ridiculous controversy out there in the press about whether global change is real or not, this program, Earth System Science, the whole national and international effort—this program documented it and quantified it in so many different ways. It’s truly remarkable. All by itself, just the fact that we now have the knowledge, and we have a better sense of the implications, I can’t think of anything else that would be more important than that. There are a lot of other things that you have to consider accomplishments, like being able to do so many more things from remotely sensed data than before, that have just really advanced the science.\\n\\n We’ve been able to pose entirely new, scientifically interesting questions about how ecosystems work, about the planet’s functioning, and what might be important changes to watch out for in the future. We didn’t necessarily discover this with remote sensing, but as an ecologist, when 20 years ago we were talking about the effects of increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, there’s what they called the “indirect effect” of carbon dioxide. It causes the greenhouse effect that in turn raises global temperatures. But for vegetation on the land, there’s also what they call “direct effect” in that CO2 [carbon dioxide] is taken in by plants to make sugars and starches and store energy. It’s a fertilizer of sorts; it’s the building block of vegetation.\\n\\n When CO2 increases in the atomosphere, it’s easier for plants to absorb it. It’s less limiting in some systems, so plants might grow more. So how the whole ecosystem responds—does it get more productive everywhere or do other factors that limit vegetation growth then take over after a certain point? We’re still arguing about that and doing scientific studies, and it seems like in different systems there’s more or less fertilization effect. What the net effect on the whole planet is, is still not settled, but it was clear that we had to look at the CO2 fertilization question as well.\\n\\n But when I talked to the oceanographers and asked if there was anything like that going on in the ocean, the answer was, “Oh, no, no, no, no direct effects of CO2 in the ocean.” It just diffuses in and out according to the concentration gradients in the ocean versus the atmosphere. The phytoplankton doesn’t grow more biomass or anything; it’s pretty much just cycling constantly. Then about three, four, five years ago, all of a sudden it became clear that well, yes, the gradient is steeper, there’s more CO2 going into the ocean, and the pH of the ocean is changing. It’s becoming more acid, and acidity is going to have huge impacts on which organisms are able to grow where. In particular, organisms that put calcium carbonate into their shells, into their exoskeletons, are going to have a harder time doing that. In fact they might just dissolve away in a more acid ocean.\\n\\n Now there are these huge concerns about direct effects of CO2 in the ocean. Remote sensing didn’t discover that, but it was part of the grander picture of building more and more understanding about what’s going on in the general system. We’ve learned whole things we weren’t even worried about that have led to very interesting questions that we weren’t asking before, like what are the prospects for coral reefs, and the organisms that have these calcium carbonate shells, in a changing climate and CO2-rich world. The science has advanced enormously in terms of understanding the parts of the system we need to understand and what aspects of the system we need to understand.\\n\\n You could also say the same thing about the field of remote sensing. We understand the biophysics of remote sensing by having all these new measurements and new instruments and methodologies for making measurements. We, of course, advanced that field enormously too in terms of understanding the biophysics of remote sensing, how electromagnetic radiation interacts with the Earth’s surface and so on. We’ve become very sophisticated in what we can do with that kind of data." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about the advantages and the impacts. What do you believe some of the greatest missed opportunities were? Twenty years have gone by. What else could have been done that had an opportunity but it just slipped by?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the biggest missed opportunity was to solidify the global observing capacity for being able to regularly and routinely monitor, observe the Earth system, and continue to document changes, to continue to discover new phenomena of import. The grand vision for EOS and Earth System Science was that we were going to measure the same things quantitatively over—for EOS it was 15 years and three cycles of satellites carrying the same instruments. And working with international partners have an even broader set of observations than those, including the in situ observations that you need to help interpret those data, as well as to measure things you can’t measure from space. That was part of the grand vision. I think it was within our reach as a nation to do our part, and we dropped the ball. We dropped the ball. We only got one set of platforms; we didn’t get the three sets of platforms because budgets got slashed. The powers that be at the time were saying, “Oh that’s old technology. NASA can’t fly old technology. NASA is an R&D [research and development] agency, we don’t do monitoring. We develop the first thing, show what’s possible, do our science, and move on.”\\n\\n That’s okay. It doesn’t have to be NASA, but the fact is that we couldn’t transition those quality observations to NOAA or USGS [US Geological Survey] in the systematic complete way that you would want to do if you wanted to solidify them in the operational domain. We are doing a little bit. USGS is in transition to taking on the Landsat time series. We’ve got some of the observations secured, we think, in what was the NPOESS [National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System] program and is now transitioning to the Joint Polar Satellite System between NASA and NOAA with the Department of Defense going its own way. A little bit of progress may have been made there, but basically we do not have the continuity of observations to continue documenting and studying global change and using the time series of information to help us diagnose further what’s happening.\\n\\n It’s just a huge missed opportunity because it would have been easy to keep going, and now it’s like starting over. Even worse, the new NRC decadal survey, while giving us a whole bunch of exciting new missions for Earth science, really doesn’t give us the systematic time series. This is partly because the NRC was asked to do something else, but I feel like we couldn’t have screwed up more as a nation. Not as an agency, because I don’t think this is NASA’s fault totally. It’s the United States’ fault. In fact the Europeans and Japanese are doing a better job of providing continuity in their time series than we are in ours right now—much better. To that extent, we’re losing some of our leadership position in the world because of that. So no-brainer, nothing else is close.\\n\\n I also do think that there were some opportunities to better integrate the US investment in global change science across the agencies, the things we do across the agencies. The US Global Change Research Program did a wonderful job of creating an infrastructure whereby the agencies can talk to each other and coordinate. It actually works, but it doesn’t work as well as it could. It’s still more important when you’re making budget decisions and what to ask for in subsequent year’s budgets. It’s much more important to look at the agency’s mission and its priorities than it is to look at the nation’s priorities and what we could do together. While we’ve made strides, I don’t think the US government has ever done better in integrating across its many agencies’ programs. We could have done more, we could have done more.\\n\\n If we’d done more across the agencies, maybe we would have done a better job of not solidifying the space-based observational time series, but we might have done a better job of securing the in situ observational capabilities. It’s the hardest thing to sell, making continuous measurements. When agencies commit themselves to that, it’s for their own very specific needs and things that they may have been mandated to do. There are gaps between what the USGS measures, versus what US Forest Service measures, versus what NASA or NOAA would measure. We could have done a better job there; it would have helped us a lot. That’s a missed opportunity too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask you about the challenge, but I guess part of the challenges that you encountered along the way is working with all these different agencies and all of them having their own missions. Did you encounter other types of challenges trying to pull these partnerships together for one vision?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The interagency stuff isn’t too bad except when people start competing for the same job. Everybody wants to get the new work, but short of that, we all have pretty much good will, in the community I interact with at least. The more you understand about each other’s programs and missions and constraints, the more you can actually use those strengths and weaknesses together. Like NASA can’t do this, but DOE [Department of Energy] can do that. DOE can’t do this, but NASA can. You work deals where you get everything done by going with whoever has the best capacity to do the work.\\n\\n We don’t do too badly there. Competing for new money though, that’s a little bit less fun. Then you start having interpersonal issues. I’ve often said that once you get a PhD as a scientist, all of a sudden you’re expected to have skills that you were never trained for, managing a budget, managing people. A lot of people who become scientists don’t have the best interpersonal skills, so working with scientists, it seems like every now and then bad behavior can really poison some things. That’s the thing I live most in terror of, because it’s the thing I’m least able to deal with, because I’m not skilled at making peace or whatever is needed.\\n\\n But that’s just people, and I suspect everything you might do you’re going to have those kinds of issues. This is in some ways a positive challenge, but people oftentimes don’t recognize how challenging it is. That’s communicating across scientific disciplines, or between scientists and engineers or IT [Information Technology] specialists. It’s amazing how long it takes before you actually understand each other. All of these fields have their own jargon and lexicon. Plain English language words you could look up in the dictionary don’t mean the same thing when an IT guy says them; they mean something more specialized.\\n\\n Plus people tend to look at the world a little differently and put information together in different ways. So just achieving complete communication as you’re beginning to work together is really challenging. I’ve been in groups whereby it can be three years before someone really fundamentally understands the issue that the other guys were talking about. It’s not that people aren’t smart and clever, it’s just that you’ve got to build up a new perspective on the topic. You’ve got to understand the lexicon of the other guys, and then you’ve got to think through the implications. And all of a sudden after three years, “Oh, now I understand why you want to do it that way or you can’t do it that way.” It’s amazing!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It all comes together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Once you’ve done that, once you’ve gotten there, all of a sudden it’s like one of the last barriers to really being effective together is gone. You can do amazing things when you bring all those experts into the same problem-solving setting, so it’s worth the investment, but I don’t think people sometimes understand how long it takes or how hard you have to listen. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said something five times over the course of a year in the same discussion before I realize I’m not getting it. It’s just interesting, and it’s important. It’s a big challenge, but if you’re going to do Earth System Science you’ve got to get there.\\n\\n Political issues connect up with the science we do a lot, and pose a lot of different challenges. Your scientific findings become controversial or contentious just because people want to use them to make different points, or minimize your contribution or maximize your contribution because it helps them make a point. It’s a challenge and a complication, and scientists don’t do too well with some of that either. At Headquarters this is a very political environment. That’s why I have absolutely zero aspirations to rise any higher in the hierarchy, because you get further away from the science and you’ve got to deal with more of the politics. I don’t care for that a lot, but it is something that’s a reality in Earth science. It makes it a little harder to just enjoy your discoveries and findings, because they have all these implications and differing perspectives on whether you’re doing good or bad work. I find that a big challenge, and I think some of the scientists in the community do too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve been so involved in the last 20 years. What essential decisions or events do you believe need to happen to shape those next 20 years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ll come back to this missed opportunity thing. Especially in the United States, we have just got to figure out what kind of an observational capacity we want to have to understand what’s going on in our environment in this country, as well as what’s happening around the world. I don’t think that the United States has grappled with that issue. You can argue about whether not making a decision is the decision or not, but I really don’t think it’s been thought through and decided exactly how much or how little observational capacity we want to have. What phenomena we want to track, both in space and on the ground. So I think that’s a decision that is needed that would very much shape the science as well as a lot of other things.\\n\\n Related to that, I think, is whether we’re going to, as a nation and as a world, begin to do things to address global climate change. Are we going to try to mitigate, going to try to adapt? Are we going to actually try to cut emissions or are we going to try and store carbon in geological formations? Those decisions will shape the kind of research we do a lot because decision makers are going to be obviously wanting to monitor and assess the efficacy of whatever’s done. We’re going to be needing to make measurements to document that. While some of that activity might get moved to the more operational or even regulatory agencies to do, there’ll still be a lot of scientific data collection that will be needed to support that.\\n\\n One thing you know in Earth System Science, and one thing we’ve always known in ecology, is all parts of the system are connected. Once we start manipulating the environment to manage for these different mitigation or adaptation options, there’s the potential for unintended consequences and surprises in terms of how the system responds. Maybe you manage agricultural lands to store more carbon in the soil, but maybe all of a sudden that ties up nitrogen, and fertilizer usage has to increase dramatically to get the same degree of productivity, and farmers all of a sudden start having losses instead of profits in their operation. There are other things that wouldn’t necessarily manifest themselves in the economics but in other ways.\\n\\n We’re going to be wanting to do whole system studies of what management activities might follow, to understand more fully if there are going to be any unintended consequences or surprises in the response that will prevent us from achieving our goals, or create other problems that we may have to deal with in other ways. I think what we do is going to have a significant effect on shaping the kind of science questions that the ecological and Earth science community will be addressing. The sooner we had a better feel for that, the sooner we could start doing the appropriate studies.\\n\\n There are a lot of other reasons to want to know if and when actions are going to be taken that have to do with societal future prospects, but the science I think is really going to be affected. Those are the things I’ve been able to think about to answer that question.\\n\\n In terms of what NASA does, we actually in the FY11 [fiscal year] budget from the President [Barack Obama] got a fairly large plus-up to more aggressively tackle the decadal survey missions, but we’re still nowhere close to being able to deploy them in the sequence and timeframe that the decadal survey recommended. So I think NASA’s own program of R&D in this area—forget the continuity of observations, which is I think a bigger issue—but NASA’s own program of R&D here is on shaky ground, because if you just do these things one off, you lose your ability to do an integrated Earth system study.\\n\\n I don’t think the FY11 budget answers the question, solves the problem. It’s a big step in the right direction but we’re not there yet. If that’s all the United States can afford, because the economy is very bad and there are a lot of other problems we’re facing, that too is going to really shape the future in ways that will mean we’ll be less likely to continue documenting the changes that we have, as well as identifying new phenomena and furthering understanding. Maybe the Europeans and Japanese will really begin to take a leadership role there if we don’t do it anymore. That will certainly shape things, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ll preface this next statement by telling you I don’t want to put you on the spot, so don’t feel like you have to answer it in any [particular] way. As a scientific leader in the carbon study area, at what point do we need to move into a study that will provide the information they need to help make those decisions that can redirect the impacts of what’s going on for the future? How much time is there before it’s almost too late to not have an impact?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You mean on heading off the worst effects of climate change? This is all at the point of speculation now. I think it’s probably too late to avoid consequences. Now, no one knows for sure what the worst consequences might be. I suppose things could change so fast that we can’t survive, or we can’t survive at anywhere near the population levels the planet has now. But nobody knows that, it’s just one extreme of what you could speculate. I think it’s too late to avoid effects, so the question is how serious will they be, and are there things we could do that would position us to be able to respond better or to feel the impacts less. That’s pure speculation, but if things don’t change, once you put that much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere you’re not going to get it out that fast. You’re not going to stop the positive trends that fast unless some of the mitigation techniques all of a sudden work better than expected.\\n\\n I think the issue is more supporting whatever things the nations of the world decide to do. Giving them the best scientific information that is available and trying to look ahead, ask the questions that could at least size what the unintended consequences of various actions could be or what the worst effects on parts of the system that we depend upon would be. I think we need to recognize that we, the scientific community, we NASA, are not going to be calling the shots here. But we can bring our science to address, as best we can, the things, the scientific whole-system response implications of whatever choices are made. That’s the way I’m looking at it. I guess it’s pragmatic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you see for your program here in the next three to five years? Are there specific new goals or trying to finish up some of the things that you’ve done? What are you looking forward to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a good question. The R&A [research and analysis] part of the Earth science program has basically been shrinking every year. Our budget has been getting cut. People will tell you, “Oh no, it’s not been cut, we just took more money away for full cost accounting than actually we should have, but it’s close enough. You have horrible uncosted carryover numbers. You obviously don’t need any more money, so we’re going to take it away from you.” But every year since about 2002 or ’03 my budget has gone down a fair bit, so I’m looking to do less and less. And there’s plenty of things to do, so setting priorities is something I’m really concerned about.\\n\\n There are also opportunities in other parts of the NASA program that are growing to tackle some of the things that I might have otherwise done within the R&A program. It’s not like it’s as bleak as it is when everything’s shrinking together, but I’m most worried about my next field campaign. The Terrestrial Ecology Program I manage has had a long tradition of identifying a major scientific question that can be addressed by a focused field and airborne and satellite remote sensing program. Over a relatively short period of time, which is longer for ecology than it is for some of the other disciplines, going to a place or set of places and trying to answer a particular science question with intensive measurements at all scales. We’ve done several of them over the years. The last one we did was looking at Amazonian tropical forest systems. We needed to be in the field for three to five years there because of the timescales involved. We finished that, and for the first time there hasn’t been a next study just waiting in the wings fully developed with the community behind it ready to go.\\n\\n So I funded a couple scoping studies last year to develop some ideas, and I also told the community anybody who has an idea, now is the time to develop it and bring it forward and we’ll look at all these things and try to make a choice. Once we have a good idea, and I think we will likely see something, building back up the funding wedge to do it is going to be a little difficult because this other field campaign was ramping down when the budget kept going down every year, so some of that was just absorbed. There’s going to be some building up and there’s going to be some shifting of priorities, which means we’ll do less things for ecological modeling or other parts of the biophysics of remote sensing. That’s going to be stressful I think. I’m worried about doing that, but these field campaigns tend to really give you good cost benefit. You learn a lot, you make an impact. You develop new approaches for relying more heavily on satellite observations in the future. They also are good for bringing scientists with different expertise together, and putting them in a setting where they do share expertise, where they get over their communication differences and begin to really work together effectively.\\n\\n The field campaigns are also great places for students and postdocs to really get into the science, learn from the others around, get well trained and thinking about the kind of questions, integrative Earth science questions, you want them to be thinking about. So for all those reasons they’re good things to do. I think they’re probably worth the fact that you don’t do so many things when you focus in. But I’m still worried about doing that.\\n\\n I’m worried about being ready for some of the decadal survey missions that are coming up soon that involve my community because the analytical techniques and approaches have not yet really been fully developed. Because we’ve never had those data types before, it’s been a little hard to do it. That means that you really need to spend some time. It’s almost more the time you need, building understanding from a more fundamentals of remote sensing perspective up to what would be an appropriate algorithm to apply to this type of satellite data. An example is this DESDynI mission I mentioned earlier. It is flying a lidar and radar, and in order to get the estimates of aboveground biomass and vegetation carbon storage that we hope to get sufficiently quantitatively, you have to combine the two datasets into one integrated product. They call that “data fusion.” Sometimes fusion implies an approach, and we don’t know what the approach is, so trying to figure out how best to blend those two datasets to create a single biomass product is a big challenge. I’ve already funded a half a dozen or more studies that are beginning to look into that, but it’s going to take some time, and it may take even more resources than that. In principle DESDynI should pay for some of it, but flight projects are notorious for not investing in the science, knowing that others are probably more sympathetic.\\n\\n It’s always a tension, so I’m worried about being ready for not just that mission but some of the others that are coming along. There are worse problems to have, but it’s just the budget is so tight and there’s so many things to do that establishing priorities and being able to do these focused things that will pay off is really important.\\n\\n The other thing is, I know some of the politicians will say, “Well, all research is is a bunch of mouths to feed.” But the community is of a certain size. There are a lot of people who are well trained now, they really understand, and if you can’t keep them funded they’re not going to be there five years from now when the next data stream from a satellite starts flowing and we need all of a sudden lots of people to analyze the data. Keeping the best minds and the young minds, the newer scientists, who sometimes fare worse when times get tough, keeping them in the mix is also a big worry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned about the students and the field study. Do you feel like your field of study is one that there is a great interest of a new generation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. In fact every time I have a meeting with the investigators in my program—we had one actually last week for just terrestrial ecology, and we had an even more exciting and interesting meeting almost two years ago of the focus area, which included terrestrial ecology, the ocean biology and biogeochemistry, the land cover/land use change and the biodiversity elements of the program. Both times I am just wowed by the energy and expectations of the younger scientists in the room. They’re just like me back when I didn’t see all the challenges for EOS and Earth System Science back at the beginning. They know what the questions are; they know what the things to do are. They’re learning about remote sensing and the tools. They just expect all of these things to happen, and that we will tackle these questions, and we will do these kinds of analyses, and we will get engaged in connecting up with the end users. I think the younger generation isn’t as afraid of connecting with decision making and policy as some of the older generation are. They see science as a little bit more integrated into that. I suspect that’s because that’s what the times require, so that’s what their experience is. They’re just fantastic.\\n\\n And there’s lots of interest. You get a lot of young people who are very environmentally sensitive so you get all of those issues and concerns there. Others are very political action-oriented and really want to see the right scientific information fed forward as fast as possible. It’s really interesting. It’s really fun, and it’s energizing. They have great expectations and don’t understand why we aren’t and can’t do more. They’re certainly ready to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s good to know you’ve got a whole new set of troops out there ready to keep taking the mission forward." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The big worry about letting them down, or not being able to find a way to meet those expectations, is pretty challenging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe it’ll continue to be inspiring for you, every time you start to feel dismayed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, maybe they’ll have a voice someday too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They will, they will. That seems to cover pretty much what I wanted to cover. Are there some other notes, or some other thoughts that you want to add before we close out today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I spent a lot of time thinking about the past 20 years of Earth System Science last June when that [NASA Earth System Science at 20] Symposium was planned, partly because I missed it. I had committed to give a plenary talk at a remote sensing meeting long before the dates got picked here, so I was really disappointed. I was disappointed to not hear other people’s perspectives and I was disappointed not to see some of the key players from the good old days like Shelby Tilford. I was disappointed to miss it, but I ended up thinking a lot about it. It’s not at the scale of a golden age, but in terms of my lifetime and in terms maybe of this type of science from space, developing Earth System Science and deploying the EOS satellites really was a golden age. It was exciting, it was stimulating. Everybody was working together towards the same goal. The problems were huge but there was no unwillingness to tackle them, and in the end we did pretty well.\\n\\n I’m still amazed to this day that our data system didn’t do us in, because I didn’t think we were going to get through it. Looking back it was an amazing thing, and it seemed like NASA was doing something different and special then. Now, NASA is just another government agency. We’re more weighed down by our bureaucracy than we are uplifted by our aspirations. It was a neat time, and I’m glad you’re trying to document that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We hope to be able to gather more from people like you who have been through the time period to see the division that first started and then how it’s come about to bring in impacts and changes. Thank you. We appreciate your time and your thoughts this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Diane E. Wickland", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. It is sometimes fun to look back and be a little bit more reflective. I enjoyed doing that." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00400", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McBarronJW/mcbarronjw.htm", + "original_file_name": "McBarronJW_4-10-00.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McBarronJW/McBarronJW_4-10-00.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "James W. McBarron", + "location_date": "Frederica, Deleware– 10 April 2000" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Kevin M. Rusnak" + ], + "respondents": [ + "James W. McBarron" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 10, 2000. This interview with Jim McBarron is being conducted at ILC Dover in Frederica, Delaware, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Kevin Rusnak, assisted by Carol Butler.\\n\\n I'd like to thank you for having us here in your office today, and if we could, just start with some of your background information, where you grew up, what kind of interests you had going into college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm pleased to be able to have the opportunity to do this interview.\\n\\n I was born and raised in a small town in northwestern Ohio, Lima, Ohio, and I grew up with an interest in science. Of course, I didn't know the term \"technology\" back in those days, but that's sort of what I was interested in. I was a big fan of\\n\\n Buck Rogers\\n\\n and other space programs,\\n\\n Flash Gordon\\n\\n , that were shown on the local intermission activities at the Saturday matinees in our hometown movie theater.\\n\\n Growing up in grade school and high school, I always sort of had an affinity for science and chemistry. My friends used to always remark that I was sort of the mad scientist at the time, because my mom and dad gave me a chemistry set for Christmas when I was a freshman in high school, and I was good at making flash bombs. We don't call them bombs, but flash reactions and other things. I always had trick pencils with flashing lights and all kinds of gadgets that I made when I was growing up.\\n\\n So when I graduated from high school, I decided that I wanted to get into the science field. My advisor at the time recommended that I start out in physics. Not wanting to get too far away from home, I went to the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, entered into the science program there as a freshman.\\n\\n During my first year, I had a few problems with math, which led to an interview with my dean, Brother Mann [phonetic], at the University of Dayton, and he recommended that I not take physics due to the extensive amount of math that was required for physics, and suggested that if I wanted to stay in science, which I'd expressed to him, he said I had a choice of either biology or geology. Not liking biology too much in high school, I asked, \"Well, what is geology?\" because I really didn't know too much about it at the time.\\n\\n It sounded pretty interesting, because I did get to take physics and a watered-down math program and chemistry that the pre-med students took at the time, rather than the true scientists. So I enrolled on a trial basis in geology, and found I liked it, and I liked the program, and graduated in 1960 with my bachelor of science degree in geology.\\n\\n Next?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any particular plans that you were going to do with your degree?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, part of my expenses that I earned while going to college was working various odd jobs. I finally saw an ad on a bulletin board in a science building one day, they needed test subjects out at Wright-Pat [Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio] to work in the Aeromedical Laboratory under a psychology project. I applied and was accepted, and led me to work for three and a half years part time during school time, full time in the summers and holidays, working at Wright Field as a test subject and as a technician in testing high-altitude protective equipment, pressure suits, Air Force equipment, which included such things as, I was one of the guinea pigs that was used to set some of the medical criteria for selection of the Mercury astronauts. Later we did part of the medical tests on the candidates for the Project Mercury there, and I was one of the data recorders, in fact, for some of those. So I had exposure.\\n\\n I also helped train some of the X-15 pilots with the use of the Air Force suit that they were flying for high-altitude pressure protection. So I got my start in this field of protective equipment at Wright Pat there at the Aeromedical Laboratory.\\n\\n When I graduated from college in 1960, there was an oil glut, and there really wasn't many jobs open in the field of geology. So I was able to continue to work on this psychology project full time for about six months with the proviso that I had to remain a student, keep a student number. So I took several courses at night just so I could work in the daytime to keep my student number.\\n\\n During the period I was working there, I met some of the NASA people who had came in, because we were doing an evaluation of the three candidate suits to be selected for Project Mercury. I was scheduled to be one of the test subjects for that and helped build the first closed-loop environmental control system for testing those suits that reduced pressure in a vacuum chamber.\\n\\n So I got interested and submitted an application to NASA for employment. I submitted it to Edwards Air Force Base [California], is where I thought it should go, but somehow I got interviewed by a NASA human resource specialist out of the Cleveland [Lewis] Research Center, and he forwarded my application on to Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], where they were starting up the Space Task Group.\\n\\n So I got hired as one of the original members of the Space Task Group at Langley Field, Virginia, in the Life Systems Division, not knowing exactly what I would be doing, although I did know I would be working with high-altitude protective equipment.\\n\\n What was interesting is it was on May 29th, which was my parents' wedding anniversary. I went home to Lima with the good news that I had got a job working for the Air Force that day, I mean, I was offered a job with the Air Force working on the Dyna-Soar project as a pressure suit specialist, and for Ed [Robert E.] Vale, who worked there. While we were sitting having dinner and they were celebrating the anniversary, and they were happy that I finally got a real job opportunity, I got a long-distance phone call from my roommate saying that he'd just received a phone call from the telegraph office that I had gotten a telegraph from NASA offering me a job for NASA at Langley Field, Virginia, and to forward on the TWX [teletype transmittal, pronounced “twix”] to me, which he did. So it was sort of neat.\\n\\n My father and I went down to the telegraph office and got this neat TWX, saying I'm been selected as a member of the astronauts' team, and would you please consider working for NASA. They offered me a GS-9 starting, whereas the Air Force were stretching to do a GS-7. So my dad says, \"Why don't you take the NASA job,\" which I did. We never left the telegraph office before I sent back my response, I'd be there in two weeks. So that's when I started, in June of 1961 at that point. My first boss was Dick [Richard S.] Johnston. You may have interviewed him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He hired me to be the Project Mercury spacesuit engineer, which was my first assignment. This was right after Al [Alan B.] Shepard's [Jr.] flight, which was in May of '61. So from [Virgil I.] Gus Grissom's flight on, MR-4 flight, I think it was, I was the Mercury spacesuit engineer all through the Mercury Program. Technicians Joe [Joseph W.] Schmitt and Al [Alan M.] Rochford, I supervised them. They were the technicians that did the actual suit checkout and fit checks with the crew. But I was responsible technically for the suit and modifications and managing the contract that NASA had just set up with the B.F. Goodrich Company at Akron, Ohio.\\n\\n So that's how I got my start with NASA, was the Mercury spacesuit project engineer and a tech monitor for the suits being manufactured, plus spare parts and repairs for suits that went back to the factory in Akron, Ohio, for repairs, which was sort of neat, because when I got to go to Akron on business trips for NASA, I could take a side trip home to Lima and see my folks, which was good, and also back to Dayton to see some of my professors in geology, because they were interested in was I going to get to work on the Apollo lunar program and work on the Moon and use my geology. [Laughter]\\n\\n So I got transferred from Langley Field to Houston in late 1963. I was one of the last members of the Mercury Project Office team that was supporting Mercury from Langley, and went to work in Building 4 at the time at the Johnson Space—Manned Spacecraft Center at that time. I was made a section head at that point, because we'd had a growth period within the Manned Spacecraft Center where they hired a lot of new engineers, and fortunately, I was there early, so I got to become a supervisor of the newer hires. I was in charge of the spacesuit section in the Gemini Support Office under Jim [James V.] Correale [Jr.], who was a branch chief, or support office branch chief, worked for Dick Johnston.\\n\\n So I had the opportunity to participate in the selection of the David Clark Company [Worcester, Massachusetts] for the Gemini suit, which came about during a mockup evaluation of the Gemini capsule at the McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis. A lot of people don't realize that there was an MA-10 Mercury flight scheduled at one point, and we were working on an improved suit for that flight that provided increased comfort and increased stay time on orbit for the crew member, but since it didn't fly, we did have this prototype, so we were evaluating that suit for use as the Gemini suit. Actually, it was an MA-10 suit made by B.F. Goodrich.\\n\\n At that point in time, David Clark Company, who were making the Air Force X-15 suit, expressed an interest in being considered to provide suits for Gemini. So we had a suit evaluation at this mockup in St. Louis where Gus Grissom was the test subject. He wore both an MA-10 suit prototype and a David Clark suit, and made determination that from his viewpoint, the David Clark suit better suited the needs for the project. That's how the Gemini suit was selected for the Gemini Program.\\n\\n At that point in time, it was strictly a contingency device. The suit only provided protection to the crew member in the event of loss of capsule pressure. We developed a G1C, which was the first version of the suit, which was a slightly modified version of the suit that David Clark brought down for that evaluation.\\n\\n Then we had a G2C, which was a second version, which was the training suit version for crew members, which we made quite a few models of or copies of.\\n\\n Then the G3C was the first flight configuration for extravehicular operation, and its configuration flew on the first Gemini mission, GT-3.\\n\\n About this point in time, there was an interest on the part of NASA management at the Johnson Space Center, particularly Chuck [Charles W.] Mathews, who was the Gemini Program manager, and Reg [Reginald M.] Machell, who was the project engineer responsible in the Gemini Project Office for life support and crew equipment, to modify the suit to provide an extravehicular activity [EVA] capability to fly as soon as we could make it ready.\\n\\n That's when a small team was formed, led by Larry [E.] Bell in our division, to develop a chest pack and modifications to the suit to enable a crew member to open the hatch on a Gemini in orbit and do the first American spacewalk. I was responsible for the suit modifications, which involved adding protection for the thermal environment, and also abrasion and puncture protection for the suit, which was the outer layer, and provide visors for the helmet to protect the crew member from the increased brightness of the sun that exists once you get about the Earth's atmosphere. So we had to reduce the transmittance of the helmet for optical reasons, as well as for protection of the gold coating on the visor for solar temperature control.\\n\\n Then the interface with the chest pack was made by a different section under Larry Bell and Joe [Harold J.] McMann, did the chest pack. Of course, all this activity was sort of done hush-hush for political reasons, I guess, at the time. I really never did understand all that at the time. We were just doing our job, and made a system and tested it in the chambers there that we had in the Crew Systems Division, and got approval to fly it and it flew on GT-4. Ed [Edward H.] White [II] was the first American spacewalker wearing that system. That's how there was this Gemini IV Extravehicular Activity Team Award established for the members of that small team that had developed that.\\n\\n At that point in time, there was a different group within the Crew and Thermal Systems Division developing the suit for the Apollo Program. I was located in the Gemini Support Office under Mr. Correale and Charlie [Charles C.] Lutz as his deputy. Then there was another group of people in the division in the Apollo Support Office under Ed [Robert E.] Smylie and Matt [Matthew I.] Radnofski, who were doing the Apollo suit and PLSS [portable life support system], and actually had worked and selected the contractor for that through a competitive evaluation, sort of different competitive evaluation. There were teams formed for the program by the contractors and Hamilton Standard and the David Clark Company was one team that submitted a proposal, and Allied Signal and ILC [International Latex Corporation, now ILC Dover] got together and formed another team.\\n\\n When NASA evaluated a proposal, which I didn't take part in, but from what I know, they liked the Hamilton Standard management and portable life support system part of the proposal, but not the David Clark. They liked the ILC suit part that was in the AiResearch [Manufacturing Division of the Garrett Corporation] proposal, but not the AiResearch life support system and management. So NASA forced a marriage between Ham Standard and ILC on a program to develop the Apollo suit. There were a series, I think, of four suits developed, four or five at a minimum, suits developed by the Ham Standard/ILC team, none of which met the requirements or expectations of NASA and the NASA astronauts who were working at that point in time.\\n\\n So the suit program was behind in what was expected and required of it by NASA. At the same time, there was apparently some change in the command module, so they had to a Block I and a Block II program formed, and it was determined that they would fly an improved version of the Hamilton/ILC suit in the Block II program, and then on an interim basis they would use a modified Gemini suit for Block I, which I was put in charge of at that point in time, the Block I suit, due to my longstanding experience with David Clark and on the Gemini suit.\\n\\n So we were put in charge of making the Gemini suit interface properly with the Apollo command module interfaces. Fred [A.] McAllister and I worked together to do that. At that point in time, I'm not sure of the time sequence exactly, but there still is a problem between Hamilton and ILC from a managerial viewpoint, as well as a technical viewpoint, with the suit. Hamilton canceled the contract with ILC and started a new contract with B.F. Goodrich, who was the Mercury suit supplier at that point in time.\\n\\n So that was right around the time we had the Apollo 1 fire where we lost the three crew members and good friends of mine. So with the redesign of the Apollo command module to make it fireproof—I think that was a little later—there was no need for a Block I suit anyway. That program was terminated.\\n\\n There was a competitive evaluation of three suits, the Hamilton/B.F. Goodrich suit, a modified version of the Block I suit made by David Clark that I was in charge of, the AX1C. ILC wanted in the competition, so they brought their own suit that was company-funded and provided under the auspices of George Durney [phonetic], who was their lead suit designer, our lead suit designer now.\\n\\n There was competitive evaluation on a technical basis conducted by an independent group within NASA to select which suit NASA would use for Apollo. The ILC suit won hands down as being best in most different categories of the test evaluation and the highest total score. The Block I suit, modified Block I suit, made by David Clark was second, and the Ham Standard/B.F. Goodrich suit was third.\\n\\n So at that point in time, NASA said, \"We can't force Hamilton and ILC to work together again, because that didn't work.\" There was a lot of so-called bad blood between the management people, over which I not clear to this day as to why because I was still working back on the Gemini side and the Block 1 side of the program. So NASA decided that they would award two independent contracts, one to Hamilton for the PLSS, one to ILC for the suit, and NASA would hire an integration contractor, G.E., locally to integrate the two companies' products to create a single spec that both companies would work to, and do an independent oversight of trying to make that whole relationship work.\\n\\n When this program was being set up by Matt Radnofski, it was sort of interesting. On one Friday I was asked if I would consider being the NASA representative in ILC to participate in the monitoring of the suit program up here. Went home that weekend and talked to my wife about it, and with some reluctance we agreed that we would accept that job. I come to work Monday and find out that in the meantime Dick Johnston had his own scheme of things and asked me if I would run the program for Johnson and Radnofski was off the program. [Laughter] There was a whole new management scheme within the division.\\n\\n So I was put in charge of the development of the A5L, which was the first prototype of the ILC contract effort, which fourteen units were built for supporting all the various needs within the program that existed at Grumman with the LM [lunar module], and North American with the command module, and Johnson for interfaces with the [MIT] Draper Labs on the navigation system and all other—there were a lot of needs for suits at that point in time.\\n\\n Because people don't realize one of the few pieces of equipment that was used and had to work from launch to return back from the Moon was the suit. I mean, very few pieces of equipment actually flew the whole mission. Which meant that it had to interface with the command module, in addition to the—well, actually, to back up, it had to interface with the cooling system to get the crew member in the bus to the launch pad, up on the launch pad and into the command module. It had to interface with the command module couch and launch support system, the command module navigation and optics. Then it had to interface with the LM environmental control system and instrumentation system for landing, its navigation system and all its displays. Then it had to be able to work with the portable life support system, and then all the way back. That's quite an integration job. It had a lot of requirements that people never realized to this day as to the complexity of what it was being asked to do.\\n\\n But anyway, we did it. For interface and evaluations we used the A5L, knowing at the time that we had to work on the suit changes that were necessary from evaluation. There were some problems that were identified, and there was some interfaces that weren't satisfactory. Came up with the A6L, which at the time was to be the first flight configuration suit.\\n\\n At that point in time is when the fire occurred, and it became necessary to change the suit design to make it less flammable and to interface. So that was that time sequence I was wrong on. So that's when the Apollo 1 fire occurred. As a result, we had to completely redesign the suit. We had a separate jacket and pants TMG [thermal micrometeoroid garment]. We had to provide an Integrated TMG [ITMG] to provide protection to the crew members inside the command module limb. It was impossible to make the suit fireproof from the viewpoint of selecting materials that wouldn't burn within the suit. We had a bladder that was flammable. We had a restraint that was—and it just wasn't possible to make certain parts of the suit out of nonflammable materials.\\n\\n But we did provide a flammable protection cover with the beta cloth, which was developed by NASA. We were allowed through a waiver process to use a polycarbonate helmet which was flammable, because there was no acceptable substitute for that, and the crew members did need to see what they were doing when they were wearing it, wearing the suit. So with that integrated suit and the changes, we came up with the A7L EVA suit, which was the first suit that flew on Apollo 7 with Wally [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.], Donn [F.] Eisele, and Walt [Walter] Cunningham, I believe.\\n\\n So that's how the Apollo suit came about. As you can see, each suit program there's been a competitive evaluation between a minimum of two U.S. companies and sometimes three: David Clark Company, who was the Air Force contractor for the X-15 and high-altitude aircraft that the Air Force provided; with B.F. Goodrich, who provided the Mark IV suit that was made for the Navy, and then to modified and used for Project Mercury; and ILC, which was truly an advanced suit that was a competitor for Project Mercury and a competitor for consideration for Gemini, but not too much so, but then selected for Apollo. So there was a competitive shootoff, so to speak, with actual hardware for all three programs. That was interesting, because when we get into talking Shuttle, there's an anecdote to that.\\n\\n So we flew Apollo, and I managed the Apollo suit contract. I was the project officer on the contract, or tech monitor, whatever term NASA had in vogue at the time. I was responsible for setting up a field organization at the Kennedy Space Center, where we actually located ILC people, a team of ILC people who handled the flight suits there and did the checkout and maintenance and repairs, logistics and bond room and all that, and supported the crew chamber runs that we had there with the command module LM before we flew.\\n\\n We had a small team out at Rockwell which has become—I mean, it was North American and became Rockwell. We had a small team at Grumman with the suits we had there. All these were under a field support operation that I also headed up, in addition to monitoring the plant development and production activity.\\n\\n So I worked that contract, NS9 6100, for a period of ten years of my career, and this contract provided all the suits needed for Apollo and for the ASTP [Apollo Soyuz Test Project] mission, which was a modified version of the Apollo suit, and then eventually for the Skylab Program, for the three manned Skylab flights to the workshop, all manufacturing being provided under this one contract for NASA.\\n\\n Can we take a break for a second so I can get my thoughts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "During this time of the development of the Apollo suit directly under contract with ILC, there was an activity to look at use of hard suits, so to speak, provided by Litton and AiResearch Company, the R-Series suits. While they may have provided more mobility in a pressurized condition than the Apollo suit, they were considered, but not selected for use due to the weight, because the weight was at premium for return of the LM back from the lunar surface, and the storage volume that would be required to stow them in the LM, which storage was at a premium. Also as the result of evaluations by crew members, who were expected to make the lunar commission trip and return, and their evaluation was, \"This Apollo suit's adequate. We understand it. It's got a track record.\" The hard suits, while offering opportunities, really weren't ready and had the disadvantages of weight in both storage volume, so they were not selected. That occurred during the period from '65 to '68, I guess, because it was in 1965 that I started working on the Apollo suit program as the project manager on the ILC's contract. So there was consideration of hard suits, but not selected.\\n\\n I can't discuss too much about the development of the Apollo backpack since it was not under my responsibility. I know about it. The big challenge there was to take in as small a package as possible, provide a portable life support capability, closed loop life support capability that would last, initially it was for a four-hour system, and then for the J missions extended to six hours.\\n\\n Its big development problem was that during Gemini it was learned that it was necessary to have—there was inadequacies with the air-cooling system in a Gemini suit during Gemini EVAs where a crew member overheated and the visors fogged, and it became necessary to have a liquid cooling system to remove the heat from the crew member and then expel it and to remove it from the system. They had to change the Apollo backpack from what they called the dash-five configuration, which was the air-cooled portable life support system to the dash-six, which was liquid-cooled system. So it even added more complexity, because it added the need for a sublimater and a pump and instrumentation and the plumbing associated to do that, and in addition, the addition of a liquid-cooling garment in the suit to interface with that.\\n\\n You have a question here regarding the process used for drink bags and how they were integrated into the suits. The first development task I was ever given for NASA during Project Mercury was after Al Shepard's flight when we did not have a urine-collection device inside the suit to take care of the period of time from him leaving the Hangar S crew quarters until he got to orbit and could open a suit up. So one of the first jobs Dick Johnston gave me was to take over a contract with B.F. Goodrich Company for developing a urine bag for the suit.\\n\\n Well, the contract didn't produce a product that was truly acceptable, so we started an in-house effort, and that was my first experience with the development of an entity, sort of the opposite of the drink bag at the other end, so to speak. [Laughter] That was to get a good handle. The first thing, of course, you've got to get a good handle on what the requirement is, develop concepts, and on this urine bag, using my experience as a test subject from the days when I worked for the University of Dayton, I tried all these devices out myself first in my apartment.\\n\\n I found that the problem was a seal to the crew member so it wouldn't leak. I mean, it was easy to store a liquid volume or the urine in the suit, but the problem was so it wouldn't leak and have backflow. Using prophylactics and modified version of same, I developed a way to attach it to the crew member that worked fairly well. We actually went to a prophylactic manufacturer and got him to make this modified version, and solved that problem, which is still used today by some male crew members in the Shuttle suit, although not by everybody. But it was used successfully for the rest of the Mercury missions, all throughout Gemini, and all the way through Apollo, and for the first part of Shuttle.\\n\\n It's sort of neat to go to the Smithsonian [National Air and Space Museum] and look on the wall and you can see all of John [H.] Glenn's [Jr.] stuff hanging there. You can see this urine collection bag that I had personally, Joe Schmitt and I made in the lab, hanging there. [Laughter] People don't know the history behind it, but that was pretty neat.\\n\\n So you go through a process of requirements, concepts, definition, verifying the design by test, trying it with crew members to get crew acceptability, because they had their likes and dislikes which needed to be satisfied. Then, of course, in those days cost came last, because we were more interested in providing a product than with the less cost emphasis than we have today. I mean, it was sort of a mandatory that we have a product. I won't say cost was at no object, I mean, we did have constraints and budgets we had to live within, but the primary focus was on technical performance compared to today.\\n\\n My responsibilities during a mission. I sat in the back room over in the Mission Evaluation Room [MER] in Building 45. I recall during the Apollo 11, we had two teams of technical people that provided EMU [extravehicular mobility unit] support, that's suit and PLSS support, and my responsibility was for Neil Armstrong's suit and system. We were there just to be able to answer any question of the mission operations people, the flight directors, that they might have and ask how this worked, and would it perform first characteristics of this piece of component or what have you. Then during a mission, during the actual spacewalk on the Moon, we sat there and watched and were ready to answer any technical questions or any problems that were to arise.\\n\\n That was an exciting time. At the time we didn't—looking back now, I realize the significance of what we did, but there at the time, it was an important job, but didn't realize how significant it was. We knew it was important. I mean, not to take that away, but to be able to do that that number of times on the lunar surface and not have a suit problem was marvelous.\\n\\n What role did the division have in the experiments and tools? We did develop, due to our experience with the suit and the constraints of the suit and how to operate things, controls and devices with gloves, and how to carry things on the Moon, the only place to carry it was on the crew member suit, we got involved with both the experiments, the ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package] deployment, and tools that the operator, the crew member, had to control, such as the drill and how to assemble the drill stems and drill bits and the walking and interfacing with all the equipment. We played a big part in the interface of the suit to all these devices. In some cases we actually provided the tools to provide for the opportunity for the crew member to do his exploration task and sample collection and return.\\n\\n As far as mission training, my job was to provide the suits, the training suits, keep them up to date through our mission support, people both at the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson. We had two types of training. One type of training was actual physically having a crew member wear the suit in a command module in the LM in an altitude chamber test at the Cape, which was a full-up systems integration test before every mission, where the crew members went through a complete dress rehearsal of entry into the command module or the LM, and doing a vacuum exposure test of all the systems, as well as there was a test called C3S3 test, which was a crew compartment physical and functional interface that was done at the Cape.\\n\\n Then, of course, back at Johnson we had a rockpile back at that point in time where the crew member practiced laying out experiments like ALSEP and going through the physical geometry. Then in Building 9 we had a 1/6G simulator where the crew member could practice actually trying to develop his technique for walking on the Moon in a reduced gravity field at 1/6 gravity that we had at that point in time.\\n\\n So in all of these, my job was to develop the suits and do the certification of the design, and then to manufacture the training and flight units, and support the crew's use of those training and flight suits through all the different mission activities in both pre-flight and post-flight. When we got the suits back, we did a big post-flight inspection, looking for any micrometeorite damage, which we never found, and vacuuming the suits to remove all of the lunar dust and pebbles that became embedded in the suit, and turn them over to the Lunar Receiving Lab, and then finally disposition of suits to go to the Smithsonian [Institution], which is where all the flight suits ended up.\\n\\n In some cases we were able to reuse the training suits for crew members on a later flight. People don't realize that. But we did reuse some of the training suits through reassignment to later crew members. But we never reused a flight suit; they always ended up at the Smithsonian.\\n\\n At this point in time towards the end of Apollo, Skylab was making an appearance on the scene, which was our first true space station. Since the transport vehicle to the Skylab space station, or orbital workshop, was the command module, it was determined that we would continue to use the Apollo suit, which had all the command module interfaces built into it, and did provide for an extravehicular environmental capability. However, it was determined it wasn't necessary to have the expensive portable life support system for that role, so we used an umbilical with a chest-pack mounted system, similar what we used in Gemini, although a little more complex, little more advanced, more capability, which was called the ALSA, or astronaut life support assembly. This was used in conjunction with the umbilical back to the orbital workshop to provide the astronaut the life support function, liquid cooling, and communications back to the ground.\\n\\n Of course, it was through the use of the EVA that we were able to actuate, activate the workshop after the failure of the micrometeorite shield during launch and to deploy one of the solar panels manually from the command module by the crew member doing a standup EVA, and applying a solar panel, and beating on a battery box with a hammer to get the battery to work, and all kinds of good EVA tasks that made the workshop a viable part of the NASA manned space flight program. Because up to this time, other than for the lunar spacewalks, EVA was considered extremely risky, extremely dangerous, something you wouldn't want to do unless you had to do it, and it was looked at as a contingency capability.\\n\\n The question during the early part of Shuttle, which was going on at this point in time, the NASA perspective of a Shuttle was an airplane that could take off and land on a runway, and the people inside and flying it and these passengers wouldn't need suits. The original Shuttle Program never had an extravehicular capability, in fact.\\n\\n [Begin Tape 1, Side 2]\n\nIt was through prompting and questioning and proposals made by the Crew and Thermal Systems Division, and Engineering Director of Personnel, certain Engineering Director of Personnel, that Aaron Cohen, who was the project manager then of Shuttle, finally accepted a contingency capability for closing of the payload bay doors, which was an issue that they were faced with, that actually put an EVA capability on the Shuttle Program, the Shuttle Orbiter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that the primary argument for having EVA capability?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At that point in time it was for payload bay closure, yes. If you couldn't get the payload bay doors closed, what will we do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember who the people were that were arguing for this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think Max [Maxime A.] Faget was the one who thought that it was not necessary to have an EVA capability, but was willing to accept it, because our division, who worked for him, was a strong advocate of it. Owen [E.] Morris was involved in that at that point in time. Aaron Cohen. I can't recall all the other players. Of course, at that point in time, my direct boss was Harley [L.] Stutesman [Jr.], who is now deceased, who was a strong advocate of having an EVA capability. There was a whole group of us in the EVA community felt that it was sort of foolish to go up into space and not have that capability. Finally we won out, so to speak, fortunately, because it was found to be a good commodity and capability for rescuing several satellites, repairing several devices that didn't work, and are now making possible the assembly of Space Station, International Space Station.\\n\\n So let's take another break. [Tape recorder turned off.]\\n\\n A need for the Shuttle EMU was derived. There was an effort within the Crew and Thermal Systems Division of just what was the best concept and approach technically to provide that capability. Based on the experience with the Apollo suit, where we had problems of requiring fine adjustment between the suit and the PLSS for straps for attaching the suit and the life support system, and the fact that in the Shuttle that the EVA system was only for EVA use, we could optimize it for its primary job and not have the requirements for interfacing with couches and all the interior interfaces.\\n\\n The NASA people in the division came up with the concept for a hard integration of hard upper torso and a backpack so it was always attached and combined from the ground up during launch. Due to the problems we had with Apollo suit, with cables and swedges, adhesive bonded seams, and the use of rubber materials in the bladder which limited the lifetime of the suit, and the fact that the suits were custom-made to the crew members' dimensions, it was determined that for a new RFP [request for proposal] that would be released for competitive procurement, that certain design characteristics that were undesirable from the Apollo suit would not be allowed for the Shuttle suit.\\n\\n So the Shuttle RFP had in it the requirement that there could not be any use of pressure sealing slide fasteners, which were found to be necessary to be replaced up to three times before a flight on every Apollo suit for every mission. No cables or swedges in the axial restraints because of the problems we had continually with cables breaking and swedges failing, and the problem of the low leakage requirement and the permeation and migration of gas through the adhesive bonded seams. We said we wanted the heat seal seam with overtaping, and we wanted a system that had a six-year life. Well, that automatically said you couldn't use neoprene or natural rubber products, because they have a four-year life. So we wanted something other than that. So that sort of levied a set of requirements on industry at the time.\\n\\n By this time, ILC and Ham Standard managements had changed, and they had worked out a scheme that they would work together, because they thought they were the best, based on the Apollo experience, and they wanted to get back together, which they did. So one of the competitors was Hamilton and ILC was a team. Another team was AiResearch and David Clark. These same company names keep popping up.\\n\\n I was on the Source Evaluation Board for Shuttle. ILC and Hamilton were smart. They recognized that all previous programs, the thing that sold their suit was having an actual physical piece of hardware that a crew member could get in and evaluate. So as part of their proposal, they also built a suit and submitted it to NASA for evaluation. They deviated somewhat from the NASA baseline concept by putting a waist bearing in a suit, which the astronauts found on evaluation was extremely useful and beneficial, and sort of sold their suit technically from an astronaut's viewpoint.\\n\\n After the RFP evaluation of costs and management schedule and all that stuff, Hamilton and ILC were selected to be the Shuttle suit EMU supplier as a team. NASA specified that to reuse the existing Apollo helmet and EVA, modified, and has used many of the wrist disconnects and neck rings as possible to save cost in this new system, which was done. That's why the helmet sort of looks very similar to the Apollo, and the disconnects are basically the same design, although they've been modified somewhat to improve them. That was done to reduce the cost, because still at that point in time there was this climate of people that said, \"We don't need EVA. It's too expensive, it's dangerous, and too expensive,\" and so on and so forth.\\n\\n So I was put in charge of the Shuttle EMU for a very short period of time, and then a little bit of an argument I had with my boss, Jim Correale about making sure the suit had all the improvements in it that were possible, which he had disagreed with. He took me off the program and assigned me on division staff responsible for the ESA [European Space Agency]-NASA interface on the Orbiter and the life support work. So I was out of suits and suit career path for about a year and a half because of our disagreement.\\n\\n Well, the person he put in charge when I was replaced didn't work out too well. Finally Jim came to me and he said, \"You know, I was wrong. Would you go back and run that program?\" Because they were having problems with the suit again at that point in time. Which I did and worked it all out and worked the Shuttle suit, became branch chief not only for the Shuttle suit, but the manned maneuvering unit and all the tools and equipment eventually.\\n\\n My relationship on the manned maneuvering unit is, I was made the chief of EVA Equipment Branch. [Charles E.] Ed Whitsett was a section head that worked for me, reported to me at that point in time, and he's the one that's responsible for development of the design of the man maneuvering unit. Then we had a group that did the tools and EVA-related equipment that was part of that system. I worked that job for several years.\\n\\n Then the division reorganized and I was made chief of the Shuttle Support Branch, which included the EMU suit, but in addition I picked up the responsibility for the Orbiter ECLSS, environmental control life support system, and the other products the division had that were supporting the Shuttle Program. Then there was another branch that was responsible for the Space Station Program, and they had a Space Station suit and Space Station life support. Sort of similar to what we had at the beginning of Apollo, where we had a Gemini Support Branch and an Apollo Support Branch. That was set up again, but this time I was a branch chief, rather than a section head.\\n\\n That's when we had the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n problem. I was in that capacity and did all the return flight actions for that system, which ended up getting me the Exceptional Service Medal for the work on the suit and the Orbital life support system, return to flight activity.\\n\\n Then at that point in time there was a separate suit being developed for the Space Station, a brand-new suit, different from the Shuttle EMU, by a different group again. It wasn't going too well, and the question was asked, why couldn't we use an upgraded Shuttle EMU to build a Space Station. [Harold J.] Joe McMann, who worked for me at the time, and I went to Headquarters, and the rest of the division went to Headquarters with what they did on the advanced Space Station suit. NASA Headquarters management decided to pick the enhanced Shuttle EMU to build Space Station, because it was considerably less expensive. At that point in time the station program was suffering from cost problems, like it always has.\\n\\n A decision was made to use an upgraded Shuttle EMU. It sort of made the other groups' activity was canceled and terminated. So I worked the program with Joe. Joe did the life support system, and I did the suit primarily to build and enhance the shuttle EMU suit, which has finally come into fruition and flying now.\\n\\n So all this period of time we've been talking about took thirty-eight years of my life working for NASA. I decided I was getting stale and doing it over and over was something where I needed some new horizons, so I retired from NASA in February of 1999, and was offered a job by ILC, who I had worked with since 1965, and actually had known people since 1959 when I was at Wright-Pat as a college student testing their suit, offered me a job to come work for them, to bring my corporate memory and my expertise and my contacts.\\n\\n They wanted me to be their program manager for the suit work they were doing, but there was a determination made by NASA legal that that violated a conflict-of-interest statute. So in order to work here, they put me in charge of being a deputy program manager, and then it was acceptable to work on a program, as long as I don't have any direct contact with NASA people, as far as representing the company and making recommendations from a company viewpoint to NASA.\\n\\n So all that good work of thirty-eight years sort of put a constraint on me working for a contractor, which is okay, because I still work for the contractor, but I probably could do a better job for NASA if I was working direct with them. But I follow the statute and don't break the law and don't get put in jail. [Laughter]\\n\\n So here I am today, the deputy program manager. ILC moved up a young engineer to be the program manager and I'm sort of mentoring him. This assignment here is just a couple-year job, and I intend to go back to Houston, live in the NASA-Clear Lake area where it's really home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand your son also works here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. During the years my son got excited about the work I was doing and was always interested in it and got an opportunity to work for—ILC had an off-site office where he was hired originally as a technician and while he was in college, and got a job working for them as a suit engineer. He worked up here for a couple years before I came up here, in fact. Then he was transferred down to Houston to work, and I came to work up here.\\n\\n Then he had an opportunity, because he had a girlfriend up here, that he wanted to come back up here. He's getting married up here next month to a local girl from Dover, whose mother works for the company. Talking about family relationships. And then she has come to work for the company. So over the years ILC has had quite an affiliation association with ourselves both professionally and on a personal basis.\\n\\n My son is an engineer, sort of following in my footsteps, although I don't want to say that too loud because he thought that he would walk in a different direction, I think. [Laughter] But I'm pleased to see that he's—he comes to me for advice on things now and then, which I can give him my viewpoint." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's quite an interesting family business to be in, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. My family, when I was growing up, was in the restaurant business and had a well-known restaurant and cafe in Lima, Andy's Cafe. My dad was extremely proud that I'd worked for NASA. In fact, he had a display in the restaurant of all the astronaut pictures and autographs that I sent him. It was quite a focal point at the time. Really pleased him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is something to be proud of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Of course, some memorable events was on the morning of John Glenn's flight I was asked if I would be willing to be interviewed on TV, national TV. So I got to be interviewed by Walter Cronkite on the morning of John Glenn's launch, which ended up in our local newspaper, sort of like I'm not quite a headline, but local boy makes good, you know, and interviewed.\\n\\n So from then on, apparently, I did a good job for NASA, because I was interviewed with a lot of different people from then on, Jules Bergman, Cronkite, because I'm a big believe in the PR [public relations] world as well. So I had quite a few interviews. Did demonstrations of astronauts' survival equipment in the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Cocoa Beach [Florida] for the press. I even at one point in time was sent to Huntsville when Wernher von Braun was working, on how do we repair the J-2 engine in orbit. I mean, he was a broad thinker.\\n\\n So another NASA engineer, John [E.] Leshko, and I took Mercury suits, this was back just before the Gemini Program, in fact, about 1964, '63, went over to Huntsville and Von Braun and his engineers had set up an air-bearing floor with a J-2 engine on it. John and I got in the suits and tried to demonstrate how we would change out these big three-inch nuts and fasteners and electrical connectors, which we showed the suit wasn't designed for it, obviously, but neither was the J2 engine. Von Braun came down and talked to us. I got a nice letter from him that I still have, for helping him, so it was an exciting point in time.\\n\\n Another exciting point in time in the PR world was a few years ago when Queen Elizabeth was visiting the Johnson Space Center. Aaron Cohen asked me to do a little suit demonstration and explanation to Queen Elizabeth and her entourage and her husband. So I got to meet Queen Elizabeth, one of the few people that she put her hand out and I got to shake her hand. I gave her a nice thing and Mike Foale was the astronaut. Of course, he was British. He was leading the show, but I got to explain the suit to her and her entourage.\\n\\n It was sort of interesting, just a funny experience, was we had a glove box there where we can evacuate it with a glove inside and you get to feel space without having to put on the whole spacesuit. We had a glove box there and evacuated it, and we offered to the Queen if she would like to feel what space was like, and she said, no, but her husband would like to try it, which he did. She had a bunch of ladies in waiting, I don't know what official function they serve, but there were a lot of younger people in her entourage. They all wanted to try it, so I was standing there showing them how to put their hand in the glove. We had a rule that you couldn't wear jewelry when they put the gloves on. So here they were taking off these big rings with nice stones and say, \"Here, hold this for me.\" I was collecting all this jewelry in my hand, I put it in my pocket. [Laughter] Then, of course, I gave it back. But it was sort of a strange situation. Of course, there was fifty people there watching, and it was interesting to have all these giggly ladies trying on the glove and getting the feel of space. It went real well. That was good. That was sort of unusual. That's when Aaron Cohen was center director. He came back later and told me I did a good job, that he got a lot out of that.\\n\\n Of course, I gave other briefings over time. I was involved with a lot of schools and science fair judge. That's an important part of a person's job, I think, when they work for NASA, is to get the information out to the public." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's one thing we hope this project will help do, too, to get the history of all this out and really help with the public relations aspect of what NASA did and is still doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Any more questions, or any areas we missed? I think there probably are." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. I guess, I'd like to go back to the beginning of your first experiences with the spacesuit. You'd mentioned that you had worked at Wright-Pat as a subject during the Mercury suit evaluation. So I was wondering how much you remember of that process and the results of that, that type of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, some of the other jobs I did when I was a college student at Wright-Pat was evaluation of different Air Force pilot protective equipment. I can recall being a subject to evaluate the cool-water immersion capability of various prototype Air Force suits, both dry pressure suit—that is, the suit was sealed so water couldn't get inside the suit—versus the wet suit where actually water could get in the suit. I can recall being put in a minus-65-degree F. chamber with a twenty-mile-an-hour wind, and in the chamber was this big tank of frozen water, and just before I was to get in, of course I was instrumented with biomedical instrumentation and wearing a suit, they chopped a hole on this tank so I could get in. Then they dunked me in the tank, and I stayed in this water immersion facility with this cold air blowing on me for about thirty minutes before the medics pulled me out due to various characteristics in the biomed they didn't like, before it was too dangerous. It was dangerous. So I did the cold water immersion test with the pressure suit.\\n\\n I can remember one time they were having a problem with their partial-pressure suit that certain projects were using, where several crew members had to eject into the airstream from a fighter plane and lost their lives, because the helmet tie-down device failed or didn't work properly. It held the helmet onto the suit. So the Air Force decided that they would test that on a ground situation, so they took and had a big pipe with a seat that they'd sit you in front of, and then they had some big compression gas-blowing system, they'd blow 600-mile-an-hour wind on you to see if they could understand the characteristics of what was causing this helmet and neck not to work properly. That was another test I was involved in.\\n\\n NASA and the Air Force were doing some long-term studies on habitability within a spacecraft or an airplane, long-term airplane, and so I wore suits in a simulated cockpit for up to fifty-six hours, fifty-eight hours, strapped in a seat, eating special foods and liquids provided by their nutritionist, and periodically doing a time-motion study with the displays for their anthropomorphic people and vision checks with their optometrist people, just as a guinea pig. Multiple times I did this long-term test sitting in a cockpit.\\n\\n I even had the experience on one vacation period, I think this was Easter break period, where I was put in an isolation chamber, which was completely black, completely soundproof. There was a refrigerator inside, a cold box, where they had a door on the outside that they could put food into so I could eat. Of course, there was a bathroom inside. But essentially it was soundproof, black, complete isolation, no clock, no time reference. The purpose was, how long could you stay there and what was the sensations and what were your psychological characteristics. That was interesting.\\n\\n I got nervous. I think I went in on a Monday, and I had a date with this girl that I was interested in on Friday, and I lost complete track of time. They asked me when I came out, \"What made you decide to come out?\" I said, \"Well, I thought it was time to come out, because I had a date.\" Well, I came out on Thursday. That's a day early, but that was interesting.\\n\\n I also got to experience zero-G for the first time in 1959 in the Air Force C-131 predecessor to KC-135 aircraft at Wright-Pat, to evaluate suit mobility.\\n\\n I got to go on the flight line at Area A over at Wright-Pat, where we were doing some cockpit dimension studies and I wore a suit and I got to sit in every airplane the Air Force was flying at that point in time that was available at Wright-Pat, from bombers to all the different fighters, the fighter bombers, just to do a lot of measurements and criteria of cockpit. That was sort of interesting to sit in the cockpit of a B-52 that they had there, and a B-47, B-111. Not 111, it was TFX. But anyway, F-105, all those airplanes. That was interesting.\\n\\n I got to ride on the centrifuge for an evaluation of man's characteristics. This was part of the Mercury candidate physiological battery of tests, ride on a centrifuge on a couch and experience 10 Gs. Rode on a centrifuge. Did a lot of the medical tests that the Mercury astronauts were selected to, as far as the Harvard step test, cold water foot immersion test, to set the baseline for—and I wasn't the only one. There was a whole group of people that they built their baseline on this. That was quite interesting.\\n\\n I also tested X-15 suits. I was one of the test subjects that tested the equipment that Colonel Kittenger used for his jump out of a gondola at 103,000 feet. Before he made that jump, he ran some chamber runs at Wright-Pat, where they test all the equipment at the cold condition that they would be experiencing in that jump, and before he ran in the equipment, I ran in the equipment for Joe Kittenger. That was interesting.\\n\\n I also did several tests of Air Force arctic equipment in minus-65-degree, twenty-mile-an-hour. That was sort of their standard test, arctic chamber where I simulated a campout in survival equipment and their arctic parkas and all that for a twenty-four-hour period, minus-65. Really cold.\\n\\n So I did a lot of tests for the Air Force. It gave me a good appreciation for what a crew member could experience and how to deal with it and what the equipment requirements were. It gave me a good appreciation for all that, I think which really helped me in my job working for NASA.\\n\\n I even got to test some of the suits that were worn by the U-2 pilots. Of course, at the time I didn't know that. I just knew that they were—Air Force has lots of special projects and you just don't ask questions. People come through and they just have numbers for names. We trained a lot of the U-2 pilots there at Wright-Pat for use of their partial-pressure suits. I assume we trained [Francis] Gary Powers. I don't recall him personally, but I assume all of them went through that training there. So that was a good experience, all while I was a student learning geology at the University of Dayton.\\n\\n Of course, I ended up I liked geology. It was very, very good. I got to use it a little bit in design of the Apollo suit and boots when we were trying to figure out, we didn't know what the lunar surface characteristics were too well and what to expect, so we had a lot of conversation with professional geologists. I could almost communicate with them at times, knowing a little bit of the language. Of course, you're not a geologist until you finish grad school. I mean, an undergraduate degree in geology doesn't hold much water in the geology world.\\n\\n So it's been a varied career. I mean, everything has sort of fit into a plan, I mean, an unpredictable plan, that's worked out real well. Fortunately, I made always the right decisions in each cross point. I've had a lot of good mentors—Charlie [Charles C.] Lutz, Dick Johnston, Matt Radnofski, Ed Smylie. They were really good to train me in product management.\\n\\n Eventually I got to go get my MBA through NASA at the University of Houston at Clear Lake. NASA paid part of my way, some courses that you could show had relevance to my job. They were pretty liberal with that. Because this job requires more than just understanding how the equipment works and what's required, but you've got to be able to manage it through the system of schedules and budgets and reports and resource control. You've got to be quite versatile.\\n\\n Interesting things and accomplishments that I had that I think are really neat. NASA has a classification of hardware Class I, II, and III, as far as controlled hardware. I created that classification during the Mercury Program when we had control and uncontrolled hardware. I sort of first defined that classification system that NASA now uses this for control and uncontrolled hardware. That was because in Mercury, the NASA astronauts did not want inspectors and quality-control people in the crew quarters area. All they wanted was Joe Schmitt and Al Rochford, and I sort of intruded a little bit as an engineer, which they accepted.\\n\\n The ground rule, when you went in to work in the crew quarters was, if you've got a job to do, you do it and you leave, and go back to the motel. It's okay to get paid for doing nothing at the motel with a swimming pool, as long as you're doing your real job, and to stay out of the crew quarters when you weren't needed there, which we did.\\n\\n But they didn't want any quality inspectors, so eventually the question came up, well, who's verifying and saying that this equipment's okay to fly, other than McBarron and Joe Schmitt and Al Rochford? So I developed this classification of control and uncontrolled, and got a quasi-control that we did it ourselves, and eventually we ended up with inspection. Of course, crew headquarters went away for Gemini. We had a trailer and inspection found our way in, because that was their job. They were charged with that responsibility. So we did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, before we go on, if we could stop to change the tape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure.\\n\\n [Begin Tape 2, Side 1]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Going back in time when I first started working for NASA, this was when NASA was in a period of hiring a lot of people, and the division was small at the time and they were trying to hire people. I was called in to my division chief's office, Dick Johnston's office, and he wanted to know who he could hire that worked at Wright Field that could contribute to the division in the suit world, because he told me he had just hired Jim Correale from the Navy, who had worked the Navy Mark IV suit for the Navy in Philadelphia.\\n\\n I said, \"Well, you ought to hire Charlie Lutz, if you could.\" Charlie was my boss at Wright Field.\\n\\n So he said, \"Really? Tell me about Charlie.\" So I told him about Charlie.\\n\\n We called Charlie, and Charlie talked about it, and he actually accepted and came to work for NASA. That's how Charlie Lutz got his job at NASA. Charlie was probably my biggest mentor, both having worked together at Wright-Pat, and our experiences together. He's an individual that you should interview also, because in his career he was a chamber operator technician that actually worked on the Bell first—let's see, what was the Bell, Bell X-1 drop. He was a tech that helped the first man drop with the X-1. He was a tech that worked with protective equipment, pilot there. That's Charles Lutz, who's retired from NASA now, but still alive.\\n\\n His son I hired. His son sort of followed in his dad's footsteps and worked for the Boeing Company in the flight crew equipment processing contract. He was an engineer checking out primarily the life support system. We had a vacancy, and I knew of Glen as he was growing up, so I hired Glen Lutz, Charlie's son. Now Glen is an EVA branch chief at the Johnson Space Center, another interesting relationship that you might want to explore, a father and son. I'm sure there's more than just my son and I and Glen and his dad's relationship. But in the suit world, the two of us that did that.\\n\\n At the time, Dick Johnston was very smart, he hired the best that the Navy had in Jim Correale and he hired the best that the Air Force had in Charlie Lutz. So NASA at a point in time had the best this country had to offer in terms of experts on pressure suits and life support equipment, breathing equipment. They were the mentors for all the current people and the people like myself who are retired, the Joe McManns, the Larry [E.] Bells, Bill [William J.] Huffstetler. These were all people that they mentored and brought along who have done well. Frank [Francis J.] DeVos. I think Ed [Edward L.] Hayes came from the Navy with Jim, also. But they were the nucleus within the Manned Spacecraft Center, the Johnson Space Center now, of life support and spacesuits for all these people.\\n\\n I think Jim brought in Matt Radnofski, or Dick brought in Matt Radnofski, who was excellent with materials, which we really needed after the Apollo 1 fire, to change out all the materials in the command module LM and provide the protection on the suit, all the materials that were developed like beta cloth and florel [phonetic], really was a leader within this country for providing nonflammable materials that eventually got incorporated in commercial passenger aircraft and other places, submarines. It's just sort of an unknown benefit that came out of Apollo 1 fire, if you can call that a benefit.\\n\\n I also had the privilege of working for George [M.] Low indirectly, in that he was the program manager in Apollo, and he was a phenomenal leader. I gave briefings to him on several occasions when he was chairing the Configuration Change Board, where I had to go forward with any changes we were making to the suit. Boy, talk about a individual that could inspire you on one hand and give you hell on the other, and still get you to do your job, George Low was phenomenal.\\n\\n It was sort of interesting, at that point time his secretary, who handled all the details, really was more like an administrator, was George [W. S.] Abbey. I think that's where George learned a lot of his skill, was from George Low, just from my observation. Because I think George Abbey's done a really great job with the Johnson Space Center. He's probably stepped on a lot of toes, but he's done well. He did the right thing to pull out the Space Station Program when it was on the verge of being terminated, and moving it from Reston [Virginia] to Johnson and changing the management structure so it was focused and under one head from a center perspective.\\n\\n Other people that I recall working with that were great was Dr. [Robert R.] Gilruth. I can recall going down to the Cape for a flight readiness review for Apollo 16, where we'd had some suit problems with some cable swedge problems that I'd mentioned earlier. I had to give the briefing on the suit to this illustrious group, and here at this table were all the center directors from all the NASA centers and all the Headquarters managers, Rocco Petrone and all his people, General Sam [Samuel C.] Phillips, program director.\\n\\n I knew they didn't understand how a suit worked, but I also knew I had to convince them, I mean, that we were ready to fly, that we felt safe, and why we were really safe, I mean, really what we'd done to show we were safe. This was to fly and to put a man on the Moon again, to commit this big process. Here I am last on the agenda, and the guy gets up and talks about the Saturn V, and a guy talks about the command module, and another guy talks the LM, and there's Jim McBarron, this young kid, talked the suit and this is why we were doing all this. It's going to protect a crew member and allow the work to be done.\\n\\n I can remember after getting done, I think it was Rocco Petrone looked at the group and said, \"Anybody have any questions?\"\\n\\n Dr. Gilruth says, \"No, I think Jim's done a good job. We're ready to fly.\" That was the end of the questions. That was neat how he supported me. That was really good. That was good, because I did that several times in FRRs [flight readiness reviews]. The first one was Apollo 7, when I was there just to say, not because we had problems, but just to say what we'd done and how we certified it and why we were ready to fly. But that was quite an experience. Not many people have an opportunity at my level, at that point in time and experience, because I'm probably GS-13 at this point and most all these guys were program managers doing the talking, you know, the big wheels. So the suit has given me the opportunity to approach various levels of management at different times.\\n\\n The spacesuit, to the public, is the most visible part of the space program. At first you've got the astronaut and then you've got the spacesuit. People can relate to the person and they can relate to clothing. They can't relate to some kind of a digital thruster or some controller or some something that they can't relate to from their own life. But the crewmen and the suit, second, I think fascinate people. They find a hard time, why does it cost so much? Why is it so big? Why is it so bulky? If they only knew all the details of what it's expected to do. And that's the message we try to get across to people.\\n\\n I can remember in Apollo, a spacesuit cost $100,000. I don't know where that number came from, because I don't know what a suit cost on Apollo, because we never bought them. They're not a commodity we bought off the shelf, you know. And there's different ways to amortize costs, whether or not you include development, whether you include all tests, whether you include all the mission support people. I mean, you could have a suit costing about six different ways if you wanted. We intentionally never gave out a number, because it wouldn't mean anything. But an $100,000 suit, compared today, I guess, with what they call the 10-million-dollar EMU. It all depends. You can't buy them. There's no demand and the production is a very small quantity. So that's why they're expensive. NASA requires all this quality.\\n\\n Back in Apollo we had to—I mean, we knew in Apollo, we knew like for the neck ring or wrist disconnect, we knew where the mine was that the ore was mined from to make the metal, and then the treatments of heat treating and then machining. I mean, we could trace it all the way back to the mine, if you wanted to, as far as the traceability. Of course, that cost money. There were a lot of people involved processing paper.\\n\\n We had to control the grain, how you machine it with respect to the grain of the metal, I mean to get the strength that was required, and to minimize the weight. We tried to minimize the weight of the suit, because every pound that we had in a suit meant 900 pounds of fuel or something. I mean, just the relationship. Weight was so significant.\\n\\n In fact, we threw out, on the Moon, after the last EVA on the Moon, we left the life support system and the extravehicular visor assembly and the lunar boots, extravehicular gloves, and all the garbage the crew members collected while they were in the LM. Anything that wasn't required, they just opened the door and pitched it all out. Every landing site, we got a little garbage dump of all this expensive space equipment that some day will be a gold mine for memorabilia collectors if they ever get back to them. [Laughter] It'll be interesting to see just how those materials held up under that environment for that long a period of time. There's some scientific value, technical value to that effect.\\n\\n Apollo was probably the best program that I ever worked on, I mean where I felt I contributed the most." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were mentioning following the materials back to the source and such, reminded me of, I think there was a problem in Apollo with some of the rubber that had like a high copper content or whatever, that was causing premature degradation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was Apollo 14. I didn't mention that. About three weeks prior to Apollo 14's flying, a crew member down at the Cape was in his training suit and the boot bladder ruptured, lost suit pressure during a test. We come in the examination of the boot bladder, we found that the material of the boot bladder was reverting back to its natural state, and the boot bladder, as well as all the convolutes and the bladders and gloves of the suit, were made to a proprietary ILC compound that included natural rubber.\\n\\n Once we found that boot bladder reversion was related to age, we found it was related to age, and we started looking. We found other boot bladders with the same problem and we found convolutes with the problem, the various stages. We couldn't figure out what was causing that. Of course, we were getting ready to fly. So once we determined that it was related to age, we said, \"We've got to replace all the rubber, this suspect rubber manufactured components in the suits.\"\\n\\n So we had to send the suits back to ILC to replace all the convolutes and all the boot bladders and all the glove bladders for nine suits, six for the prime crew, because every crew member had two suits, and three for the backup crew. Each crew member had one suit.\\n\\n In parallel to the investigation to try and determine a cause, that was a very hectic period, because every day I had to give a report to the program manager, Jim [James A.] McDivitt—I think it was McDivitt at that point in time—of where we stood. They put a [Lockheed] Jetstar [aircraft] at my disposal, gave me a phone number, and a guy named Horace Bell set it up, who was the transportation officer at Johnson.\\n\\n There were some rules. I couldn't send a crew member's flight suit with his backup suit at the same time, and they didn't want me to send the backup crew's suits with the prime crew's suits. So I had a real logistics game that I worked out to get the suits shipped from Kennedy back to ILC, get all the rubber replaced, ship them back to Houston, minimize the number of flights of this Jetstar that was out of Miami. But I had that airplane at my disposal for about two weeks. And we did it. Of course, the mission was successful.\\n\\n Later on we determined—I mean, we called in experts from around the world, from the British, who were the rubber experts from their work in India, in Burma, and was told this characteristic of natural rubber reverting back to the natural gum state the way it comes out of a tree, that's just something to be expected over time with age, but something that expedites that process was a reaction to chlorine gas.\\n\\n We said, where does chlorine gas come from? Well, we did a lot of materials examinations. We hired a Rice University [Houston, Texas] professor and some other people, did a lot of testing to find out that copper in the natural gum material, this is natural rubber, plus copper that was introduced from the plumbing in the dip tanks that were used to make the convolutes in the plumbing, copper plumbing, copper reacted with the neoprene that was another ingredient in the rubber, the chloroprene, and then the chloroprene was chlorine, but it was locked up in the base. But somehow this copper reacted with the chlorine and created chlorine gas, and that gas is what was back in contact with [unclear], was causing the reversion of the rubber.\\n\\n So what we did, we had to take all those dip tanks and take all the plumbing and change them off to stainless, so there was no copper in the process. Then for what was residual copper we put in what's called an antioxidant that prevented the start of the process in the first place. [unclear] was the chemical.\\n\\n So all the Apollo 16 and subsequent have this different material when all suits were rebuilt. That was an interesting thing, to be able to change out the suits that quick. I mean, it took like two weeks. I mean, today people take six months to get a pair of gloves from here to the field. But we had 600 people working for ILC at the time. It's a bigger base than the little few people we have back in production now.\\n\\n That was interesting on Apollo 14. That was another one I went down to FR, to explain all that stuff on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the things I find interesting, given something you said before about there being essentially no demand for spacesuits, and the supply obviously is limited, as well, is that for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, you had three different contractors. So I'm wondering why is it you think we ended up with this situation and how the technology was shared—or wasn't—between the three contractors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, my understanding before I started working in this field back in the fifties, there were other contractors involved. Well, you go back to B.F. Goodrich. B.F. Goodrich actually built the spacesuit, or pressure suit, that Wiley Post flew in the Winnie Mae. The engineer who worked with Wiley Post was a friend of Wiley Post, was a guy named Russ Colley, and he worked for B.F. Goodrich. Russ actually made the first pressure suits. His wife made them at home on her sewing machine. Russ Colley worked for B.F. Goodrich, was our chief suit person back—I got to meet Russ, I knew Russ just briefly in the Mercury Program, because at that point in time he had retired and was just a consultant. But he was a marvelous individual in terms of he was the first one to create—did a lot of inventions for B.F. Goodrich, like a pneumatic inflatable de-icer on the leading edge of airplanes. He helped build the—they built the suits. People don't realize that originally that Jimmy Doolittle's raid over Japan was going to be high-altitude and they were going to wear suits, and he built special suits for that. I know all this because I did research to write up an award from NASA to Russ for all his contributions to America's programs. I had the privilege of doing that, working with the Smithsonian, because they had a lot of the details of Russ Colley\\n\\n But anyway, there was B.F. Goodrich, and Russ and their association with Wiley Post. They got involved with the Navy in a series of suits, the Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, and then the Mark IV, which became the standard Air Force-issue high-altitude-flying protection suit for jet aircraft, for high-altitude jet aircraft. And they worked with the Navy for years. That ended up being the Mercury suit.\\n\\n David Clark Company had a hand. Mr. Clark, David Clark, Sr., was interested in the biomedical aspects of flight, and worked with the people at Wright-Pat. He knew Dr. Henry, who was one of the original Air Force principal investigators of high-altitude protection. He's a physiologist. So David Clark, whose primary business at that point in time was making brassieres, got involved with Henry and Colonel John Stapp from Wright-Pat, and they—this is my recollection, okay? It may not be completely accurate, because it was before my time. But they got together and he built the first suits for the Air Force. So Clark established an Air Force relationship with the people. It's all people relationships to make things work.\\n\\n So eventually they made the partial-pressure suits originally, the David Clark Company, whereas the Navy had all these full-pressure suits. The first Air Force full-pressure suit use was with the X-15, the MC2 suit. The Air Force established this relationship and they developed the AP22 S-2 and all the things that were equivalent of the Mark IV for the Air Force fighter planes.\\n\\n At that point in time, I think the strategy of our Defense Department was to have competition and multiple vendors for similar things just as a smart way of doing business for the country. So we had two competitors, Clark and B.F. Goodrich. Then ILC got involved just through the work of George Durney and his interest. I'm not sure how he got started. Unfortunately, he's passed away a couple of years ago. I knew him quite well. They made a suit for competition in the late fifties for the Mercury Program that was not accepted. They never really got involved with Gemini. Of course, they got involved with Apollo and were successful finally, and then the Shuttle.\\n\\n But Clark and ILC have been longstanding competitors for this period of time. B.F. Goodrich dropped out when NASA selected the Apollo suit to be an ILC suit. It was sort of a corporate decision, I believe, and several of the B.F. Goodrich people came to work for ILC at that point in time. Tom Waldenmuth [phonetic] was one that created a little bit of a legal problem for ILC, I think at the time, as far as transfer of Goodrich trade secrets. There was a legal judicial activity that took place that I don't know all the details on. Then Goodrich dropped out. That's when ILC was selected to build the Apollo suit.\\n\\n Then the competition for the Shuttle suit, they weren't even involved. So they no longer have—all their suit people are gone. I mean, I knew Wayne Galloway [phonetic] and Chuck Landers [phonetic]. All those people are either retired or dead. The younger people, I even tried to come work for NASA, and they went off on other fields, so they don't have a capability any longer, whereas Clark still makes pressure suits for the military and for special projects. Most of the aircraft today do not use pressure suits, but there are some special project suits for some reconnaissance aircraft that Clark still makes suits for. They also make the Shuttle Launch [and] Entry Suit [LES].\\n\\n One thing people got interested in about suits, there's two types of suits. An individual suit, which is only for contingency use, and the biggest driver from a crew member's perspective is comfort. They normally don't pressurize in it, but they've got to wear it for a long period of time. Usually it's in a cockpit, and you're either on a landing strip for a long period of time or you're in a spacecraft for the launch to get to where you have the opportunity to take it off. So you want comfort, as opposed to an extravehicular suit where you normally wear it for a short period of time and you need mobility and tactility to do a task. Comfort becomes secondary. Still important, because pressure points, what have you, drive you crazy, but it's secondary.\\n\\n So there's two paths now. The Clark suit technology, the way they build suits with link net and their fabrication techniques, lend themselves to the IV-type [intravehicular] of suit, where it's more comfortable than the ILC EVA suit, which relies on bearings and disconnects and convolutes with axial restraints that provides the mobility. So the Clark suit's not very mobile. The ILC suit is very mobile. Clark suit is most comfortable. The ILC suit is less comfortable.\\n\\n So you have these two competitors, and right now they're in the right niche. I mean, Clark makes the IV suit, the launch and entry suit, and that's the best technology for that application. ILC does the spacesuit, and they have the technology that Clark doesn't have for the EVA suit.\\n\\n My company now today would like to do the suits some day as a business venture, but in terms of technology, I still think, and I tell my people that Clark has the correct concept. It's driven by what their technology is and not by the company. I mean, technology's there because of the company. I was in charge of the launch and entry suit for NASA during my tenure, and it's a good suit for its application, but pressurized, you can't do any work. It can get you down to a safe altitude where you can then bail out of the Orbiter unpressurized. So sitting in a seat, you don't have to do anything but operate some controls and look out, it's fine. It has other requirements added to it. It's got to have an integrated parachute harness, because if they jump out, you've got to have a parachute. You've got to have life vests. You've got to have a survival kit with a life raft and all your survival equipment, beacons and radios and food and water.\\n\\n I didn't mention to you, but during Mercury I was in charge of the Mercury survival kit as well as the pressure suit. That was provided by our division also.\\n\\n One of the neat opportunities I had was after [M.] Scott Carpenter's landing, and use of the survival equipment that I was responsible for, I got to fly in a C-130 from Patrick Air Force Base to Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas right after his flight, for his post-flight debriefing by all the chiefs. Dr. Gilruth and Paul [E.] Purser and Owen Morris and Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht. That was an interesting trip. I got sent there just to participate in the debriefing part for the survival kit at Grand Turk Island.\\n\\n We landed at Grand Turk Island, which is out in the middle of nowhere. This was a military C-130. We sat in sling net seats, inside with earplugs. Nobody could talk. I mean, they tried to talk, all these chiefs. Took us about two hours to fly there, I think, in that airplane. We landed and we open up the doors of the plane, and there are all these big British military people with their white pith helmets and a red carpet for us to come out on. [Laughter] Of course, I came out last.\\n\\n Then they took us off and they put us in beach huts. We were right on the beach and screened in. It wasn't a hut. It was just a screened-in enclosure on a wooden platform about two feet above the sand with a screen door and that was it. Of course we had lights and cots. That's where we stayed for three days, I think, just getting the debriefing. When we got there, Scott wasn't there. He was out snorkeling with some of his other astronaut friends. [Laughter]\\n\\n We had a debriefing that afternoon where he went through, and I finally got to ask some questions about his use of all the equipment. In fact, he didn't have any problems, and it worked the way it's supposed to work, which was good. So I could write a report that I had to write.\\n\\n Then I had to wait for the plane to leave and go back Patrick with all the chiefs when they finished their stuff with him. So that was interesting. They had luaus each night. It was an interesting occasion to participate in. That was another highlight-type activity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's an interesting mission to have ended up on the debrief for, given how his flight ended and the fact that he was quite a bit off target and such." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. I listened through all that.\\n\\n Another interesting opportunity I had was, after John Glenn's flight, I had a special badge that got me into Mercury Control Center. So at the end of his flight, of course, his flight was very short, I went from—I didn't go up the gantry on John Glenn's flight. I was in the suit room. I was there when we suited him up and went in the backup bus over to the launch pad, because I was sort of like a contingency person. I didn't go up the gantry with John, but I stayed there and we went to the fall-back area.\\n\\n After that we went to mission control to watch the mission. I got to watch that whole heat-shield thing standing there in the back row, watching Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft and his team work that. That was marvelous, you now, but everybody thought that heat shield had deployed prematurely. That was an interesting, fascinating thing.\\n\\n I got to work on a Skylab emergency activity, where our division was responsible for trying to find a way to build a thermal protective shield to put on the outside of the orbital workshop to cool it down on the inside, because the temperature provided an atmosphere that wasn't habitable inside.\\n\\n My job was more of a logistics job for that activity, by nature of having the ILC as my contractor and ILC's capability. I got asked to set up a sewing shop at Marshall, so they could build their concept of a solar shield, and to provide the materials that were necessary to build these competing solar shields. At JSC they were working on a parasol, under my boss, Jim Correale, and Marshall was working on a different shield approach with big booms. So I had the job of having a NASA Gulfstream fly to ILC and picked up sewing machines and sewers. We took them to Huntsville to set up a sewing shop to build their sail. That was on a Friday, I think, and Friday night we found out we needed some more material, this aluminized mylar. Wasn't any to be had, so I participated in a phone call that my boss Harley [L.] Stutesman [Jr.] and I made to Sheldow [phonetic] in Minnesota. This was Friday night about seven o'clock, and we called and talked to the plant manager, and said we needed 500 yards of aluminized mylar as fast as we can, it was for this national emergency.\\n\\n He opened his plant up that night and brought in all his people, and we had the NASA Gulfstream there at seven in the morning and picked up that material, no purchase request, nothing, and took it to Huntsville and to Johnson so they could build the flight hardware. Eventually it was the parasol. That was National Metallized. I mean, that was the kind of support, patriotic support this country provided to Apollo and Skylab that I don't think exists today. I mean, I don't see it today. Fortunately, we haven't needed it.\\n\\n But we used to have to ship suits from one place to another, because we had a test here and tomorrow we had a test somewhere else. They wouldn't take them in at the counter. At one time the suits were considered classified, as far as security. You had to watch them being loaded on a plane. A lot of times we just packed them, take them on board when the pilots and the people pick them up at the other end. I mean, it was pretty neat. I mean, we had the support we got from the airlines and aviation in general. It was neat. We got a lot of good support." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you participate in anything concerning the suit classification, the security classifications, any kind of meetings or anything?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, at the start of Apollo, the Apollo suit was classified, and so was the Gemini suit. It was classified confidential. It was a hassle. We understood why, but it was a hassle in doing business, because certain drawings and certain documents were classified, which meant to take them anywhere you had to have them specially wrapped, and you had to have authority, authorization signed and stamped. It made doing business harder. I mean, we understood why. Eventually it was dropped. Then we had to go through and declassify every piece that we had classified, with a note of who authorized it and what the authorization was, and the date, and you signed it. I mean, every page. But that was in the national interest. You did it. You didn't question it. It just was a hassle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On a related note, how much did you know about the Soviet technology?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was one of my hobbies, actually. That started when I was at Wright Field, in fact, was a collection of Soviet pressure suits and spacesuit data. I probably collected the most comprehensive set of Soviet pressure suit and life support data up to the point where they became partners on International Space Station to about '93, four file drawers that went on back to 1943. Eventually I got it all catalogued, and it was available to the people that have an interest in it. Big collection.\\n\\n I did follow and I used to routinely—not routinely, but infrequently I would give a briefing to the center management on what the Russians were doing, and what their system—mostly it was descriptive-type briefing, \"Here's what it is, what it looks like, and here's what we think it can do.\" I even gave a couple briefings at a couple conferences on what I'd learned, and tried to compare and contrast with what we had versus what they had.\\n\\n Finally in 1993, I got to go to Russia, in fact. But before I went to Russia, I did get to meet my counterparts who worked for Zvezda right outside of Moscow. The first meeting was sort of interesting. It was at Houston, but we weren't allowed to meet them on the Johnson Space Center, for some reason. Then the meeting came about through crewmen contacts. The first meeting that I had with Guy Severon [phonetic], who was the chief of Zvezda, general director, was responsible for all the Soviet suits, both military and space. They didn't treat them any different; I mean, they were the same. Was at a crew member's house on NASA Bay, where I was invited over and he was invited over and we talked through an interpreter. It was pretty interesting that the first contacts, so to speak, where we shared how we developed the suits and how similar the designs ended being in terms of the concept. Both used full-pressure suits, both found zippers weren't good to use, both found polycarbonate was a good material for the helmet, and a lot of similarities. I mean, the actual shapes looked different.\\n\\n Our technology is much more advanced than theirs, in my opinion, now. I mean, our Shuttle suit is much more advanced than their Orlon-M that they fly, and they're going to fly International Space Station. They still use a lot of glued seams. We use heat-sealed seams. They use a lot of cables and swedges that we don't. Their materials availability constrains them what they can do, compared to what we have available. In fact, they use as much of ours as they can get a hold of. Like polycarbonate, it was originally a U.S.-developed product.\\n\\n But that was an interesting meeting. It was first time I met them. Then later on I met them at a conference in Cologne, Germany, that I went to. We hit it off well there. In fact, we were asked by NASA Headquarters and the Russian equivalent of NASA Headquarters to write a joint chapter for a book that NASA and the Russians wrote.\\n\\n So Guy Severon, and he has his deputy Dr. Abrahamov [phonetic], and Ed Whitsett on the MMU [manned maneuvering unit], and their counterpart on their MMU unit, wrote a chapter for the book Foundations of Biology and Space or something like that. So over a three-year period I really got to know them pretty well, due to our joint authoring of this chapter for this book, which we did, and it's been published. It gives the whole history of U.S. EVA and Russia EVA. It's all Russia now, it was Soviet. A chronological of all the EVAs and everything's in it. So that was good.\\n\\n Finally in '93, I got to go over to Moscow and meet with them. I didn't get out to their facility, because that's right when they were having the problem politically at their White House, where it was being bombed by the tanks, a mini-revolution, so to speak. We were isolated and stayed at the hotel. I never got out to Zvezda. Never have in fact, yet. It’s on my to-do list yet some day.\\n\\n But it's interesting to see how they've come over the years, I mean the parallels and the dissimilarities, mostly due to what's available to them. They're pretty smart people. They do a lot more analytical things than we do, I mean approve things analytically. They have a better connection with their university system than we have, where actually the universities do a lot of their work for them, whereas we hire another subcontractor, and the universities do more technology work rather than mainline program work, where there, there's no distinction.\\n\\n Severon is a full professor at Moscow Aviation University. I mean, they're working like I would a professor at a college and I would teach. Part of their job is teaching students. They take the problems from the workplace, can translate them to a graduate student to earn his credentials working a real-life problem. I mean, their system is better than ours, from that viewpoint, from my opinion. It's pretty neat.\\n\\n They can be good adversary, a hard adversary, and they could probably be a good friend once you get to know them and respect them. There, rapport is big. I mean, you just can't go start working with somebody overnight. I mean, you develop it and there's a trust period. You start with little things and you build up. That's inbred in them. Even internally, within their own company, when somebody does something, he keeps his little notebook, and there's no copying of how he arrived at what he's done. I mean, there's a product, but he keeps his little notebook. I mean, that's their security, personal security for employment. And it's also a way they keep their security from being copied by other nations. I mean, it's internal, even. I mean, people don't realize that it's not an international thing, but it's inbred internally. So it's an interesting observation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As someone who's worked with every U.S. spacesuit that we've had, what do you think the key problems have been over the past forty years of development?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Key problem. Technical problem, I assume is what you mean, not the fact that we've never had the right amount of money to do the correct job. [Laughter] Technical problem. Sizing the suit to fit the crew member, a wide range of people, like we do for Shuttle, has been a problem. It intermeshes somewhat with money, in that originally we started out with five sizes, for example, the hard upper torso on Shuttle EMU.\\n\\n [Begin Tape 2, Side 2]\n\nThen due to cost considerations, we tried to reduce the cost by reducing the fleet up to two sizes. Then the crew said, \"No, that's not acceptable.\" We had to expand it to increase it to more, which we did to four. Now we're looking at another extra small going to the fifth again. So there's been a vacillation of what the requirement is and how do you accommodate it and still meet the budget. I mean, they're all tied together. So, sizing and its implications is one.\\n\\n The big technical challenge is gloves, of course, to be able to put something over your hands and still let your hand do what it normally does without something over it. We've made some big improvements over the years from Mercury to what we're flying on the Phase 6 Shuttle suit now. Big improvements. Not only is it improvements of tactility and flexure and doing a task, but the useful life has increased. Like on Mercury, we started with a ninety-minute flight and now we're certifying the gloves for almost four hundred hours of operation. So it's a combination of performance and useful life have been the big drivers. Of course, the more useful life, the less you have to buy, which gets back to money again. So, gloves is a big technical challenge.\\n\\n One thing we learned in Apollo is that we did not factor in properly the man loads that a crew person can induce into the suit just by movement or doing a job, the forces that he puts into the suit system that have to be counteracted by the suit. Originally we just designed to the pressure load, plug load, but the use of man loads significantly increase the requirement of strength of certain parts of the suit, especially were the waist and the brief and the hips. That wasn't properly factored into the Apollo suit until the later last two missions, where we had to put in redundant restraints, because we were concerned about the cables breaking, because they weren't designed for the loads that we were seeing, which we did. Then we incorporated them into the Shuttle suit, have already done axial restraints for strength and they work very well. So how do you factor loads imposed by the crew member, as well as the pressure load on the suit.\\n\\n Optics for the helmet. The helmet we fly today, which is basically the same as we flew on Apollo, the helmet does not meet the goggle distortion particle-free spec of glasses or military goggles. It's due to the technology capability of making them.\\n\\n The current suit has a problem that—the big disagreement I had with Mr. Correale when he reassigned me out of the suit program was a problem that still exists today in the Shuttle suit, is that we don't have a way to adjust the neck height for the crew member. Some crew member, you'll see that there's about four to five inches from the top of their head to the top of the helmet, and they're way down low, and they can't hardly see over the top edge of the neck ring because of its inherent concept limitation, which we saw it in the Apollo suit. We had an adjustable neck height. But Shuttle suit doesn't have it. So some people it fits fine, but people with short necks there's no—so that's a problem, neck height adjustment. Some of the people even here today in ILC don't understand that, or if they do, they don't want to recognize it. They don't do anything about it.\\n\\n I think those are the big ones. Those are the big ones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you're talking about the crew-induced loads on these, that got me to thinking about the roles of the various astronauts in contributing to suit design. I know like Wally Schirra worked on early suits. You mentioned Gus Grissom. John Young later became interested. I was wondering what contribution you feel that the crew members made directly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. One of the ways the NASA Astronaut Office does business is that they have assigned a specific crew member to follow a certain part on the vehicle for two reasons. One, is to get the crew member smart enough that he can talk to other crew members and tell them what's going on in that area. Two, is to contribute to the actual product that he's working on.\\n\\n Like I say, Wally Schirra followed the Mercury suit. Gus Grissom, I traveled many times with Gus to David Clark working on the Gemini suit. Of course, we have a Gemini suit from Clark because of Gus. Had some good trips with Gus to David Clark.\\n\\n Then we had George Nelson, \"Pinky\" Nelson, followed the early part of Shuttle. In Apollo we had Story Musgrave. Was it Story? John Young for a while, Story. Story followed it. When you say contributor, you mean they were more evaluators than contributors, and they were good. I mean, they fulfilled a real need. I advocate that system.\\n\\n We found to use it, it was good to use it that way. If we could convince the crew member that was responsible for an area that this was the way it was, then he'll sell it to the rest of the crew members, because they all had their own ideas. I mean, you probably heard that story that it's hard to satisfy a group. You can satisfy individuals, but not the whole group. So they could help you sell it to the group.\\n\\n Pinky Nelson, Story Musgrave, John Young, of course. John and I go way back to Gemini when he flew. But they were always evaluators, and at times we used to get John Young letters, which we hated, because he stated things in such an accurate and—I mean, he was accurate in what he said, and sometimes we didn't like to hear the truth. So that was good. But they contributed by virtue of their comments on how well things were and when things weren't so well. John Young was good at that and still is today, I think. That's why he is where is there on the director's staff, because he doesn't mind stepping on people's feet and necks and heads. [Laughter] Sometimes you've got to ask somebody to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now you've got me curious about your comments that you ended up with a David Clark suit for Gemini because of Grissom. I wonder if there's anything else you wanted to say about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was because of the evaluation and the mockup at McDonnell-Douglas where he evaluated the MA-10 suit concept versus the David Clark suit, and he found the David Clark better, you know, technically. Then he was put in charge of following the Gemini suit for a period of time. and he and I traveled to Clark for design reviews and fit checks quite a few times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of suit selection, Dick Johnston was recalling, in an interview with us, about the Mercury suit and that when it was evaluated at Wright-Pat that there were some issues there that they actually preferred the Air Force version of the suit rather than the Navy, so NASA had them go back and reevaluate them, because they actually felt that the Mark IV suit was better. So I was wondering if you remembered any of these events." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I'm biased there, because I was working for the Air Force. [Laughter] That is correct, that the Air Force did find in their evaluations that the David Clark suit was better than the B.F. Goodrich Mark IV suit. Then I lost track from that evaluation at Wright Field until the time I started working for NASA.\\n\\n There was a period of time that I don't know what happened. I think a NASA guy was working for Dick with Lee [N.] McMillion at the time. I don't now what happened to Lee. But NASA had some additional test runs at ACEL by the Navy on heat stress, I think heat stress test. At that time in the program, the Mercury capsule was thought that during reentry the inside of the capsule was going to get pretty warm, and they needed a suit that provided adequate cooling to the crew member, to keep them from getting overheated.\\n\\n I think those tests run by the Navy this time—and I think they did them at Johnsville [Pennsylvania], maybe I could be wrong—showed that the Goodrich suit was better, the Mark IV suit was better for heat stress than the Air Force suit. And that was sort of what swung it. Also I think there was maybe some political things where the Navy offered to NASA to buy the first batch of suits under Navy contract, which was done before NASA had the process set up to buy them themselves. So I think there was some other than technical factors that played, and only Dick probably knows that today, who's still alive, because I wasn't party to that. But that's something to explore with Dick, if you ever get a chance to talk to him again. I would like to know that myself.\\n\\n But you're right, the Air Force did fight for it. The tests they ran—and I was one of the guys recording the data—the Air Force data did show the Clark suit was better, but I don't think that was a complete battery of tests, that there were added tests run that were more significant run by the Navy. So I don't think it was—you know, the Air Force is going to recommend the Air Force, the Navy's going to recommend the Navy. I think that may have been a subservient part of that, but not the primary, not the basic reason for the difference.\\n\\n I helped prepare the report that the Air Force did for the Navy. I was just a clerk at this point, okay, not doing any of the writing, but just consolidate it and putting all the pages together and putting them in binders, so to speak. I never observed any bias in the way they did the tests or recorded the data or anything. So I don't know. Dick's the one to answer that question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back on your career as a whole, what do you think your most significant accomplishment was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My most significant accomplishment. That's a good question. I thought about that over the weekend. I think bringing together the NASA participants and the contractor participants in an open and free exchange, and respecting others' opinions, and forcing the establishment of the best for our crew member, keeping the crew member in mind, having warm suits and used them, keeping the purpose for why we do things just for the crew member. That's sort of a generalistic thing, but that's probably across the board for all programs would be being able to understand a crew member's perspective and bringing together the team to satisfy that need. I mean, that was sort of—there's no individual thing. I didn't invent any specific thing, okay? I think it was more of a collection of roles, technical, administrative person, people-handling, cut out the BS and get down to brass tacks. You've got to meet schedule, you've got to make a decision, can't be right, but you've got to make one.\\n\\n Well, a lot people that worked for me just had a hard time making decisions because it wasn't perfect. If the time comes, you're better off making a decision. If it's not right, fix it later with another decision and wait. So you're marrying all these factors together, meet the schedule, meet the budget, meet the need.\\n\\n That's part of the problem with the original Hamilton/ILC thing, is Hamilton was too much engineering. Space is still, there's a lot of art in spacesuits. There's no textbooks on how to design a spacesuit. A lot of art still. I mean, there's less art today then there was when I started back in Mercury. But back then there was a lot of art, and I think when Hamilton came in and tried to impose on the ILC all these rigid engineering drawings and analytical disciplines on something that you can only do it by trial and error in terms of design, that just didn't work, and they never could communicate. That was a problem. They couldn't communicate. When you can't communicate, you can't have a product. I mean, it just doesn't work.\\n\\n So it's still part of the suit, trial and error, make one, try it, test it, evaluate it with different people. It's not to a fixed set of standards that you would find in a textbook. It's become a lot less so over the years, but there's still a good deal of art in a spacesuit compared to a life support system, which is pretty much an engineering piece of machinery." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We're almost out of time, but I want to give you a chance to make any final remarks, if there was anything else you felt you wanted to say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The obvious question is, where do we go from here to the future on spacesuits? I've heard comments from some crew members that, well, all we need is a pill to take that provides us protection, to other contractors who have never made a successful suit, have tried with trying to duplicate the properties of the skin for an outer layer of the suit, to people who have thought of making the suit more of a part of a vehicle, make it power-on air lock, where you carry this big bulky heavy thing that theoretically on the surface of the Moon or Mars wouldn't weigh that much, although you have mass, and then the relationship of kinetic energy with movement.\\n\\n I think that the technology suits depend upon the materials, technology advancements. The suit contractor can't afford to develop suit materials; they only apply what comes out of the other fields of technology. So I think as materials get developed over time, suits will follow and become better. I think that's the main gate or limitation of suits today, is the materials that are available to provide strength and the elasticity and the leakproof tightness and puncturability for the future. So I don't really talk about hard suit or soft suit or configuration. I think it's more materials-driven than anything.\\n\\n Of course, you always want the suit to be as low a pressure as you can. People have talked about an APSI suit, so you don't have to pre-breathe to go on EVA. I say, well, reduce the cabin pressure like we've done in the past, and you don't have to pre-breathe, so you can operate the suit at a pressure where the technology lets the guy do more comfortably. So you want the lowest pressure in the suit, which is about 3.75 psi. Of course, in Shuttle it's evolved up to 4.3 psi, due to the design of the life support system and the settings of the valves and the regulators, and really don't need to be that high, but it ended up there.\\n\\n So lowest pressure, probably going to be stuck with using 100 percent oxygen due to that low pressure in the suit. So you've got to pay attention to ignition sources in the suit, make sure you don't have any energy source that can create an ignition point in the suit, because that would be catastrophic. That's my one big fear with the next generation of engineers coming on board, is they don't understand how dangerous this thing can be if it's not properly used, both from an ignition point of view, primarily, where they're talking about putting batteries or power inside a suit. Boy, that scares me. So from a safety viewpoint, you've got to be careful.\\n\\n I think the construction details that exist for current materials, as far as the seams and the fasteners and the attachments, that's what used in the shuttle EMU, for today's technology is probably the optimum.\\n\\n Sizing-wise is still a problem, not being able to adjust the head height properly. There's nothing in the mill to fix that over the term that I can see. It's too expensive to change it at this point.\\n\\n The other concern I have is, they're trying to do too much and make it last too long before they replace it with another one. We're about to reach the end of the technology limit, I think, right now. So that's where I think we're headed.\\n\\n Hopefully we'll keep a David Clark around, and keep an ILC around, and maybe we can get some other—I mean, I'm speaking from a NASA viewpoint now, not an ILC viewpoint. But hopefully there's competition, because I think that fosters better work from all parties. I came to work for ILC because I think they have the best technology and the best people right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'd like to thank you again for taking the time out to speak with us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James W. McBarron", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very good. Looking forward to seeing the product of this. We sort of jumbled up the time span. Maybe we can fix that, I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We'll see what we can do." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00607", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WhitmanTL/whitmantl.htm", + "original_file_name": "WhitmanTL_7-5-18.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WhitmanTL/WhitmanTL_7-5-18.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Tony L. Whitman", + "location_date": "Rochester, New York – 5 July 2018" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Tony L. Whitman" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 5, 2018. This telephone interview with Tony Whitman is being conducted at the Johnson Space Center for the JSC Oral History Project and in Rochester, New York. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Thank you again for taking some time to talk with me this morning about the test. I wanted to start by asking how you became involved in the Jim [James] Webb Space Telescope [JWST] Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, it’s a pleasure to be asked to do this interview. I’m honored to do it.\\n\\n I started on JWST back in 2003, with the development of answers to early questions like “What should be tested, how can we test it, how good does the test need to be,” basic questions like that. That led to continuing as a lead systems engineer for the mechanical and optical test equipment to be designed and built for the optical part of the test. This naturally led to the role of optical test director for this test down at Johnson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How knowledgeable were you about the problems with the Hubble Space Telescope, and how did that impact designs for James Webb and then also the test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was definitely knowledgeable of the issues with the Hubble Telescope. One of the main lessons learned was that a system-level optical test was not done with Hubble, which would have caught the problem that existed with Hubble. From my point of view, it made the whole process of justifying the test and the amount of effort needed to do the test, because we had the Hubble experience. It was easier to justify that we needed a system-level test at Johnson to make sure that optically we would not have the same problem that Hubble had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Originally the test was supposed to be done up in Ohio at Plum Brook [Station at NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland]. Why did it get moved to JSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t really involved in that decision process as far as switching locations or trading between locations. Our role was figuring out a way to make it work at Johnson, as well as Plum Brook, so that NASA could make that trade. Originally, at the time that trade was being made, the project required that the primary mirror be pointed downward for contamination reasons.\\n\\n We actually came up with an elaborate elevator scheme to make Johnson work [with the primary mirror facing downward]. The telescope was originally going to roll into the chamber with the primary mirror pointed down and then lifted up on an elevator inside the chamber so that we could test the primary mirror with equipment at the bottom of the chamber. Fortunately, later, the project was able to figure out a way to make it work with the primary mirror pointing up, which made the configuration at Johnson much easier." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in the decision to move from a cup-down to a cup-up configuration?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was only involved in the way that we illustrated the obviousness that the test configuration was far more complicated with the mirror pointing down versus mirror pointing up. That incentivized the contamination control team to assess the risk of testing with the primary mirror up versus down and also looking at installing a clean-air utility in the facility down at Johnson to make that work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the potential contamination risk for having it faceup?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just the simple principle that gravity acts on particles; particles tend to fall down towards the ground. If you have the mirror surface facing up, particles from above are more likely to come down and fall on top of the mirror surface. Whereas if you have the mirror surface facing downward, then particles will have a tendency to move away from the mirror." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you be able to clean the mirrors easily if particles had fallen on them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The project had developed a means to clean the mirror if necessary, but in general you want to minimize operations on the mirror as much as possible so you don’t risk any damage that would affect the imaging capability of the mirror." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn’t want a second potential Hubble, I suppose." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You try and design the process so that the mirror doesn’t get dirty to begin with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You work for Harris [Corp.]. Can you talk about the role that Harris played in the test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Harris had a fairly large role in the test. We were responsible for the optical test equipment. We were the lead role in the optical test equipment, as well as the mechanical equipment to hold the telescope for the optical test. We also designed and built the sunshield thermal simulator in the test and built a lot of the thermal test equipment that was in the test.\\n\\n I was the optical test director. A colleague of mine, Mark Waldman, and I were the day-to-day test planners throughout the main part of the test. We supplied a lot of the people who ran the test in the control room. We supplied most of the people and processes to integrate the telescope into the mechanical test equipment, to install it in the chamber for the test, and the thermal test equipment. We covered the logistics of items going in and out of that Johnson building for the test.\\n\\n So we played a fairly large role in that test. We also generated the drawing that Johnson used to understand what they needed to renovate in the chamber for the test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand there hadn’t been a 3D [three-dimensional] model for the SESL [Space Environment Simulation Laboratory] before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s correct, because it was built in the early ’60s. Computer models weren’t available back then. It was all done by drawings. The drawings didn’t match or didn’t keep up with all the changes over the years, so we had to go through and check everything getting ready for the test to make sure the chamber represented what we thought it represented.\\n\\n A big part of that was making sure that our platform and the telescope would fit through the door. Johnson surveyed the door location and size for us a couple times to make double sure that we knew where the door was and how big it was, so we could make sure that the telescope and the platform could fit through the door. That was a big worry later on when the telescope was about to roll into the chamber, because with the human eye down low, with such a large telescope you could not get a good perspective to see that the telescope would clear the door.\\n\\n I remember getting lots of phone calls the week before the telescope was about to roll into the door with worry that it wasn’t going to fit. I had to assure them, “Yes, it will fit. Yes we only have inches to spare, but it will fit.” Part of my confidence was that we had a pathfinder telescope that we rolled through the door earlier and it cleared, so we had confidence it would work. And it did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I think I’ve seen the video on the website, and the clearance looks very, very tight there at the end as you roll things in. You talked about modifying the SESL for the test. What changes were made to ensure that you could test the optics here in Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were a lot of changes made. One big one was the helium system. [It] was installed in order to get the temperature down to 20 Kelvin, so that we could operate the telescope at its planned on-orbit operating temperature. We replaced the chamber crane system with our own lift system suited for lifting sensitive optical test equipment to the top of the chamber. As I mentioned, we added clean-room systems to keep the optics clean throughout the test, and Johnson scrubbed the chamber several times to get the inside of that chamber clean enough for an optical test.\\n\\n We added custom vibration isolators between the chamber and the telescope to minimize the optical image movement and blur during the test. You can’t quite simulate the vibration-free environment of space here on Earth. You have traffic traveling outside and heavy trucks adding to vibration that feeds all the way into the chamber. We had to isolate that as best we could. [The isolators were] custom because of the amount of weight involved in the mechanical platform, the optical test equipment, and the telescope. We had to basically scale up isolators to be able to hold that amount of weight and also isolate the vibration.\\n\\n We added cameras on windmills that rotated inside the chamber from the walls, using a technique called photogrammetry to measure the [change in shape] of the telescope between room temperature and cryogenic temperature. We innovated and patented an optical instrument [and software] to measure the [optical quality of the] segmented primary mirror. That’s just a sample of all the custom equipment that needed to be done and renovated for the test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about your role in coming up with that patented optical instrument. What was that specifically?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My role personally was coming up with what the instrument had to do and how it had to do it. One of the people at Harris had to come up with the technology to do it. The effort was shared with a small company in Arizona that made an interferometer for a segmented mirror. The reason that a segmented mirror is tricky is that most interferometry instruments are looking at a monolithic mirror, so the phase [of the reflected light] changes gradually as you look across that mirror. With interferometry, you’re looking at interference fringes in the image to understand the optical quality of that mirror. But with a segment, you have two mirrors that can be spaced apart from each other with a very abrupt change in phase across the edge, and you need to be able to understand the phase to well under a single wavelength of light.\\n\\n Typically, we use well under a single wavelength of visible light [across a monolithic mirror]. It also has to be coherent light, so you have to use a laser to do that. The problem is that when you go across a segmented edge with an abrupt change between the two segments, you can be multiple wavelengths apart. As you know, light is a wave. If you’re two waves apart between the two segments, that can look the same as only one wave apart between the two segments, because the wave repeats itself. You have to come up with a scheme of using more than one laser and using the [beat] frequency between those two laser [wavelengths] to be able to effectively come up with a longer wavelength. In other words, using one laser you can only tell if the spacing is less than one wavelength apart.\\n\\n But if you have two lasers, then you’re looking at the combination of the phase between those two lasers. You can set the wavelength such that there’s only one spacing that can show the same phase between both lasers, that’s how you get an effective longer wavelength. We can add one laser that adjusts its wavelength, so we can check at multiple different wavelengths to see exactly what the spacing is across that edge.\\n\\n Traditionally the optics in front of the interferometer is designed for a single wavelength, so we had to come up with a design that was just as precise over multiple wavelengths. That was the part that was patented. One of my colleagues here at Harris came up with an optical design where the quality was just as good over multiple wavelengths.\\n\\n What the optics do in front of the interferometer is convert the parabolic [primary] mirror into a spherical shape, which an interferometer can then measure. We call it a null lens. This null lens had low distortion across multiple wavelengths and low color aberrations across multiple wavelengths.\\n\\n There were a lot of other challenges that we had to deal with. Typically, interferometer systems are in a lab environment, room-temperature environment. The glass mirrors and components of an interferometer system are designed to be warm, and we had to stick this inside of a chamber that was at cryogenic temperatures.\\n\\n We actually had a very elaborate thermal cocoon, if you will, around the interferometer system, with an opening at the bottom looking down onto the primary mirror. We put a thermal shutter over that opening so we could isolate the room-temperature heat coming out of that opening when [necessary] during the test and also open up the shutter to take measurements during the test. And still meet the precision that room-temperature interferometers typically perform." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did it take to come up with this single instrument? I know it took many years to prep for this test, but this single instrument, how long did it take?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say it started in early 2000s, late ’90s, because when I came on board NASA was already doing technology development with the small company in Arizona to come up with an interferometer that can use multiple wavelengths. When I came on board we had to figure out how to do the null lens. We also had to take the work that was done and make it far more reliable so it could last through multiple practice tests and multiple months during the Webb test.\\n\\n We also pushed the company to come up with a fiber-optic solution, because the lasers that were being used didn’t have the reliability needed for such a long test. We wanted to be able to swap out spare lasers if necessary from outside the chamber, so we worked with them to come up with a fiber-optic method to deliver the laser light down into the interferometer for the chamber.\\n\\n How long? It started before I started in ’03 coming up with the technology for the interferometer itself, and we worked on the lens and had that design done by something like 2007. I would have to look up the dates, but I want to say we started integrating the interferometer system around 2011 and going through all kinds of tests to make sure that all the new ideas worked. Then we had to have it installed for all the early practice tests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you relocate to Houston for a time as the SESL was being refurbished? Or were you monitoring all of these changes from Rochester?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I relocated to Houston for all the practice tests and for the Webb test itself. Leading up to that it was mostly monitoring from afar, with many visits down at Johnson to work with integrating [the test equipment] into the chamber and building it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the importance of the pathfinder. I wonder if you can talk about your role in the optical tests that were done with the pathfinder. I understand that there were two, and then there was a thermal test, but there were also some optical tests during that run. Can you talk about those and your involvement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it actually even started earlier than that. There were a couple of functional tests on the chamber itself after the renovations were done. I wasn’t very involved in those, other than monitoring and understanding how the chamber was responding to the renovations. After that we installed our mechanical hardware that was holding this interferometer system, as well as [the first of three] large test mirrors that were going to be held at the top of the chamber over the Webb. We did a qualification test with that at cryo [cryogenic temperatures] early on.\\n\\n Then, after that test, we completed installation of all the optical and mechanical test equipment and ran what we called the commissioning test. We had a chance to run through the motions of our optical and mechanical test equipment to make sure they worked at cryo temperatures and also that they moved to the right position going from room temperature to cryogenic vacuum.\\n\\n Then we brought the pathfinder in and tested with that, qualified that. Because our intention was to follow that with putting the actual flight tertiary mirror, otherwise known as the Aft Optics [Subsystem] module, onto the pathfinder and run the full gamut of optical tests with that.\\n\\n My role was organizing the optical test team to get ready for all those tests and also organize the team for running the [optical] test equipment for those tests. Getting everyone to think through how the test was going to be done, think through the procedures, writing all the plans [and procedures] down, organizing the logistics of running the [optical] tests, organizing the control room [for the optical test support]. I had a lead role in all that effort. Also planning the tests and doing the day-to-day planning of those tests, leading up to the Webb test itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there anything unusual about your role or this type of test, compared to say other telescope tests that you may have been involved in? Or was this pretty standard? “These are the steps we need to take, and we need to make sure we check these boxes before we have the actual test of the Jim Webb Telescope?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This definitely had an aspect of—or at least to me it felt like a type of test that had never been done before. We certainly borrowed as many aspects as we could from previous tests and methodologies, but there were many differences, one being that we hadn’t tested a segmented telescope. Very few of us had had any cryogenic experience. We were also working with a team of people that were new to testing, new to the experience.\\n\\n We were working with a team that was spread across not only our nation but working with Canadians and Europeans as well for this test. There are federal restrictions working with our international partners that we had to work our way through to make that work. We had people from different companies as well as different parts of NASA; we had people from academia. It was a process of coordinating a very diverse group, leading them all into one direction, and getting us all working on the same plan and having a broad distribution of expertise scheduled throughout the test so we were always prepared if there were any issues." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any challenges working with such a diverse group of people that you recall that you really had to think outside the box?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We certainly had to think outside the box to [accomplish the goal while meeting] the [federal] restrictions [working] with international people. The rest of the challenges I think are typical of working with a broad group of smart, innovative people. I don’t think that was unusual compared to any large group of engineers and scientists and technicians." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any recollections of the day the Webb finally arrived here in Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t actually in Houston when it arrived. I had been working with the hardware at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] previously. But when the hardware arrived at Johnson, I knew the clock started ticking on when everything had to be set for the test. We were very busy putting the final touches on our plans for the test at that point, but it was definitely a thrill to see years and years of development and planning end up with actual hardware showing up onsite. Basically a feeling of, “Here we go!”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did you finally get a chance to make it down to Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The whole process of transitioning the telescope from shipping to getting it installed in the chamber was about two months long, so I was down there for the second month. By that point, the integration team needed to coordinate with the test team. We needed to start checking out test equipment as it was getting installed. I was down there coordinating with that and getting the final procedures in place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you talk about the test itself? What were your hours like, what shifts did you normally work? Were there any memorable moments or events that took place over the course of the test? [Hurricane] Harvey obviously being one of them, but I wonder if there are others." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I said, there were two of us whose responsibility was the day-to-day planning. There were plenty of chiefs, if you will, during the day shift. So I had my colleague do the day shift with them, and I did the late-night shift when there were less chiefs around to make sure things went smoothly through the night.\\n\\n Typically, we had a tagup meeting with all the leads at roughly 3:30 every afternoon. I would get in for that, or call in as I was getting in around that time, and then I would end up staying there till typically about 2:00 in the morning, but sometimes it went longer than that. It was definitely my 40 days and 40 nights, because I was there at least that long every single day without a day off. It was very challenging from that aspect, from a personal fatigue aspect, but it was also a thrill working with that team. There was a very strong enthusiastic team atmosphere, and it was great to work with a bunch of very knowledgeable people who were experts in their areas and coordinating working with lots of experts together to make it all happen. It was definitely exciting and thrilling and exhausting all at the same time.\\n\\n The test itself went very well. I was very pleasantly surprised. You, of course, go into these things planning for the worst and hoping for the best. The test went extremely well, so that was a huge relief. There were challenges of course.\\n\\n We talked about getting the interferometer system, developing that for this test. This test was the first time that we had operated in this particular configuration over 18 mirrors and getting all 18 mirrors stacked up in such a precise fashion. The pathfinder only had two mirrors. We worked on an 18-segmented mirror system in the lab before that, but those mirrors were not polished and controlled as precisely as the Webb was.\\n\\n We had to do it for real this time. There were still some processes, data analyses, creativity involved in making all of that work in the time needed. We anticipated this, and planned to do as much practicing while we were waiting for the telescope to cool down. Which we did, but it was still interesting to make it all work and be confident that what we were seeing was correct in the end. So there was that fun challenge.\\n\\n It was also great watching the hardware work in this environment. We of course went into the test with our expectations—or I should say perfect locations or perfect outcomes for various test measurements and images that we were taking, knowing full well that tests are never perfect. There were many times over when we took our first image or took a first measurement and it was very close to exactly matching what we expected. That was amazing in and of itself, that with this huge telescope and all the uncertainties that we knew about, given all our analysis coming into the test on where we think things should be, but also how far off they might be, and turning out that everything was very close to right where we expected. That was great; it was great seeing that.\\n\\n There was always a crowd. I remember the crowd waiting for the first image to come across in an instrument. There was a whole chain of events [across multiple teams] that had to work to [get that image]. You had to make sure that the optical source was working. You had to make sure the source was lined up correctly relative to where the instrument was located. The telescope alignment relative to the instrument had to be correct, the timing of the signals had to be correct.\\n\\n The whole processing of the image data, that whole process had to work. We had the people there to make it work if we had issues. We quickly had that first image, and it was great to see that everything was working the first time. Everybody was thrilled to see an actual image through the whole hardware system finally, after all these years of thinking through it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine that was very exciting for everyone to see that happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That experience carried throughout the test whenever we were doing something for the first time and knew all the things that had to happen correctly to make that happen. Having that feeling of excitement and relief that it actually happened as planned and the hardware was in really good shape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned something I wanted to go back to. You said that there was some creativity involved in making all this work. Was there any creativity on your part as the test was ongoing, and an issue came up that you had to come up with a new plan on the fly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were constantly optimizing. We had many things happening in parallel in order to meet the schedule of the test and get as much testing done as we could in the amount of time we had. There was a lot of time spent talking to the various experts there. As we found issues, you had to work around them and figure out alternative ways to make the test progress efficiently. But at the same time, you couldn’t be overly creative because there was a lot of thought going into the test. There was a lot of careful thought going into the test. You wanted to make sure you didn’t forget something or take any shortcuts. You had to maintain the integrity of the test, while also coming up with ways to either work around issues or ways to make things more efficient." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people were on the operations team as you were doing the test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see. In the test room there were I would say easily 20 people in there, three shifts a day. That was just our test room. The facility [room] had about another five people, the instruments’ [room] had about another six or seven people. Plus some other experts just there in the background to help out, although the experts wouldn’t need to do three shifts. Let’s say 30 per shift, three shifts. It was about 90 people, plus some other managers and experts that were in the background, so about 100 people a day involved. There were more people than that involved, because we were rotating people on location to help keep bodies and minds fresh throughout the test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Except for you, you got to stay for a very long time, you said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, my colleague Mark Waldman and I—he and I had the best grasp of all the details across all the disciplines, so we had to be there for a good chunk of the test to make sure things went smoothly and efficiently. We didn’t have to be there for the whole three months fortunately, but I know I was there over 40 days anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wanted to ask you about Hurricane Harvey, which hit as I understand it really when you hit the cryogenic temperatures that you were looking for. Can you talk about the impact of Harvey on the test and your personal experience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From a test efficiency point of view, we actually only lost one day. The first day was tough. I happened to be on shift when it struck and ended up doing close to a 24-hour shift that day. We spent a lot of time running around, kind of like plugging holes in the dikes in the Netherlands. We were running around, running triage on water leaks in the old building, protecting the equipment outside of the chamber that was running the test.\\n\\n We needed the first day to think through organizing the people and organizing how we were going to operate during the hurricane. Lee [D.] Feinberg led that whole effort, and he was excellent at that effort, leading all of us. We had to shift gears. We first went into basically safety mode, just make sure the hardware was safe, reorganizing personnel because it was too dangerous to travel at night, so we changed to 12-hours shifts.\\n\\n We had the Johnson meteorologists involved, who would give us a forecast of when there would be a break in the bands of rain passing through, and then we’d set up a shift change time. People would carpool in trucks and SUVs [sport-utility vehicles] and come in for the shift change. Once people arrived, then the people who were already there could then leave and go back to their place of sleep.\\n\\n We definitely shifted to a mode of monitoring. But after we realized things were stable, the building was shored up at that point, we could resume some optical testing. We ran some tests that could be run given the situation, so that started up again in a fairly quick manner.\\n\\n We got to the point where food became scarce. We knew Johnson had MREs [Meals Ready to Eat], so we weren’t in any kind of starvation danger, but we were told that the MREs weren’t all that appetizing, so another guy and I went out scouting for food. All the restaurants had closed except for the Waffle House, we discovered, and all the grocery stores had closed except for a small one that we found that was still open. A bunch of us went in there. The only thing that was left was expensive food. Gourmet tuna, glass jars of fruit that were like $6 apiece, bacon-wrapped pork, stuff like that. At that point we wanted to make sure we had some good food to eat, so we bought it and stocked up. That was one of the challenges.\\n\\n Many of the people worked 12-hour shifts for seven days straight, so we had to be careful with fatiguing people. We had to rearrange tests to take advantage of the time we had until operations were back to more normal [when] we could get back to three shifts a day and having the full team travel in, instead of just essential team members." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you spend the entire time of the hurricane in Building 32, or did you have the opportunity to go back and forth between your hotel?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had the opportunity to go back and forth. Actually, personally, I was not critical for running the safety of the hardware since I was more involved in the optical testing, which was more optional from a safety point of view. I was staying at a hotel during that time. I could do what I can from the hotel, which is why I was one of the ones who was available to go scouting for food and road conditions for the people who did have to get into Building 32 to keep the hardware safe during the hurricane." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite a memorable event in the midst of this unique test, I’m sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was in a hotel that served breakfast. After a while they had to get creative with the breakfast, I remember one breakfast was just a bowl of salad for us to eat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A bowl of salad? Oh, wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just what you wanted for breakfast, that’s funny. You stayed until the last day of the test? Or when did you end up leaving Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where we had breaks was when we were waiting for things to happen, when we were waiting for the telescope to evolve thermally to the point where we could run optical tests. I was there for most of the first six weeks of the test, I’ll say. I guess it was longer than that, I guess the first two months of the test. By then we were done with most of the optical testing. We were in a thermal balance mode, so at that point the telescope was just sitting and waiting to reach the point where it stopped changing thermally. The planning was not so complex day-to-day anymore. We weren’t doing things in parallel. We weren’t running both a thermal team and an optical team and other teams simultaneously at that point.\\n\\n It was mainly the thermal team running the show at that point, and the procedure was fairly straightforward. We were able to leave and just help out from the planning remotely. After that thermal balance was the warmup. We had basically just one optical test to run during the warmup, and a few other mechanisms tests, which was well-procedurized and somewhat simple, so we could [organize] that remotely as well. We also had test directors well-trained in the tools that we used to do the day-to-day planning, so other people could run the local day-to-day operations with confidence at that point. That helped us not have to be there for the full three-month duration of the test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to go back down to Houston at all? Have you been back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, actually not. Because the data reviews that we had following the test were not at Houston. So no, I didn’t need to go back. I actually moved on to another project as soon as I returned to Harris. I had a whole weekend off before I had to hit the ground running on another project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Another telescope project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Another NASA telescope project, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s exciting. I wonder, if you could look back over the time you were working on this test—even before there was a pathfinder or a telescope at the SESL—what your biggest challenge was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think there was a single challenge. I think there were many challenges over the years. Early on when we came up with what the test had to do and how well it had to test, the numbers we came up with were very challenging, and we had to figure out how to meet those numbers. There was a lot of effort to come up with a test that we knew could succeed. A lot of effort convincing others that the test could succeed, the constant challenge of meeting cost and schedule.\\n\\n Even though I’d been on the program for 15 years—most of those years getting ready for the test—throughout the years I don’t think there was a single day that went by where I didn’t feel behind, or felt like the test was coming faster than we felt comfortable with. Each phase had its different challenges. The early-on phases were coming up with the plan for the test, convincing the community that it was the right way to do the test, and that we would be able to meet the numbers that we came up with that the test had to meet. Then the big chunk of the phase after that [was] designing and developing and building the test equipment for the test. How good the test equipment had to be, and how the test equipment had to meet what it needed to do, while also being inside a chamber that we had no access for three months [during the Webb test].\\n\\n One of the big challenges is that it was a three-month test, and there’s no way you could stop in the middle of the test and just open the door to go in and fix something. We had to be very careful with our plans leading up to the test to make sure everything was put together in such a way that we had high confidence that it would work at the environment that we couldn’t easily test at room temperature and also work for three months without any reliability issues.\\n\\n There was a lot of paperwork involved. Paperwork is probably the least favorite thing for engineers to do. It was a challenge providing incentive to get that paperwork done before the test started. I would say there were constant challenges throughout the program. It would be hard to come up with one single one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure, it sounds like it. Do you think that you could define or explain your most significant contribution to the test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would guess my most significant was organizing the technical team to be ready by the time the test started and also to be prepared so that everyone was comfortable and efficient while we ran the test. I think my contribution was my organizational capabilities leading up to the test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any important lessons learned from the test that you think would be important for others to consider when they are working on tests of future space telescopes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was definitely noticeable, the advantage we had of being well-planned for the test. Never underestimate the value of being well-planned heading into the test and also well practiced heading into the test. It was clear that the test was a success because of all the practice that we had and all the planning that we had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about? Any of your experiences, things that we might have not covered or overlooked?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t think of anything big to add on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we go, I did want to ask you—are there other people you think that we should consider talking to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mark Waldman would be a good one if he wasn’t on your list." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t think his name is on the list, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was more involved with the test side. I certainly put the [very] early conceptual [order of events] together for integrating the telescope into the chamber and de-integrating the telescope coming out of the chamber. But there [was a large team that organized and detailed that operation. There are] people much closer to that day-to-day effort, which was also a very—I won’t say heroic effort, but it was a lot of hard work as well.\\n\\n One person you could talk to is Tom [Thomas R.] Scorse, who’s also here at Harris. Ed [Edward L.] Shade may be another person, who’s at Goddard. I don’t know if Carl [A.] Reis was on your list, I’m sure he has stories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "His name doesn’t sound familiar. Tom Scorse, we have invited him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Carl Reis was the lead test director for the test. He works for Goddard now, but he used to work for Johnson." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, thank you very much for your time today. I appreciate you letting us run over a little bit this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re welcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have a great weekend and thank you again. Enjoy your next telescope project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tony L. Whitman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right, thank you again for this opportunity. Have a good weekend." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You too." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00054", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "William “Bill” Seibert", + "description": "William “Bill” Seibert was a Senior Archivist and Chief of Archival Operations at the National Archives at St. Louis when he retired in 2017. Seibert began working for the National Personnel Records Center in 1978, after serving in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. After completing Career in Development Status (CIDS) training, he became Chief of a Correspondence Section in the Records Reconstruction Branch, which handles records damaged in the NPRC’s 1973 fire. He held several other positions in the NPRC. When NARA established a preservation program in St. Louis, in 2000, Seibert was named Preservation Officer and tasked with setting up that unit, staffing it and developing the preservation labs. When the National Archives of St. Louis was established, in 2004, he became the Chief of Archival Operations. In addition to describing notable events in his career, this oral history discusses Seibert’s involvement in NARA’s momentous decision to make late 19th and 20th century Official Military and Civilian Personnel Files permanent records, which vastly increased the agency’s holdings.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/seibert-william-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "seibert-william-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:17", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "09/22/2017" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Oral History Interviews", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Watford" + ], + "respondents": [ + "William Seibert" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bill Seibert, may I help you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hi, this is Rebecca Watford." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, hi. How are you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good, you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm okay. I'm going to close my office door and put you on speaker phone, is that all right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, sir, and I'm recording the phone call as you do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, thank you. Hold on. Hi, can you hear me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, sir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can hear you, let me close the door. Hello everybody [to people outside. Closes door and returns]. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Let me do the metadata really quick, and then we can start." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is Friday, September 22nd, 2017. On the phone is William SAY-bert—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] SIGH-bert." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—oh, Seibert, what was it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seibert, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Who is a Senior Archivist and Chief of Archival Operations at the National Archives at St. Louis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My name is Rebecca Watford. I am an Intern in the History Office at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. So, Mr. Seibert, what is your background prior to working at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I came to work at the Archives a few years after I finished my academic work. I returned to St. Louis in 1975 and for a brief time was involved in a number of projects having to do with architectural history here in the St. Louis area. Also spent a year or so in a family business, but then in 1978 I took what was then known as the PACE Exam, which was an examination for the civil service. And at some point after that, I think it was in '77 or '78 that I took that exam, and then in '78 I was contacted by the National Archives and Records Service, as it then was, here in St. Louis and offered a job at the National Personnel Records Center. So since 1978 I have been employed by the National Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. So what do you do at the National Archives? What is your job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well I am the Chief of Archival Operations at the National Archives at St. Louis, which is a field location of the Office of Records Services, as it's currently organized. And we hold the accessioned records of … Basically our collection is unique, in that it's a national collection, it is not as in the other field locations, it is not a regional collection of federal records but it's a national collection. And they really are the personal data records held by the National Archives and created by the Federal government. In other words, records about people rather than about government offices and organizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell me about the programs that you've worked on at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, when I started out I was, as I say, I was a CIDS (Career Intern Development System) trainee working for the National Personnel Records Center, and my first position after training was in the Records Reconstruction Branch, which was charged with providing reference on the records that were affected by the disastrous fire that took place at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973 and that destroyed upwards of 16- to 18 million records of individuals who served in the Army and the Army Air Forces and the Air Force between 1912 and 1963—basically, those who served during two World Wars and the Korean War. And what we did, we, again, provided reference on the records that were salvaged from the fire, and we reconstructed individual service histories of those individuals whose records were destroyed in that fire. And I was a Section Chief in the Reconstruction Branch, in one of the Correspondence Sections in that Branch. And I worked there for a number of years, and then I was selected as Assistant Branch Chief in the Air Force Branch of NPRC at that time. The branches were organized by military service—in the military facility, they were organized by military service branch. So there was an Army Branch, a Navy Branch, an Air Force Branch, and then there was the Reconstruction Branch. And when I left the Reconstruction Branch, I went into the Air Force Reference Branch as the Assistant Branch Chief. And then after a few years there, I was selected to work as an Appraisal Archivist, appraising a collection—I think as my CV mentioned, located in the St. Louis Military Records Facility was a collection of about 100,000 cubic feet of records of military field commands. These records were sort of the anomaly in St. Louis. As I said, in St. Louis, the main type of records held here are individual service records of military people and civil servants. The collection that I'm referring to now were records of organizations. They were records about military field organizations, their programmatic records, their administrative records, and so forth. Different type of records from the personnel records. There was a project to appraise all of these 100,000-plus cubic feet of records which were unscheduled. And we worked, there were two of us that worked as Appraisal Archivists systematically examining these records and appraising them for their archival value, separating what were determined to be records of permanent value from the records that were of temporary value and could be disposed. And that project is still going on. It began a few years earlier, about 1976, and it continues on today. But I worked in that project, and then after time I was also appointed as the Chief of the Appraisal and Disposition Section at the Military Records Facility of NPRC. So I sort of had a dual role as Appraisal Archivist and also as the manager of the Appraisal and Disposition Section of the Record Center. And then in 2000, after a decision was made by the Archivist of the United States that the military personnel files were a permanent series that would be accessioned into the National Archives—prior to that time the records were contingent—identified as … their status was basically in limbo. No one had proposed disposing of them, but they had not yet been determined to be of permanent value. They were in what is called a contingent status. But as I said, in April of 1999 the Archivist made the determination that the military personnel records were permanent, and that triggered the establishment of an archival unit in St. Louis. Prior to that the only organization here was the Federal Records Center, the National Personnel Record Center. But in 2000 an archival presence was established here in St. Louis, and the first unit was a Preservation unit that was specifically mandated by Congress to take action to preserve the records that were salvaged from the 1973 fire, what we refer to as the Burned Records. And I was appointed as the Preservation Officer with the task of setting up that unit, staffing it and developing the preservation labs that would be needed to fulfill that function of preserving those records. That was in 2000. In 2004 an archival, full-fledged archival … unit was established in St. Louis that would deal with reference and all the other archival functions other than preservation. And I was appointed as the Chief of that organization, which is what I do today. And we, again, our task was to establish that organization from the ground up. We have a Public Research Room here, obviously, now. And we have a Reference Branch and also a Processing and Access Branch. And then those are sort of the three functional units within the National Archives at St. Louis. And I manage those three operational areas here. So that's what I do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. What, I'll ask this so I have the complete timeframe, how—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Pardon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—long were you at the Archives in number of years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't hear the first part of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I was just asking—I said you've already said when you started, I just need to know when, the number of years you've been doing that—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Oh, yeah, well from 1978 to 2017 … is… hmmmmm… that would be 39 years. That plus my military service and accumulated sick leave and so forth means that I've ended up with 43 years, a little over 43 years of creditable federal civil service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you do in the military?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in the Army. I was drafted during the Vietnam period. I had been in graduate school at Oxford University in the United Kingdom, and, but I was in the Vietnam draft. So then I had to—living overseas, a lot of us that were there had to make the decision as to whether we would stay or go back and participate in a war that we did not believe in. So my sort of—I felt that the long-range thing to do would be to return and to serve. So I was in the Army from 1969 through the spring of 1972. I was part of the—President Nixon after his opening to China began a major reduction in force in the military, and those of us who were due to separate in less than a year were given an early out. So I served all of 2½ years and then was discharged in April of 1972, and fortunately I was able to … the organization that provided the scholarship that I was on at the University of Oxford when I left in '69, they said they would hold my scholarship and I was welcome to return, so in April of '72 I returned to the United Kingdom and continued to study there. Finishing up in 1974, late '74 and returning to my home in St. Louis in 1975." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like your military background served you well in working for the Archives in St. Louis?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Oh, oh, definitely. That really was a fortunate occurrence, because the work that I eventually [Laughing] did in the Army was actually personnel related, and so when I applied to work for the National Archives and especially here in St. Louis, the main holdings are basically personnel records. Of course, I knew the Army records, but I had to learn the records of the other military services and also the records of the civil service, which are a major portion of our holdings here at the National Archives in St. Louis. But it was a great sort of a … a start, because I had worked with a lot of those records when I was actually in the military." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a background in preservation before you came to the Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. That was interesting. They felt when they established the Preservation Program in 2000 that they wanted somebody to initially head it up at the beginning who understood the records. And then the way it worked out is I was selected as the Preservation Officer but was able to select two outstanding records conservators to work with me, and actually one of those people succeeded me as the Preservation Officer here, Marta O'Neill, who has an amazing background in preservation as well as in archives. So they wanted somebody who had a deep background in the records and knew the condition of the records and would be able to prioritize the work. And so that's why, I think, why I applied for the job and why I was selected. But my major interest and background, of course, was in archives and in history as opposed to preservation and conservation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did you initially apply to work at the Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, because my academic background and my greatest interest is in history. I really did not, never desired to be a teacher. So really, the other major way to work in history is to work with the primary sources. And that's of course what archives is, what archivists do. They work to identify and make accessible historical records. So that's what appealed to me about archives and certainly the National Archives. Which is, you know, the professional leader in this country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think you've learned a lot from being in the archives, for being there for 39 years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, my goodness, tremendous amount, yeah. You really learn a lot about the history of the United States Government and all of the functions that the government performs, and it's fascinating work, and you learn something every day, really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are some things that you've learned that have surprised you over the years from working at the Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hmm. Well, I would say, understanding the complexity of bureaucracies, both of military and civilian bureaucracies. And how they evolved and developed has been pretty … a pretty amazing learning experience. If you want to know what I think are the most significant activities that I've been involved in over these years, I can name four of them [Laughing] right off the bat. If that would be of interest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Go ahead, go for it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I was, my colleague and I, she no longer works for NARA, but is one of the most … she’s one of the most brilliant archivists I've ever worked with. She was working here at the time. We were named as the, basically, the support people for a task force that was appointed by the Acting Archivist in 1995 to look into the appraisal of the—to deal with—to make a decision as to the ultimate disposition of the military personnel records that were held in St. Louis, the Official Military Personnel Files is what they're actually called. They're the individual service histories of people who have served the United States in the Armed Forces starting— the earliest ones that are out here are from the last third of the 19th century. The prior, the earlier records that have been part of the National Archives in Washington, and are held in the National Archives building, have been among the most heavily accessed record series in NARA's history. So the question is, okay, huh, we have held the early records of those who served in the Armed Forces of the United States beginning in the Revolutionary War, what about the people that served in that capacity from the last third of the 19th century and through the 20th century? And this task force was directed by the Archivist to come up with a decision. The decision that we came up with was that these records were of permanent value for the people of the United States and should be accessioned by the National Archives. And that's what eventually happened, in the year 1999, as I said, the Archivist at that time, John Carlin, issued the decision that the military service records held in St. Louis were permanently valuable records of the United States and would be accessioned into the National Archives. In one fell swoop, the holdings of the National Archives increase by almost, I would say, close to 40 percent. Anyway, it was a major, major decision. And that was followed a few years later by another task force appointed by the Archivist to look at the value, the archival value, of the records of individuals who served the United States government as civil servants. And those records were also held here in St. Louis. And they are held here, and that working group, which I also was on, made the recommendation that records held here, which really date to the beginning of the civil service in the 19th century, that those records up through 1973 should be also brought into the holdings of the National Archives. Records of civil servants who served the government in 1974 and later, their records, basically, are held in electronic form, and so the paper records were deemed not to be of permanent value, the later records. But the records created prior to 1974 were recommended for permanent retention, and that recommendation was accepted and was approved by the Archivist. So that represents about over 200,000 cubic feet of records of civil servants, the people that served the United States in a civil service capacity. So being involved in those two … really … seminal appraisal efforts was really a privilege and I feel, you know, I've served history very well in having been a part of that. I think subsequent years have borne out the correctness of our appraisal decision, because we, here in St. Louis, are—the reference that we perform on those records is—we are—our Public Research Room is the third-busiest in the system after the one in College Park, and I think our level of business that we, number of researchers that come to us here actually surpasses the number that come down to Archives I. So the interest in these records is tremendous. Of course the interest is … a big part of the interest is in their use in family history and genealogy but also especially the records—well, the military and civil service records are increasingly used by historians doing … research in the history of the Federal government and the United States. So, those two activities I think stand out in terms of evaluating the time I spent here. Also, I was pretty much responsible for the reappraisal of the records of the Selective Service that were held in the records centers of the National Archives, basically, the draft records. Which have been used here--I became familiar with those records when I first started working in the Records Reconstruction Branch, 'cause those records are critical to being able to reconstruct individual service histories of people who served in the Army and in the Air Force during the First—well, certainly, during the Second World War and subsequent to that in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. And those records were slated for disposal, for destruction, and when we— when that was brought to my attention I, you know, advocated and was successful in having that disposition changed, and we have subsequently accessioned the records, the draft registration and classification records for millions of American men. I think the question now, I think, has become, will women be subject to the current draft? I don't know if that has been decided yet, but certainly those records that document the people that served in the Second World War and in the Korean War and the Vietnam War are now safely held in the National Archives here in St. Louis and will be available in perpetuity. So that was another major accomplishment. And I think most recently, in recent years, the last eight or nine years, I've been actively involved in bringing in the records of another important series, the records, they're known as the Individual Deceased Personnel Files. These are records created by the Army and that document the circumstances of death of persons who really were in all branches of service. The Army until the mid-1950s had the task of dealing with casualties in all branches. And those records, again, have always been an important group of records for us in reconstructing military service histories but especially important, the people that, you know, made the ultimate sacrifice and were the casualties of war in World Wars and in inter-war periods as well. People that died in service. So those records are in the process of coming into our holdings as well. But … all told, about 15,000 cubic feet of records that go back to—the earliest ones in that group are from 1939 forward through 1976, through the end of the Vietnam War. So anyway, I would say, if I were asked what the highlights of my time working for NARA, those, bringing those four groups of records into the collections of the National Archives and ensuring their permanent retention for the American people is probably, I would say, the most significant activities that I've been involved in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would you say St. Louis has grown in the archival field according to size and in the work you're doing since you've been there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well I mean I think it's … in terms of archives, yeah, it's just … you know, it's expanded tremendously. We had the records center operation here, had been in St. Louis since … really since the end of the Second World War, starting with the Army records. But then when our previous building was constructed, the records of Naval personnel, Marines, Coast Guard, and Air Force all came into St. Louis. And at the same time in the early ’50s, the records of the civil service came here. And those records were being accessed and referenced by the Federal Records Center here. But the main issue was, what was their ultimate—what was their ultimate fate? Would they, you know, eventually be destroyed or would they become part of the archives, permanent holdings of the National Archives? And as I say, that's been happening starting in the mid-’90s, those appraisal efforts took place and the decisions were made, and since 2004 when the Archival Division was established here. It's just, it’s grown tremendously, and currently we have outside of—we are the largest facility in the National Archives outside of D.C., and our holdings come very close to … well, I think our holdings exceed the holdings at A-1, and I think right now we have over, close, getting onto 700,000 cubic feet of archival records here. So it's a major, major center for the Archives. And as I say, the reference that takes place here is … is I think second only to what takes place at the archives in College Park. And it's …" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What stories do you have from working at NARA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well. I guess the ones that I talked—told you before about bringing in these major series of records. And then, of course, we, I think we hold now upwards of over 800 individual series of records and over 130 record groups, so it's become just a major center for archival research. In terms of stories … well, it was in about two areas I remember working—but those involved, during the time that I was working in the Military Appraisal and Disposition Project, dealing with the collection of field command records here, we were assisted—a Congressionally mandated investigation of … of extraterrestrial … aircraft, basically? This was in the early ’90s. A Congressman from New Mexico was … basically … directed the Secretary of Defense to have a major records search done on records created by the Air Force during the immediate postwar period in the late ’40s and early ’50s surrounding supposed sightings of unidentified flying objects. It was very interesting. The results of that—I think that study, they sent several teams of historians, Air Force historians out here to work, whom we worked with and helped … access pertinent records that were held here in St. Louis. That went on for the better part of a year. The study they produced, I was looking at it the other day, it's about three inches thick [Laughing]. But the conclusions they came to were, obviously, that other events which at the time were top secret and could not be shared with the public … because the information could not be shared, the result was that legends proliferated about what had occurred. The main place of course—I don't know if you're familiar with Roswell, New Mexico, is where one of the alleged crashes of a spaceship and supposed recovery of alien spaceship crew took place. All of that, of course, was … crazy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But it had to be—because of this Congressman's insistence, the work had to be done to basically debunk [the legends] through the documentation that existed. So that was an interesting experience. Another thing that happened somewhat later, there was an allegation of mass killings during World War II at an Army base in Mississippi. And I don't know, it was in the national news for quite a while in a place called Camp Van Dorn in Mississippi. It was alleged that the Army basically responded to a riot by African American troops by killing hundreds of them, and burying them secretly. And that also was a—again, the Secretary of Defense mandated an investigation, and they came out, the investigators were out with us for many months. And we were able to, based on tracing, using the unit records that we have here, the rosters and morning reports, were able to identify the individuals who were assigned to the units that were there at Camp Van Dorn at the time of the alleged massacre, and we were able to follow these individuals through to the end of their military service and determined that there were not hundreds of people killed. I'm not sure that there were—I think there were one or two individuals who … were shot in, during those riots and that died. But we were able [to determine], again, documenting through the records that the hundreds of people [who] were there and assigned at that base, at that time, not only didn't die, they were discharged alive from military service later in the war. So that also was an interesting research effort. And there have been others. A number of investigations having to do with the use of mustard gas and Agent Orange by the services, and the exposure of military members to those … toxic agents. Also, I was appointed to serve two different times as a Records Expert on committees of the National Academy of Sciences. The one [committee] was investigating the long-term effects of exposure to radiation, exposure of military service persons to radiation connected with the atmospheric nuclear tests that took place from 1945 or '46 through the 1960s. That was … that committee worked for about, I think, two or three years. It involved numerous … attending numerous meetings in Washington, D.C., at the National Academy of Sciences. And then there was another committee that was appointed by the Academy to assess the effect of exposure to Agent Orange by persons who were in the military during the Vietnam War. It was essentially an epidemiological study, and the study obviously was founded on the use and the availability of the records of individual service members, as well as the records of military organizations, that we hold here in St. Louis. And, as I was an expert in those, you know, the contents of those records, I was asked to serve on those two committees at the National Academy of Sciences. So those were interesting experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have anything you would like to say about the Archives itself? Have you enjoyed working for it? Have you … ?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, tremendous. It's been—that's, you know, why I stayed as long as I have, because the work is fascinating, it's very rewarding. As someone who loves history and understands the importance of history, archives are the foundation of historical research. And without archives, history cannot be served. So it's been a wonderful, wonderful career. Wouldn't change it for anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have anything else you want to add to your interview?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. Can't think of anything at the moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Is there anything you need me to edit out of this interview at some point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think so, but I mean would I be able to listen to it? You know I—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Yeah, I can send it to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, and I can let you know. No, I don't think—I don't think so. I think I was accurate in what I said, but it would be nice to be able to listen to it and verify that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, sir, once the recording came out, we'll—I should be able to send it to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just to let you know, nothing will be put online or released to anyone in the public for probably about five years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you have plenty of time to make your edits if need be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Alright, well thank you for letting me interview you for our Oral History Project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Alrighty." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And thank you so much for talking to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Seibert", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Appreciate it. Good to talk. All right. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have a nice day." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00849", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/FrutkinAW/frutkinaw.htm", + "original_file_name": "FrutkinAW_3-8-02.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/FrutkinAW/FrutkinAW_3-8-02.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Arnold W. Frutkin", + "location_date": "Washington, DC – 8 March 2002" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Kevin M. Rusnak" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Arnold Frutkin" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 8, 2002. This oral history is being conducted with Arnold Frutkin in Bethesda, Maryland, for the NASA Headquarters History Office. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Kevin Rusnak.\\n\\n This is the second half of this oral history. The first part was conducted on January 11, 2002. We are visiting with Mr. Frutkin about his roles with NASA that included his involvement with NASA policies dealing with … the international community … and federal agencies.\\n\\n We’d like to begin today with some of the work that you did with negotiations with Spacelab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. The Spacelab story begins, as near as I can remember it, with a number of talks that Tom [Thomas O.] Paine [NASA Administrator] gave in this country explaining his vision of the post Apollo Program. He talked in fairly ambitious, very ambitious, terms of a large space station. In fact, he described it as a one hundred-man space station. You have to remember that Paine, before he came to NASA, was head of a think tank at GE [General Electric Company], and he was a strong member of the Futurists Group. So he thought in these rather large far-out terms. He was pretty good at sketching that kind of thing, and it attracted a fair amount of attention.\\n\\n He gave that talk at one time when Herman Bondi was present. Herman Bondi was president of ESRO, the European Space Research Organization. He was, I believe, a Nobel Laureate. [You] can check on that. He was a physicist, and a very bright and energetic man [and co-author of the Steady State theory of the universe]. He was much impressed with [Paine’s] talk, not in terms of its literal specifics, the hundred-man space station, but in terms of there being a follow-on to Apollo that would be quite elaborate and involve a space station of some sort. He met with Paine after that talk and expressed interest in the European space [agencies] getting on board in some way, participating in some way.\\n\\n I was present because he was an international guy, and Paine asked me how we could begin to lay the groundwork for European participation. So I suggested we take his talk, that he go abroad, and we talked in those words—of a dog-and-pony show—that would go to Europe, go to several of the capitals and lay out what he had in mind for follow-on programs, and invite European participation. Well, we did that. We structured a fairly elaborate dog-and-pony show.\\n\\n I remember John—who headed the manned space program for quite a while and got the shuttle off the ground." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. [John F.] Yardley? Was it Mr. Yardley, John Yardley?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yardley. Yes. Yes, right. John Yardley, I’m quite sure, was a participant. There were several people, probably Homer [E.] Newell. I really don’t recall. And I was there. Each of those people laid out his program area, and I laid out the sort of terms under which they might participate. I had talked with Yardley, I believe, and whoever was involved on the program side, and gotten a pretty good feel for what they felt would be acceptable and useful. So we talked in terms of doing some coherent element of a space station which could stand pretty much by itself and then be integrated, so that we wouldn’t have too many interfaces.\\n\\n That dog-and-pony show played to very large audiences in Paris [France]—I remember Paris. I’m sure we went to London, and I don’t remember where else, but we went to several places. There was a great deal of press attention and a great deal of talk in Europe, and the Europeans got together and cooked up some proposals. Now, here I’m a bit fuzzy, because I think that there was a strong interest in Europe at that time in doing an upper stage of the launching system, and that presented some difficulties from the U.S. side, not just in NASA, but in the science advisor’s office. There was a general reluctance at that time to get the Europeans involved in propulsion. So there was a fair amount of to’ing and fro’ing.\\n\\n We had to steer their interests to some extent, and it eventually emerged in doing the Spacelab. It was to be a complex platform, what actually emerged, and the agreement we drafted for it had them designing a Spacelab in concert with the appropriate NASA people, building it entirely at their expense, but it then becoming, in effect, ours, because we couldn’t have any veto power of the use of it. They would be able to use it when they wanted to by arrangement with NASA. They would have to pay for its launching, if they wanted to use it for their purposes exclusively. If a cooperative use was worked out, they would not have to pay for it.\\n\\n But in any case, it was a very favorable agreement from our standpoint. I think there was a little grousing on the European side that maybe we drove too hard a bargain on that, but it was subliminal. And that’s how the Spacelab came about.\\n\\n Do you have any questions on that at all? That’s how it came about.\\n\\n By the way, when we went abroad in that dog-and-pony show and heard Paine’s first speech in which he repeated this hundred-man space station business—and remember, this is back in the [nineteen] seventies some time—it would be an extravagant notion today. It was more than an extravagant notion then. When we heard him repeat it [then], Julian [W.] Scheer, who was along, and I went to Paine, who was a very approachable guy whom you could talk to very well, and said, “Tom, you’ve got to knock that off. No more talk about hundred-men space stations, because we will lack credibility here. People won’t believe we’re serious.” So he was very good-natured about it and he dropped it, talked about a space station and what it would do. That showed something about that administrator.\\n\\n Okay. What would you like to do next?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, about Spacelab. Were the Japanese also involved? Were you negotiating with them as part of any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. It was with the European Space Research Organization. We negotiated through them. We could just segue into the Japanese if you like, because up to that time, the Japanese had been very much laggard in cooperation with us. I don’t think the Japanese were really interested in cooperation. I think they were much more interested in developing their own space program and space capability, and so they focused a good deal on propulsion.\\n\\n There were actually two groups in Japan. There was one, a propulsion group, headed by Professor Itokawa. He had developed what was called the pencil rocket, a small solid propellant rocket, Japan’s first effort in rocketry, and he wanted to escalate that work into a major launch vehicle. And there was another group, … university professors, who were interested in research, scientific research. They had some pulling and hauling between them, because they were competing for attention with us, to respond to them, and they were competing for money in Japan.\\n\\n There were people who wanted to build a Japanese satellite and have us launch it, and we were interested in Japan joining the group of countries that had done that kind of thing. Itokawa and his friends were interested in getting access to Thor Delta [rocket] technology, and that led to some difficulties. They actually submitted proposals for access to Thor Delta technology, saying that would be their cooperative interest. We explained that was not cooperative, because, in our view, cooperation required joint or mutual interest. We had no interest in their working with Thor Delta. And, of course, we were reluctant in those days to provide access to launch vehicle technology. Not that NASA was, but we were under marching orders—guidance—to discourage that.\\n\\n Things got quite interesting there, and I don’t know whether this is general knowledge—I doubt that it’s general knowledge—but there was in the State Department a very senior official, Alex Johnson. He was very much interested in the Japanese interest in launch vehicle technology and tried to encourage us to be more forthcoming to them. Now, in my opinion, he should have known a lot better, because he was a member of the little intelligence group, an interagency intelligence group, that would have known far better than I did that the U.S. was not interested in Japanese access to launch vehicle technology [at that time].\\n\\n But here I’m going to just add a footnote of mine because I think it’s relevant. He was married to a Japanese woman. He had been ambassador to Japan previously. So I felt, and I believe that others felt, he had a particular slant. I resisted it as strongly as I could, but he was a much more senior guy and, in my view, it was one of these cases where a man was advocate, judge, and jury. He was an advocate here and he took the Japanese interest before this small interagency group, which had Defense and C.I.A. [Central Intelligence Agency] and State and other representation, and pushed pretty hard for it.\\n\\n What came out of it, as I remember—but you may want to check this—is that there was a commercial arrangement between the Japanese and the Thor Delta manufacturer. NASA had nothing to do with it. We opted out. But I believe that there was access ultimately given to the Japanese through that channel. Before it was [approved], the Japanese asked us if they could borrow a Thor Delta to display in Japan, and we just laughed at that idea, I mean, it was so transparent.\\n\\n Okay. In the course of that history, I don’t know if I told you this, but if it’s already in there, stop me. There was an elderly Japanese scientist named Kaneshige, who had been a quite good friend of Hugh [L.] Dryden’s, and we became quite good friends. He had been involved in the Japanese atomic energy program—peaceful uses. He told me at one time during a visit here that Itokawa had misrepresented our attitude toward cooperation with the Japanese publicly and he sent me a Japanese newspaper—did I tell you about this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shinbun, which is their New York Times, … had a picture of me on the front page. I knew nothing about this till Kaneshige showed it to me. It was in connection with a letter that Itokawa had written, stating as a fact that NASA refused to launch a Japanese satellite and using that falsehood as an argument for the Japanese developing their own launch vehicle. Kaneshige was identified more with the research scientists. He was opposed to Itokawa, and especially that kind of behavior, and so he was letting me know, I think, so that I could write a letter to Asahi Shinbun, straightening out that letter, which I did. But those things never catch up with lies like that. I’m sure there were Japanese who felt that we declined to launch their satellites. In fact, we had been trying to encourage them to submit a proposal for a cooperative satellite. So that was sort of interesting.\\n\\n A very similar thing happened, which I think is quite interesting, with the French. It had to do with the launching of communications satellites. This was after INTELSAT [the International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium] had been established. You know what INTELSAT was? Okay. As part of the INTELSAT agreement, the signatory countries all promised not to launch any international or regional communications satellites in competition with INTELSAT. The idea was INTELSAT would be a unitary global system, and they didn’t want the members peeling off, setting up their own English system, their own French system, their own whatever, taking business away from the international system. And all the countries signed that.\\n\\n Now, there were certain circumstances under which countries [could] launch communications satellites, I think for strictly national use, because that wouldn’t compete with INTELSAT. There may have been some regional exceptions, I don’t remember, but no international satellites.\\n\\n France then came to us and asked if we would launch a communications satellite for them. That would not be a cooperative program because we had no interest in that, but it was a [purely French] program. They would pay NASA for that launch. We asked them to explain what this communications satellite was going to do. Well, it was going to be a research satellite, no commercial application. So we said, “Okay.”\\n\\n Then some statements began to appear in the French press by French officials, telling the French people that this satellite would, in fact, after a research period, be used for commercial purposes internationally. The State Department got very disturbed, properly, and asked us to get a reaffirmation from the French of their pledge to INTELSAT that they would not launch a satellite for commercial purposes, impinging on INTELSAT. I was reluctant to do that that way, because I felt they had made their pledge, and it would be sufficient to say, “Hey, these statements are being made which are inconsistent with what you’re agreeing to do here. Are these people speaking with authorization or without authorization?”\\n\\n Anyhow, it’s a small issue in the end, but State insisted we write the letter. So I did write a letter to the French and asked them to reaffirm their pledge. I, frankly, don’t remember how they answered the letter. I don’t remember how they answered that letter, but what happened was that a number of people in the French space program, one in particular, a man named Lebeau in the French space program, put it out in France and throughout Europe that we had refused to launch a French satellite when, of course, all we had said was, “Clarify the pledge you’ve already made and we’ll be glad to launch your satellite.”\\n\\n So it was grossly misrepresented, and I was so angry about it, I refused Lebeau access to my office. He was not allowed to come to my office at NASA. Since that office was a very important point of contact for European space interests, this was quite a thing. And the French science attaché, Lévy—I forget his first name, very nice guy— Lévy came to me and pleaded with me to forgive Lebeau, and I said, “I want a flat apology from him.” He was a person I had grown to dislike. I discovered that he was devious in many other contexts. In fact, years later, he became director of a museum in France and got into a great public feud with a woman who maybe ran that museum or something, and was forced to resign. He got himself disgraced.\\n\\n But, anyhow, that canard, that false representation that we had refused to launch a French communications satellite, was bruted all around in Europe and I had to respond to it. I mean, I would go to a meeting in Europe and somebody would say, “Why did you refuse to do that?” And I would have a copy of the letter with me, because it was such a common thing. And we never fully caught up with that. That covers another story with the French.\\n\\n There is one other related story, talking about other countries’ interests in launch vehicle technology. Somewhere in the sixties, before 1966, I don’t know exactly, but I know it was before 1966 because one of the people involved, an Indian, was killed in a plane crash, an Air India crash into Mont Blanc. His name was Homi [J.] Babha. He was a great figure in Indian science and generally in the world. He was a member of the Royal Society and the National Academy of Sciences. He was a fine man.\\n\\n Anyhow, in that period, we had a sounding rocket program going with India, and they expressed interest in access to Scout technology, and we raised the issue in government agencies here, how we should respond to that. There was a debate, because some of the people who were well up on solid rocket propulsion, like the Jet Propulsion Lab people, JPL, we got them in on it and asked their opinion, and they said that the Indians could develop this themselves. It would be no great deal to do it. It might take them a few years, but they could do it.\\n\\n There were others who said we should deny it to them because one didn’t know how they would use it, whether it was going to be space research or for military applications. And we couldn’t decide a question like that.\\n\\n At one point, the head of the Indian program, Vikram Sarabhai, and Homi Babha came to my home to try to talk me into helping them to get access to Scout technology. Well, my personal belief was—and I said this in our own interagency meetings and so on—that they were going to get it ultimately. If we didn’t help them, there were others who were going to help them, the French in particular. The French were developing their own solid rocket technology on their own, and they would be eager to help if we didn’t, and others might help.\\n\\n So the Indians would get it and, in effect, they would get it over our dead bodies if we refused to give it to them, and so they’d resent us. I thought it would set back relationships because it was important to them. I recognize that you’d be giving it to them sooner than they might get it otherwise, but maybe only a year or two, because there were others in the wings waiting to help. In any case, the decision here was not to help, so we said no. The French did help.\\n\\n When I visited—I went to India often—they showed me what they were doing. There was a filament spinning technology which is used in the casings of solid rockets and—god, I haven’t thought of that in thirty years—and they were working with that. They’d gotten it from the French. Then there is the casting of the solid propellant itself. They’ve gotten into that.\\n\\n Then, I remember, one of the critical items of technology that they needed in developing the rocket was a shake table. They’re these very large structures that I think … are designed to simulate the high-vibration regimen in the launch phase, and they shake rockets to see what they—they have to be built to withstand that terrific vibration. They applied to get shake tables in this country, and I’m quite positive they were denied, but they did get them from somebody else.\\n\\n So I mention this because it’s part of the history, but it also illustrates that there is a real question. I won’t presume to answer it, but there’s a real question whether it pays to stiff people who should be your friends in matters that are futile, because you could not keep the Indians from getting launch vehicle technology of that primitive kind, the scout-level thing.\\n\\n I don’t know how significant that was in U.S.-India relations, but they were terrible at that time. Mrs. Gandhi was the prime minister and very anti-American at the time. For part of that time, the New York senator who’s just retired, Pat—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Moynihan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Daniel Patrick] Pat Moynihan was the ambassador to India at that time. I used to visit him whenever I was in India, and he would fume about Mrs. Gandhi. And she was a person whom it was easy to dislike. I met her a couple of times. She did not like Americans. But I have no idea how significant a thing like this was in that general problem with India. I suspect it was probably relatively minor, but more significant than most people would think because it was the sort of thing—you see, they undoubtedly were interested in getting technology for military purposes. So it would have been a big thing for them, for their security posture, so they might have felt a bit more seriously about it than we imagined. That’s my guess. Anyhow, there it is.\\n\\n Later, of course, the Indians did—I think they have put up their own small satellite, haven’t they? I believe they have. It was after my time, but I believe they did. I’m sure they have. Right.\\n\\n Now, you asked me about China." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Unless you have some more questions about any of this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were doing nothing with China. NASA was doing nothing with China in the sixties, the early sixties, because there was a deep freeze in U.S.-China relationships at that time.\\n\\n I don’t remember exactly when in the sixties the ping pong era began, you know, when we began playing ping pong with them, which was the first public evidence of a slight, slight crack in the thing, but we [in NASA] were doing absolutely nothing and it was not imaginable at that time that you could do anything with them. There would not have been any toleration of the slightest technological interface with them for satellite launching or anything else.\\n\\n But when we come along to Apollo-Soyuz, by that time, the early seventies, you had [President Richard M.] Nixon and [Secretary of State Henry A.] Kissinger in the White House, and they pushed hard for us to do Apollo-Soyuz, and I distinctly remember coming back from Moscow [USSR] after we got the Apollo-Soyuz agreement signed [but] before the project began, just the signature of the agreement, came back to my office, and my guys said, “Well, now we can relax for a while. We’ve gotten that taken care of.”\\n\\n And I remember saying, “No, you can’t. I want you to sit down and draw up a couple of proposals for space cooperation with China.” They looked at me as though I was crazy. And I said, “I’ll bet anything that one of these days, it may be a year or two, the White House is going to ask us for some proposals they could make for space cooperation with China. It’s going to come, so you might as well work something up.” And that had to be very specially tailored according to our judgment of the political realities. It had to be an arm’s length kind of thing. The Chinese might do a satellite, but it would have to be something very benign, like meteorology. Another was communications, in order to get them communicating with the rest of humanity. So [I believe] those were the two things that I asked our guys to work up. [The second ight have been an earth resources satellite data access for the Chinese—I’m not sure.]\\n\\n In time, they worked up two proposals and we went over them and polished them up and filed them away. I don’t know how long after that it was, but one day—this would tell you a little about when it was because [James C.] Fletcher was the Administrator—Fletcher called me into his office and he said, “This is very hush-hush, but the White House has asked me to come up with some proposals that might be made to the Chinese for space cooperation.\\n\\n So I said, “Okay.” I went back and took these things out of the file and went up to his office and gave them to him. [Laughter] He almost lost his teeth. I mean, he was really flabbergasted. But that was quite a minor coup.\\n\\n Now, I think that happened after Kissinger’s first visit to China. I don’t think it was in advance of the first visit. I would be quite sure it was after the first visit, and it was for a return visit, and those [proposals] were taken over. There were no NASA people involved in that visit or the presentation to the Chinese. I suppose it was done very informally.\\n\\n It developed very slowly, the response and so on. I was out of the loop by that time, so I never had any follow-on with the Chinese. That was done by others in the office. I know it was done. I mean, there were talks. As a matter of fact, I don’t know whatever happened to them. My impression in the early year or two was that it was not going well. The Chinese were dragging feet or whatever. I don’t know the problems. You’d have to talk to people who—like Dick Barnes might know. Do you know Dick Barnes? Do you know his name?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, he should be interviewed for this stuff, because Dick worked for me in that office from almost the very beginning through all the time I was there and beyond, and became head of that office sometime after I left. It had all changed. It wasn’t the same thing, but he was there, and Dick has a far better memory than I do. He would have been there when this Chinese thing was going on and, presumably, has known something about it.\\n\\n I remember not being too well impressed with how it was going or how my old office was handling it. I had the feeling that things had slacked off quite a bit, but that’s just a vague impression and it may not be valid. Dick Barnes would have a better feel for it than I.\\n\\n So that’s all I can tell you about the China thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you talk with us a few minutes about Canada and, maybe, in specific, the remote manipulator system, the ARM, how it came about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. That’s an interesting story. Did I tell you about the topside sounders? I think I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was that very good, fruitful cooperation with the Canadians launching their topside sounder, ionosphere sounder satellites, at least four of them. I don’t know whether that continued. But they had come up with a proposal that was better than ours. I think I told you. Okay. So I won’t repeat that.\\n\\n But they then came in—that’s part of the Spacelab story. Sure. I didn’t think of that. When [I said] we were talking with the Europeans about their participation in the Space Station Program, [I should have said] the Shuttle Program—the Shuttle Program. I earlier said Space Station; it’s the Shuttle Program. The Spacelab was for the Shuttle. When we were talking with the Europeans on that, the Canadians came in and said they’d like to participate, too. And as I recall, they had identified the remote manipulator, ARM, [Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS) or Canadarm], as something they would like to do. So we got them together with the program office, John Yardley’s office. Yes, that’s why Yardley was involved in that dog-and-pony show, because it was the Shuttle, not the Space Station. I was a little confused there. All right. It was agreed that they would work on the space ARM. Is that what we called it? Whatever.\\n\\n They had done some work on materials with memory. See, the key to the—I’m getting mixed up. I’m getting mixed up. They had done an antenna. They wanted to do an antenna also, and I’m getting those two things mixed up. At some point they must have come in, wanting to do a very long antenna for one of our space vehicles. I don’t remember which one. The key to that antenna was that a metal tape, almost like a tape measure, would unwind way out. I forget how long it was, but very long, and as it rolled out, it would curl up to make a tube, and it had teeth on the edges so it would lock into a tube, which would then hold its shape. It was a very clever business. So they did that for one of our space vehicles, but I guess that’s distinct from the space ARM, which was a robot system with [manipulators]. They went to work on that and, as I understand it, did a spectacularly good job. It was very, very good.\\n\\n Now, after it became known publicly that we had made this agreement under which they would build it with their own money and we would have it for our program—they wanted to do it as an exercise and as a sort of price of admission to the Shuttle Program—GE came in to see us. They were very upset because they wanted to do a robot. Well, we’d already made the agreement with the Canadians, for one thing. For another thing, we were going to get it free that way and continue the congressional mandate to cooperate with other countries. We would have had to pay for it with GE. But GE said it was a technology that should not be left to be developed by other people; we should have it here.\\n\\n There was a particularly aggressive and difficult vice-president from GE who came in with lawyers to see us about that, and what he alleged was that we had given commercial rights to the Canadians for this robotic ARM. Well, we had done no such thing, obviously not, and we had not precluded ourselves from also contracting for robotic arms in this country if we wanted to. And in fact, I read not too long ago, I mean sometime within the past very few years, that we have, in fact, contracted out robotic ARMs for space applications in this country. My impression was the Canadians were disturbed because they thought they had an inside track.\\n\\n Anyhow, this GE lawyer said it was right in our agreement with the Canadians that they would have the commercial rights. Well, I wrote the agreement. I didn’t have it with me. I hadn’t looked at it in a long time. I said, “It’s not there.”\\n\\n They said, “Yes it is.”\\n\\n I said, “Show it to me.” So their lawyers began leafing through the documents. Of course, they couldn’t find anything of the sort, and I remember Fletcher was delighted that we sort of trumped them there.\\n\\n That GE vice-president, I think, did not last more than another six months at GE. He was a very difficult and objectionable fellow, and if he did all his business that way, you could see why they had dropped him.\\n\\n Anyhow, that’s the ARM." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Also going on were some agreements being made for science." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For science technology. You had some cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union for space biology and those types. Could you tell us how the science aspect was also included in part of your negotiations with countries or even industries here in the United States?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t tell you a lot about that. There was a life sciences cooperation with the Soviets. It focused mainly on man in space. The reason I can’t tell you much about that is that we worked out the umbrella arrangements with the Soviets, and then there were joint working groups that got into specific areas, like meteorology, life sciences, whatever. I had probably least to do with the life sciences thing, because you had, on the Soviet side, the space medicine guy. That’s what it really was, space medicine sort of stuff. The Soviet guy was named Gazenko. We didn’t cover this before?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We covered part of it, and I was just wanting to see if there was anything—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I know why we brought his name up. It was because we embarrassed them for their lack of cooperation publicly with a dossier. Okay. I won’t mention that here.\\n\\n On the U.S. side, I don’t honestly remember who Gazenko’s opposite number was, but they conducted … meetings where [they] exchanged results with astronauts and cosmonauts, you know, how long [till] they recovered their land legs after flight and what the calcium/bone loss was and these things. They exchanged data on that. They seemed to get along very well personally. I had no way of knowing how important those exchanges were. I think they just enjoyed the meetings.\\n\\n Well, you know, this is a very murky area. When John [H.] Glenn [Jr.] flew a couple of years ago and the general rationale was that there would be a lot of really important medical information for older people, relevant to older people, I remember saying to my intimates, “Don’t hold your breath.” [Wright laughs] And so far as—I’m not aware of one item that’s come out publicly from John Glenn’s flight. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me ask you, as you were moving along through the years that you were in this position, how your role changed and how possibly your office or program office changed before you moved on to your next role?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fortunately, I don’t worry about such things, because it would not be a really good story. In my view, I’m now going to be talking about myself, so obviously it just has to be a personal view, and I don’t know how objective it is, but I think it was clear that my office and my personal role had constantly grown through the years I was in that job, to the point where some people had a grossly erroneous notion of how important I was at NASA. There were some people who thought I was much too important. The simple answer was, I wasn’t. I don’t think I was. But there were some people who thought so, and from time to time there were signs of some outside effort to cut me down in size. I didn’t know exactly where it was coming from for quite a while. It never amounted to anything, because I fortunately had, as far as I know, total support from every administrator up until [Robert A.] Frosch. So that takes you [from Glennan and Webb] right through [Paine], Fletcher, George [M.] Low as Acting [Administrator]. Who the last one was before Frosch?\\n\\n Now, there were some complaints about the program. That’s one thing I had down to tell you about. I might as well tell you about it on the way. There were a few, very few, American scientists who, from time to time, groused about our giving flight opportunities to foreign scientists. Well, you see, we were caught in the middle. Our mandate was to conduct a program of international cooperation, and it wasn’t going to be a token program; it was going to be a meaningful program. It was going to be a real program. So foreign scientists were encouraged to submit proposals, not to me, but to the Space Science Office, and there they were vetted along with all other American proposals by the advisory committees that were set up for the Space Science Office.\\n\\n There was one American scientist [Giaconi] in particular, whose name I cannot remember or I would give it to you, because I think he would deserve to have his name mentioned. I mean, anyone who’s that nasty should be identified. But I can’t think of his name. He was an experimenter and apparently a very good one.\\n\\n One day, Newell called me and asked me to come down to one of his advisory committee meetings. I never went to those meetings, or very rarely. And it was because this guy was present, and he was complaining about our accepting foreign experiments and denying the space to American scientists. He was an experimenter. He had experiments on American satellites, but I guess he objected in principle. He had been objecting, and Newell, who was not a terribly gutsy person, wanted me to answer him, not himself, because these experiments had been selected by Newell’s committees, not by me.\\n\\n Okay. I explained that we had a congressional mandate, that I wasn’t making the selections, that “You people are making the selections, your very committee.”\\n\\n And then I realized that this S.O.B., at that very moment, had an experiment of his on a Dutch satellite. The Dutch were accommodating one of his experiments on a satellite they were building with their own money and that we were going to launch, or was going to be launched by ESRO, the European Space Research Organization, I honestly don’t remember which. But in either case, he was complaining that we were accommodating foreign experiments when he was a foreign experimenter being accommodated on a Dutch satellite. And I just gave it right to him between the eyes, and it ended that for a while. But there was a little bit of that kind of thing in the background. That was the only overt case that came up to that level at a meeting.\\n\\n Now, this story is pure gossip, but it’s relevant to your question. If I told you this one, you’d better stop me. One day Newell told me, while [James E.] Webb was still Administrator, that Joe Kaplan—did I tell you this? Joe [Joseph] Kaplan had come in to visit Webb. Joseph Kaplan was a physicist. He had done some work, when he was young, on [the] aurora. He had been chairman of the U.S. National Committee for the International Geophysical Year [IGY]. That’s how I knew him. See, I worked over there before I came to NASA. I knew him, and we were very good friends. He was an older man and always came by to say hello and was particularly nice. He was a bit over the hill, but he was a very nice guy.\n\nHe came in to see Webb and, in Homer Newell’s presence, he said that I ought to be fired because, apparently, some of this business of giving all these opportunities to foreign scientists and so on. Well, Webb laughed at him. Webb wasn’t going to fire me.\\n\\n Nothing ever happened from it, but the amusing gossipy part of this is that later that day I had a luncheon date at the Cosmos Club and I was over there and walking up the stairs when Joe Kaplan was coming down the stairs. And I knew he’d been in there that morning suggesting I be fired, and I thought it was a joke, because I knew Joe Kaplan. I said he was over the hill. He was a nice guy. He really liked me. He had been put up to it by somebody whom I know who said, “Joe, you’ve got to go in there. Frutkin’s just too big for his britches.” So I didn’t take it all that seriously, and I felt quite secure in the job.\\n\\n …He said, “Good morning, Arnold. How are you?”\\n\\n [Without any forethought whatever], I said, “Well, Joe, I don’t know.” I said, “I don’t know what’s happened.” This was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. I said, “I don’t know what’s happened.”\\n\\n He said, “What’s wrong?”\\n\\n I said, “I was fired this morning.”\\n\\n His face just collapsed. He was horrified. I mean, he was a nice guy. If he thought he would really get me fired, he would never have suggested it. He just said it to express an attitude, not really wanting to get me fired, I’m convinced. Anyhow, he passed on really disturbed.\\n\\n And I went on, thinking, “What’s he going to think when he learns that I was not fired?”\\n\\n Anyhow, what that leads to is that I said that I felt I had a growing role, and an increasingly significant one, until Frosch. And the significance of it—I mean, by the time we negotiated the Spacelab thing, my program was bringing a great deal of cash—money, contribution—into NASA. The Spacelab, I forget how much it cost, but [many hundreds of millions of] dollars. I forget exactly, but it was a lot of money. And we would have been paying for that ourselves if not for the international cooperation program and the four or more Canadian topside sounders and the robotic ARM and a big satellite like Helios, a big scientific satellite that the Germans did.\\n\\n So the sum total of contribution through the program to NASA was very substantial. And it had another great significance: it stabilized programs. When it came to budget-cutting and stretching out programs, it was very difficult to do that with international programs. After you’ve made an agreement and gotten people to spend their own money on something, you couldn’t just go to them and say, “Forget it.” So it stabilized programs, and the program people in NASA knew that. They began to seek international cooperation because it became an additional argument for things they wanted to do, and it lent a measure of security to things they wanted to do. So it became really quite significant in that sense. I’m not taking personal credit for that, but the program had been put on very sound grounds, and I think that’s why it grew so well. Nothing failed in it. Everything worked very well.\\n\\n So it was a good thing, and I think my status grew with it. But there was this little bit of backbiting somewhere in the background. Now, when Frosch came in, I had known him very slightly because he was assistant secretary of the navy for R&D [Research & Development], and I’d met him socially. He called in the senior people, one by one, to meet them and talk to them and so on. He called me in. He started off by saying—he was very pleasant, but he started off by saying, “Well, I hear good things about you and bad things about you.”\\n\\n So I said, “Well, why don’t we start with the bad things.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, some people think you’re running NASA.” Well, I mean if somebody came to you and said—what’s the organization you work with? I forget." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "SIGNAL Corporation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That you’ve got the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] of SIGNAL Corporation wrapped around your little finger—I assume you don’t. Okay. All right. I mean, this was just absurd. So I laughed. I said something like—because I remember the scene pretty well. It was a new scene for me, not only at NASA but anywhere. I said—what the hell is Frosch’s first name?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Robert." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bob. Yes. Bob Frosch. Right. “Bob,” I said, “I don’t have a program. I don’t have a budget. I’m running a staff office. I mean, I have nothing whatever to do with the science program, the Shuttle Program, the Space Station Program, nothing, nothing. I mean, whoever thinks I’m running NASA, speak to the previous Administrators.”\\n\\n Anyhow, there were a couple of incidents which I think—see, I think Frosch came in having heard the same line that got Joe Kaplan in some years before to suggest I be fired and something else which will emerge in a moment. I think he’d been given a line and it stuck.\\n\\n We very early took a trip abroad together, and I don’t think he was prepared for the level of attention that my position got abroad, because abroad I was NASA, you see. And so people significant in foreign government, science offices, and in ESRO and ELDO [European Launcher Development Organization] and so on, and in the national space [agencies], treated me that way. And I don’t think he was prepared for that. And they didn’t know him at all, and I could see that [there] was an unfortunate [disparity] of exposures between the two of us, and I did all I could to put him forward. This is the Administrator and step back, and so on.\\n\\n He had enjoyed the international activity he had previously, at Navy and in other places. Places I used to meet him were at foreign embassies in town. I just really think that he thought that there needed to be a change so that he wouldn’t have to be working through me necessarily. I think he enjoyed working directly.\\n\\n And at the same time, in that same new administration, the new science advisor was Frank [Press]. Frank [Press]—he had been the president, or later he became president, of the National Academy. … I attended a meeting at which he met with people from the different agencies, and he asked each of them to tell about his program, his agency’s program.\\n\\n When he got around to me, I knew him somewhat, also from the IGY background. See, all of this came out of that. He said, “Arnold, tell about your program.”\\n\\n So I just gave a very brief description of the space program. and when I finished, he said, “That’s your program, not NASA’s program.”\\n\\n I said, “What do you mean? My program is NASA’s program.” And this was in front of a lot of people. I mean, it was the same line, you see.. These people had all gotten the same line from somebody outside—I know who it is, who it was. He’s dead now. No point in arguing there. I remember, I did say to him, “Frank, I don’t have a program office. I am a staff office, and I don’t have a budget. I don’t run NASA.”\\n\\n I called him and arranged for breakfast at the White House. He was a very nice guy actually, perfectly nice guy. And I said, “Somebody’s got this thing very much wrong, the wrong end of the stick.” But there was really nothing—I think they wanted to get me out of there, but on the other hand, they were dealing with somebody who had a pretty good reputation.\\n\\n I’ve twice gotten NASA’s highest award, NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, and the lesser award, the Exceptional Service Award [once]. The program was extremely well received on the [Capitol] Hill when I testified annually about the program, extremely well received, because the congressmen thought it was the greatest thing in the world that we did all this without spending a dime abroad. It was un-American. It really was. And they [said], “Why don’t other agencies have programs like this?” and so on. So I wasn’t somebody you’d fire. I mean nobody could begin to say, “This guy is incompetent,” or difficult or anything. I had just the best of relations with 99 percent of the people.\\n\\n So they kicked me upstairs, is what really was done. I was made an Associate Administrator …, first Deputy Associate Administrator, then Associate Administrator, which was a higher level than Assistant Administrator, but it didn’t have the program content. It was understood—I mean, all the external affairs things reported to me, but I was not to have anything to do with international.\\n\\n Well, I must say I’ve been very fortunate, because I was just simply not the sort of temperament to be upset by a thing like that. I always knew bureaucracy for what it was, always knew you’d have problems with specific people, and began planning my exit, which I [made], within two years from the time that Frosch came in.\\n\\n My chance went to Detroit [Michigan], because my wife went to work for Ford [Motor Company], … then Ford Aerospace, and then Lockheed—[v.p. at Ford Aerospace],… corporate vice-president [at] Lockheed…. But anyhow, she got a job at Ford and I got a job at Burroughs Computer then, now Unisys in Detroit.\\n\\n Not long after I got there, Frosch showed up …—must have been a couple of years—showed up with a job at General Motors, and the first thing he did was call me and invite me for dinner. So, I mean, I don’t know how you explain those things. You can do it as well as I can, but I’m just trying to answer your question.\\n\\n Through the years—the answer to your question is, the role, I think, grew in content and significance and usefulness to a point until some personal—I think personal—hostility that I’ve located on the outside finally reached me. It made no difference. I should have left NASA before that. I was there too long anyhow. All that happened was I made [some] money in Detroit, stock options and things, so it was probably a good thing. I think that’s as candid an answer to [the] question as I can give." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were there that almost twenty years, what do you consider to be your greatest challenge that you had to overcome?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold Frutkin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a very good question. That’s a very good question. There are really two. I’m sure my mind doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. There are really two. One—I may be indiscreet here—one was dealing with Webb. In my first years there, the first five years, I dealt primarily with [T. Keith] Glennan and Dryden, and then Dryden. I did not normally go to Webb with my problems, I went to Dryden, and it was because I felt Dryden operated at a level that I respected a great deal more than I respected Webb’s operation.\\n\\n I always felt there was something a little irrational about Webb, and I didn’t want to have to cope with it. But Dryden died in 1965, and so I then had to go to Webb. I never went to any of these people lightly, [only] when I had something substantive to do so as not to waste their time. But Webb was a complex personality, and I always felt I had to be very careful dealing with him.\\n\\n There’s a interesting story that I have to tell. Maybe nobody else saw it that way, but when Webb first came to the agency—you see, Glennan was an [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower appointee, then [President John F.] Kennedy was elected. Glennan sat around for quite a while waiting to hear that he was resigned or that he was continued or whatever. He was very upset. [The] White House paid him zero attention. Glennan was a gentleman, a real gentleman, and I think he expected to be treated as a gentleman, but nobody contacted him from the White House, and he was quite hurt by that.\\n\\n He resigned, then we began to hear that the job of Administrator was being offered to a great many people. The word—I have no idea how valid it was—but the word was it was about eighteen or nineteen before Webb took it. Webb’s impact on people, meeting him for the first time, [was] a thing because he was a highly charged personality. You don’t meet people like that very often, so people had different reactions to it. I remember Dryden coming out of his room after he’d met Webb and saying, “I don’t know what we’ve got here.” Those were his exact words.\\n\\n But anyhow, that was followed—we met Webb and he convened his first staff meeting. There were only about five or six senior staff members at that time. It was Johnny Johnson, who was the legal counsel, and myself and Abe [Abraham] Hyatt—I don’t recall in what role he was, I think director of planning or something like that—and a few others, I’m sure the press person, that was before Julian Sheer. I forget who was the press person at that time. Somebody else.\\n\\n So it was just a small group of us and we were staff people. The first thing Webb said was, “What would you all think of our having a NASA song, like the Air Force song?” Well, if you could have seen the faces of those people. I mean, it was just not NASA’s style. We weren’t eighteen- or twenty-year-old recruits to the Air Force. NASA consisted of older career people in the sciences and management and in administration and engineering, and it was grossly inappropriate. Well, he just took one look at our faces and said, said something like, “Well, let’s forget that.” [Laughter]\\n\\n And then he began to ask us questions about what was going on, but all the questions he asked us were program questions, and people just sat there. I remember I said, “Mr. Webb, you probably want to put those questions to the program people, because we really are not competent to answer them.” Well, it took him two or three meetings before he really got that straight.\\n\\n Anyhow, see, now somebody like Abe Silverstein, who was a powerhouse, an absolute powerhouse, in my view and in a lot of other people’s view, he, with Dryden, is the man who put NASA together when it was established. Of course, he was an old NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] guy, so he had a lot to start with, but they put together the new organization at the top, which was totally new, and it was the organization which, in effect, remained NASA’s strength for the first dozen years. They did a beautiful job, Silverstein and Dryden. But [after a] very few weeks with Webb, … Silverstein asked to go back to Lewis [Research] Center [Cleveland, Ohio].\\n\\n Webb was a complex and difficult personality. He was always experimenting with the organization and with people. He was always taking somebody who was doing a good job out of where he was and putting him into a place where he couldn’t do a good job. I could name people. I don’t know how many times he changed the relationship between the program offices and the centers. There are people who know more about that than I, but I know it was changed back and forth and back and forth, and always as though we were going off into the wild blue yonder. So I [obviously have] reservations about Webb. So that was one of the challenges. I had to deal with him.\\n\\n He enjoyed putting people in a difficult position. For example, when Tom Paine was brand new as his deputy, his new deputy, there had been a previous deputy, Dryden. Paine came in and we had a staff luncheon. Webb sat at the head of the table. All the staff, program and staff staff, were present, maybe eighteen people at the table, or fifteen by that time, I don’t know. Webb is at the head of table, and sitting right next to him at the head of the table was Tom Paine. I don’t know how it happened, but Paine delivered himself of a rather long statement about what was generally wrong with our situation in this country. We had lost China, we had lost the Korean War, a whole bunch of things like that. We all listened to him, and he delivered himself of views, which were rather common views at that time. A lot of people would have agreed with him.\\n\\n I’m sitting at the foot of the table. We could sit wherever we wanted. I was sitting as far away as I could. Webb said, “Arnold, what do you think of that?” Well, you see, that’s experimenting with people publicly, and here was my new deputy administrator who just delivered himself of a bunch of things, not one of which I agreed with personally. They were just all personal views. I hope you can tell, I do not cover up anything. So I had a difficult little spot. That’s why I say Webb was a challenge.\\n\\n I had to tell the truth and not offend anyone if I could. So I said, “Well, I think you could make a very good argument for every one of the things that Tom said, and I think a lot of people would agree with him.” I said, “On the other hand, you could make, in principle, a counterargument to every one of those things.”\\n\\n And for once I was very verbal. I ticked them right off. I said, “We didn’t lose China. We never had China. The Russians have lost China. They were in there and they were thrown out. We were never in there and we were never thrown out.”\\n\\n “We didn’t lose the Korean War. The Korean War was fought to prevent North Korea from taking over South Korea, and they didn’t. They were driven back to their line. The Chinese invaded to help them do and couldn’t manage it. So we didn’t lose that war. I know its popular to say we did, but we didn’t.” Anyhow, I didn’t speak quite this way. But I went down through the list. I don’t remember what they were.\\n\\n And Tom Paine was always wonderful to me. He gave me one of those Distinguished Service Medals. He was always wonderful to me, so I guess he did not resent the comment. But it shows Webb was a character." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If we can, before we continue, we’re going to stop the tape and change out one." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00698", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) / Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Recovery Project 2012", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/SCA-SRB/LaRoseLR/laroselr.htm", + "original_file_name": "LaRoseLR_4-12-12.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/SCA-SRB/LaRoseLR/LaRoseLR_4-12-12.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Shuttle Carrier Aircraft Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Larry R. LaRose", + "location_date": "Kennedy Space Center, Florida – 12 April 2012" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Larry R. LaRose" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 12, 2012. This interview with Larry LaRose is being conducted for the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft [SCA] Oral History Project at the Kennedy Space Center. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Rebecca Wright and Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for taking time out of your day to meet with us and giving us that great tour of the SCA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m glad to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We appreciate it. Give us a brief history of your career at NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started with NASA in 1979, come onboard around September, and I started on the Zero-G [gravity] program on the KC-135 [aircraft] as a flight engineer. Then shortly thereafter, about December of that year, I was selected to go to the STA Program, the Shuttle Training Aircraft, and I stayed with that program until I retired in 2008.\\n\\n In 1989, I was selected to transfer from Johnson Space Center to El Paso, Texas [Biggs Army Airfield], to assume the responsibility of the El Paso FOL [forward operating location] manager. What we had out there was the STAs flying, and we also had T-38 [aircraft] depot maintenance. We started out with 5 contractors and 1 civil servant, and I think we had 42 contractors and 2 civil servants by the time I left in 2008.\\n\\n That’s a little bit in a capsule where I was at and what I did. And all the time I still maintained my currency as a flight engineer, but then I took the role on as being a manager. I certainly liked the role of being a flight engineer. I like flying a lot more than I do managing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the role of the flight engineer on the SCA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That is a field that I love dearly, because that was what I trained to in the Air Force as a panel engineer on [Lockheed] C-141s [Starlifters]. When I first come to work for NASA on the KC-135 and the [Grumman] Gulfstream II, that really wasn’t a panel engineer position. They called it a flight engineer, but it didn’t really have a panel. When I got selected to do it for the [modified Boeing] 747 [SCA] in 1989, it was like going back to my old roots. It was fun to be part of that program, and it’s still a real pleasure to be doing that type of work. That’s how I got selected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about your responsibilities for the plane." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We go out, pre-flight two hours prior to the mission, and walk around the airplane and make sure that all the cowlings and the doors and everything is closed up, and make sure that we don’t see any maintenance that hasn’t been closed out that will be closed out before flight. If it’s not working, then we’ll go back and make sure that it does get closed out properly.\\n\\n That’s on our walk-around outside, then we basically do the same thing inside. We do a walk-around just like you saw down there on the lower deck. We’ll make sure that no loose materials are floating around when we get ready to take off. We want to make sure everything is attached, like on a passenger [airline] you get your seatbelts on. We have to tie it down because we don’t want anything moving around when we’re taxiing or taking off.\\n\\n Then we go up in the cockpit, and we check all the systems and make sure that before the pilots arrive the radios and the flight controls and the systems are up and running prior to takeoff. Again, we don’t want to wait until we go for the first time and power things up. For example, coming out of Edwards [Air Force Base, California] we had a fuel boost pump failure. Fortunately for us, our MEL [minimum equipment list] allows us to take off with a failed boost pump, but it allowed us to make a decision 2 hours prior versus 15 minutes before we start engines. Sometimes if you delay that, then you don’t have any time to recover and save a mission. That’s why we do the pre-flights.\\n\\n Then it comes times to start the engines, and we start running checklists. The FE [flight engineer] runs a checklist, and we assist the other crewmembers on getting the engines started and getting all the systems up and running. From that point on we call the taxi checklist and the before-takeoff checklist, and just kind of be a third set of eyes and do our duties as assigned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When we were up in the cockpit there’s room for three people, but you have two flight engineers. Tell us about how that’s different from a normal crew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it gives us some capability that if we get into an emergency situation we have another set of eyes. It allows that engineer to go downstairs and fight a fire, emergency, or whatever else. Remember, we’re not carrying maintenance or anybody else with us, so we need somebody to be mobile to go down and do what we need to do downstairs and look at the condition of the orbiter.\\n\\n I told you earlier how much I can see—it’s not a whole lot. There’s not a whole lot I can do even if I did see something, because there’s no way I can get out. We just have to land and figure out what our problem is and also help when we have to. If we lose an engine on takeoff, to help dump fuel to lighten our load so we can get down on the ground or continue to fly. Being so heavy, if we lose an engine it’s a handful to keep it in flight with the weight that we are. We’re trying to reduce the weight as much as possible and maintain flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you ever lost an engine in flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve never on my watch. They did at Edwards. I think it was 1996, I have to go back and look at the archives. The crew had just lifted off from [runway] 04 Edwards, and I think it was the number three engine that caught on fire, and they basically just teardropped back to runway 22. It was just fortunate for them they were all cleaned up and engines were at full power and flaps were up and the gear was up, so they didn’t have a lot of drag out there. If you’re going to have an engine fire—nobody wants one, but if you’re going to get one that would be the best time to have it.\\n\\n They basically started dumping fuel and dumped what they could until landing, and [it was] pretty uneventful. The engine fire light stayed on even through taxi roll, but everybody got home safely and the orbiter was safe. We didn’t do any serious damage, other than we had to change an engine before we went to go fly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long of a runway does the SCA need to take off?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very long. We like to look at Air Force bases 13- to 15,000-foot of runway. This, KSC, is 15,000. Edwards is 15. But most SAC [Strategic Air Command] bases are anywhere from 12 to 14 to 15,000 feet of runway. We need a fairly long runway because of takeoff roll. It depends on temperature and conditions, but Tuesday’s flight [ferrying Discovery to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia] will probably be 9,500 to 10,000 foot of runway takeoff for a ground roll. I’ve had ground rolls sometimes 11, 11.5. It takes a lot of runway because it takes a long time to get a lot of speed because you’re so heavy. That’s why we pick Air Force bases, because they have long runways." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By comparison, how much runway does a Continental [Airlines, Inc.] or a Southwest [Airlines Co.] flight need?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They’re typically anywhere from 10 to 12,000 foot of runway. At El Paso there’s one runway that’s 9,000 feet, and they don’t need that much. They’ll lift off at 4,500 to 5,000 feet. Again, it all depends on weight. The lighter they are, the shorter the runway they are. When we’re not carrying the orbiter, we lift off at 2,500, 3,000 feet down the runway. We’ve got a lot of power but not a lot of weight, so we just jump off the ground. It’s all depending on the temperature of the outside and the weight of the vehicle, what our performance is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "About how long does it take you to get off the ground when you’ve got an orbiter attached?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it seems like it’s forever, especially when you push the power up. You just lumber down the runway. As you pick up speed and get to that magical number of rotate speed, you look at the other end and say, “I’m glad it got to that speed,” because now you’re running out of runway. Like I said, 11,000 foot of runway.\\n\\n On this situation we’ve got 15,000 foot of runway. We’ve still got 4,000 foot remaining, but there’s been some runways, like 12,000 foot at Barksdale [Air Force Base, Louisiana], that when we have those long rolls, we use almost—not every bit of it, not to a danger point where we know that we’re not going to get rotate speed and safely lift off, but there’s not a lot of runway to play with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned in the note that you sent me that one of your biggest challenges is engine power. Would you talk about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What I mean by that, and this is just me—one of the critical phases of flight is power with this airplane. If you lose any power it’s detrimental to flying. So I think that’s a critical phase, especially on takeoff. If you lose an engine, it’s a handful to get it in the air. There’s a lot of things happening, and it’s that crew coordination to make it work.\\n\\n We train to do that in the simulator. We have three engine B-1 cuts, and we train to lose an engine and safely get it off the ground. We demonstrate it in the simulator, but nobody really wants to have that happen. In my mind, that’s the critical phase of flight, I don’t want to lose an engine. Nobody does—that’s the one thing that we don’t want to happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of engines do you have on the SCA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We have JT-9J engines. They produce approximately 49,000 pounds, almost 50,000 pounds of thrust, so we’ve got over 200,000 pounds of thrust on takeoff for the 747-100s. The original ones were 7-As, and they produced about 47,000 pounds. We upgraded them to the 7-Js, which gives us an additional 12,000 pounds of thrust combining all four engines. You can never have too much power, that’s how I look at it. If you can give me more power, that’s what I need as an engineer. The more power the better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about crew training. You mentioned that you train in the simulator, and you also take the plane out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was intimately involved in training because I set up for crews to go to training centers. When we lost a contract at Pan Am [Pan American World Airways] in Miami [Florida], we went out looking for another training site. We run upon a training site up at Denver [Colorado] at United Airlines [Inc.], so I had a chance to meet with the very talented crew up there that was willing to take us on and provide us a good service. They provided it until the time that United retired their sim [simulator], and we’re still now using the United sim. A great bunch of people up at the Denver site.\\n\\n We had been training up there—I think we started there in the mid ’90s, ’95 timeframe. [Arthur C.] “Ace” [Beall], myself, and Bob [Robert] Zimmerman were the last crew that went through there for SCA training. I think it was the third week in March. So that will be it for them as far as SCA crew. We’re still using that simulator for SOFIA [Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy], but it will be the last time we use it for Shuttle carrier training.\\n\\n Our requirements were we had to do two sims a year, where a normal cargo or commercials only have to do one sim a year. Because we flew it so infrequently, that’s the reason why our standard operation procedures tell us we had to go twice a year. That meant usually four days, two days of ground and two days of sim. The ground was to talk about systems and malfunctions and abnormals. Then we actually get in the simulator, and they give us the sims.\\n\\n We also had the capability of having software that we could simulate the Shuttle on top of the 747 to give us that drag, to give us that feel of what it would be with the orbiter on top if we lost an engine or we had a malfunction or hydraulic problem. So we had that capability to really have a true simulator of what it would be with an orbiter on top." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting. So you had people who were experts in 747s but not SCAs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. When I say “experts,” they had a lot of expertise in the 747 performance of the simulator. They provided us a lot of information, but we also had to provide them the information for our unique flying too. It was a good tradeoff for both organizations. We were very lucky to tag on with the folks up at United Airlines." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you do that kind of training, are you normally training with the pilots that you would fly with? This last time you mentioned you flew with Ace and Bob Zimmerman. Would you normally fly as a group when you were on the SCA, or would you fly with some other people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It just depends on the rotation and the selection. On the first flight [to Washington, D.C.] I’m going to fly with Bill [William E.] Rieke and Jeff [Jeffrey L.] Moultrie, but that was just a matter of a draw. It could have been with Jeff and Bill when they were up doing the simulator. It just depends on schedules. They wanted to go early because they had a lot of preplanning to do, and since they were running it Jeff, Henry [T. Taylor], and Bill got the first selection, and then we got what was left over. That’s just the way it happened. We all trained. The syllabus is the same; we don’t do anything different as far as crews. When it comes to crew selection, it very well could have been Ace and Bob, or Bill or Frank [W.] Batteas. It just depended on how the crew selection was made to go fly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about that crew selection. How was that made?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Back when we were ferrying on a regular basis, it used to be that if I flew last then I’d be the last in the rotation, first out, last in. Especially when we were having to deal with launches. A lot of us were multi-qualified in different programs. If I was tasked to be on a launch and there was a ferry mission, then probably I was not going to be in the rotation. Or somebody would have to replace me in the STA, and then I’d have to go fly the SCA. A lot of it was crew availability, if you weren’t on another project or the rotation. If I flew the last leg on the last ferry mission, then I’m going to be the last one in the rotation on the next one. There was six pilots and four flight engineers at that time, so we had that complement to rotate from." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you actually got to put in requests for certain ferry flights. Would you talk about some of the flights that you put in requests for?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the ones that I really wanted to be involved with was the ferry mission of the Columbia back to Palmdale [California], but we went through Salt Lake [City, Utah]. The reason for that was I’m originally from Wyoming, and my folks still live in Wyoming. My wife’s family lives there also, but a lot of her family lives in Salt Lake. So it was an opportunity to be able to take the Shuttle up into the Rocky Mountains and up west, because they don’t experience launches. They don’t know what an orbiter is. They see it on TV, and it was special.\\n\\n We had a lot of problems getting out of here because of delays, and then we had some instrument problems shortly after takeoff. We were working those issues, and the tower come back and said we hit a bird. We didn’t know where, and we didn’t feel it. I was asked to go back and look and see if I could see anything on the orbiter, and I couldn’t see any damages. When we landed at [Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base] Fort Worth [Texas], we ended up taking some damage on the left wing leading edge and took out some tiles, so they had to do a repair before we could take off.\\n\\n That was a delay, so we thought we might not be getting to go to Salt Lake that night. Well, they got it fixed fairly quickly. They were starting up the Pathfinder, and they had some engine start problems, so now we’re going to have to find another jet to be our Pathfinder. The word went out and there was a lot of anticipation, a lot of anxious moments in Utah that they really wanted that vehicle up there. I think there was some telephone calls to the Utah Air National Guard, and they had happened to have a KC-135 in the air so they diverted them down to be our Pathfinder to Fort Worth. They got a briefing from the pilots of what this required, and we also had one of our pilots with them so they knew where they had to be at in the reporting back to us for the Pathfinder.\\n\\n It come time to go fly, but we were getting late in the day and one of the requirements in the ferry missions is that all our operations has to be day VFR [visual flight rules]. We don’t want to fly at night. We want to be able to see out there. We want to see clouds and we want to be able to see other traffic, so we have a mission rule that we have to be in day VFR. We can go up to the sun’s starting to go down, half hour after the sun, but we really don’t want to do that. Then you would have to get a waiver.\\n\\n As we got a little closer in to Utah, I remember coming over the mountains of the Wasatch [Range] and dropping over Spanish Fork [Utah]. I’m familiar with that area, so I know where we’re at when we’re dropping in. We dropped in over Spanish Fork and then up through Provo [Utah], and then we were kind of tracking on I-15 and just going around Thanksgiving Point [Lehi, Utah] and then up through Sandy [City, Utah] and Salt Lake. It was very interesting because the sun was going down, and you could actually see people on their roofs flashing flashbulbs at us as we’re going up. I’m not sure what the pictures looked like.\\n\\n Also what was interesting was seeing people pulling off the side of the road on I-15. I could also see the Highway Patrol trying to get them to move, but they weren’t moving. We’re watching all this going on as we’re making our turn back up towards Ogden [Utah]. Same thing as we were going through Salt Lake. Off to our left, we could see the [Salt Lake City] International Airport, and you could just see it flashing because there was lots of folks there waiting on the ground for us to land. Two of those folks were my parents. But we flew past it. We flew up to Ogden and flew over Hill Air Force Base and then hooked it back toward Salt Lake. It was quite the arrival. It was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You guys were celebrities that day I suppose. Lots of media interest as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, very much. I got a chance to give a tour to my wife’s family and to my folks, and while I was doing that my mother was tugging at me. She says, “You have somebody that’s along with the tour.” I did not know that somebody had joined us. Well, it was Senator [Edwin Jacob] “Jake” Garn. So my mother, “Well, he needs to come up here.” I said, “No, this tour’s for you. If he wants to follow along, that’s fine.” She was nervous the whole time, and I said, “Mom, it’s okay.” That was kind of funny.\\n\\n The next morning—and this was another one of these things that you don’t think about until it approaches you—we were about an hour from takeoff, and I got this special request. I’m not even sure who it was from the airport side, but they said, “We have this elderly lady that would like to go aboard the 747,” and could we do that. The last time she had visited the airport was to come see Charles [A.] Lindbergh in the late ’20s. How can you refuse something like that?\\n\\n She was in a wheelchair, so I said, “Sure, we can. We’ll figure out some way to get her aboard the airplane.” We got her aboard the airplane and talked a little bit about what we did. She was very appreciative, and she told me as a little girl the last time she was at the airport was to come to see Charles Lindbergh. This was just as proud a moment for her as it was for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Neat history. You’ve flown some other historic flights, one of which was a simultaneous ferry of Columbia and Atlantis. Would you tell us about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it wasn’t much different from any other ferry mission. They had us at different sites. One took off from Palmdale, and I was the one that went out of Edwards, on the Atlantis. I think our first refuel spot was at Wichita Falls, Texas [Sheppard Air Force Base], and I think the other one went to Dyess [Air Force Base], Abilene [Texas], so we had them in different locations. There was some concern that they did not want to have both orbiters in the same location for safety. They didn’t want to be able to destroy two orbiters at the same time, so if they kept them separate they wouldn’t run that risk.\\n\\n It took a lot of resources, and all of the crew members got involved with that because we needed all of them. There was two engineers on each airplane and then we had the additional six pilots, two on the airplane and one on each of the ferry aircraft. We used the entire crew complement on it, so there was no rotation. Everybody got a leg on it. That was the fun part. One of the things I remember is when we got here everything was uneventful. I think I was on the crew that landed first, and we unloaded. Henry, I think, had to go home, so I ended up getting to jump over to the skid strip to do the short flight from here to SLF [Shuttle Landing Facility], or X-ray 60 as we call it, for the unloading.\\n\\n You have to go back in the archives, but you can see it was really blowing that day. We had a lot of crosswind. You can go back and look at the Florida Today, and it was one of these things that looked like it was a near disaster. The right wing tipped down and we almost struck a pod. It wasn’t that bad, but the picture looked like it was pretty bad so there was a lot of wringing of hands and saying, “How close was it?” Yes, we had a lot of crosswind, but we got down safely. It was blowing pretty good out there at that time. You have to go back and look at the picture; it looked pretty bad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved with the Phantom Ray flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was not. I did the security checks, and it looked like I was going to be part of the crew, but when they decided they were only going to do one leg that eliminated me. They didn’t need a third FE to do a crew swap wherever they were going to stop at, so no, I wasn’t involved. I was helping for the training up to that point, but when it came time to fly the mission, no, I didn’t do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In August there was actually a formation of the SCAs flying together out at Edwards, which seems to be very unusual." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Especially that big of an airplane. It was quite a moment, I’d never experienced something like that before. I’ve been part of formation flights, but nothing like that. Two 747s, I mean, that’s pretty unique. I was flying on [SCA] 911, so I got a chance to see Jeff in [SCA] 905 come up from behind us and to our left wing. To see such a big piece of metal coming towards you, it got your attention. It was fun to watch that and be part of that. From the videos I got to see from the F-18s [aircraft] and some of the ground shots, it was a pretty good photo op [opportunity]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any discussion about where you would fly and how you would fly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We had a pre-brief before we went to go fly, and basically Jeff choreographed what we needed to do with both sets of airplanes and what he was planning on doing and how long we were going to be up. We also had to have the F-18 be part of that briefing, because when we’ve got three ships up there you want everybody to be on the same page of music." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did you fly in formation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably 30 minutes, I don’t remember. We couldn’t spend up very long, because 905 was very limited on aircraft time that it could fly because it was on a check flight and they were doing some engine monitoring stuff. They were very limited on their flight time, so it wasn’t very long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us, if you would, about your role as flight engineer in the flight readiness review [FRR]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because I’m living in Las Cruces [New Mexico], I don’t get involved with the flight readiness review. Back in the early days, yes, there was a couple things that I would provide, but it really was a pilot brief. They really wanted information from the FEs about who the crews were going to be in selection and performance. They needed to know if we could use the fields that were picked from the Department of Defense [DoD].\\n\\n We had some DoD representatives at JSC that would go out and review these fields that were available to us for landing sites. Then what we’d also have to do is find out if we could use them. I was telling you about our performance. We’d look at runway length and that particular time of the season and the temperatures and see, with the weight of what we had, if we could use those runways.\\n\\n We would provide that information for the FRR and say, “Okay, if we got in there at sunset or close to sunset, then we’d have to spend the night due to temperatures,” or vice versa. The fuel load that we could put on to get us to our next destination, or we could put enough fuel if we spent the night to go past another destination and go a little further. Those discussions were made on the FRR in our range and in our capability. But again, I’ve been retired so I don’t have to do that stuff anymore. I just come fly, which is a good thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you give us a sense perhaps of how ferrying has changed over the years since you’ve started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think it’s changed. I mean, this [ferry] is going to be a little bit different because it’s what is classified as not a live orbiter, so we don’t have the hypergolic fuels, and we don’t have to supply the power for the minus-10 restriction. So this will be different from what we have normally have seen in the past, but over all the 20 years of ferrying I haven’t seen much of a change. It was the same as it was when they started back in the early ’80s, at least from my vantage." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the fact that you’re working out in El Paso. Most of the people who flew or were flight engineers were based out of JSC, but then I understand you also had a pilot or two at [NASA] Dryden [Flight Research Center, Edwards, California]. Tell us about how all of that worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I lived in El Paso I still belonged to Johnson Space Center. That was a JSC facility, just like White Sands Test Facility [Las Cruces, New Mexico] is still part of Johnson Space Center. We had a crew that had flight engineers and pilots at Dryden, but in the ’80s we eliminated the engineers and just went with the pilots.\\n\\n The reasoning for that was that if for some reason we needed to move the airplane and the JSC pilots—it takes them a day to sometimes a day and a half to get there, depending on T-38s or if we had a commercial [flight]. But we still had to provide an engineer, so it still was a day for me to get out there from El Paso. It give us flexibility that if it needed to be moved or we needed to position it somewhere, we had a crew that was there to make that happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you would fly from El Paso out to Dryden?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I fly to L.A. [Los Angeles, California] and then have to get in the L.A. traffic, and sometimes that was longer than the flight from El Paso to L.A. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stuck in traffic in L.A. for two or three hours just trying to get across the mountain, painful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us a little bit about the plane. The plane is kept at Dryden, but it’s JSC property, so one of the questions one of the Dryden historians asked me is are people possessive of that plane? Do people at Dryden think it’s their plane, people at JSC say it’s their plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The best way I can explain it is it’s part of Shuttle operations, and Shuttle operations is JSC flight operations. That airplane was in direct support of the orbiter. That’s why it had a 9 serial number, versus an 8 from Dryden. That’s the reason why it belonged to JSC.\\n\\n The other thing is it was a great place to maintain an airplane because it was a high desert, not a lot of humidity and corrosion. That’s a big enemy, especially for airplanes like that. That’s one of the reasons why we used to have the Guppy at Houston, and now the Guppy is in El Paso because of the desert and the low humidity. You really want to do that, so that played into it too. Plus that’s where we landed, so that’s another reason why the 747 is at Edwards, because if we’re going to land we might as well have it in position ready to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned for a time 911 was out in El Paso. Would you talk about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It showed up at our doorstep in 1990, and we deconfigured it. What I mean by deconfigured it, we took all the passenger seats out and the luggage racks and the galleys and lavatories and reduced the weight, did a little bit of the work before it got to the Wichita, Kansas, Boeing facilities for modification.\\n\\n It was originally assigned to El Paso because it was classified a national asset, so we had to keep the vehicles away from each other. Just like we were talking about that dual ferry, they didn’t want to have one asset be destroyed at the same time as the other one. That’s probably the other reason why the Rogers Commission [Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger (STS 51-L) Accident] said if you lose one, then the program’s down for two years while it’s being modified.\\n\\n The original plan was to assign one at El Paso, and we would rotate them. 905 would come to El Paso when 911 would come operational. I think that went on for a couple years, maybe three. I’d have to go back and look and see exactly when we decided to make the move, but it had a lot to do with the contract out at Evergreen [Air Center] at Marana [Arizona]. What we decided to do was while one airplane was in maintenance the other would be at Edwards Air Force Base. There really wasn’t a need now to have a permanent station at El Paso, so they elected to just rotate the airplanes through Marana. That’s kind of how that happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you do maintenance on the plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, we had our own maintenance crew. We had three mechanics that were assigned to the 747. It was a little easier for the Houston crews and myself to fly in El Paso than it was L.A., because it’s now two legs to get to Edwards, but it’s only one leg from Houston to El Paso. That was the training site for the STAs. The astronauts used to come out in the morning to go fly a morning flight, or [in] the afternoon, because it’s only an hour and a half away. So when it come time to go fly the SCA, the pilots in Houston loved it because it was just an hour and a half away, and we jumped on an airplane and then go home at night. Versus a day, day and a half, sometimes two-day trip to get to Edwards to go fly a two-hour mission. It was convenient, it really was a nice thing to have at El Paso." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where would you take the plane out when you flew it from El Paso?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of our locals were done at Biggs Army Airfield. Again, that was a fairly long runway, 13,000 feet, and it got us away from the El Paso International Airport. They don’t like a large airplane in their traffic pattern when they’re trying to land Southwest Airlines and American Airlines. And they loved it because Biggs didn’t get a lot of work. The tower operators really liked for us to come over there and work in their pattern because it give them training and it give us training too. It was a good working relationship with Biggs Army Airfield." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those aircraft are nearly 40 years old. They’re old, as we noticed when we went in them today. You told us about some of the mods [modifications] for the vehicle, but what upgrades have there been for the aircraft?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Henry probably could talk to you, because he controlled the service bulletins and the ADs [aviation divisions]. I don’t remember a whole lot of modifications. I mean, new equipment aboard the airplane—I remember deactivating center tanks and scavenging pumps when that TWA [Trans World Airlines] problem occurred with explosion in the fuel tanks [TWA Flight 800 accident]. But we just deactivated, we didn’t put in any new equipment.\\n\\n The only modification that comes to mind on 905 was autobrakes. We didn’t have autobrakes on 905 when I first come onboard, so we made that modification. I just can’t think of anything off the top of my head that in the 20-some-odd years that we ever did any mods. We did maintenance and changed components out, but nothing new as far as systems aboard the airplane that I can recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the maintenance of the plane. Would you as a flight engineer tell the mechanics out at Dryden, “Hey look, there’s some issue with the plane”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the flight engineers—I’ll tell you a little history—when we were hired on, we were hired on as quality assurance flight engineers. So we took on that role, not so much directing but just making sure the quality was done. Our bosses at that time said, it’s good for our flight engineers to be part of the quality system. Who better to watch and make sure that the job gets done, because they’re the ones that are going to have to get aboard the airplane and go fly. That was one of the thought processes why they selected us to do quality and flight engineering both.\\n\\n The other thing was that, yes, I was involved with maintenance decisions and making those calls. The contractors are the ones who do the maintenance, so we let the contractors make the calls on the maintenance. They discuss it because they belong to the NASA operations, so they run everything by us, and if we object then we’ll talk about it. That’s kind of how the process works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there a regular maintenance schedule for the vehicles themselves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, because it’s just like any other airplane. Sometimes scheduled maintenance gets in direct conflict with operations, so sometimes you have to make that decision. We’re here to fly airplanes. It’s a tradeoff and you have to say, “Okay, we’ll have to defer it.” But when the operations stop, then you do know that that airplane goes down and we have to do the maintenance before we go fly again. Sometimes the tempo of operations conflicts, so you have to make the adjustments to make it all work. That’s the things I don’t miss. I don’t miss those discussions at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about some of those discussions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it’s just pilots want to fly and the operations want to fly, and maintenance, “We’re held to a schedule. If something goes wrong, then we’re responsible.” It’s one of those things that sometimes you just have to lay the law down, say that this has to get done. They’re good about it too. They know that there’s some things that you just have to bite the bullet and do the maintenance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ve been talking today about 905 and 911. What planes fall in between 905 and 911?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, NASA 910 was a T-38, so it just depends on what the number is. When I come onboard—the STAs, the first one was 946 and -47. We tried to find the serial numbers or the production numbers as close to those airplanes as possible at Gulfstream [Aerospace]. Their serial number was 146 and 147, so that’s how they got NASA 947 and 946. They just put the 9 on it because Johnson uses 9 and Dryden uses 8, and I think Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] uses 7. Every Center has their own number. Those numbers are picked, like I said on 146, due to the uniqueness off the production line.\\n\\n The next STA was NASA 944 and then 945, but it didn’t come sequentially. They were later than -46 and -47, but because their serial number was earlier that’s why they picked that. Sometimes they try to go in order, but sometimes that doesn’t work either. You look at 905 and 911, it’s a 747, but there’s a couple T-38s in between them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did NASA decide which SCA it was going to fly for the ferry flights?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, like I was talking about the maintenance schedule, if the one was in scheduled maintenance in Marana—the 905 was not going to go fly, 911’s available. It was just whatever airplane was up at that time was the one we used, it was just a matter of the maintenance schedule and where it was at at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your baby has just been retired, 911." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know, it’s a sad moment. Henry did me a favor. I was pre-flighting 905, and we were going to fly both airplanes. One was going to take off and go straight to Palmdale, and I was going to stay back and do a local with Bill Rieke and Bill [William F.] Brockett. Henry come up and he says, “You need to go do a walk-around one more time on the airplane before we can call it quits.” That was kind of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is it the newer of the two?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was the latest of the two. It’s not the newer, because it had more flight time on it than 905. When we got 905 I think it had a little over 10,000 hours on it. When 911 came onboard it had over 30,000 hours on it. So 911 had a little more passenger time on it, but for ferry time, I would say 905 had more ferries than 911. You’d have to go back and look at the archives, but I’m almost positive it did. When I come onboard on the SCA in the ’90s—I think I was involved with over 30, 35 ferry missions, and it was a lot more before I come onboard. Do you know what the total is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it’s 55 ferries from Edwards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, then I guess I did more than I thought. I was thinking there was 50 before I come on, but I don’t know. I didn’t do any counting until we got to looking at the numbers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did NASA decide to retire her instead of 905?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, I wasn’t part of that discussion. They just picked 911 to be the one that goes down. They took, I think, two engines that had better time and condition on them and put them on 905. I think I was told that we had some gear-overhaul issues and some time-change issues that it was too expensive to get repaired and modified, so they decided just to take the one down. I think that’s what I remember in the discussion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned, a lot of the early missions landed out at Edwards, and there were a lot of ferry missions back here, and then of course taking the orbiters from here out to Palmdale. As time went on, there were fewer and fewer flights. What impact does flying the plane less and less have on the aircraft itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I told you earlier, we’re multi-qualified and so we kept our hands in other projects. When the ferry mission come along, you found any way to get off the other schedules to get back. They were few and far between, so you really worked the schedule to make yourself available to go fly. We were still required to go out every three weeks to fly our locals and keep our landing currencies going and then going to the simulator twice a year, so that’s how we maintain our currency. When it came time for ferry mission, yes, it was pretty exciting times to get back to rolling again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Does it have any impact on the aircraft itself, though? Because I know if you don’t drive a car on a regular basis it’s problematic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they’re very temperamental. If you don’t use them and you sit for a while, the systems just don’t want to go. Once you get up and running and work them, yes they work, but that initial get them moving is tough sometimes. We found that especially when we were out at Marana. When those airplanes were down for three months at a time and there was no flying done on them, when it was time to roll out we had all kinds of issues. But you work through them. Nothing major, it’s just pain to try to get it going because it just doesn’t want to leave the parking spot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any funny stories you can share with us about some ferry flights or the planes themselves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. Great moments, great guys to fly with. [Francis R.] “Dick” Scobee; Joe [Joseph S.] Algranti, the first guy that I went to work for; [C.] Gordon Fullerton, great guy, great individual; and just the people that I’ve been involved with. With the 747 and the orbiter on top, you don’t sneak into town with that. It just brings everybody out, and you get to meet the different folks and see their smiling faces. Especially at Fort Campbell [Kentucky], taking thousands of those students through, busload after busload. I’d love to go back and see how many students we touched, that really wanted to stay with NASA and stay with math and science and do those kind of things that we’re doing right now. I’d love to go back and see if any of them did take the challenge. Those are the good moments." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk to us about that ferry flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We got into Fort Campbell and I think the hurricane was Hurricane Ivan. It was stirring up in the Atlantic, so there were some concerns that if we got in [to KSC], could we get it offloaded and get it to the [OPF, Orbiter Processing Facility]. Or do we just need to sit away here and let it come in and then pick up the pieces and figure out when we need to bring it back in. Well, they elected to just set it out. If I remember right I think it went northeast, kind of went up and petered out and never even come close, but it ended up delaying us. I think we ended up staying there four days.\\n\\n The NASA managers at the time decided this was a great opportunity to open it up. But we were being hosted by an Army base, Fort Campbell, so they had to run it by Fort Campbell PAO [public affairs office] and the commander to find out if we could have schools around Kentucky and Tennessee come in and view it and have a few of us, just like on media day, answer questions. We started early in the morning until it was dark. You just saw busload after busload, and you kept thinking, “Where are they finding all these kids?”\\n\\n It was great. Some of these kids had never even seen an airplane before, and now you’re bringing the Space Shuttle. They’ve heard about it, so it was pretty emotional sometimes, and they brought me right down into it. It was great to be part of it, those were fun times. Not saying that this mission here is not going to be fun, it is. Some of those folks up in D.C. I’m sure haven’t seen some of this stuff either, especially doing the fly-bys. A lot of folks are going to be looking up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of emotions or feelings do you have now that you’re taking Discovery?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sad, sad. It’s an era that’s treated me very well. Like I said, I started in the late ’70s, but I’ve been retired for about four or five years now. It was kind of a unique experience when I landed here and saw a lot of activity on the ramp. About six, seven, seven o’clock, we were driving back to Cocoa Beach [Florida], and to drive by the [OPF] and the launch sites are all gone and not see any activity, it’s hard for me to grasp the program is coming to an end. It’s hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it is tough. Rebecca, Sandra, do you guys have any questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve got a couple. One, when you were giving us the guided tour, we found another classic piece of equipment onboard. It was a microfiche reader. Can you share why that is still there, and did you ever use it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we still use it. It has our maintenance manuals and our parts catalogues and such. That’s old technology. You got to remember that’s a 1971 airplane, so a lot of the manuals—we have hard copies of the manual, but we have microfiche. It’s hard to get updates on the microfiche, but we still get some. Sometimes old technology is good technology. Just because it’s new doesn’t necessarily mean it works well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we got started, you mentioned that today about one o’clock you were going to go through some fire training. Are there specific types of training that you go through?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Some of the things are unique to this airplane, because we stripped out a lot of stuff. A lot of those crew doors don’t have slides and don’t have emergency escape exits, so we deactivated them. What we have to do is show the fire department which doors are activated, what doors have slides, what doors don’t have slides, how to get us out of the seats if we become incapacitated, and we can’t get out. We have to show them how to get us out of there, how to shut the airplanes down. They can get the electrical power off and shut the engines down if we can’t do it. Those are the kind of training things we do, and we tell them how many crew members are onboard the airplane and where they’re going to be so during a fire, smoke, they know where to go.\\n\\n I’ve got another crew coming in at one o’clock, the second shift. We had first shift yesterday and then third shift will be tomorrow. It’s great. That’s sort of like giving tours too. The fire guys don’t get to do this kind of stuff, so they’re kind of taken away. If you give a little extra time and tell them what you do and what the mission requires, it’s a good working relationship with those guys. They don’t know that kind of stuff, and it’s kind of fun to talk to those guys, especially the ones that are going to have to come and get you if something goes wrong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there other types of those safety trainings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Typically if we’re going to spend any time, like at Fort Campbell, before we started the tours we had the fire department come out because if we have an emergency we want those folks to know what we have to do to save people, and to save the airplane if we can." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just one more. As a flight engineer walking around a few hours before everybody’s ready to go, you really do have that option that if you see something that’s a showstopper, you have to call it. Did you find yourself in that position during those 30, 35 flights?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m sure I did. I’m trying to remember. I’ve had some issues when we got on the airplane that it was a no-go, but it’s been one of these things that we can talk about and we can go with. I’ve had a generator that didn’t come online. It give us an option in what we call our MEL, our minimum equipment list, that basically says you can take off with three generators versus four, but this is what you have to do in order to safe the CSD [definition?]. We had to disconnect the CSD before we went to go fly.\\n\\n It wasn’t a showstopper, but yes, we had a malfunction and we had to take care of it. You hate to know that if you took off with something that you weren’t supposed to go fly with and then you were in the air and—whoops. Those are the kind of things you want to talk about and discuss before you get in the air, because in the air you don’t have any options." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just one other question. Tell us what it’s like flying inside that 747 once you’re up in the air and how different it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it’s pretty awesome. You got the thing [orbiter] strapped to you and you know it’s there. I mean, you could hear the vibration of it. Especially when you get close to towns—well, you don’t have to get close to town. You can be up flying and you hear airliners talking to ATC [air traffic control], “Where’s the Shuttle at?” They’ll call them in and give them our clock position and tell them where we’re at, and sometimes we’ll see them come in on us to let passengers see it. You look out, and you see it. I’ve never been able to have good enough eyesight to see passengers looking at it, but you know they’re there. One of the pilots one time rolled the wing. He said, “That’s everybody going from the right to the left.” I kind of laughed and chuckled, “Yes, okay.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there something that we may have missed that you thought we should talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think you got it pretty well covered. Sorry about getting a little emotional, but that’s the way it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We understand. Well, thank you very much for your time today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Larry R. LaRose", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You bet.\\n\\n [Tape break]\n\nDryden at the time, the lakebed was full of water so we knew well in advance that we were going to land at White Sands Missile Range [New Mexico]. A lot of the equipment showed up early on by train. When it come time for landing the 747 out there, it was like landing on a runway. The first inch was gypsum, kind of soft, but when we broke through that soft gypsum it was like a hard concrete. The handling characteristics were no different, and the wife really didn’t really understand. “Was that a one-inch of mud?” No, it was just a crust. It was really just like a hard surface, and we knew that we could land the Shuttle the same way. They had load testers out there at White Sands that could test that surface so they could maintain it and it wouldn’t sink or rut or veer off the side of the runway. We had a good understanding.\\n\\n My involvement was not with the SCA at the time. I was flying the weather flight with John [W.] Young and Dave [David] Mumme. When we waved off the first day, there was some concerns because our forecast didn’t look like it was going to be much better the next day. There was a lot of discussion because, remember, we were still in flight test mode on STS-3 and we weren’t going to be out of flight test mode until -5 or -6. If I’m not mistaken, I think we went up to -8 before we really got out of flight test mode.\\n\\n Our requirements were to land on a lakebed. Well, we didn’t have many lakebed options. We only had White Sands and Edwards, so we said, “Okay, we need to have an alternate in case we can’t get into White Sands.” They didn’t have a lot of expendables on fuel because it was just a two-man cockpit and they were only going to be up for a short period of time. So they were making a decision.\\n\\n Well, we’re going to have to support KSC, so we sent one of the SCAs down. I stayed in White Sands and flew the weather flight the next day. The winds were pretty high, but nothing like it was the first day. The sand and the dirt was up to 5,000 feet and kicking up, and you couldn’t see any visibility the day before. The next day most all the sand was gone, but the winds were still pretty high. They were right down the runway, so we eventually landed.\\n\\n The biggest thing that come afterwards—in the spring in El Paso and Las Cruces you’ve got a lot of blowing dirt. That’s the only thing you’ve got to put up with out in the Southwest is high winds in the spring. I like the falls, and if you can stand the heat—it’s a dry heat, but that’s the only thing. We don’t have tornadoes or hurricanes and torrential downpours or anything like that, we just get the wind in the spring.\\n\\n To make a long story short, because we had a lot of wind and the gypsum was blowing all the time, it blew in between the tiles and it caused a big problem with cleaning the orbiter once it got here. That rumor got out that we really don’t want to land at White Sands anymore, but they made some corrections and built a hard stand, and they were going to build a temporary cover to put over it if we ever had to use White Sands again. That’s a little quick history of being involved with the landing, but I was not part of the SCA crew to come in and pick it up. I was there to help a little bit with the logistics. That’s the short story of how I got started." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00031", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "David Kepley", + "description": "David Kepley worked for the National Archives for 36 years and was chief of four different branches. In his interview, Kepley discusses the Archival Research Catalog (ARC), traces the origins and development of NARA’s Electronic Records Archives (ERA), and talks about NARA’s independence from GSA.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/sources/kepley-david-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "kepley-david-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:16", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "June 20, 2014" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Brian Knowles" + ], + "respondents": [ + "David Kepley" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I am Brian Knowles. I am acting as an oral historian for the National Archives and Records Administration. Today’s date is 20 June 2014. I am conducting Oral History Interview at Archives I, in Washington, D.C. with Mr. David Kepley. He was an archivist, a branch chief of several departments and has recently retired from the National Archives. And I know you’re a Ph.D., so—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Dr. Kepley or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Sure. That’s fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doctor, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. If you would just begin by telling me your dates of service for the National Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I began working for the National Archives in 1976 and I retired the last day of 2012, December 31, 2012. I’ve been retired for about a year and a half now. I began working for the Archives in 1976, as I say. My career goal at that point, and this is kind of as an interesting demographic comment, was, in the 1970s, there were a number of people like me who got advanced degrees in history. I got a Ph.D. in American history, but turned to the National Archives. The reason why I describe it as a demographic phenomenon is those of us who were baby boomers who were coming out with our PhDs were all seeking jobs in academia and there just weren’t jobs there. So we’re all searching around for what else we can do. We continued to try more, you know, harder to get into jobs in academia and they just weren’t there to be had. The demographic problem was, as this huge bulk of baby boomers came into college in the 60s and 70s, colleges expanded to meet that demand, but then the people who came right behind us, there weren’t as many of them, so there weren’t as many jobs. So there’s a contraction of the market there. So we didn’t quite know what to do with ourselves. A number of us came to work here at the National Archives. I did my graduate work at the University of Maryland and a couple of my buddies said, “Well, geez, you ought to look at the Archives. I mean, at least you can get a summer internship kind of a thing or like a student internship.” So that’s how I got my first job here in ’76. I was a student intern, as many people here at the Archives are right now, while they’re going to undergraduate school or graduate school, they start as students. In fact, both of my sons were students working here at the National Archives, the same kind of a deal. That’s what I did. I only worked, I don’t know, 20 hours a week or something like that, while I was teaching part-time at Maryland and finishing up my degree work and trying to find a job. A number of us finally decided that the Archives is a pretty good gig—this is very much in keeping with what we were trained to do. It advances the larger cause of trying to honor and push forward the ideals of history in American society. So, whoa, this isn’t so bad and you get paid a good paycheck and a number of us came and worked here at NARA. There’s a number of people that you could interview that are in that same boat. You’ll see a preponderance of people with higher degrees from my age demographic because of that issue. And the previous generation of leaders really did not have those advanced degrees because people of that generation could get academic jobs if that’s what they wanted to do. So there’s the first observation—there’s a bunch of us who did come in with those advanced degrees and making this a kind of a, well, a fallback position. But I found it was very rewarding. I found that I was advancing the larger cause of history, and I was delighted to be working here at the National Archives. I worked here for about 35 years. While I was searching to find a job, I worked in several other U.S. government history offices. I worked for the Labor Department as a historian for a couple of months. I worked for the National Parks Services as an interpretative person for a couple of summers between classes. I worked for the Forest Service history section for five or six months trying to catch on permanently, until finally, my first permanent job at NARA was at the Philadelphia Regional Archives. That opens another whole set of questions. Regional Archives, what’s that all about? What happened was, the main building, the one we’re sitting in right now was the National Archives. It was all housed in this one building. Then the obvious thing happens; we outgrew the building. The spillover effect went to a building we had in Suitland, which was in the late 1960s’. Also out of necessity, we expanded then into the many Federal Record Centers. The Record Centers have been around since the 1950s, but out of necessity, we outgrew this building so we had to put stuff some place. They started inventing these Regional Archives. The idea was—well, at the regional level, those records created by the regions were permanent and housed there. The usual way it would work was they were living in their temporary storage and they were in one section of the Records Center. You could just move them across the hall into the Archival section. That’s sort of the birth of the Regional Archives System. It was not terribly well thought out or planned. As a brand new, almost PhD at that point, I’m out at the Philadelphia Regional Archives. The thing you have to remember is, these Regional Archives, some of them were located in nice buildings. Philadelphia was in a miserable building is the best way I could put it. It was the old Atwater Camera factory. Atwater Kent was an old industrialist who didn’t believe in labor unions and when the Wagner Act of the 1930s required that they unionize, he closed the plant. Somehow, the Federal Government got this piece of property and most of the building was the IRS. They had a huge filing, you know, auditing tax returns and all that. We had another part of the building, like another whole floor for record storage. The building was built in the 1930s and I got there in the 1970s. I was there for about a year and a half. The facility was pretty bad and it was not terribly well located. Here’s to me what’s interesting about the Regional Archives—what kind of a public did they in fact serve? Who were our customers? The answer is, well, from when I got there in 1979, the “Roots” phenomenon had hit in the late ‘70s. Everybody in America, it seemed, wanted to know their roots. Everybody started wanting to know their genealogy. The one thing that we had in these Regional Archives that was extremely helpful, in that regard, were the census records. We had immigration records. People were very much interested in those kinds of records and those records were all on microfilm. The originals were here in the main National Archives Building, but sets of the microfilm were deposited in each of the Regional Archives around the country. Those kind of became local magnets. People would come and see us and we had a very active program in loaning out the microfilm rolls to people in local libraries in our area. I was in Philadelphia Regional Archives and we served Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. If you were in Pittsburgh, you didn’t have to ride all the way to Philadelphia. You could get your local library to borrow that roll of microfilm. There was an extremely active inter-library loan program for people to borrow this stuff. I would say 98% of our researchers were researchers looking at our microfilm collections. Okay, so we had all this hard copy stuff, but almost nobody looked at that, with the exception of the ships passenger arrival lists because those are genealogically oriented records. I spent most of my time processing records, in other words, doing descriptions of records. We didn’t do much in the way of exhibits because there was no space for that. It was mostly descriptions. I probably did 95% of my work describing new accessions and moving them over from the Record Center. Occasionally we would have a researcher. I used to say to people that we would average about one researcher a month looking at our hard copy holdings—one a month. The rest were all looking at microfilm stuff, which is fine. I think that’s probably true of most of the Regional Archives at that time. They were microfilm research centers. That’s what they did. Later in my career, when I was in administration, in the late 80s into the early 90s, we did a study of the Regional Archives for the Archivist. The Archivist of the United States put together a group of people to try to study the Regional Archives. This was Don Wilson. I was on that group. We took a look at why did the Regional Archives come into being? What’s going on here? What’s the level of research they’re doing? What’s this? What’s that? The idea was, should the National Archives expand this program? Should it redirect the program? Where should we be going with that program? That’s where I pretty much confirmed my impressions from being in one regional archives that the entire collection of them did relatively little research work in original records but lots and lots of microfilm research. At that point the decision had been. The Archivist decided to expand those Regional Archives and put more staff into them, give them more of a public presence, have them reach out to their congressional delegations or to local, regional libraries, and other archives, you know, the state archives and that kind of thing, to give NARA a larger nationwide presence. One can argue about the wisdom of that. Do you need that many Regional Archives, especially given the low research volume? Especially in our own time, it really comes into question, because all of those microfilm resources have now been digitized. So is there a reason to have them? If so, do you have them as a storefront kind of an operation downtown, which is expensive space. Alternatively, do you have them out in the suburbs? It’s less expensive space, but there’s still an awful lot of it. Should you reduce the numbers of them because not too many people are using the physical records? There are many questions surrounding those, especially when you get into fiscally difficult times, which we’re in right now and we seem to always be in. Let’s face it; where can you save money at the National Archives? Well, we only spend money on renting space, okay, and people. But of that, renting space is by far the greatest amount. So if you could take, say the Regional Archives, reduce the number of them and put them in bigger facilities, would that help us? Maybe yes, maybe no. We just closed or are about to close the Regional Archives in Alaska. It is probably a wise idea. We have some Regional Archives in downtown areas where the space is extremely expensive. I remember when we did this study in the early 90s, for the cost for the Regional Archives in New York. Because it was in downtown Manhattan, it was greater than the next three Regional Archives put together, in terms of the rental costs. Does that make sense? Do we get a decent return on our investment? I have to say I don’t think so, but okay. We wrestled with those kinds of issues then and I think we are still kind of wrestling with now. My time at the Regional Archives in Philadelphia, for me personally, was good because I really got to understand how to describe records. I learned that basic, fundamental building block of what it means to be an archivist. That is critical. Not so much on reference, but lots on that particular one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] How were you instructed to do the descriptions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, good question. As a brand new archivist, what kind of education did I get? The Regional Archives generally did not train people very well. They sort of said, “Here’s your job, and maybe your boss would kind to work with you.” Because I worked down here as a student intern, I knew that brand new archivists went through a rigorous training program. I said, “geez, that’s what I need, so I can be really good at what I’m trying to do here.” I asked and the answer was, “no, we can’t send you down to that training program.” There is a training program which is offered to members of the public, which I think might be useful to me. I persuaded people to send me down to that program. It’s called the National Archives Institute. The Institute has been going on for probably 40 or 50 years. You’d have to ask folks who have been involved in that. Its mission is to bring together archivists from around the country, almost none of which are National Archives people, generally. It is almost all people from somewhere else to teach them the art and craft of being an archivist. I came down here for two weeks and got my training in basic archives management kinds of things and that was my basic training. Had I been hired centrally, I would have had the advantage of having rotational assignments in different units, which would have helped me learn more about the art and craft of being an archivist. You go back to Philadelphia and it was, no, we’re not doing that. I felt like this isn’t too cool. Regional Archives, what one of the problems is, they are been a backwater. They’ve been always trying to fight to be brought on an even par with folks in downtown D.C. I did eventually get a job down here in Washington. I felt there was better career advancement here. It turns out I was right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you were in Philadelphia from 1977 to ‘79." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then you came here to work at the Legislative Archives Division?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right. I had worked in Legislative as a student intern. I worked there actually three different points in my career. The first time I was there as a student intern and I did reference work. The second time I came on board I was a full-fledged archivist and worked there for, I think, about four years. There, I really learned an awful lot about reference. Reference was my basic role, working with researchers, which I found really very exciting and enjoyable. I think I enjoyed teaching most in my graduate work. When you’re in graduate school, either you like publication or you like teaching or hopefully you like both. I liked the teaching part of it. What I liked about being a reference archivist was that it allowed me to exercise that teaching dimension of my personality I suppose. I guess I’m more of a people person. I really enjoyed working with a researcher who would come in and say, “I’m trying to figure out everything which relates into what.” Then I would talk with the person about their project, and we would work together to develop a research strategy. I would bring down records for this person to look at and that sort of thing. That was a lot of fun for me. I found that personally very rewarding. It was fun seeing, when their books came out many years later, an acknowledgment that I had done some great work to help them out. That, you know, that is always fun to see that you are advancing the cause of scholarship two or three millimeters. You are moving the needle in the right direction, right. I enjoyed that a lot. I also got a chance while I was there to work on some other stuff with respect to legislative records. Legislative records has a very interesting history. The National Archives and Records Administration is unique among the national archives of the world in that we have the records of all three branches of the Federal Government here. None of the other national archives have that. Most of them have just the records of one branch of their Federal Government, usually the executive branch. We have executive branch records here. We have records of the Supreme Court and District and Appeals Courts. We also have the records of the United States Congress here. That is unusual and it’s a unique relationship that we have with them. When it comes to Federal records, they come to the National Archives. Legal custody is transferred to the National Archives and that is what accession into the National Archives means. When it comes to legislative records, they are deposited with the National Archives but ownership is still retained by Congress. The legal relationship, therefore, is very different. What does that mean? That means, for example, the laws that apply to access to Federal records derive from the Freedom of Information Act. When it comes to records of Congress, Congress has certain resolutions or rules of the House or Senate to which we must refer for access. When I was there, the rules on access were antiquated. For example, records of the House of Representatives were closed for 50 years. It did not matter what they were about. If you wanted to see records, even from the First Congress, even on the most inconsequential thing, you had to get permission from the Clerk of the House. This was all pro forma, but you have a researcher sitting in front of you and you say, “well, I’d like to show you this, but I can’t show you until you get permission from that guy up there.” Then, you place a phone call and it had to be in writing. You had to jump through a bunch of hoops. Did anybody ever say “no” in answers? They always said yes. It was an arcane, silly procedure especially when you had scholars who were here. DC is an expensive city to stay in and now you are wasting their time with these hoops you had to make them jump through. When we finally became the Center for Legislative Archives, Mike McReynolds and I pushed against one of these rules of access. Can’t we make them more streamlined? Can’t we try to take these silly hoops out of the way? Eventually, this is when I was Chief of Reference, we did get the House to change its procedures. It modernized its rules. People no longer had to ask permission first. The same was true with the Senate. We worked with the Senate Historical Office and they are a great bunch of people to work with. We got them to modernize their rules of access and that was very satisfying to see that happen. In one case, in the late 1970s, we got records of the Senate Watergate Committee. When they came over that was really a hot button set of materials. Normally, they would have been closed for 50 years, no matter how mundane the stuff was. We were able to get the Senate to consider some rules of access to these materials that mirrored the Freedom of Information Act. This was a first step at trying to get the Senate and the House to apply more modern concepts of access to their materials. Were we completely successful? No, but again, we moved the needle forward in the direction of trying to open things up more and to try to get our researchers into those things on a more timely basis. I would argue a more rational basis, more in keeping with sort of the Freedom of Information Act. The other thing that we had done at time seems like a tiny thing now, but, again why don’t we microfilm some of these materials? That was the cutting-edge technology at the time. Now we digitize, but at the time, we wanted to microfilm, probably the most popular records of the House, the records of the Southern Claims Commission. This was a commission set up after the Civil War to review the claims of people in the South who lost property as a result of the Civil War. You know, the Union Army marched through and took away all their cows or whatever, and they are turning to the United States government saying here is a bill for 20 cows. Then the question became, did you lose the property, number one? Number two; were you loyal to the Union? These people had to submit affidavits on this. Because it related to people’s claims, genealogists today find these extremely rich and extremely interesting because they have all these affidavits and they are describing their personal situations. Moreover, they are describing the depredations of the Union Army and all this really cool stuff. We tried to get the House of Representatives to agree, saying it would really help our researchers if we could microfilm these records, actually microfiche these records and allow people to look at them anywhere they wanted to. Well, you have to have permission for each one of these. We tried to say, “Couldn’t we let that rule go for this body of records? We are wasting a lot of your time and our time.” They eventually agreed to do that. So we microfiched those and we sent copies of the microfiche to whoever wanted to buy them and out to our Regional Archives for the research room. Again, was that an earthquake? No, but it moves the needle in the right direction. I think we felt very proud of the fact that we got those records in the hands of more researchers. People really liked that. I think we all felt pretty good about that and the Watergate thing. The other thing we did during that period was look into the earliest records of the United States Senate and started working on that. There is a wonderful publication that predates the congressional record, called American State Papers. It was an attempt by the early government of the United States to publish its most important state papers, many of which were congressional, some of which were executive branch, such as letters from the President to the Congress. Why not the originals of those and other ancillary materials? Because the American State Papers covered, I think, the first 16 Congresses, which gets you past the War of 1812 or something like that. We launched a project to microfilm all of those records. I didn’t see it through to its end. One of my protégés, the one I was working with, she did see it through to the end and that was pretty cool that we got all of those records on microfilm. Again, it helps our research community do their jobs a little bit better and try to make things work a little bit better for everybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember her name, the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Yes. Mary Rephlo. Mary is a wonderful person. She was on Senator Danforth’s staff and as he was leaving office, we were able to hire her down here. She is still working for us and she is another good person you might want to talk to. She was with the Modern Archives Institute. I said I was a student on that and she managed it for 20 years maybe. She was instrumental in that. One other final point on Legislative Archives. It began back in the late 1940’s when their materials first came to us and had a fairly powerful presence here with a lot of close connections with political figures on the Hill. I think the Archives tried to use it to its advantage, but herein lies a bit of a problem. The folks who ran the Legislative Archives could sometimes use that political leverage for their own ends, which can be a problem. Whom are you working for? Are you working for those guys or are you working for us, you know? Then some of the more powerful figures retired or died. That was well before my time. Then Legislative Archives became kind of a stepchild to some executive branch agency branch here within NARA. When I got here, it was the Legislative, Judicial, and Fiscal Branch. Next, it was Legislative and Natural Resources Branch. Then, it was Legislative and Diplomatic Branch. We were always stuck in with some other unit and we kept trying to make the argument that you really ought to have us as a separate unit and elevate our status to give us a little better relationship with the Hill. It might help the Archives out. Eventually that was done during my third time I was with Legislative. We set up the Center for Legislative Archives, and the idea there was to elevate the Center, to make it more prestigious, to get better relationships with the Hill, but to maintain that balance. I think Mike McReynolds and I understood we worked for the National Archives and promoted our interests, but tried to work closely with the Hill to try to keep that balance. I have not worked there since the early 90s. I think there was a different emphasis that came in after me. Mike Gillette came in and kind of fashioned that group as more like a Presidential Library, which has its pluses and minuses. I was not working there then, so I cannot comment too much on that but you might want to talk with those folks about how it changed over time. I wanted to talk to you about those things with respect to Legislative. Did you have any other ones that you wanted to ask me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No. You covered that very well. That was, archivist in Legislative Archives Division, ‘79 to ‘83. Then you went on to an archivist in the Program Analysis Branch, ‘83 to ‘85." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Let’s talk about that. That was in policy and administration, a very different kind of a job. I was an archivist there by title, but not really, for all practical purposes, I was more like a program analyst. We would do things like go into certain units and work with them to see if their procedures were efficient, effective, and efficient. We did a number of different studies with units. The Federal Register was one. Our microfilm sales unit here was another one. I worked with probably the most controversial program there was. We brought in an outside vendor, a contractor, Management Analysis Incorporated to work on how to make the whole art and craft of archives more efficient. At the time, work processes very idiosyncratic. Each archivist did it his or her own way and each technician pulled and re-filed records his or her own way. As we moved into the 70s and the 80s, the constant refrain that we in the National Archives and throughout government had to work with is, do more with less. It was constant cutting back of government. You had to be thinking about how could we use the resources we had; mostly we’re talking about personnel resources, much more effectively? To give you an example, when I worked in Legislative, we had this wonderful filing system for which any letter we wrote to a researcher we would file a little card on whatever the topic was that might be something that was interesting to somebody else. The card would refer you to the reading file and you would pull out that letter. When I would look at letters written in the ‘50s and the ‘60s, somebody would write in and say, “What do you have on the Battle of Little Bighorn,” or something like that. We would write these letters that would go on for a page and a half with detailed references. When the next guy wrote in asking what we had on the Battle of Little Bighorn we could reproduce that letter and tell them to take a look at this. What it also speaks to is the time we had to devote to a letter. It probably took that researcher, that archivist, maybe a whole day to write up a letter back to that person. Were we providing good customer service? Well, yeah. The researcher benefited from that. Obviously, we had the luxury to be able to do that. As you get into the ‘80s and the ‘90s, we were getting slammed here and the byword of government, starting with the post-Watergate period well up into our own time is, do more with less— cutting back government, denigrating government services. It hit the Archives. It hit all aspects of the Federal Government. We had to start looking at what we can do more effectively. We had to start cutting back on how much research service we did give to people. We had to start saying that when you get a letter you must answer the letter in, I think, an hour or two. If the person asked you 20 questions, you would say I’m going to answer your questions, serially. I’m going to give you an answer to the first several questions. Then I have to move through the rest of my list of letters and I’ll come back to your letter and answer several more. That one person can’t dominate your whole week and you’re giving good customer service to as many people as you possibly could. We had industrial engineers, that’s Management Analysis Incorporated, come in and look at our work processes. They looked at how we managed the whole process of giving service to our customers, both in-person service, pulling records for them, or corresponding with people through the mail, through email eventually, and that sort of thing. Then trying to figure out, well, about much time did we spend? We found the numbers were wildly different. Or, how much time did we spend to pull records for different requests? Again, the numbers were all over the place. For certain kinds of research or certain kinds of questions we get thousands, indeed hundreds of thousands of requests, for example, for military pension records there is a certain procedure you do. You look it up in a register. You go from the register to the units, military service records. You pull the veteran’s record, you make a copy, and you mail it off to them. For those we developed certain standards for how many minutes it should take you to do this kind of thing. Therefore, they would batch the work by that type of record. For example, all military service records would be one. Immigration, naturalization records would be another kind. You’d say an average person should be able to do, I’ll just make up a number, about 20 of these a day and the person would be expected to do that. This makes sense on some levels. It is an efficiency kind of a thing. On a cultural level, this was a difficult thing for the National Archives because we’re sort of, especially on the side of the archives that I dealt with, the historic record side, we see ourselves as a cultural institution. We are kind of like an adjunct to a university, you know. Universities see themselves as being something that you cannot turn us into a factory. You can’t turn us into a widget factory. No, this is about culture. It is about art and those are the cultural values that we value. This really went against the grain. Most of the archivists really did not like to do it. It was difficult for me to have to try to sell this program. Portions of it stuck, particularly in the rote kinds of areas where we’re pulling by rote, like the one I just mentioned. In the other areas, it didn’t really catch on and probably just as well. It did compel us to rethink how we were giving service out and to reduce and try to systematize the work that we did, but that was a difficult thing to work on. The other thing I worked on in the Program Analysis Branch was the transition from the National Archives and Records Service to the National Archives and Records Administration. Independence. I was on the periphery of that, but once independence hit and we were an independent agency, our unit was in charge of trying to develop procedures for the National Archives. Up to that point, GSA developed all of our major procedures. We inherited their procedures. The first thing we did was make the argument to GSA that if we are going to have to do all these services that you were doing for us we are going to need slots to go hire some people to help us do personnel and procurement, and all those kind of general services kinds of things. What GSA did was say they’ll give us “x” number of slots. I forget what it was. They sent over some people to fill those slots. Now, do you think they sent their best and their brightest? I see you are laughing and so I think you got the idea. They sent the worst people they had. Oh, it was terrible. They had some people whom if GSA had had any integrity they would have fired them years ago. But, of course, instead they dumped them on us. Eventually those people either retired or left. They did not stick around for too long and various strategies were developed to try to move them along. We had to develop the basic procedures for running the National Archives. My unit had to particularly; I had to get smart in procurement of all things. Geez, I did not know anything about that. I’m an historian for God’s sake. I went out and took a bunch of classes in procurement. Government procurement is a highly procedure-driven activity. I mean, you can get in trouble so fast on it. My unit developed the basic procedures for how NARA would buy stuff. I had to get smart in all that. I even had a warrant to issue contracts up to a certain dollar threshold. Our theory at the time was an archivist could learn to do just about anything. Well, I guess I’m the proof of that, huh. Procurement stuff, give me a break. I learned that stuff. I didn’t particularly like it, but it gave me an appreciation for that. Throughout the rest of my whole career, I was really smart on procurement stuff. When people would say, “Oh, you’ll never get that done because you got to fill out these pieces of paper for procurement.” I would tell them to give me the piece of paper. I can fill it out. No big deal. They are looking at me like, “really?” I said, “Well, yeah, my unit wrote the first procurement handbook for NARA, so I kind of know that stuff.” We also worked on Archives II. That was also in that unit. One of my people, Michelle Pacifico, worked closely with Adrienne Thomas, and the whole planning for Archives II. When this building that we are sitting in here, Archives I, was state of the art for the 1930s. Now we are talking about the 1980s and 1990s and we have learned a lot about how to build buildings in between time. The way I would describe Archives II is that it was our lessons learned. If this is the way, this is what we like and do not like about Archives I. Here is our chance to do it right, so to speak, not that we did it wrong here, but this is how I’d do it better at Archives II. In Archives I, since we outgrew the space, we had people who were working and their office was in the stacks. My first office was in the stacks. You are surrounded by documents. You are not near too many humans and you are not allowed to take anything to eat or drink in there. You couldn’t have your morning cup of coffee in there or a snack or any of that sort of stuff. The air conditioning here was considered state of the art in the 1930s, but by the 1980s, it’s not so great. There were portions of the stacks where it’s just freezing no matter what time of the year. You have wind blowing in your face. They had to retrofit this building, I think in the 1950s, for water, so that we could extinguish any kind of fires. You are walking through the stacks, and I’m a guy of about six foot one, okay. Those water pipes, they had to put them some place. I think I still have a permanent crease in my forehead from smacking into those pipes. You come around the corner and wha-boom. One of your questions Brian was what was it like to work here. That was what it was like to work here. You had to know that you don’t go flying around a corner too fast or else you might get clocked. I worked with a guy who started working in the late 1940s, so he was there, not quite at the beginning, but pretty close. He would tell me one of the essential pieces of equipment for early archives was to always have an incandescent bulb in the pocket of your stack coat, because in those days incandescent lights were used in the stacks. By the time I got there, they were fluorescent lights. An incandescent light puts out light a certain kind of bandwidth, but there are dead spots in between. Inevitably, the records you are looking for are in that dead spot or the light bulb was burned out. You’d always have a spare bulb in your pocket and take out the burned out light bulb, put a new one in, so you could see what you were doing. You know, quite, quite incredible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Who was that gentleman?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "George Perros, P-E-R-R-O-S. George Perros was a Greek immigrant, worked in Legislative Archives, remarkable mind, and remembered stuff about the records, just a classic kind of a stack person. He had been there for a long, long time. He had some interesting stories about what it was like, being present at the creation kind of thing. That was cool to learn about. When we built Archives II, we said people would never work in the stacks again. It is kind of a, from a human being standpoint, not too cool working in the stacks. I mean, you would come in here in the morning in the wintertime, and it was dark. You leave in the evening, and it was dark. You never see daylight. At Archives II, you had offices where you had access to either direct sunlight or ambient light, which was very, very nice. You had an atrium in Archives II which would give you access to natural light. It was much more human friendly. The other thing that here is we have a few elevators, but, if one breaks down you are suddenly moving records from the stacks to the research room. If one elevator breaks down that really puts a crimp in your day. At Archives II, there are a lot of elevators. These are examples of things, well, we are not going to make that mistake again. When I got here, we had a really crummy snack bar. Oh, my goodness. Just dreadful. There was no real practical place for people to have lunch. They would have to go out of the building. At Archives II, they have a nice cafeteria, a nice menu with a selection of items to have. Here, the research room is very nice, very ornate, very beautiful, but not terribly practical from some standpoints. In Archives II, we have a whole cylinder of research rooms, six of them, depending on the record type you are researching and lots of access to natural light. You are looking out to the woods, which is really quite beautiful. So that’s the way we tried to kind of think about how to make it nicer for people and, of course, secure for the records. The records were always not subject to sunlight or anything and in air-conditioned controlled stacks. We do that well here and we did that well in Archives II as well. I would say the focus was on making it more human friendly. The next major assignment I had was Chief of the Research Rooms of Archives II, for about a year or so. I had been in administration. We were among the first people to move to Archives II, and that was interesting, because we were the pioneers. The whole place was empty. It was a break-in period—they are still doing punch list items. I remember we had computers, and the way computers were networked was for something like word processing. It was provided to you from the network, but if the network went down there was nothing to do. Your computer was dead. We all wanted the computer people to load copies, I think we were using WordPerfect at the time and we asked them to load WordPerfect on my PC. Why? Because if the network goes down I can still keep working. They thought that was the craziest idea, but eventually they did it. When they had to do any kind of updates to the software program they had to literally go around and touch every PC. You could imagine how incredibly time intensive that was. Then I moved to Branch Chief of the Research Rooms, which is how we were first organized in Archives II. We had to invent everything from scratch. How we manage researchers. How we manage staff. The whole process had to be invented and that was kind of fun. It had its frustrations but it was kind of fun trying to figure that out. The way it was initially conceived was there would be this reference branch— my branch—that would manage all the interactions between NARA and the researchers. That was how it was going to work. Not with the individual custodial units and the units had always run their own research rooms. They really resented this. They did not like this idea at all. We had to try to manage this relationship between researchers coming in and the folks in the custodial units who were pulling the records and trying to make that work well. I think at the end of the day the experiment in doing it that way did not work particularly well. I think they were better off running their own research rooms, which is what they eventually did too. Eventually, still pictures ran its own research room. When we ran it, it did not work because they knew all the questions to ask. Same with motion pictures. Same with cartographic and same with textual. I tried to manage that whole thing for about a year and the good thing was just trying to get everything to mesh and to try to get researchers to move through the way we thought it would work. Of course, it did not work that way in the real world and then we tried to make that work out better. That was a fun assignment. I enjoyed that a lot. My next assignment was one of my most fun here at the National Archives, which was when I was a Branch Chief of Motion Picture, Sound, and Video. We have a fantastic collection of motion picture, sound, and video materials. Itis just a wonderful, wonderful set of stuff. I had a really good time working on that. When I first went in, the branch was in a real difficult spot. There were a lot of personnel upheavals, a lot of EEO complaints, and suits. It was a real train wreck. At the outset, I was just trying to get folks to treat each other nicely, play well together, and that sort of thing. Then we also had to integrate the old downtown unit, the Archives I unit that went to Archives II. We had another unit that worked out at Pickett Street in northern Virginia and they came to Archives II. We had two units that had physically been apart for probably 10 or 15 years now working in the same space together. It was getting them to play nice together. It was a great experience in team building and trying to get people to think beyond what I want and then what do we need to be focused on, which is what do our customers want? That was what should be driving us. That was the mission and if you are not supporting the mission, then you need to change the way you’re doing it because you’re not supporting the mission. Getting them to think that different way was my biggest challenge through that. Also, there was an active set of researchers who were professional researchers. This is probably the only time I’ve ever dealt with professional researchers. In Legislative, you’d get someone who comes in, they’d work with you for a few weeks, boom, they go and you never see them again. With motion pictures researchers, you had a group of professional researchers who were there as many days in the week as I was there. They were there all the time. They are always under contract with some documentary filmmaker or whatever, putting together the next project. It’s a group of people who are very intelligent and very demanding. For them, this is money. This is dollars and cents. This is their living. I had to figure out a way to work with my staff, work with the professional researchers, and get them to kind of all move in the same direction. It was not that everything they want, we’re going to give them. It was not that everything that our staff wants, we’re going to give them. We’ve got to kind of move together here. I started setting up meetings, I think we did it quarterly, in which it was an open meeting and I’m going to tell you what kind of things we’re thinking of doing. I’m going to solicit your thoughts on it. Then I want you to tell me what’s bothering you. If, in the meantime, you’re upset about something let me know so we can talk it through. I was just trying to improve that whole communications dynamic, which was pretty much absent. They were treated mostly like the enemy. And they’re our customers. We really ought to be working together. We can’t give them everything they want, but we can probably work towards helping them out and helping us out. The biggest problem they had was, well, they’d say, “I placed an order for something today, and they don’t get it for 12 weeks.” Well, 12 weeks in the commercial sector is like 12 million years. They’re in a tight deadline and they are asking if there was anything, we could do to speed that up. The answer was that we actually figured out a way to do that. We sent all of our orders for reproductions down to our own lab, but our own lab couldn’t keep up with the production cycle. There just weren’t enough of them. It gets back to that issue we talked about a little while ago, which is government is continually contracting. That means when you lose people, you don’t get to replace them. Okay. In our labs, it’s contracting. Yet our demand for stuff goes up. In government that never matches. In the private sector, you can match that up. You can say, “we’ve got to hire three more people because look at the demand. And here’s all the money coming in that supports that.” In the government sector it’s a disconnect. Your demand can go up, your demand curve can go up, but Congress isn’t seeing the demand curve, they’re just seeing the bigger picture or some picture in which they feel like government in general has to go down. The fact that you guys are going up, well, you just have to organize yourself a little better. That’s the reality of the situation. So, what do you do? We turned to the private sector. Basically, we said, “you know what; let’s get our labs out of this business.” Frankly, they’re not cutting it and it’s not their fault. It’s not. They’re good people. They’re hard working people. There’s not enough of them. Why do we have a film lab at the National Archives? Is it to meet the demands of our researchers? Well, actually, it’s to copy things that are in danger of going out of existence forever. That’s their job, preservation, not reference work. The reference work was like a teenager. It’s eating you out of house and home. They’re taking over all the resources and you are not doing your primary mission, their primary mission, which is to copy this stuff. Solution to the problem: why don’t we turn to the private sector? There are about four or five labs in the DC area within an easy car ride that could do exactly the same work, and they can do it for a fee. Okay. Here was the proposal: let’s tell National Archives labs that they are out of this business. Boy, they were really not happy about this. We’re taking that business away from you and we’re going to put it out to the private sector. We put out bids to four or five of these different companies and they had their own price schedules. And we turned to our customers and said, “Here’s the deal. Here is how we’re going to do it from now on. If you want to place an order, place an order, not with us, place an order with them, Lab ABC. How do we know what they’re going to charge? Look at their price list. What if they change? Then go to another one. We’ve got four vendors. If you don’t like the price of one, go to another one. It’s market driven.” They placed their order with the lab. The lab then places the order with us. The order is, could you please pull these five rolls of film? Boom. We pull the film, we send it to the lab, lab makes the copies, gives it to the researcher, comes back to National Archives, and we re-file it. Turnaround time goes from 12 weeks to under two weeks. Then it’s, “well, who’s going to pay for this?” “Who’s going to pay for it?” The guys who are asking for it. They’ve got money. They’re working for these filmmakers. Guys like Ken Burns. Money solves so many problems. It’s wonderful. That’s what they did and they loved it. They absolutely loved this. We would send our originals here, they made the copies, and we brought them back. We broke the whole earlier dynamic. You may recall in the early years of the Clinton administration they developed a number of initiatives that related to making government more responsive to people, more responsive to customers. They got us government folks much more customer oriented. I think it was a good thing. One of the things that they developed to try to encourage government people to do this was the Hammer Award. I don’t know if you ever heard of that. I forgot—I’ll think of the name of why they named it the Hammer Award. But, you could say, “hey, here’s this project we’ve done and we think it deserves being recognized.” We turned in this particular process I just described and we got a Hammer Award. This was from the Vice President’s Office of Reinventing Government, or whatever they called themselves. We all got a little piece of paper saying we got a Hammer Award. Oh, and a little lapel pin that had a hammer on it. That was pretty cool. That was kind of fun. But, I think—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] That was 1996?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so. Yeah. We got the Hammer Award but I think I was very pleased to see that we could think of a way around a pressing customer service problem. And I think it, again, moved the needle in the right direction. It made us more responsive to our customers. Did they get everything they wanted? No. Instead of beating us up for being so slow, they beat up the labs. That’s where it should be. They are the ones making the copies, not us. It didn’t take much time for us to pull something. That whole process worked really well and we were really, really pleased with that. Then we got the labs to focus on this vast body of materials that was in danger of being lost. That’s their job; you’re a preservation lab. And we start sending stuff to them. Now 100% of their time or some high number percentage of their time is devoted to preservation, which is a much, you know, really why we’ve got them there in the first place. That was very satisfying. Towards the end of my term there, we held a conference here, Association of Moving Image Archives. It’s kind of like the SAA for moving image archives. We had the national conference here at Washington and we showcased Archives II. We showcased our collections. Our folks were the ones who were on the program committee and did all that. So that was a lot of fun, too. And it was very satisfying to have people coming here and being able to show off Archives II and show off our collections and that sort of thing. We had some really wonderful materials there. We’ve got a lot of military footage, combat footage, from World War I, World War II, Vietnam, which is very moving and interesting stuff. We had the Zapruder film of Kennedy being killed. The Challenger tapes of these poor people exploding in mid-air and all of that. So we had a lot of really, as I say, really interesting stuff. To me that was a really fun assignment because of what we had and how we were able to kind of change the culture there of how the unit operated and our relationship with our research communities. That was that job. Then my next job was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Well, hold on for a second, just before we move on. I just want to go back and put the dates on some of the positions that you had handled. Let’s see here, Chief of Legislative Archives Division Branch, Archives Division Reference Branch, excuse me, is 1985 to ‘88." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Chief of Program Analysis Branch, ‘88 to ‘93. And Chief of the User Services Branch, ‘93 to ‘94. And, as far as User Services Branch, is that Reference Services? What—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Yeah. That’s what I mentioned. We were running the entire research complex—of all the research rooms. As I said, in retrospect did that really work? Well, you had to get something started, but I think they were better off running their own branches. That was, that whole conversation about getting that whole research room complex up and running, starting it from scratch, that’s what that was all about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I’ll ask you about the reorganizations a little bit later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ll ask you about that then. Then next was the Chief of Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Branch—1994 to ‘97." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And now to Electronic Records Archives Transition Officer, ‘97 to 2012." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To 2012." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a mouthful for a title." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Too long. I moved from being Chief of Motion Pictures, Sound, and Video to working for the office head for, let’s see, we called it Office of Records Services-Washington, DC (NW) at the time. Today we call it Research Services. But basically, that’s whom I worked for. My job was for Michael Kurtz, through all of it, except for the last year or so. My job was to try to be his guy to try to figure out how we can use technology to provide services to our customers more effectively in research services and the former NW. Okay, so what does that mean? It means interviewing people at the unit level. Interviewing the major division directors and talking to them about parts of their processes that we could automate. Would it make sense to automate them, and why? We gradually, you know, no, we shouldn’t do that. Well, maybe we could do that. So we’d get a lot of conversations going. It is basically doing an assessment. First, an inventory of all the little systems we were using. Then trying to get them to sit back for just a second and say how could we automate some of these? Or, could we take five of them and turn them into one? How can we make our own internal processes better? And our own processes, the interface between us and our researchers more effective? How do we do that? So we got them to think about those kinds of things and so, like, what? What happened? Well, okay. As a result of that interviewing process and brainstorming process, we talked. One of the first ones we got was we worked with the Exhibits Unit. Jim Zeender was the guy I worked with, and he was trying to figure out how he can get a system that helps him keep track of the documents that they use. So that you understand their process, they borrow documents from the custodial units and they use them in their own exhibits here. Sometimes they just borrow them for a short period, and then they return them to the units. They also borrow documents from the units and they lend them to units, to organizations outside of NARA, like the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress because they’re having a new exhibit on whatever. Managing that entire process, I mean, we’re not talking about three documents, we’re talking about hundreds of documents, you know. And they’re not talking about ordinary documents. They’re usually talking about pretty important documents. So you really want to keep track of this in a very rigorous kind of way. They came to us and he says, “well, you know, there’s some automated systems out there, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products that you can buy that will actually help you manage that process.” So I said, “Okay.” Our office, my unit, worked with Jim’s unit to try to assess the COTS products, figure out which ones of them had the highest percentage of requirements that met his requirements, and eventually we ended up buying one of them. It’s called ReDiscovery and I think they’re still using it to this day. What it does for them is you go and you get a document and now you scan it. Now you scan it and then you associate it with whatever project you got. Now you got a scanned image inside in ReDiscovery and you can track its process. You can use that for lots of different purposes within their unit. For example, they’re going to do an exhibit catalog. Boom, you got a copy of the document right there. You’re going to use it for, geez, the volunteers could use that. Oh, yeah, make a copy off of that and use it for the next school group that comes in. It had a lot of things going for it and it also had a module, which allowed them to track where that document went. The original went from the custodial unit to their vault to the Smithsonian. There are usually restrictions on how long it can be there, like, it can only be shown for two months or whatever, and then it comes from the Smithsonian and back to the unit. So it tracks that process to make sure we’re bulletproof. That we know exactly where everything is. That’s, I mean, that was a huge, well, I think it was a big success for him. He was very pleased with it. The other one that we did, which has even wider ramifications, was the National Archives, back in the late 90s, developed something we now call ARC, the Archival Research Catalog. The catalog was to replace our various systems that dealt with descriptions of records. I say various systems because each generation developed its own style for doing description. And so you had layers of these things over time. There was no standardized way of doing it. Each generation almost had its own standard and everybody wrote to that standard. Then the next generation came in, and no, no, that’s not right. So then they do it a different way, but we don’t go back and redo the older ones. You’ve got various different ones and then none of them are online. The Archival Research Catalog’s goal was to put it all online and to make it searchable, you know, keyword searchable. Stuff that you guys, you know, it’s so obvious to you, but less obvious to folks at the time. The strength of that approach was it answered the question, “what have you got?” You know, what do you have on “x?” Then it’ll pull together everything you have on “x.” Okay. The only weakness of the approach was the thing they didn’t take on was, “gee, you’ve got this. Great. Where is it?” In other words—where is its exact stack location? Because now I’m here in Washington, I want to see the blasted thing. Or, I want a copy of it. So one of the archives staff has to go find it. Same problem. Where is it? What is it? Where? Those two questions were instead of being married up, which they should have been done from the beginning, but then you make a hard job ten times harder. I kind of understand why they took on the first part, which was very difficult by itself, and pulled it away from the second part, which was difficult too, managing where it is. Well, when we did the move of archives from Archives I and from Suitland out to Archives II, they had to develop a database to track all that. It was called the Master Location Register, the MLR. It was absolutely essential for archivists to use to find stuff. Okay. It didn’t answer the question, “oh, what have you got on “x?’” It answered the question, “where is it?” You know, it’s like you could look it up and find out, oh, it’s in Stack 5, whatever, row, whatever. That was an absolutely crucial database. It was on an older software platform by the 2000s and so many of the branch chiefs and division directors thought perhaps we should take the MLR and we should make it somewhat more expansive. Let’s solve a number of problems here. Let’s not only solve the problem of where is it? But let’s also solve the preservation question of what kind of condition is it in? Have we done work on that one before? Because we don’t want to have to go back and do it again. Oh, is it checked out to the Research Room and checked back in again? It’s that same problem we talked about earlier with respect to exhibit items. Can’t we get something that tells us a bigger picture about the physical holdings themselves? Okay. And so what that grew into was the Holdings Management System, HMS, which people are using right now. Lots of bumps and grinds along the way. None of these software programs worked perfectly out of the box. This one certainly didn’t, but it has grown into something now where it’s an absolutely crucial part of their daily life. When an accession comes in you have to make an entry into the Holdings Management System so it knows where it is. It’s supposed to be the comprehensive inventory of all of NARA’s holdings. Now if you think about that, that’s a pretty staggering thought, but that’s what it’s supposed to be. I mean if you’re in Archives, what are we supposed to do? At the very least we have to be responsible for the stuff we have. Oh, what stuff do you have? Oh, you don’t know. That’s not a good question; that’s not a good answer. You have to say we know exactly what we have, and here’s where it is. I mean, it’s a property accountability system, if you want to think of it that way, but it’s intellectual assets. But they’re on physical pieces of paper or film or whatever they are. You have to be able to know where that stuff is and be accountable for every last piece of it. You can’t say, “Oh, well, it’s missing.” That’s not a good answer. “No, where is it?” “It’s in the lab.” Good answer. “It’s at the Research Room.” Good answer. “It’s with Suzy Q. She’s the researcher.” That’s a good answer. “It’s now back in the stacks.” Oh, that’s a good answer too. You have to know where everything is, all the time. And that’s the goal of the Holdings Management System. Not all of it has been built out to this date; at least I don’t think so. But the basic parts of it, and we’re not talking about just Archives I, we’re talking about Archives I, Archives II, every Regional Archives, is in HMS. I forgot how many millions of cubic feet of stuff. That’s a lot of stuff. So they ported a lot of the old National Location Register information into it, a lot of work to try to match that up. And then they’ve also barcoded each shelf. Glink, glink, glink, glink, down the row. So then the idea being able to associate a box with a location. Boxes are barcoded. Locations are barcoded. You associate box with location. Boom, boom. Now is that completely done? No. Because there’s a lot of boxes. So there’s going to be plan in place to try to eventually have all new accessions barcoded. Then old accessions, as you touch them or as on some systematic basis, you get around to, you know, barcoding all the boxes. The grand scheme here being, if you get a barcode scanner, you can just go, like they do in the stores. You scan the box, you scan the location, and it associates it. Boom, boom, boom. Now if I’m going to take it off the shelf, click. And if I’m going to go take it to the Research Room, click. It associates that it’s now no longer on the shelf, it’s in the Research Room. Perfect. When it comes back, you reverse the process, or it goes to a lab, or to Jim Zeender for an exhibit you know where everything is. Then the golden moment would be, geez, wouldn’t it be great if you found it through your discovery tool, ARC, which answers the questions, “What do you got on the Civil War?” And it gives you a gazillion hits. Then you say, “Oh, I want to see that one on the Battle of Antietam.” Now you can link over to the HMS system and find where it is and the process is complete. Researcher finds it, hands it to the Archives, generates a pull slip, staff pulls it, gets it to the research room, and it’s all seamlessly connected. That’s sort of the grand vision. I think they’re kind of, I don’t know, 60% done with that. I don’t what the percentage is, but that’s where we should be moving towards is integrating these systems, which were built at different times by different folks. I’m not being critical here, it’s just the way things go. This is the great challenge for the Archives, is to integrate these systems, which individually have their strengths, but to be so much more powerful if they’re pulled together. That to me was the vision that I kept trying to push to my bosses before I left—you’ve got to get pushing these things together. That was the HMS System which was being used now and I think to great effect. ERA, the Electronic Records Archives. It is probably the biggest software project the National Archives has ever undertaken by orders of magnitude. I mean in terms of dollar value. Hugely expensive. Hugely complex. It’s launched now. It’s being used now. It’s got some strengths to it. It’s got some significant challenges to it. Absolutely no question. What drove ERA at the very beginning, the guy who probably was there at the very beginning, who pushed it most effectively, was Ken Thibodeau. Ken formulated the vision around the fact that we’re all starting to use computers a lot now. We’re generating government records in electronic form. How will we manage those electronic records in the future? We’ve got a really good grasp on how we manage hard copy materials, paper and film, and all that. We’ve developed really good methods for doing that. We don’t always do them real well, but we’ve got our hands around a lot of that. How do we deal with electronic records, especially given that the nature of the industry is such that they’re always changing software and hardware? How do we keep up with that? How do we get out ahead of that curve and how do we maintain the archival materials that are there in perpetuity? That’s the huge challenge. Ken was able to push that forward. He was able to push that in front of the Archivist and the senior archival managers. They all agreed that’s the vision, that’s where we’ve got to go. Miracle of miracles they were able to sell Congress on giving us a lot of money to try to solve the problem. Now comes the next part of the problem. I was there on the source evaluation team that evaluated the contractors who were applying to get this monster contract, monster for us anyway. I learned procurement. I was on the team. It was a team of probably 20 or 30 people. They had us sequestered over at CACI, an information technology company. Their headquarters is right across from Fort McNair, I think, in Arlington, Virginia. They sequestered us there for two or three months and we read these gigantic proposals from these vendors. They’re telephone book-size proposals telling the names of their people, their proposals for solving your technical problem and all of this. We would come back with questions. It was a long, long process. The way the process ultimately worked was we hired two firms to work with us for a year to develop the concept of ERA. Then at the end that year, we would pick one of those two firms as being the winner. We picked Lockheed Martin and Harris Corporation and we worked with the two of them together for a year. I’m off the source selection team because we had made our selection. I worked for Michael Kurtz, the office head for Research Services, my job is to represent the interests of my office with the contractors, and with the ERA team here who work for IT services. I’m the lead guy for my unit, for my office. Then I have guys working with me who are working for the textual people, the still pictures, the promotion, all those folks, they’re all kind of reporting to me. I managed an IPT, Interdisciplinary Product Team, from these units to try to represent their interests effectively in front of the contractors and our own ERA team. That was my job for about ten years working with them, developing our requirements. The next major task we had was to figure out our business rules. This took me back to the period when I worked in program analysis, which everybody does differently. When you automate services, you have to start to regularize things because computers have a lot of trouble with that. They’re really good at having things done in a predictable way. That’s the way computers work. There can be some variation, but you have to get your processes, and define them. We asked people, “How do you do your job, Brian?” Well, “I do this, this, this, this, and this.” “Oh.” Then you ask the next guy who does the same thing and he does it very differently. Therefore, you have to say, “No, guys, you got to have a standard way of doing this.” Then we have to develop business rules around that activity. The activity might be pulling records. “How do you do that?” “We’ll we get the reference service slip.” “Then what do we do?” “We take this copy and we go there. You have to go down and pull the records. Then you take it to research room.” You have to get that all figured out. Because then you’re turning to the programmers and saying, “Here’s how we do our job. Automate it.” If you don’t know your rules, and with each rule there has to be some rules, it’s a true, false. We do it. We don’t do it. It’s a yes, no question. For other ones, it could be A, B, C, or D. Computer guys can deal with this kind of stuff. The third one might be something like, Yes, no, it might be A, B, C, D, or might be something else. They say, “Well, we sometimes do it, and we sometimes don’t. You can’t do that. You can’t automate, no, no, no, no, no.” This is a huge cultural issue for the National Archives. Guys like me have to go to our people and work with them and say, “this is your chance to actually think about what you do and ask the question: do you even need to do that?” You’re doing it that way and we could automate that, but why are you doing that? That’s a hard question. Human beings don’t really like that question. You’re making me make a decision on that. This is like herding cats. You have to kind of get out the cowboys and get them to herd the cats. It’s trying to get them to move in the same direction and try to say, well, “How should we do that?” “Well, that’s not the way we do it.” “Well, I know that. But could we think of a different way?” That’s a very challenging question when you ask that to people. People don’t like that because then it’s almost implies they’ve been doing something dumb all their lives. That’s not the way it’s meant, but that’s how people can take it. You have to kind of craft ways to try to get people to think imaginatively about how they do their jobs. How do you do accessioning? How do we appraise records? Eventually as ERA grew, it started with, well how are we handling electronic records? Then we said, “Well, let’s just think about this. The process for dealing with electronic records is really not that different fundamentally from dealing with any other kind of record.” Let’s see what we do. We appraise them pretty much the same. We say certain ones are permanent; it’s the same. We accession them at the appropriate time. That’s the same. The paperwork to this is identical and we take them into the National Archives. That’s the same. The way you do it’s different. Electronic will be different from paper, would be different than audio tapes. The physical format now starts to make a difference, and storing them is definitely different. The paper you put on a shelf. We have figure how to store the electronic. It’s really towards the end of it, when we actually get that it’s different. All those steps at the beginning, from appraisal through accession is identical. If you have to do it for electronic, why don’t you apply the same processes to all of them? Talk about an earth moving moment. Oh, my God. We’re going to do it for everything. Everybody said- “Well, yeah, we should do that. We should automate all of our appraisal processes.” Let’s use this, an opportunity to automate all of that, to get the entire life cycle of permanent records taken care of. When you appraise, we say something like what, 3-5% of our records are permanent. The rest are temporary. To get to the word temporary, you still have to appraise it. We’re talking about scheduling for all records that come to NARA, even to the Record Centers, even the temporary ones. You can see how this little germ of an idea has now expanded to the entire life cycle of all federal records, and is in something called the Electronic Records Archives. People kept telling me- “You have the wrong title for this. It really should be something like, not the Electronic Records Archives, but it ought to be the National Archives, because it’s the whole thing. We sold it based on electronic records. We couldn’t sell the Congress on that, I guess, but we could sell Electronic Records Archives. We had this branding problem, which I think still exists to this day. Most of the records it’s going to touch aren’t even electronic. They’re hard copy. We begin with developing business rules for each of these processes. We work with our subject matter experts and to do whatever it takes to get their business rules out. Once their business rules are done, they have to get it down to an extraordinary level of detail. For one sub-process, it might be several pages single-spaced of steps you have to go through and what the conditions are. Whether it’s a yes, no, or whether it’s an A, B, C. You have to write all that down because you can’t just tell the computer programmer- “Oh, automate appraisal.” He doesn’t know what appraisal even means. He’s not an archivist. He’s a computer programmer. We got those business rules done. We worked with the contractor. Now comes the sort of the sadder part of the story, which was, for reasons that I still don’t quite fully understand, our dealings with our contractor were not terribly satisfactory. You should probably talk to the folks who worked in the ERA contract shop as to why that did work, worked, or didn’t work so great. The initial product we got out of ERA after a year of working with Lockheed Martin was inadequate. It’s the nicest thing I can say. It was a disaster is probably the more accurate thing to say. ERA was designed to do the whole life cycle of records for NARA. When we appraise records, that’s a relationship we have between the agencies and us. Now the agencies are going to play in that little swimming pool and the agencies are the ones who transfer the records to us in accessioning. It’s not just for NARA. It’s for the whole Federal government. Success is widely amplified, and so is disaster. When you start saying to the government- “You know what, I know we deal with you and the way we deal with you guys right now is with these forms, but we’re replacing the forms with these electronic systems.” The screams could be heard from miles away. Some of them were more tech savvy and would say, “Well, that’s cool. You’re going to automate those forms. I don’t have to type them anymore. Wow. That’s fabulous.” Others, of course- “I like typing those forms.” We had to talk with them and we had a group of those folks come in and say- “Alright, so how do you use these forms? How can we best accommodate your needs when we automate that?” We work with OMB. And OMB was one of our greatest champions because to them, our argument was, if we automate those forms, it will take them less time, effort, and money. It’ll make the whole process more efficient. They’re thinking they’re not going to have to spend as much money in those different agencies, because we’re all going to do this electronically through this wonderful product called the ERA. You would have thought we’d asked them to go to war or something. It was really, really a big deal for people. That those kinds of culture changes are the hardest things humans have to deal with. By the soft stuff, the softer side of management is actually the harder side. The hard side of management, which is the numbers and the dollars and all that, it’s actually in some ways easier. Harder to do, but easier. When you’re dealing with the people side of it, it’s much more nuanced and complicated because trying to bring them into a common way of doing things without making them feel too regimented, and still feeling like we’re valuing what they do as an archivist is hard. Then we suddenly found out, “Well, we’ve been using this form for all these years, but if a box is missing we just write a little note on the side of the other box and that’s it.” That’s your way of keeping track of things? You get all this kind of irregular stuff going on. I said, “Well, then how do you keep track of it? “Well, we just stick it in the file cabinet.” There are file cabinets the size of this room that are just exploding with materials, and if you ever had to trace this stuff back, you’d be really challenged to do that. This is what I would pose to archivists, “At the very core of what an archive is, if we don’t do anything else, we have to be accountable for the stuff we’ve got and we have to preserve it.” If you don’t know what you got, you’re failing in that portion of the mission. This will help us solve that question or address that question. We worked with Lockheed Martin and it did not work first year. Very, very poor results. We had told the agencies, we’re going to field this to all the agencies. Then we push that date back because we aren’t doing so great. We had to push the next date back a little bit. We had to work really hard with Lockheed Martin. They had to dismiss most of their team and bring in new players. It was pretty ugly. We had a lot of skull sessions with them, “We told you what we wanted. Here are the business rules we gave you and you didn’t build it to the business rules.” They would put out a build and our people would review the build. They would say, “Oh, it’s not working here. It’s working okay there.” You’re trying to meet certain dates because you’re telling the agencies that they have to use these forms by a certain date. If you can’t make the forms work by that date, it makes things extremely challenging. At the end of the day, we now have an appraisal portion of it. It’s out there. Agencies are using it. They’re no longer using hard copy forms. That date came and went. They participated in the testing. They participated in lots of information sessions and all that. The second piece of it is accessioning. All accessioning, hard copy, whatever, has to come through that. Your accessioning form comes in through here. Now the stuff comes in and the way we keep track of this is with HMS. To let our researchers know about it (HMS is used by staff internally) we have to make an ARC entry so the researchers can know about it. You start to see what’s happening here. This system feeds data. ERA feeds data to HMS, which has to feed data to ARC. Instead of three systems, they really ought to be three systems that are integrated so the data can seamlessly move from your ERA system and we’ll attach the accessioning information over here to your HMS system. Staff write up a series description, and that gets pushed to your ARC system. Then your researchers should now be able to say, “Eh, I want to see that box.” They fill out a research services slip online and then we pull it, which speaks to the HMS system, which allows you to pull it. It accounts that Suzy Q has it in the Research Room, turns it in three days later, it goes back to the shelf, and then we all know about it. That’s how the whole system should work. The problem is we built all three separately on different platforms. It’s expensive. If we’d have been really smart, we would have tried to build one system that would do all these things, but we didn’t have the money. We said, “Well, let’s just do ARC. Let’s just really get our hands around all of our descriptions and put them all in this thing called ARC. We did do that and we’re still feeding ARC. Now we’ve got these other systems which need to start to speak to one another and that’s the convergence factor. That is a big challenge, to achieve convergence. We’re starting to go from hundreds of little systems that people use on their desktops and we’d like to move away from that model to several big systems that we all feed into and we all access. I spoke to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and to my boss about that. That’s huge. You asked about digitization. I worked some on digitization we set up some guidelines. Mike Hamilton worked on that. You might want to talk to him as well as Doris Hamburg. Now the question is, “Hey, NARA ought to be providing its content to more people online. How do we do it?” Back in the 1930’s the cutting edge technology was microfilm. We went into it huge, big time but we don’t do microfilm anymore. No one actually likes to look at microfilm. It’s somewhat tough on the eyes. Especially, when you can look at it in the comfort of your own home on your PC. Our problem with digitization is the vast scope of the National Archives. We have something in our most recent strategic plan that we’re going to digitize everything. Holy smokes. That’s a lot of stuff. We have to figure it out, prioritize this, determine what’s the most requested, the most demanded records, and start figuring out processes for getting these records digitized. The other piece of this that people forget about, and my wife can talk to you more about this because she does it really well, is we can’t find this stuff because it’s images of documents. It’s not a Word document which you could do full text searching on. These are handwritten documents by Andrew Jackson. It’s an image. We can’t do full text search of it. At least we can’t so far, in today’s technology. What you need to find that image is you need metadata about it. You need information about the information, so a researcher can say, “That letter was done from Andrew Jackson to John C. Calhoun in 1816.” Ah, and it has to do with the Seminole War in Florida. How do you develop the metadata? Right now, humans have to do it and that’s labor intensive. When we say, “Digitize things,” it’s not as simple as taking a document and putting it on a scanner. Someone has to read it and put it in the metadata, so then the research world can find it. That’s the hard part and the labor-intensive part. The other piece that people don’t realize is many of those documents are not in great shape. Putting them through a scanner isn’t going to work. You have to go through it slowly and you have to do some kind of preservation actions on them to preserve them at some level. Where are we going to put all that stuff anyway? The Electronic Records Archives. These things are electronic records. We’re developing this giant server or series of servers to store this stuff. We should just be able to put it in ERA and let people find it as if they’re looking for any other kind of electronic record because it’s an electronic record. That’s kind of how we’re thinking about doing that. Again, convergence. We’ve got a group working on digitization, but they don’t seem to be working on the connections with these other pieces here, pulling things together, and making the whole thing work seamlessly for the benefit of our customers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any idea of how significant, as far as the information size, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte? I even had to look up what was bigger than the gigabyte and, or excuse me, the terabyte, and it’s a petabyte." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Petabyte. Right. It’s petabytes—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] And they’re now over the petabyte range, so…" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any idea that this system or system of systems would approach this size? Did anyone—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] We did—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—foresee that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There’s a lot of information that was developed by the ERA team in making the argument to OMB and Congress about how much stuff we are talking about. You’re right, we’re into the multi-terabyte, multi-petabyte stages and I think they were even talking about yottabytes, which, I think is next and a huge volume. How do you store that? How do you store it securely? I’m not a computer science guy, but there was a lot of work done and many studies into how much storage would be needed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. Overall, how would you describe the success of ERA? Up to what you can remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as I say, at the beginning, it was not a success at all. It was pretty much in failure mode until they brought in another team. It’s been launched to the entire Federal government. As far as I know, the entire Federal government is using it and we’re not using paper anymore. Are they all happy? Nobody’s ever happy but I think people are adjusting to it. How is it working within NARA? Are people using it? Yes. It is the system of record for our accessions and our appraisals. Can it be better? When it comes to these electronic systems, they can always be better. There will be a constant need of fixing things. Is it a success? I think it is doing its basic core mission. It has been completed, has been laid out, and now they have to populate it. They have to keep using it and they have to keep revising it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So who are some of the people who’ve helped you with your career at the Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a great question. I was fortunate to have a number of really good bosses throughout my career that taught me an awful lot about archives, as well as dealing with people. I would name Ken Harris who was one of my bosses way back when we were the Legislative and Diplomatic Branch. An excellent, a great guy, but a really good person who could think about projects and help me figure out project plans. For example, we were trying to figure out after we received some money from Congress to preserve the early records of Congress. I think, $400,000 or something like that. He says, “Well, we go to the project line. I said, “What’s that?” He says, “Here’s how you do it.” He shows me the math and shows me a nice pattern. I built on that model that he gave me the rest of my career doing project plans. Now, it’s no big deal. Nevertheless, he taught me that and he was a very thoughtful guy. He went on to work for the Library of Congress for many years in preservation. He was terrific. Mike McReynolds and I worked together in Legislative Archives when we were the Center for Legislative Archives. He was the Center Director and I was the Branch Chief for Reference. He had a lot of good front office experience that helped me deal with folks on the Hill as well as people in our own front office. Probably the most important influence for me was Michael Kurtz. Michael and I worked together when I was in the Program Analysis Branch, and again when I was ERA Transition Officer. I probably worked with him for probably 15 years. He was a strategic thinker, a guy who could carry things through. He can articulate the vision and he can carry the vision through. I have a lot of respect for Michael. Those were key influences in my career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have any major events affected your role or your perception of the Archives, anything—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] External to NARA kind of events?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The one that probably impacted me were when I first started in Philadelphia was the “Roots” phenomenon. Suddenly everybody is a genealogist. I forgot the statistics at the time. But, our number of researchers back in 1975 were ten or something silly like that. Then it’s like 300. It exploded through the roof and I didn’t know anything about genealogy or how those records worked. I had to learn about all that, which was kind of cool. Then they had me going out to local genie clubs and so forth to teach how you search for your roots. You do this, you look this up, and they had slide shows. I’d show them slide shows. That was great fun. The other one that was a big deal when I first started was Watergate. Watergate was gigantic in the late 1970s and we got the records. Where I wanted to work, at the very beginning, was at the Nixon Project- Whoa, that’s so cool. We seized the records of the President. Wow. Except I couldn’t get in because everybody wanted to do it. We thought, “There’s going to be so many smoking pistols in there and guns and everything. This is going to be so neat.” Then they were closed for a generation. If you’d have gone there, you’d have been in this deep, dark cellar and never been able to come out. Because, no, you couldn’t talk about what you were doing. I did work with the Senate Watergate Committee records. That was a major event, which then had a huge impact on my career. We had to deal with these really hot records. That was pretty cool. The other big one would be the general transition of the government and indeed the entire world to information technology. That was the stimulus behind the Electronic Records Archives. Instead of a single event like 9/11, that was a gradual thing that builds and builds and builds, but finally is now the natural order of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you view the Archives transition under the various archivists of the U.S. or have you noticed a change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, for the earliest ones, I was at such a low level I hardly had any inkling of the impact. I started under Bert Rhoads. I’m a beginning archivist, what do I know what he’s doing? I had no notion of that. Warner got us independence. I met the man a few times and he seemed like a wonderful guy, but I had almost no personal contacts with him. With Don Wilson, his focus was on Regional Archives and trying to expand that program. There was some wisdom in that, but there was lack of wisdom in the way he went about it. I think he left us with a legacy that was not as good as it could have been. Then John Carlin was able to get us an awful lot of money and that helped us during the Clinton Administration. I did not have much interaction with Weinstein. I had some with David Ferriero. He continued the push towards toward ERA, which is good. Again, I didn’t have a whole lot dealing with folks at that level, my dealings with folks at the level below that. I was just an archivist." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What organizations have influenced your career, SAA or any of the other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, outside organizations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was a member of SAA at the very beginning but it became difficult to stick with that just because the problem with being active in these associations was NARA, unless you can get on the program, generally did not support people going to the conventions. They’re almost always out of the city, so that’s a significant personal commitment of funds to do that. Once you start having a family, a mortgage, it’s hard to, so I didn’t do that as much as I would have liked to. I enjoyed it early on when I didn’t have some of those commitments and my wife and I were on a double income and no kids. Once we started having children, I didn’t have time to do that. SAA did not have much of an influence on me. MARAC somewhat more, because it’s local and you could get to those places more easily." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you had any work with the Archives Assembly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had any relation with them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was there when the Assembly first was formed in the late 1970’s. I was there for some of those discussions. It is a wonderful organization. It is what we should have been doing, all along, an organization of professionals and paraprofessionals sharing their insights. I very much believe in what they do and how they’ve done it. I think it’s terrific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now your wife still works here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. She retired two weeks ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s right. Two weeks ago, that’s right. So, at one point your children and your wife and yourself all worked at the Archive. Can you explain how that worked?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. My wife and I met here at the Archives. You’ll have to talk to her about her background and so forth. She worked at the Kennedy Library. In those days if you wanted to become an archivist, the Office of Presidential Libraries hired all their archivists centrally here in Washington and then they disbursed them to the libraries. They trained them all here for a year or something like that did training in rotations and then they assigned them out to the various libraries. She started at the Kennedy Library, moved down here to be a professional archivist, finished her training program, and then we met and we got married so she’s been stuck down here ever since. She and I have been working at the Archives. In fact, that’s another interesting cultural side of the National Archives is there are a number of people who met here at the Archives and got married. I think it’s just a function of, you know, we’re doing all this graduate school stuff and we didn’t have time to be thinking about spouses and all that. By the time, this is your first job and we start meeting people who are somewhat like-minded, I guess. It was funny when we got married, at our little party that our Branch Chief and she gave me a single-spaced two-page list of all those people they called the Orange Blossom Express. It was a list of people who met at the Archives and got married. “Archives Couples,” that’s what we were called. That was kind of funny. As my kids grew up, we had this program where we have student interns. In the summertime, you would hire students who were in college. When my kids came home for the summer, they both worked at the National Archives. One of them worked in Legislative, where I first started out. My other son, Patrick, worked pulling records, I think. Yes. He worked in record pulls. They did that for three or four summers during college. Patrick, later, applied for a job and got a job here after he graduated from college. He is still here. We’ve moved on, but he’s still here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What does he do today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He works for the Exhibits Branch. That system I talked to you about a while ago, Rediscovery, in which they’re recording all of these things, I helped develop the program or at least get it purchased and all that. He now uses that. He’s the guy that has to scan those documents in, keep track of everything, and make sure that everything works out okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what did your other son wind up doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He’s now an MBA. Finished an MBA program at the University of Washington, Seattle and he got a job with Amazon now. It is a very different career line." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. And looking back from your career to what you know of NARA today, what do you think NARA could be doing differently, better or worse, just differently?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think one of the greatest challenges it has right now is staff morale. When we look at these employee surveys, they’re very poor. We should be doing a much better job of figuring out why people are so dissatisfied and developing better ways, we could make things better for staff here. This should be a place that’s an exciting place to work that really motivates people. Whenever I’ve met people from other agencies, I’ve always felt like NARA people are far more excited about the mission of their agency than a lot of other agency people. We have a very clear mission: preserve and make available the permanently valuable records of the Federal government. That’s our mission and we live, eat, and breathe that. When I meet people from other agencies, it’s like, “Yeah, it’s a job.” Well, many of us don’t feel like this is a job. This is important. This is important to the republic, my goodness. I think that’s genuine and think that’s a strength that our current leadership should be building on and it’s not. It’s so sad to see people who are really dissatisfied, just because of the way decisions are made and the way they’re communicated and so forth. To me, that’s a source of great sadness to see that. Other things that I’d like to see us do, like I talked to you about a minute ago, is in the IT world we should be looking for opportunities for convergence. How do we pull all of these things together so that they talk together better and it makes things far more efficient for our customers? I think there’s so much we could be doing with digitization. It seems to me it’s being done so sporadically or haphazardly. There doesn’t seem to be a plan behind it and there doesn’t seem to be an established procedure behind it, because this is absolutely the way of the future. I think we’re kind of dropping the ball. Areas that I think we’ve done really well at, when I look back at the whole sweep of my career, is public programs. When I first started here, public programs were really downplayed. By public programs, I mean having speakers come in, having a symposium, having school groups come in, and have a place where you can show them stuff. The Exhibit Hall area was the rotunda with the documents of freedom. Then there was a wall behind it, which was made it into an exhibit area. In the early years of my career, I regret that my colleagues kept looking on that as fluff. “What are we doing that for?” Again, we went through this whole business about constricting budgets. That’s why we’re here. It’s a part of our mission is to help people appreciate the stuff that we hold in perpetuity. You have to think past today and you’re inspiring some little kid who might go on to be President or something. I thought Marvin did a fabulous job of taking the exhibit space we had and when we renovated this building, expanding the exhibit space and taking it to the next level. Wow. All of the interactives and all the displays to try to excite people’s interest in history. Yes. That’s why we’re here. To bring speakers in and to have them talk about their books, and to talk about controversial topics is what we should be doing. I said earlier, culturally, we’re kind of like a university. That’s the part where we are. I’ve always admired the folks that do that and I always think they’ve done a good job. I really like seeing how far it’s come. I’d love to see it continue and perhaps even do more. We’ve done traveling exhibits with facsimiles of great documents. There was a lot of stuff that we do, back at the very beginning that was almost looked down upon as kind of dumb, or why are we bothering to do that? I think it was very short-sighted. And we are trying to promote our name out there. I remember the earliest archivists would say, “Success depends on how infrequently your name is mentioned.” The thought was, well, if you’re mentioned, it’s only going to be for the bad. But why couldn’t it be for the good. It was a very different mindset." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, a last question would be or is, has it been hard letting go, the duties, responsibilities, or have you transitioned into retirement pretty easily?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know about pretty easily. It was hard to leave here. It was very hard. Part of it is, I believe in the mission of the National Archives. I do. I met my wife here. My kids worked here. I was trained as an historian and I wanted to go into an academic profession. I worked here and it was sort of a fallback position, but then it became a passion for me. I have a passion for the mission of the National Archives, absolutely. By the way, while I was working here I worked part-time as a history professor at Northern Virginia Community College. As I was coming to the end of my career, I went back to those guys and said, “Would it be okay if I came back?” And they said, “Sure, come on back.” That’s what I’m doing. Two weeks, a week after I left here, I was teaching a class at Northern Virginia Community College, a history class, of course. I’m a history professor. When I’m asked who am I and what am I doing now? I say, “Well I worked for the National Archives for 35 years and two years in other government organizations, so 37 years overall for the Federal government, but I’m a history professor. I’ve always felt like I’m kind of like both. I’m proud of both of those experiences. My wife and I, now that’s she’s retired, have done some traveling. We’ll be doing some more of that and just enjoying ourselves. It was difficult to transition at first, but once I jumped into the teaching that helped me. I could do something that I loved. I had never taught the class before so I had to work really hard to get ready for it, to get ready for all the questions and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Any other topics you’d like to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. I think I’ve done it. Do you guys have any other questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You sure?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well, thank you for your time today, sir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "David Kepley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You bet. Thanks, Brian." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00630", + "metadata": { + "category": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/VossSC/vosssc.htm", + "original_file_name": "VossSC_8-4-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/VossSC/VossSC_8-4-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Suzan C. Voss", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 4 August 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Suzan C. Voss" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 4, 2015. This oral history session is being conducted with Dr. Suzan Voss at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of the International Space Station Program Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright. Thank you again for taking your time out of your day to come and visit with us here.\\n\\n You have been with NASA for more than 30 years. If you would, please start today by telling us how you first became involved with the International Space Station Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First, I would say you have to be hired at NASA. It can be a very interesting process for individuals to have the opportunity to be hired at NASA. My undergraduate degree is in mathematics, and I had an MBA [Master of Business Administration] at the time. I’m talking about 30 years ago. They were only hiring what they called AST [Aerospace Technologist], which means you must have a science, math, or engineering degree. Because of my master’s in business, I was actually hired in financial management, but they could not have hired without me having a degree in mathematics. I was learning a lot there, and it was enjoyable, but I knew that I wanted to work in the technical side of the house.\\n\\n So I thought, “I need to get an engineering degree also.” I started taking night classes in engineering. I had to take some background classes because I didn’t have an undergraduate in engineering, and then go into my graduate work. Then I applied for the Johnson Space Center [JSC] Fellowship Program and I ended up getting my Ph.D. in engineering through this process.\\n\\n After that I moved to the [Space] Shuttle Program Office and I worked in the Shuttle Program Office for about five years in various areas. We looked at the vehicles and their mass properties, CG [center of gravity] analysis, and the flight program, the scheduling, and looked at the vehicle itself as far as the middeck cargo capabilities, and the configuration and compartments there. After a number of years there, I was very fortunate, because while we were still in the early stages of Space Station I was asked to go and work in Moscow [Russia]. I went to the Moscow Technical Liaison Office—we called it MTLO—and worked there for one year. I think if you’re going to work in an international program such as International Space Station, it’s of great benefit to understand how the partners work.\\n\\n While I was over there, I supported the EVA [Extravehicular Activity] team. I also supported the ECLSS [Environmental Control and Life Support System], which is the environmental systems team, as well as other crew resources. When they had technical meetings I would support them and follow up on all of their requirements so that they were appropriately documented. Occasionally if there was some hardware exchange I would go and look at how we did that process and sign off for the hardware exchange. But it was extremely interesting learning how the Russians work, learning how they negotiate. They’re very good negotiators.\\n\\n Then, about I think a month before I came back, I was nervous about what I was going to do. A lot of times when you go into a special assignment, you don’t necessarily know what you’re going to do when you return, but then I got a call from Rod Jones, and he asked me if I wanted to come back and be the deputy launch package manager for the U.S. Laboratory Module [Destiny], and I was thrilled.\\n\\n I had a home when I came back, and it was also on a part of the Space Station that I was very excited to work on. The U.S. Laboratory Module is the heart of Space Station from both a systems perspective as well as from the science perspective of being a laboratory. After about a year being back in Houston working at that, Rod moved to deputy manager of the office, and I was selected to manage the launch package for the U.S. Laboratory until launch and that was a thrill. I learned more about integration, and I spent a lot of time over in avionics—because of all of the systems and the avionics on board—to understand how it was progressing. The role is really an integration role across all of the program, but also across [NASA] Centers. It is how we are going to integrate this module, get it ready for launch, and then integrate it into Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us what shape and what phase of development Destiny was in when you came on to work in this new role." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I came on there in ’97, and it launched in 2001. Of course it takes a very long time to establish the requirements, build the physical module. But, more than building the structure, it’s the interfaces—the interfaces to the other modules as well as the interfaces of all the systems and hardware within it. All the requirements had been defined, it was just in the final build integration test phase." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the challenges that you faced as you moved to get this module ready for launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As always, schedule is a challenge. You have to be flexible, because the schedules on complex programs and the testing—if not everything goes exactly as planned, then you have to look and see where it is—either you can make up the schedule, or where it is, can you can adjust for the longer term—because the most important thing is, of course, is to have it right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk some about that ’97 to 2001 time period. You did have a schedule. There was an expectation that Destiny was going to become full-fledged, and as you mentioned, become the heart of the Station. Walk us through some of the more significant achievement, and the goals and accomplishments, and even some of the failures that you encountered getting that package ready to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were two aspects to it—like I said, the software and the avionics, and having that at the level that it needed to be [in order] to be tested. A lot of that testing was actually done here. Then there was the physical interface testing, which was done at [NASA] KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] with the module to understand the physical interfaces. Schedule is always a problem—certainly it did not launch as planned when I came on, as far as the timing. But it got there very successfully, was integrated successfully, operated right away, and of course is still operating successfully on orbit today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned Centers earlier. Did you have a working relationship with [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] at that time, or was that afterwards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did work with Marshall a good bit. We worked of course with KSC a good bit because a lot of the testing of the physical hardware was done down at KSC. I’d say those were probably the primary interfaces that I had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you there, here, there, and everywhere, going from place to place as the manager of the module? I know you had a team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. I would say a lot of the work that I did was from here, because a lot of it was more of a program-level integration versus integration of the subsystems and the detailed technical work. A lot of it was done from here. I would say the place that I would travel occasionally would be to KSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course as you were getting ready for launch, that wasn’t really the end. That was more the beginning, because Destiny would be going up to make its place in history. What were some of the other duties and responsibilities that you were working on that you needed to take care of while launch was being prepared for, and then eventually that you moved into after Destiny was up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My responsibilities on Destiny ended when it was launched and integrated. We worked real-time ops [operations] just during the actual flight until it was integrated onto Space Station. But then my role moved to other flights after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about those and then how those eventually led to where you are now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was Launch Package Manager; that is what they called it for [ISS Assembly Flight] UF-1 [STS-108], one of the MPLM [Multi-Purpose Logistics Module] flights. That was needed, because after Destiny, after the core part of Station was there—even before that with the core Russian modules—we first launched crew. Then of course as it built, we not only needed things for the crew and their operations, but for any of the other modules that were coming up, any interfaces or any equipment that needed to be up there, as well as the science that we were conducting.\\n\\n A lot of the science initially was short-term science, and it would come up and down on the Shuttle. Some of it would be transferred to Station and then come down on the next Shuttle mission. Basically I worked that area for several flights, and then I went and started managing an office, which was initially the Cargo Integration Office, which had a lot of the same responsibilities, actually, similar responsibilities to what I manage today. Sometimes we changed names, but the Cargo Integration Office was managing the contracts as well as the flights that supplied the science, the logistics, the utilization for Space Station.\\n\\n Today I manage the office that is called Visiting Vehicle Integration and Operations. The key thing on that office is we manage integration of all the pressurized cargo for the flights that go to Station—all the science, all the technologies, all the supplies that are required for Station. The vehicles include U.S. commercial resupply and international partner vehicles. Until recently there was the ATV [Automated Transfer Vehicle cargo spacecraft], which was from the European [Space Agency], but they have flown their last flight. We have an HTV [H-II Transfer Vehicle cargo spacecraft, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)] launch in two weeks, HTV-6, which is carrying some very critical science and logistics.\\n\\n Then we have our commercial resupply flights, both SpaceX [Space Exploration Technologies Corp.] and Orbital [ATK, Inc.], and of course the Russian flights. We still send cargo over to Russia and fly it either on the Soyuz [spacecraft] with the crew or on the Progress, the cargo vehicle. We deal with all the [international] partners still, as well as the commercial resupplies, the Orbital and the SpaceX corporations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Instead of an air traffic controller you’re a space traffic controller." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about contracts. The ones that you just mentioned are each a different entity on their own that have their own rules and requirements. If you could give us maybe some examples about how your office manages to make everything seem seamless, make it look like it just falls right into place, although you’ve had to deal with delays and you’ve had to deal with disappointments on the [launch] pad and cargo not reaching [orbit]. Share with us some of the complications, the complexities, of what your office has to deal with, and then how you’re able to resolve those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say of course the biggest problems this last year have been the failures of some of the resupply vehicles to get to orbit, when there was a failure on an Orbital vehicle, a Progress vehicle, and a SpaceX vehicle, which just shows us how difficult it is. It wasn’t one entity. Spaceflight is just very difficult.\\n\\n When you do have those occur, for instance on the last one, when SpaceX [Cargo Resupply Services (CRS)-7] was not successful, you look at your next flight. HTV-6 is our next flight, and so we do have a late load there. We started working with the Japanese right away, telling them that our priorities were going to change. We were going to have to send some new cargo; we were going to have to displace some cargo that was already on the vehicle.\\n\\n That took quite a bit of negotiation with them because, as you know, everybody likes to keep their schedule and their process, but we were able to successfully do that with the Japanese. They understood, they were cooperative, and they actually found a few extra locations on the front of a rack where they could get a little bit more cargo on this flight. So, you just work with the circumstances that you’re dealt. Then you see what the priorities are.\\n\\n Then of course Station is very resilient. We do our planning ahead. We have typically four to six months of critical spares, crew supplies, science, so that if a flight is delayed you’re able to still accomplish your mission all the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Along with schedule you have cost. When you have delays in schedule, sometimes it impacts cost. You have so many entities that are absorbing those costs or having to deal with those costs. How are you able to help them? Or how is that part negotiated? Where are your boundaries that you’re allowed to negotiate what those costs are, and how does it all come together where it works out where everyone’s in agreement to move forward?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If it’s something within my realm of responsibility, say for instance the Cargo Mission Contract where that comes under my area, then we certainly can adjust. They did have to work some overtime to allow us to get cargo to Tanegashima [Space Center, Japan] quickly for the HTV launch. If it’s broader, with all of the international partners, that’s worked out of a different area. That’s our External [Integration] Office, and we just give inputs to them, and then they will work the agreements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good to know. I’m sure that helps you some along too. What kind of impact did it have a few years ago when NASA began its different way of business by making agreements through a public-private partnership with these new companies that were coming in to be part of the International Space Station for the first time? We were using Space Act Agreements to bring these companies in to help bring cargo up. Can you share with us what were some of the discussions, and how you folded those into these other transportation vehicles that you already had in place?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it’s like anything when you make a change and people are used to a certain process. It takes them a little while to adjust. It’s true on the commercial vehicle side—whether you’re talking about SpaceX or Orbital, they had certain expectations also. It really is sitting down and talking to them. They’ve turned out to be flexible where they needed to, and where it was not appropriate, they would tell us.\\n\\n You have to stay in this CG box, you have to stay within these mass parameters. You have to give us the data before we do this set of analysis. Every vehicle. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a government-owned NASA vehicle or whether it is a commercial vehicle. They all have their own technical constraints, and you have to understand those. But outside of that they’ve been very good and very flexible on accommodating additional cargo. After their first flights—everybody’s conservative on your first flight, and you should be. Your products need to be a little earlier, they need to be a little more controlled. Then later you understand what your capabilities are, how you can load your vehicle, when you need the products. Then you will adjust and make the schedule a little bit more flexible and the parameters, as far as the mass CG-type parameters, more flexible where it’s appropriate. It’s been a great experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds fascinating. I want to ask you about the science elements. You mentioned being so involved with the Shuttle cargo going up. First it was short-term projects that would come back on the Shuttle, and now of course the Station is involved in long-term projects. Can you share with us when you believe you saw that transition, where you saw more and more long-duration projects going up onto the Station? Give us your thoughts about how the science and research has evolved over the years that you’ve been involved with Station. It was very little early on because there was very little time and folks on board to do that, and now we have a full-fledged floating orbiting laboratory that’s able to do so much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’ve always initially, even early on, done what I call the human science. You could easily bring back, say blood samples or do your exercise protocols in certain ways, and then take different measurements, because it didn’t require as many laboratory and other resources.\\n\\n But I say the big, the huge change has come with assembly complete, because during the assembly phase people were still focused on, “We have to get this complete.” I’ve been involved since last year in what they call RISE, which is Revolutionize ISS for Science and Exploration. This is a team led by Ryan Prouty, but I’m one of the members of this team. I led the part that you might think would be appropriate—plan and process cargo—on this.\\n\\n The key to this was to relook at the way we do requirements, relook at the way we do verification. When you’re conducting science in a laboratory it’s completely different than when you’re building a vehicle that has to last 20, 30 years. We have really gone in and looked at how we can streamline the requirements, make them appropriate as far as being safe for the crew and safe for the vehicle, but not worry so much about mission success. That is to the payload customer and the payload entity to worry about that. We used to have books, and we still do, of requirements that everyone has to meet to fly to Station, but we’ve looked at that and we’re seeing how we can reduce that.\\n\\n From my side we’re looking at what we ask of them and the time that we ask of them. Many of the science customers need much later access. They may have late-load type of requirements where they’re limited life. They also are not prepared to be added to a flight until much later in the process. They haven’t known for years they’re going to Station; they’ve known for six months that they’re going to Station. You have to adjust your processes in order to change and accommodate the types of science that you need." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have to believe there’s been such a variety of choices to be able to send up on Station and no matter what’s going up, you get the opportunity to know all of it because you’re in charge of the cargo. Are there elements of what you have done that have been surprising? Have there been some cargo pieces that have gone up that you’re thinking, “Wow, I never thought this would go up on Station?” Or those that you find you’re looking forward to the results of that research?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the more recent things that have gone up that has drawn a lot of attention is the rodent research. That did take a lot of special attention, because it’s not just the habitats. The rodents—for them to be comparable and to do the research—they have to be at a specific time in their lifecycle. They have to prepare them a certain amount time before flight so they’re in that cycle. Also we learned a lot. We knew we needed a powered habitat for the rodents, but even things like how we were going to ventilate it appropriately, how we were going to have the airflow right in the vehicle—that took a good bit of time and effort.\\n\\n All of our conditioned science—we call it cold stowage—has a limited life, and so we spend extra attention on that. We’re going to send up, and we have sent up, other large facilities like the Microgravity [Science] Glovebox and different types of facilities to operate in, whether it’s for materials science or for life science. But, our rodent friends have been one of our top priorities recently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s really interesting because again it’s that word of “integration.” You’ve got to have the environment correct, you have to have facilities correct. Everything has to be like you would do for a guest, you have to have everything ready to accept them. I think I read the other day, if I’m correct, there may be some whiskey samples going up for aging. Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To be honest, yes. I did actually read that myself. I believe this is on HTV, and it is to look at how the aging is different. Actually they’re going to be on orbit, some of them, for one year and some for two. Then they will get the results and test them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure that’ll have a big story after that. I just thought well, that’s odd." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a little unusual. It didn’t take any special handling from our perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there other aspects or elements throughout your lifespan working on the cargo part that have been maybe disappointing, that you worked really hard to make sure things got up? And that you had to go back and rethink, and that ended up in a process that maybe got enhanced or improved for the next time something got sent up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did have some trouble with the NanoRacks [LLC] CubeSats [miniaturized satellites] on the deploy. The various teams, not just in my area, worked with them to make sure that we have the requirements right, and they have tested them appropriately so that they don’t have any problems in the future with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seems like the word you use a lot is “teams.” You really work with a lot of people. What’s the common ground? Is it a series of meetings or a series of requirements? What seems to be the working piece that makes it work well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My visiting vehicle leads for each of the flights typically have team meetings every week or every other week, depending on how close they are to flight, or how close they are to some milestones that they have to meet. They have representatives from the vehicle office, they have representatives from the EVA office, and they have representatives from science, the utilization office. Anyone that flies on Station, you would have your representatives.\\n\\n Now obviously not all your experimenters are going there. That’s why they interface with the Research and Utilization Office. The Research and Utilization Office essentially brings us their requirements, when they want to fly, what they are, do they have any unique handling, do they have any unique timing requirements. Then they go out and work with the details as far as the science goes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All good plans sometimes don’t work out, because someone that is not even involved makes a decision or change, and you’re not maybe given that information. Or it could be a political change. Or it could be an international cooperation change. Have you had to deal with an unexpected decision that came down the line that impacted what you were doing that you had to make a change in getting something on Station? Or something that you changed the process because of a decision that was made either organizationally or politically?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There are always some changes. That’s why flexibility is one of the key things. It is for Space Station. You have to be flexible. But typically, as far as the cargo on flights, the biggest change comes if they have an on-orbit failure. You need to get up something quicker that you did not expect, and so then again you look at your priorities. What do you have on that you need to take off in order to accommodate this other hardware or cargo or payload or whatever the hardware is? Then sometimes people think they will be successful in getting it there, and then they’re not.\\n\\n We always have some other cargo what I’d call the more standard logistics available—your crew provisions, your food, your laptops—things that we have multiple items of that we can substitute in order to, of course one, fully utilize the vehicle, and two, make sure you stay within your mass properties that you told the vehicle you were going to be within." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve been involved in all these processes and the whole environment for so long. You have been for a while serving as the chair of the Mission Integration and Operations Control Board. Do you find things to be falling into place because we have been doing this for so long? Or do you feel like there’s much more to do? I think you mentioned earlier the simplification of the processes. In your leadership position, how are you hoping to move forward to get these more streamlined?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First, I’ll say I don’t chair that Mission Integration and Operations Board. My manager does, Greg [Gregory] Dorth, but I’m on the board obviously for my area. The thing that I’d say that we had hoped would be more stable now would be the sequencing of the flights. Therefore you could decide the flight manifest, what you were going to fly on each of the flights with few changes, but unfortunately this last year there were a number of failures on the vehicles. And whenever you have the instability, that causes a lot more rework, and a lot more look at what’s the real priority, because then you’re trying to fit 10 pounds in a 5-pound bucket. Instead of having the same number of flights you have fewer flights in that timeframe, so you have to make sure that you have the right things.\\n\\n For the Mission Integration and Operations Office another key area is increment management. They have their whole increment plan on what science they’re going to conduct, what EVAs they’re going to conduct, what hardware needs to be repaired and replaced during their increment just as a standard part of the process of maintaining systems. Those plans for all the onboard operations are significantly impacted by the vehicle failures also, but they’re doing an excellent job as they move forward." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Lots of details to get in lots of rows. A change that’s going to be coming soon will be the commercial crew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We hope very soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You will have yet again another vehicle to work in. Are you already making plans? If so, what types of work are you putting in place to be ready?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We do have someone in my office that is overseeing and reviewing the requirements as they come on, both for [The] Boeing [Company] and for SpaceX. But again, in my office today this is looking at it more from what powered payloads, what other logistics. It’s a relatively small volume for the cargo, but it’s a very critical volume, because it’ll go up and down, just like any of our return vehicles, whether it’s a Soyuz or the SpaceX. The competition on the return is to get the science down, or on a larger flight like SpaceX if we had a failed ORU [orbital replacement unit] and we wanted to do an investigation to make sure that we understood what the cause of the failure was so that for the future we would make adjustments.\\n\\n I think the commercial crew will be very exciting. We will have a piece of it, and we do have a piece that I have people in my office already assigned to looking at the requirements and when they need products. We look forward to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of return, the [SpaceX] Dragon [cargo spacecraft] allows you to bring things back from Station. You also coordinate the return of those vehicles as well? Can you share maybe some of the details, and the challenges that are involved with making sure that that gets down the way it needs to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say the return is often more challenging than the launch, because we all understood how to deliver cargo to a point, whether it be in Florida, whether it be in [NASA] Wallops [Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Virginia], or whether it be overseas. The return, of course, of the Dragon—today it returns in the Pacific [Ocean], and they retrieve it. They take the powered payloads, they put them on ground power on the ship, and they take what we call “cold bags,” our conditioned science, and put them in a freezer.\\n\\n Generally it’s been more or less, but basically the plan is 48 hours from splashdown back to the port. We do have our cargo mission contractor who meets them at the port, takes the early science and brings it back to Long Beach Airport [Long Beach, California]. Then some of the science will actually be handed over at the airport, especially if you have a customer like [NASA] Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] that’s on the West Coast. They don’t want us to bring it back here [to Houston] and then have to go back [to California]. Depending on what the requirement is and the customer, they may hand it over there.\\n\\n Most of the powered payloads or the cold stowage will go in ground freezers or ground refrigerators, depending on the type of temperature it needs to be conditioned. Actually we have a contract right now, CMC [Cargo Mission Contract] does, with Kalitta Air [LLC]. They have aircraft that we have all the GSE [ground support equipment] on. It flies back to Houston that day, and then is either turned over or given to the right people, or put in the appropriate laboratories here until all the handover can happen.\\n\\n Just establishing those processes and making sure they were all appropriate took a while. Although they may change. We’re just hearing they may change and land in the Atlantic [Ocean] in the future and come back to [Cape] Canaveral [Florida]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned, things are always changing, you have to be flexible. If I can stay on the future for a few more minutes, I understand that in some of the work that you’ve done you were able to handle cargo or some experiments that went up that impacted some work that was done for Orion [Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I will apologize here, because I don’t know. I know that we have done some work that will help Orion, but I don’t have the specifics today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay. You’ve talked about one of the most memorable moments was being able to work with Destiny, getting it ready and then watching it launch. Do you have any others that you’d like to share with us that seem to stand out in your memory?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think probably the first launch of every vehicle. The first launch of ATV—making sure it was successful, the docking was successful, and it appropriately brought all the cargo. The first launch of the HTV, the first launch of the SpaceX, first launch of Orbital. I think all the first time launches are very special in that you do have a lot more coordination and integration, but you also are a lot more nervous initially. So you want to make sure that everything goes well, and they have done very well. It’s not just the launch. I say launch, but obviously the important part is either the docking or berthing to Station and successfully carrying out the mission, because you’ve got to have the science and the other logistics delivered." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you here watching? Or are you somewhere else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have not gone to one of those launches. There are a few people that have. For instance in my office I do have a few people that go to KSC for the late load. They process it at KSC because KSC has some laboratories that can be used for the L minus 24-hour [24 hours before launch] late load. Then they just truck it across the causeway over to the Canaveral side, so I do have a couple of people who work for me that have seen a SpaceX launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe something to put on your list, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We started out by talking about where you started. You mentioned that you had spent that year in Russia and getting to understand how important it is to understand the international partners. Of course Russia was the first one and now you’re working with the Japanese and you’ve worked with ESA [European Space Agency]. What do you feel are some of the lessons that you have learned by working with these international groups that work well for all of those, or just work well for you? What can you share with us as important lessons when you’re working with international partners?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it’s the same with anyone—good communication. When you don’t speak the same language sometimes that is more difficult. One of the techniques that one of my team members uses with the Japanese which I think is very effective—they go ahead and make the charts and the questions ahead, send it to the partner so that they will understand what the question is, what the issue is, what will be discussed. They can go back and forth before they actually have the telecon [teleconference] or actually make the agreement.\\n\\n It’s like with any people. Communication is one. I find all partners, ourselves as well as all—whether we’re talking about the Russians or the Japanese or the Canadians or Europeans—you have parameters you have to work within. There are certain things that different levels can and cannot agree to. It depends. You’ve got to work at it and understand what the issue is if you’re not coming to an agreement, so that you can focus on that area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also shared with us about your professional background, that you have business and math behind you, as well as an engineering degree. As we’ve talked, it seemed like you were able to utilize bits and pieces of each of those to be successful in what you were trying to accomplish at the time. Can you talk about possibly why it has benefited you through these years of negotiations and schedules and cost to have a diversity of understanding, and how you were able to apply that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do think that different types of backgrounds can be helpful. Again the mathematics was just the core, what I call a “core and basic,” sets the stage. The business degree helped me not only initially as far as getting on and working in the financial management area, but it’s helped me when I manage contracts. Today I manage various contracts and budgets, and so even though it’s been quite a while ago, there are different pieces of that that I’ve used over the years.\\n\\n As far as the engineering degree, it helped me really talk to other engineers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who have a language of their own." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Who have a language of their own. I don’t know the depth of your technical specialist, but I understand the principles, and so that’s where I really think it is. Then you have to just look at what your skills are and where you think those can best be utilized." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We forget sometimes that it’s more than hardware and software, it’s the business side that can bog you down, especially now that you’ve got so many entities that you have to coordinate to get vehicles. I thought that was an interesting piece.\\n\\n Thirty years seems like a long time. But I think things have gone pretty fast during those 30 years, and they certainly have evolved from where you started working with the Shuttle Program and then where you are now with the Station, and it’s not over yet. What do you think when it moves into its next phase? When part of the Station becomes history, what do you think its legacy will be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, I’m thrilled that we’ve extended it to 2024. I would think it would be unfortunate not to fully utilize it. Where I really think it can help, and where it is going now, is really helping us to go beyond low-Earth orbit, first, as well as helping science and new discoveries that will help on the Earth.\\n\\n It has two legacies. When it’s over—whether you talk about the science or the technologies used or the experiments on board—transferring that information to the people on Earth and making practical applications of it, that’s one of the biggest legacies of Station. The other one is looking at technologies such as your reclamation systems and your regenerative type systems. How can you make them work with essentially no additional resources? You start out with a resource, but what do we do? We reclaim urine and we process it and it becomes drinking water.\\n\\n If you’re going beyond low-Earth orbit—if you’re going back to the Moon, if you’re going to Mars—you’re going to have to have smaller, more condensed systems, so you don’t have to have as much logistics, and you’re going to have to have a lot of things that are regenerative in nature. Your air, your water, your environment—you need those to be regenerative so that you don’t have to have new resources all the time. We’re going to be doing more technology demonstrations on these, and see which types of systems are more effective. As well as the human, the materials science, the additional science that we transfer back to Earth and have those applications apply to everyone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One question I saved mostly for the end, because you don’t have to answer it. This morning in the [Houston] Chronicle [newspaper] it talked about NanoRacks possibly having an association with China to put a DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] sample on a future flight. I was wondering how you felt about maybe having yet one more partner, in a sense that it would be one more experiment that’ll go on, and yet one more cargo that you’ll have to do. I thought it was an interesting revelation this morning that there’s a possibility that you may be reaching even further to extend that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that’s the purpose of an International Space Station. That’s what the “I” stands for. We are a global community. International Space Station is a global cooperative effort. I have not read that specific article, but them reaching out to get science from other different countries and parts of the world I think is a very good thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s a nice common language to share, science in itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any other thoughts or any other comments or experiences that you’d like to share or talk about while we’re here today? Anything personal or professional that you’ve shared, or something else that you’ve learned that maybe would be a good thing to pass on to others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think mainly people need to keep pursuing their goals. You don’t necessarily get your ideal position the day you come, and it may not even be the best fit. But if you know what your goal is and you keep moving towards it—just as I did when I went back and saw what I needed to do to move over into first the Space Shuttle and then the Station—you just have to understand what your goals are and then keep taking the steps in order to achieve them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We should watch and see what you’re going to do with Mars. Is that what you’re saying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would love to see what we’re going to do with Mars. I would just love it. We definitely need to go beyond low-Earth orbit. Station is going to be an excellent—I think like you say the legacy, it’ll come a little bit later. Usually people don’t understand all of the benefits initially. It does come a little bit later. But I hope one of the legacies is that it did help us to do human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit as well as the science that helps the individuals on Earth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for coming today and for doing so much that you’ve done and sharing that with us. Appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Suzan C. Voss", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you very much. Everyone does a lot." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00413", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/VeraJ_MilhoanJ/veraj_milhoanj.htm", + "original_file_name": "VeraJ_MilhoanJ_9-30-09.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/VeraJ_MilhoanJ/VeraJ_MilhoanJ_9-30-09.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Jose Vera, James Milhoan", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 30 September 2009" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jose Vera", + "James Milhoan" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is September 30, 2009. This interview with Jose Vera and James Milhoan is being conducted at the Johnson Space Center [JSC] for the JSC Facilities Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Rebecca Wright. Mr. Vera begins today by talking about the Radiant Heat Test Facility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The importance of the radiant was that it was instrumental in selecting who was going to make the Shuttle tiles, initially. We tested them and Lockheed Martin won the contract, because their tiles performed better, and that was done in Building 13. Then in late ’74 and 1975 we moved to Building 260. It was the Radiant Heat Test Facility. Then we started preparation for the nose cap and part of the wing for the Shuttle testing. We had a chamber to do that over there. It simulated the reentry temperature and pressure profiles. That’s why I deemed it important that somebody mentions that part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s start with each one of you giving a brief overview of your career at NASA and how you came to be associated with this building, the arc jet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Go ahead, Jim." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started in the arc jet facility around February of 1967. At that time they had an operable one-and-a-half-megawatt facility that they brought online in 1964 and that facility operated until about 1975. When I first came in they were still constructing this building. They were just able to occupy the offices and brought the furniture in. We were still constructing the power supplies, and they were putting wiring in and wiring the consoles. We monitored that activity. They were installing the vacuum system and the boiler, so the facility was only just partly constructed. Most of the technical items weren’t really installed yet.\\n\\n AVCO had the contract. As Don [Donald J. Tillian] has probably already mentioned in the write-up there, they had two arc heaters that they designed for us. They also had a radiant lamp bank that was four electric arc lamps with real deep dish reflectors. Those were mounted very tightly around a five-inch nozzle that would go in a vacuum chamber and that had combined radiant heating and convective heating. It met its specifications but unfortunately the reflective surfaces would get contaminated so quickly that we abandoned that as a practical method. If we’d been in the Department of Defense, we would have just bought a warehouseful of the reflectors. We abandoned that effort and tried to revisit the radiant heat a little bit later on. We combined with the convective heating, and so far we just never had the impetus to really do that.\\n\\n We got the facility operable. We ran arc heaters in the atmospheric conditions to begin with, no vacuum chamber. It still exists, there’s a firebrick-lined chimney with a big high temperature stainless steel exhaust fan. We would exhaust the arc heater for short periods of time into that exhaust. That was back in the day, so nobody paid much attention to environmental concerns with NOx production. Arc heaters make copious amounts of NOx." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is NOx?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s oxides of nitrogen. The air gets so hot that the oxygen molecules get broken apart. They’re very reactive and the nitrogen molecules will get broken apart, and you can have the N and the O combine and make various combinations of nitrogen and oxygen, and that’s the NOx that you’ll hear [about] that’s like automobile exhaust. It makes a lot of it. We’d run for very short periods of time, just a few minutes, in the atmosphere out here. The whole test cell would get so orange you could hardly see through it, but we only did that for short time periods until we got our vacuum chambers put in. Once you’re in the vacuum chamber you can’t even hear the arc jets then, but if they’re out in the atmosphere you can see all the shock diamonds coming out of them. You might have 15 or 20 shock diamonds.\\n\\n The original facility ([Building] 262 the one-and-a-half-megawatt [arc jet])—they installed with Plasmadyne; it was atmospheric operation. It’s like being next to a jet aircraft. It’s very loud and also you had the NOx contamination problem. We got a vacuum chamber and put a one-megawatt General Electric heater on that chamber. It was what’s called a dual constrictor, where it had flows that came through these two devices, and they met head on and would mix in a plenum chamber and then come out of that plenum at a 90-degree angle from those two flows and through a nozzle. We ran some tests with that heater, but it was prone to some shorting problems. So that was the Plasmadyne and then the General Electric and then we got an Electro-Optical Systems [EOS] heater.\\n\\n It’s a pin anode heater. It has a lot of small downstream electrodes that are located in the nozzle. The nozzle is a unique design. It’s segmented into very many segments. I think it was like about a dozen that had insulators in between them so that it’s really made up like a sandwich of about 12 different segments.\\n\\n That heater would get up over 50,000 Btus [British Thermal Units] per pound. That’s very high temperature gas, and that gets up in the range to where you can easily hit the gas temperatures you’d have coming back from Mars. That facility was actually built as a prototype for this facility. The people that were originally in management here, really even the technicians all basically came from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]. Langley was where they built the first supersonic electric arc heater. All the people at Langley in management and engineers were very interested in the arc jet. They all came over and visited it and had tests run in it, like Max [Maxime A.] Faget. They were very aware of the capabilities of this type of facility, and they wanted to build a large one.\\n\\n They had plans when they first started this Center to build a multimegawatt facility, and they were thinking something in the range of ten megawatts or so. They felt that they wouldn’t get that facility online quite in time for the initial part of your Apollo tests. It would be easier to get a one-megawatt facility online, and they could learn. That facility was designed and assembled by NASA employees. At that time there were no contractors involved in it. It was the first operating facility at the Center. As soon as they got that place operating, and they were running tests, they concurrently were designing a new facility and writing the contract specs [specifications] for that. AVCO got the contract, and the Corps of Engineers for construction.\\n\\n Meanwhile, we went into arc heater modifications at the one-and-a-half-megawatt facility. It’s called one-and-a-half-megawatt facility, because the basic facility could handle the power of one and a half megawatts. You could put an arc heater and it could be like a half megawatt, but the facility had a one-and-a-half-megawatt heat sinking capability. We never put more than a one-megawatt arc jet in it.\\n\\n There were literally thousands and thousands of tests run in that facility. There were other tests run besides the Apollo Program and some of the early orbiter work. When Pioneer got far away from the Sun, you had to keep the electronics warm, so they had nuclear heat sources, canisters. These were devices that were shaped about like a cold capsule, only they’re about 12 inches long. Outside of them they’ve got this high density carbon hexagonal-shaped heat shield that was bolted to the leg of Pioneer.\\n\\n At that time, [Richard M.] Nixon was President. The nuclear sources that go into orbit, they have to be signed off by the top guy so Nixon had to sign off that it was okay to put that thing in orbit. The then Atomic Energy Commission [AEC] was in charge of that. They were pretty nervous about whether it was going to work or not. So the final test for it was to run it in arc jet at very high entry heating conditions and then take the test articles, take them in a plane out at some Air Force base out west. They would take it and drop it from many thousands of feet, like 10,000 feet or something like that, and try to hit a runway. They’d try to find the biggest widest concrete runway so they wouldn’t miss it, and we ran those tests. In fact Don Tillian was in charge of running those.\\n\\n I had to design a pyrometer system that could measure those temperatures, because you couldn’t get thermocouples that would work. I think it was between 5,300 and 5,500 degrees Fahrenheit. I built an optical system with a little periscope set of mirrors, where we would get up close enough to it. The windows we had to blank off, and we only left one small window on it. The light was so bright that the light coming through that window would hit a wall and it would blind you in the control room. You couldn’t see the instruments, just the light on the wall. We had to put up a barrier so we couldn’t see the light on the wall.\\n\\n That was a very important test. If you didn’t get that test off, then they couldn’t fly the program. We pushed it all the way to the wall and that was an air-cooled chamber. It was a steel chamber, and it had a sheet metal jacket on it. There was a fan on top, and you’d draw the air-conditioned room air around the outside of the chamber to cool it. Since the test was so important, we pushed things very hard. We cooked the paint off the outside of that chamber from the heat that was spilled off of that test article. We got the test run and the test article survived and they took it out and dropped it on the concrete. The AEC was very happy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you have worked in this facility since 1967, this and [Building] 262?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We ran both of these—that one-and-a-half-megawatt facility until about 1975. We were running tests over there. We had a crew running there, and we had two shifts over here in 222 at the same time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about you, Mr. Vera? How long have you been working out here? How did you come to be associated with this facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started out in the Air Force. I put [in] four years, and then like I said I started with the radiant heat. When they started a C of F [Construction of Facility] project in ’78, and it ran into when we finished in 1992. I started working prior to finishing because I was involved in setting up the control system for this facility. We still use the same kind of control system. Developed the screens for all our systems and made sure everything worked after we got done. There was a lot of instrumentation.\\n\\n Prior to that, they had different stations. We integrated the systems so that one system could handle the test gas, the coolant pump, the pump down of the chambers, and monitoring instrumentation for the testing. During that time, we had two chambers. The chamber that was here was called TP2 [and] was taken to the Radiant Heat [Test Facility]. We started using it over there. Like we said earlier, we were running both the radiant and the arc jet so we were involved in both facilities. I worked the radiant heat from 1975 until I came over to the arc jet. I worked with the guys here off and on, but Milhoan knows more about the arc jet as far as the initiation of the facilities, because Milhoan worked for NASA at the time. I’ve always been a contractor.\\n\\n I’ve been involved in test setups and setting up test articles to run and the instrumentation control system and troubleshooting systems and making sure the facility is kept going. That’s been my job. Also, I’ve been test conductor at the radiant facility in here.\\n\\n A test conductor makes sure the facility is ready for test operations. The test director is in charge of making sure the test runs with the parameters that were set for that test and makes sure the test article gets the best testing it can. We, on the other hand, make sure the facility is ready for support. I just stayed here since that time period and continued working both facilities through a series of many many test programs. We’ve upgraded the control system since then. It’s probably good for another eight years, the one we have now. We have all the systems just to run a test. We haven’t talked about that yet. We have hydraulics for model insertion. We have the boiler that produces steam so we can pump down the chambers. We have an ejector system that controls the steam so we can get the vacuum inside the chambers. We have coolant pumps to cool the lining of the chambers.\\n\\n We make our own test gas, our own air. We have tube trailers with nitrogen, oxygen, and we have a start gas of argon. We installed a faster method of setting the mass flow in the chambers to test different test articles. We installed some digital valves and that helped us out. It used to take something like maybe ten minutes, Jim, to set up the mass flow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now we’re just pushing the button and the digital valves will gives us a mass flow. We’re mixing oxygen and nitrogen to make air. Nominally but not always, we use 77 percent nitrogen and 23 percent oxygen to make pure air, because we don’t want any impurities. The argon is just used as a start gas to start the arc.\\n\\n In addition, we have a high pressure water system. We use deionized water to cool the heater. Minimize arcing is the reason we use deionized water. We have a ten-megawatt power supply, which is a rectifier, it’s a power supply. We have high voltage, and we convert it to DC. We use DC for the arc. So all the systems come together to run the arc jet test. I think I’ve covered most of them. We also have a data system to acquire data, and we have 256 channels so we can acquire data. Nominally we don’t run that many, but we have that capability." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell me again, when did you start working in this facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This facility, it was about 1978. Then I went on until the end of the construction of facility, which finished in 1992." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was the upgrade of the integrated systems?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I’m sorry, it wasn’t ’78, it was ’87." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[In] ’87 you came to this facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, then maybe, Mr. Milhoan, I should ask you. What changes did you do in the building to support the Shuttle program itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I first started out we were still running Apollo, and we had the AVCO heaters. A lot of management was aware of the problems you’d have developing heat shields without adequate test facilities, and that’s why they built this place. Joseph [N.] Kotanchik, Aleck [C.] Bond, and Max Faget were all big supporters. We got funding to tailor this facility to support low Earth orbit for the orbiter.\\n\\n The first test we ever ran for the orbiter was maybe the first test that was ever run for it; [it] was 1969. These gentlemen that I was just talking about had a meeting with our branch chief and that weekend we worked overtime. Over in the NASA shops they built these little Teflon orbiter models. They were only about like five or six inches long. The original concept for the orbiter had straight wings so these models had these straight wings on it. The wings were made out of Teflon also. They had them hustle up and build those models, and we ran them on a weekend because they were having a meeting that Monday or Tuesday. They wanted some input on what the effects were of having straight wings with respect to the shock impingement, because you’d have the shock come off the nose of the vehicle, and it would impinge on the wing. They just wanted a quick qualitative but a little bit quantitative answer about how much that would increase the heating so we built these Teflon models and ran them.\\n\\n What’ll happen with Teflon is when you heat it it doesn’t melt, it vaporizes. People understand the rate at which it erodes. They can relate that to what the heating was. We ran those guys, and there was shock impingement. You could see an erosion on the wing, and it was about where people thought it might be. It looked like the heating was double due to that heating. In fact later on wind tunnel tests confirmed that. It was about double the heating rate because of the double shock. So actually the first test we ran was in 1969, very early on.\\n\\n In fact if you go back further than that, Don Tillian was involved in the Apollo Program. We had an unmanned vehicle. I forget which one. I don’t know if it was 6, might have been Apollo 6. Apollo 6, I think, was designed to prove out the heat shield. What they were supposed to do was put it into orbit and then they had rockets that would move it further away from the Earth. Then it turned around and burned coming back so that they could try to simulate the high velocity you’d get coming back from the Moon. Don got a piggyback experiment. Since it was unmanned, they didn’t need any windows. He had these test articles built that went in the windows. The idea there was to get very lightweight heat shield material.\\n\\n These gentlemen I was talking about earlier were thinking ahead, what comes after Apollo. They were thinking well, we’ve got to get the weight down, and the heating on the back of the vehicle was less so it was a benign thing. They could take the risk. Don designed and built these panels that fit into the windows, and they had a foam in there, like what they got on the Shuttle tanks. They had balsa wood, which was very early used for some heat shield work.\\n\\n They had Apollo ablator in there but they lightened it up by drilling a lot of holes in it. In a way, that’s a precursor to test for the orbiter, because in the beginning people weren’t thinking about reusability. It was just get lightweight ablators and they thought well, they’ll just change them out from mission to mission so that may actually be the real genesis for the first orbiter test, I would think. It really didn’t have the name or the concept yet, but people were already thinking along that line about post Apollo and this is where we need to go.\\n\\n Like I said the first test we ran with those Teflon models in 1969. So they got busy, and then around 1972 we completed the C of F project that was tailored to get this facility right into the ballpark where you need to be for the orbiter. We got new arc heaters, and these arc heaters were designed by Aerotherm. They were the same basic design that Ames [Research Center, ARC, Moffett Field, California] arc jet facilities were using.\\n\\n These were segmented constricted arc heaters. They were in a way very similar to the EOS pin anode heater from the one-and-a-half-megawatt facility, which was a segmented constricted arc heater. We’d had quite a bit of experience with that. It looked like that was the way to go because they have a lot broader operating range in a single setup than you’d have with—the AVCO was a Linde type heater, which was similar to what’s called a Hüls heater, which is basically a couple of big water-cooled tubes. Once you get a certain size diameter and length of those type heaters, it’s very difficult to change the enthalpy in them. You try to put in more power and the efficiency just goes down. You wind up with the same test condition.\\n\\n The segmented heaters don’t have that problem, so we bought these Aerotherm heaters. We started running tests with them. Then we started modifying them a lot, because there were a lot of practical issues with them, and so we highly modified those. The original Aerotherm heater, the whole column was nitrogen. You would inject oxygen into the plenum. Except for the acceptance test, as soon as that was over with, we said, “Well, that’s got to change,” because you probably won’t get the oxygen hot enough before it can get out through the nozzle. You’ve got to have dissociation, that is you’ve got to have the oxygen molecules torn apart because the atomic oxygen is much more reactive than the molecular oxygen. If you want to simulate conditions on materials, especially ablators, then you would need to have that. There’s no facility that can duplicate exactly reentry conditions, but you need to err on the conservative side and make sure that you’re much more dissociated, that is have a lot more atomic oxygen, than you would have in flight so that you’re conservative in your test.\\n\\n We moved the oxygen injection way up into the middle of the heater and that did the trick. Once you’re up into the arc, the oxygen dissociates very easily. Since then we’ve never put so much as one molecule of oxygen down a plenum right in front of the nozzle.\\n\\n We had that construction of facilities, and in that process we needed to get more capability. The original vacuum chamber we put in, I think it only had about I think about a .5-pounds-per-second pumping capability. It could probably handle a lot more, but I think it was designed for a five-megawatt heat load. That was in what’s now Test Position 2.\\n\\n We put in a larger chamber with a bigger flow capacity and that was up to a pound and a half. The chamber was bigger, and it could take up to ten-megawatt heat loads. The original power supply was ten megawatts. We also had another Electro-Optical Systems heater. It was five megawatts. We ran quite a few thousand tests with it. Had a five-megawatt in Test Position 2 in that five-megawatt tunnel, and then ten-megawatt heater in the ten-megawatt Test Position 1.\\n\\n Of course we ran a lot of orbiter tests. In ’72, Fluidyne Corporation built a channel nozzle where we could run one-foot-by-one-foot and two-foot-by-two-foot test articles. It also had an eight-inch-by-ten-inch section. The reason why we did that is the facility was originally configured with conical nozzles of different diameters. You could stack on sections and expand those and get larger and larger and larger nozzles. Those conical nozzles are good for stagnation heating, where the flow comes along and impacts right square onto the leading edge surfaces, and then you can put wedge-shaped holders, that are water-cooled, and put panel-shaped test articles inside of the wedge. You can change the angle of attack and that gets you conditions that are similar to parts of the vehicle where the flow is coming at an angle of attack.\\n\\n When you look at the belly of the vehicle, the flow is parallel. Say it’s coming in at a 60-degree angle of attack. The flow that comes up and impacts the nose turns and comes down the vehicle surface, and then the additional flow that comes all along there gets turned. It’s really flowing next to the surface, it’s flowing parallel to it. We needed a facility that could simulate that in large enough acreages to do systems tests.\\n\\n We did that with the channel nozzle. It has a ten-degree expansion. What happens is it’s the same arc heaters with the conical nozzles but the heater has a round outlet so you have a special throat that slowly changes that round into a square shape so your throat is square. That was like a two-inch-by-two-inch square throat. You allow one dimension to expand at a ten-degree angle on each surface, and you hold the other two-inch dimension constant. The inside of the nozzle is all lined with water-cooled copper plates, and then your test articles go into these openings in the nozzle. The surface of the test article is flush with these copper plates so the flow comes across down through the duct. It’s like an expanding rectangular duct. It’ll smoothly transition over the test article and out past the test article so you get this parallel flow.\\n\\n There are a lot of tiles. The flow comes in at all kinds of angles with respect to the gaps between them. Then the question comes up well how wide can the gaps be, what about the depth of the gaps, what about the run length. All of that affects the aerodynamics and makes a difference how much energy finally winds up getting down to the aluminum structure of the vehicle. If your gap is too wide, you can get too much flow down there. So wherever you’ve got a pressure difference along those gaps, that hot gas can be driven down into the gap and overheat the structure.\\n\\n Also a forward-facing step like you’re putting tiles in and maybe the one behind the tile you just put in it is raised up. If the flow is coming across and that looks like a forward-facing step to the flow, it raises the pressure, and it drives this high energy gas down in those gaps. The rear-facing step can be like suction. They used a lot of wind tunnel tests. Ames was involved in it and Langley was also running arc jets at the time; everybody was interested in how you should design these gaps, because most of the energy coming into the structure is through those gaps, not the tiles.\\n\\n We ran hundreds and hundreds of tests with all kinds of different gap configurations in both wedges and the channel nozzle. Other facilities were working on this problem and so were wind tunnels. The great bulk of the tests that were run were run here. The majority of the data for what those gaps and steps and all that should look like came out of this facility.\\n\\n Other things with the tile development was coating losses. What if you had a bunch of coating gone, an ice gouge, or what if a whole tile was missing? We ran those tests. In the Apollo Program, there were literally hundreds of arc jets in the United States. Everybody was fascinated with the program. There was all kinds of money. Every university worth its salt tried to build some sort of little plasma device. They might be ten kilowatts or 100 kilowatts or something like that, many of them. They could run some considerable number of valuable tests with it, but in order to do anything of any consequence you had to get into the high power ranges.\\n\\n Aerotherm was selling arc heaters, and they had arc jet facilities. I think the maximum they had was about two megawatts. AVCO had a ten-megawatt facility and I think GE, I think theirs was also ten. It might have been larger. McDonnell Douglas had a facility in St. Louis [Missouri], and I think it’s around ten. Boeing took that over, and it’s now called LCAT.\\n\\n Why am I telling all this stuff? Because there were many thousands of tests run for Apollo; Aerotherm ran a lot of them. Ames, JSC—of course it was MSC [Manned Spacecraft Center] at the time, and Langley. All three of NASA’s arc jet facilities at ARC, JSC, and Langley—we were running two shifts constantly, and they were running probably at least 50 percent I would think in overtime. We never did really run all the tests that we wanted to run.\\n\\n For example the first flight, they had a burned filler bar problem. The filler bars are at the bottom of the gaps, and they’re similar to the SIP [Strain Isolation Pad], it’s a high temperature felt. They didn’t understand that because none of their tests showed that that would happen. There was suspicion that the filler bar was burning where we didn’t run tests, which was well after peak heating, but when the pressure is higher. Those tests weren’t run because there wasn’t adequate facilities in the time span to really do it. They had to set priorities and just get done what they could.\\n\\n In the channel nozzle there we set up tile arrays and ran through a program and showed that we got burned filler bar right when they were suspecting it might happen. The capability we had there was pretty impressive. We were able to run entry pressure and surface temperature profiles that very closely matched a whole entry cycle, except for the very low heating parts. We ran a lot of development tests there.\\n\\n We tried to automate things and improve the facility in our 1990 C of F. You’ll hear people call it ’89 and ’90 or ’91 or something because it took so long to get it done. At the very beginning of that period of improvement was when we got into the Asea Brown Boveri control systems that Jose was talking about. Originally, we had a gas system that had used nothing but gas turbines, and in order to get it accurate you had to have those turbines running in the right range. They had narrow operating ranges. We had three sets of separate flow loops for nitrogen and three separate ones for oxygen: low, mid and high. You’d have to select between [the three]. You’d have to guess now this is the way I want to run my test and I need to use that one.\\n\\n It would take two technicians; one of them would have to operate the oxygen and one of them the nitrogen. They would have to have these thumbwheel controls, and they would have to adjust them all during the runs to keep you correct. It was high tech for the time, but we thought it was archaic so that’s when we installed this digital valve system. It has a very broad operating range. I’ve run tests down to like less than .03 pounds a second and up to a pound and a half with it. It has a very broad operating range. You just key in a flow rate and punch a button and in like two seconds that’s what you got." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to add anything more about those efforts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s when I came into play. We’re just going to call it the 1990 [C of F] even though it went from ’87 to ’92. It was a little difficult. We had to do a lot of instrumentation. They didn’t want to stop running. I always give an example. It’s like trying to change your alternator while going down the freeway. It’s hard to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That never changes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We want to put the stuff in, but we don’t want to stop running. So we wound up working a third shift to do a lot of the wiring and instrumentation. It was a lot of work to develop all the screens to get what the test directors needed to run their tests more efficiently. It improved the facility turnaround for testing quite a bit at that time. We could monitor more areas with temperatures, pressures, and flows. It was a benefit to get that system installed. We’re still using an upgraded model since then. But like I said it’s still good for another eight years, and we’ll have to do another upgrade after that. It’s been a plus having that system in there, with minimal amount of problems, nothing we couldn’t resolve, and great support from the company when we needed parts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which company was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s called ABB, Asea Brown Boveri, but at that initial time it was just Asea. Asea meant general electric company of Sweden, but now it’s Asea Brown Boveri. It’s a good integrated control system. It’s got a lot of capability. We also improved not only the test gas but setting the pressure for the coolant pump and improved on the pump down of the vacuum chambers with that system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Before we got this automated system, 25 percent of our tests were aborted with problems with the vacuum system. We were inserting like 400, 500 models a year, but we were pushing against problems like that. That’s another reason why we did the automation was to eliminate the startup problems we were having.\\n\\n It says here, “How do we support the Space Shuttle Program.” Well, we were involved in the design, development, and certification. That meant we had to run materials tests and we had to find what their degradation modes were, what kind of thermal conductivity they would have transferring energy to their back faces, and what the upper temperature limits were.\\n\\n We’d run systems tests on things like windows, lost tiles, lost coating. There was a certification test that was supposed to be run and was run at Ames. There’s a rub tube in the wing, and an aircraft has an elevon on it, it’ll look like a flap. With the orbiter, it’s a little different than an aircraft in that the gas is real hot, so you can’t just let air leak through where the pivot is on that flap, or you get hot gas and you get it trapped down in there. There’s no way for the surfaces to radiate the heat away. The parts try to come to the temperature of the gas, which is going to be like 10,000, 12,000 degrees Fahrenheit. There’s nothing that’ll survive like that so you can’t let the hot gases flow through.\\n\\n There’s this tube, a fairly thin metal tube, that had a Vespel rub tube on it, just a long strip that was spring-loaded that would go against this tube. That was supposed to be a gas seal to keep this flow from going through the wing. Ames wound up running the cert test on it, but Max Faget was very worried about that tube causing a burn-through and the loss of the vehicle. He didn’t want to wait until they ran a certification test to find out about it.\\n\\n He commissioned us to run some definitive tests that would tell him if the design was okay or not. We designed a test article that had this rub tube in it and had tiles on it. It had the inlet which is called a cove that goes smoothly into the rub tube. It was instrumented heavily. We could run it in our channel nozzle inside the chamber and the vacuum from the vacuum system in the chamber would be applied to the back of this test article. It was like having your hot gas at the right speed and enthalpy on the input side, like the bottom of the wing, and then this vacuum being applied to the other side of the test article was just like the low pressure you’d have at the top of the wing when you’re entering. We measured the flow rates through there and temperature rises in the materials and then we would adjust the gap between this rub seal and this tube.\\n\\n Winston [D.] Goodrich, that was one of the aerodynamics people, along with Carl [D.] Scott—in fact we wrote a paper on this. We came up with a parameter that could take our test data and correlate it to flight and so that’s how they got confidence that that elevon cove design was good, long before they ran the real cert [certification] test they already knew what was going to happen. We were involved in things like that all the time.\\n\\n There’s high pressure gradients like I was talking about with driving the flow down in these gaps. There’s the chine region, which is where the wing goes into the fuselage. That’s a pretty large radius, and it has tiles with gaps. Because the flow is going around there, it’ll be high pressure on one side and low on the other. We built a large model of the chine region and ran a lot of tests and would put gap fillers in it and made a lot of measurements to determine what flow angles were acceptable with these gaps and again the width and depth of them. There’s just dozens and dozens of different kinds of systems tests that we were involved in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. Vera had mentioned the importance of his facilities in terms of selecting the tile. You had mentioned that early on they were looking more at ablatives and different types of—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In fact the first orbiters had Apollo ablator on them. There was an area between the fuselage and the elevons. The elevon is moving up and down, well, there’s a gap between it and the fuselage and so there’s no seal you can put in there. You just have to let the hot gas flow through there so the original designers were originally designing with tile in there. Then the analysts said, “Well, that’s going to melt off and you’re going to lose the vehicle.” They said, “Well, we’ll put Apollo ablator in there.” Those gaps were originally lined with Apollo ablator. Well, Apollo ablator, that stuff is not cheap, and every mission they had to refurbish it. The orbiter is an expensive thing to turn around, but that was one of the highest cost areas, was that Apollo ablator in those elevon gaps.\\n\\n We used our channel nozzle, and we attached hardware to the exit of the channel nozzle. If you look at the end of the channel nozzle from inside the chamber it just looks like a rectangle when the hot gas comes out of that rectangle parallel to all of these copper plates. What we did was we built a test article that went on one side of this exit. It had the shape of an elevon with this Apollo ablator. Then because this vacuum that I was speaking of earlier was on the bottom of this gap, flow would come along like parallel on the vehicle and then it would wrap over and expand down through this simulated elevon gap, just like it would in flight. We ran that and got some good pictures of that. That was to certify that you could even do it that way with the Apollo ablator. Then when the cost issue popped up, we went in and used high density tile, reran the test, and showed that the analysis was too conservative, and that it would work, so then they switched from the Apollo ablator to high density tiles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there different materials that you were testing for the tiles though until this TPS [Thermal Protection] System that we have now was put into place? Were there different types of materials?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the very beginning Don Tillian had the original contracts. They had sections back then, and you had section heads. Don worked in the section that was in the arc jet. He wrote the original contracts for the tiles from different companies, which included Lockheed. He did that right out of our facility. We stored them in lockers out here and ran the side-by-side tests that were the basis for selecting Lockheed as the fabricator of the tiles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they pretty similar materials?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of them were made out of mullites and different materials like that. In fact we had one, I forget who made that; we went to run it and it degraded on the shelf just sitting there. The Lockheed materials were obviously superior and so it was an easy selection once we started running tests. But like I said the very original tile procurements were out of our group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "While they were running some here we were also running at [Building] 13. Don Tillian was involved over there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Radiant tests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The radiant tests. There were just two different facilities, just different kinds of heating. We were also testing them in Building 13. It’s an RHTF (Radiant Heat Test Facility). Then in ’75 we went to [Building] 260. That’s when the big tests started for the nose cap and for the wing over there. Jim was involved in that also. It was difficult tests. We got them done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The name of the group is Experimental Heat Transfer. So it wasn’t just arc jets. It was whatever it takes. We used arc jet facilities, convective heating, and radiant. There’s some exceptions to it, but generally what you want to do is run the test where you see how it performs. Does it reach some temperature limit and degrade? How does it behave with a flow on it, like gaps, and optical properties of the surfaces, because you have to have good optical properties where you can have high emissivity, that is where you can radiate heat efficiently, because some materials don’t. If they don’t radiate heat very efficiently then Mother Nature drives their temperature up until they get rid of the amount of heat you need to get rid of. When it does that, they may exceed their temperature limit. The arc jets are mainly used for surface phenomena, flow phenomena, and then systems, when you’ve got a system design and you want to see what’s the response at the base of the heat shield.\\n\\n The radiant heat is used mainly for getting thermal properties. You could look for something like tiles cracking of the coating. You’ll get that in arc jets. You can get all this surface kind of response in arc jets, but it’s the thermal conductivity that you get out of the radiant heat. Jim [James A.] Smith was our thermal branch chief. He had this plot that he called the anthill. When they were first trying to design the orbiter with the tiles, they went out to very many companies and there’s a process called a guarded hot plate. They would get the thermal conductivity of the material, which is of course important, because if it’s too high you’re going to overheat your structure.\\n\\n The tile is made up of very small fibers and still the best insulator in the world. The reason why is it’s very small fibers. There’s not much advantage to it at atmospheric pressure, because the air in the tile, in a lot of these insulators, is the dominating factor at atmospheric pressure. But when you pump it down and you get rid of the air, then having more fibers is what counts because those are then radiation barriers. These real small fibers are more effective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just to elaborate, you were talking radiant and what the temperatures do through the tile down to the structure. That’s what the radiant does." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. This anthill plot of his had temperature on one axis, it had conductivity, and then it had pressure, because the conductivity is a function of pressure. He had whole sets of these anthill plots, and it’s temperature versus thermal conductivity at this pressure and another plot at another pressure. If you put all those together from all those different manufacturers, they were all over the place except they had an upper bound that looked like the top of an anthill, like a volcano shape. The data plotted looked like an X-ray of an anthill and those were all the tunnels. It was just a nightmare because nobody could analyze the vehicle because they didn’t know what the conductivity was.\\n\\n There were some gentlemen working in [Building] 13 that came up with a method with our radiant heaters. We would run tests at different constant pressures with a tile array. We had very fine thermocouples at precisely known depths, very small gauge. They were at the surface all the way through the tiles at different depths. We would run tests at a constant pressure and a constant temperature and hold that temperature very constant on the surface. You’d measure all the response. They would have to guess what all these thermal properties would have to be to make it behave that way at each one of these sets of a bunch of different temperatures and pressures all constant. When they got all their guesswork done, then we would run a profile to where we would have a chamber pressure changing as an entry profile, plus the temperature changing, because the conductivity of the tile is highly dependent on the pressure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Simulating the Shuttle reentry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. We’d do that and run these profiles and then the temperature response back here at the bond line where the tiles were glued down—when that matched, then they had confidence. That’s the way that every tile that’s ever been flown on the orbiter was certified in that little radiant heater over there. But see, that’s the radiant heat. You got the high quality as you use it, thermal conductivity and then in the arc jet you’ll get like the surface properties. Is the active oxidation a problem, or are the chemistry effects correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had mentioned models. Is that something that you made in house for these tests?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of them were brought in, but we used to build our own test articles in the early days. Just like I was saying like that rub tube model, we’d just go build it. Back in those days we had people at Building 13 that could make tiles. They could cut them out and coat them and fire them in whatever shape you wanted. We would build our own test articles here if they were real custom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you both walk us through a test before the orbiter flew and then a test today that you would run? How does it work? How long does it take? What’s the process? How many people are involved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right now what do we have? About 22. I think the peak we had was around 27 or 28 back in the ’80s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We have two shifts, but a lot of times, not always, we can run some testing during the day and then testing in the evening. There were some issues during the summer with power usage at NASA here, so we were running after 5:00 p.m. sometimes. We have a test requester that says, “We need to run a test.” Then the branch decides yes, we can run it, and they schedule it in. They approve it. We have to set up for it, and we have a test readiness review. Safety is involved, NASA safety, and environmental at times. Safety because [of] outgassing of test articles, they give off fumes. As a facility we make sure all systems are operational, everything’s ready to support test.\\n\\n Then sometimes we just have one model or test article to run and sometimes we have 20 or 30 or more that we have to run for somebody requesting tests at different pressures and temperatures, or they just don’t want one because they need to do more to see if the data is going to be correct and repeatable. Once all the systems are go and we can start testing, they either come in for the test or they assign one of the NASA test directors to say, “You call it if you have some onboard parameters and we can abort at this level.” We’re trying to meet their temperature and pressures.\\n\\n There’s different distances we run at and at different temperatures. That’s why sometimes they have many multiple test models. Then after it’s all said and done there’s a test report that’s written. Every test goes through a very similar process. It takes sometimes a little time to set up. If we don’t have to do a lot of fixture changing, there’s different kinds of tests we run, different kinds of holders, different kinds of cooling, preparation in putting a model into a holder and then going into the arm takes some time. They have to change nozzles sometimes. So we have to change the heater configuration, how long is it going to be, is it going to be a short or long heater, and then what kind of nozzle. It all depends what kind of temperatures and pressures you need as to what we use." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this request normally from the Orbiter Project Office or Engineering [Directorate]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It may be like a subsystem manager, or it could be the Orbiter Project Office. We do real-time flight support. So, for example, you remember when they had to go out, I think it was STS-117, and the blankets over this carbon honeycomb were pulled up, and they wanted to find out [if we] should we go repair it. They found some stainless steel pins and staples and said, “Well, we’ll go push it down and we’ll staple it and pin it.” But nobody knew what those metallic things were going to do during reentry at the location that they were at.\\n\\n You’ve got to move pretty fast. They built test articles and got the pins over here. Right here at this table where we’re sitting, the astronaut would come over and have a glove, and they would read the script that they were going to have them follow when they repaired it. They folded it down with the glove and put the pins in it and the staples. Then we put that test article in a water-cooled wedge holder that we’d already precalibrated and knew what conditions to run. We ran that and then people were able to see it and say, “Hey, that looks pretty good,” and then they said, “Okay, now go out and repair it, because we know it’s going to work.” We do real-time support like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They repaired it while they were on orbit. After they came back the astronaut who did the repair in space came over and gave his thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gave us that guy up there. [Points to wall hanging from the flight crew.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was the astronaut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Danny [John D.] Olivas. He’s the one who repaired it and he said, “Thanks a lot.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Even years before that, I forget what mission it was. They had these white deposits show up on a vehicle, I think it was on the runway at White Sands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At Edwards [Air Force Base, California]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Edwards. Then they started looking at all the vehicles and they go, “What is this white stuff?” Scrape it off and try to analyze it. It’s calcium carbonate. They thought is that going to cause a problem, where’d it come from. They had a vehicle, and I forget which mission it was. They had it sitting on the pad. They didn’t know whether to roll it back and study this problem or what. They said, “We’ll run an arc jet test and show that this material is okay if we can for one mission. Then they’ll give us time to work the problem.”\\n\\n They got samples of it and we had these RCC [Reinforced Carbon-Carbon] sample pucks. Astronauts flew a T-[38] down there with a puck, and they contaminated it with the stuff off the vehicle. They flew it back. Meanwhile, we had the test point identified and put it in, ran it, and everything looked okay, and said, “You’re okay, you don’t have to pull the vehicle back.” From the time they asked us to run that test until we had the results was 36 hours. We were working round the clock and had to get everything quick because they had to make that decision. They didn’t want to leave it sitting out on the pad longer than necessary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We get on standby for every flight in case they have problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is it unusual for you to be called?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just depends on whether they have a problem. Most of the time, it’s okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "After they find out they have a problem, we’ll have some time before they reenter. They have to do all their space experiments so we have a little bit of time. Sometimes they’re up there ten to 14 days, whatever they’re up there. It’s not like, “I need the information by tomorrow.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They’ll be up there a little while you see before they make the scans and find out about it. Then when they get them, it might be the fourth day or something before you find out there’s a problem. It depends on how bad the problem is about how quick you got to move." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the Columbia [and Challenger] accidents impact your facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were involved in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course that was two years of not flying. NASA turns all resources loose when there’s a problem. We ran some tests that weren’t arc jet tests, but people here were involved in them. For example, there was an infrared handheld pyrometer that the ice team measured temperatures with that day. It was real cold so they had that thing in their station wagon. They went out, and they waited at the pad there before they went out to inspect, and so this instrument was sitting in this heated running vehicle.\\n\\n Because it was so bitterly cold that day, they waited until last second to jump out and go start making measurements. Well, the instrument is supposed to be stabilized in its environment first. It’ll shift the readings and that shift is more important when you’re measuring temperatures in the range they were interested in. If it was real hot temperatures they were trying to measure it wouldn’t make much difference, but it made a lot of difference to the measurements they were making that day. The accident investigation board wanted to know, how accurate were these readings if this instrument was just pulled out of this warm vehicle?\\n\\n We went into a mode where we bought a duplicate, and then we also got the instrument they used. We ran a lot of tests on them. I stood out in a field all night long taking measurements on the sky and then when the Sun came up, because the Sun was coming up that morning, and it was early in the morning. We had to know what the background radiation from the sky did to it and the Sun. Then we ran tests. We had a big box with a plate and the same type of paint that the SRB [Solid Rocket Boosters] or the fuel tank used. We had thermocouples all over it, and then they would calibrate it with an oxyacetylene torch trying to get the same predicted heating rate as what the analysts said that jet of gas from the solids, what it would have done to the tank, because there was some dispute among the analysts whether you could even burn a hole through the tank with all that cold liquid nitrogen on the other side.\\n\\n These analysts were saying, “You can’t do it because the liquid is so cold.” Of course we were saying, “Well, sure you can, because it’ll flash to gas, and then when it’s gas you can’t get much heat through it.” Of course they hit it with the torch and bang, it goes right through it. So that was another input for the panel that showed that yes you can and despite the analysis, you can do it. We were involved in things like that to try to help them understand the thermal data better. Meanwhile, we were working on facility development while we weren’t running orbiter tests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you been involved in any of the tests with the goo gun and some of the other fixes for the tile?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, that stuff was developed here. In fact that’s the second time around. There was an aborted effort at that early on with the same type of material. This last time they improved things. We’ve run very many tests on tiles with all kinds of damage with the goo gun, the STA [Shuttle Tile Ablator]-54, and also the overlay, which if you’re familiar with that it’s the plate. They have these augers, and they put insulation bags in the damaged cavity in the tiles. You take this thin high temperature plate, and you screw it down with these big large diameter augers into the tiles. We’ve run tests here, both in the channel nozzle and the wedge, developing and certifying that tile repair. We’ve run very many tests with the tile repair and STA-54 and also the RCC repairs, crack repairs.\\n\\n There’s a material that they spread in the cracks. In fact we’re still running some tests on that. That’s run in wedges. It’s run in such a fashion that you get this pressure differential across it so that the gas coming through the crack will erode it like it would in flight and then also there’s larger holes. They have a plug repair, which is high temperature disks of different sizes, they’re curved, and there’s a single bolt in the middle, and they’re like a molly bolt you put in a wall. The bolt and the crossmember goes down through the hole then it springs over. Now you can just tighten the bolt down, and it’ll fasten it. It’s curved like a potato chip and it’s flexible so that when you pull it down it conforms to the shape of the wing wherever you’re putting it. We’ve run a lot of tests. Very early on the first tests that were run on it were run here. We’ve run many tests and proved that that system will work.\\n\\n Also in the radiant heat, over the last year and a half we ran a radiant heat test on that plug repair in which we had a big thick wall, about a one-inch-thick wall graphite box that had a section of an orbiter panel about one foot by one foot that had an impacted hole in it. It’s out of a real orbiter wing panel. They had put one of these plug repair devices in it. We had that heavily instrumented. We adjusted the heat losses in the bottom of that test article so it simulated a vehicle. We had an optical pyrometer system that used fiber-optic pyrometers that would measure at a number of points the temperature of that thin plate over the RCC. Those pyrometers did that by looking through small holes in the RCC from the back through the little holes in the RCC to the plate that’s protecting it over the top. The target area that those pyrometers had to look at was like 1/100 of an inch in diameter and then the pyrometer is maybe about 15 inches away from it. The alignment was a real bear.\\n\\n Why were we running those things? Well, it had two phases. One of them, we got all the thermal response of the system. The subsystem manager has a thermal math model of how it’s supposed to behave on the Orbiter. He needs to validate that model so we built that test article to do that. It had all these temperature responses in it, and then what he did was add the graphite box and the other features of our test setup. He had his math model embedded in another overlay of a math model of our facility.\\n\\n Some of that stuff, like the amount of heat that would go through the contact area between that cover plate and the RCC, you can’t get that analytically, you have to do that experimentally. We got all that data, and he was able to correlate his math model very well with it. Then the second issue with that test was the load. There’s that single bolt holding this thing down. As things heat up and metals expand, they’re concerned that this curved plate that they compressed that conformed to a different curve shape of the orbiter wing, that if all that loosens up it’ll lift up too much and you’ll get flow under it.\\n\\n We built these devices that would measure the load in that bolt and how much that plate would lift. They’re very unique setups. Completely different than anything anybody else has ever done. We got that phase done successfully and showed qualitatively that the trends that they thought were going to happen happened. That test is run with the same crew of people we have over here. When people come in with a test request it just depends on what their goals are. A lot of times you can suggest things that they never realized that they could do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think has been the importance of the arc jet facility in relationship to the Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the heat shields would have never been developed without it. The leading edges of the nose and the wing leading edges, the RCC, we got samples of that we can show you. Those are made out of a woven carbon material. It’s combustible. It’ll burn just like a charcoal briquette. The only thing that protects it is that they came up with this process where they pack fine powder of silica around it, heat it up with no air around it, and that silica will combine with the carbon to make silicon carbide. Silicon carbide does pretty good in air at high temperatures so the outside layer of this carbon shell is converted. It’s not a coating you put on it. The outside layer of the carbon combines with the silica, it’s converted over to silicon carbide that’s your oxidation barrier. That’s very thin, so if you get a hole in it, your primary heat shield at the highest heating level starts burning. It’s very critical.\\n\\n There are small cracks, millions of these little tiny cracks in this coating, and oxygen can sneak through there slowly and degrade the carbon, which is where your strength really is. We had to run many hundreds of tests with pucks of this material over and over and over and over and over again at the same conditions to get the subsurface mass loss rate on the RCC. Then there’s a whole bunch of conditions to run. A program might take you a year and a half with one whole shift to get the data. They would have never been able to fly the leading edges or the tiles or any of those systems without the arc jets.\\n\\n The FRSI, flexible reusable surface insulation, was developed here. It was developed in our Test Position 2. First tests ever run were run out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about the orbiter vents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There was an orbiter vent box test. The orbiter has these rectangular-shaped vents on the fuselage on each side. If you look at it you can see them. Those have their doors that open and close. The purpose is just like what it sounds like. You’ve got all the structure. It’s built like an aircraft, and it’s pretty lightweight aluminum. There’s cavities all over the place, and they have to vent. The orbiter gains altitude pretty rapidly. Air will come out of all these cavities and has to be able to rush out and get outside or you’ll rupture your structure. Like the orbiter doors, you could just lift those or open them up or blow them open.\\n\\n When you reenter, gas has to go back in those cavities. When you’re reentering you got the extra problem of the gas is hot. There’s other problems in that the pressure changes according to your attitude of your vehicle at different places in this vent so that there’s times when you’re entering you could have air going out instead of in or vice versa when you’re on launch. So they have to open and close these vent doors all the time.\\n\\n The vent doors, on the inside of the orbiter they have a screen. It’s a fine mesh screen. That screen, I suppose it’s probably about 39 inches by 26 or 30 inches or something like that. They had a problem in that the early orbiter [days], the payloads were very small. The air coming in and out of those vents wasn’t restricted. The day was coming when they would have a large laboratory with large structures that would almost completely fill up the orbiter payload bay. The size of those structures was such that they would get very near these vents. They didn’t know if air would be able to get out fast enough on launch or come in fast enough on entry, that it might restrict it too much, or even if it didn’t restrict it too much would the velocity of the air coming in damage the payload.\\n\\n Even before that problem surfaced they were flying some payloads that had like goldized Kapton insulation on the outside that could get damaged by high air velocity coming in. Those were military payloads [and] were classified. It was getting pretty critical. There was no adequate analysis that could predict this. Even the computational flow dynamics could not predict these complex flows and what would happen.\\n\\n So all they had available to them was a very rudimentary analysis that everybody knew was wrong, but it was the only thing that was available. That predicted that the air velocities coming in would be extremely high and it would tear up all these payloads. They were extremely interested in getting a cure for that. So the purge, vent and drain manager talked to me because I had discussed a different test but it had some capability of testing something like this.\\n\\n He came and talked to me, and he explained the problem to me. I told him, “Well, no, we got to do it a little bit different way.” What we did was we took the arc heater off, and we used the 40-inch nozzle just to inject gas. We just used nitrogen gas. We used the pumping capability of the chamber. I had them install a system on the repress part of the chamber where we could manually bleed gas into the chamber while we were pumping. That meant that I could adjust the chamber pressure to any pressure we wanted all the way from atmospheric pressure down to 1/1,000 of an atmosphere. At the same time that I could adjust this pressure to anything I wanted. I could flow calibrated amounts of gas up to six pounds a second into the chamber while I was doing that.\\n\\n They had a vent box. It was a structure that had this vent in it with the actuator and the door. We mounted that over the diffuser inlet that goes to our vacuum system. It was mounted in the chamber over the exit into our vacuum system. That meant I could apply pressure differentials across it. I set up I think it was about 200 probes. They were like aerodynamic probes, the little small tubes. From the pressure impact on there you could calculate the velocity of the air.\\n\\n I had 80 of them on a movable platform that was inside the diffuser so this test was run with the box mounted one way and then mounted the reverse so you’d get both inflow and outflow. I had all of these zillions of these pitot probes that gave them velocity profiles. I could move them and get it at distance from the test article. Also, we had big plates that simulated the payload, and we would get that plate closer, closer, and closer to the inlet of this vent box. I had pressure taps all over it and probes around it so I could get how hard is it sucking on the plate and what the air velocity was right next to it.\\n\\n I started buying parts and designing things, and when I ran the last test, Christmas Eve I think it was, that was nine months. Most of that nine months we were running tests on one shift, sometimes two. We had boiler problems at that time that were really plaguing us. About every fourth or fifth run of that, we pumped down, we had to tear into the boiler and repair it, but we kept doing that all of that nine months because they had to have that data to be able to fly.\\n\\n They came up with a parametric description of how the vents behaved. The venting is based on nothing but the data that came out of—it was Test Position 1 that we did it in. You couldn’t do it analytically. It was all experimental data from this laboratory." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year was this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, man, I can’t remember, all the years are beginning to blend together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned being a test director. Can you share with us maybe one or two of your favorite tests that you ran or maybe missions that stand out in your memory?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there was a bunch of them. Let’s see. Well, some of them I’ve already mentioned. I think that elevon cove test was real good. Of course the things that stand out are some of the disasters. We had one of these original AVCO arc heaters. It was a Linde type heater. It only had one insulator in it. We started that thing one time and it broke in half. The cathode that’s connected to the power supply, it fell down on a thermocouple wire, and the best way it could find to get back to the power supply was through that thermocouple wire. So it vaporized that wire, just like a lightning bolt, only it’s continuous. It vaporized that.\\n\\n At that time, it was a long time ago, we had data on strip-chart recorders. I was standing between this stack of strip-chart recorders and a data system. I’d been standing there a while, and I thought, well, I want to lean on something. So I thought, well, I’ll lean on that, or I’ll lean on this.\\n\\n Well, I leaned on the data system. I wouldn’t be here if I’d leaned the other direction, because that thermocouple wire came into those strip-chart recorders. You want to talk about some activity. That thing lit up, and it was I guess about 15 inches from me. You could feel the heat from it. It lit up, and plasma was coming out of it and capacitors and parts were blowing up in it. It shot this fireball out, and it’s about the size [of] a soccer ball. It’s blue-white plasma.\\n\\n It shoots out of there. Whenever those things touch something they just instantly vaporize whatever the heck it is they touch. When it vaporizes whatever it touches, well, that creates high pressures so when it hits a surface then it comes off of it faster than it hit it. A few of those bounces and the thing is really traveling.\\n\\n It’s bouncing around the room. People are ducking. It vaporized the plaster off the wall down to the metal lath, just instantly. Maybe it contacts the wall a handful of milliseconds. It just vaporizes it. It’s shooting over the top of people’s heads. It’s the disasters that you really remember.\\n\\n We had a leak in one of our insertion arms. They’re water-cooled, that hold our test articles. We couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the vacuum. Finally went out there and looked in the window. The water comes out, you see it freezes instantly. The way the leak was, it made a hose, okay, so the ice would form, and it’d make like about the size of a garden hose. Finally it came out and it hit the front of the chamber and then it turned and it went down. There was miles of that stuff in there. It would just go around and around and around. People were just watching it, fascinated with it, because it’s like 500 psi [pounds per square inch] water coming out of there. It’s making this tube, and it’s got several feet of it in the bottom of the chamber. You’ll see it move every once in a while. If it gets a crack in it, see, it’ll spray out there, and it’ll seal. It would come up like a snake, it would arc over, and it would go back down into the pile. Boy! So it’s just a lot of crazy things.\\n\\n We had a vacuum problem one time. We didn’t know what it was. We didn’t realize it, but there was a failure in our vacuum system. It’s driven off this boiler. It’s an 80,000-pounds-per-hour boiler. If you just keep looking around for an hour you’re going to have 80,000 pounds of ice back in your vacuum system. So finally I went out there and I came back in. I said, “Hey, it’s all frosted over out there.” I said, “It’s like four feet off the ground it’s frosted up.” We put water hoses in there. It took four, five days to melt all that ice.\\n\\n Then you’ll have things. Of course you got maintenance problems. The shell on the vacuum system, after a number of years of operation, it’s just—they build it as cheap as they can. It’ll just rust through and collapse. Then there was another test we were running that you’ve got this 10-million-watt power supply hooked up to your arc heater and you’ve got gas running through it. You go to shut down, and you can’t turn it off. That gets important because what’ll happen is eventually you can have a failure and it’ll arc over. It’ll start eating up the whole stand. It’s just amazing. It looks like you got a piece of the Sun out there. It’ll just eat its way all the way back to the power supply and then back to the grid. We finally got the thing open but it was a real challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had a pump come in and not on pallets so I had to get the riggers and call a work order in so it could go to 260 and unload it, P401. Well, here’s 1,800 pounds with no pallet so we can’t use a forklift. So riggers says, “We won’t get there till an hour.” We got a shift change going on at 3:30, but people are covering it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many tests have you guys run in the arc jet facility for Shuttle? Anybody have that number?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The run numbers have been changed a lot of times. That method that we’ve got for the run numbers was first started when the orbiter was in existence. I can go look at that, but it’s 3,000 something. Now that’s tests. Then you can insert models more than one time. I think I recorded the number of thermal cycles. You might have a model; you might insert it and let it cool down a number of times, it was like 540 model insertions one year. That was our peak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. Vera, what are some of the tests or some of the events that happened while you’ve been here that really stayed in your mind, or something that you did connected with the Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, after the [Columbia] accident we were involved. Of course every time they fly we’re on standby and then we actually have to support them. After the last Shuttle accident, we were investigating what would happen if you get a hole in the wing to the stuff behind there and that was memorable to me. How fast things can burn after a little hole in the wing, and how fast the hole would grow. We did that kind of test also the bonding, fixing of RCC and tiles, if the holes need to be patched in space. To me, the fun part is setting up to run a test. Regardless of what the test is, just the setup. Also either modifications or difficulties—that is what’s challenging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Our run number in there right now is over 3,500. Probably 90 percent of those are over and we had well over 1,000 probably before that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. Vera, have there been times that you have started tests and then you’ve had to close them down because you had malfunctions for any reason or do you have a pretty good percentage of when you start you go all the way through?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A lot of times higher priority tests can come in, and we have to reconfigure. So we say, “Okay, well, let’s stop this series and start another one.” Or, “We’ve had enough on this, let’s do something else.” It’s always in flux, and we’re getting ready to run a test and spend maybe a day and a half and then they say, “No, tear that down, let’s do it for this other test,” so we have to set up something else, but it’s part of the job. It doesn’t get you down, it’s just stuff we have to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They wanted us to schedule things better one time, so we hired this guy that all he did was the schedules, a Microsoft project. He would go around all day long talking to everybody, developing these schedules. You’d have a scheduled meeting once a week. He’d come in with these schedule stacks. It’s about an inch thick. The first thing he’d do was to lay it down. He had the top level schedule. We’d just grab that. Nobody ever looked at the rest of it. We said, “Well, this is wrong,” because things change.\\n\\n Maybe half the time things change from 7:30 in the morning till 9 pm. It has never been any different from the day I ever walked in this facility. It’s because it’s the nature of the technological field we’re in, the requesters. The inputs that they have and the twists and turns in the analytical results and the contractual elements and the major contractors. The requesters are constantly wanting to change their minds all the time. We just dance on marbles, just keep doing it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. Vera, you’ll still be running the facility for that final Space Shuttle mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had that discussion recently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we’ll have to support the mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had that discussion recently and the result is you’re going to have to be there for the last one, because we have this real-time mission support. There’s a lot of history. For example, let’s talk about just tiles. There’s a lot of history of the way you can damage tiles and it comes back and it looks okay. Then there’s great big damage that a guy can look at it and say, “Whew, we’ll analyze it, but man, that’s bad.” There’s a whole twilight zone in between there of lots of different kinds of damage and a lot of different locations on the vehicle where you can’t easily make your mind up. You can’t make your mind up with a test. You can’t make your mind up with the analysis, but you can with both of them together. Like our channel nozzle out here, we’ve put a lot of effort into computational flow dynamics, studies of our particular test setup. Those same CFD people have CFD analysis of the vehicle, and they’ve gotten correlations between those.\\n\\n When they don’t have enough faith in their decision-making, they’ll run a test. Over in our radiant heating facility there’s a locked up cage over there that has prebuilt test articles of tile arrays that fit in our channel nozzle. When they make a flight and you hear “Well, they’re going to go examine the tiles,” they’ve got this laser scanner that goes out on the arm. When they take pictures from the Space Station, what they do is they get surface data that tells them x-, y- and z-coordinates of the surface. The computer has what’s called point cloud data, that’s data that describes this shape of the surface. So if they see damage in there they know all exactly how it’s shaped.\\n\\n Well, they send that data over here to Building 9. They have sitting over there right now a machine with a tool in it; we go get one of these test articles, or we go get three of them. We get one of them, we don’t simulate damage on it, we just run it like this is—they tell us what conditions to run on it; we get the temperature response in it internally. Meanwhile, they’ve got this point cloud data in two of these other test articles over there and they’re machining out the cavity in both of these test articles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Simulate the damage." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They take one of them and fly them to Denver [Colorado] where they have a box with a procedure and everything and astronaut gloves and all that under a vacuum. They put the STA-54 in it. Meanwhile, we’ve run a test on an undamaged one. Then when they’re busy at Lockheed trying to simulate the repair we get the damaged one and we run it. Now you’ve got undamaged and damaged and then we get the repaired one, and we run it. You’ve got exact duplicates except one of them is not damaged, one of them is damaged and not repaired, and the other one is damaged and repaired.\\n\\n You take that data, the volumes of CFD studies they’ve already done, and many runs we’ve made to support this on our channel nozzle, take that and their flight CFD, and their experience. Now you can make the decision. Now you can make the decision in the no-man’s-land. That’s the reason we’re here. Meanwhile, we’re running CEV [Crew Exploration Vehicle] testing part of the time, and we’re transitioning over to that. If the orbiter is there we have to support." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’re optimistic. We’re looking at five years from now and what we need. We have critical spare parts that we’ve ordered. As a matter of fact, what I just talked about, the pump came in, if one of our pumps go out we have a spare. So we can get our maintenance contractor to put it in. We look ahead and what we have to do to support future testing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You remember I told you about all these arc jet facilities there used to be? Well, there aren’t anymore. There’s only one commercial arc jet still operable. The size of the test articles they can run is limited. So you’ve got Ames, you got JSC. Langley was shut down. Now the AEDC [Arnold Engineering Development Center, Tennessee] has facilities, but those are high pressure facilities. ICBMs [Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles] dive into the atmosphere almost straight down. When they get to lower altitudes, where the density of the air is high they’re still going very high velocities. They get very high heating and pressures on them, which is different than manned entry, because people can’t take that acceleration. The manned entry is a different environment. We generally have lower pressures and higher enthalpy. Their heating is very high, but the environment we have can be more aggressive.\\n\\n We’ve had materials that AEDC has run in their facilities for leading edge inlets to engines. They ran the models, and they still looked like they hadn’t been run. Brought them here, and we just vaporized them. We got the temperatures up to the same levels, but our pressures are a lot lower. It’s like boiling water. Water boils at lower temperature in Denver. Well, this stuff just vaporizes, it just turns to gas. In their higher pressure environment it doesn’t do that. So it can be more aggressive than even an ICBM environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We should probably end our session, but we certainly appreciate everything you’ve shared with us today. Mr. Vera, did you want to add something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jose Vera", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the reasons I wanted Jim Milhoan to be here is that he’s been very intimate with the arc jet longer than I have. Since he was a NASA test director he knew the ins and outs of the models and test articles and programs, where I have been more on the facility end and supporting. He has too. I’ve been here 41 years and Jim has been here longer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We certainly appreciate this sharing of knowledge. If you have any sort of documents or anything about the arc jet in relationship to the Space Shuttle, if you’d be willing to share them, we’d love to get copies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Milhoan", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is the best condensed one, [“The Evolution and History of Arc Jet Testing Thermal Testing at the NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.”] Don wrote that, and I modified it, modernized it a little bit more." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00655", + "metadata": { + "category": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office Oral History Project 2012 - 2013", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/EliasAL/eliasal.htm", + "original_file_name": "EliasAL_6-3-13.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/EliasAL/EliasAL_6-3-13.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Antonio L. Elias", + "location_date": "Dulles, Virginia – 3 June 2013" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Hackler", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Antonio L. Elias" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 3, 2013. This oral history interview is being conducted with Dr. Antonio Elias at the Headquarters of the Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Virginia, for the Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Hackler, assisted by Rebecca Wright. Dr. Elias serves as Orbital’s Executive Vice President, and also as the Chief Technical Officer.\\n\\n Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us this morning as we compile a history of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services [COTS] program. To start off, we’d like to ask you to give us a brief overview of your background and how you came to join Orbital in the 1980s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have a terrible memory for dates, however September 2nd, 1986, is a date that will live in infamy, because that’s the day that I walked through the doors of Orbital. It was also the day that Orbital went from their first program and headquarters building [in Vienna, Virginia] to their second program and headquarters building [in Fairfax, Virginia]. So everybody was moving in, all 19 of them. I was the 20th through the door.\\n\\n Let me start at the very beginning. I’ve always been, even as a young kid, enamored of aircraft and flying, probably more with aircraft and flying than space itself. I’ve always wanted to be an aeronautical engineer. My father was in the Spanish Foreign Service, so he always thought I should study in Spain first, which I tried. I did start aeronautical engineering in Spain, and it didn’t go too well for me. Kind of a cultural mismatch.\\n\\n After three or four years of trying hard, I decided to transfer. I applied to this little technical school in the northeast of the United States called MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge], and then a miracle occurred and I was accepted. I’m saying this seriously, this is not a joke. Obviously they didn’t understand the translation of my grades from the Spanish system to the U.S., otherwise they would have never accepted me. But they did accept me, and I was both very happy and very lucky at MIT. As a matter of fact, I was initially accepted as a sophomore because they were a little bit unsure about my background. After one term I had accumulated enough credits to be reclassified as a junior. After another term I piled up enough numbers to be reclassified as a senior. After a third semester, I graduated.\\n\\n I was an undergrad at MIT for the grand total of three semesters, although cheating. That is, having started from my background in Spain where I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was extraordinarily happy at MIT as an undergrad, so I tried to milk being a student as long as I could. Got into grad [graduate] school, and luck struck again. I got a research assistantship at a place called [Charles Stark] Draper Laboratory.\\n\\n I actually worked on the very, very, very, very, very tail end of the Apollo Program. I was in the Draper Lab, which had just been renamed from the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and I was in the backroom for both the Apollo 16 and 17 flights. And immediately after that, I was assigned to a group that worked on the Space Transportation System, soon to be known as a Space Shuttle, in the original Phase A/B Programs. I was initially supporting the two finalists, McDonnell Douglas [Corporation] in St. Louis [Missouri], and [North American] Rockwell [Corporation] in Downey [California].\\n\\n Then, good luck struck again. I had this one brilliant idea about a guidance system, which eventually became a part of the Shuttle software design, and that gave me enough brownie points to give me stature at the lab. In 1980 MIT offered me a teaching position, so I was an assistant professor, second class, for six years. MIT decided that they didn’t want to give me tenure, so that explains my entry into Orbital. Because there I was, knowing that I had to leave within a year because I wasn’t going to get tenure.\\n\\n I got a phone call from Dave [David W.] Thompson [Orbital founder and CEO (Chief Executive Officer)], and the first words out his mouth sealed the deal. His first words were, “Hi, my name is Dave Thompson. You don’t know me, but I know you.” How can you say no to anybody who starts a conversation that way? He told me that he was a few years behind me at MIT. We actually never crossed paths because I was, as a grad student, kind of lost in the bowels of the black hole of Draper Laboratory. That tends to isolate you socially from the main campus a little bit. We actually attended a symposium together and we liked each other’s style.\\n\\n Also, I didn’t have many other choices or options, quite honestly. That’s why I tried Orbital really. That was my next stroke of luck, because nothing would have told me that Orbital itself, and my ability to contribute to Orbital, would have been what it has been. It was totally unplanned, unpredicted, unexpected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you overview briefly how your responsibilities evolved within the company?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was hired as the Chief Engineer, and at the time Orbital had only one project. Orbital’s role in that project wasn’t even highly technical. It was more of a business development and a financial operation. As you probably know, these were the years of the [President Ronald W.] Reagan commercialization of everything. The three [Orbital] founders conceived a scheme for an upper stage for the Space Shuttle. NASA had planned to develop a set of three that the Shuttle was going to have, and the founders approached NASA and suggested that rather than NASA funding its development, that they allow a private company, Orbital, to find funding for this development stage, then sell it both to NASA and others.\\n\\n If you remember at the time, the Shuttle was supposed to be the national transportation system, therefore spelling the end of the expendable launch vehicles. They found this hungry company in Colorado whose expendable launch vehicle was going to come to an end, i.e., Martin Marietta [Corporation], to do the actual engineering and development of this upper stage. The Orbital team was more of a supervisor and a steward of investment rather than a detailed design. That was my first job.\\n\\n Then Challenger happened [STS 51-L accident], and with Challenger the Shuttle no longer became a commercial possibility or alternative. There was a presidential directive that restricted Shuttle flights to government uses, and Orbital’s big business went up in smoke overnight. Orbital, all 20 of us, including the receptionist and the assistants, were trying to figure out what to do next. One of the ideas was the development of a constellation of small satellites at low-Earth orbit that could be used—and I’m choosing these words rather accurately—as a signaling network. Not as a communications network, the difference being how much data is being transferred, but also the timing. If you have a burglar alarm system, that’s a signaling device, not a communication device. If you have a videophone, that’s a communication device, not a signaling device.\\n\\n This idea of a so-called “remote asset monitoring system” was actually the brainchild of a recently-retired NASA employee, Bob [Robert R.] Lovell, who came to Orbital and suggested that that was, in his words, “the last cookie left in the satellite communication cookie jar.” We started thinking about that commercial development as Orbital’s next product, and there was an issue at the time—mind you, this is 1986, 1987—with how to launch and release small spacecraft. We’re talking about dozens, maybe three dozen, in low-Earth orbit. Very small, 100 to 150 pounds.\\n\\n One of my tasks was to look around and see what launch opportunities were available. I went to visit the big guys—General Dynamics [Corporation] that had the Atlas [rocket], and Martin Marietta that still had the Titan [rocket]. With the Challenger accident, ELVs [expendable launch vehicles] all of a sudden became useful again. We found it was very, very hard, but there was a small entrepreneurial company in Camarillo, California. George [A.] Koopman’s company was called American Rocket Company [AMROC]. They were developing a small launch vehicle. They called and I went to visit them, and there was a bizarre event that happened.\\n\\n Rather than receiving us with open arms, George Koopman, who was an interesting character, assumed that we were kind of spies that were trying to figure out what they were doing, and literally kicked us out of his office. There were other interesting facts on that famous incident. There were a bunch of other people employed by American Rocket Company at the time who then later had roles either in Orbital history or other history. One of the characters that I met for the first time that ill-fated day in January of 1987 was this guy that sat in a corner by the name of Mike [Michael D.] Griffin. That’s how I met Mike, as well as others, but he certainly remembers that meeting.\\n\\n I came back to Washington [DC], kind of cross filing that there wasn’t any obvious way of launching these small spacecraft. Then one of the cofounders, another colleague, and myself were at this very boring meeting in a hotel which happened to be across the street from where the [National Air and Space Museum] Udvar-Hazy [Center, Chantilly, Virginia] is now. The meeting was so boring that I started doodling on a piece of paper.\\n\\n The year before, 1986, the Air Force had launched a small rocket out of an [McDonnell Douglas] F-15 [aircraft] and intercepted a satellite, blowing it to smithereens. Much like the Chinese did many, many, many years later from an aircraft. The thought of launching a rocket that could carry a satellite to orbit from an aircraft intrigued me. I sketched it, showed it to my colleagues, and we started talking without realizing we were in the middle of a meeting. Finally we decided the meeting was a lot less interesting than talking about a new launch rocket. We went back to the office, started talking to Dave Thompson and others, and of course that’s what became Pegasus.\\n\\n So my first real, serious role in the company was as the Chief Designer and Chief Technical Officer of Pegasus. I also kind of bluffed my way into being the launch panel operator on the [Boeing] B-52 [Stratofortress bomber] for the first launch. Being a B-52, we immediately thought of the famous movie Dr. Strangelove [or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb]. It became the official Orbital movie. Some of us even knew the script by heart, and we would repeat the script while watching it.\\n\\n A couple of days before the first launch of Pegasus, while the first flight units were still unpainted, Dave Thompson showed up at NASA Dryden [Flight] Research Center [California], where we were sending the rocket, with a 10-gallon [cowboy] hat. I went, “Oh, no,” and he went, “Oh, yes.” So sure enough, there’s this picture of moi with a flight suit, holding the hat like Major [T. J. “King”] Kong going down with the H [hydrogen]-bomb.\\n\\n Anyway, that was an amazing program and shortly after that, actually during the Pegasus program, they rewarded me with the vice presidency. I was Orbital’s first Vice President of Engineering. After that I did a number of things. I was, for a while, the Vice President of Programs, while we were still a few hundred people and had $100 million a year revenue.\\n\\n When Mike Griffin joined the company, Mike and I did at least a couple, if not three, musical chairs. He started off as Chief Technical Officer and I was VP [Vice President] of Programs, and then he took the VP of Programs and I was Chief Technical Officer—which happens to be a title I have right now. So I think about it this way, ever since I joined Orbital I haven’t really had a promotion. I mean, I’m in still the same job that I had when I joined 27 years ago.\\n\\n Mike and I traded jobs, then he left and I started a small group called the Advanced Programs Group. This was 15 years ago, ’97. That program grew mostly to develop the X-34 [aircraft], the research vehicle for NASA. The Advanced Programs Group started to give a home to the program. As time evolved, that group was chartered with expanding Orbital’s market into two areas that it had not participated in before. One was human spaceflight, and the other was national security space. By that I mean the satellites and satellite systems that both the [Department of] Defense as well as the intelligence community buy from industry, and the big companies.\\n\\n That group grew from just a single program and miniscule size, tens of millions of dollars a year, to eventually becoming the same size as the other two groups the company had, the group that built all of their satellites, and a group that built all of the rockets, including the Pegasus that I had started back in the ’80s. That job lasted 15 years, more than any job should last in my opinion. So last fall, Dave and I agreed—actually I’d asked Dave for two years—that it probably would be a good idea to have somebody else do what I was doing. Last fall we did that.\\n\\n I became the Chief Technical Officer of the company, a job that arguably I had had in the past, at least in title. Being the CTO of a $100 million a year company and being the CTO in a $1.5 billion a year company is different, but CTO nonetheless. Then somebody, if not younger, at least fresher than me managed the Advanced Programs Group. That’s Frank [L.] Culbertson, the former astronaut. I think that summarizes my career path and what I did to date." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you, that’s a pretty good overview. Just out of curiosity, did you work with George [C.] Nield [Federal Aviation Administration Associate (FAA) Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation] when he was at Orbital?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I most certainly did. George Nield I think joined us about the time that the X-34 program started. I think he was one of the original Advanced Program Groups. It was a roster of about 70 people that included George Nield, Bill [William A.] Wrobel, who’s now the [NASA] Wallops [Flight] Facility Director [Wallops Island, Virginia], and it included Frank [T.] Bellinger, in SES [Senior Executive Service] right now working at Wallops. A number of interesting directors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you still work with him through the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation? Is that a relationship you’ve been able to maintain?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We bump into each other occasionally. He’s also an AIAA [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics] fellow, so we see each other every year at the fellows’ dinner. I bumped into him—for instance when we were both at one of Burt [Elbert L.] Rutan’s first little bunny hops, the SpaceShipOne [suborbital spaceplane] flights. We see each other probably more socially than professionally, because the relationships between the [Code] 700 [FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation] and Orbital are very intense at the working level. Only occasionally we bump into each other. But we do we recognize each other, and we still remember the old days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Going back to the origins of the COTS program, when do you remember first hearing about NASA’s plan to use commercial services to resupply the [International] Space Station [ISS]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ever since we developed Pegasus we had been bugging NASA to do that. As a matter of fact, we made several unsolicited proposals to use Pegasus, because of its air-launch and low-cost attributes, as a way to bring small but very high-value cargo to the Space Station on very short notice. NASA listened to us patiently, but pointed out that the size of Pegasus and the frequency with which the Space Station—in the beginning, I’m talking about the early versions of the Space Station, not necessarily the ISS. It was back when Space Station Alpha and all those programs were going on. They pointed out that the actual need for a few hundred pounds of something next week was something that NASA had not bumped into.\\n\\n We were thinking of a commercial resupply service more in terms of timeliness and response than in terms of bulk, because the bulk of the supply was being handled by the Shuttle, thank you very much. We were constantly interacting with NASA on those issues, so when the first COTS initiatives were starting to become formulated, we were constantly in touch with NASA about what was going on. As soon as there was a formal RFI [Request for Information] out, we responded. As soon as there was a formal RFP [Request for Proposals] out, we responded. As a matter of fact, I brought with me our response to the 2006 original COTS competition in which we were not selected [demonstrates]. It’s very hard to say when we first became aware, because we were constantly pestering them about that. It was a constant dialogue with NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about your role in developing that proposal and the design of the vehicles?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This particular proposal was not successful. It was submitted by the Advanced Programs Group, so I’m listed on the table of organizations and the head of the organization that would have executed the contract. This was when Scott [J. “Doc”] Horowitz was the [NASA] Associate Administrator [for the Exploration Systems Missions Directorate]. On the design of the system itself, my opinion on how to offer the services was not the one that was eventually selected. I did participate somehow, but the offering had two components, a new launch vehicle and a spacecraft.\\n\\n On the new launch vehicle side, 2006 was about the time when rumblings of the impending demise of the Delta II [rocket] were first starting to be formulated. Delta II has been a workhorse of U.S. launch [services], originally developed at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] but then extended throughout the government community, including DoD [Department of Defense]. Perhaps its most stellar program was launching the early GPS [Global Positioning System] constellations, both the first and the second one. It was an old design and it suffered from some of the same problems that the good old small NASA launch vehicle, Scout, had when Pegasus replaced Scout.\\n\\n Our initial interest in also building national security satellites was threatened by the demise of Delta because our forte, and quite honestly the only size spacecraft that Orbital would be competitive in, were spacecraft the size that Delta could launch. Whereas if Delta disappeared and the only launch vehicles our community used were the bigger ones, the ones that Boeing and Lockheed produced, those would naturally launch much larger spacecraft. The other established launch companies were much more competitive in building billion-dollar national security spacecraft than we were.\\n\\n We saw the demise of Delta as a threat to Orbital’s future and its future in the national security arena, as well as in things such as Space Station resupply. We embarked on this program that eventually resulted in the Antares launch vehicle, partly to satisfy the requirements of the original COTS solicitation, partly as a defensive move to make sure that the government had a Delta II replacement. I did have some hand in the configuration of the rocket, however we had been convinced that our credibility in the development of a spacecraft able to rendezvous with the Space Station was so low that unless we did something like what we did in this proposal, which was go to the Russians and buy Soyuz spacecraft, then we would not be considered credible. Indeed, this proposal assumed the use of a modified Soyuz spacecraft.\\n\\n As you probably know, we were not selected. SpaceX [Space Exploration Technologies Corp.] and a company called Rocketplane Kistler were selected. Soon after though, Rocketplane Kistler came to us to ask us to be their engineering talent pool for their system. It turns out that we had previously evaluated the Rocketplane Kistler concept because we thought that perhaps instead of developing our own Delta II replacement we could avail ourselves of the Rocketplane Kistler system, and therefore still be able to launch Delta II-class spacecraft without having to develop a new rocket.\\n\\n Believe it or not, when you have to put your own money behind it, you don’t develop a new launch vehicle because it’s fun. It is, but you have to have a substantial business reason. We were looking at alternatives, and when we evaluated the Rocketplane Kistler concept, in spite of the amazing authority that the organization and George [E.] Mueller had—George Mueller, one of legends of the Apollo Program—in spite of George Mueller himself, that program had so many questionable characteristics that we shied away from it. So it was with great surprise when they came back to us and asked us to be their lead systems house.\\n\\n We looked at what they had committed themselves to do under COTS and the resources they had, and it just didn’t click, it didn’t compute. We suggested to them that they tone down their commitments to NASA to try and fit within the financial bread box that they were in. And of course they felt that they couldn’t do that. They had committed to do something, they could not go back. So eventually the sword fell on them and they were unable to find the financial resources to do what they had committed to. By that time NASA had already given them $30 million, but it was the nature of the Space Act Agreement that either party could go away at any time with no hard feelings. NASA went away having spent $30 million, and Rocketplane Kistler kind of disappeared.\\n\\n NASA reopened the COTS competition, of course with $30 million less. Then we rebid, and on the rebid I was successful in pushing through my concept for the spacecraft, which has an important characteristic. On the COTS solicitation, NASA specified that they were interested in three types of cargo to be carried to and in one case from the Space Station: pressurized cargo, unpressurized cargo, and return cargo. Both the original Orbital proposal based on the Soyuz spacecraft, as well as the SpaceX proposal, proposed the use of a single spacecraft able to perform all three types of cargo transportation services.\\n\\n The only problem with that approach is that for a spacecraft capable of doing all three things to be even vaguely efficient, you have to have a pretty good idea of what the ratio of amounts of cargo of each type—any one flight, or all of the flights—would have. If it turns out that pressurized cargo ends up being twice what you thought it was going to be, and return cargo half of what you thought it was going to be, then all of a sudden your spacecraft is very inefficient because you’re carrying up all this return capability that you don’t really need.\\n\\n So my approach was to develop a unit, a hockey puck, that contained all of the spacecraft devices and systems—propulsion, electrical power, avionics, communication, etc.—and that hockey puck would be attachable to one of three different types of cargo-holding devices. So that on any one flight you would ask the customer, “Hey NASA, would you like pressurized cargo on this flight, or outside cargo, or return cargo?” Then you are able to match the unknown future demand simply by adjusting how many of the flights use the pressurized cargo can, versus how many of the flights use the unpressurized platform that carries external, versus how many carry a capsule that, because it’s a reentry vehicle weighs a lot so you can carry less cargo. That’s the fundamental architecture. That was my concept, my design.\\n\\n As it turned out, when we were successful in being selected as the replacement for Rocketplane Kistler, NASA gave us an initial order for eight flights, all of them pressurized cargo [under the Commercial Resupply Services contract]. Counting on the fact that SpaceX has the return capability, obviously the ratio of pressurized cargo to the other kind of stuff was different from what they thought originally. Thank goodness we had this approach where we could offer them, if they so wanted, all pressurized cargo.\\n\\n That was my role in the recompete. Similar to the original competition, the proposal was submitted by the Advanced Programs Group, so I was listed in the proposal as the head of the organization. I think on the original proposal Dave Thompson signed the proposal letter to Scott, and I signed the proposal letter for the recompete." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of discussions and negotiations did you go through with NASA in the course of that COTS competition, the second round?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a Space Act Agreement, so it was not subject to the normal due process that a FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation], a regular contract has between the government and a private company. There were a number of rather informal exchanges between C3PO, the Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office headed by Alan [J.] Lindenmoyer, and a group of both internal and NASA team members, as well as some consultants that they had. They came to visit us and we gave them oral presentations on our approach, and then we had an afternoon session one day where they wanted to explore how we were going to finance this caper. Their previous failure, Rocketplane Kistler—some people can say they were trying for too much technically. In other words it was several bridges too far technically, but mostly it failed because there was no way they could raise the amount of money that they needed to do that.\\n\\n They kept asking us questions about how we would raise the money, and we kept answering that we didn’t have to, that we had the money in the bank. For some reason, that message took two or three repetitions to sink in. When it finally sank in to Alan Lindenmoyer and his financial consultant, it was like a eureka moment. Their eyes kind of, “Oh, you mean you’re not going to go out to the market?” I said, “No no, look at our financial statements. We have the money in the bank to do it.” It was as if this huge load had been lifted, a sigh of relief. All of a sudden the great black cloud on top of the COTS program had been released. That was perhaps the key interaction.\\n\\n Who was the Source Selection Authority for that? I think it was still Scott Horowitz." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was Doug [Douglas R.] Cooke the second round." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re right, yes. I’m not sure there was an explanation of selection, because the Space Act Agreement is a lot more flexible than the regular one. My personal feeling—we’re talking about feelings here—is that setting aside all technicalities, the single biggest reason why they selected us in the second round of COTS is that we didn’t have any financial risk, and they had just been burned badly by an organization that essentially didn’t have a lot of substance from the financial standpoint." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Earlier we talked a little bit about George Nield and the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation. You also worked with the ISS Program Office and their visiting vehicle requirements. Can you share with us about your relationship with that NASA group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Certainly. Both for them and for us, it was kind of a new experience. We started with a little bit of a head start because we had a number of people, starting with [G.] David Low at the time, soon joined by others, that had substantial Space Station and NASA experience. I myself, as I mentioned, worked on both the Apollo Program and the Space Shuttle, so we knew that the process of gaining confidence for spacecraft to operate near the Space Station was something that was very hard to codify in a document like the famous IRD [Interface Requirements Document].\\n\\n The IRD was probably an initial attempt at explaining what operating near the Space Station and human spaceflight was to somebody who had no background experience, kind of trying to simplify things. In that sense we of course read the IRD very carefully, but we soon realized that that was just a framework, and you actually had to do a lot more than simply check the boxes on that IRD.\\n\\n We were initially a little naïve in how we approached the issue of avionics redundancy. We thought we could reuse a lot of what we had from other spacecraft programs. As we attempted to do that, we ended up with an avionics architecture which was hopelessly complex. And much to our amazement, the folks down at the ISS Program Office started suggesting to us ways in which we could simplify the problem a lot, at the expense of abandoning some of the products and devices that we already had. The trade was, “The good news is you can do this in a lot simpler way. The bad news is you’re going to have to develop some new stuff to do it a simpler way.”\\n\\n The relationship started very well, in the sense that there was obviously a desire by the program office to help us and make us succeed. At the same time it was obvious to us that the program office itself was kind of trying to figure out what to do with this beast. I think the relationship was one of—I don’t want to say the blind leading the blind, that’s an exaggeration—but of two organizations. One that knew a lot about commercial low-cost space, the other that knew a lot about traditional government procurement and tests, and both trying to find a way to do things in a satisfactory way.\\n\\n There was a lot of iteration, but overall—we haven’t approached the Space Station yet, but we’ve gone through a lot of mission simulations and all of the avionics in the spacecraft have talked to all of the avionics in the Space Station. So far things are looking very, very promising. The people I’m talking about are the bigger Space Station Program Office. The COTS program office in particular, my view is that their main role and their main utility was as a lubricant for this machinery that is the ISS Program Office and the Orbital Cygnus—that’s the name of our spacecraft—to mesh together without grinding and without noises. So that’s part of what they did, and in that role they’ve been extraordinarily effective.\\n\\n Their other role has been one of identifying and marshaling the ordinary NASA resources, outside of the Space Station office, that could somehow help the combined NASA Space Station office, Orbital, COTS program to work. For instance, on the first launch of Antares, they scrounged unique devices to for instance measure the sound environment around the rocket to characterize the environment around the rocket that the spacecraft will experience during launch.\\n\\n Some unique high-speed tracking cameras with which we could follow the flight—and thank goodness nothing bad happened. As a matter of fact, everything went amazingly well, but had we had any anomaly, that high-speed imagery would have been priceless. That’s a little bit of what the specific that the NASA JSC COTS program office did for us, and still does." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know there are many more areas where I’d like to pick your brain, but I’d like to ask Rebecca Wright if she has any topics she’d like to ask you about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was just going to ask one. You also developed this partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport [MARS, Wallops Island, Virginia]. Tell us why you feel that was such a value to Orbital, and for future space launches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not any single reason, but a variety of reasons combined. I think I like to claim paternity of the idea of using Wallops. There was certainly a political element, I must be frank about that. At the time we had been very close to [Maryland] Senator [Barbara A.] Mikulski’s office. She has been always a great friend of Orbital, dating from the time when one of our groups was actually headquartered in Maryland. She was also a friend of Wallops. There was a certain political element, but that by itself probably did not have sufficient cause for me to suggest or for the rest of the team to concur in the selection of Wallops.\\n\\n Because Wallops has a lot of drawbacks. It is underdeveloped compared with, say, the Florida coast, that has all sorts of facilities and supplies and transportation. Wallops was, and probably still is, rather underdeveloped. On the other hand, we had had a very positive experience dealing with Wallops [Flight Facility] as a launch range for several Pegasus flights. I think at the time we were about to have a Minotaur flight from there. We knew that Wallops as an organization, because of its size and its culture, was closer to what Orbital is as a company, organization, culture, and so on.\\n\\n Also, at the time Florida had kind of been taken by storm by SpaceX, but still it offered a lot of advantages. It certainly was easier to transport things through Florida than it was to transport things to Wallops. Florida had an existing infrastructure. Perhaps the pebble that tilted the balance in the direction of Wallops was we wanted some financial help from the various states’ space-promoting organizations. Space Florida, in the case of Florida, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in the case of theoretically the combined Commonwealth of Virginia and State of Maryland—but the Commonwealth of Virginia is the 800-pound gorilla in that partnership. So most of the help that we could get from MARS really had to come from Richmond [Virginia] and not from Annapolis [Maryland].\\n\\n Both organizations proposed to us the funding of the new infrastructure that would be required, either at Wallops in the case of MARS, or Florida in the case of Space Florida. Space Florida was going through a transition period, both in their leadership as well as in their relationship with the state. Essentially the proposal they presented to us required really a financial miracle, very similar to what NASA found in their hands with Rocketplane Kistler. They were going to go to this investment bank, which were going to give the organization a loan. Whereas MARS at the time proposed to us direct funding from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth would issue some bonds which I think were tax free, and those bonds would be used to fund MARS.\\n\\n So that, plus the geographic proximity, plus the political support, plus the good experience. We’ve operated from the Eastern Range in Florida, we’ve operated from Wallops, we’ve operated from Vandenberg [Air Force Base, California], we’ve operated from Kwajalein [Marshall Islands]. I mean, we have a lot of experience with ranges. My analogy was that in Florida, at the Eastern test range we would be the 200-pound spider monkey. If we operated out of Vandenberg we’d be the 200-pound chimp. If we operated out of Wallops we’d be the 200-pound gorilla, in that we would own the range and their priorities and attention.\\n\\n It has happened, although right now we’re faced with a rather ironic circumstance. We do have a range conflict at Wallops—between two Orbital flights! The one to the Space Station this fall, and the one to the Moon, the LADEE [Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer] Program. And the NASA LADEE office and the NASA Space Station office are at odds. I think each one thinks they have priority. So sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for. All of these things put together made us decide in favor of Wallops and MARS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We don’t want to take up all of your time this morning. Could you share with us, what do you feel was the biggest challenge for you in developing these vehicles for ISS resupply?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If your question is specifically limited to the vehicles, you probably know that the availability and supply of these AJ-26 engines is an issue. We originally thought that the inventory that Aerojet had accumulated in Sacramento [California] would have had a much higher yield than it appears to be having. Then, on the spacecraft side, I already mentioned the avionics development. We did have a false start and we had to recover from that. I’m happy to report that I think the recovery worked.\\n\\n However, both of these vehicle issues were overshadowed by the unexpected and, in retrospect, kind of pedestrian problems that we’ve had in setting up the launch pad and the fuel farm. There was nothing wrong with the equipment or design, but implementation had a lot of issues. Bad welds, valves that didn’t work, resonances in the fueling system that caused it not to operate. The problem with all of these developments is that one tiny little thing can delay this much bigger development. So I’d say that the number one challenge we had was setting up the launch pad and the fueling system, and the origin of those problems was not as good an engineering job, both in the design and the actual construction, as we did on the rocket and the spacecraft." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We do want to ask—we were talking to Mr. Thompson about the [fiscal year 2011 C3PO budget] augmentation. It’s rare to have someone say, “I think we’re going to have more money for you, would you like to have it?” Could you share with us how you learned about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We learned that SpaceX had asked for more money, so we essentially went and said, “Wait a minute, you’re already giving us much less money than you gave SpaceX. Now you’re going to give them more money without giving something to us?”\\n\\n NASA said, “You guys are right. So what do you propose doing?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, given the breadbox of money that you guys gave us with COTS originally, all we thought we could do with the NASA money and our own money was one demo [demonstration] flight.” And that first flight carries a spacecraft.\\n\\n SpaceX, on the other hand, had promised three flights, for a little bit more money admittedly. When we heard that SpaceX was going to propose a reduction in the number of flights from three to two in exchange for $100 million more, we said, “How about if we give you one extra flight for $100 million, and that flight will not carry spacecraft, it will just be a flight of the rocket itself?”\\n\\n NASA said, “That sounds like a really good idea,” and that was the deal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you. Are there any last thoughts or reflections you’d like to share about your work with the COTS program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Antonio L. Elias", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, just a reminder to everybody that we haven’t rendezvoused with Space Station yet, and to paraphrase opera, the play isn’t over until the fat lady sings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We certainly wish you the best of luck. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00680", + "metadata": { + "category": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office Oral History Project 2012 - 2013", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/Thom-King_Graham_Reilley/thom-king_graham_reilley.htm", + "original_file_name": "Thompson-KingS_4-24-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/Thompson-KingS/Thompson-KingS_4-24-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Sumara Thompson-King", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 24 April 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Sumara M. Thompson-King" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 24, 2015. This oral history is being conducted with Sumara Thompson-King in Houston, Texas, for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Ms. Sumara Thompson-King serves as the NASA General Counsel, appointed to this position in June 2014, and this is part two of an oral history session. The first one was conducted on March 4, earlier this year. Thank you for stopping in to see us in Houston.\\n\\n We would like to start today with when you went to NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC], and you were responsible for litigating protests before the General Services Administration [GSA] Board of Contract Appeals. About four years later in 1995, you became Deputy Associate General Counsel. If you would, give us an overview of the range of work that you were doing in those positions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the reasons I was excited about going to NASA Headquarters from Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] was that I was going to learn how to be a litigator. At the Center, I was focused on giving advice to programs, and fortunately, we didn’t have much litigation. Contractors were not suing us. There weren’t disputes. Having the opportunity to go to Headquarters meant that I would learn, and be trained by senior attorneys there who handled claims.\\n\\n For instance, if NASA had a government contract with a company, and there was a disagreement, the company would file a claim against us. That claim would be resolved in one of three ways. The parties would settle that dispute themselves or go to court or go to one of the administrative boards. Also, when an agency in the federal government made a contract award and someone thought that it was an improper award, one of the competitors might file a protest.\\n\\n Bid protests were another type of litigation. Bid protests were different from contract claims. Bid protests challenged an agency decision to award a contract to a company, while a contract claim was filed by the contractor who had been awarded a contract and during the performance of that contract, a dispute arose. When I started work on litigation matters, the bid protest litigation was a very busy practice area at the time.\\n\\n In 1991, the reason I was handling cases before the General Services Administration Board of Contract Appeals was because of a statute called the Brooks Act. The Brooks Act had a broad definition, in those days, of items called ADPE, automatic data processing equipment which we now call IT, information technology. A protest involving anything that fit within the broad definition of ADPE in the Brooks Act, was filed with and decided by the General Services Board of Contract Appeals [GSBCA].\\n\\n Think about NASA. Everything we bought had ADPE in it. It was really a challenge for the Agency, because all of a sudden, decisions that resulted in a contract being awarded to one company rather than to another company, were now being challenged before the administrative contract board at GSA, the GSBCA. The GSBCA heard all protests involving ADPE.\\n\\n So, because ADPE was an essential aspect of most of the NASA acquisitions for satellites and exploration programs activities, many bid protests of NASA contract award decisions were within the jurisdiction of the GSBCA. This was a very different experience for NASA. Until the GSBCA had this new bid protest authority, on the GAO, now known as the Government Accountability Office, had statutory authority to decide bid protests. NASA was accustomed to the GAO process but NASA was not accustomed to this new process that the GSBCA was using. The GSBCA process was more like a court trial than an administrative review. To some agency officials, it seemed that this new authority encouraged more protests.\\n\\n Of course the folks at GSA will tell you that what was happening then was that government agencies were using more ADPE, or what we now call IT, information technology. The GSBCA was really on the cutting edge of dealing with all kinds of issues across the government regarding the acquisition of information technology that was used by government agencies to carry out government programs.\\n\\n You might remember that there was a big brouhaha about the Department of Treasury trying to upgrade and install an IT system, and the contract award was protested by a company that wasn’t selected. The GSBCA handled that protest. Also, at that time cell phone usage was starting to become more popular. Remember the government used to have the FTS, Federal Telephone System, and then the federal government began to contract with commercial companies for both landline and cell phone services. I can’t remember now all of the companies that we were contracting with, but back then Sprint, AT&T, because it was pre-Verizon, were competing to get federal contracts to provide telecommunication services. We were really engaged in a lot of acquisitions for this new technology, and the awarded contracts were lucrative for companies. If a company was not selected for a contract award that meant that they had no contract, which meant no profits for the unsuccessful company. Many of such unsuccessful companies believed that filing a bid protest at the GSBCA was a vital opportunity to have a second chance to be awarded a contract. It was an interesting time.\\n\\n Those bid protests filed at the GSBCA had to be litigated and resolved quickly. From the date the case was filed to the date of decision was 45 days. What happened in that 45-day period was an extremely streamlined trial court process. The parties could actually conduct depositions and request documents, which was something that parties could not do when a protest was filed at and decided by the GAO. That was significant, because it meant that you had senior leaders in the Agency who could be called by the other side to testify before the GSBCA. GAO did not have authority to hold hearings, so it did not have authority to require senior Agency officials to testify. GAO made all of its decisions based on a paper record only. Think about how this new ability of an unsuccessful company to hire a law firm, and have that law firm file a petition to have the GSBCA require a senior Agency leader to testify. Think about how this new ability affected the operational activities of the Agency.\\n\\n Attorneys representing the protester were requesting that source selection official be available so that those attorneys could depose source selection officials. That meant that attorney could ask them questions about the decisions they made and use that testimony in preparation for trial. Then, the selection officials would have to appear at trial and provide testimony and be subject to cross-examination. All of the depositions, the hearing and the submission of documents, pleadings and briefs had to be completed because the decision of the board had to occur before that 45-day period ended. This was a high-octane process.\\n\\n The reason that it was 45 days was because when Congress established and authorized this process the members responded to the complaint they heard from Agencies that, “You’re going to slow down our operations if we have to stop for these protests.” That’s the key thing with all big protests. Bid protest statutes require that all performance on that particular awarded contract has to stop when a protest is filed. Stopping for 45 days, Congress said, “Is not too much of a delay to ensure fairness in the contract award process.” It also was meant to incentivize the agencies to do it right—run a fair competition or risk a bid protest.\\n\\n Many Agencies believed that they were doing it right, but Congress was giving unsuccessful companies the opportunity to stop everything for 45 days, even if the case seemed frivolous. The filing of a frivolous protest was the big concern for most agencies, and for the companies that won the award.\\n\\n I came to Headquarters to learn how to handle those cases protests, as well as contractor claims. There was a senior attorney at Headquarters at that time who handled all of the GSBCA protests. I was going to be working with him, and the plan was for him to train me, and both he and I would handle the protests. Well, and I’m being candid here, he came into my office one day and informed me that he would no longer be doing any of the GSBCA protests, and they were all mine, and good luck. He closed the door and left.\\n\\n I was stunned, because I hadn’t been there a year. I think maybe I’d been there six months. I don’t even know if I had been there six months. I said to myself, “Gee, can people do that? He can just decide he’s not going to handle cases anymore?” My supervisor at the time didn’t exactly say that I was going to be the only one handling protests. I don’t remember how he characterized it, but I got the message I was going to be the only one doing it.\\n\\n If you look at all of the NASA GSBCA protests from around 1991 until I don’t know when, my name was on every single one of the cases. It actually turned out to be a huge benefit for me. First of all, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I learned. I handled every GSBCA protest across the Agency, which meant I had to travel to Centers and meet with people at the Centers, learn what the case was about, and work with the attorney there who had supported the source evaluation board that conducted the competition. I met the contracting officers at each Center, I met the source selection official at each Center.\\n\\n In those days, the source selection official on some of the major acquisitions—because these were major activities where we were getting protests— was the Center Director. I received a [NASA] Exceptional Achievement Medal because of the protests that I worked at Glenn Research Center [Cleveland, Ohio, formerly Lewis Research Center]. We had three or four contract awards that came right behind each other, and each was protested. At that time, the Center Director was Larry [Lawrence J.] Ross. Here’s what I learned from Larry Ross.\\n\\n First, to many people I believe that I still looked young and inexperienced, and I could look in people’s eyes and see that look of concern that said, “Are we sure she knows what she’s doing?” I don’t remember him having that look of concern when he looked at me, but I had that concern about him. Here’s why. We went through the trial preparation process, and I clearly remember getting him ready for his deposition. I cringed because he couldn’t remember anything. I thought to myself, “He’s the source selection official; this was a major IT acquisition. He doesn’t remember why he selected this company, or what the other companies did?” His recall just wasn’t there.\\n\\n I went away very nervous about that. I was nervous because I was thinking he’s not going to be able to do what he’s supposed to do on that witness stand, and then they’re going to blame me because I’m going to lose this case. The Center attorney and I worked with him a little bit more, but he just didn’t have a lot of time to talk to us because he was the Center Director and he had a full schedule each day. But we prepped him so that he knew the kind of questions we were going to ask him and that the other side would ask him when we got to the trial.\\n\\n I learned something from Larry Ross. He was a Center Director. He was a very busy man. He didn’t have instant recall of everything that came across his desk and everything he worked on. But, when we got to that hearing, he was stupendous. He remembered everything that he couldn’t remember the first time I met with him, or I thought he couldn’t remember. He was articulate and he clearly and in detail explained his analysis of the offers. He remembered facts and details about the case. Once he had had a chance to go back and look at the file, refresh his recollection, he was just a fabulous witness, and we won both of the protests where he was the selection official.\\n\\n It also taught me a lot about the workload and the ability of the leaders of the Agency, how much they have to do each day. Maybe they don’t recall things immediately, but if you give them time, and they sit down and they have some time to prepare, they are remarkable people, who because of the type of things, the variety of things that come across their desk that they have to have recall on, are able to explain why they did certain things. I also learned through this process that there are some leaders in the Agency who have much more of a business sense than other leaders, while other leaders are more technical in their approach to things than others.\\n\\n Larry Ross was interesting to me because he not only had a technical knowledge, but he also had a business savvy. He was very good at explaining to the GSBCA official both technical and cost matters. There was no jury, it was just the GSBCA judge who really wasn’t familiar with NASA programs. In 45 days, GSBCA judges had to become familiar with NASA’s acquisition practice and culture, how we did things, and how this selection official thought, and how he weighed his determination. Larry was very good at explaining all of this to someone outside the Agency. He was quite memorable for me, and taught me, okay, don’t underestimate your source selection officials. He also set the bar high, because there were some people who really did have a tough time when they got into a GSBCA hearing.\\n\\n I had a very negative experience, very sad experience, involving the head at White Sands Test Facility [New Mexico], who made a contract selection. He flew into Washington, because all of the hearings were held at the GSBCA in Washington, DC. He was very troubled because he thought his integrity was being questioned in his selection decision. The attorneys on the other side were challenging him and they said things like, “Did you treat this other company the same way as you treated the company you selected? We know you have a relationship with people that work with the selected company. We found this evidence of your longstanding relationship with people in that company, that’s really why you selected this company, not because they presented a better proposal or more cost-effective proposal. It’s because of your relationship with them that clouded your judgment.” He was listening to them and he had been very concerned during the depositions when the attorneys asked him these questions, and his concern did not subside when we got to trial.\\n\\n That day he was having a very difficult day, physically. During the lunch break, he had a heart attack. He died at GW [George Washington University Hospital]. I learned from that experience to take care of our witnesses a little more, really talk to them and make sure that they understand this is not about them personally, this is about people wanting to get a contract. I learned that I needed to repeatedly tell the NASA witnesses that the attorneys on the other side are going to say things in a particular way that may not be the way things happened, but that’s how they need to present the case, and I have to refute it, and together we will do that. It was a very difficult time for all of us. The case was postponed for about a month, and then we proceeded. It’s interesting, that’s one of the cases I don’t remember what the outcome was when we finally got a decision, because it was devastating for all of us to lose our NASA colleague.\\n\\n The leader of White Sands passed away, so the whole operation was affected—they had never had a protest like this, and then they lost the leader of the organization. It was a very difficult time for all of us, and as a matter of fact the attorney from the Center, it was actually at Johnson Space Center [Houston, Texas] who worked on the case, left the Agency shortly after that. It really broke him up, really bothered him. I stayed in litigation. It taught me something. I regret that I had to learn it that way, but learned to take care of my folks better. Understand and be more aware of the stress that they may be under, and work at addressing it more effectively.\\n\\n Because I was the lead attorney on all of NASA’s GSBCA protest cases, I worked across the Agency, had cases in California, and had cases in Cleveland, Houston, and Florida at KSC [Kennedy Space Center]. [Robert L.] Bob Crippen was a source selection official, and I was his lawyer, and I work for NASA. I worked at Headquarters, and okay, it seemed that astronauts and former astronauts are always around Headquarters serving in some position or coming to Headquarters for meetings. That was my NASA world. Not that it wasn’t a big deal for me, to meet astronauts. But, to be an effective attorney in this Agency, you cannot be awestruck because of the astronauts you advise, work with and talk to frequently.\\n\\n That’s not the world outside – most people do not get to meet NASA astronauts and when they do, it’s a big deal. One of my cases reminded me of that. We had been working on a protest involving this base operations contract down at Kennedy Space Center. The longstanding contractor had not received the award, along with some other folks, other companies, that submitted proposals. We had three companies to protest the decision that Bob Crippen made. Bob was comfortable with his decision, he was relaxed. He was prepared. He’s just very laid-back. I guess you have to be when you’ve been a [Space] Shuttle commander, nothing’s going to ruffle you too much. His deposition preparation sessions went fine, he was ready.\\n\\n Usually, when a law firm is representing a protestor, the senior partners don’t handle the depositions. Generally, it’s the associates or a lower level partner that had been working on the cases that are assigned to work the protest conduct the depositions. On the day that Bob Crippen was to be deposed, I gave him the advice that I usually give: “They’re going to really come at you, they’re going to ask you these hard questions. Remember what we talked about. Respond truthfully. Don’t let them lead you to answer. Answer only the question they ask you.”\\n\\n Bob and I walked into the room, everybody else was already there. When I walked into the room, I paused, I really did; I paused, because the room was full. Attorneys were there who I had never seen. These attorneys were all men who are about Bob’s age or older, in their best suits. Senior partners, the name partners from the law firms were there. There were attorneys present from four law firms, representing each contractor that was a party to the protest.\\n\\n The thing to remember about protests is that whenever a company decides to file a protest, they hire a law firm and the company officials don’t get to see the documentation that is provided to the law firm. Company officials don’t get to see this information, because that would give them insight into the competitor’s information. That’s why they have to hire outside law firms, and they have to truly rely on those outside law firms to represent them and to understand their business. When any source selection official is being deposed or testifies at trial, he or she is only talking to the attorneys who are outside counsel, who are from a law firm typically, who are representing the companies. No company officials are present.\\n\\n If, for instance, Bob Crippen had made an award and it involved ABC Company, he likely would have known the president of ABC Company. It is likely they would have met on several previous occasions, and would be familiar with each other. Bob was not familiar with any of the attorneys in the room he entered and none of them had ever met him or had the opportunity to meet him. When Bob Crippen walked into the room, the attorneys stood up. Bob and I were on one side of the deposition table, directly across from the attorneys. I said, “We’re ready to begin, and I’d like to introduce”—before I could even say, “I’d like to introduce Commander Robert Crippen,” somebody tore across the room to come and shake his hand. I was nearly knocked over.\\n\\n I’m standing there—and I just moved out of the way. I had to sit back and wait for 20 minutes because everybody wanted to shake his hand—and this was before—can you imagine if they could have taken selfies? Every attorney got a chance to shake his hand, introduce himself to Bob Crippen and identify their client and their law firm. Finally, all the introductions were done, people sat down, and his deposition was twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s nice to be in awe of an American hero, isn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m like, “Oh my goodness, where are the hard questions?” You talk about softball questions, well that’s what they asked, and I know Bob’s wondering what all that preparation was for —but he never batted an eyelash. I think he was used to it. He didn’t say to me, “Sumara, this happens,” but I’m sure it happened frequently.\\n\\n Another lesson learned. When you have an American hero as a client, people treat American heroes differently. We ended up losing that case, because they went after everybody else with full force. We ended up losing, but they did not go after Bob Crippen, they did not attack him. Not at all.\\n\\n Yes. I had some very interesting experiences. As time has gone on, now, where I am, I see how folks treat Gerst [William H. Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations (HEO)] and how folks treat Charlie [NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden]. Since I’ve been at Headquarters, Charlie hasn’t been a selection official, but Gerst has, and, yes, your status in the Agency does make a difference. Even in court. Judges, respond to Gerstenmaier very differently than they might respond and react to a program manager who might be a source selection official.\\n\\n One of the things we have learned when we are dealing with HEO programs that are the subject of a court case is how effective even the mere presence of Mr. Gerstenmaier is to the judge. In one case, we had to ask Gerst, “We need you to just sit in the courtroom. We don’t need you to say anything, but they need to see you’re there.” The NASA attorney told me later, that at times Gerst would nod his head, and they would see the judge looking over at Gerst nodding his agreement. Those nods were important “testimony.”\\n\\n I had the opportunity to work with a lot of Center Directors. I got to work with procurement officers on major acquisitions at the Centers in the Agency. People got to know me. James [E.] Hattaway was a contract specialist on that case where Bob Crippen was the selection official. Jim Hattaway became the Associate Center Director years later, worked his way up, became Procurement Officer, and then eventually became the Associate Center Director. I’ve known him since he and I were both junior level colleagues, him working in procurement, me as the attorney. People have asked me, “How do people across NASA know you?” It’s because of the GSBA protests I worked in my career. How fortunate that assignment became.\\n\\n In working every one of those cases, I had the opportunity to meet and develop relationships with folks. They had the opportunity to meet me, and I think it developed some trust, because I am the lawyer representing the Agency. You have to gain that trust with folks. So if you know somebody at the Center who everybody else knows, that was also a way to develop relationships. I knew Jim, so newer people who were coming along might at first say, “Why is a lawyer coming from Headquarters?” And raise their eyebrows. When Jim would come into the room and give me a hug, I had credibility. Those relationships helped me over the years to do my job, to offer advice, which was accepted by folks that might have been a little leery, but having someone at the Center who would give me credibility helped as time went on. Those GSBCA days were very important.\\n\\n Also I hate to write. I really don’t like writing. I learned to do it pretty well, I’m pretty good at it, but I don’t like doing it. At GSBCA we had to write and prepare numerous documents for every one of those cases—had to write the legal briefs, help the contracting officers write their statements. I did a lot of writing. Folks knew I could write. That helped.\\n\\n One of the things I tell young attorneys is you need to be able to write. Competence means something, because you never know who’s going to read what you’re writing. The source selection officials would read the legal arguments that I wrote, and I had to be accurate and truthful, but I also had to have them feel that I was explaining their decision making, and why they did certain things, so that when they read it, they wouldn’t say, “She doesn’t understand,” or, “That’s not true.”\\n\\n I became pretty skilled at capturing the thoughts of our source selection officials and the source evaluation boards, and skilled in presenting their case to the GSBCA. That helped me to understand how we conduct our operations, how the engineers and scientists analyze and interpret things as they’re going through their decision making. I had to gain their confidence in knowing that I could effectively express their thoughts well to someone outside NASA, so that my work would result in a successful win for us at the GSBCA. All of that helped me get credibility across the Agency, learn about the Agency, and just improve my skills.\\n\\n As time went on, we had to have other folks, other than just me, handling GSBCA protests. We hired two attorneys. One of them was [Bernard J.] Bernie Roan, who’s now the Chief Counsel at Johnson Space Center, and Vincent [A.] Salgado. The three of us really became the protest attorneys at Headquarters, and every protest in the agency was handled was handled by one of us. Eventually, GSBCA’s authority over bid protests went away, and that authority was given to the—used to be the General Accounting Office, now it’s the Government Accountability Office, GAO. All bid protests go before GAO now. We continued, the three of us, Bernie, Vincent, and I continued to handle those protests before the GAO.\\n\\n The way that protests are handled at NASA is that the Headquarters attorneys represent the Agency. The Center attorneys work with the assigned Headquarters attorney. The Headquarters attorney would be what’s called the “first chair” attorney. HQ was lead in the case, but we always worked with the Center attorney, because they had been working on the competition since it started. Representing the Agency gave us great training and great experience with working with folks across the Agency, and working with different programs. When I became Deputy in the contracts division of OGC, I spent more time managing those protest activities than actually handling cases myself. We hired another attorney who was also handling the protests, so I wasn’t sitting first chair, I managed the protest process, and managed how we worked with the Centers in litigating contract claims. Claims are adjudicated before what’s known as the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals.\\n\\n A short footnote here. NASA used to have its own Board of Contract Appeals. We didn’t generate enough work for the Board. The General Counsel then, who was [Edward A.] Ed Frankle, reached an agreement with the head of the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals, so we abolished the NASA Board, and all of NASA cases were to be heard by the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals [ASBCA]. NASA employed two attorneys to serve on its Board that was being abolished. One of them had accepted a position as an ASBCA judge, while the General Counsel decided to still keep the other attorney on the rolls as a NASA employee, but that other attorney would work as an ASBCA judge. Eventually as time went on that individual retired.\\n\\n Today, we don’t have a NASA position on the ASBCA, but we provide funding to the ASBCA, so that we can support their activities, because they serve as the administrative forum for addressing claims filed against NASA. As Deputy in the contracts division I was responsible for managing the claims activities and our relationship with the Armed Services Board of Contract Appeals. The other thing that I did, once I became Deputy, was really managing the office and working on the program activities, and how we provided legal advice and support to the program activities. The attorneys in OGC’s contracts division offered assistance to the Centers in how they provided legal advice to the source evaluation boards on issues that would arise during a competition. NASA was conducting more complex acquisitions, so there were more complex issues in these new competitive acquisitions that the Centers hadn’t seen in previous competitions.\\n\\n We also wanted to establish consistency across the Agency, so we would have attorneys at Headquarters who would offer their senior level advice to the attorneys at the Centers. Sometimes that advice was welcomed and sought, other times it was, “Why are you calling us? We’ve got this.” We walked a careful line, because we know what our role is as Headquarters. We were there to assist, and there were times when some folks might have thought, “We really don’t need your help.” At Headquarters, we understood that some felt that way, but we had to explain why we were providing assistance. That took having diplomatic but firm conversations with folks. That was one of the responsibilities I had. Because I’d worked protests, I had some credibility. Because I also had worked with other program officials, we used those relationships to start building more credibility so that when we would offer our assistance it was more readily accepted. There would still be some pushback from some folks, but most program officials were accepting of our help.\\n\\n We were very busy with a number of major acquisitions that were going on in the Agency. We were also very busy providing input on the Federal Acquisition Regulation [FAR] that were being developed and updated. The Federal Acquisition Regulation is authorized by three agencies, NASA, General Services Administration, and DoD [Department of Defense]. NASA is a key player in developing those rules that everyone in the government must follow. Therefore, we had an attorney who was the legal support to one of the teams that was helping to develop those regulations, and that team included someone from the Policy Division in the Office of Procurement.\\n\\n We were busy doing that because the Competition in Contracting Act had passed in 1984. Now I haven’t done this in so long, I can’t believe I’m almost forgetting specific legislative history because I’ve been out of procurement for a while subsequently. Clinger-Cohen [Act] was passed, different acts were passed that were modifying the Competition in Contracting Act. Whenever there was a legislative change, we would have to go in and make changes to the FAR. Our Office and the Office of Procurement was very busy in those days, and that was when—and I can see his face, he’s no longer in Congress right now—from Virginia, and I’ll think of his name—Tom Davis was very active. There are very few people now – very few people on the Hill – who are very knowledgeable and active in developing federal procurement legislation. You don’t see much activity, not as much as in the ‘80s and ’90s, particularly when Chairman [Jack] Brooks and others were in Congress. These days you’ll see slight changes from time to time included in the DoD authorization bill, which may include language about how NASA must conduct acquisitions.\\n\\n This was the reason we paid attention to the DOD authorization bill, and this is another story, a little footnote here, NASA is covered by Title 10, which is the Armed Services Procurement Act, whereas other civilian agencies are covered by Title 41, which is the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act. The reason we are covered under Title 10, there are multiple reasons, but when the Space Act was passed, one of the things it did was to abolish NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics]. This is the year, 2015, that we’re celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NACA. When NACA was abolished as part of the authorization of the Space Act, its authority was transferred to NASA. Remember, NACA was started on the DoD side, so all of their procurement activities were conducted under the armed services statute, and then NASA continued its procurement activities under the armed services statute, even though we were very clearly a civilian agency.\\n\\n Frankly, it’s where we want to be, because NASA work is more akin to the type of work DoD does, than it is akin to the acquisitions made by other civilian agencies. That has raised some interesting issues over time, because some members of Congress don’t realize NASA is covered under Title 10, so we would see changes in Title 10 that referred to, “DoD, the Secretary of DoD,” and no mention of NASA. We’re out in limbo, because it doesn’t cover us. It would cover the Coast Guard and it would cover DoD, but not NASA.\\n\\n Those were the breadth of things that I worked on when I was Deputy Associate General Counsel for Contracts. Probably a lot more detail than you were looking for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And, I’m sure you left a lot out. It’s an amazing span. Like you mentioned, what a great opportunity to learn a lot in a short amount of time about the Agency as a whole, to give you that background that each Center is the same but each Center is different, to help you do that. Share with us, as you moved, how you took that information and how you built upon it in the next years, and some of the adventures you went on as well. One of the things we started to talk about in March was NASA exercising its Other Transactions Authority [OTA] to enable partnerships with commercial businesses. Although NASA had had partnerships of different ways, this was the new way of doing business, or NASA was looking at it as doing business in a different way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was very interesting. We did develop an additional way of doing business. I say additional because we still conduct much of our business through contracts that we award, but when we started with COTS [Commercial Orbital Transportation Services], that’s when NASA branched out into a new direction, interpreting our “other transactions” authority, or actually using it in a way we had not previously used it. That Language, we learned, was inserted into the bill as it was being written, by Paul [G.] Dembling. He came and talked with the NASA attorneys at one of our meetings. We asked him, “What were you thinking when you added this language to the bill?” He responded, “I just put it in to give us flexibility. Didn’t know how we would use it, what we would use it for, but we put it in there.”\\n\\n No one else, no other agency in 1958, had that kind of language. For the longest time, because lawyers can be conservative and careful, NASA used this authority sparingly. There was a concern that if we used it, and if we used it wrong, Congress would take it away from us, so let’s not use it. So we didn’t use it, I think, mostly because lawyers were giving very cautious advice about it. NASA did start using it, but it was for things that were really under the radar. I thought that meant that NASA only used the authority a few times, then what I found out was that NASA had lots of what are called Space Act Agreements. I remember asking another NASA attorney, “What’s a Space Act Agreement? What is that? I’ve never heard of that.” “Shhh” was the response.\\n\\n At Goddard, the only person who saw the Space Act Agreements [SAA] was the Center Chief Counsel. There were lots of them, but all of them had to come to the Center Chief Counsel for drafting and concurrence. SAAs could be used for any purpose that wasn’t an acquisition of services or supplies needed for NASA operations. Mostly, NASA entered into a SAA with a company, college, or university doing research so that it could be a research partner. NASA and its partner would provide their own resources to perform the research, but they would share research data. But there was clearly no exchange of funds. No exchange of funds.\\n\\n When Administrator [Michael D.] Griffin came in, he basically said, “We need to do something different, because I’m hearing from people outside the Agency that NASA is not supporting commercial industry. Find a way to support commercial industry.” We started looking at NASA’s “Other Transactions” Authority, and figuring out a way to use it. I know we’ve talked about this before, but the challenge was how to get everybody to understand, number one, NASA can’t just do anything it wants, under the authority. There were NASA folks who believed that we could use OTA to do anything NASA wanted to do. Everything’s okay, nobody will look at what we’re doing, and nobody can stop us from what we’re doing. There were really individuals in the Agency who looked at the use of NASA’s OTA as a new way to get out from under the Federal Acquisition Regulation. They would say, “Hey, NASA wants to build this rocket, and I want to buy it from that company, and I want to buy bearings or wheels from this company. I’m going to use the money in NASA’s budget, and I have a plan and I’ll share it with people in the Agency, but I don’t have to tell anybody else about it because I know what I’m doing and I’m going to move forward with this plan using NASA’s OTA.”\\n\\n I, and other NASA attorneys had the task to calm everybody down and explain that NASA didn’t and doesn’t have authority to operate like that. But truly there were people who felt that because we’re NASA and because we are exploring space, we can operate that way. That may have been what we could have done with the Apollo Program and the Gemini Program, but we’re a long way from Apollo and Gemini, so we can’t do those things now. We are getting scrutiny over every dollar we spend and over every decision we make. Also, I had to remind folks that there is this thing called bid protests. NASA folks would tell the NASA lawyers, “Oh, we’re not using the FAR, so protests don’t matter. This can’t be litigated.” The lawyers respond by saying, “There are people over on K Street, the K Street lawyers would be excited to have the opportunity to test that view through a lawsuit in court.”\\n\\n The NASA lawyers struggled to educate the programs and get some officials to understand that use of OTA was not an unfettered opportunity. The lawyers advised, “We have to develop some type of process for using OTA, it has to be rational, and it has to be fair. It doesn’t have to be under the FAR, we don’t want to make it under the FAR. But NASA had to create some type of fair process that had credibility that showed we were not making arbitrary and capricious decisions.” That was the huge challenge every step of the way at every level in the program chain, with folks who were involved in developing COTS. I won’t say every person had that point of view, but even the folks who didn’t, even the folks who understood would say, “We understand we’ve got to have some rules, but we don’t like that rule, we like this one.” The lawyers would have to explain why some rules applied to use of OTA and others did not.\\n\\n We were constantly trying to explain how we thought we could effectively let them do what they wanted to do operate the program the way they wanted to, but to do it so in a way that NASA would not don’t get a legal challenge in court. The NASA lawyers knew the GAO did not have jurisdiction over activities conducted using OTA—we believed this. But NASA had never done this before, used OTA in this way. The lawyers recognized that a court would welcome an opportunity to review NASA’s new use of OTA. We knew what legal arguments we could make successfully, and we also knew what legal arguments wouldn’t be successful in explaining what we did. And we said, “No, the program can’t take that approach. We will lose on that point. We will lose.” “You don’t know that we will lose,” would be the response from a program official, and we would respond, “You’re right. But here’s what we do know. Based on our knowledge of how courts operate and interpret law, this is why we have a strong belief and indication that NASA will lose in court if we do certain things.”\\n\\n Establishing parameters and getting agreement within the Agency was the constant struggle, the daily struggle, defining the appropriate use of NASA’s Other Transactions Authority. One of the things I remember when we drafted the language for the Announcement for Proposals, even things like calling it an Announcement for Proposals was important. I told them, “This is not a procurement, you can’t use procurement terminology. We have to make sure we are keeping this separate from the procurement process.” We didn’t call the solicitation an RFP, Request for Proposals, we called it an Announcement for Proposals, AFP. We were trying to make that distinction. Also, don’t call them contracting officers, they’re agreements officers. What the heck is an agreements officer? It’s not a contracting officer. It is a person who worked on this particular activity to reach this agreement using OTA and procedures NASA created by using OTA. That’s all I can tell you an agreements officer is at this point. We haven’t done this previously, here’s what we’re doing now. The program folks would ask, “Why are you making us use a different term? Like that’s really going to make a difference.” We responded, “It is going to make a difference. Please use this term.”\\n\\n I spent a lot of time convincing folks that NASA attorneys weren’t just making life difficult for them, because there were folks who really believed that was what we were doing. They would say, “You’re just creating rules.” I responded, “Well, you’re creating a space transportation approach that no one else has created. We have belief and confidence in you. We also know there are things you haven’t done, there’s technology that hasn’t been developed. You have seen what’s worked, so you know how to use certain information. We’re the same way as lawyers, and we’re giving you our best advice. Rely on us the way that we’re relying on you to allow another company to build a vehicle that will go into low-Earth orbit, so that we can buy services from that company.”\\n\\n That became the other interesting thing that happened to me during COTS – I realized that people started to think I had some influence. Within the Agency, there were people who did not believe that a party other than NASA—maybe the Air Force – could or should build a rocket that would take cargo or human beings to low-Earth orbit. It just shouldn’t be done. Not that it couldn’t be done, it just shouldn’t be done, and therefore, it couldn’t be done. There was the belief by some that the American people did not want a privately owned spaceship to transport cargo and astronauts to the ISS. NASA cargo and astronauts should only fly on vehicles owned, designed, and built under a NASA contract and operated and controlled by NASA. As NASA lawyers, we knew that there were two camps within NASA. I think if you go back and look at some of the history and the conversations, I don’t know how much folks will talk about it now, but there were two camps in the Agency. There was a lot of concern about having private companies conduct this operation.\\n\\n Some folks, I think, will be very honest about it and talk about their concerns. Bryan [D.] O’Connor, when he was head of [Office of] Safety and Mission Assurance [OSMA], was concerned about this new approach. He was vocal. There were others who weren’t so vocal. They’re under the radar, engaged in conversations and activities that might not have supported the COTS effort. The NASA lawyers were in the middle of these competing camps. There was a team of NASA lawyers working on the COTS effort. But you also have these other people coming and talking to you, a NASA lawyer, about how COTS may not be the best thing for the Agency, and why are you supporting this activity, and that they need you, the lawyer, to tell the COTS team that they shouldn’t be doing this.\\n\\n It was very interesting, because I did not think of myself as having influence on whether to do COTS or not. I viewed my influence as how to conduct a competition for COTS in a fair and effective way. Yet, during the development of COTS, some NASA folks would button-holed me to talk about and share their concerns about COTS. I wondered, “Why are you talking to me?” I realized that they were talking to me because they had been talking to the program and technical leaders, and weren’t convincing them. Apparently, their next thought was – Let’s try to talk to the lawyers and get the lawyers to go in and tell the technical folks that this really won’t work, and this is not a viable approach. Get the lawyers to talk some sense into them. Stunning, I thought to myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, revealing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was the time we were living in, because there was an individual who didn’t talk to me. I don’t think he thought very highly of me. As time went on, I think he began to realize that there were people who were listening to me, and that I was helping to develop the competition model that we used in COTS, and this activity was going forward. We were going to spend a lot of money on COTS, and then subsequently we had the CRS, Commercial Resupply Services contract, and we were spending a lot of money on that also. I was sitting in an auditorium, trying to listen to the presenter, when an individual sat next to me and begins saying these things like, “Why are you supporting NASA spending money on that? NASA could be spending money on some other things that the Agency really needs to spend money on, something that’s going to be successful.” I was told that CRS and COTS were not going to be successful, and we were just spending a lot of NASA money on that activity, and it was going to embarrass the Agency. I thought, “Why are you telling me this?” But I knew then answer, he wanted me to influence other NASA officials to stop COTS. I didn’t know any more than anybody else.\\n\\n Did we know COTS was going to work? Probably Alan [J.] Lindenmoyer had more faith than anybody else. Did we know Commercial Resupply was going to work? Don’t know that Gerst was 100 percent convinced, but he was the expert and he determined that both NASA and the contractors had a credible plan. We had capable engineers who were reviewing what the outside parties were doing. We had our Safety and Mission Assurance and our [Chief] Engineer—they weren’t getting the total insight that they wanted, but they were pushing to get enough information to make the best decision possible.\\n\\n First, Gerst made the decision to award two agreements for COTS to SpaceX (Space Exploration) and Rocketplane Kistler. When Kistler couldn’t continue, Gerst selected Orbital [Sciences Corporation] as the other COTS partner. Then NASA got to a place where we awarded the CRS contracts to provide commercial cargo transportation to ISS before we even knew that either vehicle could fly. Oh, people on the Hill, even people in the Agency, even some of the lawyers were concerned about that. Some folks thought that we were—really, I guess the expression is, “betting on the come” on this one. But as Gerst thought about it, and as we helped him to articulate, we all thought about this, we needed a plan to have something available to us when Shuttle is no longer available. We were going to shut down Shuttle, and of course there were people, even on the [Capitol] Hill, who did not want us to stop operating Shuttle.\\n\\n All of this was going on, and the lawyers were caught in the middle at times, because people would come to us with their different agendas and want us to take positions that would support their particular agenda. The lawyers understood that our job was to provide reliable and credible advice about what the Agency leaders made a decision to do. We would tell our agency leaders to tell us your goal and how you want to move forward, and we gave them the legal parameters for what they decided to do. That’s how we advised them. It was a very interesting time. Very interesting time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There was a lot of movement, a lot of research, a lot of a lot in a very short amount of time, because whereas Mike Griffin had said, “Step forward and let’s see how we’re going to do this,” then it became accelerated with the cancellation of Constellation. You were moving to get things in place and to protect the Agency from a future protest, but I remember you had said before, you and your team were working to make sure that it wasn’t just good for today, it was going to be good for tomorrow and a year from now when people started asking questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So far, it’s worked pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have defended it against a couple of protests, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We do apply our lessons learned. There were some things that we did on COTS, which I learned recently we hadn’t done on some subsequent OTA competitions, and that was to identify an ombudsman. We created an ombudsman for COTS, and folks were asked, “Why do we need an ombudsman?” I responded, “Understand this. With COTS, a disgruntled proposer can’t go to GAO to challenge NASA’s actions, or to a contracting officer, because there are no protest procedures applicable to OTA. If somebody feels something’s wrong, who do they go and talk to? If we don’t give them someone in the Agency or a process to use to voice their concerns and discuss them, they’re going to take us right into court. I’m not ready for us to go into court yet. We don’t want that to be on that path, because that will clearly slow down the Agency.”\\n\\n So we created an ombudsman process that was set forth in the COTS solicitation. It basically said if you, as a proposer, have a concern, you can take it to this individual. We thought long and hard who that should be. The lawyers knew that we had to identify someone credible. We needed to have somebody who was not involved in the competition, but somebody within the Agency who would understand the issues. We identified an individual in the announcement for proposals in the ombudsman section. At some point along the way we had to rely on that language, because there was a proposers who had concerns and the ombudsman heard concerns and responded. Having an ombudsman kept proposers from thinking that we can only go into court to discuss a problem.\\n\\n The lawyer knew that any court action would be a dive into unchartered waters. It was going to be a question of whether a complaint was filed in a district court or to the Court of Federal Claims, and, the NASA lawyers, frankly, didn’t have a clear view of which court would have jurisdiction. We even talked about it with the Justice Department, and they know because by law, they would have to represent us in federal court. This was one of the things we said to the COTS program officials, “If we have a NASA ombudsman, the agency controls the resolution of concerns, and the NASA lawyers provide advice. But when you put things in the federal court, it’s in the hands of the Department of Justice, not NASA.”\\n\\n Little bit of a scare tactic, yes, but it was true. At that time, depending upon where a case was assigned in the Justice Department, an agency get a person three years out of law school representing its case in court. I asked the program, “Is that what you want for your program?” We got that ombudsman language included in the COTS AFP. The lawyers said, “We’ll try this,” and it helped us. I found out in some later competitions, that language was not included in the AFP. Then, we had an issue even though the ombudsman language wasn’t in the AFP, we informed the parties that an ombudsman had been assigned to hear their concerns. I’m now reminding people that language needs to be in every Space Act Agreement competition proposal, so that proposers know who they can go to in the Agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading something the other day, someone had talked about Gerstenmaier, asking about the differences of the public-private partnerships, and he made the remark, “When asked to compare the costs of using a public-private partnership to NASA’s traditional procurement methods, Gerstenmaier said he could not offer a specific number, but the partnership is extremely more efficient.” Have you found that remark as well, from other people? That not only did you create a way to use the OTA, but it’s more of an efficient process compared to the FAR? Or do they just continue to serve different purposes for different reasons?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they serve different purposes for different reasons. I don’t know what Gerst is basing his assessment on, because from where I sit, I think both are efficient. They’re meant to accomplish different purposes, and from where I sit as an attorney for the Agency, there must be some type of fair process, when using either approach. You can make your process as efficient as you want, but the more information an agency wants to receive in a proposal, and the more certainty an agency wants to have, it means the more complex the competition is going to be. If it’s more complex, I’m not sure how efficient you can make it.\\n\\n When I look at some of the things we did with the Space Act Agreements that we awarded to Blue Origin and Boeing and Sierra Nevada, that whole OTA competitive process, was an efficient process. It was a process that was needed to achieve what the Agency wanted to achieve and to achieve it through a competition. Did that make the OTA competition more efficient than what we could have done under FAR? I don’t know. It was different. But there was still a process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s good to have a choice now. It must be somewhat rewarding knowing you put all those things in place, because a few years ago, and now even more so, you’re entirely responsible for the legal umbrella as General Counsel. Share with us about those responsibilities. How are you hoping in this leadership position that you can continue to enlighten and educate more people into moving the Agency forward in the way that you would like for it to go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Charlie [Bolden] reminds us that our job is to lead our people. As the Agency goes forward, we are going to continue to do these type of competitions, so, it’s important that we educate and train our attorneys to understand what the difference is between our public partnership type competitions where we want to use our Other Transactions Authority, and when it’s appropriate to use our contracts authority under the Competition in Contracting Act, or when we can use other things like CRADAs [Cooperative Research and Development Agreements], grants, cooperative agreements—there are a number of tools that we can use.\\n\\n We always start off saying to a program official – tell us what you want to do, what you want to accomplish. Don’t come in and tell us how you want to do it. We’ll tell you how. Come in and tell us what your goal is, what you want to do, and we will help you get where you need to be. We’ll help you to define the process that would best benefit the goal you’re trying to reach.\\n\\n Training attorneys, making them knowledgeable, making them comfortable with those tools is my job. I do it through the Associate General Counsels, through the Chief Counsels, just observing and talking with them, seeing who’s working on particular issues. How are they doing? Are we getting consistency across the Agency when we do these things? What discussions are we having? How are Centers feeling? I hear from the Center Directors or from, for instance, [Robert D.] Bob Cabana, they’re doing a lot of non-FAR type activities at KSC. Bob has the goal to create a multiuse spaceport facility. He’s got a lot of activities going on. Are we giving him consistent advice? Are we helping his attorneys and his program officials, his procurement and non-procurement folks who are working on this?\\n\\n We have to all make sure that we’re all on the same page, and we’re communicating with each other. That’s a big thing that I’m talking about with everyone. We must communicate, we must coordinate, we must collaborate within our own organization at Headquarters, and then with the Chief Counsel offices, and with the Centers, and with our Mission Directorates. I’m happy to see that other people, other than me, are working this and learning it, but that’s our responsibility as lawyers and leaders, to guide them as the Agency uses OTA more, so that they’re comfortable with it. Sometimes, lawyers have to stand up and say, “Hey, this may not be the right direction, or the right use of this authority,” and I want our early and mid-career attorneys to have enough knowledge that they are able to stand up to some of the senior officials and say, “This is not quite the way that we can use this authority, but here is a different way that we think we can use it and accomplish the purpose you’re desiring.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The legal department—so many times people think it’s always litigations—but you have to work with just about every branch with those who that take care of the real estate, and the people that do the procurement. You’re very widespread in what you do. What are some of the challenges, getting all those people to communicate, cooperate, and collaborate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One challenge is that NASA officials don’t think they need legal support. “Nothing we’re doing involves anything legal, so why would we need to talk to you?” Talking with NASA officials and getting them to understand that attorneys not only give advice on laws and statutes, but we also have a counsel function. That means, that if a NASA official is thinking about policy, there may be some things that she or he hasn’t thought of that we may point out as a benefit or a problem, and offer recommendations to consider or directions to move in. Having people view NASA lawyers in that way and to reach out to us to support them when they’re thinking about things and developing ideas is a challenge, because NASA officials sometimes don’t think about getting the legal office involved until there is an obvious legal issue.\\n\\n I tell program officials, “Well, when you’re thinking about things, you may be creating legal issues unbeknownst to you.” For example, a NASA official may say, “Hey, I need more cargo going up to the [International] Space Station, so we’ll just issue another Space Act Agreement.” The lawyers would remind the official that we have a contract to transport cargo to ISS, the CRS contract. If a lawyer has not been consulted, and the NASA official is thinking that the use of a Space Act Agreement is permitted, when really the more appropriate thing is a contract, then there could be a legal problem. The official had all of these discussions back here with other program officials, where they were brainstorming, thinking about things. So, as Robert [M.] Lightfoot says, “It’s all potted, ready to go.”\\n\\n The NASA official is ready to move out, and the lawyers come in and advise her to use CRS. This upsets the NASA official and the lawyers are viewed as the log jam. If the official had brought us in when she was having that brainstorming session, we could have provided the appropriate advice then. Getting folks to bring the NASA lawyers in early is still a challenge. Getting program officials to think of us and our counsel function is something we work on every day. When you have a change in leadership, you have to introduce yourself to the new leaders and say, “We’re the lawyers, and we’re here to support you, not just giving you legal advice on statutes, but we are your counsel. We’re here to support you and talk with you, discuss issues with you, and identify solutions.”\\n\\n That’s one of the reasons why we have our program called the DLC Program, Directorate Lead Counsels, where we have attorneys embedded in the Mission Directorates, so that they can be there as issues come up to be a sounding board, to talk with the leaders or the folks in that particular organization, and bring back to the legal office issues to address early. Having that person embedded in an organization means building the relationships and gaining credibility. For instance, a program official might be nervous if I make a phone call and say, “Hey, I hear you are doing XYZ.” But if the embedded attorney, the DLC, makes the same call, then there usually is more willingness on the part of the program official to discuss an issue. When they hear from the embedded attorney, they’re a little bit more receptive, because in a way, they begin to feel, “Oh, that’s our attorney.” Well, he’s the Agency’s attorney, but that attorney had developed a level of trust with the program official. That’s what we try and work on every day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the groups that you work with outside the Agency? Like NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], DoD, the list goes on and on. I was thinking too of the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], because of all of the new Space Act Agreements. How are you able to work those relationships, when all of you have different agendas, but still at the same time, you’re all trying to work together for the same goal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is where you push the activity down. With the FAA, one of the attorneys who works in the Commercial Law Group said, “Hey, why don’t we get a team together, and not just lawyers, but technical folks also? When we say technical folks, let’s have somebody from OSMA, let’s have somebody from the Chief Engineer’s Office, have somebody from HEO, and then we’re going to have somebody from Johnson Space Center.” So the NASA team is broad. Then she said, “Let’s ask the FAA to come in and have their counterparts with each of these people also be on the team.”\\n\\n We had this huge team of NASA people working with the FAA, and that’s one of the attorneys in our group who’s managing that day-to-day activity. She sends me messages and updates through her Associate General Counsel, keeping her supervisor, the Commercial and Intellectual Property Associate General Counsel, aware of what’s going on. That attorney also sets up meetings with me to keep me abreast of what’s going on, and about a month ago, we went to meet the Chief Counsel of FAA, to whom the FAA members of the team report. We met, and it wasn’t a decisional meeting, but just to acknowledge that we’re all working on this together, get to know each other.\\n\\n We take it in stages, both the FAA Chief Counsel and I have pushed it down to the appropriate level of attorneys to work on this issue. The team forwards issues as they get close to finality, or when they need input from me or from the Chief Counsel over at FAA. That’s just one example of how we do it. This is how you build a team, how you ensure continuity and understanding and knowledge. It’s not just me, it’s not just the Commercial Law Associate General Counsel who knows what’s going on or how to do things, or focus on the issues. We have other folks in the legal office and across the Agency who are working on these issues, so that we have an understanding that will carry us into the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wanted to ask you a couple of questions that lead into finishing this session out, but as you move into completing your first year in this new leadership role, what do you expect to be some of your significant challenges as you move into the next years? What are some of the goals that you would like to do to make your time at NASA one that will benefit the years after you leave?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Back to the people, making sure that we have some programs in place for developing our attorneys across the Agency so that there’s more of an interdisciplinary approach to us providing legal support as issues come up. What I mean by that is, for instance, when the Orbital [Sciences Corporation rocket] accident occurred at Wallops [Flight Facility (WFF), Wallops Island, Virginia], lawyers in our Office asked, “If there are legal issues that come up, who is going to be involved?”\\n\\n Well, we have a Space Act Agreement with one entity. We have a contract with another entity. Those are two different groups of attorneys. It’s a service being provided to NASA, but it’s not a NASA operation. We also had to remind folks it’s not a NASA activity because NASA did not operate or control the launch. Because of that, there were certain things that we don’t get to go in and ask questions about and get to review and make decisions on, so everybody understands their role and communicates that to the program officials. If an accident happens, everybody thinks NASA is going to go in and investigate.\\n\\n NASA attorneys had to explain to the folks on the Hill, “No, this was an FAA-licensed activity. NASA is supporting the FAA.” NASA wants to know what the FAA is doing, so we have folks in our legal office who communicate with the FAA. NASA learning to function in this “support” role has been a challenge, shall I say, or a reminder.\\n\\n We have to learn how to do things differently. Attorneys also have to remind our clients that we are doing things differently when an activity is controlled by a non-NASA party. No, we’re not going to go out and do the investigation of the launch mishap at WFF. It’s a commercial activity. When we look at who is going to pay for what, we’re still having that conversation. Within our Office, we had to make sure that all of the right people were involved, and sometimes it’s not just one group. Its several groups.\\n\\n You never know when a particular issue is going to come up that you didn’t expect, and you may need to include another group of people. For example, NASA people forget, some folks don’t realize that we have international partners down at Wallops. I think it’s the Ukrainians who are there. I asked the contracts attorneys and commercial law attorney to make sure that we don’t have any international law issues that were raised by the mishap. There were none, but if there had been, that’s where our International Law Group would get involved. For instance, if any export control issues might come up as a result of something we do down the line, our International Law Group would need to involved, because they handle our export control and our ITAR [International Traffic in Arms Regulations] issues.\\n\\n It’s always interesting to work legal issues at NASA because we never know when an issue is going to present itself. When it presents itself, we need to get the attorneys with the right expertise involved. That’s why I monitor, and keep abreast of what’s going on, and make sure that an assembled team brings the right people in at the right time. We’re not perfect at it, because we’ve had e-mails in our Office saying, “Hey, I’ve been working on this for so many months, how come nobody told me about this?” We’ve had that happen. We’re not perfect. At least we’re having the conversation, we’re circulating things so that eventually, if somebody else had been working on it and we didn’t include them, they’re going to raise their hand and say, “Hey, I have some knowledge about this. Here’s what I’ve been doing. Bring me in the loop, or really, I need to have the lead on this.”\\n\\n There was an e-mail that was sent to me about a particular matter. I sent it to the Associate GC [General Counsel] and a team lead who I thought had cognizance over the matter. It turned out it was someone in that Associate GC’s office, but I identified the wrong person. They got my e-mail to the right person in the group, and that’s how we’re working it. Sometimes there’s a little bit of a ruffled feather, where an attorney said to me, “You didn’t send it to me, I’m the one who’s working this.” I responded, “I didn’t get it to you, but somebody in the office got it to you.” But there’s a sensitivity when the General Counsel doesn’t remember who is working on a matter. I don’t remember everything, but I know enough usually to get an issue to the right legal practice group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, the whole international part, too—at least your days are never dull, that’s for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they are not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is it that you’ve enjoyed so much about your NASA career, and the profession and working at so many different levels or different aspects of NASA? What continues to propel you to keep going back and doing more?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Agency has let me do what I want to do. I’ve been able to do what I want to do. I have two children who are grown now, but for a long time, I was the only woman in the Office of the General Counsel who worked full-time and had children, and still my career progressed. This Agency afforded me that opportunity. There are other agencies or other workplaces where I would not become General Counsel, because many agencies did not have a workplace that embraced work-life balance. I had children, and I worked in litigation, handling all those GSBCA protests, while I had small children. That experience benefitted my career growth. NASA and the supervisors that I had here, and the work life-family balance I experienced over the years enabled me to stay at NASA and feel comfortable and feel excited about my job. I don’t know many other places that were giving any employee, much less women, that opportunity.\\n\\n So I’ve been very fortunate. There were times in my career, when my oldest daughter said to me—she wanted me to be like Annie’s mom, who met her at the bus and took her home every day. My children went to aftercare, but I reminded them what I was able to do for them because I had a job. At one point in their lives, when they took ballet lessons, I was getting to work at seven o’clock, so that I could leave about two o’clock on Tuesdays and Thursdays, drive to pick them up from school, to take them to ballet; first we’d get McDonald’s or whatever they wanted, they’d go into ballet and I would walk for an hour and a half because they’d be in ballet lessons. I became a better mommy, they thought I was cool then.\\n\\n It was just two days a week. I had a job and I had a supportive supervisor, and I had credibility in the Agency so that I could leave on Tuesdays and Thursdays at two o’clock to go spend time with my children. That culture of family and support is something I couldn’t find other agency legal offices or private law firms. I did look for career opportunities outside of NASA but always came back to NASA because I had the opportunity to raise my children, to be a mother, and to work full-time in this agency. That doesn’t mean that it was perfect, because I do talk about years where I felt like I was in the wilderness, where I just didn’t see my career progressing, didn’t know where I was going to go, because I was the Deputy Associate General Counsel for Contracts for many years. When you’re a deputy in a division level, you’re thinking, “Okay, my boss is probably not going anywhere any time soon, I don’t see that happening. I’m not really sure if I should compete for one of the other positions now vacant in the agency or at another agency.”\\n\\n I felt stagnant. I did look at other agencies, looked to move, but ultimately I found that the type of work that I was doing at NASA was my best opportunity. The other thing that was key—we may complain about our IT services in the Agency, but there are other agencies that are worse. Truly, that was one reason why I didn’t go to one agency that offered me an opportunity. When I looked at their hardware and their software, they were about five years behind us. The agency didn’t have e-mail. I thought to myself, “What do you mean, you don’t have e-mail?” They were still communicating with hard paper, walking information around to other offices, and sending things in pouch mail to other offices across the country, because they didn’t have an email system. I decided to stay at NASA.\\n\\n NASA may have been frustrating, and I was not sure not sure where my career was going, but I wasn’t moving to that agency with an outdated IT system. Also, while the litigation was exciting, after a while it gets old. I know how to do that work, but I’m not doing anything that seems different or interesting. Then I was assigned to a new role within OGC, and I started doing different and interesting work. I persevered, and that’s a lesson learned. Sometimes you have to persevere and figure out how to do the best with the situation you’re in. Things are going to change. I didn’t know how things were going to change, I didn’t know when things were going to change, but change is going to come. Sometimes you just have to be patient and wait for that change to come, do other things to keep up your skills, improve your skills, and advance your skills during that period while you’re waiting. I think I did that, and that helped me to get through that period, and then be ready when an opportunity presented itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You described your career with NASA as innovative, because you were able to use skills and do them in a different way. Do you have some examples of how that innovation has maybe paid off? Or maybe didn’t pay off?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The General Counsel got to a place where he was not available to go on certain speaking engagements. The Associate General Counsel for Contracts couldn’t go either. Send it to the Deputy. I was very nervous, because I was going to go speak at a NASA Center. I would be speaking on behalf of NASA OGC. I was very nervous, but I was also excited about it. That’s how I started speaking at the Federal Bar Association annual government contracts symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. They didn’t know me, I was third person down on the list, but they were happy to have somebody from NASA Headquarters OGC be a speaker. I think I did pretty well, because they have invited me back every year since that presentation.\\n\\n That’s what gave me a new opportunity. I had spoken in front of judges, administrative judges, all the time in litigation. Now, I have to make presentations speaking to an audience on a particular subject requires skills that were not part of my regular skill set. I had to develop the ability to present information in an interesting manner, and be very knowledgeable and present accurate facts. And what I learned from doing that is I had to really learn what the Agency was doing, because I didn’t know what people were going to ask me. So if I talked about a competition, and I planned to talk about a contract that was awarded, but I also had to be prepared to talk about the program and why that program was important, and how that program fit into the NASA mission.\\n\\n When I have those speaking engagements, it also helped me to think about what the Agency does, understand what the Agency does, and communicate that so that people outside of our environment know what I’m talking about. I had to learn to not talk “lawyerese,” like I’m in a litigation activity, but be interesting. Be interesting and give people information that they can remember and understand, so I worked on that skill.\\n\\n The other change in my career in OGC was how we operated and interacted as an office. Sometimes, we tend to stovepipe ourselves in the Agency, and I had the opportunity to break down some of those stovepipes within OGC, and within the Agency. For example, the Office of Procurement and the Office of the General Counsel have done joint training assignments between the two offices. There had not been any Agency organization that worked together in that way. It seemed natural to me, to have a joint training because the attorneys who worked on procurement matters and then the contracting officers worked hand in glove all the time. We really thought that it would be beneficial for us to share with each other our thought processes about how we approached the same issue.\\n\\n Within OGC, we learned to take a more interdisciplinary approach to working on a legal issue, which meant that we had to learn to share information across the legal practices so that we could effectively provide legal services. That’s how we work today, but that wasn’t how we behaved in the past.\\n\\n I’m going to add one more thing about something else I’m thinking about. The Agency has been talking a lot about diversity and inclusion. I sat on the recent SESCDP [Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program] panel to review the applicants. One of the things that I observed, and I’ve shared this with others, is that I think that Charlie’s message supporting diversity and inclusion, encouraging the leaders of the Agency to think about it and make it a part of their workforce considerations, is being heard by senior leaders.\\n\\n I’m not sure we’re doing a good job of sending that message to the next levels of leaders and managers, and then down into the employee ranks, because some of the responses to our diversity and inclusion question during the SESCDP were not impressive. It’s something we as an Agency need to work on, and I put myself in that “we.” That’s something that I’ve been talking about with the folks in my Office, and getting them to stretch when they consider hiring candidates, and then stretch when we have hired someone, so that they are included in our planning and execution of legal services. It’s also important to have attorneys, and other employees, expand and diversify their skills and experience. One of the funniest things that happened years ago, when I was Associate General Counsel for Contracts was when I said to an attorney, “I want you to work on this HEO activity.” He looked at me and responded, “I don’t do HEO.” This was before it was called HEO, Human Exploration; he said, “Because I don’t do human spaceflight.” I said, “Precisely. That’s the problem. You are so wrapped up in activities related to the Science Mission Directorate and Aeronautics, you don’t know about operations on the human spaceflight side of the house. You need to broaden your experience base.” He was concerned, because that was not his area of expertise, so the assignment was beyond his comfort zone.\\n\\n Guiding employees to new opportunities is part of diversity and inclusion. If someone wants to be a leader in this Agency, he or she needs to have a breadth of experience, not just a depth. We have people who have great depth within a particular subject matter, but they don’t have knowledge that demonstrates a broader experience they don’t have a breadth of dealing with different types of people. OGC just had a training with Human Resources, and they came in and taught us something about various styles of interaction and influence. I had a conversation with one of our OGC leaders about hiring people who are just like everybody else in the group. This would create a practice group where everyone would interact with others and use their influence in the same way.\\n\\n When we talk about diversity and inclusion, we do talk about race, ethnicity, but it’s also other things, like the fact when we hire, we gravitate to people who are like us. Then you get groupthink, because everybody wants to address a problem the same way. Who in your group is the gregarious person? When I came to Headquarters, there was a group of attorneys who they kept their doors closed. It made them seem very closed, and nobody, other attorneys or clients, wanted to talk with them. Nowadays, I encourage folks in OGC to interact with others, but also recognizing that alone time is also important. I encourage attorneys and administrative support to put themselves in different positions and identify different opportunities.\\n\\n All of this will help, I think, to develop leaders who are going to lead the legal office across the Agency. That’s really what I’m thinking about right now, as I finish up this first year, we move into my second year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s gone by fast, hasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We wish you the best of luck." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else you want to add before we finish?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I think I’ve talked a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay. We learned a lot. Thank you for sharing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sumara M. Thompson-King", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you for talking with me." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00969", + "metadata": { + "category": "NACA OHP National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 2005 - 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/mciverd.htm", + "original_file_name": "McIverD_4-1-14.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/McIverD_4-1-14.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Duncan McIver", + "location_date": "Hampton, Virginia – 1 April 2014" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Duncan McIver" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 1, 2014. This oral history is being conducted with Duncan McIver at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project, sponsored by the NASA Headquarters History Office. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. We thank you so much for coming in this afternoon here at Langley to visit with us. We’d like for you to start by telling us how you first became interested in going to work for NACA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had been in the Navy during the Korean War. After I got out, I went to college at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and studied physics. In the Navy, I was involved in electronics and sonar. That was the job I had, which was searching for submarines, if you will. Anyway, when I was graduating, I interviewed for a number of jobs. One was this thing called NACA, which I didn’t fully understand except they talked about rockets and going to the Moon and so forth. I was a long-time fan of science fiction, so I signed up for the job and came to work here in July of ’58. It was still NACA until October." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where was your interview? Was it here locally when you got out of the Navy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I interviewed in Chapel Hill." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Chapel Hill." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had a recruiter, Bill [William M.] Bland, if I’ve got the name right. He went to Houston [Texas, Manned Spacecraft Center/Johnson Space Center]. I’m sure he retired there. He was a super interviewer, and he got me all excited about the job. Anyway, I came up then. When I arrived here, I interviewed at the headquarters here. They said, “OK, electronics and physics—you’re going to work for the Instrument Research Division [IRD]. Don’t even look anywhere else.” The first building as you come in is Building 1230, and that’s where I went in 1958. I stayed in electronics and instrumentation measurements for most of my career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you got here, 1957 was such a monumental year. Sputnik [Russian satellite] had debuted in October. Of course, it was months after that. Did that have an impact on your interest at all of trying to do something maybe in space?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, absolutely it did. I was very much interested in that. When I got here, it was all rumbling. There was this committee put together by NACA, laying out space plans, which eventually resulted in the creation of the Space Task Group and then the opening of the Center in Houston. They were putting that together. It was just very exciting—the response to Sputnik—but really to go in space and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any thoughts of maybe wanting to join up with that group, or was that even an option at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an option, but I liked it here. I liked Hampton. It was close to where I was born in North Carolina, so I just didn’t feel like I wanted to leave. This was the right place. I had met my wife shortly after that. I can’t remember. We probably knew each other. No, we did, because her cousin worked for NASA but went to Houston. He was the one that introduced us. I stayed here. I really liked it. Hampton is a wonderful city, Newport News and Williamsburg. It’s a great, great area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Beautiful to look at, especially. Talk about some of the activity that was going on when you arrived here, because it was starting to transition. The [National Aeronautics and] Space Act passed at the end of July, so you knew that part of the Center’s activities was going to move towards space exploration. How were you drawn in to the work that had to do with the IRD? Did you have a mentor, or did you have a group that helped you become part of what they were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and the reason we had, almost right off the bat, a space connection—we were in the Instrument Research Division, and that was a measurement branch where we dealt with telemetry. In telemetry, if you will, we would put sensors and instrumentation on a vehicle and radio transmit it back to the ground and record it. We were doing instrumentation on high speed rockets that were investigating high speed flight. That was immediately a good connection to space, because, when we put the spacecraft out there, they were going to be heavily instrumented. We were sort of in the forefront of that. In fact, one of my early jobs that I had was the high speed, four-stage rocket that we launched from Wallops Island [Virginia]. I did the instrumentation. We were looking for how telemetry signals reacted at high speed. Unfortunately, my rocket unscrewed, it was in four stages, and crashed. We were so excited about it, and then one moment later, it was gone. Another thing that we were studying in that period was when spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere, they created plasma around them which then interfered with the transmission of radio signals. Some of the early work that I did was trying to understand that. As they were launched, the rocket plume behind it also would interfere with it, so some of my early jobs were dealing with some instrumentation we flew and analysis and understanding of how the plasma generated either by re-entry or by the rocket exhaust interfered with signals. What we did eventually was to record it on board, and then you could telemeter it later or recover it. We looked at things like going to higher frequencies or lasers that would penetrate that plasma, but in the end, NASA just recorded it on board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were the launches close by, or did you use Wallops?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We went to Wallops Island, and then later on, we would work with Gemini. There was a Scout rocket at the time when we were looking at the plasma. I got associated with a camera that we put on board. We looked at the plume during the period that it interfered with the radio signals to begin to understand the physics of that interaction. From an instrumentation point of view and sensor measurements, they would fit aircraft or spacecraft—the technology—and that’s what I was working on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You used the word ‘forefront.’ You were making things for the edge of technology at that time, weren’t you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. You asked about mentors. They were here. Jim [James Edward] Stitt was one of the guys that was a mentor to me. Later on, when he became the Director for Electronics, I was his technical assistant. He did that for a couple of years in headquarters at Langley but a terrific guy; a Georgia Tech [Institute of Technology, Atlanta] graduate and no-nonsense. He ended up living in the same neighborhood in Williamsburg later on. They were all great guys; very practical engineers, and you just loved to work for them. The excitement was the job.\\n\\n A little later, another guy I worked for, Cliff [Clifford H.] Nelson, who was the kind of guy who would give you an idea to go work on. We were trying to understand the plasma around the re-entry vehicle, and he said, “What about if you fired the rocket over an antenna in the shape of a re-entry rocket but have a little, small, solid-state rocket motor fire it in a vacuum sphere?” Well, lo and behold, we had 41-foot and 60-foot vacuum spheres. I went down and met with a guy named [Joseph Guy] Thibodaux who is still living in Houston, Guy Thibodaux, and he put some rockets together and we instrumented a cone. We would pump it down, and what was fascinating about it, when you would begin to pump it down, you didn’t know when it was going to be ready to fire, to run the test. So, I would get everything set up and go home. At two o’clock in the morning, a phone call would come. “We’re ready.” We would get in the car, come down, fire the rocket, and take the data and analyze it. That didn’t interfere—I mean, it interfered with life and family a little bit, but the excitement and then we were associated with the Space Task Group. The original astronauts were here for a while and so forth. It was an exciting time. It really was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk a little bit about the interactions of how you all worked? You were working on a part. You mentioned about the rockets. So much of what we hear now today is about how bureaucracy slows things down, but I understand that, in the NACA, the whole atmosphere was that you just worked on it as it happened, and you made it happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, and I’m sure that there was another period in life when I worked at Bechtel in the executive exchange program that NASA had at the time. I went out there, and it was a big engineering operation. You walked in the front door, and you were among a bunch of engineers, and that was sort of the same thing it was at Langley. Anytime you get those kinds of guys together, it’s similar. But they have individual challenges and they would help each other. There were, obviously, some people pushing for higher rates and some of that, but that never seemed to get in the way. What really was exciting and important to everyone was the job, and how do you get the job done? How do you get it solved? All kinds of challenges. I’ve never been around a group that worked together so well. You respected those before you and they laid the groundwork for you.\\n\\n In the first days, they gave you a project. It was about a year’s time. You had to sort of write that up and report on it. It was an evaluation of you. I was watching NCIS [television series]—‘probie,’ just starting out—but you were that, so you had to learn. It was good discipline. You had to learn from the people you worked with and then report on the assignment. The subject I did at the time was optical communications. They were looking at using lasers for space to space communications. It was interesting, this was 1958 and 1959. I saw recently they flew some tests in optical communications, so they’ve been working on it a long time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a good subject then, I guess. The publishing part—was it actually a full, technical report that you were responsible for putting out, or was it a collection of information for a presentation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we had to eventually write. These were guys who were engineers and not always writers, but we had people—Sam [Samuel] Katzoff was the guy at the time. If you came under his purview or his oversight, you were very nervous about it, because he was a purist but just an absolutely wonderful guy; a great inspiration. But, you did have to write, and so that first project that I talked about, I had to write a report. It was edited. A team of editors would look at it, review it, and give you guidance. That helped you, because you had to really document what you did. That’s what the guys out here do very well and have always done. That whole library of technical reports that the NACA did was so instrumental in the aerospace industry and reports since then, so they’re remarkable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess it was an interesting time, because you came in when this new frontier was taking off, but yet you walked into an atmosphere that had been here for a number of years with such credibility for aeronautics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a time earlier in my career, Floyd [L.] Thompson was the Center Director, and we had a monthly technical meeting in the evening where engineers would give reports on things they were working on. You’d have a rehearsal. It was not a casual thing. It was very important, so I was rehearsing, and Floyd Thompson, the Center Director, was there and getting ready. It looked like he was asleep. I was a little bit annoyed that I’m practicing, and here’s the big guy. Something came up, and he said, “I’m not asleep.” He was absolutely terrific, as all the Center Directors I did get to know and others here in management. It was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, they were very much the epitome of amazing engineers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, absolutely, all of them were. I mentioned Nelson and Jim Stitt. [G.] Barry Graves was another one I worked with. George [W.] Brooks, who directed the structures program is still living—he’s close by. They were all just terrific guys. The ones I gave you on that last list, they were ‘Directors for.’ If you can imagine, you had the Center Director and then maybe his deputy, and then the next level were department heads, and they were called ‘Directors for.’ Those guys—Stitt, Barry Graves, George Brooks—they were just terrific, terrific guys. You did the right thing. They got you excited, and then you did the right thing. You didn’t screw around. You did it right. They would take you to task to be sure that you had done it exactly right, and that’s good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a formal peer review? How did you know you did it right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you had a formal career review. It would take on different things over my career. Towards the end, it was fairly formal. You had to report and deliver on these things. In general, whether it was a formal document or not, you were given assignments and graded on those assignments. Later on, I remember there were cases where you really were; your name was attached to that thing, and if that didn’t succeed, then your career was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Impacted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Impacted. That’s right—influenced." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to follow your projects all the way through? You mentioned about the different project things. Did you just work on a piece and then hand it off?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You generally could follow through. Some things had been going on for a lot of years. You may come in and help contribute to it and then step back out, but your contributions in that period were recognized and they knew what you were doing. As you got up in management, then you began to have to manage those under you and see how they worked. You’d have to track them, motivate them, and make them commit to it; performance appraisal-type stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A different type of hands-on activity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a different type. That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the biggest change, if any, when the NACA officially became NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t spend a lot of time in NACA—a couple of months pretty much—but the people who had been there were still there. As an aside, the most important thing for those who had worked in NACA were the wings [wall plaque] that you got. I ended up getting a set of wings at the end. For a while, you had to have worked one year or two years or whatever, but I watched grown men cry when they were awarded those wings. It was a very significant moment in their professional careers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, for different parts of their career, they received those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I just want to make the point that a lot of the guys that had served—and women—in NACA were still here with NASA, so we carried over a lot of that history and appreciation of what had been done in the past and their contributions as we began to bring in large numbers of new people. As you know, at Johnson, the Space Task Group was formed here with [Robert R.] Gilruth. They went down, and a lot of friends of mine went down with them. I kept track of them for years. I’ve lost a lot of people at this point in my age." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like the culture of the comradery or the nature of the level of achievement changed in any ways when more and more new people were added to the ranks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. There were times when some of the people here had been at Langley for a long time in aeronautics, mostly. This space group had run off down to Texas. A little bit later, Langley did a Viking project [Mars space probes], and it was a terrific program. It went to Mars, but, at the time, it was a group that worked on that space project who demanded a lot of resources from Langley. The aeronautics and older people working there resented that a little bit, so there was a little bit of in-fighting and that kind of thing. In the end, I think they all were extremely proud of the product and the accomplishments. It was an amazing thing for this aeronautics-based organization to rise up and take on a major space exploration project. They had done other things, but here was landing on Mars. That was absolutely terrific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I wasn’t. I was on the other side. A lot of my friends were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you know what they were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you knew pretty much what they were doing. What would happen was they would work on a project. There was one where they were doing the lunar orbiter, which was doing photographs of the lunar surface. They would come, and we’d interact with those people pretty well. Then, as Viking, I’d go in, and they would come in and say, “We need more people, engineers or electrical engineers in this area to come work over here.” So they would draft some in for a while. They’d come back and forth. It was an interaction. There was a little competition during it, but with both sides working just absolutely focused on success." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your role change in the division from where you started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first job, as I mentioned, was telemetry measurements. At the time, there were sections, so I became a section head after a few years. We moved into this building that you’re sitting in [Building 1202]. We were over by the front gate, and they formed a flight instrumentation division, and it was here. It was composed of this building, one across the street, and one down the street. The antenna facility was across the street. The navigation guidance and research was down the street. This one was the core building. I was in something called a Measurements Research Branch for a while—Assistant head of that branch. That was on the backside of this building. You’re bringing back memories. It was terrific. We would come up with ideas, and we’d do research on new instrument approaches.\\n\\n My division chief at the time became the Director for Electronics, which was, as I mentioned earlier, that board of directors, if you will. That’s the best way to describe it. He went over to take that job and asked me to come over as his technical assistant. What I did there was to help him run what was a directorate composed of about four or five divisions. It was computational science with computers for the Center, instrumentation for the wind tunnels and for aircraft and spacecraft, and guidance control navigation, which was how you guide and control these things.\\n\\n I became his technical assistant and helped him run that; all the hiring and promoting, keeping the programs, and dealing with [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC]. Suddenly, I was now, for the first time, having interaction with Headquarters. After three years, I said, “I’ve done that.” That was Barry Graves and my good friend, Jim Stitt. I think the world of both of them. Jim has passed away. They said, “Look, the transition from Barry to Jim is going to be rough for Jim. Can you stay for a few years?” I ended up staying for about three more years and worked for both of them. They were great to work with. They would give you different levels of responsibility. The only problem with Jim was that we both lived in Queen’s Lake, I mentioned, and we carpooled together. We started work when one of us picked the other one up 25 miles away, but it was absolutely terrific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had an extra hour’s worth of work, didn’t you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Extra. We talked sports, so we covered a lot of it. That worked well. After that, I became the Assistant Division Chief here in an office in the front. Then, I ran by the headquarters one weekend on a Friday. I mentioned something about not feeling like I’m really doing what I—I need some more challenges or something. On Monday, I had a job at [NASA] Headquarters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Be careful what you ask for!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Be careful what you ask for! I went up on a training program for about a year. It was called the Senior Executive Service Career Development Program. After a little less than a year, I came back for some reorganization here. The guy I worked for in Headquarters retired. My boss called me and asked me if I would go up and take this job. It sounded exciting. I knew then about a year out, so I went up and took that job in ’80 or ’81. I was there in Headquarters until I retired in ’89. Up there, following on what I had worked on in avionics and so forth, I was the Director for the Guidance Control and Human Factors Program for the Agency. Then, I dealt with all of the Centers—Johnson, Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California], and so forth, so it was a lot of fun. About midway through that year, I mentioned earlier that I got selected for the President’s Executive Exchange Program and spent a year with Bechtel Engineering in San Francisco. It was an absolutely wonderful year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had to go for a whole year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, had to go. The travel funding paid for my apartment. An interesting thing in this program, they could only pay what NASA paid. That seemed like a fair thing. I got to meet a lot of people. We had a class of people who were government and had worked in the industry and industry working in government, so we became a class and took a trip to Europe in the ‘85/’86 timeframe with this whole group. It was absolutely wonderful. We met the Pope at the time—Pope John—and leaders of all of the countries, so it was a terrific involvement. Just being engaged with people, we understood industry. I came back. My boss then asked me to head up the Headquarters office of the National Aerospace Plane Program, which was with the Air Force. I ran that office until I retired in ’89." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell me a little bit more about this Human Factor Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Human factors are a pilot or crew reaction to information. For example, how do you design a cockpit? Where do you put the displays? What information do you put on it? The office I had for a while up there in Guidance Control and Human Factors dealt with the instrumentation and computers that helped fly the aircraft, but also dealt with the information you provided to the pilot. We did a program here at Langley I was only partially involved in it—not really directly—but it was Boeing. Interestingly, I’m going to be hosting a Boeing speaker tonight. They took the original airplane—a 737. They shipped one. There had been a program in the country called Supersonic Transport. That didn’t go anywhere. That ended, but they took the electronics, which were glass cockpits like we see today, put it in the back of this 737 and did research flying this airplane around, down in Argentina, looking at new electronic landing systems.\\n\\n Anyway, when Boeing got ready to do the 757 and 767, they were thinking about doing electric mechanical instruments; conventional dials and so forth. The pilots who had flown in the back cockpit with the glass cockpits said, “No, no, no. You’ve got to have this in that new airplane.” Boeing, at that time—I knew a guy and he gave a talk. He said, “No, that’s what influenced them to put glass cockpits in the front of the aircraft.” So, Langley affected something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It connected back to the aeronautics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that’s right. So, when you say human factors, how do you handle, inform, and keep the pilot up to date so that, if something happens, how does he take over?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that also related to the glass cockpit change in the Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think so, because before they were electromechanical, and now they were glass. For example, different airlines might have a different cockpit configuration. If it’s glass, meaning it’s like a television set, you can change and modify that easily through software, where before you were stuck with a hard, electromechanical instrument. It just opened up a whole new world. Like we do on iPhones today, we have the display, and we can upgrade the software and get new applications. It was the beginning of that whole period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have a question I want to ask you about how technology impacted your career—the changes of what you walked into. Actually, when you were with the sonar, you started using that instrumentation, but yet, what you ended up with when you were leaving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that’s right. Of course, in the early days, we were looking at screens and listening with our ears. You got to the point that you could identify that echo as a submarine, but you were augmented by the electronics. As we got up further, I began to look at the avionics and airplanes. I wrote a paper, “Coming Cockpit Avionics.” One of the little schemes we talked about was the pilot would get into the cockpit and everything is just blank, but he put on a pair of glasses, and the glasses were programmed to be a cockpit. Anyway, Google Glasses—we didn’t know. They owe us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you could have just patented that!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in Headquarters when Apple first came out with the Lisa [personal computer with graphical user interface], and we began to see the power of individual things. I was at Langley when initially we had a big, central computer. They still have it. Then, we began to have smaller and smaller computers that the individual researcher could then carry, and that’s what we have today—the laptops, desktops, and smartphones, iPhones, and so a whole world of how information is provided for both doing research as well as doing an action like flying an airplane or spacecraft.\\n\\n That’s just remarkable and still changing, as you and I know today. Driving my car now with my iPhone, I can say, “Read my emails,” and Siri reads them to me. I say, “I’d like to send Rebecca an email.”\\n\\n She says, “What would you like to say?” I tell her what I want to say. “Should I send it,” she sends it. That’s with hands on the steering wheel. That’s kind of remarkable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It has. It’s increased our productivity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, of course, we don’t talk to each other anymore, except to Siri." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "She’s very popular. It’s a good thing you like her.\\n\\n What do you think are some of the principles or some of the basic tenets that you learned when you were first here that carried you through your career, again learning from some of those first people that were here as NACA folks? You learned, and then you carried those through that other people could learn from you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think loyalty, dedication to the job to do it right, and to work hard to do it right, depending on teammates, and you have to, because you can’t do it all. I don’t care how great you think you are, it’s going to be a team effort. And to work together to that common good and to be so excited about it and enjoy what you’re doing as you go along. I left NASA in 1989, and since then, I have a small business that we helped form in ’99, and it’s still going. The jobs you do there—I learned how to approach them as tasks; how to plan them and how to put them together.\\n\\n We have a team of members of our little company that come and go, but the company is the same sort of thing. I don’t know what it is, but you need that. I need that to be able to go in and do the work. I worry about not coming home to my wife. At the same time, I go home, and I’m interfering with her life. There is a resentment I run into it with women that don’t want this guy to come home and take over her life. At the same time, you both are always engaged in roles that change. As the kids grow up and move away, you both change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s a full life of negotiation, isn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly. It never goes away. You learn that with government and keeping the marriage together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You say you worked at Headquarters for a while. You worked between all those Centers, you must have learned a few practices of well-kept secrets of how to make things work with numerous personalities and agendas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If you’re worried about being sure everybody is on board, make the team larger and include everybody. They’ve got to be there to work it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were working there at a very interesting time during the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was. The whole thing was fascinating; the excitement of the Moon landings and anything we had done. NASA was and is a wonderful name that when you mention that’s who you worked for, people step up and pay attention. One time in my life outside, I was back in my little hometown in North Carolina. Somebody said, “Where are you working now?”\\n\\n I said, “NASA.”\\n\\n They said, “Is that an insurance agency?” It wasn’t everywhere, but most people were learning about it. It was a great organization. It’s been wonderful to be part of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you ever find a time that you go back and reflect on that was probably the most challenging time period that you worked for the agency?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think when I was doing some of the earlier launches, because everything was so new and so forth. The little rocket instrument I put together that I was going to be so proud of—it didn’t work, so that was challenging. All through it, everything—the instrumentation challenge, measurement challenge, organizational challenge—they all were good. I can’t think of any particular area.\\n\\n There was always a moment when you had an organizational problem you were trying to wrestle with, or you had a mission problem. When we were doing the National Aerospace Plane Program, my boss was working hard on that. Since it was Air Force and NASA, we had a little colonel that we used to meet in the parking lot of my apartment building in Washington, and we’d work strategies out. Since we had to get Congress to put the money up, I would go with him to the Air Force side, and he’d say to their legislators, “You’ve got to give us money, because this NASA guy has got his,” which I hadn’t. Then, we’d go down to the other end of the hall and tell the same story on the other side. It helped keep it going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You found a way to make it work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was a great program, because there we worked very closely with the Air Force. I think, over the years, NASA has been a great partner with the Department of Defense, especially the Air Force." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like you got everything accomplished with that program that you wanted to before you left, or did you find parts of that frustrating?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was frustrating. Some of the technology wasn’t ready. It was a fairly expensive program, and so priorities come and priorities go. As we currently know in budgets in Congress, there are going to be airplanes that people love or programs that people have dedicated their lives to make work that are not going to happen because currently we have budget problems. But, don’t give up the vision. You’ve got to keep going. I was looking at an interview with the guy who runs Tesla." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Elon Musk." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He lives on the edge of failure at every minute but doesn’t give up. He’s a great model, I think, for a lot of people. The challenges are tough, but they’re exciting. You may fail, but don’t not go after them. That’s what’s exciting to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think has been the most rewarding part of you working in your career? What is something that you’re most proud of that you were able to accomplish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a small thing—not a small thing, but it was exciting at the time. A guy had invented a way for airplanes to maneuver in the terminal areas—a system he put together that used the radars of the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. He got a hold of a congressman who wanted to get his job and research funded. The FAA didn’t want to do it, so Congress gave the job to NASA to resolve. I ended up running that little job. It was fascinating, dealing both with the FAA and the private industry and Congress and coming to what was a reasonable resolution of the job. It’s those kinds of jobs that I don’t forget. I think the Aerospace Plane Program—the part I played on that was exciting. All of the way back to the optical communications job, to do something, work at it, and bring it to some conclusion is exciting. An idea, to me, has always been exciting. To get an idea and work it—it may not work at all, but something of the creative side of you makes everything fun and worth doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like it. Is there anything else you would like to add or something else you can think of that we haven’t talked about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I do appreciate you spending the time with the NACA and that history. You mentioned earlier the centennial or whatever it’s called." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that’s coming up next year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s coming up. The other thing I did enjoy doing very much, as you know, I chaired the final reunion of the NACA here at Langley. The guys called me from California and said, “We want to do one more, Duncan. Would you please chair it?” which I did. The Alumni Association was behind it. Langley was behind it. We did it and had 360 people all over the country. You were here. You got to see part of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We stopped in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We made money on that, which was surprising. We got about—I forgot—9 or 10K. We made a promise—I did—to the attendees that we would take that money and do something with it good. We wanted to do a scholarship, but we found out fairly quickly that that’s a small amount of money. For a scholarship, you need something big.\\n\\n We looked around for other things and realized that Langley—the mother, the original Center—didn’t really have a Hall of Fame. So, with the Alumni Association, we promoted a Hall of Fame, which is called the NACA/NASA Hall of Fame. I’m running that. I put that together. I’ve got a committee, and we’re going to try to do something in concert with the centennial. We’ve looked at Ames. They have a Hall of Fame, so we’ll take that as a model. I think, from the history side, it’s going to be fun, but I’m very clever. I’m the operational side to put it together and make sure it works. We’ll put it at the [Virginia] Air and Space Center in Hampton. Then, we’re going to form an Honors Committee who will select who is in it. I don’t want to have anything to do with that. Of course, you run into, “Well, of course, my father or mother should be in that,” but we’re excited about it. It’s going to be a lot of fun.\\n\\n Someone raised the question should we expand it to the Air Force, because the Air Force has done a lot of things. I think that’s something we might think of downstream, but I think, for the moment, working with the History Department is going to be an exciting thing. Gail [Langevin] is very much committed to it and Langley, so that’s an exciting thing for the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is. You’ll have to keep us posted and see how it goes. Well, thank you so much for sitting with us and talking today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Duncan McIver", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you, Rebecca. I’m very much pleased. I really appreciate it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00644", + "metadata": { + "category": "Orion Program Oral History Project 2016", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Orion/ReedDE/reedde.htm", + "original_file_name": "ReedDE_7-18-16.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Orion/ReedDE/ReedDE_7-18-16.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Orion Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Donald E. Reed", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 18 July 2016" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Don E. Reed" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 18th, 2016. This interview with Don Reed is being conducted in Houston, Texas, for the Orion Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for taking some time out of your busy schedule to meet with us. Really appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I look forward to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us how you became involved with Orion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked with Brian Anderson on X-38; Brian was the first Program Manager for MPCV [Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle], CEV [Crew Exploration Vehicle] back then. He asked me to come work for him and lead up the Flight Test Office, so that’s how I got involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in 2005." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of things were you involved in at that point? It was a fairly new Program in 2005." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was involved in the Source Board. We went ahead and downselected for the contractors. Then what I was asked to do was work on the abort flight testing, so I was not only on the Source Board but also was asked to lead up the abort flight test. Back then we had six abort tests on the books, so that was really what we did, lay out the plan on how we’d get all the abort tests that we felt were necessary to be done at the time to certify the design. We used Apollo as the basis for that and laid out the initial plan based on what Apollo had done for their abort system. That’s where it all started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you refer to the abort system, you’re referring to the Launch Abort System [LAS], the rocket on top of the [vehicle]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the Launch Abort System." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How robust was the design at that point when you started working on CEV? Have things changed dramatically since 2005?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a tough question for me to answer: how robust the design was. The design has evolved over the last what, 11 years or so, 10 years. We had a boost protective cover back then, for example, like they did on Apollo. Then they wanted to carry I think it was the docking mechanism to the Space Station, so they actually extended the area underneath the Launch Abort System. That’s when the Ogives came in to have a larger volume in which to carry a docking system to the Station.\\n\\n As far as how robust, the vehicle has always had the mission to go on to Moon, Mars, and beyond. From the get-go it was designed to do that mission. It’s not like the requirements for the mission have evolved. How you define how robust it is, I can’t answer that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you took a look at Apollo to come up with these ideas for these abort tests. How did you stray from their original plans? Were there differences, or was it very similar?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have a background in flight test. When you test, you hit the corners of the envelope. You look at the areas where the environment is the most stressing or where there’s the most uncertainty in the design. We looked at those areas, and physics is pretty much the same as what it was for Apollo. Pad abort was the big one for your total impulse for the motor to get you high enough, further enough downrange.\\n\\n Then you get into the conditions of max drag, where it takes the most amount of thrust to get away from the launch vehicle. That happens right around Mach 1 transonic. Then there’s when the aerodynamic forces are the highest, which challenges the ability of the attitude control motor to be able to perform, have a good enough control authority. That was our third one, the max dynamic pressure. High altitude was another area where the size of the plume is larger, and thermal effects are more prevalent. We had two pad abort tests. PA [Pad Abort]-1 was like an engineering developmental unit if you would. Same with AA [Ascent Abort]-1. They were initial development units.\\n\\n The run for record was PA-2, AA-2, AA-3, and AA-4. Budget became an issue, so we went and had several discussions on the risk in that and what the objectives were. The high altitude abort was really the first one to drop off because very low dynamic pressure at that altitude. The technical community sort of agreed we understood that well enough that we didn’t need to spend the money for that. The risk wasn’t worth the cost.\\n\\n We did PA-1. We learned a lot from that, a lot of design changes. In fact about every system on there I can think of had a design change after PA-1. PA-2 is where, in my opinion, they felt like they’d learned enough on PA-1 they didn’t need to do a PA-2. That’s really a risk discussion. It’s a risk discussion of does your engineering analysis give you confidence that you understand what could potentially go wrong. They opted not to do a Pad Abort 2. We were going to do an Ascent Abort 1, which was similar in terms of the configuration as PA-1 in that we were going to use a government boilerplate crew module for AA-1. When they started looking at it, the cost of doing a separate analysis for those loads, [the Program] deemed that it was not worth the cost. PA-1 took a tremendous amount of analysis from a loads and dynamics standpoint. AA-1 was going to be a one-off design again. Lockheed would have to spend a lot of resources in terms of loads and dynamics, so AA-1 basically fell off the chopping block a couple years ago.\\n\\n Really came down to our transonic and our max dynamic pressure abort, AA-2 and AA-3, and what they opted to do was combine those into a single test that sort of split the difference between transonic and max dynamic pressure. That’s where we’re at today, just AA-2. Of course that was supposed to be flown with the EFT [Exploration Flight Test]-1 crew module, so it was closer to production design if you would, but then again we were trying to save money. Again, we looked at doing a government-provided boilerplate like we did on PA-1. Last March, not March of ’16 but March of ’15, the Program decided to go ahead and do AA-2 with the Lockheed production Launch Abort System with government-provided crew module and avionics and ground support equipment, so that’s where we’re at today. We fundamentally went from six abort tests back in 2006 down to two today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a tremendous hit to your budget." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s where we’re at." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the technical community came to this decision. Who was involved in those decisions to cut back on those tests and look at different ways of ensuring that the rigor would be there and that you were proceeding safely?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We went through, and we discussed the risk with management. We’ve actually gone back and done a trace of how these decisions got made. I know AA-4, AA-1, as you went through and looked at the budget, the PPBE [Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution] each year, you would see these things drop off. There wasn’t really a formal Program Control Board that dropped those off until we finally got to AA-2. That was really the one that really got people’s attention, because we’re down to the last abort test now and not doing an ascent abort test at all. That went through a very rigorous, very formal review of all the engineering folks and the risk. We actually had two MPCV Control Boards addressing that issue back in March of ’15 so there was a lot of rigor that went into that.\\n\\n The engineering team, who really needs the data to certify the design, had to come in and show where they were confident that their analysis they were going to use, that they could get information from a nonproduction crew module that would allow their analysis to be valid. They had to come in and show how they were going to do that.\\n\\n On AA-2 we’re actually going to do an acoustic characterization test so that we understand how the acoustics get transmitted through the boilerplate crew module as well as the random vibration, so that they can actually measure how those loads are transmitted through our government boilerplate and then go back and see how that compares to their models in terms of how loads get transmitted through that, so they have confidence that they’re modeling the production crew module loads appropriately.\\n\\n They convinced the Program that the risk is acceptable. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel is very interested in this topic, so they’ve weighed in. This topic has gone all the way up to [William H.] Gerstenmaier, to Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. Right now we’ve got the approval from up at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] to proceed in this configuration for Ascent Abort 2." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Will you be testing here in the Vibration and Acoustic Test Facility or are you taking it up to [NASA] Plum Brook [Station, Sandusky, Ohio]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’ll be here. Over here in the old Apollo acoustics lab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I may, how much do these tests typically run? How much did Pad Abort 1 [PA-1] cost?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pad Abort 1 was roughly around, I think it was somewhere between $220 and $250 million. I think AA-2 is coming in right around $180 million." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Beyond coming up with these plans for aborts, what else is entailed to work on these types of plans? Do you have to set up a Mission Control Room? How many people work on these? How many people set them up? Can you walk us through all the things that you have to do? You started in 2005, Pad Abort 1 was in 2010, so obviously it takes quite a long time to put something like this together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "These flight tests are done like most of your missions, where you’ve got to have the whole gamut of control rooms, people sitting on console monitoring the systems. You’re flying out of a range so you have to coordinate with the range, all the safety aspects associated with that. All the networks required to pass video data to the control team, send commands. It encompasses all those things you need to do a mission.\\n\\n Back to PA-1, the attitude control motor and the loads and dynamics were the two items that created the most amount of delay. In the end it was the attitude control motor development that really pushed the critical path. It was a design that was used previously on missiles, so they felt like scaling it up to the size we needed. [They assumed] scalability wouldn’t be an issue, but it was. When they scaled it up, they started having issues with the electronics and the control on the valves and all the environment this thing had to operate in. They had a lot of challenges in this design because of how it didn’t scale quite like they thought it would. In the end it was that motor that pushed the flight out from 2008 to 2010, which was unexpected.\\n\\n Now with AA-2, the attitude control motor is pretty well understood. All the things we learned from PA-1 have been incorporated. The LAS has been integrated a second time for EFT-1, albeit not with the active abort motor attitude control motor. But the fact is they’ve gone through that integration process again. They’ve stacked it on another vehicle. I don’t think the Launch Abort System is going to be an issue in terms of schedule getting to the launch.\\n\\n We have an agreement with the Air Force for them to provide a launch vehicle, so that’s being done by Orbital ATK out of Chandler, Arizona. They’ve got a lot of experience in terms of doing these types of one-off flight vehicles. We’re pretty confident that they’re going to provide a good product. They’ve got a mission assurance contractor that they’ve used for decades now, so we’re going to rely on them to do the independent mission assurance. So we think that’s not going to be a problem getting to schedule.\\n\\n I think where the big schedule risk on AA-2 is going to be is with the crew module, because they just came on less than a year and a half ago, so they’re catching up. They’ve got a lot of responsibility in terms of the crew module, the loads, the avionics, the ground support equipment. They’re new to this in terms of working with this Program with the loads that they have to deal with, with their structure and their avionics and the software. I think if we have schedule issues that’s probably where it’s going to happen.\\n\\n That being said, in terms of again doing the actual mission, we’re flying out of Launch Complex-46 down there at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station [Florida]. The crew module is being built up at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]. The boilerplate, it’ll be shipped down here to JSC—then integration of the crew module and the mating to the separation ring. Separation ring is what adapts the crew module to the abort test booster, the launch vehicle. That’s all being built and fabricated up in Langley. It comes down here. The JSC engineering team integrates all the avionics, does all the testing, and they provide it to us. We actually run the acoustics tests from our Office here locally. Bottom line is they’ll deliver us an integrated and stacked crew module and separation ring, and then we’ll take it, accept it, and then we’ll transport it down to KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida].\\n\\n Once it gets down there we’ve got an ops team that then is responsible for ground-processing it and getting it through all the different tests that have to happen down at the launch site. GSDO [Ground Systems Development and Operations] is supporting us in this effort. Once we get it to the pad then we’ll go ahead and stack on the ATB [Abort Test Booster]. We’ll do full-up mission rehearsals on that, test out all the range assets, the network, make sure we’re getting all the data, that the radars can see the vehicle. We’ll have a full-up launch control team integrated with Eastern Range and the KSC networks and go launch it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course the pad abort happened after the decision to cancel Constellation. How did that impact what you were working on at that point? Did you just continue? Or was there some discussion about are we going to move forward with this, and how so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Mark [S.] Geyer, myself, we all went out to WSMR [White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico] at the time, which is where the team was, because the crew module and the Launch Abort System were physically at White Sands Missile Range when the announcement was made in February. We basically wanted to reassure the team that we were still going to continue to fund the test and conduct the test even though Constellation was canceled that February. Basically we told the team just to keep working. We still planned to do this test. Just wanted to make sure people knew that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are your memories of that day? You’d been working on this for so long. What sort of feelings did you have as things went smoothly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You mean on the launch day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On the launch day, yes, for Pad Abort 1." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was just amazed that it went so well. It’s a big relief. You work that many years and you work so hard. You just sit there and hope everything goes the way it’s supposed to. I was Test Director, and I just remember sitting there watching the video. Other than the data, which everybody was looking at, it was the only thing I had to see was it going like it was supposed to. Just seeing all those motors firing and seeing the attitude control motor working, it’s like, “Well, didn’t blow up, and we’re flying, so that was just such a great feeling.” To find out that it did everything it was supposed to, achieved all its objectives. It was just a great day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There wasn’t a decision to move forward on MPCV till May of 2011 by the NASA Administrator. What were things like around here? What sort of projects were you guys working on? Were you just continuing your work? Congress was certainly battling to keep Orion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I actually headed up the effort here to justify continuing with EFT-1. I worked with Mark Geyer down here, and we put together a plan to brief Doug. He was the head of the Exploration Mission Directorate, Doug [Douglas R.] Cooke. I helped pull together the presentation, and we went up there and briefed Doug Cooke on what we can continue to do in this gap in terms of getting a commercial launch vehicle.\\n\\n In April is when Obama basically made his speech at KSC that said, “Hey, we’re only canceling the launch vehicle. Orion is still intact, so Orion is still going to continue.” We were looking at ways that we could still get a flight test done on the Orion system spacecraft. That’s when we presented the benefits of what we could achieve if we used a commercial launch vehicle. That happened in 2010. I think it was August of 2010 when we went up there to present the case. I think at that point in time is when they said, “Continue to move out in terms of putting together a strategy for doing a flight test like that.” That’s eventually what EFT-1 became.\\n\\n That’s what we did at the time when Constellation was canceled, figure out a way that we could still fly the Orion crew module, get some good flight test data, instead of having to wait for the Agency to formulate a new strategy for a launch vehicle and morph itself. We wanted to try and keep moving ahead and making progress, so that’s what we did. My Office here, once EFT-1 was approved, there were some things that Constellation was doing that we had to fill the gap.\\n\\n The other philosophical change that Geyer wanted to do here is just give Lockheed the responsibility to do the mission. The government provides the flight test objectives. Lockheed provides the data back to the government based on the flight test objectives. It was basically make it a commercial launch, and FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] license; Lockheed, they go do the mission. That was the original plan, but then the whole network thing was an area that really NASA had more expertise in. That was one of those gaps, because the office at Constellation that did that went away, and so my Office actually stepped up and said we’d take care of that. Working with the people at Jet Propulsion Lab [Pasadena, California], we came up with a network working group. We basically made sure all the ground network, space network stuff was all coordinated and requirements were established.\\n\\n The other interesting thing that happened is Astrotech [Space Operations, Florida] was where Lockheed was going to integrate the LAS, stack it on the spacecraft, and then transport it to the launch pad. Just so happens there was a bridge down there that was going to cost over $1 million to get certified for the load for transport from Astrotech out to the pad, so that’s when it was more cost-effective to have the government provide the integration facility. Again that’s where my Office got involved working with [LSP, Launch Services Program] to provide the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility down there, [KSC]. That’s where they actually serviced the EFT-1 crew module in terms of ammonia and hydrazine. It went there, and we did that in a government facility with GSDO’s support. They provided the ammonia cart to service the ammonia, and then we transported it from there to the Launch Abort System Facility where Lockheed stacked the Launch Abort System and then took it out to the pad from there.\\n\\n The government picked up a little bit more of the work, just because of expertise. We had more expertise in network, because we owned the Space Network, NASA, and the ground network, a lot of that is owned by NASA. Just seemed to make more sense to let NASA integrate that. Then just a cost saving thing to have the government provide the facility to do the hazardous processing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like morale was never really low here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had plenty to do, believe me. Of course I was on the recovery team. Tom [Thomas E.] Walker, we had the responsibility for the recovery. GSDO provided support, whereas now it’s GSDO’s responsibility on EM [Exploration Mission]-1. With EFT-1 that was another thing that the government did; it was led under MPCV for the recovery, and GSDO provided the support. Then I helped with the air operations out there to get the helicopters in the air and get all the imagery to meet the flight test objectives. That kept me very busy working that. Griff [Griffin P. Corpening] next door here, who was my Deputy, helped work the LCC [Launch Control Center] and the mission management team. He sat in there in terms of flight test objectives, and what do we do if certain instrumentation goes down. They worked through a whole thing of what’s acceptable if we have failures in the data system.\\n\\n Then Joe [Joseph B. Voor] next door here, my ops guy, he was working all the different requirements for services and support at the launch site. We were taking all Lockheed’s requirements and then getting them into what they call the Universal Documentation System, particularly the program requirements document, which is how we request services from all the different organizations, from KSC, from the Cape, from the Air Force. We were basically just plugging holes when we went from this Constellation cancelation to trying to get EFT-1 done. We just all pitched in and filled in where we could. There was plenty of work to go around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned working on the recovery, so you were working on EFT-1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, EFT-1, I was out there on the recovery ship. Tom Walker, who works in this Office, was the recovery lead. He cochaired the recovery panel with Jim [James S.] Hamblin down there at GSDO, so it was a co-led effort on the recovery. MPCV was the lead, and GSDO was supporting, where now it’s reversed for EM-1. GSDO is the lead, and MPCV supports them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you talk about your involvement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Fundamentally I had to make sure that we had the clearance for the helicopters to take the NASA-provided imagery gear and carry it on board the helicopters. It was an interesting experience. It’s not that doing that is any different. Working with the Navy, they call it NAVAIR [Naval Air Systems Command], Navy Aviation out of Patuxent River, actually going through their whole flight clearance process was very interesting and done in a very short amount of time.\\n\\n Bottom line is we got through all that and got certified to fly our equipment on their helicopters, then going through all the training. We were in pretty close. There were hazards we had to worry about, and there’s tools we used to avoid that hazard. Doing all that training and getting the aircraft in the right position so that we could acquire the spacecraft coming back from orbit. That’s a pretty tricky task to be able to pick out a spacecraft at 70,000 feet without having any autotracking aids if you would.\\n\\n We had two Navy helicopters. We had the same crew in terms of the pilots and the people that operated the sensor on board the actual Navy helicopter. A lot of our guys from NASA had experience, so we basically took what we did at Yuma [Proving Ground, Arizona]. I do the Yuma operations also for the CPAS [Capsule Parachute Assembly System] testing. We use helicopters there. We use the same NASA still photographer, videographer that we’d use for quite a few drops. It’s the same tools that we use. Fundamentally we took the same operation that we used with the CPAS testing at Yuma and then we just transferred that capability and adapted it to the Navy’s helicopters in capturing a vehicle coming back from space as opposed to one being dropped out of an aircraft at thirty some thousand feet. We’d learned a lot at Yuma and then we just applied that to the EFT-1.\\n\\n We brought the actual aircraft over to Yuma, and that’s where we did some training in terms of letting the Navy crew actually see what the crew module looks like, what the sequence of parachute deployments look like, what the forward bay cover looks like coming off. That was a good test for them to actually look through their cameras and see what they were going to see on EFT-1, so they knew what they were seeing and what to follow.\\n\\n One aircraft followed the forward bay cover down, the other one followed the crew module down. It was just a good opportunity for them to actually see what they were going to see for EFT-1. They learned a lot. I was really shocked that both helicopters picked up the crew module well before we expected them to. They both got it and tracked it all the way to the water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your role during EFT-1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had multiple roles. Again, we were responsible for the network, responsible for recovery. We were responsible for the ground processing once the crew module left the O&C [Operations and Checkout Building], and then specifically on the recovery side I was the air ops lead out there on the recovery ship. It was our responsibility to get the flight clearance, to get the crew trained, to make sure we had our operations integrated with the other operations going on on the ship, which is a very interesting experience.\\n\\n This surprised me, but the Navy apparently never had experienced helicopters cranking their engines on the flight deck at the same time they’re trying to do operations inside the well deck. The first time that we cranked the engines to take off, they told us to shut down, because it was so loud in the well deck they couldn’t even communicate with each other. What we had to do was go deconflict all the helicopter ops from the well deck operations. Getting all the sequencing of all the different activities that had to happen on the ship and the helicopter ops, getting that all integrated in a good timeline so that we could work without interfering with each other.\\n\\n Communications was the other thing that took a lot of effort. It was flight rules development. What happens if the crew module is not where it’s supposed to be as it’s coming back on its reentry? Because where are our tools and where are we [depended] on the crew module being where it was supposed to be. We had to go back and look at all the credible failure modes that could affect the navigation state of the crew module. Then work with the people over here in the Mission Control Center [MCC] that had the data coming off the vehicle to know whether or not the nav state was credible and that the vehicle was actually where it was supposed to be, then working communications. When we got calls from the MCC on the control tower on the ship that relayed information to us out there flying around.\\n\\n That took a good bit of effort in terms of generating those different conditions and then convincing everybody that we could actually implement that, that we had sufficient time to implement it, and to convince the safety community that we weren’t putting anybody in harm’s way and we had a good exit strategy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you witness the launch from where you were of EFT-1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they had the actual feed from the launch site on the ship. We were all down in the chapel. That’s where they congregated. We sat there and listened to the countdown. Of course the first day it didn’t launch, it scrubbed. It’s like oh. It’s actually fortunate that it didn’t, because the weather on that day was not very good for a helicopter. We had a lot of low-hanging clouds. It’s overcast. We probably wouldn’t have got what we actually ended up getting if we’d gone on the 4th of December. By delaying a day, the weather the next day was just beautiful. That allowed us to get some really good shots." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you in the helicopter for the recovery?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you share those details with us?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. What better place could you be, talk about a front row seat. Yes, it was pretty amazing. We could actually see the imagery in the back. They had a repeater of the display that the pilots were looking at. We could actually see them acquire the crew module and then see all the chutes deploy. It was really something to see all the main chutes come out and actually look out there and see it coming down.\\n\\n To actually fly up to it just after it splashed down, be the first people there to actually see it, that was pretty neat. The crew module came within four miles of where we were. It’s probably the closest anybody’s ever been to a vehicle coming back from space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were some problems with the uprighting system. Was that a challenge for retrieval?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was a good lesson learned, because at the time one of the things that we try and do is recover as many of the pieces, parachutes and stuff, as we can. When we’re at Yuma that’s one of the things that we do with the helicopter. After the crew module lands and all the chutes come down, we go around and we go get coordinates of where everything lands so that the recovery team can go out there and recover the parachutes and the hardware to get it back so they can analyze it.\\n\\n We applied those same techniques to EFT-1, not thinking that there could be a failure of the CMUS, the Crew Module Uprighting System. The plan was as soon as the crew module splashed down and the parachutes cut away, we would refocus and try and pick up the drogue chutes to follow them to where they splashed down so we could go see if we could mark them and get the recovery crew there to pick them up.\\n\\n We had that whole plan orchestrated. We had smoke grenades and sea dye and communications set up to talk to the RHIBs [Rigid-Hulled Inflatable Boats], the small boats, to get them to where they could pick up these items. We refocused our imagery sensors to the drogue chutes, and we should have stayed on the CMUS because of the failure. The initial failure we captured, because the failure happened right away. But had we been more aware that that failure might happen, we probably would have focused on the CMUS bags and not gone to look for the drogue chutes and the pilot chutes. That’s a good lesson learned, and that’ll definitely be an objective we make sure we get here on the EM-1, now that we know that failure. It’s there, they didn’t get root cause, only probable cause. That’s one thing we’re going to do, make sure we keep some cameras on the CMUS so we don’t miss anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve talked about working with DoD [Department of Defense] and some of the other NASA Centers. My understanding is that Orion is very much a multi-Center approach. You could probably say a multi-Agency approach. Can you talk about how that’s affected the Program in your perspective?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess there’s different ways to look at this. There’s the production program, all the coordination that goes on there. I don’t get so much involved in that. Having worked PA-1 and now AA-2 with all the different Centers and different organizations, we work with the Air Force, the Eastern Range, GSDO, Lockheed, different contractors.\\n\\n Working with the different Centers has been a great experience for me. We really work well together. It’s been a good experience from where I sit working PA-1 and AA-2. As far as the Program, program-to-program, we watch that from my Office standpoint. We have a separate agreement with GSDO to get support from them. There’s some challenges there. They have a certain mindset, and we have a certain expectation on how we want to do things. It takes a lot of communication, coordination with GSDO. Nothing bad against them, it’s just it’s an educational thing.\\n\\n In fact we had a meeting in June to sit down with their management just to talk through: who’s in charge, who’s our interface, how the decisions get made, so that we could understand who does what down there in terms of making decisions. We sat down in May of 2015 with their systems engineering and integration lead Phil [Philip J.] Weber and some of their safety people, and we walked through the whole flow down there, all the different things that we’re doing and what GSDO is going to do. We have a memorandum of agreement with GSDO specific to AA-2 because this gets into funding issues; who’s going to fund what activities. We’ve been working very closely with GSDO in terms of program-to-program coordination. We actually have an individual that’s assigned to my Office that’s matrixed here that is from GSDO, so we have a direct line into their Program.\\n\\n We’ve got the people in place. We understand the processes. We’ve got agreements in place, and we just continue to morph those and update them as we get closer. I have no issues working Center to Center. Everybody’s been great working together. Working with DoD, you just got to know the process and how to get their support. I think all in all, it’s worked pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about some of the budgetary issues and its impact on the Program. I wonder if you could talk about policy decisions or operational decisions that you think have impacted the Program or testing in particular, your area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a heavy question. What it ultimately comes down to is it’s a risk acceptance. What’s an acceptable level of risk that you’re willing to take by cutting out content in these tests? I’m retired military, and I keep going back and telling people that when I was in the military, the program managers would have control over these large tests. What the military realized is that when there would be budget problems these program managers would cut these big integrated tests. [They’d] be the first thing to go, because they’re the most expensive thing. If they’re running short of money, they cancel the big tests.\\n\\n What the Army in particular did is they took that away from the program managers. They put all the testing under a separate test organization so that the budgets couldn’t be cut for these big integrated tests. What I see in NASA, NASA is doing that same thing that the military was doing. When they get into budget problems, what do they do, they go after the big tests. Like I said, we started out with six tests, we’re down to two. At what point is the risk no longer acceptable?\\n\\n I’ve got to caveat this by saying that the analysts have done a pretty good job. PA-1 was an extremely stressful test. The analysis was pretty darn good. I think that our tools these days, our computing systems, allow us to model things much better than we could do 10, 20 years ago. It’s just at what point do the unknowns get you. Are you putting the right things into your models to really model the physics the way it’s really going to happen?\\n\\n When you start cutting these tests, at what point do you cross the line between actually getting data from the real flight tests to anchor your models versus trusting your analysis? It’s a very fine line. I’ve always been a believer that these big tests don’t necessarily help you certify the design. What they will show you though is where your analysis was off. You’re outside what your uncertainties were and your predictions. That’s where you really benefit, where you just totally missed something that you didn’t expect. As we cut back these flight tests we’re adding a lot of risk. Do we really understand that risk? Do we really truly understand it? It’s the unintended consequences, the unknown unknowns. There’s a line there. Where is that line?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that something that you’ve talked with Mark Geyer and Mr. [Mark A.] Kirasich about? Have you been an advocate for keeping those tests on the books?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I certainly have. But again what it comes down to, it’s the engineering team, they ultimately have to be the ones that stand up and say, “This is acceptable. We’re getting enough data to certify the design.”\\n\\n We’re more of a service organization. I have a flight test background. I understand that there’s certain risks you take. It’s really the Engineering Directorate that has to really stand up and say, “Here’s why we’re confident that we can certify the design.” They certify the design. Safety and mission assurance [S&MA], sure, they’ve got a big role in that. But those are the people that decide whether or not the design is going to be certified, not me.\\n\\n I can only say from a philosophical standpoint this is why you don’t want to cut these tests. Ultimately they’ve got to accept the risks based on what the safety and mission assurance and engineering ITAs [Independent Technical Assessments] tell them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Everybody’s on board? Or there are people who disagree with the assessments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had a reclama when they went to make the change from using the EFT-1 crew module to a boilerplate. S&MA had a reclama. They had a person that reclamaed. The reclama went all the way up to Headquarters to Gerstenmaier, and they did the process. They listened to what he had to say but didn’t change their decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think has been your most significant challenge in working towards EFT-1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My most significant challenge was PA-1, just because that was really the first test that I had done in terms of being in charge of. It was a very challenging test because of the environment that everything had to operate in: loads and the avionics and the structures.\\n\\n EFT-1, again it was providing the support that I mentioned. You don’t realize how huge the Ground and Space Network is and trying to get all these different facilities all stitched together, meet everybody’s requirements. The Program Office was in the mindset, “We’ve done this, and we know how to do this.” That’s years and years of flying the Shuttle. You fly a new spacecraft with different ways of transferring data, it’s different routes, it’s totally different. You basically have to start connecting all the dots. That was a huge challenge. I think the biggest thing there was just getting the Program Manager’s attention that this really needed some good people working it and resources thrown at it.\\n\\n I got a lot of pushback on having to pay JPL to do that work. But in the end they got the Systems Engineering Award of Excellence for their model-based systems engineering that was used to do that whole requirement set for EFT-1. In the end they got recognized the way they should have. The Program finally realized the importance of their role. That was a bit of a challenge getting through that.\\n\\n Working with the Navy, NAVAIR, it’s just getting up a learning curve on their process to get the flight clearance. The time pressure was tight because we started November and we needed the clearance in February, which wasn’t really enough time. That was a real time crunch getting that all done.\\n\\n From the hazardous servicing, just working with GSDO to get the ammonia cart certified. They pretty much were off on their own, did a great job getting that thing ready, getting the facility ready, getting all their support needs. Wasn’t a real big thing.\\n\\n Working through the flight rules and working with the MOD [Mission Operations Directorate] over here and those folks, getting the safety clearance for all the helicopter ops took a big effort. We got through it. That’s really it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think is your most significant accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "PA-1, to date. Probably got some of the best imagery you’ll ever get of a capsule coming back from space. Just look at some of the pictures up and down the hallway. All the ones of the crew module and the parachutes, that was from our helicopter. Just supporting EFT-1 in general. Put a lot of work into it. Everybody did. It took everybody’s effort to make it a success." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A lot of long days and weekends, long nights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. By far the most rewarding was PA-1, just because we had total responsibility for making it happen and executing it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mark Geyer has said that Orion learned to persevere. Would you agree with that statement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, definitely. Just to persevere in terms of the political environment, the funding environment. All the things. Compromises that had to be made in order to continue to move ahead. Personally, it’s my opinion that it’s a very inefficient way to do things. We’re going to spend a heck of a lot more money in the long run because of those compromises that we had to make. When I say compromises, let me just give you an example.\\n\\n On the EFT-1 reaction control systems, the material they used to hold those reaction control system nozzles wouldn’t survive abort loads. Basically we had to certify that design for EFT-1 from a loads standpoint. For EM-2 where we could do an abort with crew on board, now you got to recertify that whole system there because of a new material. You have to use a different material, now you have to go back and test it again.\\n\\n That happened on quite a few components on EFT-1. They didn’t qualify it to abort loads. You go certify it to what loads you expect to have on EFT-1, now you got to come back and recertify all those and test them to abort loads. If you’d just been given enough money to certify everything to abort loads, it’d be done with. But now you’ve got to test things multiple times. It’s very inefficient." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "NASA has an agreement with ESA [European Space Agency] to build the ESM [European Service Module]. Has that impacted your Office in any way in testing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, because we don’t use their hardware for AA-2. There isn’t anything really that we touch, no software, no hardware. We’re not involved in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Knock on wood. Unless you have anything else you’d like to talk about, I think we’ve covered most of the topics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it’s been a great experience the last 10, 11 years. There’s days when you get really frustrated, but in the end what keeps you coming back is knowing that you got a super job, you’re making a huge difference, really helping our country and the space program to succeed. Human exploration, there’s no better place to be. That’s what keeps us going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you very much for your time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Don E. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you bet." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00137", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2020-021.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Coolidge, Jacqueline (1980-1982): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2020-021", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2020-021", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Jacqueline (Jackie) Coolidge served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana from 1980 to 1982 as a middle school teacher. Following initial training in Colorado, she traveled to Botswana for additional training in the capital city of Gaborone. Her arrival coincided with the memorial ceremonies for the first president of Botswana, Seretse Khama. After training she moved to the village of Mahalapye and settled in a one room mud and thatch rondavel (hut). Coolidge taught developmental and social studies at a middle school (grades 7-9) that had 18 teachers and approximately 250 students. During her service AIDS became rampant in Botswana, and she later learned of students, teachers, and community members dying of the disease. Coolidge says her experience gave her a special appreciation for the culture and people of Botswana, and an opportunity to share this with others when she returned to the U.S. Interviewed and recorded by Russell E. Morgan Jr., November 13, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "13 November 2019", + "extent": "2 digital files (audio; stereo; 68 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "011. Botswana.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Botswana. Coolidge, Jacqueline (1980-1982): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Botswana", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2020-021", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2020-021-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/lpw30xa16i6rx60f7c44rnrto5gp17h2.pdf?odc=20231115173657-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/52b13299-ee8d-4921-89c2-3b696542fea5/b236081b-6216-4696-8d04-5b31a23b9fd3/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI5YzdfYjc3OWFmNjM0NGExMjc0MWE3YjIxMjA1MmQyOWE4YTI3ZmNkYmM2OTkwMjRhOTY1MTAzYzNiN2E0MmM1YWExOF8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS81MmIxMzI5OS1lZThkLTQ5MjEtODljMi0zYjY5NjU0MmZlYTUvYjIzNjA4MWItNjIxNi00Njk2LThkMDQtNWIzMWEyM2I5ZmQzL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Chevy Chase, Maryland", + "length": "31 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 11, 2019, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Jacqueline Coolidge Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Russell E. Morgan Jr." + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jacqueline Coolidge" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok. Today is Wednesday, the 13th of November 2019. This is Russell Morgan and I'm interviewing Jackie Coolidge, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana from seven 1980 to seven 1982, and she served as a teacher both in math and social sciences. So good afternoon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good afternoon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So tell us why did you join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:34", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was very interested in traveling and working abroad, and I was interested in I eventually having a career in related to economic development. I was very interested in Africa. I thought about applying to various other jobs, like with some of the nonprofits or NGOs, and they weren't really interested in taking someone right out of college. But the Peace Corps, of course, was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you hear about the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:11", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, gosh, I'm sure I've been aware of the Peace Corps. Most of you know, most of my life, certainly from high school. I remember, you know, hearing about it, hearing about John F. Kennedy's famous speech in Ann Arbor. I'm originally from Michigan, so I was from Grand Rapids, Michigan. And when I was an undergrad at Johns Hopkins University, just near here. I took international studies and I, you know, talk to the various counselors and professors telling them that I wanted to have a career related to economic development. And sort of my main faculty advisor suggested the Peace Corps as it was probably being the best way to get started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:02:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was your reaction when you were accepted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:02:15", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was happy. I was actually I was relieved. I was afraid. You know, I had tried to apply to some of these other things, like care or I can't even remember a bunch of places. And even I had a cousin who was living in Zimbabwe doing work with some of the refugee camps there. And even he wrote back and said, no, I can't just hire you right out of college. So I was I was relieved that I was able to go into the Peace Corps and have that experience to sort of launch my career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you got accepted, where you're did you have any preferences of where you wanted to go or what you want to do or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:03:02", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, actually, I was most interested in Africa. And I had sort of indicated that, as I recall, somewhere along the line in the process, they indicated, you know, I might be able to have a position in Africa or in Latin America or maybe it was, I think also maybe South Korea or something like that. And I said I was most interested in Africa." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:03:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:03:32", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. It is it just sort of a feeling of curiosity and interest. I was very interested in African history. I had taken some African history courses and I loved music from Africa and some of the then heads of state like Julius Nyerere and in Tanzania. And so I thought, that's where I want to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:04:08", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your family travel a lot before when you were in school or before then or had you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:04:14", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had not had much opportunity to travel. My dad had been in the Navy and the South Pacific in World War Two. And my sister and brother in law also were sort of a Navy family for a while and they were stationed in the Philippines. We couldn't really afford to travel. I had only had one other experience in college during one of the spring breaks, I had an opportunity to attend a conference in Kingston, Jamaica, for a week or so, which I did. And that was pretty exciting. And so I thought, yeah, I can do this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:04:59", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you were accepted, did they ask you or did you have a preference of what you would do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:05:07", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I probably yeah, I was not actually all that eager to be a teacher. I had visions of me doing something more, I don't know, profound, but oh, yes, I had some odd notions. But could I probably just because so many people were going in as teachers and especially English teachers and I sort of thought I can do that. Yeah, I studied economics. I want to do something that's, you know, more closely related to the profession I was aiming for because I was not really ever aiming to become a teacher as a profession for me. So this was get into the Peace Corps for the international experience and ultimately, you know, figure out what it is that they can have me do that would fit in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:06:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So at that time, did you have an idea of what you wanted to be doing in the future?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:06:17", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I did want to be an economist, and so I actually did have already have in mind that I thought what I would like to work for the World Bank or something like that and be involved in economic development in terms of policy, you know, government policy, economic policies, you know, building up infrastructure, building up, you know, all kinds of things to improve the well-being of people and in a poor country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:06:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you graduated from college and did thinking about that future vision of yourself, how did you see the Peace Corps fitting into that then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:07:08", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I understood that it was definitely a good idea to build up some experience living and working abroad. And definitely, you know, since I had been sort of trying to just get hired directly into these positions and they I they wouldn't take me. So I understood that Peace Corps is probably my best bet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:07:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Interesting. So where were you trained?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:07:35", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Peace Corps training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:07:37", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Colorado. We went to Colorado. It was for a week, I think. I think it was in June." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:07:42", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where? University or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:07:45", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was. It was actually up in the mountains. And they did that deliberately because Botswana is, you know, a fairly high plateau. And they wanted to give us a little taste of, you know, a relatively high altitude just in case that would be a problem for anybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:08:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you finish your training, did you feel you were prepared for your assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:08:13", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I wasn't, but I thought I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:08:17", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how old were you then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:08:19", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "22." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:08:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "22. So you were very young then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:08:21", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I was right out of college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:08:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So what was your initial entry into the country to Botswana like? I mean, how did that happen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:08:31", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was it was in a very unfortunate situation because President Seretse Khama, who is the father of the country, had just died and he had been president for quite a while and, you know, beloved in the country, as you know, the founding father of the modern country of Botswana. And so we arrived in a period of mourning in the country and they put us up. It was during the winter break for the University of Botswana." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:09:13", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s where you were assigned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:09:14", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, no, we were that's where we started out for training, I think, in country language training and so on. So it was a period of mourning. And they asked us to, you know, be mindful of that and to not just, you know, be boisterous or rowdy or anything like that, to be respectful of the feelings of everybody. We're really, you know, this was a shock to the country and deep mourning. And so we really were constrained to, you know, behave in a way that would not disturb anybody's feelings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:09:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how long were you in that sort of training program in country?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:10:03", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a couple of months. It was during the winter break for the university. And so they housed us there in the dorms at the university. And they, how did this go? Yeah, they sent us up almost immediately, sent us all out. We were a fairly large group. There were over 30 of us, 30 as a group. They came in and they sent us out to a on- site experience with other volunteers who were already in place around the country. So I was sent up to, so we had been in the capital city, which is Gaborone and they sent us up. They sent me up to a town called Palapye, which is where there were a couple other volunteers who were already stationed there. And in fact, that wasn't too far away from the hometown of President Khama, where he was going to have the you know, where there is the funeral, where he was going to be buried. So there were plans to for all of us to go and attend. As it turned out, I wasn't able to do that. I had just a bit of a medical issue. I had to go back down to the capital city to have it attended to. Nothing major. But I ended up missing the missing the funeral." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:11:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what were the specifics of the job that you were assigned to? The initial job, I guess I should say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:11:43", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the job. Yes. I was supposed to be a math teacher in what they called a community secondary school. So they already had a number of government secondary schools scattered around the country. But they really didn't have the capacity to take in the numbers of students. There was demand. And so they started on sort of another tier of education, which would be somewhat subsidized. But it was really up to the community to start up these schools and to bring them together. So in this community, Mahalapye, the founder of the school, was actually also the head of the opposition party and a communist, Communist Party. And he started up this community secondary school. But I mean, he's not the kind of communist who is like, you know, die hard Soviet or anything like that. He was just of, you know, more of a Marxist philosopher, shall we say, and he was delighted to hear that he could get some Peace Corps teachers to come and teach in his school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:13:13", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was, this is the principal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:13:14", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He wasn't the principal. He was the like the superintendent. But he was the he was sort of the founder, the sponsor of the school. And then he hired a principal and there was a board and then they hired teachers. And so the school was relatively young already. It was only a couple of years old. And my and other Peace Corps volunteer and I were the first Americans first volunteers, outsiders to be brought into that particular school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:13:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this was in which town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:13:53", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mahalapye." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:13:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mahalapye. OK, so can you help us understand some of the experiences that you had during that placement? Or that was just that you didn't actually this is that still training? Where were you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:14:09", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now, know, that was that was the actual teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:14:12", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The actual teaching. So can you share with us some of the experiences you had during your two years there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:14:18", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it was a mixed bag. And so it started out they had recruited me as a math teacher. But when I got there, I it was we found out that they actually had math teachers, but they were short on teachers for a subject that they called development studies. And this would be like in the United States social studies. But it was in the context of a developing country. And but it was a similar mix of history, geography, sociology, economics, you know, an introductory social studies course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:15:01", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So tell us a little bit about the school or the number of students and where you lived. And how that all worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:15:09", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, boy, that's a long story. The school the school was responsible for our housing. That was that was their contribution to having Peace Corps volunteers, teachers there. So they rented a compound that had two huts in it. I and I went with another guy who had been in the same incoming Peace Corps group, Joel Simon, and he was teaching science. And so there were two huts there. There was a cement block and sort of two room tin roof hut and a smaller mud walled thatch hot. And I decided I, I would actually prefer the mud walled thatch hut, that being thatch being actually a nicer insulation than a tin roof. And also I thought it was more authentic and cozy and all these things. So I got the mud hut and then we shared an outhouse in the back and there was a standpipe in the front." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:16:25", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The standpipe for water?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:16:26", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Water. Yeah. So no running, no running water in either of the houses." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:16:32", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so you were just in the one house in this hut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:16:35", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hut, yeah. One room. Mine was one room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:16:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So are they round or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:16:39", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was called a rondavel. And it was it was round. It was just big enough for a single bed, a table, a bookshelf, a little two burner cookstove. That was really it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:16:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about nighttime? What did you? Could you see? Was it light?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:16:59", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had to rely on kerosene lanterns and candles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The petromax or whatever you call them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:17:04", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had these sort of gas burner things where you would put in a mantle and the gas would flow through the mantle and you would light that. And that could be very bright. But they were kind of fragile. And if they got knocked around, then it would break and you'd have to get a new mantle. So I was sort of I sort of gave up on that. And so I was more of a good old fashioned kerosene lantern and candles. And that's what I used for light. Yeah. And I'd have to take a bucket out the standpipe outside and haul in the water. So if I wanted to bathe, there was a big galvanized tub and what I would do is I would bring in the water, put it into a pot, a regular cooking pot on the stove, warm up some hot water, mix it with some cool water in a little basin and sit in this galvanized tub." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your thatched hut." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, in my thatched hut. And do a really glorified sponge bath. That was it most days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:18:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that was for two years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:18:20", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Better part of two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:18:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must have been a good experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:18:25", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was interesting. I did hire out laundry. I tried at one point to do my own laundry and very quickly discovered that, you know, it was just I didn't have the calluses that you would need on your hands. It was you know, I was getting blisters. And so I hired that out to a neighbor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:18:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess, was there such a thing as cleaning or do you just use a broom?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:18:53", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. Around the house, you know, you're on your own. This is just one room. I mean, you know, how much work is it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:19:01", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I've never experienced that, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:19:04", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, just a broom and rags to dust and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:19:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So are there some experiences you had with your students?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:19:14", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I found it really challenging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In particular, well the classes were pretty big. They were usually about 35 to 38. I think somewhere along the line I probably had a class of maybe 40 for a while and in in theory the kids were sort of strange. So they did have sort of, you know, classes that were considered to be higher level students in it, mostly meaning that these were kids who spoke reasonable English and understood English reasonably well. But then other classes, the kids were, you know, struggling more with English. And I had to teach in English my Setswana. I did learn Setswana, but only a bit. And I wasn't fluent in it. And in any event, they wanted you to teach in English. This was kind of what they wanted. So I would have to, you know, slow down quite a bit. It took a while for me to figure out how to speak in a way that the students could understand, because if I were just rattling along like this, like an American kid, I just thought, like, la la la. And I could figure out that that they didn't really a lot of them didn't understand. So and you'd start out and you'd say something like, do you understand? And then they would all say, yes ma, but you would you know, you get the sense that this wasn't true.\n\nAnd eventually I I figured out that I should pause more often. And if I asked that question, I said, do you understand? If they said, yes ma, then that meant no. But if they said, ehey ma, then I knew, oh actually yes. That then they were you know, they were more enthusiastic. And that was they were actually responding in really their own language, Setswana. And that was actually an indication that they did understand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:21:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were these what were you students from that area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:21:33", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they were. Like, yeah, they were from the town or nearby villages." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:21:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about the distribution of boys and girls? I mean, was it about equal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:21:40", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was about equal. And in fact, if anything in Botswana, it might have been a slight, slightly higher number of girls because the boys tended to be sent off, you know, at the age of 10 or 11, they were more likely to be sent off to the cattle posts. And girls were allowed essentially to stay home and continue with their education. So there was a slight majority of girls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:22:10", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how do you think you were received by the other teachers, particularly the Botswana teachers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:22:16", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess that was sort of a mix of some of them I got along with very well. And they were helpful and supportive. Others of them were a little more standoffish, you might say. And there was, you know, like any organization there, there was they had their own internal politics. And so we weren't really part of that. And I don't think anyone really expected us to, really. But there were sort of factions and clicks and so on. And so we just sort of tried to stay out of that. But it was you know, it was not healthy for the school to have that kind of free action within the ranks of the teachers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:23:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And we're just two Peace Corps volunteers there at?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:23:10", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First year, and then we got some more. So the school was growing and so we got another Peace Corps volunteer. And then there was also a Canadian who showed up. A couple Canadians, I think so. These were where we have. And we got a couple of British towards the end. A couple of British, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:23:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was there a town is this right in a town or was it near?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:23:41", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right on the edge. Yeah, right on the edge of a town and it was a big town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:23:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's big?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:23:46", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mahalapye, depending upon the season. If it was you know, if they, if people were out in their fields, that was one thing. But in the in the winter months, it would be close to forty thousand, which is really big. But it was at the time it was still considered a quote unquote traditional village just because there was nothing much modern there. I mean, the rail line was going through there in the main highway was going through there and it was actually designated as a place that should become more modern and that the government would sort of invest in the infrastructure to encourage more modern economic activities. But at the time we were there, it was, you know, that was just barely starting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:24:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So does that mean that the town didn't have electricity or running water or sewage?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:24:40", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, definitely. No central sewage or anything. There was the main street essentially, which just came right off the highway and the train went through there. So that immediate downtown, I think had maybe a handful of just streetlights and probably in the train station they may have had in the bank. Yeah there were two banks. They may have had, you know, some running water there and a couple of general stores and they had refrigeration and lights. But for the most part, it was just tiny. It was you could count the buildings that had that on your fingers and that was it. And then everybody else, it was much more traditional and no electricity, no running water." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:25:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had time for a vacation, I assume?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:25:48", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:25:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us a little about some of your experiences, or what you did during vacation time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:25:54", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first vacation, that could be a long story. I won't give you the long story. Four of us got together and decided we wanted to go to Tanzania and we wanted to take the train. And it was a bit of an adventure. So we went into Zimbabwe by train and then we had to take a bus to Zambia. And in Lusaka, I think we needed yet another bus to get to Kapiri Mposhi. And then there was we got on the rail and that was the new Tazara railroad built by the Chinese. And that was only a couple of years old. But they were there were some organizational problems and the trains were actually not running all the way through. They would take you to the border and then you'd have to get off and buy a new ticket and wait for the next train to come to pick you up. So they had to train for just sort of meeting each other in the middle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:27:00", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was to take it, what, two days or so to just do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:27:03", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was the better part of a week to get to Dar es Salaam." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just to get there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:27:08", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, right. And then we got robbed on the way. Like I said, this is an adventure, but we threw ourselves at the mercy of the Tanzania Peace Corps and they were able to give us an advance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:27:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get robbed? I mean, what was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:27:24", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Changing, you know, at the at the train and bus stations, this was a place where, you know, thieves would hang out and they were well organized. So it was just aggressive pickpockets. But it was very you know, it was really just, nothing subtle. It's not like sneaking into your pocket. It was grab, grab and run. It will grab and hand off to the next guy and run. And so I, let's see. I think I might have lost, they ripped a watch off my wrist, while other others of them. One person lost a passport. And then, you know, some traveler's checks and money got missing and so on, so we know it was an adventure and we went to. We often would go to Zimbabwe for like long weekends because that wasn't too far. You could get there easily by train on an overnight train." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:28:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was, what, 1981?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:28:22", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it had just become Zimbabwe and it just, you know, had its election and Robert Mugabe had just been elected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:28:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the transition hadn't totally occurred yet?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:28:33", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was, well, he was in power. But yes, it was brand new. That was a very interesting experience too. But yeah. So we’d go there and we also made a trip to Swaziland, which meant we had to go through South Africa, which was when it was still under apartheid. And so that was very eye-opening experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:28:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And but did you do that by car or truck?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:29:02", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, bus and train. But we also did hitchhiking and so on the way back, we were hitchhiking. And yet more adventures, nothing too serious, but sort of getting lost, ending up in some little dorp." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:29:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so it was just like, did you say four of you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:29:22", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were, yeah. We would do it in groups of three or four, maybe two." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:29:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But so any other experiences on vacation time that you thought were interesting?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:29:34", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the last one. There were a lot of adventures. The last one my sister had come to visit and she wanted to go on safari. And so we loaded up. Well, my husband's friend had a truck and we loaded up with our tent and camping equipment and we went up to Zimbabwe. And so we went to Victoria Falls and what was then called Hwange Game Reserve. And then we were going to go down to, um, we were going to go over to Harare, where a friend lived, and we decided to take a shortcut because instead of going all the way down all the way south to Bulawayo and then northeast again up to up to Harare, we thought. We looked at the map and we saw, I think we cut across here. So we did that. And when we got over to the main road leading into Harare, there were just an inordinate number of police and army stops and checkpoints. And we're saying, what's going on? And they wouldn't really tell us, but we could sense something was going on.\n\nSo we got to our friend's house and they had an apartment and television. And so we turned on the TV and we saw that just on that road going south from Hwange to Bulawayo, there had been a bunch of tourists who had been kidnaped by rebels and were being held. And so that's, you know, that's why everybody was so anxious. And the news was it included, you know, a couple Americans, Canadians, Brits, I don't know. And they also on the local television station, they read out the names of the people who had been kidnapped.\n\nSo we said, oh my, oh my! And then, you know, we stayed a day or two there and then headed back south again and took our time. And we were, you know, stopping in the Matopos and enjoying, you know, all the lovely scenery in Zimbabwe. And then again then decided again, oh, instead of just following all the main roads, let's take this little road over here and cross the Limpopo at this little border station over here. And then that's closer to Mahalapye and then we'll get home. So we did all that and, you know, it was nice. And then we get home. And my husband says, well, he wasn’t my husband, yet he was my boyfriend. And he said he said, oh, my God, you're here, you're okay! And I said, yeah, we're okay. He said, we were so concerned, we were so worried about you. And apparently so this was a real international incident, this business of the kidnapping of the tourists and what we didn’t realize was that somehow the names of the kidnaped people had, even though we saw it on local television, had not made it outside of the country. They put suddenly a block on bad information.\n\nAnd so people heard about a kidnapping that included two Americans and, you know, feared the worst. And of course, this was not at a time when we had cell phones or anything. And in fact, we weren't making phone calls on a regular basis because it was way too expensive. So, you know, we were just writing postcards and stuff like that. That was communication back then, letters and postcards. And so we said, no, we're fine. And he said, oh, well, we didn't know. We tried calling in Zimbabwe. We tried calling the police station. We tried asking and they wouldn't tell us and they wouldn't tell us. And so everyone's been really concerned. And then I said, oh, well, okay, we're here.\n\nAnd then I go out, it was Friday night and there was a party. And so we go to the party and the one of the other Peace Corps volunteers, a woman, and she'd already had a couple of drinks. And she said, oh, Jackie, Elsa, the co-Peace Corps director, has been trying to reach you. Something about your mother. And I said, my mother, oh dear! You know, so then I get worried about my mother. And so then we dash and we do track down a telephone and we do make a phone call. And then it turned out that my parents had heard about this incident. They were scared. You know, two of their daughters, and they had been calling frantically down to the Peace Corps office. The Peace Corps office hadn't even been aware that I was out of town because I was supposed to file a something or other, which I didn't do. And so, boy, was I in deep doo-doo. And they were scared. And then Elsa had, was sure and had told everybody that, oh well, when they come back through the border at Francistown, I have alerted the Botswana customs facilities that they will, they'll let us know immediately. And of course, we came through a different station and there was no word. So here I was back in the country for hours and she didn't know. And so that upset her even more.\n\nSo, yeah, that was, uh. So we had to make phone calls and fess up that I had, you know, essentially taken an unauthorized vacation. But no, actually, it's actually tragic because those people who had been kidnaped were killed. They were killed. And this was when there was, you know, ethnic civil war going on in Zimbabwe after it had become independent. So this was the, you know, roughly speaking, Shona and Ndebele fighting. And so this was a real tragedy, you know, a real tragedy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:36:12", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it's good you were safe. And I'm sure that your parents were happy as well as the Peace Corps director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So looking back at your tour service, what do you think were your main accomplishments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:36:28", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that for some of my students who were, you know, really sufficiently fluent in English, that they could really understand what I was saying and writing on the blackboard. I do think, you know, they got an interesting perspective from an American on, you know, some of these issues of history and geography and economics and so on. And, you know, got to know Americans. And I think they found us more, um. We could have sort of a more familiar relationship with them. The Tswana had tended to prefer the more British traditional system, which is, you know, yes sir, no sir. You know, a real distance usually between student and teacher. And so we were a little more pal-sy. And so they got to know Americans in that kind of context. And I think that, was probably, you know, a nice thing. I think they enjoyed having American teachers, certainly as a novelty, if nothing else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:37:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you say anything about how you tracked any of these students or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:37:59", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not many of the students. One of them started out, he looked like he was really going to be like a track star and but he ended up with bone cancer and that was a sad thing. You have to remember, this was also when AIDS was just hitting. And to be honest, a lot of the teachers ended up getting AIDS and dying. My husband and I had to get tested when we came, you know, not immediately. But it was pretty clear pretty quickly that we needed to be tested. And so we were fine. We were lucky. But Botswana was one of the hardest hit by AIDS. And as I understand, for the Peace Corps, more recently, they almost ended the Peace Corps program. They were planning to phase out Peace Corps from Botswana. And I think for a while they may have briefly done so. But then the AIDS epidemic became so, you know, such an enormous problem. They brought back a lot of health and community health and social workers because it wasn't just the disease, it was also orphans. And it was so devastating. It was, you know, it became its own sociological problem that so many of, you know, families, adults, working age, family age, parent aged adults were just devastated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:39:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it impact the students as well as the teachers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:39:40", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I know that because they were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:39:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You knew some of these people personally then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:39:45", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I knew some of our language teachers and a couple of them died. And a couple of them died. And I don't know for sure, you know, specifically named students because I didn't really stay in touch with the students. But there were definitely, it was known that some of the teachers were sleeping with some of the students and the whole area, as I said, on the main railroad and road network with, you know, truckers going up and down and so on. So it was one of the hardest hit areas in the world actually. Botswana was one of the hardest hit countries and Mahalapye and that whole corridor, transport corridor, was one of the hardest hit in the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:40:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did any Peace Corps volunteers come back and come in specifically to work in the AIDS area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:40:52", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was not our group, but afterwards yes, my understanding is yes, definitely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:40:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that would be very traumatic. Also in term of your tour of service, are there some things that when you look back, you regret?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:41:11", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, I look back, I feel silly about it. There was a problem with just classroom discipline, right? And so we tried." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:41:26", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, just, you know, just kids being unruly. Yeah. I mean, these are you know, these are 12, 13, 14 year olds. And so a rambunctious age. And so and with such large classes, it was always an effort to, you know, try to keep them focused on class. So we started out, you know, a lot of the Tswana teachers would carry around a stick and they would beat the kids. And that was their main method of discipline. And of course, we said we're not going to do that. And so we were coming up with other possibilities. And so we started on a system of demerits. So, you know, yeah, we're going to give you a demerit. But of course, that had to be backed up by something. So we had them. We said, OK, if you get three demerits, you're going to have to clean the teacher's toilets. Well, toilets need cleaning. So we had that system in place. But then, you know, there came a point when some of the students just said, well, I'm not going to do that. And so then there’s the question of enforcement. Or they would say, oh, you know, Ma Coolidge, just beat me, just beat me, I don't want to do it. I’d say, no.\n\nAnd then, you know, it was sort of a question of like turning them over to the principal, but then the principal would beat them and, you know, and so. At some point, Joel, the other Peace Corps volunteer said, well, you know, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. So he started, you know, to bring a stick. Basically it was, I mean, you're not banging him over the head. You'd say, put out your hand and then you use, you know. But yes, corporal punishment. And somewhere along the line, I thought, well, if everyone else is doing it, I'll do it too. But this was just I immediately, you know, abandoned that. I just couldn't, you know, couldn't do that. But I did, you know, I did try a couple of times and I feel like an idiot for even trying." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:43:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Remind me, how old were these students?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:43:40", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "12, 13, 14. They were bigger than I was, right? You know, I'm a little pipsqueak. No, that wouldn’t have happened. None of that was a problem in our school, to that degree. Other schools there was more of a problem. There was you know, there were Peace Corps young women teachers who were raped and. Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:44:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your school area or in other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is in other assignments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:44:10", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Yeah. And it was you know, these were serious risks. Actually, this is one other thing I wanted to share on the record. I was lucky, I never had any really serious problems. But as you probably know, most Peace Corps volunteers at the very beginning, they’re sent for a village live-in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And we all were. Ours was actually even a little longer because they were, you know, they were having trouble juggling with this whole situation, with the mourning over President Khama." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:44:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A village live-in means live with a family in the community to sensitize you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:44:51", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For a week. Yeah. And you would get your language training in the context of being able to practice with, you know, a family. And so I was there and I was assigned to a family and we got there in the late afternoon and we, you know, we had food with us as a contribution to the household. And so this was a family compound with, you know, three or four huts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:45:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These mud with the thatch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:45:30", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly, yeah, I think one of them, the father had a smaller, well a cement block house, but nothing very big. But I got there and so I had, you know, a bag, a suitcase. And the next thing I know, they're bringing the suitcase into the father's hut." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your suitcase?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My suitcase. And they're bringing a bed, a cot into his bedroom. And I, I was, you know, saying, oh my god, no, no, this is not right. So I went off to find one of the official Peace Corps language teachers who was also in the same village as a number of us. So there was maybe a half a dozen of us or eight or so. And then so I went to Buntle, her name, and I said Buntle, they're trying to put me in the same bed, hut and bedroom with the father. And she said, oh that's not good. And so she went in and there was, you know, a long talk, long talk, long talk. And eventually one of the boys brought my bag out and into another little hut and moved the cot over there. But this guy, you know, this is the father of the household. And he had really wanted me to his room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:47:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was his expectation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:47:13", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was his expectation. And now he was unhappy. And so I had wanted to be moved. You know, I don't want to be in this situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And they, the response, you know, the Peace Corps response was, oh no, that would be offensive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tough it out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so I had to stay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh my god." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he was, you know, always eyeing me, if you will. He never touched me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:47:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:47:41", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nothing physical ever happened. But he was definitely, you know, looking at me like. And so I ended up avoiding him. It was an awkward situation with the entire family. So most people you would think, you know, most people you hear about, Peace Corps people, that their village live-in is this heartwarming, loving experience that they, you know, that they look back on with such fondness and warmth and all that. And I was just, I was basically, you know, hanging on to the edge of the family. I mean, I managed to develop a bit of a relationship with, you know, some of the other women in the family. And, okay, they were showing me how to pound millet and stuff like that. And, you know, I had to go through with some of the just, you know, standard household things that we were supposed to share in. But I was forever trying to dodge and avoid this guy. And he was huge, by the way. He was like six foot three, at least six foot three, probably at least three hundred pounds. He was enormous, probably pushing 60, I would guess. And so I was avoiding him for the whole two weeks. And finally I thought, okay, I'm now it's the last day and I'm ready to leave and I will look him in the eye and, you know, I'll say my goodbyes cordially.\n\nSo I was sitting down for breakfast around the fire, a little fire, a little area where they eat. And he came up and he looked at me and he sat down, you know, just opposite me. And he patted his, looked at me, patted his crotch and said nice in English. And I again, I just finished up and fled. You know, this was just so obnoxious. But I do understand that, you know, from what I've heard over the years in the Peace Corps, this kind of thing is not that unusual. And Peace Corps didn't, you know, had a hard time figuring out how to deal with this situation because, you know, this guy might not have been seen as being the nicest and most hospitable host in the world, even by local standards. But it was considered, you know, his prerogative to behave that way. And I, you know, I don't know how, I've heard that Peace Corps has struggled with this kind of problem and worse, and worse definitely, over the years. But this was when I was there, I really felt I was on my own and just coping with this on my own because. Yeah, I mean, the official Peace Corps response is, no, we're not going to move you because that would insult him. And he's, you know, he's a village elder." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:50:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a tough one to take. Well, congratulations, you survived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I survived. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's an interesting story. Well, on the flip side of that, what were some of the most meaningful relationships that you felt you had with the students or the community that you were with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:51:18", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I liked, we had some very nice neighbors that I liked, and some of the teachers that I worked with were really wonderful, very welcoming and supportive. The teachers, you know, very dedicated and professional. I wish there had been more of them. The teachers in particular, you know, like I said, that was that was there was sort of constant friction in that school. The neighbors were very nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:51:53", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But let me ask, how many teachers were the ballpark total in the school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:51:58", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I would say 16, 18." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:52:03", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that's quite a few." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:52:06", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And it was growing and we helped we help with plans to expand the school. And so one of the things I was able to do, aside from just teaching, just teaching, I shouldn't say that, was putting together a grant proposal for the school to expand. So that was one time when I sort of felt like I was putting my economic skills to work and it did happen. And we eventually went back there in 2013. And so I saw that, yes, they actually had expanded the school. And that was, hey, look at that! They really did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:52:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So could you say what you learned most from the people who you worked with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:52:55", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, not just the people I work with, but the community. Yeah. It was it was really an opportunity to step up, step away from sort of, you know, your usual cultural context. And first of all, you find out that, hey, you know, people are people everywhere and, you know, hanging out with the neighbors in the evening. It would be, it was a very familiar thing. I could, you know, write letters home to my parents and say, this is so familiar. I mean, they're just, you know, talking about their kids and neighborhood gossip and stuff like, it was just the most normal thing in the world. But also, of course, there were a lot of cultural differences. And being away from your usual social and cultural context, you're sort of left with, you know, who am I? And that was, I think, a useful experience and a good experience and both professionally and personally and, you know, to become accustomed to another culture, another way of thinking, and to be able to come back home and to share that, I think was a benefit, you know, to the United States, to have your friends and neighbors who come back home and say, hey, I was in Africa for two years, and people would say, oh my god." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You survived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And you say, hey, you know, they're just like us. They sit around in the evening and they talk about the kids and they gossip about the neighbors just like we do. It's, you know, this is the human condition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:54:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So in the beginning, you said that you were interested in the economics and maybe getting into the even that thought, if I remember, about getting to the World Bank. So my question is, how did the Peace Corps experience or how do you feel the Peace Corps experience influenced or impacted your life and particularly your plans for your own future?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:55:01", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It did ultimately solidify my notion that I did want to continue in this work professionally. And, you know, I went back and got a master's degree and went into work. I was with a consulting firm for a while and then in the World Bank. And I think it is, it gives you, I think it's definitely a good idea for anybody who does this kind of work and especially policy work. You know, at sort of the higher levels like the World Bank tends to do with, you know, high level government officials in the capital city, blah, blah, blah, to have a real first-hand experience with what life is like in a typical village in some of these countries, what the challenges are, what life is like. And, you know, so that is not theoretical and it's not abstract. And it's not just assuming that, you know, a place like Mahalapye, Botswana, is just going to be like, you know, Cleveland, Ohio, or something. Grand Rapids, Michigan. So I do think that those of us who have had this kind of experience and then go on in our careers and, you know, working at a more abstract level, it's good that we have this lived experience and not just for a short period of time, not just a visit of, you know, a couple of weeks or a month, but when you have to stay in one place in this, you know, in this kind of setting for two years, you can't just tell yourself, oh well, I'll just, you know, I might not like this or that, but it's only two weeks and whatever. If you're there for two years, you really have to come to terms with everything, you know, all of the language and cultural and living standard issues. And you have to you have to cope with that.\n\nOtherwise, you know, people who leave early, you know, there were people who ended up leaving after a few months. They would just say, nah, this is not for me. Ok, I would you know, it's fair. That's fine. But, you know, sticking it out for long enough to really have a lived experience, I think is very important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:57:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Remind me, how many students were in the school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:57:42", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, in school, okay. I forgot that total in the school, let me think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:57:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this went from what, first grade to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:57:52", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, this is like junior, junior secondary school, so it would be it would be equivalent to our seventh, eighth, ninth grade. And there were probably, I'm guessing, in the ballpark of 250 students." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:58:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In that cohort?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:58:11", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. In those grades." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:58:12", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Wow. And then they went on to a high school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:58:17", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They would either go on to transfer into a government secondary school to finish up. So they would have done what do you call it, O levels?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:58:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they on the British system?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:58:31", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Roughly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:58:32", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They didn't do the Cambridge though, did they?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:58:34", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. So it would be roughly on the level of I think, all levels. And then if they wanted their A-levels, they would have to go into a government or private secondary school or they would go into trade school. So my husband was teaching in a what they call the brigades, which is basically a trade school with a live-in apprenticeship program sort of built in. So they would have the class work in the morning and had hands-on contract work. It was on-the-job training contract, which they did. So they were bringing in money and they were supposed to be self-financing. And in my husband's case it was, but it was it was hard to keep that going too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:59:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you speak a little bit about what had been the long-term impacts? I mean, you're now retired and you're able to think back on not only to say how many years ago it's been, but what do you think are some of the longer term impacts that have resulted from your involvement, the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:59:39", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, I." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:59:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Both on yourself and on those and let's say your family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:59:43", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My family. Well, my husband, you know, we ended up getting together when we were both in the same village in my Mahalapye. And so we have that shared experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:59:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is he Botswanan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "01:00:00", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he was from the Netherlands. He was a Dutch volunteer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "01:00:05", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So at the very end, I ended up sort of moving into his house, which was a nicer house, because the Dutch volunteers were considered sort of a higher level professional than most of the Peace Corps volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "01:00:19", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but so we had that that shared experience. Our daughter, you know, we continued to work overseas off and on for quite a while. And our daughter was born in Nairobi. And so we have this, you know, experience of living and working overseas, starting out in Botswana. And, you know, we look back on Botswana and we're very proud of it in many ways because Botswana is one of the few countries that really did well. Now, they were lucky in that they have diamond mines, so they've got real big revenue earner. But, you know, you think of all these other countries that also have mineral wealth and they you know, they just got, you know, swallowed by corruption. And Botswana didn't do that. It was truly a multiparty democracy, even if one party would, you know, dominate and win pretty much all the time. It was a multi-party democracy with an independent judiciary and a free press and a local level of governance that was called the Kgotla. And it was, you would, it would be similar in function to a New England town hall. Now, this is you know, this was an indigenous thing. This is not something they learned from, you know, Americans or Brits or anything else. This was purely an indigenous thing. But as you know, imagine a town hall and, you know, people bringing up the various issues and problems and how to resolve them and debate, debate, debate, debate, debate, debate, debate. Everybody gets to have their say. And it's long and it's tedious, but everybody has their chance to say. And then pretty much the elders, you know, you know, talk among themselves a little bit and come back and they say, well, we think we should do it this way. And then mostly people say, okay, that's fine. It's, you know, but there's been input. There's been voice.\n\nAnd we found that, you know, that's an unusual situation. And I think it did help ground good governance in Botswana. And they managed to avoid a lot of the problems of corruption and infighting and so on that you saw in a lot of other countries. So we were always very proud of that and would talk about Botswana as an example of it. You know, maybe not pointing out, be like Botswana, because you can't just snap your fingers and do that, of course, but as an example of an African country that that had its own indigenous forms of governance and was able to use those apparently to build on. It was sort of a mixture of the British parliamentary system and so on. But they had this bedrock basis of local self-government that I think helped them. And so it was an interesting case study, you know, trying to figure out what bits and pieces might be transferable to other places." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "01:03:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you kept in contact with any of your former students or faculty, the teachers or anything?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "01:03:42", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "01:03:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or going back, any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "01:03:45", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was one, um, one of my former language teachers that I was in touch with very briefly, because he was a journalist in the capital city. And I was back there once or twice professionally and didn't actually get together with him again. He is another one who was suffering from AIDS. So he was, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Under therapy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, he was struggling, you know, health wise. And others of them, as I said, died of AIDS earlier, you know, because that hit that hit Botswana so hard and so fast. So a lot of people remember, died before there was really an effective treatment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "01:04:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm. Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "01:04:37", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But, yeah, some of the some of the other Peace Corps volunteers, yeah, I've been in touch with some of them and that's fun too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "01:04:44", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Old war stories. Have you gone back to Botswana?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "01:04:48", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. So professionally a couple of times in the ‘90s. Yeah, late ‘80s, early ‘90s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this with the World Bank?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First with a consulting firm. Also with the World Bank. And then my husband and I both went back there for a holiday vacation in 2013 and did another little safari. Oh, we did another safari. Oh my god, I forgot to tell you about the other safari that we did in the Okavango Delta, which was really amazing. But oh well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "01:05:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, when you went back, did you go up to your old go back to your old town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "01:05:25", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. And it was much it was, you know, somewhat bigger. It's always been a fairly big town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "40,000." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. But it now had more modern amenities in the area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Electricity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "01:05:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Water, hopefully." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "01:05:40", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. Quite a bit more. But you could still see this sort of hollowing out of middle aged people because so many had died of AIDS. You know, this was you know, it was noticeable, the absence of, you know, people my age." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "01:05:59", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, no that’s. And men and women?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, definitely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, no question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Definitely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then babies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "01:06:08", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Orphans. There were a lot of orphans." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "01:06:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, right. Right. Do you continue to be involved in the Peace Corps in any way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "01:06:15", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not a lot. But I did go down to the, there was a big event launching this new museum, if you will, an event at the Kennedy Center a couple of months ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "01:06:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, when they had that film?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Oh yeah. Some people find it great to continue involvement with the Peace Corps, others don't. Why do you think? You did that, but not a strong thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "01:06:54", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some people, some of my friends actually came back here and ended up working as professionals in the Peace Corps administration for a period of time. And so they have, they've formed more of a network, if you will, a tighter network, I would say. The rest of us, you know, we're just scattered. We're so far apart. But yeah, it is actually with Facebook has been, you know, made it easier to find and connect again with some of them. And that's been nice. And the guy who shared the compound with me, you know, I sort of lost touch with him. He married another Peace Corps volunteer who had been part of our group, and they settled in New Jersey. And when we were taking our daughter around to visit schools, we went to Pratt because she was interested in art school. And, you know, that was their big day of having lots of people come and look at it as a prospective college location, and we bumped into them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "01:08:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Serendipitously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "01:08:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, my gosh, wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We immediately as soon as we were all finished, we said, oh we have to have lunch together. And we did. That was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "01:08:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, very nice. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for taking time to do this interview, and I think people will find it very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "01:08:21", + "speaker": "Jacqueline Coolidge", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. It was nice to reminisce." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "01:08:25", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00372", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/MatthewsCF/matthewscf.htm", + "original_file_name": "MatthewsCF_6-23-99.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/MatthewsCF/MatthewsCF_6-23-99.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "location_date": "Lexington, Massachusetts – 23 June 1999" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Carol Butler" + ], + "respondents": [ + "C. Frederick Matthews" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 23, 1999. This oral history with C. Frederick Matthews is being conducted in Lexington, Massachusetts, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Carol Butler.\\n\\n Thank you again, Mr. Matthews, for allowing us in your home to spend some time with you and gather up some of your memories on tape. We'd like to begin today by you sharing with us how you first got interested in aeronautics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it started when I was about six years old. I saw my first airplane. This was in the late 1920s, and it was a barnstorming airplane that landed just outside the city where I was born, Guelph, Ontario, Canada. That started me being intrigued.\\n\\n Then the next thing that got me started was my aunt gave me my first magazine, called\\n\\n Flying Aces\\n\\n , and, boy, was I hooked. [Laughter] I started [building] balsa models and reading everything I could. I started a scrapbook of all the news stories I could find.\\n\\n Then along came World War II and the aviation activity around Toronto, where I was living then, became very active. The Victory Aircraft was building Lancasters and a whole bunch of other airplanes. DeHavilland was building Mosquitos. The Norwegian Air Force had set up a fighter training base on Toronto's Island Airport. There was all sorts of opportunities to see aviation starting to grow.\\n\\n Then I joined the Air Force and became a pilot for a couple of years. That was after I'd started aeronautical engineering. I took one year of aeronautical engineering [and quit] to join the Air Force.\\n\\n Then after getting out of the Air Force at the end of the war, I went back to school, finished my education, got my aeronautical degree, and went to work for AVRO Aircraft, which had bought the old Victory Aircraft. Victory Aircraft was government-owned during World War II, and they were building the first jet transport on the continent, called the Jetliner, AVRO Jetliner. They were building a twin-engine fighter called CF-100. They were building engines for the CF-100, and they had three production lines going down. So this was a great opportunity to just come out of school and get involved with all of that.\\n\\n Soon as the Jetliner was ready to come off its production line, they opened up a flight test department, and I went from a stress office to flight test, and then had a chance to fly in the Jetliner, including flying with old Howard Hughes. [Laughter] And flying in the prototypes of the CF-100. And so it went. That was sort of how I got involved in aviation.\\n\\n At AVRO, the last product we built was the Arrow, the CF-105, and it was poised to be the fastest fighter in the world, but its life was cut short. I was in charge of all the flying airplanes. We had five of them flying, and the sixth was ready to go with our own engines.\\n\\n The loudspeaker came on one afternoon about two o'clock and said, \"So sad, too bad, goodbye. Everybody below the level of vice president is hereby laid off,\" and 14,000 people left that afternoon. After that is when I started to get involved with NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure that was quite a shock to all of those people in that plant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By the time a month was up, there were 50,000 people out of work simply because it ricocheted down through all the subcontractors. I wrote forty-some-odd resumes to aircraft companies, to airlines, and so forth, never got one answer.\\n\\n I got a call one day. I think it may have been from Jim [James A.] Chamberlin—I can't remember now—saying that NASA was going to come up and interview, because they were desperate to get engineers, because NASA had never done a project before. They were always research. And being research, they never hired senior engineers; they just hired graduates out of school and let them grow up through the organization. As a result, their salary structure was down just a bit from the industry, so they were having a tough time getting experienced engineers.\\n\\n So suddenly here was this pool of engineers available, and they knew our work because they had done rocket firings with models off Wallops Island [Virginia] for us, or with us, and they had done some wind tunnel tests and so forth, so they knew the company. They knew Jim Chamberlin in particular. So they came up and interviewed us. Bob [Robert R.] Gilruth interviewed me with Chuck [Charles W.] Mathews—no relationship, although my first name is Charles. He spells his name with one \"T,\" mine with two. Anyway, that was the beginning of my involvement with NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess just a few weeks before, you thought maybe that life in aeronautics had come to an end, but yet now a whole new adventure lay in front of you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. I'd never thought of space, although I'd taken a course in space. I was really a dyed-in-the-wool airplane man and had never thought of anything [else] in particular. In fact, I was so busy up until the roof fell in, that what was going on in the rest of the world wasn't always clear. We were working seven days a week, three shifts, and I only had enough people to cover about a shift and a half about six days. So it was a lot of overtime and on call." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you aware of Sputnik and what was going on with the Russian space agency at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not aware of it in any sense beyond noticing it in the newspapers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your thoughts when you learned that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think I had much reaction whatsoever. As I say, we were so buried in trying to get this Arrow going, that I didn't have much reaction to it at all. And I don't think there was that much reaction in Canada either, in general. It was, \"Oh, yes. One of those interesting things.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So now Mr. Mathews and Mr. Gilruth were inviting you to come to America and be a part of this whole new program. Did they give you any idea what you'd be doing when you came to work for them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. [Laughter] All I knew was that they were starting off this ambitious program which I'd read a little bit about, Project Mercury, and that I'd probably be working for Chuck Mathews, who was going to head up the—or was heading up the Operations Division. Other than that, it was, \"Well, this is the only game in town, so I guess I'd better join it.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n And so there were about twenty-five of us went down, roughly, and this was probably when the basic Manned Space Task Group had only about twenty-five engineers, who almost all of them had come from Langley. I think one of them or two of them had come from other NASA centers, plus the seven original astronauts had just been named, so it was the original core of what's now the big Manned Spacecraft Center. It was kind of exciting. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The goals and expectations that the Space Task Group had, as you said, was for this great new adventure and a great new program. How did you feel about all those? Did you ever have a doubt that as part of this group you'd be able to fulfill all those goals and reach those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I took it as a big challenge, having worked in the aircraft industry with prototypes, the Jetliner and the CF-100 and the CF-105. I said, \"Here's another challenge.\" [Laughter] A big one, but I like doing new things like that. It certainly was a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And a very new thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And new, yes. And learning a lot. It was learning as you go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the transition from leaving Canada and moving down to the Langley area. Was that a smooth operation for you and your family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was tough on the family, because all our relatives, our friends were in the area, and here we were going off into an area we didn't know anything about. My father had said, \"Oh, you're going down near Williamsburg [Virginia]. You'll love Williamsburg.\" And I'd heard a little bit about Williamsburg and I thought of it as being old taverns with big flashing neon signs saying \"Ye Old English Tavern Here,\" you know. [Laughter] And, boy, was I surprised and delighted when I found out what Williamsburg was like.\\n\\n But it was tough on the family. I went down by myself, first of all, went down to—I arrived in the middle of the night in downtown Newport News, and pouring rain. Boy, downtown Newport News is not the most hospitable place, even in the daytime, and, boy, was I discouraged. But I found where Jim Chamberlin and a few of the others were staying at a motel in Buckrow Beach, and I found the motel and bunked in for the day, and the next day went out to work.\\n\\n When school was over, I came up, went back up to Toronto, picked up the family and the two cats in a little coupe, Studebaker Coupe, and drove down, the five of us, the five of us in this little coupe, drove all the way down. The house wasn't ready because the floors were still wet. We were going to move into an area called Stoneybrook, and there were several of the Canadians had moved into Stoneybrook—Len [Leonard E.] Packham, John [D.] Hodge, Jack [N.] Cohen, myself. The only house that was finished—this was a new development—the only house that was finished was John Hodge's, so Tec [Tecwyn] Roberts and I bunked in with him. We didn't have any furniture. I bought a lounge chair and slept on it. It's still out in the back yard. [Laughter] So we got along pretty good.\\n\\n It was then that I found out that three of the astronauts had gone into Stoneybrook as well. Wally [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.] lived across the street from us. Deke [Donald K.] Slayton lived over near Tec Roberts and John Hodge. Gus [Virgil I.] Grissom lived over next to Jack Cohen. So it was an interesting little community.\\n\\n After the family came down, we settled in, and they soon became acclimatized to it. So we realized, all of us realized afterwards that the move, after it was all over and we'd spent the three years there, that the move had broadened us. We had both enjoyed it and we learned a lot, and it was very broadening in our whole life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about you and transitioning now into your new job. What was it like at Langley compared to what you had been used to before, and about the new duties you were taking on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was quite a bit like what I had been doing before. In other words, I used to say, when I was looking for engineers to work for me at AVRO, I used to tell personnel, \"Make sure you get somebody with a pair of roller skates and a sense of humor.\" [Laughter] Because it was panic a lot of the time. A lot of it was well planned, but there were things that kept you really on your toes and running. The original organization of the Space Task Group in the Operations Division was pretty loose. People were assigned ad hoc tasks and so forth, and it took a while for the organization to get sorted out and settle down in terms of who was supposed to be doing what. But it was a lot of interesting tasks.\\n\\n Frank Thomas, another Canadian, and I went down to the Cape to talk to the range safety people. That was one of the first things we did. Range safety had always operated by themselves, away from the launch activity, and they were charged with if the launch vehicle didn't go down the designated corridor, that if it strayed outside that corridor, they would destruct it, hit the \"destruct\" button. So the question now was, now that there's a man on board, how should this activity be carried out.\\n\\n We thought they should move in with the Mission Control Center. That was the Operations Division's general opinion. But they said no, that they would put a coordinator in the Mission Control Center. In the end, it turned out that was the right way to do it. That was a good way to do it. It worked out quite well.\\n\\n Of course, they never had to do it, though they told us a funny one about a multi-stage vehicle being prepared for launch, and when they hit the firing button, instead of the first stage igniting, the second stage ignited, leaving the first stage on the pad. The second stage was unguided, and it went wandering off back towards the mainland over the Banana River. Of course, soon as the range safety saw this deviating out of the corridor, they didn't know they were tracking the second stage, because they were in their little cubbyhole by themselves, just looking at the radar plots. So soon as they saw it deviate, they hit the \"destruct\" button and blew the heck out of the first stage that was on the pad and blew the pad to pieces as well. [Laughter] They changed their rules of where they put destruct packages after that. Of course, they had no influence on what was happening to the second stage and fortunately it landed in a remote area, didn't do any damage." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those first days when you were there and you had so many people that had so many talents and everything was new. How were you all able to focus and get the operations area clicking the way it needed to be to make the successes that you were expected to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think a lot of that has to do with Chuck Mathews and Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft. They organized the place. They had some good assistants. Sig [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg was one of them. They eventually got the organization to where I think they picked up the various talents and put them in the appropriate slots. I think they did a good job on saying, \"He's very good at doing this. Let's put him there.\"\\n\\n So I think, in the end, the allocation of the personnel to the organization, or vice versa, it was almost vice versa, I think, was very good. There was a lot of talent that arrived. There was a lot of talent when we got there. We brought some different kinds of talent. Then there were other hires that augmented it even further, and it kept growing and ended up a pretty efficient organization. Still a lot of ad hoc things going on, but it worked out pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did they focus you? Tell us how they took your talents and what did they ask you to do. Walk through with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very early on, they came up with a—Bob Gilruth published a list of controllers—these were the top-level controllers—and I was named as the backup flight director to Chris Kraft and John Hodge. Chris had the overall direction of all the flight control organization and activities.\\n\\n John Hodge was the flight director at Bermuda. Now, Bermuda was a pretty important down-range station simply because the insertion point into orbit was halfway between the Cape and Bermuda. This meant that you were leaving the communications and radar coverage of the Cape, so maybe you might be losing signal, but you were approaching Bermuda, and they were starting to pick you up. So if the decision that the capsule was in orbit and should stay there couldn't be made at the Cape, then the decision would be left to Bermuda. John Hodge at Bermuda would be the one to make the decision.\\n\\n So I was backup to both of them, but there was a missing gap in the flight controller organization, which was all the flight controllers for the down-range stations. So I inherited. I don't know whether I was assigned it or inherited it or what, but I ended up being responsible for all the down-range controllers.\\n\\n Shortly after that, I had an addition to my group. I was made head of the Flight Operations Section. I'm not sure that's the right title, but they kept changing titles. The branch was called the Spacecraft Operations Branch for a while until everybody realized what the initials stood for. [Laughter] They changed that.\\n\\n So anyway, I had all the flight controllers in my section, and along came a new hire, Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz, who joined the section, and he then was assigned to the Cape operation. He was added to the Cape personnel, the Mission Control Center personnel. That kind of relieved me of having to be prepared to take over from Chris.\\n\\n So I ended up concentrating primarily on the down-range stations and all the flight controllers for there, and we had hoped to get the personnel for the down-range controllers, other than the medical people, from the other divisions, from Ops Division and other divisions, Space Task Group, but it soon became apparent there weren't enough. So I got a hold of personnel and purchasing, and got them to put out bids for contract personnel willing to travel. That was on a Friday, I think it was, a Thursday or a Friday, and to my surprise, on Monday, on my doorstep were nineteen people from Philco-Ford Service Company, who were used to traveling around the world. I had hoped to get more engineers than they were, but they were technicians, and they turned out to be superb controllers and didn't faze them a bit about traveling around the world. So that was a big addition to the operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were the responsibilities of these down-range controllers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the down-range control team consisted of a capsule communicator who talked to the astronaut. He was responsible for determining the status of the overall mission at that point. The second one in the team was an engineer who was responsible for the status of the capsule. He [monitored] all the telemetry information regarding the environmental system and fuel systems and so forth. The third one was a doctor responsible for the status of the astronaut medical status. So here it was. They were responsible for how goes the mission, how goes the capsule, how goes the astronaut. That was the team.\\n\\n The non-medical flight controllers were pretty junior, and some of them had a little more experience. The Philco-Ford ones had a little more experience, but a lot of them were quite junior engineers. [But] medical people who had been recruited by Stan [Stanley C.] White, Dr. Stan White, Colonel Stan White, were senior. They were nothing less than a major. When I gave a briefing to the medical people about the team, the remote teams, there was one Navy captain who said, \"You mean I'm junior? I'm subordinate to those juniors,\" to the capsule communicator, who is the senior one. I said, \"Well, it's the same as an airplane pilot. Whoever is the pilot is in charge of the airplane, independent of his rank.\" That was the only time anybody tried to pull rank." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that's good news." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many teams did you have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there were—I guess it was sixteen stations altogether, including the…[Mission Control Center and Bermuda], so that's fourteen. I think that's the right number. I'd have to go back and check.\\n\\n The Canary Islands; Kano, Nigeria; Zanzibar; Indian Ocean ship; Muchea in Australia; Woomera in Australia; Canton Island; Hawaii, on Kauai; Point Arguello in California; Guaymas, Mexico; and Corpus Christi, Texas. I think that's all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there one of those that was harder to staff than the rest of them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What we did was, rather than stick somebody with a tour of duty on the Indian Ocean ship, which was an old World War II freighter converted, and it would take two weeks to get on station, two weeks on station, two weeks to get off station, and rather than stick the same controllers, what we did was we rotated them, you know. It was kind of tough to say, \"You're going to the Indian Ocean ship, and you're going to Hawaii.\" [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You'd have a fall-out on rotation, did you, every time it came time to go to the Indian Ocean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. Some of the medical doctors were flight surgeons in the Navy. They were a barrel of monkeys. They were hilarious. They were good doctors, but they had a real sense of humor. One of them was assigned on this one trip to be on the Indian Ocean ship. Of course, they were out there for about six weeks, almost six weeks. During that time, one of the crew members—the Indian Ocean ship didn't have a medical doctor on board, so whoever was the medical person assigned took his little black bag with him and acted as the medical guy if necessary.\\n\\n One of the crew members took appendicitis, so he operated on him on the mess table. He was written up in the\\n\\n New York Times\\n\\n . And when he got back, the other flight surgeons started to tease [him] mercilessly, saying, \"He didn't really have appendicitis. All he had was a pain in his stomach. You just did the operation because you were bored silly and wanted something to do.\" [Laughter] But there was a lot of camaraderie among the flight controllers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good. Were you in constant contact with all of these teams that you placed out during these six-week time periods, or was that somebody else's responsibility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they did all their contacts through the Mission Control Center. However, in my office I had the only teletype drop off the Worldwide Network that wasn't on one of the sites, so I could monitor some of the stuff that was going on. And if there was any problems anywhere, they'd call back if they had a phone. Some of them didn't. Now they have satellites, are the communications, and that's done away with the need for all these down-range stations as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While those folks were out doing their jobs, you were doing additional duties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There was always the business of doing simulated missions for about a week or so, up to two weeks sometimes, before the missions. So I was sometimes down at the Cape and wandering around various places. Went out to Bermuda once as they were building up the station and almost ready for the first orbital mission, which was an unmanned mission, and John Hodge was there. He was the flight director. I went out just to check on the status of the station, to see how they were making out.\\n\\n The government-to-government agreements in Bermuda were that the station was completely unclassified, but the command codes to the capsule, like retrofire, reset the retrofire clock, those kinds of commands were classified confidential. I don't think they were secret; I think they were confidential. So the question then was, I wanted to check to see if they had the right command codes set in the transmitters, and so how do I get this classified code into Bermuda? So I buried it in an unclassified document and took it with me. It's a good thing I did, because they had the wrong codes in. [Laughter]\\n\\n John Hodge was really irate at the subcontractor who was doing the software for the system, because they were doing changes, and instead of keeping a copy of the original before they did the change, they just went and stuck the change in. This made it difficult sometimes, if not impossible, to go back to the original if there was a problem with a change. So he finally got them to start keeping copies of the originals on their software.\\n\\n One of the other ad hoc tasks—[I] kept coming up with ad hoc tasks—was, I was given about two days' warning to go up to Wallops Island, no time for preparation or anything, just go. They had scheduled a Little Joe test. The Little Joe is multiple solid rockets, unguided, just pointed. It was to test the escape tower, to make sure that the escape rocket was strong enough to pull the tower off the launch vehicle at the maximum dynamic pressure. So they'd had several failures, and now if they had another failure, it would affect the launch schedule. So they sent me up there to make sure it went right. [Laughter] I've got two days to figure out what went wrong with the past and see if there was anything I could do.\\n\\n I went up and reviewed the project status with the project director, and I decided there was nothing I could do in two days, so I just let it go. I could watch it as the launch took off, and I could watch it out the window of the launch blockhouse, and to our horror, one of the rockets on the bottom didn't light. This meant instead of the vehicle traveling in a straight line, it started to arc down towards the ocean. If it continued that way, it would have gone right into the ocean. All of a sudden, the missing rocket lit from the heat from all the other rockets around, and it took off in a straight line, but now it was much lower altitude. [Laughter] Because it had been sagging down. The escape rocket pulled it off properly, which was lucky, in a sense, in that the test had taken place at much greater dynamic pressure than what the test was designed for, what the system was designed for. So it passed its over-pressure test, so that was a relief." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess a relief, too, that it was definitely a test and not a manned vehicle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Well, they were pretty good at doing these tests to make sure that things were going well, and that was one of the reasons for putting a monkey. They'd have an unmanned shot and a monkey shot, a chimpanzee shot, and then a manned shot, was sort of the general philosophy.\\n\\n In the early days, one of the tasks I was given was to go down with the astronauts' doctor, Bill [William S.] Augerson, to monitor the Redstone flight of Able and Baker, the little monkeys. This was launched by the Army. This was before [Wernher] von Braun had transferred to NASA. So we went down. As we said, we went down to kiss the monkeys goodbye. We went and took a look at the operations. We were invited into the blockhouse and saw the operation, how they did their launch control and so forth. Bill was interested in how the doctors were monitoring the monkey and so forth.\\n\\n So later on, a few months later, it looked as though the spacecraft was going to be ready before the Mission Control Center was ready for the ones before Shepard, and so the question then was should they have a makeshift interim Mission Control Center. Since I'd been down looking at the launch blockhouse for the Redstone—and, of course, [Alan B.] Shepard's [Jr.] was on a Redstone—the first thing that came to mind was maybe we can squeeze into the launch blockhouse and put some telemetry displays and so forth there. But that didn't turn out. That was too tight a thing. It would compromise the launch operation as well as anything we wanted to do.\\n\\n So then the idea was to look for an alternative. When I was at AVRO, we had a telemetry trailer that was mobile. We could take it around various places, and it fed a real-time aircraft flight monitoring, sort of a mini Mission Control Center for the aircraft flight test. I thought, hey, they had all this equipment stuffed in the telemetry trailer. Maybe a big forty-foot trailer might do it. We could put the consoles in there and have enough room for people to stand in front of them.\\n\\n So on the back of an envelope, almost—well, it was really 11-by-18 sheets of paper—Arnie [Arnold] Aldrich and I—Arnie later became head of the Shuttle Program, and he had just come straight out of school to join me in the controller section. So we went out to McDonnell and asked them to see if they could build this big forty-foot Mission Control trailer, interim Mission Control trailer. There was no time to go out for bids. Even then, there was no time to give formal information to the basic designers in McDonnell, so I got the bright idea, based on our AVRO activities, to go to their flight test people and get them to build it as though it was for themselves, you know. \"Hey, here's the money and here's the concept. Go do it.\" And they did. They took to it. They delivered it, and NASA checkout people at the Cape said it was the best trailer they had seen.\n\nBut it never was used at the Cape for that purpose, because the capsule schedule slipped, and so the Mission Control Center schedule caught up with the capsule, so they didn't need it. But they did use it for monitoring the astronauts and things, and Johnsville [Pennsylvania] centrifuge programs and things like that. So it did get used, but not for what it was originally intended." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working so closely with the flight controllers, we understand you were very instrumental in creating some of the procedures that they used. Could you give us some background on how the books and the procedures and all the rules came around and benefitted those flight controllers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It dawned on me one day that the astronauts had their procedures books. There's one of them right there. And the technicians at the Cape had all their procedures for checking the system out and so forth, but the flight controllers had no written instructions whatsoever. So there were two things missing. One was the procedures or information regarding the spacecraft and the mission, and the second one [was] mission rules.\\n\\n I guess the first one was my idea, was the Flight Controller Handbook, as it was called, and the second was really, I guess, Chris Kraft's and maybe Chuck Mathews' idea, was to have Mission Rules. So those two documents ended up in my lap, so we published a handbook that told for each individual system on the spacecraft, what could the astronaut see and what could he do and what can you see on the telemetry that's coming down to you as a flight controller.\\n\\n Then we did this for each and every mode that the spacecraft could be put in. We found things in doing this that the astronauts—the designers didn't even know, by having done this every mode business. For instance, we showed the astronauts that if they weren't very careful, they could use up a lot of their attitude control fuels by trying to use the automatic system and the manual system at the same time. They'd end up fighting each other, just wasting fuel. So that was one thing.\\n\\n The other thing we found out was, I got interested in the fact that there were two buttons, switches, on the astronauts' control panel. One was for firing the retro rockets to come home. The other one was to jettison the retro rocket package after it had been fired. They were sitting one above the other, four letters, JETT RETRO, FIRE RETRO, and if there's an emergency such that there was smoke in the cockpit or the astronaut, his suit had pressurized because of a leak, he might have meant to hit \"FIRE,\" and by mistake hit \"jettison\"—JETT, J-E-T-T. Then he'd be up there forever; he'd never come home. They said, \"Oh, that's no problem.\" Everyone said, the astronauts said, the designers said, \"That's no problem. It's all interlocked. They can't jettison the retro pack until it's been fired.\" And the more we looked into it, the more we said, \"Nuh-uh. If you hit that 'jettison,' you're there forever.\"\\n\\n So I told Wally Schirra this, and he took it up to the next design meeting they had with McDonnell, and sure enough it proved that there was no interlock. So they put a guard over the \"jettison\" switch. So those kinds of things were little extra things that came out of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very important, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Mission Rules were the other document which Chris gave me some guidelines about what he wanted, and so I generated the first draft. These rules defined the status that the spacecraft and the astronaut had to be in, in order to launch, to be inserted into orbit, or to abort at any time, come home early either immediately or at, say, the end of an orbit. And so these became very useful, because it meant that everybody, the astronauts, the flight controllers, all knew what the rules of the game were ahead of time. So those two documents became mine.\\n\\n Later, after Gene Kranz had come aboard, he took over updating the mission rules, and most of the updates were his. Then I wrote the first set of mission rules for Gemini in conjunction with Bill [Howard W.] Tindall, and so those were two sets of documents that were key to the flight controller operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At least with the Gemini you had already completed the Mercury, so you had that experience behind you, but when you first did those for the Mercury, was it a time-consuming process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went around and beat on a lot of doors for ideas and what they thought was important. I spent a lot of time talking to the doctors. Right from the very beginning, I spent a lot of time with the doctors. In fact, one of the things that involved the doctors was Colonel Stan White had recruited some sixty or more doctors to join the team of doctors to be part of the Mission Control Center or around the world, but the question then became how do you indoctrinate these people. They're from all over the place. You have to bring them together and start training them in terms of Mission Control procedures and so forth, and what the mission's all about, what the capsule is all about, and so forth. And like the environmental system; they had to understand the environmental systems and so forth.\\n\\n So Dr. Bill [William K.] Douglas was the astronauts' doctor that was assigned to prepare a briefing for all these people when they came to a big meeting that was supposed to bring them all together. But Bill disappeared with the astronauts up to Johnsville or someplace like this, and about a week before that the briefing was to take place, I found out that Bill wouldn't be back until a day or so before the meeting, the briefing. So I gathered my guys together and said, \"Hey, we've got to get this prepared.\"\\n\\n And so we came up with an agenda, with a bunch of viewgraphs, and got a whole bunch of people from the various divisions to be presenters, and had it all organized so when he came back he found an agenda and a briefing package and was all set to go. So it came off pretty well. That was when this Navy captain questioned the role of a medical doctor versus capsule communicator. About three or four weeks later, on my desk was a beautiful corncob pipe with a little note on it that said, \"Thanks. Bill.\" [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much prior to Alan Shepard's launch did the procedures and the flight controllers' rules and mission rules were all in place? Was this quite a bit ahead of time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Laughter] I don't know. I think at this stage of the game, time lines are somewhat blurred, partially because everybody was running around in circles, being very effective in running around in circles, but it was not a calm, simple, go-by-the-schedule-type thing. Everybody was doing their bit, and things evolved. Afterwards, it's tough to put a time line on things that slowly evolved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess that was one of those talents that you mentioned earlier, the fact that people can just continually run to accomplish much while you're still finding more to do, and nobody's egos or personalities, I guess, get in the way. You're all able to work together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know of any egos that got in the way anywhere. There were a few people that may have been originally misplaced in the organization, but they eventually found their proper home. It was very complementary, the talents. The astronauts brought certain things, the controllers brought certain things, the guys from Philco-Ford brought certain talents. Gene Kranz came in out of the Air Force, and he brought a lot of good talent to the team. He eventually took my place when I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find yourself traveling all the time, as well as doing so much there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I could have been away 100 percent of the time, going to the different range stations and so forth, down to the Cape and out to Bermuda and things like this, and I decided that this was not a very efficient use of my time. People like Chris Kraft were away about 50 percent of the time. As his wife said at a party once, she said to my wife and a couple of us, \"Wonder what his second wife's going to look like.\" [Laughter] Of course they got along well, but she was teasing. There was a lot of travel, and the divorce rate was quite high. In fact, someone said it was the highest in NASA.\\n\\n Anyway, I decided not to do as much traveling as I could, for two reasons. One, I didn't think it would be effective. And, two is, these flight controllers, I could go hold their hand on one station and then on another mission go hold somebody else's hand on another station, but that wouldn't have much overall impact. So I decided that it wasn't particularly effective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure they appreciated your vote of confidence that they knew what they were doing and you had other things to take care of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They became very good at it. In fact, a couple of incidents where they did well on their jobs, I guess it was the same mission, it was the monkey shot, chimpanzee shot, before John [H.] Glenn's [Jr.] flight, where they had to bring it home at the end of the second orbit. The flight of the chimpanzee in the capsule was more stringent than with a man there, simply because the man had two attitude control systems, an automatic one and a manual one. If one failed, he could use the other. The poor chimp, he was completely dependent on the automatic, and if it failed, he was in trouble.\\n\\n The controllers in Australia were the first ones to pick up the fact that there was a leak. This was the chimpanzee flight. There was a leak in the automatic attitude control system, and so they were monitoring it all the way along until Chris finally decided that it should be brought in at the end of the second orbit. The fire retro rockets for the entry at this second orbit would be just about above Guaymas, but it's much easier to set the clock ahead of time to fire the retros than it is to direct—you could directly fire them as well, but the first choice is to set the clock or, in this case, reset the clock. So he called Point Arguello to have them reset the clock when it came over. No answer. So he called [Guayamas] to have them fire the retro rockets directly when it was overhead. No answer. And kept trying, kept trying, kept trying.\\n\\n Finally he got through. The capsule communicator there was Arnie Aldrich. He got through just in time to tell Arnie, \"Fire retros, four, three, two, one, fire!\" And they fired and brought him in. So he came back in. But those were two instances of the flight control team doing a good job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During this time, did you still have time to visit with your friends from AVRO, or did you all go to your own many tasks and rarely saw each other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Living in Stoneybrook, which was the area some of us lived in, and three of the astronauts lived in, it was a community that had limited—it had only one entrance and then it spread out in a big area. It had a clubhouse, tennis courts, and swimming pool, so periodically there would be parties there, and people would get together and so forth. But other than that, there wasn't much social contact. Everyone was just too busy.\\n\\n The Philco-Ford wives had a bridge club, and after this trip to Australia, there were two of the Philco-Ford people assigned to it, one on Muchea and the other one at Woomera. At the next wives' meeting, one of the wives was oohing and aahing over all the wonderful woolen goods her husband had brought back, wool scarves and sweaters and mittens and things like this, and all the other girls were in envy. So they turned to the wife of the other guy that was in Australia and said, \"And what did your husband bring you back?\" \"A boomerang.\" [Laughter] He probably got it around his neck that night.\\n\\n Australia was an interesting place to get to, because in those days—and Canton Island was, as well, because in those days it was propeller aircraft, and Qantas was about the only airline flying down that way. They often had a stopover somewhere, and on this one occasion, I guess it was the same mission, two of the astronauts went along, one to each station, to act as capsule communicator. They were really thrilled. I think Wally Schirra and—I'm not sure who the other one was—they were really thrilled because they were going to stop off in Tahiti. [Laughter] And they got disappointed, because the launch was rescheduled and the stopoff point was some forlorn little atoll somewhere like Guam. The astronauts got along pretty good with the flight controllers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good. That made it easier for everybody to have confidence in each other." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. A lot of the guys had a lot of good sense of humor, so it helped a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine with all the long hours and the long days, it's maybe one of the most important qualities that a person have, is to be able to laugh off some of these—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, because when you're on the station, particularly during the simulations, when you know it's not real, if you're on Kuai, shall we say, you're up there in the middle of the night, on the top of a mountain, and so you have to stay there while the simulations go. So some of the guys just bunked out behind the telemetry consoles and so forth and stayed there. They had to go up to the top of the mountain in the middle of the night. No lights except their headlights, none whatsoever, and those roads go through the jungle and down, drop off down into the valleys below. They said it was the scariest ride they'd ever had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess so. Did you have a lot of turnover rate? Did people want to give these jobs up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. I don't remember any turnover rate. I don't remember anybody leaving, except one chap was a good engineer, but he was not suited to be a controller, for various reasons. So I advised him to apply for a transfer to one of the other centers. He was more interested in research and things like this. He was not a real-time person. He was a good engineer, but he was one of the few that ended up in the wrong slot.\\n\\n We had another incident of sending flight controllers out to the remote sites. This one chap—and I'm not going to name him—but he was all excited. He'd never been out of the United States before. We were going to send him to the Canary Islands. So we sent him out ahead of time so that he could do these—there are simulations on site as well as worldwide simulations, hooking up to the Mission Control Center. The basis for doing these simulations were audiotapes and telemetry tapes and radar tapes. So you could play an exercise into the system that they could respond to and practice. Of course, the secret of this was the tapes. So I said to this flight controller as he was getting ready to leave for the Canary Islands, \"Don't forget to take the tapes.\"\\n\\n He'd been gone about five minutes or maybe a bit more, when I looked at his desk and there were the tapes. So I called the airlines and said, \"Hey, there's a government package that has to go with one of your passengers. Will you hold the flight while we get it there?” and they said, \"We'll hold it for ten minutes. No more.\"\\n\\n So I grabbed the tapes, jumped in the car, went tearing out to the airport, Patrick Henry Airport, and this was in the days of propeller airplanes before they had jetways where you parked the airplane out on the tarmac and with steps leading up to them. So there was the airplane sitting up there on the tarmac with two starboard engines, propellers going, two port engines stopped, the stairs there, the stewardess at the top, and this flight controller at the top, waiting. [Laughter] I ran out and handed him the tapes and walked back.\\n\\n They were starting to pull the steps away, and the stewardess was starting to close the door, when all of a sudden out across the tarmac came the flight controller's girlfriend, hollering out, \"The keys! The keys! You forgot the keys!\" He had just bought himself a brand-new red Pontiac convertible and he was going to leave it with her, and he had forgotten to give her the keys. So next thing you see is the door open fully, and Bob—well, the flight controller standing there, and he heaves the keys down to her. And she goes away, comes back beside me, and we see the airplane, pull the stairs away, start the engines, taxi out, take off and disappear. She's standing there looking at the keys, saying, \"And he gave me his suitcase keys, too.\" [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, no. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I understand they got married a couple of years later. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My goodness. What a way to start a new adventure for him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess he survived the mission as well and did okay once he got there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never did find out how he got his suitcase open." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess he didn't want to tell you everything. [Laughter] Well, I'm sure it was never a dull moment for you with everything going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about the actual work that you did while the missions were up and away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of the time I was probably getting ready for the next one, trying to figure out—well, working on mission rules and so forth. Then I got a little involved with Apollo, but not much. Chris came to me one day and asked me to prepare a paper for the first briefing of industry on the Apollo Program, and what he wanted me to do was describe what the Mercury Mission Control organization and philosophies were, and how we were planning to do it, because in his mind things wouldn't change much in the future. A lot of details would change, but the philosophy would be the same. He wanted to make sure that industry understood the philosophy behind it.\\n\\n So he gave me some ideas for the paper, and I wrote the paper in detail, then gave the presentation, because there was a mission going on at the time. It was unclassified, but the publication was in two volumes, one unclassified and one classified. Unfortunately, my unclassified paper got included in the classified volume, and somebody swiped that volume from me years later, after it had been unclassified. So I don't have a copy of it. I've reconstructed it from drafts I had. I always wished I had a copy of the original." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess so, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That briefing of industry was in Washington." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to share in that paper what you felt were the differences between, say, how the manned and the unmanned missions were done and how that would affect the future?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We ran the unmanned missions just as though they were manned. There was a medical doctor there, and he didn't have much to do, but he was there to learn how the whole procedures went and so forth.\\n\\n [The unmanned mission—] the orbital mission was just as tough as the chimpanzee. It only had the automatic attitude control system. The attitude control system was important for reentry because to fire retros, you had to hold a specific attitude, and while they were firing, you had to hold that [altitude]—so if you didn't have an attitude control system, you might even tumble. You might even go off into a higher orbit.\\n\\n So the unmanned mission, orbital mission, was just as tough as the chimpanzee mission was, because they both depended only on the automatic attitude control system, but the difference was, if you left a spacecraft up there, that wasn't as bad as leaving the monkey up there, or leaving the chimpanzee up there.\\n\\n We tried to use the unmanned missions as a training program, as a training step. It was not only a check of the spacecraft and the booster and so forth; it was an opportunity to train everybody, including, particularly important for the ones before John Glenn's flight, was to give the communications and radar operators on the various stations the opportunity to see a spacecraft for the first time, because at most the pass across a station was not much more than five minutes, so you didn't have much time, as a technician, you didn't have much time to find your target, get it locked on, and so forth. You didn't have much time. You'd better be good at it. So this training was very important before John Glenn's mission.\\n\\n Associated with that was a move by headquarters to change the contractors on the remote stations. They wanted us to do two things. They wanted to put it open for bids so that they could have competition, maybe save a few dollars, and also to satisfy political pressure to get competition. So they let out bids and they proposed to have the contract changed just before John Glenn's flight. The Space Task Group were up in arms because here we had trained, gone to all this trouble of training everybody on these remote stations. These were not the flight controllers now; those were NASA personnel. But these communications operators and power and site managers and radar operators and so worth were all contract personnel.\\n\\n So here we were going to lose all of this experience, so Tec Roberts and I were given the chore, suddenly given the chore of going up to headquarters and to see if we could find some way of stopping this. And we did. We looked at all the proposals that had been submitted, and we found that every one of them had a definitive plan for training all the new operators, but none of them had a plan for how they were going to train the instructors. It became very obvious that that chore would end up as a NASA task, and we didn't have the time or the personnel to do this, so we wrote a very short memo, and the next day the solicitation was canceled, much to the chagrin of all these contractors who had spent a lot of money and time putting in their bids. So we killed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure that was a benefit to you and your time schedule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You didn't have to train all of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We're going to break for just a few minutes so that we can change the tape, and we'll go from there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So how are we doing? [Tape recorder turned off.]\\n\\n [Begin Tape 2, Side 1]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you were planning and working toward all of the goals that you had, as you mentioned, you didn't treat the unmanned launches any different than you would if they were manned. Then the time came when it became a manned flight. Would you share with us the preparations for Alan Shepard's flight and what you were doing at the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm not sure I can remember what I was doing for Alan Shepard's flight. That's almost a blank period in my memory. I don't know whether—all I can remember is being around a number of the simulations, or being part of a number of the simulations that took place down at the Cape.\\n\\n I guess the biggest thing I remember about getting ready for it was [G.] Merritt Preston was part of the Operations Division at the time. He went on down to head up the spacecraft preparation team. He and I went out to Redstone Arsenal [Huntsville, Alabama] to brief, we thought, our counterparts on what our plans were for monitoring the Redstone missions, including Shepard's. And much to our surprise, when we got there, it wasn't just our counterparts, but they had a whole roomful of senior personnel that they wanted us to brief. And we hadn't come prepared for briefing; we came with a bunch of drawings that we were going to spread out on the table and explain.\\n\\n Merritt was more fortunate than I was, because he had a number of slides in his briefcase that he was going to use later on for some other purpose, and so he gave a presentation. Then it came my turn and, of course, I didn't have any material suitable for a large audience. Didn't have any slides or anything. So I gave a chalk talk, got up to the blackboard and started drawing and talking. I had my back to the audience while I was drawing a particular diagram, and the back door of the auditorium opened. I heard a shuffling of feet, and everybody stood at attention, and in walked von Braun. He signaled everybody to sit down and told me to continue, and afterwards he came up to me and told me that he enjoyed the presentation, it was very good. That was the second time I'd seen von Braun.\\n\\n The first time I had seen him, I guess it was after the Able-Baker flight. In those days, all their recordings off the telemetry system were analog, not digital, and so after a mission they would play their telemetry recordings back on long strip charts. Here was von Braun in the middle of Hangar S, which was their hangar at the time, with a strip chart that ran from one end of the hangar to the other, and there he is on his hands and knees, with a little pocket ruler, measuring the excursions of various signals along the line. That was my first encounter with him. The second was at the briefing.\\n\\n So that was probably the biggest preparation that I can recall. There were a lot of other things probably going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then, of course, following Alan Shepard, one of your neighbors, Gus Grissom, went. Then you had a good mark, I guess, to see how well your procedures and all of your—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The Redstone flights were all focused, of course, so far as flight control was concerned, on the Mission Control Center, because they were just up and down. But on Gus' flight, the biggest thing, of course, was the fact that they had added explosive bolts to the escape hatch, escape door, and those explosive bolts, where the switch for it was three positions, one was \"off,\" the second was \"arm,\" and then \"fire.\" And the idea was, on the previous capsules, it just took too long to get the door open. So the idea was the capsule would be in the water, the helicopter would come in, grapple, and fire the door, and get out, and they'd pick them up. But he armed, apparently armed the door before they grappled the spacecraft.\\n\\n As a result, it's thought, but nobody knows for sure, it's thought that there was an extraneous static electricity current that fired the door. He didn't fire it. He'd armed it; he hadn't fired it. And, boom, the door went out, as Gus said afterwards, \"The door blew out into the water, followed immediately by me.\" [Laughter] Because the water was starting to come in. And because he was struggling in the water and under this helicopter that was trying to pick the capsule up, he was in the water for quite some time, because this helicopter wasn't successful in pulling it up. It kept trying, trying, trying, trying, and he was underneath the thing. His suit was slowly filling up with water, because there was an open connector on his suit.\\n\\n He was only saved from drowning by the fact that the helicopter got a red warning light on its engine, an over-temperature [light], because of all the effort that [it] had been putting to try to drag the capsule out. So it cut the capsule loose and went away back to the carrier, and another chopper came in and picked him up, just in time.\\n\\n Another thing, talking about the Redstone flights, was the chimpanzee flight before Shepard, the little chimp was in a suit and he had little buttons or switches to play with in response to certain lights, and if he did it the right response to the lights, pattern of lights, then he'd get a little reward of a banana-flavored pill. If he didn't, he'd get a little electrical shock on his butt.\\n\\n So he was doing a perfect job all the way through the launch, all the way up, until he got up to the top of the arc, of the trajectory. When he got to the top, a big flash of sunlight came in through the window. We could tell what was happening afterwards. We could tell what was happening because we had a time-lapse camera in there. Every second it was taking a picture of what was going on. That's how we could tell he was doing a perfect job, up until that moment.\\n\\n The flash of sunlight caught his attention. He looked out, looked down, saw the ocean down below and all the islands and so forth, and was fascinated. Because he was fascinated, he didn't keep up with his tasks, and therefore he got a little jolt in the butt to remind him to get back to work. So he didn't miss a beat all the rest of the flight.\\n\\n Now, there was a message there. Everybody laughed when they saw the time photography that was shown at a debriefing. Everybody laughed and they said, \"This is really funny to see the look on his face when he came back to do his thing.\" They didn't get the message. The chimp was trying to tell them something. On Shepard's flight, the people in charge of planning the mission had given him sort of a set of tasks that he was supposed to do. He got up to the top of the trajectory, he looked out the window, he saw the islands and the ocean and so forth, and he became fascinated, and he got way behind on his tasks. Of course, he didn't get a jolt. [Laughter] So the monkey was trying to tell them something and nobody recognized the message, which was, give the astronauts some time to look around. So that was one of the things the monkey taught us, or tried to teach us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The debriefings were a very useful time for everybody. Who was there at the debriefings after the launches?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All the operations people from the Mission Control Center for the unmanned, and for the orbital missions they delayed the briefing until they all got back from their assigned stations. Then there were other people who were designer project people and so forth, other people would show up. There was really two sets of debriefings. One debriefing was over the communication links immediately after the flight, and the center of the debriefing was the Mission Control Center, who controlled the debriefings and had each station report in as to what their experiences had been. But then there was this second debriefing later.\\n\\n On one of the missions, it was probably the chimp before Glenn's flight around the world, orbital mission, we sent a team to Kano, Nigeria, and it included a colonel in the Air Force. I'm pretty sure it was a colonel in the Air Force. And he was black, a doctor, full doctor. Kano newspeople and politicians and so on played this up really big. They thought this was fantastic that NASA would send a black medical doctor on this important team to their country.\\n\\n I had to make arrangements for all the flight controllers when they came back, because some of them, particularly the medical people, weren't from that area; they were from other places. So I had to make arrangements to put them up in hotels and things like that. He went to sign in at the biggest hotel, where I had made his reservations, the biggest hotel in Newport News, and they wouldn't let him in. I wasn't prepared for this overt—I wasn't used to this overt racism. And that was only one incidence of it. In the Canadian Air Force, when I was training as a pilot, my bunkmate was black, black as could be. You couldn't be any blacker than he was. He was from Jamaica. But I never thought anything about it, and so it was a big surprise to me. I finally had to get the doctor, the colonel, some housing in the Air Force Bachelor Officer Quarters. But that was the only untoward incident that I can remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's, I guess, the good part of that story, if that's the only one. You were moving, again, closer toward John Glenn's flight, where it wasn't just going to go up and come back; you were actually going to send a man around the world. Were your flight controllers prepared to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We hoped so. One of the things we did was we rigged up a dummy world of remote stations in one of the big buildings nearby, NASA buildings that held a wind tunnel, one of their wind tunnels. With big wind tunnels, there's lots of space underneath the tunnel itself, usually, so we used that space to set up some remote stations with consoles, dummy consoles, and communications, and had them all hooked together and ran simulations with the Worldwide Network that way.\\n\\n Then the other aspect, of course, as I mentioned earlier, was using the missions to train—the unmanned mission and the chimp missions—to train everybody, including the station operators…as to what was coming and as to how they would react." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That mission was very significant to the space program, and from what we've read about you, also to you, because we understand right after the mission you opted to leave NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I left for personal reasons, nothing to do with NASA. I left almost immediately after John Glenn's flight and came up to Massachusetts to work for my old boss at AVRO, who had come to work for RCA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you made that decision prior to that mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What led you to make the decision to leave NASA at the beginning of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Really, two parts to it. One had to do with both our parents were in Toronto and not in very good health. We didn't really want to move much further away than we were at Langley. That was one.\\n\\n The other aspect had to do with schools. We'd already made change in the schools to come down to—and that was a big change for the kids. If we had gone to Houston, the Manned Spacecraft Center wasn't ready, hadn't even started, and so they started their operation there from various rented, leased locations spread around town, which would have meant living in Houston and then later on moving up to the center area. That would mean two school moves, and I thought, \"Enough. One more is bad enough, but two is out of the question.\" So I was saying I didn't want to see my sixteen-year-old, oldest boy, say goodbye to his girlfriend again. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a nice dad. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And a strange thing, small world. Three years ago I did some work for ARINC, Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated, down in Annapolis, Maryland. We were doing a big proposal for a Korean airport. I got to talking to the office manager, who turned out to be from Newport News. So I said, \"Oh, I used to live in Newport News, out in Stoneybrook.\" And he said, \"Oh, when I lived there, I knew a girl that lived there. Connie Ogle.\" Was my oldest boy's girlfriend. Now, is that a small world or is that a small world?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have some of your former AVRO colleagues as well as your new co-workers at NASA encourage you to come to Houston? Were they hoping you would come with them when they moved, to keep the team together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Jim Chamberlin offered me a—I was a GS-15, I guess, at the time. He offered me a 16 to come work for him in his project office. He was working on Gemini at the time. It's not known as Gemini, really; it's \"Jim and I.\" Because he was the instigator. He was the guy that defined the configuration of Gemini. So we used to joke and say it's not Gemini; it's \"Jim and I.\"\\n\\n So he offered me a 16 to stay. I also got an offer, an unofficial offer, or preliminary offer, from headquarters to go up there. At the time I was a little leery of Washington. To me, Washington was an unknown, whereas I knew my old boss up here in Massachusetts, and had worked with him and for him for a number of years. That was more comfortable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Now, before you left, did you feel the contributions you made would continue on and make quite a difference in the missions that were going to follow, to have a chance to test out those missions rules and those Flight Controller Handbooks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'll let somebody else answer that question, what my contribution was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's answer the part, if you would, about the mission rules and the flight controller books." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There will always be mission rules." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And serve their purpose well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There would always be mission rules, and they would always evolve. Each mission would be a little bit different. For the remote controllers, there was always this panic of trying to get copies of the latest mission rules and the latest Flight Controller's Handbook ready, up to date at the point they were going to leave on an airplane. So that was finally solved. We finally got our own duplicating system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I bet that came in handy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because we have to remember these were days before computers, where you could make one word change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. Yes. Fortunately, I had three secretaries to help out. I guess I had more secretaries than anybody else. But there were three secretaries there. One was familiar with the Worldwide Network and put messages on it and so forth, and the other two were general typists." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And very busy typists, I'm sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. But there were panics. People would come running in, \"How am I going to get this duplicated?\" [Laughter] This was before we got our own system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You left NASA and came to Massachusetts and joined RCA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us how you went through that transition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One thing more before we quite get to that. I left and came to RCA, and subsequently there was a report, a document, put out on the results of John Glenn's flight, the first manned orbital, U.S. orbital flight. In it is a paper written by Chris Kraft, Tec Roberts, Gene Kranz, and myself, only I never wrote it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah-oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never contributed to it. Somebody on the team, perhaps Chris, added my name to it because I like to think sort of that because of what I had contributed to the thing. So I've got a copy of that, but, as I say, I didn't write it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you happy with what you didn't write? [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It was very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was going to have your name on it. Were you okay with that? That's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I came to RCA as a project engineer. I'm sorry—as a—yes, I guess I was called a project engineer. And worked on a number of projects. RCA was one of these places that they like to say they invented over the transom. Somebody would give them an RFP [request for proposal] and they would immediately invent a response. They would do things that nobody else would take a try at.\\n\\n One of the early things I got involved with was some work for von Braun's people, and having primarily to do with the Saturn V launch vehicle. In the early days, as I mentioned before, the Redstone arsenal, everything they recorded off their telemetry and so forth was analog. Well, for the Saturn V they changed over to digital, and they had stacks and stacks and stacks, which they sent me, of digital output. Somewhere buried in that pile was any evidence as to whether there were any problems or not. To do it the old-fashioned way of plotting it out and looking for anomalies and so forth would just take too much time. They had tried it. The next vehicle would be on the launch pad, ready to go, before they figured out whether there was anything wrong with the previous one. So they couldn't stand that.\\n\\n So our contract was to find a way of going through this automatically with a computer and finding out whether things were different than they expected or different than what was required, including their radar, comparing radar and telemetry and simulated results and analytical results, analysis, they had. So we put this whole thing together in a package of computer programs to run in a couple of hours, and using data from the previous launches we found all sorts of stuff that they hadn't had any idea of problems that were in there. So they received it with open arms.\\n\\n At the time they received the results, headquarters told them to quit doing their own post-flight analysis and to put the onus on the stage contractors. Each stage contractor would have to do his own.\\n\\n So a few years later, I saw a report in one of the technical journals about one of the stage operators, contractors, describing their post-flight analysis methodology, and it was obviously patterned after ours. NASA apparently had turned over the programs to their stage contractors. How I could tell it was patterned after ours is some of the nomenclature [for] describing certain tests and so forth, we had invented names, and they were the same names. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were somewhat still affiliated with the space industry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were a couple of other minor contracts with them as well. One major contract was for an operational flight control system which was never explained by Huntsville as to why they were interested in this, but this was a Huntsville version of Mission Control for the booster. The only thing I could figure out was that they had hoped to use the Saturn for unmanned missions after it was used for Apollo to go somewhere in space and to do something, and that this was their first thoughts about how they would go about doing the Mission Control of the thing.\\n\\n We had a general manager who was very thrilled that we had this contract, and so Dr. [Kurt H.] Debus was the head of the operations, the Saturn operations, down at the Cape, wanted to be briefed on this. So we went down, gave a briefing to him. I was sort of an auxiliary to this team that went down, because the project was well along when I had joined them. But they wanted me to go down anyway, particularly because I knew everybody down there.\\n\\n So here's Dr. Debus in there, in this briefing, with all his cohorts. I knew every one of them in the room. Our general manager got up and said how important this study was to the company, and therefore he was very pleased to be here to give this presentation to the Air Force. There was a dead, dull silence across the room, and everybody started looking at me and sort of pointing at him, sort of mouthing, \"Who's this guy?\" And I tried to sneak under the table, pretending I wasn't there. [Laughter] He got a little confused." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A little awkward for a moment, anyway. Gosh. Were you able to keep up with your fellow co-workers that were still at NASA, to keep up with what was going on in the space program, or did you just become so busy—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Len Packham was a very good friend of mine, and he was the technical coordinator for what RCA was doing on the LEM [lunar excursion module] program. LEM started off as a paid study for a number of contractors, and Grumman and RCA teamed up and did an unpaid study, and their concept won out. They were awarded a contract to build on. So RCA was responsible for the rendezvous radar and for the ascent and descent guidance system. I was in on the first proposal for this, but after that I wasn't involved. I was off doing something else. But Len Packham was the technical coordinator for the Project, so I used to see him periodically. He'd appear at the plant.\\n\\n We kept in touch with quite a few of them, particularly Arnie Aldrich and Len. Later on, John Hodge moved to the NASA center in Cambridge, and he just lived down the street from here, so we kept in touch with him. Tec Roberts, we kept in touch with him and others sort of off and on. Len Packham's wife became an exceptionally good friend of my wife. Len, of course, died some years ago, and we've lost touch with her. We think she may have passed away. She had Alzheimer's disease, and she had to give up writing. We talked to her son, or at least wrote to her son on a few occasions, but we never heard anything back as to what happened to her." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were so many people that you knew, I'm sure it's hard to keep up with them all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Frank Thomas is gone. Gene Duret is gone. Jim Chamberlin. Funny thing about Jim. I'll always remember Jim on Gemini, he disappeared to McDonnell for almost a month when they were first defining what Gemini should do. Came home in the middle of the night, everybody was asleep. He didn't want to wake them up, so he slept on the couch in the living room. He had to get up early in the morning and take a flight to New York, so he didn't want to disturb anybody in the morning, so he just quietly sneaked out of the house and went to the airport before anybody was up. His wife came down, and the only evidence that she had that he'd been home in a month was a pile of dirty laundry sitting in the middle of the room. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some of these wives had a great amount of patience, didn't they." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Particularly astronauts' wives. They were away more than anybody. We lived right across the street from Wally Schirra's, and he was away more than he was home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess that helped, being part of Stoneybrook extended family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, particularly with the three astronauts' wives there. They were very close. I saw Deke a couple of years ago. Deke's passed on, too. I saw Deke Slayton a few years ago at Reno Air Races. He had his little Formula One. You could put the airplane in this room. He was racing it in the Formula One race. I had a chance to talk to him for a bit, and that was the last time I'd seen him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure that was a good time for both of you to renew those old friendships." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So anyway, at RCA then I got off into doing other things other than—oh, airplane-related, not space-related, I got involved in configuring and doing a selection for the next version of the Air Force's Advanced Airborne Command Post. They had a command post in EC-135s, and we put the first computer into an EC-135. So we did this study for which airplane should they have, an L-1011, a C-5A, a 747, DC-8, DC-8 stretched, and so forth. They finally picked the 747, so we did some further studies as to how to configure it and so forth.\\n\\n After that, most of my work was on other things like some intelligence systems and some automatic test systems and so forth. Then I got into doing their engineering procedures for RCA-Burlington [Massachusetts], and they ended up being adopted by GE Aerospace in general." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You started out at pursuing your interest in airplanes, and with RCA you were able to go back and work with that again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, for a while there. At the end it got pretty far away from airplanes or space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now what are you doing to fill your busy days?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I retired in 1991. GE had taken over RCA a couple of years before, and they decided they were going to close down some of the operations, so one of the operations they decided they were going to close down was Burlington. What they did was distribute the various projects to other plants, and so the handwriting was on the wall that it was going to close, so they started giving layoff notices to various people. They gave me a choice of staying on or taking retirement. It wasn't early; I was already past sixty-five. Taking retirement. They had a retirement package. So there wasn't much exciting left, so I decided, what the heck, might as well take retirement. So I retired in '91.\\n\\n Then almost immediately, within a few weeks, I got a call from somebody that had been at RCA, had gone to Aeronautical Radio. In fact, the president of the company was an ex-RCA chap, had been general manager there. So I got a call from him saying they needed some help. They were run by the airlines, Aeronautical Radio, Incorporated, owned and run by the airlines, and the airlines were interested in using the new technology called global positioning system, GPS, for their navigation. So ARINC was pretty cognizant. They'd been following the GPS development for some time. So they needed some help, so I went down there and ended up with several contracts with them for a couple of years, including one contract to do their system engineering procedures for them, develop a handbook for them. Did that.\\n\\n Then did some work for Sanders, who ended up being owned by Lockheed, in terms of doing some systems engineering work for them. Then got involved with ARINC again, a proposal. And then the last couple of years I've been doing system engineering for an outfit called American Science and Engineering. What they do is they build X-ray systems, big commercial X-ray systems, and these X-ray systems are used by Customs. Various governments around the world use them for Customs inspections of trucks or big ISO containers or pallets, what have you. So I did a couple of years' work, year and a half work for them. The last project I was on was over last month, so now I'm back to retirement. This work for AS&E was just part time, like five days a week. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Instead of your normal—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Finally cut down to about three days a week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly have had a diversity since the time from AVRO till the time now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. I don't think I've ever done anything the same twice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As long as it's correct each time, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back through your time with NASA, it seems so long ago, can you remember one of the greatest challenges that you had in that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The biggest challenge, I sort of hinted at it earlier, was to keep your sense of humor. [Laughter] And not let it all get to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hopefully you didn't have too many encounters with people who maybe didn't have as quick a sense of humor as yours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was only one instance where I had problems with people, and that was the worldwide range was under contract not to the Space Task Group, but was under contract to Langley Research Center Instrument Lab, instrument group, and they were the ones that put the solicitation out and the requirements out and got the bids back and so forth. We were party to the selection process and so forth, but it wasn't our contract.\\n\\n However, when it came time to evaluate the down-range system configuration for the flight controllers, the consoles and so forth, the contractor set up a—I think it was Westinghouse. I'm not sure now. Set it up at Wallops Island, and somebody from the Instrument Lab and myself went up to evaluate this, as to whether it was acceptable or not. He embarrassed me by stating that all contractors were crooks, and that he was going to make sure that they toed the line and they did things the way he wanted them to do. I accepted the station essentially as it was. I think there were a couple of minor comments I had. All of his comments were essentially ignored. But he was difficult to deal with. Everybody else I had no problems with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Glad to hear that, with such a varied career, that you were able to have good working conditions and good co-workers and such a good success." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask Carol if she had any questions for you, if you don't mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have a couple of questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of them, talking about the Worldwide Network, you mentioned a couple incidences here or there or events going on, and you talked about the arrangement with the Bermuda government, how there were certain arrangements there. When you were trying to set up that network and finding—one is, how did you pick the places to go, and then, two, did you have any problems with the other governments, with bringing people in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the picking of the sites was done primarily by the contractor, a joint effort between the contractor, Langley Instrument Lab, who were letting contracts, and by the advice and inputs from the Ops Division, having to do with trajectories. It wasn't so much the flight control aspect having much to do with where the sites were, but the trajectory people in the Ops Division had a lot to say about where they should be, because they were the ones that would end up defining the coverage that the communications and radars would have for a given site. \"On this trajectory, oops, we missed that. If we put it there, we'll miss it.\" [Laughter] Okay? But if we put it there, it'll go right through the center of the station coverage. So they had a lot to do with it. Flight control didn't have much to do with it.\\n\\n The second part of your question was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Setting it up, were there any problems with the other governments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The other governments. That I don't know. That would have been—not that I know of. There was one instance, though, where the State Department gave us, when we started to get involved with the Worldwide Network, State Department gave us some suggested rules of conduct and so forth, as to how to operate in those. A State [Department] representative came down from Washington to give a briefing, in particular about Zanzibar, which there was a lot of unrest, as to what we should do if there was a coup or what have you. The interesting thing was that eventually they moved the station from out of Zanzibar, but before that, we had no problems. But he did. He was captured in a coup. The one that was coming, giving us the warning, was captured in a coup and held for some short period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, hopefully his advice paid off for himself, then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was thinking that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, my. That's quite an interesting situation. Luckily, you didn't have any problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Another question. You mentioned the Redstone was used in most of the early flights, but then for the orbital flights it moved into the Atlas. Was there much discussion or concern about the Atlas, and that in so many of the early tests—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. The Atlas had a dismal reliability record, and so there was a lot of effort put into trying to up its reliability. One of the most effective means they found was to put placards on all the bits and pieces that were going through the assembly, that said \"This goes on the vehicle that's going to be used by\" and they put the astronaut's name on it, like Glenn or what have you. And they found that the reliability went soaring, because people took that much more care.\\n\\n When we first went to NASA, I have heard that we were brought into the States under the same provisions of von Braun and his people, because we were just ushered in, you know. We had no problems with immigration or anything. We went down to the embassy and told them who we were, and a piece of paper, and they'd already been notified who we were. The skids were greased. So we had no problems. The moment we got there, we were given security clearances equivalent to our Canadian security clearances. The only people that wouldn't recognize this for some time, until they got their arms twisted, was the Air Force on the Atlas Program, because it was the ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] program. They said, \"Nuh-uh. A NASA version of a Canadian clearance isn't good enough,\" because we were all Canadian citizens at the time. I'm a dual citizen now. But you can't give up your Canadian citizenship unless you pay money.\\n\\n So this was one instance of the Canadian citizenship being a problem. The other one was State Department were horrified that some of the flight controllers were going to be going around the world on Canadian passports and not government passports, because the government passports, if you were going to Kano, Nigeria, would let you get into Kano, Nigeria, and let you get out again and come home. Wouldn't let you go anywhere else. So if you're going to Australia, it let you get into Australia and out of Australia; wouldn't let you go anywhere else. So they had control of where everybody was going. This didn't matter at all about going to Australia, but they were worried about some of the African places and so forth like this, people wandering around. So the Canadian passports had no restrictions on them whatsoever, just said, \"Be careful if you go to Russia or be careful if you go to so and so,\" but you could go to Cuba, but it said, \"Be careful if you go to Cuba.\" But there were no restrictions on it. The State Department had a fit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting. That's really interesting. And there must have been some concern, too, because I guess if you were in a place that might be more dangerous, like some of the ones with unrest, that by having a government passport it gave you a little more authority, whereas if you didn't have that, they might not believe what you were trying to tell them. Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that situation get corrected?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, eventually some people became citizens, so then they could use their American passport. I can still get a Canadian passport, but if I use it, I've got to go and exit from a Canadian port." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't have one, but I could get one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One last question from me. Even though you weren't involved with NASA and hadn't been for a while, did you watch the moon landing carefully, the Apollo 11 landing? Do you remember watching that at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't think I watched it live. I did after the fact. There's an interesting thing, now that you bring this up. When I left AVRO, having been dumped by the government, I had a hard time thinking about airplanes or getting involved with them in any sense or fashion. I didn't want anything to do with airplanes. Just brought back too many memories. And it was sort of the same way at NASA, softened somewhat because I had contacts. I kept up contacts with so many of the guys and they kept sending me stuff and so on and so forth. But I had a hard time for a long, long time trying to really dig into what was going on, just simply because it brought back too many memories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's completely understandable. You'd put a lot of work into it, to make it all—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you pick a favorite time of your career that you're really glad you had an opportunity to be a part of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think it was all, right from the beginning. The whole thing was something I wouldn't want to give up at all. It was sort of like a mosaic, a little bit here, a little bit there, and a little bit somewhere else, and all made this big experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And now we understanding you're going to be traveling in a couple of months to visit Canada. Can you tell us about those festivities and why they're so important to you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "AVRO ceased to exist in the sixties, early sixties. It downsized with this big layoff in '59 and tried to struggle back, but didn't. The engine company is still in business. But in spite of this, they keep having reunions periodically, first flight of the Arrow, first flight of the C-100, what have you, or fortieth anniversary of the first flight of the Jetliner.\\n\\n This year it's the fiftieth anniversary of the first flight of the Jetliner, August 10, 1949, eight to ten years ahead of anything else flying. It was the second jet transport in the continent, I mean in the world. Comet beat us by two weeks to be the first in the world. I say they cheated; they just ran down the runway and lifted off and touched down again. But the chief designer is a little more polite than that, of the Jetliner; he says we were second.\\n\\n But anyway, it's the fiftieth anniversary of the first flight, so a year or so ago they had an anniversary for something on the Arrow and 600 people showed up. That's since 1959. So I don't know how many people will show up this year. I don't know. There are fewer people left involved with the Jetliner than there were with the Arrow, which was ten years later. So I expect about 200 people will probably show up, 200 or 300 people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That sounds like it's going to be a great time to be there and a chance to renew old friendships and maybe start a few new ones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. So it will be interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We wish you a good time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. And I appreciate this opportunity to talk with you and put some of the thoughts and memories down so that other people can see some of the aspects of what was going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had to much to offer, so we certainly appreciate the time that you've given us to collect some of those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome.\\n\\n [discussion of memorabilia, photos, models, etc. follows]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this is the Project Mercury Flight Controller Handbook." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We were talking earlier about the Flight Controller Handbook and how it originated and so forth. When the first copy arrived from the printer's, it was distributed around among the flight controllers, and one of the flight controllers, Arnie Aldrich, came running into my office and saying, \"The cover! The cover! There's a mistake on it!\" And I looked at it and I looked at it and I looked at it, and I couldn't find it. Finally he pointed it out to me. It says \"National Aeronautical and Space Administration\" instead of \"National Aeronautics and Space Administration.\" And I never spotted it. So he said, \"What are we going to do? Are we going to get them to redo the covers?\" And I said, \"No. It took me so long to find the mistake, I don't think anybody else is going to notice it.\" So we distributed it, including headquarters and so forth. We never heard \"boo\" back from anybody. So I don't know whether anybody else other than Arnie ever caught it. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It showed he was a man for details." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was how it started. There is no words to this, or very few words. There is the general environmental control system, and it tells you what the astronaut can see and it tells you what the ground controllers can see. This is on telemetry. So that's the general picture. Here is one of the modes that you can put the system in. Here's another mode you can put the system in. Here's another mode you can put the system in, and so forth, and away it goes on, page after page after page. These are all the further parts of the thing.\\n\\n One of the things that's interesting about this, you can see by the time we'd done this, we knew everything about the spacecraft. I met Chris Kraft a number of years later after he'd become director of the Manned Spacecraft Center. I was down visiting on business somewhere else in the area, and dropped in to see him. We were sitting there talking about the good old days, and he said, \"Have you been into the new Mission Control Center?\" And I said, \"No, but one of my old controllers said he was going to take me in and show me around.\" Chris says, \"You'd feel right at home. It's much bigger and it's got all sorts of things added to it, but the core of the operation is identical to the old Mercury Mission Control Center.\" He said, \"You'd feel right at home.\" And then he paused for a minute and he said, \"There is one difference.\" He said, \"Remember in the old days we knew everything in the capsule, all the systems in the capsule? We knew all the communications, we knew all the telemetry, we knew what was in the Mission Control Center?\" He said, \"Everything in those days was hard-wired. These days everything goes through a computer. These days, only your programmer knows how it works.\" [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That must have been quite a compliment to you, to see your work still in existence, just took on a different look." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Here's the attitude control system, one of the modes. There's the automatic version of it. And here's the direct manual version of it and so forth. You can see what he can see and what he can do, and down here is some notes about the thing and so forth.\\n\\n We had to get this printed up by McDonnell. The government printing presses couldn't handle it. It's twelve different colors in here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Many, many years before color printers, that's for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So anyway, that's all the different—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I noticed on the front page that this is copy number 65. Do you remember the original number, how many were distributed on the first—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. That's the very first issue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "December 1960. December first." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It went to all the astronauts, went to all the flight controllers, went to the project office, went to headquarters, and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These were controlled because they were issued?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I mentioned the trailer. Here's the trailer. This is all the technical description of the big trailer, that interim Mission Control Center. I've got some photographs of it somewhere. That doesn't mean much there without the—that's Arnie Aldrich. He's from Lexington, by the way. These are some pictures. There's the original astronauts. There they are again. I've got to put captions on some of these things. I'm not sure which one that is. Remember I told you about the \"JETT RETRO\"—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the \"FIRE RETRO.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. \"FIRE RETRO,\" \"JETT RETRO.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You could easily confuse those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And there's the trailer. There's the big trailer. Here's—where is it? Where did it go? There it is. It's got a little different model on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very small model. What scale is this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have no idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very tiny scale of an 18-wheeler." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That isn't quite that trailer, but it's close enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Close enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's Redstone on the launch pad. How simple the gantries are in those days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you witness many of the launches?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Several of them. There's the Mission Control Center. Here's Arnie Aldrich again. There's the remote flight monitoring control station. There's the capsule communicator. There's the medical and there's the systems. The medical guy's got a strip chart recorder here, playing out EKGs [electrocardiogram] and things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Something so basic, but yet so important. It's just a small center here, but had to have it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And there's the simulator at Langley Field. I got in there one day and the operator, the trainer here, I was playing the part of an astronaut, and I didn't realize they could—I knew they could put some faults into the thing, but I didn't realize they could put smoke in there as well. All of a sudden I'm sitting there, and all of a sudden there's smoke starts to come up [around]. You never saw anybody get out of anything so fast in all your life. I'm standing over here. [Laughter]\\n\\n There's the Redstone launch blockhouse. That's where I was thinking of putting the stuff for the interim. This is John Glenn's—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Twentieth day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that was off the teletype in my office. This is Saturn V. There are all my flight controllers from Philco-Ford." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your traveling crew. A lot of these are the traveling crew; they traveled everywhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. A couple of them ended up down in the Mission Control Center, I think, but most of them were assigned around the world.\\n\\n I don't know what this is, but this is up in Nashua [New Hampshire]. I found it in the weeds a couple of years ago. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some former cabinet for—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Something. There's guess who. There's Dennis [E.] Fielder. There's Bob Ernull, who was a first lieutenant in the Army, who was on loan to NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a globe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Look at that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A transparent globe. It's more than that. It's got the star. I guess the globe's down inside. I don't remember. This wasn't really my office. My office was across the hall. I don't know why I'm in this particular—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a great picture. It's okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This office was strange. Two things interesting about it. One was that it's in one of the two first NACA buildings built in 1918, when NACA first started up. They're in TAC territory, Tactical Air Command's area of Langley Field. There are some other NASA buildings, NACA-NASA buildings on the same site, a couple of wind tunnels. There's a window here, and outside the window is a narrow, very narrow driveway.\\n\\n On the opposite side of it is a blow-down tunnel, and this is one of these tunnels with a huge sphere that they evacuate and then they open up a valve that lets the air, ambient air, go rushing into this evacuated sphere, and goes through a very narrow test chamber at supersonic speeds so they can put a model in there and measure its reaction to these supersonic speeds.\\n\\n This makes a huge bang. Sounds like a cannon going off when they open this valve and all this air goes rushing in. Before they would open the valve, they would sound [a] siren to warn you, but the timing was terrible. All it would do was give you enough warning to look up, say, \"What's that?\" and wham! And you'd end up hanging onto the chandeliers. [Laughter]\\n\\n And the other thing was, this was the second of two buildings. The first one had Bob Gilruth's office and others in it. The Ops Division had most of the second building. In that first building there was a big rotunda, and it had the most marvelous mural of the history of aviation from the times of early balloon flights all the way up to the present.\\n\\n Some years later, I was working on a contract with Tactical Air Command, and went down and visited a colonel in this building. I had to check into the front building, into the rotunda. They had taken a paint roller and obliterated entirely this old classic mural of aviation history." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a loss." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's the Air Force for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a loss." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Unbelievable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's Wally Schirra's house across from ours. Our house was right there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned Dr. Gilruth. Did you have a chance to work with him very closely?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not particularly. He was pretty well far removed from the dirty everyday details of things. But I met him on an airplane several years after I'd left, and I was with RCA four or five years, I guess. So we were chatting, and he remembered I'd gone with RCA, and he said, \"You know, I get all sorts of people coming in here saying they're from RCA and want to do studies or work on things.\" He said, \"I've never been able to figure out RCA organization, who does what.\" This was because RCA was—each plant was its own profit center, so it had limited resources. It was tough for a big project to get these various resource centers together to bid on a big part of the project, so all these little individual profit center salesmen and so forth or engineers would wander in and say they were from RCA and they were representing one little part of it.\\n\\n There's them pulling Gus Grissom's thing out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you hear a report earlier this year that a gentleman had located the capsule?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They haven't got it out yet. Betty Grissom doesn't want the—first of all, said she didn't want them to bring it up, and then she said, well, if they bring it up, she wants it preserved. No, that's Shepard's, because they never did pull Grissom's capsule out.\\n\\n That's Shepard's, too. There's Shepard climbing up into the helicopter. There he is. There he is there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's quite a job to hang out of the helicopter and take those pictures. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's Shepard's as well. These are all Shepard's. There it is, liftoff. There it is, liftoff as well. Here's a whole series of these. This is Grissom's flight. There's the helicopter trying to pull. See where he is in the water? He's got his wheels right in the water and he finally—and Gus is somewhere down in here. This one, you can't quite see him, but there's another picture somewhere that you can see him.\\n\\n There's Glenn. There's the Mission Control Center again. There's the telemetry back room. There's an anthropomorphic description of how you fit into your seat and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of John Glenn, did you watch his latest flight that was just in October?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I saw it on the TV. I was working at the time, but I saw it on TV afterwards. More power to him. [Laughter]\\n\\n Here's some more pictures. This is the old CF-100. This is the one, if I hadn't had a cold, when it crashed, I would have been in it.\\n\\n Here's the inside of a big Mission Control, the interim Mission Control thing, in a truck.\\n\\n Here's one that will make you laugh. \"I know your son is a genius, but I really don't think RCA can afford to start production on its proposal immediately. Plan for rocket. Spring for bouncy landings, one of Mom's dining room chairs, one million firecrackers.\" [Laughter] My son drew that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How old was he when he drew that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sixteen, seventeen. Seventeen, maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And he inherited that sense of humor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He's a vice president for Warner Brothers, works for Bugs Bunny, which is really weird, because when he was four years old I painted a four-foot Bugs Bunny on this bedroom wall. Now he works for him.\\n\\n There's the original spec for the interim Mission Control Center. That was from that diagram. That's what they went and built. They built all of that stuff I showed you earlier. If you compare it, it's pretty close.\\n\\n There's the Control Center layout of who sits where. There's Bermuda's version. I went back to Bermuda six years ago, called them up and said who I was, said, \"Can I come down, take a peek?\" They said, \"Come on down.\" Sent a car out for me because it's a secure area. They came out to the gate and got me and took me down. The site manager had been there all this time, since the station started, and he remembered me all this time later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's pretty neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this equipment somewhere still there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they closed it down last year. The station's closed now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wonder where it went off to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. I guess with all the satellite coverage, they don't need it.\\n\\n There is the trajectory plots at Bermuda. This is just a Redstone flight plan, tentative flight plan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this your sketching?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I have no idea what date it is or anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There's a date right there. '59." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "'59. 5/6/59. This is that paper I told you that I wrote for the Apollo, and to the publications people it was under Kraft's name." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We notice it's the Apollo Conference in Washington, July 18 through the 20th, 1961." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's right. This was the draft that went into the pubs people to make up.\\n\\n This is the escape rocket.\\n\\n One of the things I did was, in the early days, I was named as the first chairman of the Cape Safety Committee. It soon became clear that you couldn't do this from up at Langley Field. It had to be somebody from the Cape to do it. So after the first meeting, somebody else picked the chore up. In the first meeting, one of the things we decided to do was to clear the area, the footprint where if you aborted off the pad, where would the capsule land, depending on the wind. So that made a footprint. The idea was to clear that footprint of all the mangrove and all the junk that was in there, because they found they couldn't get in. A rescue team just couldn't penetrate. So the first job was to clear that area out. In clearing it out, they found a six-foot snake.\\n\\n There's the capsule console again. There's the remote site again. I guess this is after Glenn's flight. There's the astronauts again. There's Gus. There's the capsule down there, and I think that's Gus, but I'm not sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's one happy man to get aboard that carrier, wasn't he." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. One of the things, Colonel Stan [Stanley C.] White and I went up to the Lovelace Committee to give a presentation. It was primarily Stan's presentation. The Lovelace Committee was General Don [D.] Flickinger and a bunch of others who were concerned about man's role in manned space. This was an agenda of the presentation. I just went up to give them the general information about the mission, and Stan was to tell them about the medical aspects. This was done sometime later, to describe a mission and who's doing what.\\n\\n This is just a \"You're going to be working over Christmas. Thanks, guys.\" That's from Walt [Walter C.] Williams, who was head of the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just in case you had a doubt, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's a list of the various kinds of training for the flight controllers. Here's the designation of flight directors: Chris Kraft, John Hodge, me, flight surgeon Stan White. I think it was John [James P.] Henry. No, it may have been Jim. I can't remember Henry's first name. He was the one in charge of all the chimpanzees and so forth. And Bill [William S.] Augerson. He was the first doctor for the astronauts. And Tom [Thomas V.] Chambers, he was from Toronto, from AVRO. Tec Roberts. Jack Cohen was from Toronto. Glynn [S.] Lunney. Howard [C.] Kyle. So that was back in 1960, first of 1960." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "February of 1960." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They were starting to get organized. This is George [M.] Low. He's passed away now. This was a conference after John. There's the big hotel on the peninsula. Here's the agenda for that NASA—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apollo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Apollo thing. Here is the first Apollo mission design at the time. There's some of the astronauts. Here's some pictures. There's that thing again. Here's this operational flight control system I said that was wishful thinking on Huntsville's part. That's about it.\\n\\n But there's one interesting thing here. Another small world. This year I was working at AS&E, and talking to one of the physicists there whose father worked at Raytheon, and who had worked on the original concept for Apollo. This is a copy. He ran me off a copy of this hand-drawn thing. \"Three Basic Systems on Lunar Landing, Mission Profiles for Comparison.\" One of these has a LEM-like—yes, I guess that's the one with the LEM. Has it got a LEM on it? It isn't called LEM." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Over here it looks like there's something come up from the surface and docking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It's not called the LEM. Isn't that interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, small world. This is a series of books called\\n\\n Canada Heirlooms: Wayfarers, Canadian Achievers\\n\\n , and there's a whole article in here about \"Canada's Gift to NASA.\" And it talks about Jim Chamberlin and so on. And here's my name in here somewhere. Photographs of NASA via me. My name's in here, Fred Matthews." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's really nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "John Hodge, Tec Roberts, so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "America was blessed with a great group of guys from Canada." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We tried our best. [Tape recorder turned off.]\\n\\n Here's the one I wrote. [Laughter] Flight control and flight plans. Didn't write.\\n\\n There was a whole bunch of Canadian and American legislatures came down for a briefing, and I gave a pitch to them. So I got a letter back from this Canadian senator, which I thought was kind of ironic, because he was one of the principal politicians who canceled the project that caused 14,000 people to get laid off. So I thought it was kind of ironic that he wrote me.\\n\\n Those are the little horses, wild horses on Chincoteague Island near Wallops Island, where each year they sell them off. They take the proceeds for the local—I think it's for the local fire departments or something.\\n\\n This is me in the Air Force. [Laughter] Years and years ago.\\n\\n Here's my reconstruction of that paper that somebody stole. As best I can tell, that's a fair reproduction of it. Fairly close. Yes, I was right. Sixteen stations. What's this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Medical support." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is the briefing to Lovelace Committee in Washington, medical briefing. I didn't know I had that. Here's the Navy doctor, flight surgeon who did the appendicitis operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I bet that sailor remembers him well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'll bet so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a good thing he was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "These are just all miscellaneous stuff. This is the safety thing. I was chairman of the first one, but later on somebody from the Cape took it over.\\n\\n Here's some flight controller information. Here's the stuff that I mentioned about the briefing notes for guidance of personnel assigned to overseas locations, put out by the State Department and briefed to us by the guy that got captured. [Laughter]\\n\\n There's the look-see at trying to stuff our things into the Redstone blockhouse, which I said, \"Isn't enough room. Can't do that.\" So I gave up on that.\\n\\n There is an overview of the various teams. There's a remote team and so forth. And so it goes. More and more. There's the presentation that Arnie Aldrich and I gave to McDonnell, to tell them how to hook up the—there it is. Flight monitoring trailer. How to hook it up to the rest of the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What I think is so interesting, all these documents that you're showing us, they're all mostly drawn by hand and very carefully, where nowadays we just do everything on the computer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's fascinating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Here's an interesting document. Gilruth. Bob Gilruth. This is when he was in NACA, probably a struggling engineer in NACA back in his early days of working for Langley Research Center. There's no date on it, either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is report number 715." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or is there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that 1941?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's what it is. 1941." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My goodness." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "C. Frederick Matthews", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I had this in my files at AVRO, so I knew of Gilruth and I knew of Chris Kraft, because I had a couple of reports of his, too.\\n\\n Anyway, that's it, kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00204", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GordonRF/gordonrf.htm", + "original_file_name": "GordonRF_10-17-97.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GordonRF/GordonRF_10-17-97.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Richard F. Gordon", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 17 October 1997" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Michelle Kelly" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Richard F. Gordon" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[This] interview of Richard Gordon was conducted [at the Johnson Space Center] in Houston, Texas on October 17, 1997 by Michelle Kelly and assisted by Carol [Butler]. …The first question I'd like to ask you is how you decided to join NASA and how you got involved in becoming an astronaut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, the involvement is really kind of basic. All my peers were involved in the program. I should explain that a little bit. I was at Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, Maryland and just graduated from test pilot school in July of 1957. And when Sputnik flew in October of that year, it obviously got everybody’s attention. And it wasn't until 1959 when the seven Mercury guys flew and I knew all of them at that time. Even though I was in the Navy, I had worked with the Air Force people on several projects at Patuxent River. Al Shepard [Alan B. Shepard, Jr.] happened to be an instructor of mine in test pilot school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I knew John [H.] Glenn [Jr.] because he was the desk officer in the Bureau of Aeronautics and he had flown one of the things that I had done later on in 1961. But he was the project officer for the F8U-3. And General, now, Tom Miller was the F-4 project pilot. That’s one of the projects that I worked on. So knowing them and being involved in that work, I was not in a selection group for the Mercury. I keep telling those guys that I was far too young to have been accepted. But in 1962, I was involved in the second selection process. And it was, really, when you think about it, it’s a normal professional evolution, if you will. You learn to fly and we were all carrier pilots when we went to test pilot school and space, obviously, is the next addition to it. So 1962 came around and they said, \"Would you like to participate in the selection process.\" All the hands go up and all that. I failed for selection at that time. And fortunately had an opportunity then when the selection came about in 1963 and was selected at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And can you tell me a little bit about the selection process and what you went through to become selected?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in a nutshell, the selection process, it’s kind of interesting, because it’s a computer run that you had the basic requirements to become an astronaut. Age, experience, blah, blah. Do you desire to continue in the selection process? And then the affirmative, of course, then gets you invited. At that time in 1962, was a week of physicals at the School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio, Brooks Air Force Base. A week as an out patient, a full week of extensive physical examinations. Those that passed that satisfactory were invited to back to Houston, I believe it was in Houston at that, yes it was, it was Houston, for a week of technical interviews. And then after that was over, go back home and wait for the process to be completed. And there were nine guys selected in 1962. Repeated the process in 1963 and I was one of fourteen people selected in that year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And once then you did become selected, they went through an extensive training program from what I understand for the new astronaut group, or astronaut candidate group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they had somewhat of a syllabus. It wasn’t firmed, really firm academically but they had a syllabus where we went to kind of ground school for about six months. Academically, as well as, learning pieces and parts of hardware, what spacecraft were all about, what rockets were all about, and that sort of thing. And at the end of that period, we were all assigned to arenas, or areas of, so called, specialization. I’m not so sure that that’s the proper terminology. But I was assigned to look and monitor cockpit design for the Apollo spacecraft. Gemini was already well on its way so there was no activity for me in that. But the Lunar Module and the Command Module cockpit design was under my auspices for a period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, really? And I understand that you received that assignment because you were probably one of the most experienced test pilots of the group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well can I ask you a little bit what you did and did you work with some of the engineers in the design or did you make early recommendations or …?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Basically, the design is somewhat basic but you work directly with the system engineers, here at the center. You know in the cockpit, you’ve got all the systems. You got the navigational system, the electrical system, communication system, propulsion system. So you’re really involved with all of them….So that gave me an opportunity to get to know each of them here. In addition to that, you spend a tremendous amount of time at the contractor facility. And in the case of the Command Module, we were always at Downey, California. Fly out on Sunday night and come back Friday night after work. That type of thing. And we did the same thing with the Lunar Module with Grumman Aircraft in Bethpage, Long Island. So it was coast to coast operation.\\n\\n Unfortunately we were in Houston so we had to fly in from Houston to New York or Houston to L.A. And we kind of rotating and it depended upon what was scheduled in the review process. We had systems set up where you had a preliminary design review. Well, all of the system engineers and the contractor engineers, as well, would get together and critique what the design was at that time. Now, the first one was called a preliminary design review [PDR]. And then after those problems that were identified in a PDR were corrected, hopefully, then we had a critical design review. And after that was completed and problems corrected, then you went right into actual manufacturing. So that was the process that we went through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what types of problems or challenges did you find in designing the Command Module and the LM [Lunar Module]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, mostly arguments between what the government wanted and what the contractor wanted to provide. But those were normal. I don’t mean to be that they were confrontational necessarily although sometimes they were. Because every time you change something, you’re talking evaluation of delays and costs and those kinds of things. And we were under a great deal of pressure … I shouldn’t say great deal of pressure … but some pressure because the edict that President [John F.] Kennedy sent down in 1961 that we were going to go to the Moon before the decade was over. So there was always that in the background. So we wanted to do things in a hurry but we wanted to do it properly and right. So there was always that conflict and that mix but things went fairly well until we had the fire." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And can I ask you a little about that? Did you become involved after the fire in redesigning the Command Module?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, most of us did. Frank Borman, of course, was on the review board at that time to determine the cause of the fire. And that was the only one … well, we were first going to fly two of them. Block, so called, block one vehicles and they were only designed to go into Earth orbit. But after that, we decided that, or NASA decided they’d go immediately to the, so called, block two. Incorporating all those fixes that were identified from the fire. Number one, a quick opening hatch. One that you could open within seconds rather than taking minutes to open. And there’s a story behind why that hatch was designed in that manner to begin with.\\n\\n But then had to eliminate all flammable material which … creature comforts, we had a lot of flammable materials in there for our convenience and the things that we needed to do. The redesign of the spacecraft itself in the terms of potting of the instrument panel, wire tray runs, we protected electrical wiring throughout the spacecraft because this was assumed to have been the source of the ignition in Apollo 1. So we had worked on those things and worked very closely with the contractor as well as the other new thing that was in the block twos, the tunnel and the docking mechanism, the probe, if you will, that they put on the Command Module. So once those thing were done, we were ready to fly and finally in October of 1968, we were back on track again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And can I ask you what you think perhaps NASA’s most valuable lessons learned were at that time after the fire and redeveloping the Command Module?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we did one more thing. The probably the big thing they learned that, we were very, very fortunate and we became complacent because of the environment we were working in, 100% oxygen in both Mercury and Gemini. And all of a sudden here … and that had been an original design argument to begin with, mixed gases as opposed to 100% oxygen. But we had been successful for ten Gemini flights and six Mercury flights and so we were operating a Command Module with a 100% oxygen. At that time, we seemed to have no problem but we had flammable material and 100% oxygen. And all that was needed for a disaster was a source of ignition. Well, we found that too.\\n\\n But I think that was probably one of the biggest things in the spacecraft, the design of the hatch was axiomatic. It evolved very logically. But the reason it took a long time, we had to start designing systems in the vehicle that would provide nitrogen and oxygen, at least for the pad operations until we got into flight. Then as the atmosphere leaked out, which it does at a very slow rate, nitrogen would be replenished with oxygen so eventually, in flight, we were back to 100% oxygen. But I think that in itself, the time to redesign and test between January of ‘67 fire and October of ’68 flight. Took a while to get those things done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand from some of the other people with whom we’ve spoken about how they felt at time when they learned about the fire. And how did you feel when you learned of it? Were you surprised at all or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think that we were all shocked about it. I certainly was. You know, we hadn’t contemplated anything like that. And here was a routine test on the pad. Who would have suspected anything like that was going to happen in that particular environment. And I think it was a shock that it happened. I think it provided resolve in all of us that we were going to continue and do the things we had to do to accomplish President Kennedy’s edict that we were going to go to the Moon and safely come back before the decade was over. Recognizing we had a problem, the ability to correct and do something about it, and a strong desire to continue with that commitment. Because we could have very easily said, “Well, this isn’t worth it.” But it is worth it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely. And it seems like that was a really extensive project for you to be involved with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’m sure it was. It was about that time, of course, when I finished my Gemini career in September of ’66, I was reassigned right away to an Apollo crew. So we were involved in that. I was part of Jim [James A.] McDivitt’s crew as a backup Command Module pilot. So were immediately involved in taking the second, excuse me, it was the third Command Module but the first Lunar Module into flight on Apollo 9. So we were happily involved with all of that activity. And we were very concerned with about the weight of the Lunar Module. It was overweight like some of us are today. And we had to go through a super weight reduction program. So that, of course, delayed some of the early Lunar Module flights to the Moon because they were overweight and didn’t have the capability to perform a lunar landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was wondering if we could go back a little bit to Gemini?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You can go back to anywhere you want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And talk about some of your experience on Gemini. And I understand that you were assigned as part of the backup crew of Gemini 8. And what was your work like in preparing for that mission? Did you work very closely with Neil [A.] Armstrong and Dave [David R.] Scott?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, very much so, very much so. Pete [Charles C. Conrad, Jr.] and I were backup crew. And you obviously … when you first start out, you do everything together. Everything is identical. You go to the same places, you do the same thing. And it's not until very near the end that the backup crew kind of steps back a little bit and lets the primary crew take the load of the training because this is really what it’s all about. But Gemini program was very interesting. When President Kennedy said we were going to go to the Moon, we hadn't even been in orbit yet. You know, what's this idiot telling us that we're going to the Moon, we haven't even been in orbit so we had a lot to learn.\\n\\n We had to learn ... the essence of the Gemini was to give us the experience that we needed to go to the Moon. Long duration, we hadn't even been in orbit yet. So we had to at least stay in orbit, or zero g, for ten days which was the design mission to the Moon. We did that with Gemini 7, staying in space for fourteen days. And the next thing you started working on which was essential to Apollo was docking, or excuse me, was rendezvous first. You have to rendezvous first before you can dock. In other words, you have to meet before you can link up if you catch my drift. So the rendezvous problems were many and varied and we tried a lot of different techniques from 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12, different ways to accomplish a rendezvous. And then, of course, the docking procedures with the Gemini vehicle. That, with the maneuverability of Gemini, we could change its orbit which you couldn't do with Mercury. Once you were there, you were there. We could maneuver during reentry so that we could, hopefully, navigate to a precise landing in the water.\\n\\n In addition to that, Gemini, even from Gemini 4, gave us a little bit of insight into extravehicular activity. What was required to do those kinds of things. So it led to some of the redesign or the design of the Lunar Module suit. The environmental control system that you worked in to control metabolic rates and those things. So Gemini was a very, very important bridge between Mercury and Apollo. And it was essential that we did ... it was a very exciting time too because we were flying. Once we started flying with Gemini 3, we were flying every two months...I need a glass of water too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you like to stop for a moment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK. That was basically the reason for Gemini. And my first crew assignment was backup Gemini 8 with Pete Conrad. And, of course, Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott flew that flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you work with mission control after you found out that Armstrong and Scott had been gyrating wildly after they got …?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was actually in Mission Control at the time. We seemed to gravitate toward there and stay up when the crew stayed up. As the backup crew, you're usually behind Capcom, Capsule Communicator. I don't know why they would call it capsule anymore but I guess we still do. But we were there to help them. Interpreting what the crew was doing and where they were at that particular time. That was a little hairy if that is the proper word to describe the event as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, they were in trouble. We didn't really realize that at the time but when we got a look at the revolution rate that they were experiencing and that thruster staying on, until they got that under control, they had a problem." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were you available to help them in any way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh nope, just sitting there helping the Mission Control sort that thing out. And actually they had that problem out of, I think if I recall correctly, basically out of communication. They solved it and they solved it by using the reentry control system. When they came back AOS situation, acquisition of signal. When we learned that they had indeed activated the recovery system, well that was the end of the flight. They were obligated to reenter at the first opportunity. The only Gemini flight that landed in the Pacific Ocean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then, moving on. You went onto become a pilot on Gemini 12 then, I'm sorry, Gemini 11?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Deke [Donald K. Slayton] had a, apparently, a three flight rotational system set up for crews rotating from prime to backup which didn't hold true in all cases because every now and then, he’d slip somebody else in as he did on our backup crew. I flew our backup on 8. Three more flights later, I was prime on 11. Consequently, it happened with my experience in the Apollo program as well. So we came off the backup crew for 8 and were immediately assigned to Gemini 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your experience like on 11. Once you got up, I understand, you conducted one of two EVAs [Extravehicular Activity]. And on your first, particular, EVA, I understand that you did some work in trying to create artificial gravity. And I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind elaborating on that EVA and part of your mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was something I was looking forward to a lot. We had not been too successful in doing work outside the spacecraft in EVAs. If you talk to Gene [Eugene A. Cernan]. Well Gene Cernan had a problem on 9. Of course, Ed [Edward White II on Gemini IV] was very successful because he didn't have to do any work. All he got to do is have fun, float around outside. But Gene had trouble on 9. And that was basically a metabolic problem as well as anything. Mike had some problems on 10 in getting to the other Agena and being able to control himself. And I thought we had a pretty good handle on that for 11.\\n\\n The experience that we gained in training in the zero G airplane looked like we were going to be okay but we, once again, had problems. I got myself in a real bind. Pete and I were so jacked up for that EVA and excited about it that we actually completed all of the procedures at least an orbit, or an hour or so, before we were to go out. So there we were sitting there in a pressurized suit getting ready to go outside. Well the last thing I had to do was put this gold visor on my helmet. And I couldn’t get the damned thing on. I mean I struggled and struggled with that thing and apparently. Golly!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know what I’m going to do. I’m going to put that right there if that won’t bother anybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No problem." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were so far ahead of the procedure list that we were sitting there in those pressurized suits and when it came to for me to put the visor on, the fit tolerances were tighter than I had anticipated. Even though I had put it on my helmet before. I’d probably done it without the suit being pressurized. And I struggled with that thing. Tried to arms up there and get that gold visor over my helmet. I totally exhausted myself. I even put my head down inside that cockpit and had Pete try to put it on. And we couldn’t get…and finally I got the thing on but I was behind the power curve, if you will, in terms of metabolic rate. So I had really worked up a real heat load in there.\\n\\n And then when I got out of the spacecraft. We opened the hatch and I flew out with all of the debris. And the first thing that I had to do was to install the camera on the outside. Which was easy enough to do because I was still basically standing on my seat and being able to hold myself in. But then the next thing I was to do was to propel myself to the Agena and attach the tether which would keep the two vehicles together. It had a 100 ft tether on it. And in training, I had been able to always wedge my legs between the Agena and Gemini spacecraft. And then be able to use both hands to attach the tether. Well, I couldn’t keep myself in that position. I kept floating away so I ended up having to hold the docking bar with one hand and put the tether and the locking mechanism on there with the other. And I’ve always equated that to the task of trying to tie your shoelace with one hand. And that was a lesson we brought back from that EVA. And I was so far behind the power curve with metabolic rates. I was perspiring. My eyes were stinging from my salt solution that they decide to quit.\\n\\n But the lesson learned there, which finally Buzz [Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr.] did it on Apollo 12, was we need restraint systems when you’re out there. And developed those restraint systems whether it was a place for your feet, a window washer belt, or something that keep you in place while you have both hands free. Because if you don’t do that, you’re just going to float away or float off somewhere else. That was the basic lesson there. Painful for me because I wanted to complete it. I was supposed to go back to the adapter section and eventually have a little propellant system that I could fly around with and never got to do it. So that was the end of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have a classic picture here of you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, ride ‘em cowboy. Yea, that’s it. That was it. You see how I have my legs wedged between the collar on the Agena and the spacecraft and it just wouldn’t stay there. But that’s it. One of those pictures. And I’m trying to use both hands to work. I finally couldn’t do it, I had to hang on to the docking bar with one hand and operate the thing with the other. The second EVA was easy. That was no problem at all. It was basically one of looking at source of UV in the solar system. Standing up in the hatch, outside the spacecraft, but pointing this camera or the spacecraft at a particular area in the solar system where the dark places where they suspected that there may be…UV photographs that they were taking. Actually, Pete and I, in the two orbits they were doing it, I fell asleep during EVA. So that’s how difficult EVA is when you can fall asleep. It was a totally different experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that really true? I read that you and Mr. Conrad both fell asleep." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "True! Daytime I was leaning up against the spacecraft and he was inside like this. We were going over the Atlantic and he said, “Hey Dick, guess what, I fell asleep.” And I said, “Guess what, I did too.” It was nice and warm and cuddly. Back in the womb, you know. I’m nice and snugly. But it was a totally different experience between the two because one was so easy. And Dr. [Robert R.] Gilruth had suggested that maybe it would’ve been better off if we’d reversed the two EVAs. And I think he has a point. Because, I think, the more you’re in that environment the more you pick up and the more you learn. And by that time, I would’ve not had the problem with that bloody damn visor. I wanted to throw that thing as far as I could throw it. But that’s life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what kind of training did you undergo to prepare yourself for the EVAs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two methods basically. I had an air bearing table here at the center that we used for the propulsion gun I had to propel myself as part of the experiment. That, and the zero G airplane. And those were the basic two training devices except, you know, going through the procedures step by step by step in one G while you’re back there looking at the backpack that you were going to put on and that sort of thing. And that’s just to get you familiar with step 1, step 2, step 3, on through the recipe book. Unfortunately, we hadn’t learned to use the water. This is what Dr. Gilruth had come up with after 11 as well. He said, “We have got to do something different because we’re not succeeding very well.”\\n\\n And he came up with the idea of utilizing underwater training which simulated, if you didn’t try to swim in the water, if you let the environment, pretended like you were in zero G. And they could put weights on your pressure suits so that you could actually think you were in zero G. So it gave us a much better feel for what tools were needed. And it also gave us a better feel for the timeline. In other words, we could stay in the water and stay there for an hour and continuously go on and do the work. In the zero G airplane, you got 25 seconds of simulated zero G going over the top of the parabola, and 2 G pullout and then you’re recovering again. So you’re always starting each parabola from a very stable position which led to false assumptions as well. But there wasn’t enough of the right training for that. Finally we learned how. It’s like a school teacher, you do it over and over again until you get it just right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I understand on your mission on Gemini 11, it was the first mission that you rendezvoused and, I believe, docked on the first orbit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And can you tell me a little bit about your work in that area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we approached the rendezvous problem, do KISS, [keep] it simple stupid, to begin with so things worked fairly under control and stabilized. And I think the first one was done with, what they call, M equals 4. In other words, four orbits to make adjustments with the orbits to stabilize. Well there’s four times one and a half, that’s six hours of rendezvous activity. The lunar mission, because of the short life span of the accent stage said that we couldn’t afford to do things like that in case we had a problem. So we had to rendezvous much faster than that.\\n\\n So we came up, or the people here at the center came up, with the idea that we shouldn’t be able to rendezvous within the first orbit. And there was a lot of controversy about that. It was going to be too expensive in terms of fuel and this, that, and the other thing. Well, it did cost a little more fuel but it was pretty dynamic and pretty exciting when you’re launched after the Agena and your rendezvous was by the time to get to Hawaii and dock was by the time you get to the United States. So it was a different way, a different method, of rendezvousing which cut down the time required for rendezvous. It gave you all the rest of that time to take care of other problems that may or may not develop. And it eventually was the way that we rendezvoused on all of the lunar missions.\\n\\n 11 and 12 did somewhat of a hybrid rendezvous technique because we had a CDH [Constant Delta Height], and I forget even what all these terms are now, but it took a little longer than a direct ascent rendezvous. But basically the rest of the missions did the same thing that we did on Gemini 11, they rendezvoused within the first orbit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now did you work with sextants, did you work with computer guides? What type of navigational tools did you use?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Apollo, we used a sextant and radar. There are two things. In the Command Module, we had the sextant sighting on the Lunar Module and we also had a ranging device from the VHF. We could tell the ranging. You’d tell the computer what those sextant angles were and what the range the VHF said and it would make the computation. On the Lunar Module, it had radar which was its primary method of rendezvousing. So the two were complimentary and very, very accurate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you use similar devices on Gemini 11 as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m almost sitting back here trying to figure out what we did use. We had the ground providing calculations and the other way we did was to calculate angles against time and I had charts. And I would look into, kind of lookup, enter here, exit here, type thing that would give us the velocity correction that we needed for rendezvousing. And of course, we got that information from the rendezvous radar that was in the Gemini spacecraft." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did your work on Gemini 11, as far as rendezvous and docking were concerned, really help you out in your mission on Apollo as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Almost identical." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah, except, of course, in Apollo you had a partner in the other vehicle that was doing the reciprocal calculations. So then you compared notes. So basically, the techniques were virtually the same. So we, Pete and I, have always felt very comfortable with that kind of rendezvous because it was the only thing we really worked at. Of course, when I worked on backup on 8 and 9, they did things a little different too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then I’d like to ask you a little bit about your transition into Apollo. You had mentioned earlier how you were working with the modules themselves and their development. How did you find your transition between the Gemini and Apollo programs since Apollo was already underway once you’d finished up with Gemini 11?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was a transition between the two. I was working on the spacecraft and its design on Apollo. I was taken off of that and put in a Gemini. I mean I was assigned to a flight crew. So I was working on Apollo for a period of time up until we started training for Gemini 8, and then I sat on a flight crew. And from that time on, I was on a flight crew until I retired, or virtually until I retired. So then when Gemini 11 flight had finished in September of ’66 then we were right back in the Apollo, picking up virtually on where we had left off before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was the training, at all, any different?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, more the same. You know, more complicated. The vehicles were more complicated. The things that we were trying to do were more complicated. The simulators were much more sophisticated. So the transition was easy. I mean it was not that difficult. You just had a different vehicles and more sophisticated training devices and you stepped right into it. It’s like going from say a DC-9 to a 747 type of transition. And it’s things that you could easily make without any problem." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great. And I understand you were then assigned to the backup crew of Apollo 9?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when you were assigned to that backup crew, was it known as Apollo 9 at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think not. And I’m just trying go back. I’ve always been mad at Jim McDivitt because we could have been on Apollo 8 instead of Apollo 9. And there’s a significance to that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell me a little bit about it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as things turned out, the decisions that were made after 7 flew which was nothing more than, nothing more, the first flight of the Command Service Module. Then we were ready to fly Apollo 8 and we didn’t have a Lunar Module for it. So what are you going to do with Apollo 8. Jim’s [James A. McDivitt] crew was the next one up. I mean in a normal rotation of things, he would have been assigned [Apollo] 8. But he, in his own reasons and wisdom, as the crew commander, wanted to stay with the Lunar Module. He had worked…as a crew, we had worked on the Lunar Module so long that he wanted to go ahead and stay with the flight that would have the first Lunar Module with it.\\n\\n And I don’t recall all of the machinations that went on then with Frank coming on to Apollo 8 and Mike Collins had surgery about that time and then Jim Lovell [James A. Lovell, Jr.] took his place, Bill [William A.] Anders was on 8. And the decision was made since there was no Lunar Module to send it to the Moon. Which in retrospect, was a pretty damn bold decision because if we had done that and it was Apollo 13 they would have never had gotten back because the Lunar Module was the only thing that saved them. So I look back at that and say, “You know, that was a pretty damn bold decision and the proper one to make at that time because why repeat the same things that Apollo 7 had done.” So they decided to something different with Apollo 8.\\n\\n And in those days, we had other plans. First of all, we were going to go into real high elliptical orbit and test the heat shield gradually up to thirty six thousand feet per second and all that sort of stuff. And that got all modified, thankfully, or we’d never made it before the decade was over. But with that decision having been made and Jim wanting to stay with the Lunar Module, Apollo 9 became the first flight of the Lunar Module in Earth orbit as well. So that’s where we were. We were still the backup crew for McDivitt and his crew which was Dave [R.] Scott and Rusty [Russell L.] Schweickart. So I’ve always blamed Jim McDivitt for not letting his backup crew be on Apollo 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think I understand. And I understand then, just from your inference, the reason why you are disappointed because then you weren’t assigned as the prime crew on 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s a jester. I mean I’m jesting. There’s no control over that. It could have been anybody or anyone and nobody was selected to be the first crew to land on the Moon. It just happened to be Apollo 11. If Apollo 10 had not been successful, it probably wouldn’t have been Apollo 11. So most of this is talking amongst us girls, ribbing each other about who should have been where when. But we weren’t. And then as 9 was very, very successful flight. Both vehicles in Earth orbit. And we moved onto Apollo 12.\\n\\n During that process of going onto Apollo 9, we’d lost one of our crew members. C. C. Williams [Clifton C. Williams, Jr.] was killed in an airplane accident and Al [Alan L.] Bean was reassigned in his place. So Conrad, Gordon and Bean were together through Apollo 9 and also prime crew on Apollo 12. Which was great for us. We were extremely compatible and had a lot of fun. The only surprise on Apollo 12 was a lightening strike. Everything else was, as they say in the community, nominal which, of course, means insignificant. I’ve never seen a connection between the two but that’s one of the vernaculars of space language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I wouldn’t call it insignificant by any means." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s what nominal means if you look it up in the dictionary. But that was a surprise. Something nobody thought about, nobody trained for and that thunderstorm in November of 1969 about thirty-six seconds after launch got everybody’s attention." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And would you mind telling me a little bit about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there’s not much to tell you about that really. It struck and some people say it was a static discharge, others were…it didn’t make any difference because the consequence of it was to knock the fuel cells off the electrical busses. The fuel cells were providing us electrical power at the time. Fortunately, during launch, procedures say that you’ll have the batteries turned on as a back up system. If we hadn’t had those on, we’d of had an automatic abort. So the batteries picked up the required electrical load and we proceeded from there. Al Bean got the fuel cells back on the line during the boost phase and the only thing that left once we got into orbit was realigning the platform because we lost a platform in a little subsequent strike at fifty-three seconds.\\n\\n The inertial measuring unit, well it didn’t fail, but the information form the inertial measuring unit to the computer was interrupted so we had no indication of what our attitude was. The attitude reference system was doing this. So once we got into orbit and got it realigned, everything was okay. I mean we checked everything we could in the orbit and a half before we had to reignite the S4B [rocket]. And the only the lost was the quantity gauges on the reaction control system. And that was of no consequence really because the ground was able to tell us what quantities we had. In the school of physics, PV does equal RT. So with the pressures and temperatures, they were able to tell us what quantities we had. And it wasn’t missed at all. But that was the only thing that we found. Fortunately, the recovery system was not interrupted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I understand that. I read in Mr. Slayton’s [Donald K. “Deke” Slayton] book, Deke!, that he mentioned that they had contemplated what to do about the situation. And how do you feel about that? That they thought, ‘Well, you know, there’s nothing we can do now, why not let them go to the Moon.’" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, and that’s the only correct decision that they could have made. If they would have made us come back, we would have been highly upset. The word is pissed-off…is what we would’ve been. But yeah, they were concerned about the pyros because the recovery system was full of explosive devices. And they thought, ‘Gee whiz, if that system has been bad, the crew would have been just as dead coming back from Earth orbit as they would coming back from the Moon so why not go ahead.’ And it was altogether fitting and proper. We never even thought about it. We never even discussed it. I mean we were going to go. I mean, that was the only thing we were even concerned about. Once we saw that the spacecraft…the integrity of the vehicles looked to be pretty good, we didn’t even contemplate that we were going to come back. We thought maybe they’d take a little longer look and keep us in another orbit or something but they didn’t even do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it also seems significant too that President [Richard M.] Nixon watched your launch. And I believe that that was the first time a president had ever seen a launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, he got all wet too. That is correct. And some people say the decision to launch was simply because he was there. I don’t believe that. I don’t think that NASA…makes decisions based upon those kinds of inputs. That’s not the way we did business. And I hope they’re not doing it today because that would be totally incorrect. If he didn’t get to see the launch, there were many more that he could come back and go to. So the idea, and I’ve heard that in some corners, that the only reason they launched us in that kind of weather was because he was there. I’m not buying that one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And once you did go ahead and launch and once you checked out your vehicle and realized that, you know, your spacecraft was intact and you were on your way to the Moon, what types of things did you perform at that time, what types of things did you do to prepare for your mission out to the Moon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the way out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s a three day trip. And we were still all excited about, not the flight and the trip because we hadn’t accomplished a mission yet. Which was a totally different thing than coming back home because the mission had been essentially completed except for reentry. We had the Lunar Module onboard. We could see it out there in front of us on the way. We had to do a barbecue maneuver for thermal control. In another words, we had to have the spacecraft perpendicular to the plane of the orbit so that we would stabilize the temperature, a slow barbecue maneuver. Exposing all pieces and parts of the exterior of the spacecraft to the sun. And it was an acclamation period. We had a lot of things to do. We looked into the Lunar Module, we opened the hatch. The three days going out went by fairly, fairly rapidly. You know, it was always a fascination to look back at the Earth and see it getting smaller and smaller and smaller and the Moon getting bigger and bigger.\\n\\n So that was…it was a relaxed time but we were still excited because we hadn’t done anything yet. And, of course, when you first arrive at the Moon, that’s kind of an exciting time itself because it’s a totally different place to be. And the first time you get a chance to look at it you really want to see most of it. And you only get to see half of it because that’s all that’s ever illuminated. But once we got into orbit then, of course, it was…the rest of the work had to be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And once you did get into orbit then, I understand, you had, the LM probably took off and you were in your Command Module. And when we were speaking with Mr. Collins, he mentioned that he wasn’t able to track the landing sight of the LM. And I understand that you were able to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, that’s somewhat of a…probably the reason that Mike wasn’t able to track it, he didn’t know where the hell they landed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And they didn’t know where they landed. The ground didn’t know where they had landed because of the navigational problems that they experienced. You know, the accuracy with which their state vector was and then Neil had to fly beyond the boulder field. Well, to correct those kinds of problems, we were assigned a specific target called Surveyor 3 which was in a specific crater on the lunar surface. And the reason for learning how to do that was later missions we’re going to land along side thirteen thousand foot mountains and big valleys that were six hundred meters deep and a kilometer across, the highlands of Descartes and Hadley Rille on 15 and Taurus-Littrow on 17. Later on, these sights were not picked but we knew that we wanted to go to other places that were going to require precise navigation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds very interesting. It sounds like it was probably a difficult job for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that and the difference was, I knew where that spacecraft was going to land. And I could see the crater in my optics. I could identify the crater and I saw a source of light, reflected light, on the rim of that crater. And I didn’t see the shape of the LM or anything like that. But I knew that they were going to land on that crater and I knew the only thing that was going to look like that, my own interpretation was that had to be the Lunar Module. Well I stuck my neck out to about here and said, “I see the Lunar Module.” And it was but it was just a source of reflected light off of the Lunar Module that I saw. It didn’t look like anything else down there. I think, who else saw the landing sight, I think Stu [Stuart A.] Roosa claims that he did also on 14. And I think that trick of it was that you had to know where they landed. If you didn’t know where they landed, you’d never find them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What types of things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I always said I had superior vision. That was the only reason I was able to see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, maybe that’s true as well. I’m sure you’ve been asked this a million time and I want to apologize if it is being redundant or repetitive. But I’d like to ask you what types of things did you do in your Command Module while they were on the surface." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was very busy on the Command Module. I had a lot of assigned tasks. Number one, I was all alone, I had to fly a three man vehicle. That kept you fairly busy. But I had a lot of landmarks to track for navigational purpose. A tremendous amount of photographs to take. We had a four camera array, Hasselblad array, that fit into the circular window on the hatch that required a certain amount of tracking to take more photographs. And the film was different. I had IR film, we had false color IR, we had black and white, and we had normal color. So we were mixing the cameras and it was on an interval. As you went across certain parts of the Moon, the illuminated part obviously, you were taking pictures.\\n\\n The rest of the time was involved with housekeeping, a sleep period, and then I also had a plane change to make. I had to ignite the SPS, Service Propulsion System, by myself to make a plane change because we simply had landed, I think, three degrees south of the equator, something like that. So as the Moon rotated, I had to make a plane change to get back overhead for their rendezvous. And that was basically it. It was a fairly busy time. If you knew those two other clowns that I lived with, you’d been happy to have a little time alone yourself. So that’s what I always tell everybody. “Were you sad being alone?” I said, “Hell no, if you knew those guys, you’d be happy to be alone.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there a lot of antics on the mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yeah. We just had a great time with each other. We have a lot of fun. We’re very comfortable with each other. Pete and I got so that we communicated without speaking and if you know what that means. And we still do that today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had a lot of fun. They had a good time on the lunar surface. They came back so damn filthy that I wouldn’t let them in the Command Module. I made them strip, take every bit of clothes off they had. I don’t know what it was about the storm, but it had an extraordinary amount of dust that clung to their suits. When I looked into that Lunar Module when they took that hatch apart, all I could see was a black cloud in there, I didn’t see them at all. I looked in there and said, “Holy smoke. You’re not getting in here and dirtying up my nice clean Command Module. So they passed the rocks over, they took off their suits, passed those over, took off their underwear, and I said, “Okay, you can come in now.” That was something. And, you know, the dust disappeared on the way back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Never found it. It had migrated outside the bags we had the suits in and everything. Of course, we clogged up all the filters and everything with the dust but it was all gone by the time we got back or we thought it was all gone. Maybe it wasn’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And at that time, I understand you went through your reentry procedures after arriving back at the Earth. And were you in charge of those procedures?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Once we got into orbit, the Command Module was mine to fly. So I did the transposition and docking with the Lunar Module. I didn’t do the rendezvous but I did the docking. I was the active participant in the docking. And I occupied the left hand seat when I wasn’t down in the lower equipment bay doing star sightings or whatever. So I was the bus driver, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like you had an excellent landing as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yeah. There wasn’t much to do other than monitor the landing. Once you start the reentry, of course, fortunately the computer does very, very well. So you’re sitting there basically monitoring its performance in case something obvious goes wrong, you can take over and manually fly the same kind of reentry that it was going to fly because all the information is there for you to be able to do that. And you just sit there and watch it and it did its thing. It was spectacular, it was absolutely spectacular. Eight minutes from the time you enter the atmosphere at roughly four hundred thousand feet until the chutes open. So it’s a very dynamic time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "…How was it so dynamic in your opinion?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s very fast, the G loads build up, you’re anxious to get, what we call, sub-circular and it digs into about 6 G. And it gets sub-circular and then it starts maneuvering but the visual aspect. Damn, I’d jump up and go holler at those guys but it’s there office, isn’t it. As the ablative material comes off as the heat builds, the colors behind you and because the spacecraft is maneuvering for entry, it’s kind of a corkscrew out there behind you. And the material is burning off at different temperatures and there’s yellows and reds and greens and purples and they’re all mixed up. So it’s like, “Wow, look at that!” But then your inside, your head’s inside monitoring the performance because you’re trying to navigate back to where the ship is. You have a specific point in the Pacific Ocean that you’re supposed to land and you want to land there as close as you can just to get the hell out of it. That’s all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I understand too that once you did get out of it, they threw you some garments. I understand that they did not use the biological …?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We didn’t use the BIGs [Biological Isolation Garments] on 12. We wanted to do as little of that as possible being the kind of people we are although at the same time, appreciating some of the requirements of the medical community and the people on Earth. They found out from 11 that there was nothing there to cause any problems so they eliminated the BIGs but we did have to wear our respirator when we got out … in case we had bad breath. Oh dear. Anyway, that’s all we wore and then we had our blue flight suits on. We went immediately into the … well we didn’t, we had the white coveralls on. We had blue flight suits in the Mobile Quarantine Facility [MQF]. We went directly then into the Mobile Quarantine Facility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how long were you in the MQF?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, all the back here from Hawaii. Well in the ship for a day to get back to Hawaii and then the flight back to Houston. I’d have to go back and really look at that. I think we were probably there for three days maybe, two or three days, three days probably. That’s a long flight from Hawaii to here. It was probably fourteen hours, a day and a half. It takes a lot of time just to get off the ship and get into the airplane to get us back here as well. But it was comfortable. We had everything … no, we didn’t have everything we needed but most everything we needed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great. And then you proceeded onto the Lunar Receiving Laboratory?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they backed the MQF up to, what is it, building 37 at that time. I think it was. And we were right in quarantine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What types of things did you do when you were in quarantine?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Must you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You don’t have to tell me if you wouldn’t like to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, the normal routine stuff. I think we had some movies and we had some pretty good meals and we worked on … I think Pete worked on a Heath kit at the time. But it gave us the opportunity to write all of the reports that were required of us. All of the pilot reports. In addition to that, all of the briefings. Between a biological barrier, we briefed other flight crews, we briefed Mission Control, Flight Control Division, system engineers. So once we got out of quarantine, we were all done. We didn’t have anything more to do, Apollo 12 was over with except for the studying of the lunar materials that was brought back. So it was an appreciated time. Even though we felt that we didn’t need to be in quarantine, we used it to our advantage. And by the time we got out, all of the reports were written, all of the debriefing had been accomplished and that was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s great. Now did you have any time for reflection on your flight? It sounds like everyone was so busy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not during the time of flight. I think that you do afterwards. And they’re pieces and parts you remember. You read the transcripts. You [watch] the videos. “Oh yeah, I remember that.” But at the time of the flight, you’re busy enough doing other things that you really don’t have time to look at that. Al Bean didn’t even have time to reflect because he slept most of the way coming back. Crawled into his cocoon and he stayed there. I think most of the reflection of what you saw and what you did probably comes subsequent to the flight, in retrospect. And I think that the best comment. I made it and others have made it. We’ve often been asked, “What did we discover when we went to the Moon?” “We discovered the Earth.” Think about that because you don’t get to see the Earth from that kind of distance before and it takes on a whole new perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And for you, what type of perspective did it take on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, its beauty. Its apparent fragility. Its uniqueness in the solar system, maybe the universe. Who knows. And I think you look at it, it has been likened to a delicate Christmas tree ornament that’s hanging out there all by itself in a black void of space. Blacker than that black briefcase there. Blackest black that you’ll ever see. It looks like velvet. And it’s the only thing out there that looks like that’s the place you ought to be because it exhibits a tremendous amount of fragility. Which I think environmentally, we‘re probably appreciating more and more. The sheer beauty of this planet is awesome. The blues of the oceans, the whites of the clouds and the khaki color, the appearance of the continent. It’s awesome. It really is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I would like to ask you, just very quickly, a little bit about your reassignment after you returned from 12 then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand that they had plans on going through Apollo 20 at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Originally, yes. Not…I’m not sure when the decision was made but the missions had been so successful and the risk, reward ratio was diminishing or increasing depending on which is the denominator, that decisions were made not to fly 18, 19, and 20 and to utilize that hardware in a Apollo applications which became Skylab. To utilize that hardware with the exception of the Saturn Vs, of course, for other purposes and not go back to the Moon. When I flew on 12, I did not have the opportunity to fly the last sixty miles which was my desire. And I was reassigned as the backup crew commander on 15 thinking that under the normal rotation process from 9 to 12 to 15, possibly 18, that I’d have an opportunity to go back again which I wanted to do. And that’s why I wanted to stay in a crew cycle with the Apollo program.\\n\\n Well, 18 didn’t fly so that was the end of that dream. And I’ve always had a lot of fun with Cernan about Apollo 17 of who was going to be assigned on that flight. And logically, Gene was because his rotation, coming off of Apollo 14 as a backup commander, said that he was going to fly 17. But he stole my Lunar Module pilot and that was the reason that I had told him that he couldn’t fly because I had trained Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt as my Lunar Module pilot and he stole him. The decision, of course, was made that Jack was the only scientist, so called, in the program. In particular, his Ph.D. was in geology. And it was a natural that he should have the opportunity, or the community. I shouldn’t say Jack necessarily but he was in line to do so but the community, at least, would have the opportunity to send a scientist to the lunar surface. Now whether it would have made any difference or not is problematical but it did satisfy the community.\\n\\n And Jack did a good job. I trained him very, very well. And Gene and I used to, and still do, have a lot of fun about who was to fly Apollo 17 when he stole my Lunar Module pilot. And of course, the guy that I’ve always felt bad for was Joe [H.] Engle who was on his crew and didn’t have the opportunity to fly. And Joe handled that very, very well. Like a real man. The cookie crumbles in strange ways." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes it does. I guess my final question, I’d like to wrap this up for you, is what do you feel that NASA really gained in your experience and in your opinion and how do you feel that they’ve used what they may have brought into it right now in their current program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Tough question. What NASA gained from the Apollo program is a how-to attitude. I’m not so sure, I guess we could but I sometimes wonder if we could do that again today. And I’m not sure what they learned. In terms of corporate memory, I sometimes wonder if they had learned anything. I know they have. I’m being somewhat facetious but trying to make a point at the same time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’re not alone in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, is that right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, you’re not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s changed a lot. And that can-do attitude, the vigor, and the enthusiasm that was experience in the sixties, I don’t know that it exists today. Maybe it does. Maybe I’m just not exposed to it. But I think that’s an era that is gone by." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where do you think they should go right now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, obviously they’ve got to go with the Space Station. No question about that. I’d wished they had at least gone back to the Moon. The Moon is going to be a great training ground for those things that are needed to go to Mars both in terms of hardware and personal experience. All of those things that I’m disappointed that we haven’t done that. So twenty five years this December, the last flight was on the Moon and I would have thought that we’d of been back there before now but times have changed. Politically, economically, leadership, desire, willingness, all that’s different today than it was then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I would really like to thank you so much. I’m very honored that you agreed to talk to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Richard F. Gordon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it’s kind of fun." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00084", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-057.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Boileau, Don M. (1968-1969): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-057", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-057", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Don Boileau served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea from January 1968 to November 1969 as an English teacher. He briefly discusses training in Bisbee, Arizona, and speaks extensively about the close lifelong relationship he developed with his host family. Stationed in Seoul, Boileau worked as an English instructor at the Central Officials Training Institute. Although he says that his official job didn't amount to much, he talks about various night or after-work jobs he held that did have an impact. These include tutoring a number of Ministry of Forestry officials in English in preparation for their trip to New Zealand for a reforestation project, and tutoring people working in the port and harbor authority. Boileau discusses the impact that Peace Corps had on his career as a professor in intercultural communication. He concludes by discussing his return visit to Korea with other RPCVs and spouses at the invitation of the Korean government. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, January 7, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "7 January 2019", + "extent": "2 digital files (audio; stereo; 87 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "047. Korea (South).", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Korea (South). Boileau, Don M. (1968-1969): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "South Korea", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-057", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-057-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/a6d5a3c702f7iak28fr4lla0y2yk48eq.pdf?odc=20231115173800-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/54f8c7b6-f784-4120-bf82-f98ad90b0553/96769112-8a47-42da-baba-c496527fea21/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzMwMjdfNGZhZmZkYjYwMGM5Njg1NTJmNzAxNTcyMjMxYzc5ZWRiN2U2YmI0YjYzNzAyOTZiMGVlMDcxY2RiNWVkODZhMl8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS81NGY4YzdiNi1mNzg0LTQxMjAtYmY4Mi1mOThhZDkwYjA1NTMvOTY3NjkxMTItOGE0Ny00MmRhLWJhYmEtYzQ5NjUyN2ZlYTIxL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Reston, Virginia", + "length": "41 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed April 10, 2019, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Don M. Boileau Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Evelyn Ganzglass" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Don M. Boileau" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Evelyn Ganzglass. I am interviewing, uh, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. Today is January 7th, 2019, and I am interviewing Don Bolger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:21", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Boileau." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Boileau, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea from 1968 to 1969, and he was an English instructor at the Central Officials Training Institute. Don, why did you join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:41", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To avoid the draft. Typical of, the majority of males in my training group were trying to avoid the draft because of the Vietnam War. I was advised by the people in my local draft board that the chair told my mother that I would be taken very soon and I was teaching at Central Washington at the time. And I was the debate coach and that had just happened that two weeks later, I'd be taking the debate team to San Francisco State for a debate tournament. And so I said, well, I'd like to meet with the person at the head of the draft board, which was available at the beginning of the war.\n\nAnd so I met with them and I said, well, what I would really like to do is I do not want to go into the war, but I would like to be a debate coach. And I knew that when I was a freshman at Stanford University, that this, one of the guys who was a senior went into the military and became the debate coach at West Point because the academies at that time had very strong debate programs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:59", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:59", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I asked him if I could go to officers candidate school and develop, and he said that would be great. And I said, well, what about Peace Corps? I had applied for Peace Corps earlier when I was engaged. I was working on my master's degree and Vicky and I thought we would go into Peace Corps right after we got married. So we both applied and unfortunately we broke up before we got married, six weeks before, not advised. And, uh, and we finally heard from Peace Corps a week after we would have been married, that they were, where would we like to go? And I was really upset at Peace Corps at the time. So I sent them my response written on toilet paper with a marker. And I thought, oh my gosh, if they pull that out of the file, I'll never get in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:02:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it wasn't their fault that you got, uh, unengaged." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:02:53", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, they, but the other part was they just didn't say anything to us until it was really late. If we had got married, we wouldn't have known. So we'd already made plans to do something else. But anyway, that's how I had taught at Portland State and taken, she got a job in Portland also. But it was an interesting phenomenon. So I applied and I got accepted into Peace Corps and that's why I joined. And when I got to training in Bisbee, Arizona, talking with the other guys who were trying to also avoid the draft. So I didn't feel too bad about that.\n\nThe other, the other aspect of why Peace Corps that I think is important is when I was a senior in college, Kennedy was assassinated and approximately 10 percent of my graduating class went into Peace Corps eventually over the next ten years. It was a huge amount. There were several people in Korea that were Peace Corps volunteers. In fact, the leader of my dorm, when I was a senior, I was a dorm counselor. And the guy that organized that visited South Korea because there were so many Peace Corps volunteers from Stanford in Korea. And but for us as seniors, that, that afternoon after he was assassinated with the university closed and the bells rang steadily all afternoon.\n\nAnd I remember walking across campus to give a paper to a professor. He said it was due 5:00 Friday. And I got to his office and he said, as he took my paper, you think that that's important now? And, um, as a dorm counselor, I had to not only myself to rectify this assassination, but there was just, people forget that it was Kennedy's Peace Corps, in our view, and he was assassinated. And therefore, we should do something to honor him. And I know from my friends, and I have a good friend who was in Liberia in Peace Corps, that that was a really strong feeling." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:05:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, so what is your, your background? Where did you grow up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:05:27", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I grew up on the Oregon coast. A lot of Oregonians also, on a per 100,000 or per million ratio, a lot of Oregonians went into at that time into the Peace Corps. I grew up on the Oregon coast in a logging community, and that's relevant to later on probably. And that it just was that that feeling about Asia, which made South Korea an acceptable sort of thing for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:06:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what did your family think about you going into the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:06:08", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, they were ecstatic. My mom and dad and my sister. And we actually had, before I went in, I was originally assigned to Tonga, and I really wanted to go to Tonga because they wanted to start a high school curriculum. And I had taught two years in college, one at Central Washington, where I was did the course, the methods course, for people who were going to teach high school speech and drama." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:06:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:06:34", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I was going to be able to develop a speech and drama program for Tonga, and that was just really excited about that. And then irony of ironies, um, we actually had a family trip. My mom and dad went up to Vancouver and I, the three of us went across to the World's Fair. And my sister flew up from New York. She was an attorney and actually at that time a vice president of a chemical company. And she came up. And so we had a family all get-together, which was significant because she died while I was in Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:07:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:07:11", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And but anyway, my family was very excited about me going. And they thought that that was a good thing to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:07:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To avoid the draft or to go explore the world? Or both?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:07:23", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Both. Actually, they weren't too excited about the draft motivation, but they thought this was good to be a helping profession." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:07:33", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you applied for the Peace Corps with, oh, well, this was post girlfriend now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:07:38", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Post, well, actually, yes. Post girlfriend now. And I applied and I got accepted and assigned to Tonga. And I was, so when I was at the World's Fair, I spent most of my, a lot of time at the Tonga exhibition, not even looking, thinking about South Korea. And when I got back, I opened the letter that I had been moved because of my high language ability scores and that, that's why I said the irony of irony is because consistently, um, my Korean was, I was a poor student. We had 60 people in our training class, and the first test we had around, I ranked 60th out of 60. And when we left for Korea, I ranked 40 out of 40. I was still at the bottom of the group. And I always used that example when I was teaching research methods. If you use gain scores, always be, because I had the biggest gain score." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:08:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:08:39", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My friend Al, who was very fluent in Korean, only went from 5 to 4 and so his gain score was one when mine was 20. No question that I was very poor. And when we left Korea at the end of the two years, I was 36 out of 36. We lost four people, including my friend Al, during that period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:09:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So language is not your thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:09:06", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Language is not my thing. And I at that time regretted very much because I really wanted the professional challenge of developing a high school curriculum. That was my career goal at that time, what I wanted to do was work with high schools, speech teachers, which was where my training, even when I went back for my doctorate afterwards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:09:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were, um, where were you living? You were living back in Oregon at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:09:35", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:09:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had your training in Bisbee?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:09:38", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, Bisbee, Arizona. So we did our training, which was one of those great things. We were supposed to go to a ski resort in Pennsylvania, but they canceled the contract right before. And a woman in the national Peace Corps office, they came in and said, what are we going to do about Korea? And she said, let me call my brother, who was an attorney in Bisbee, and see if they could host it, because they're in the middle of a copper strike and they need the money. And our $10 checks for the 60 of us was the big economic, besides the other food and stuff and lodging, but the other big economic input. And again, that was significant.\n\nWe went to Bisbee, Arizona, and no relationship at all. We had 12 Koreans come over for the language training and that that was fantastic. But Bisbee had no relationship at all to South Korea in terms of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:10:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, neither did the mountains in Pennsylvania." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:10:45", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Neither did the mountains in Pennsylvania. But the mountains of Pennsylvania sounded exciting to me at the time, and I'm actually glad I went to Bisbee. We learned a lot. Our Peace Corps training to do, because we had a lot of teachers in our group, people with teaching backgrounds. So about ten of us formed a reader's theater group and we did Winnie the Pooh things and went to the schools to do readings for kids. We'd do a reader's theater thing on Winnie the Pooh. I was Eeyore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:11:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:11:15", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that sort of thing. But that was our contribution." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:11:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were, were you a trained teacher at that point? But what was your?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:11:22", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had taught college for two years. I taught at Portland State for a year and Central Washington for a year. And that's where I got assigned to train teachers. And I spent time visiting teachers around the state of Washington. So I've learned a whole bunch of different approaches to teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:11:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was the training like in Bisbee?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:11:44", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Training was intense. For language training, we had an hour of Korean before we had breakfast, so we started our first class at 7:00 and the last class would end at 10:00. And we were in a really weird converted whorehouse. And so, like there were four of us in one room, and they put four beds across there and there was six inches left. So that when we made our beds each week with our new linens, we'd start with the one against the wall and he'd have six inches. So the four of us had to coordinate how we made the bed so we could move it over. I was in the third bed and so there was no room there.\n\nAnd that made the other sort of thing that was I found intriguing in training is that we would go from like 10:00 to 11:30 up to Jesse's Bar, and Jesse would sell beers for 25 cents for the first one and 15 cents for the second one. I corresponded with Jesse for about four years after Peace Corps. I would send him a letter and he would respond back and I'd sent him a couple of letters from Korea, and he just was fascinated. So we got community involvement in Bisbee." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:13:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So from 10:00 to 11:30 in the morning, this is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:13:05", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, at night." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:13:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At night. Oh, I thought you were drinking beer early in the morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:13:09", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. We'd have our beers then go back and go to sleep and get up and start the day again. And then they'd intersperse the language with lectures on culture. The other significant thing was Bob Coles was our director, and he became probably one of the top, top three of in a field called intercultural communication. And because he had spent time in Korea and was also spoke Korean and he was just a wonderful person to lead our group. And I came in contact with him after I returned.\n\nI, I look at my contributions to Peace Corps in a very different way so that the top two were, one, it's important to understand that South Korea was not only the first country where we weren't on the equator, so we got two pairs of Sears, the new fancy mesh long underwear, and I literally wore that. You just you just wore that all the time. It was so cold in Korea. But so, so we were the first ones in addition to our clothing allowance, which allowed us to buy Bermuda shorts and a t-shirt, we got long underwear as a contribution because we're going to be in Korea in January. And then secondly, Korea was so short on housing it was the first country where it was mandated you live with a family, so that there would be no impact on, for the volunteers.\n\nI was in group 5 in Korea, Korea V. So there had been groups before us. And, uh, but anyway, the big contribution was I lived with a family that when I got there the very first week, the daughter who was the fourth daughter, Houk, Houk Song. Houk graduated from Korea University with an English major. And, uh, what, what happened was that while I was in Korea, my sister died. My older, she was nine years older than I was. My sister died from cancer and Houk actually at the end of a year and a half of my tour went over and spent a year living with my parents, who were grieving a lot from it, but they had to immediately help Houk.\n\nSo she went to community college so she can get her English up. And then she went the next year to Central, this was all planned, to Central Washington for a masters in theater, which was one of her interests in English. And so she went to Central Michigan and she had really good, some because her, her oral English, the spoken English was not up. And then that's, by interacting with me and stuff and then the year with my parents, got really good at that. So Houk then after her master's degree came back to, uh, Korea and taught for a couple of years and then went back to University of Oregon in the very same department where I got my doctorate, she got her doctorate in drama.\n\nI was on the speech, in the speech and drama department, I got my doctorate in speech, and she got hers in drama. And that whole time that she, Houk was blind in one eye because of food deprivation and medical lack during the Korean War. The family, she had gone down to Jeju-do, which is the island south of Korea, and but in that period of time, she lost her eyesight. And so her parents were actually looking to, could she get to the United States and have a really top ophthalmologist just look at her eyes? And we got one of the top people in Oregon and actually had her examined and helped by University of Oregon Medical School, the ophthalmology program there. And there was no help.\n\nBut anyway, so Houk took a little longer to read and do stuff to get her doctorate. But in that whole time, my parents were 2 hours away from the University of Oregon, living in North Bend, Oregon. And that whole time she would spend Christmas and summer and spring break with my family. So we made it a family exchange." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:18:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:18:01", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So the very first week that Houk went to the United States, my family refused to have, be paid the allowance that they gave to the families that we lived with for food. They gave a food allowance to each of the families. And so the Songs refused that because she was living with my folks in the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:18:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Uh huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:18:28", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, so that was a subsidy. The other, the other, Il, the son which was the fifth child in the family. Il means number one in the Chinese alphabet that the Koreans used. And Il most people would say is a spoiled, because four girls, other older sisters. And his grandmother lived, moved into the house and fed him until he was five years old. I mean, she was so excited that he had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:19:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A son." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:19:01", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A son. When Houk was born, Dr. Song's really close friend came over in mourning clothes because he had had four girls, and Dr. Song chased him down the street according to the story. I have no way of verifying, but it was very consistent with his theory. He was, he was yelling at them, girls are as good as boys, girls are as good as boys!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:19:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So he was a medical doctor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:19:25", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was a medical doctor. And he, his clinic was in our house. And so because Korea was in a curfew, I was, I would say not a week went by that I wasn't woken up by someone knocking on the door or yelling, [speaks Korean], and trying to get the doctor. And because the curfew very, hardly any doctors except for Dr. Song, Dr. Song would go out at the risk of his life, of being shot. While I was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:19:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why was there a curfew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:19:56", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The curfew is because the North Koreans might come down because they came at 4:00 in the morning when they started in the Korean War, they came down. And so Korea had a curfew for a long time. And I was there in a very exciting time. The first week we were in Seoul when we were all together as a group, the North Korean group of about 30, 30, 32, I can't remember the number or somewhere, North Koreans attacked the Blue House, which is their White House. And, um, and so we had people running through the streets. You had to get back into your, getting off the streets. We were under martial law at 7:00 and we were in a restaurant and we hustled about the three blocks over to our yoglon so we could get there. We heard firefight the whole night. We could hear guns being shot.\n\nThey killed most of them, but not all of them, because the Koreans just faded into the crowd and spoke Korean and looked like Koreans. And so that was kind of an exciting time. The next month, I was awakened by tanks going through the streets. We were near a major street, so they were leaving from the U.S. Army base in Seoul to going up to the DMZ. And so I thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:21:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These were U.S. tanks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:21:23", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, U.S. tanks going through the streets. And I immediately turned on the radio and then heard about the Pueblo affair from BBC. The U.S. ship had been taken. So there was, there was that tension that was going on. In fact, one of my favorite stories was that I got a call from Peace Corps headquarters saying that, asked me to come down so that the staff could evaluate and see visually, because if we had an evacuation and they had to evacuate, we would immediately go to Gimpo and to be evacuated. They didn't want us gathering any, just to meet, your job was figuring out how you could get to Gimpo, which is the major airport at that time in South, in Seoul. And she wanted to be able to visually identify me because I was the only volunteer who hadn't come into the main office.\n\nI mean, after I saw where it was, I never went there. I didn't go to weekend meetings because I was having a good time in Korea. I didn't, I figured here I was here to meet Koreans, not to spend time with other American Peace Corps volunteers. And so they didn't know who I was. So they asked me to come in and be visually recognized. So it just shows you that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:22:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So where were you stationed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:22:44", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in Korea, in Seoul." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:22:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, you were stationed in Seoul?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:22:47", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. So I was just part of, rode the bus actually within a block and a half of the Peace Corps office when I would go to work. But I just, you know, knew where it was. I was here to meet Koreans and work with Koreans. I didn't go down there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:23:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So let's just back up to the, to the training again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:23:08", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:23:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had the training there. Do you think it prepared you for going overseas, the cultural training, the language training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:23:16", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I have high ratings for them. I often thought, you know what, what should have they done that they didn't do? Well, nothing. They tried to serve us rice once in, we were at the Copper Queen Hotel where we had our, we had our meals, and they made rice. It was so bad the Koreans complained about it. So we never had rice again. And at that time, anybody, I was, two things. My mother would have told you that I was a finicky eater and I hated rice. And I was worried about eating rice three times a day when I got to Korea, which never was a problem. I just took to it like water. But it was so different from anything my mother had served or anything we had at the Copper Plate Hotel, which the Koreans themselves said, that's not right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:24:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's not right. So. Okay, so you finish the training. And then how many of you went overseas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:24:12", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "40 of the 60. And we lost four people during the period of time, one was my friend Al, which was a medical leave. And another one was Kevin, who was, who was probably also one of the top five in Korean language skills. He just, he had worked in a TB thing and just felt it was, um. For example, of the thousand vaccinations that they did in that, in a six month period, he did 800 of them and there was four or five other Koreans that were part of the staff and they just were, didn't do much. And he just got disgusted and quit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:24:57", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And just quit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:24:59", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, because he thought, I'm not, I'm not doing any good here. And they're not, they're just letting me do all the work and then they won't do anything when I leave. So, uh, I mean, you quickly learned that your individual thing. And like 35, or 30, 39 of them went into middle schools and I went to a government training institute that trained. COTI was set up to train civil servants. In other words, the GS people, and we focused on what would be equivalent to GS-12 and above, trying to train them. And the reason that I was there was to help the director of our institute save face because they lost the USAID contract with University of Minnesota that sent a professor of public administration.\n\nSo when the powers that be went through the things they saw, oh, he's taught college for two years. So even though it's in speech, they didn't care what it was in. Then we have him. He still has an American professor. Well, I had only a master's degree and I didn't do anything. The only thing I really did is they once had me give a lecture to 600 people on why the U.S. is in Vietnam, which was an interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:26:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what is it that you said to them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:26:31", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I followed what was the rationale I could guess, get out of Time magazine. I subscribed to Time or my folks did for me for the two years, and it was my first experience with censorship. I didn't ever receive a Time that didn't have either pages ripped out or marked out in big black letter or anything that said about the Vietnam or protests of the Vietnam War. And so I had a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:27:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was doing the censoring?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:27:02", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Korean government. The post office, people in the post office. Korean government." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:27:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn't want to have anybody know there were protests against the Vietnam War?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:27:13", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:27:16", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And why is, I'm sorry, why did Korea not want to let people know about protests?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:27:25", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:27:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's the connection? I don't know what's the connection between Korea and the Vietnam War." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:27:30", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the Koreans. There's a couple of really great stories behind that that most of us in Peace Corps said the Brown agreement got Korea involved in, uh, and Secretary Brown and secretary flew out to Korea to negotiate the situation. And the Koreans said, well, give us $115 or $117 a month per soldier. And Brown said, they didn't expect to do that. They were thinking maybe $40 or 50. And so Brown actually flew back to talk with Lyndon Johnson, because they didn't. Everything was top secret at that time. And he flew back and he talked with Lyndon Johnson. And Johnson says, give them what they want. We got to get people in there, because Korea was the only really the very large, serious force of soldiers there.\n\nThe debate in the legislature was very few people talk about, the debate in the legislature was not about should we go and get all this money and stuff. The debate in the legislature was over the question, do we have an obligation to the United States as an older brother because they saved our country in the Korean War? And, uh, it was because Korean troops had never served beyond the Korean border in the 2,000 year history of, you know, the Mongolians coming across or the Japanese going up the peninsula into China. All these forces that were there. And the Koreans just said, okay, we'll get you out, we'll fight you and get you across our borders, and then we stop. We pushed the Japanese down and when the Japanese went back to Japan that was fine. They didn't try to invade Japan, never invaded China, never invaded to Mongolia.\n\nThe Korean dress, that's another just, I got fascinated by this. The Korean dress makes, it looks like the women are pregnant, and the Koreans did that and designed that chima jeogori to, um, so that because they would respect a pregnant woman and wouldn't try to rape a pregnant woman. So all the Korean, all the young women in Korea wore this chima jeogori that made them look like they were pregnant because of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:29:57", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:29:57", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It starts at the bust line and runs right down and then you have a top over the top of it. And, uh, and I just thought that was a curious thing. But that's part of understanding that, that Korean sense is that we never go overseas. So Vietnam is the first time a Korean troop had been in a foreign country. But they were paid a tremendous amount of money. I mean, that, that's what built the army for, for South Korea was all this extra. The soldiers still got less than $12 a month out of that $115." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:30:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "$115 a month?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:30:32", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. The U.S. paid for a Korean soldier. Or it's $117." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:30:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:30:38", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean, it was just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:30:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A tremendous amount of money." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:30:40", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. 90 percent of the money went into the coffers of the army." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:30:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. So. So what is it that you actually were doing in the training institute? What?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:30:55", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good question. I couldn't tell you at the end of two years what I was actually, you know. My official assignment was I sat in a room with six people that they hope would go overseas and get doctorates. Now, one of the six already had a doctorate from France in public administration. But he was kind of, he was my assigned mentor. And he was the one that found the Songs' house. There's two great stories there, or one great story. With what Peace Corps Korea said is whatever school you're assigned, you have to find a family to live with. So when they went to COTI, they told them that. And the director's wife said, we can't, we can't take an American because we don't have a throne toilet. We have a ceramic pit toilet, and which is very rare, I mean, because it really was nice, a very fancy sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:31:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A fancy pit toilet?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:31:57", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fancy pit toilet. And so you have to squat. And that, so if anybody in the staff said, well, we'll take the American, they were one upping the director's wife. So they decided I would sleep in a classroom and on a kind of a twin bed, which I had my winter sleeping bag that had an insert in it for the winter and sort of thing. And they put a screen around it and that was where I was going to expect. And I remember talking, doing a tape that I sent to my parents that they never arrived, where I was complaining about it. And this, this is, I said, I don't know how I'm going to last two years. The food was just terrible because I'd eat at the restaurant in the basement of our institute. We had a served lunch, but they also served breakfast for people who wanted to. And then they would do dinner for me. And that was the idea.\n\nAnd I remember going down the second day that I was down there and I went to, to the, to, to eating breakfast. And I thought, I remember praying, God, if you can get me. And I immediately calculated how many days left times three and it was like 2,100 something meals or whatever. And if you can get me back, I'll never complain about food the rest of my life, which I have honored. And as I said, my mother would say I was a very finicky eater. Korea just destroyed finicky eating because I was always eating unknown stuff. And the, but the food was really terrible. Anyway, the, uh, one of my, my group went down to eat lunch there and they thought the food was terrible too, and went to the director and we got, they were fired and they got a new group in. But by that time, Dr. Pak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:34:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Dr. Pak was the director?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:34:03", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was the, my mentor. He was the guy in the, in the group. He found, he was, his father was a good friend of Dr. Song. And when, when his father died, then Dr. Song stood in for him. That's what good friends do. And so he was like, then his mentor was Dr. Sok. So he went to Dr. Song and says, here's this American. And Dr. Song was thinking, oh, well, maybe my wife, my daughter, who I couldn't help during the war, could go to the United States. So we'll take the American. And so we actually fulfilled that duty by having her go to my parents. That wasn't planned, but that was in the back of their mind I discovered later. And so it was, in the first year I spent a lot of time with Houk and her friends, and that was just a great introduction. They were all young college graduates and they." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:35:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was she your age about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:35:06", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yeah. She was just a couple of years younger. I was 25. She was 22." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:35:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:35:11", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then the next year, Il, the son. We spent a lot of time together. Almost every night I would come up, because you'd be home by at least 10:00, 10:30 because the curfew. But Mrs. Song, and it really wasn't, she kept her name. In Korea you don't take the man's name, but anyway, so she would bring. I always called her Mrs. Song. So she, she would bring up colas and like pears or some other fruit or something. And Il and I would talk for one or two hours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:35:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:35:51", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so we really got, I mean, I noticed between the time I left his English was, he could go anywhere and be in a fluent, follow a conversation, where at the beginning we really struggled and but that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:36:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All of this was in English?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:36:06", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All this was in English. So here I am in Korea. I'm sitting in a room supposed to talk English from 9:00 to 5:00. I go home and I'm supposed to talk English to make the kids talk English. My Korean didn't really grow the way other people did. I mean, it's just, the only time I had one day where I was completely in Korean. When we had, we had over the period of the two years I was there, we had two different maids. They were sisters. Now, I don't know, maid is the best English word I can use, but it's not really. In Korea, if you're orphaned, people in the community will take the girls in or the boys in and take care of them. And so we, from this, it was a neighboring town to where Dr. Song's family had their, where the family compound was. And, um, and so he. Uh.\n\nThe, oh, first May finally got married and so her younger sister came up with the Songs, and then the Songs would give her room and board and clothing allowance and take care of her that way. And there are a couple stories in there. It was really the oldest, the first one, when they realized that I'm going to have to use the squat toilet that didn't have ceramic. It was just a hole in the boards, which was the irony of why I couldn't be at the other place. But they didn't worry about it. I didn't worry. I was so delighted it was inside the house in the winter because most people had to go to outhouses." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:37:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was cold." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:37:46", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Really cold. And but anyway, I couldn't squat. When I squatted, I was so high in the air they just thought that was really funny. So I remember the maid and my sister Houk, they're there trying to push me down to get my muscles to go down. And so I went through about two weeks of these exercises to stretch my muscles and they would laugh and they thought it was so funny, you know, like, how could I even go to the bathroom? Which I needed to go quite a bit. Like I often say, Korea was two years of diarrhea. I had just terrible problems with the food." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:38:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:38:27", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And when I woke up in the morning, we were in a Japanese style house, which meant two stories, wood sort of thing. But I would run down the stairs and people would hear me coming and everybody'd just squat so I could get into the bathroom as quick as I could because it was always a different sort of thing. And we were in a very upper class neighborhood. A block away was the Secretary of Education. There was a Peace Corps volunteer that was staying with him, who was a friend of mine. I didn't know he was that close until eight months into my training, because I never went to the weekend Peace Corps stuff. I just, finally something happened and I found out, whoa, we live near each other. So I was over there a couple of times, but we just, we lived very different lives because our jobs were very different. He was teaching in a girls middle school and had a lot of contacts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:39:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you stayed in touch with the Song family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:39:30", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Have I? Yes. I emailed both Il and Houk in the last week. We dropped out of contact for a while because I couldn't. Il would send me an email or Houk would send me an email and I'd hit reply and I'd get it bounced back because it wouldn't go through. And so we just kind of drifted apart for a period of time. Il visited Kathy and I three or four times, once spending a week. Sometimes he, he had a, you know, I should explain about Il. Il came to Central Michigan where I was teaching and did an MBA degree. He lived with us for six weeks. And then my, my first wife Jan kicked him out because he wanted to be waited on and he wanted to have his meals whenever he wanted to. And it just didn't work.\n\nAnd he, I say I converted to their, their culture and he couldn't convert to ours. And that was probably the, what I call the Peace Corps difference because he did his masters at Central Michigan. I mean, after he lived with us, he moved to the dorm. And the irony of ironies, he had a Japanese roommate. They actually went into business together in New York and sold leather coats for a long time. And then he went to a doctoral program at Syracuse. So I look at, so Houk and Il both did American degrees, both got doctorates. So I'm, you know, for Dr. Song who I, when I was, when he was alive I kept writing to, he felt really good all three of his kids got doctorates. The other three, the other three were very successful women. I mean, they were married.\n\nI would use this example, which I thought my family. The first daughter had a completely arranged marriage, saw her husband to be once at the engagement party. The second time was their marriage. The second daughter, the parents picked him out together, arranged their marriage, and then they dated several times over a six week period before they got married. The third daughter, Young-Ja, she and her husband to be told their parents that they were getting married. They could have the engagement party, but they, they were choosing each other. So you see that in that cycle, in that family, we moved from old Korea to modern Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:42:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In what period of time was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:42:12", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you talk about eight years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:42:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Eight years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:42:14", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's post, post Korean War. And then Houk never did get married." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:42:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:42:21", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And she was the professor. And Young-Ja also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:42:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And taught where, in Seoul?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:42:26", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:42:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:42:27", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was head of the drama department in Korea and she has. She did a Hamlet production that was really fantastic. So she also wrote books of poetry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:42:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you still in touch with her?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:42:41", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:42:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, great. That's excellent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:42:44", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So both Houk and Il, you know. And what's interesting is they're both singular names. Like the others would be Young-Ja, but they both had a single name. So you don't find that very often in Korea for the first name, it's generally it's a hyphenated name." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:43:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh. That's significant?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:43:05", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's just, it's part of the Songs being kind of modern, ahead of the game sort of thing. He was, Dr. Song was. I wanted to write an article and I never did. You know, Reader's Digest had The Most Unforgettable Character You've Ever Met?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:43:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:43:22", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was who I would write about. He was disowned by his family because he wanted to be a doctor, and to be a doctor, this was during the Japanese occupation, you had to, you had to be fluent in Japanese because all the higher education was in Japanese. And his father was what's called a yangban, which would be like a country squire. In his village, he was the one that owned the rice bin, you know, storage and sold the rice and the farmers sold their rice to him and then he sold it off. They all, um, so. So Dr. Song was disowned by his father because he wanted to be a doctor and studied Japanese. He wrote poetry in Japanese as well as Korean, and he was just a really remarkable man.\n\nHe, in his retirement, did sculpturing. In fact, he did a whole life-sized body sculpture of his wife. And it was a nude, and she was very embarrassed by it. But he was just a fascinating guy. And so the last, he worked on his English with me, so we'd have breakfast together the last year I was there. And so it was very, uh, significant. That's why I think the family thing is, because I feel, you know, we help, my family helped Houk and Il get their doctorates in the United States and launch their careers, which was similar to mine, to be a university professor.\n\nIl did a hour long documentary, he was a business professor, on the importance of trade and about the deal stuff. And he did a one hour documentary and he came and he stayed with Kathy and I, and he interviewed Kissinger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:45:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:45:24", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, he had that power to. First he had, he asked me to arrange a thing with Kissinger, and I had no idea how to do that. He said, I'll do it myself. So, so he did, because it was easier in one sense. Kissinger wouldn't responded to me, but would respond. But, but he then became nationally famous in Korea so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:45:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very successful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:45:44", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very successful. Both of them are successes. And so I look at that as a family thing is that, the first thing. The second thing I wanted to talk about is my relationship to growing up in North Bend was part of Peace Corps. Um. I was depressed a little bit the first couple of weeks on the job because this was a no job, sitting in an office, just chatting with people from, telling them what was in Time magazine. And, you know, just like the image of huts and villages of the world just wasn't working that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:46:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:46:24", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One was we were supposed to dress the way our colleagues did, which meant I had to have tailor made suits. And I mean, here's this kid from Oregon that's never had a tailor made a suit in his life and hasn't since. But I had to go to Korea and get tailor made suits. The first suit I had, the guy said something and he goes like this. And I figured it was with my pants. And he used the word whether it was, what do you want for your fly? Do you want buttons or a zipper? And I didn't know enough Korean to know the difference between the two. And I said, I just wanted to respond, I got buttons on my pants. And I thought, well, that's my grandfather. And because I had diarrhea a lot, the buttons were often a barrier, that I would be swearing to myself.\n\nBut those two suits lasted me until 1988. I mean, at least I was the same size, didn't have to deal with that. They were really well done. I had to get tailor made shoes. I mean, this is just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:47:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And why was it tailor made, because mass production wasn't good?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:47:31", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You didn't have the mass production. Yeah. For for suits and stuff, you're just, everybody. But it just seemed to me weird. They had, they had a jeep pick me up, and I finally told them after six weeks, don't pick me up in a jeep. I want to want to ride the 10 won bus, which is like a three cent bus. It's the stand up buses." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:47:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:47:51", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I got to be somewhat Peace Corps-ish. And I remember the impression I felt because I'd get off and I'd have to walk a block. I'd walk over, over a hill and then up to this thing. So it was about three blocks to the school. But the kids in this one place were in a school. They'd always call me a monkey. And then one day I wasn't worthy of being called a monkey. And that kind of depressed me. I thought either, A, I'm accepted or, B, I'm accepted or I'm just not important anymore. And I realized I'm not important anymore. I'm just part of the landscape sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:48:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that, that depressed you or you felt better about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:48:35", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I didn't know which way to test. But it was a significant thing for me just along that line, that I had blended in. And so that was wonderful. Now, back to my job. So after about three or four weeks, Dr. Pak, again, my mentor, arranged for me to be a tutor to the director of the Department of Forestry and the assistant director and the chief financial officer and one of their friends. So I thought, hey, that's good. I can do something. And the reason behind that, and I did that for a year, I was tutoring five nights a week. I'd go down, take the bus downtown and be at their office. And I'd go to a tea room, and then I'd have tea. And then I go upstairs and teach what they, what they wanted.\n\nAnd they were going to New Zealand to get trees. The Korean War, the trees that weren't cut, they were knocked down by mortar. And if, you know, the Korean War was vicious, we just blew up a lot of trees and denuded Korea. And the, uh, they were going to New Zealand to get trees. And so they wanted training in English. So having worked at Weyerhaeuser for three years in the summers going to college, I wrote my mom and my mom went down to Don Dills, who I knew, who was their PR person, and said, could you send Don materials? And so I was enriched by being able to teach them because I could teach them about clear cutting and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:50:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah. All those terms." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:50:29", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All the terms, you know, the logging terms and the lumber terms. And I just thought that in reality, my biggest contribution was helping them be successful on this tree thing. So when I went back four years ago and traveled around Korea, there were huge forests and they, all these trees, I would say, hey, those are my trees that Korea has now got. And you saw that somewhat in the Olympics with all those trees around in those mountains up there. But that was all gone. They were, people used it for firewood when they couldn't afford coal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:51:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they had a major reforestation program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:51:10", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. If you, if you look at Korea, when we were there, there were only two bridges across the Han River, and now there's 23 or 32 or something like that, incredible number of bridges. And all the south side of the river has been developed, which was just farmland when I was there. But Korea was still in the bottom 10 percent gross national product at one time. Right after the war, it was third from the bottom. And so now that it's in the top 10 percent, top 5 percent of economies in the world. It, it's just, Korea's the amazing miracle of all, of all the countries that we were in in terms of progress.\n\nAnd the wonderful thing is that the embassy and people have always said they've attributed Peace Corps to helping them get the English to be able to get over that hurdle. I mean, when I think about it, now that there's 30 some thousand kids, people teaching English in Korea that are Americans, you know, and here we were several hundred. But we, we were, you know, like my, my friend that I mentioned that lived in the next, the middle school he taught in was the school that, you know, the president's kid, the cabinet's kids, their girls went to and stuff like that. So we really did make a difference. Several of the ambassador's wives learned their English from Peace Corps volunteers in a period of time. So Korea was very appreciative of Peace Corps. And I always thought that made a tremendous difference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:52:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So before the interview, you, you mentioned this trip that you went on. Why don't you talk a little bit about this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:52:52", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was a thank you trip. The South Korean government has, did this with soldiers, appreciative of soldiers for the, that fought in the Korean War, and brought them over. And then they did this. Someone suggested they do that for Peace Corps volunteers. And so the Friends of Korea, which is the, kind of the Peace Corps, a lot of leading Korean business people and stuff like that belong to Friends of Korea. But it's basically the Peace Corps group, our group, used that. And then they, they, they would take them groups of 50. I think I was in the eighth group and I was, I didn't respond to that because I was teaching all the time and I never could.\n\nAnd then I got near retirement and so I had to leave. And so I applied for that period, which was the last one, which hasn't been the last one. But at the time they thought it was the last one. They would bring over 50 volunteers. And so they're from all the groups. There's 39 different groups in Korea. K-39 was the last group. We were cut in the Reagan administration. He had to cut something. And so over the protests of the Korean government, he cut Korea Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:54:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, maybe they had outgrown Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:54:20", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was their argument. The Korean government says, no, we, you know, it's, we still got pockets and we need help in different ways, which it was, they were on their way up. So I didn't feel too bad about that, but I just felt bad that they're cutting it because by then it wasn't the economic impact, it was the personal contact. And that, that's why I would say you still want people in different, to be able to deal with it, because Korean culture is different. Anyway, that they would bring over 50 volunteers and your spouse." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:55:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:55:02", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And you would pay your plane fare over there and then you would go to a hotel and it was a suite hotel. It was downtown. It's two blocks from the royal palace. So it's really well situated. It's across from the Japanese embassy. We had a suite, we had a living room, we had a kitchen area, we had a separate bedroom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:55:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:55:24", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And, well, the best I've ever been able to do for my wife, to take her to a real elegant hotel. And what we did was then stay two weeks afterwards. And I spent it with my Korean brother. And he was going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:55:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "With Lee?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:55:39", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Il." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:55:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Il." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:55:40", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he's successful. He has a car and a driver and from his other sorts of work he does consulting. And, um, and little things happened. His, Il had two daughters. One of the daughters married a guy who's a really good lawyer who did a year at an exchange with the law school at University of Virginia. So Il and his wife Kang-ho came and stayed here with us for three or four days and they bought a car for them. And so when they flew in, then we helped them move down. They took, took their SUV filled with their luggage, plus our CR-V to get all the stuff down to the house that they had rented for the year. And then we had them up here for Thanksgiving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:56:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:56:42", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so, so when we went there, we had already met her and her husband. Anyway, the other daughter, Sugi, and this daughter, they went together and they arranged to have Kathy and I go down to Jeju-do, which is the island south, off of South Korea, and which is. And we spent three days there. And Il sent two of his students to go down and rent a car and drive us around. And so but they paid for our flight down, the daughters did, at Thanksgiving. Now, Kathy and I made a book for both Houk and Il, a photo book of some of my photos. Well, the interesting thing was when the daughters, Il's daughters, saw that, they had never seen a picture of their mom and dad before they were married." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:57:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:57:31", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And here they were, you know, drinking and eating and, you know, up in my bedroom, we had always sort of did our stuff. This is amazing. This is mom and dad when they were, before they were married. Wow. Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:57:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:57:44", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They thought that was really cool. And we had a picture of a nephew that I got to meet and I went to a poetry reading. So we just had a wonderful two weeks in Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:57:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So clearly the two families are joined." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:57:57", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two families are joined and that to me is a significant part of my tour. Now, the other year, I said two years. I want to go back to my other. The second year, Dr. Pak got me working with the committee in Korea that works on ports and harbors and commerce and harbors in Korea and dredging of harbors and, uh. And so if you feel that, I grew up in Coos, on Coos Bay, which is the largest port between San Francisco and Seattle, but there's a port there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:58:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what were you doing with them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:58:32", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was teaching them English, but my big thing was there's high tides in Incheon. That's kind of, you know, MacArthur's invasion and that sort of thing, to be able to do that. Anyway, the high tides were there, and so they were losing cranes that were picking up these logs they're buying from Indonesia that are big and they're really heavy. And, you know, a crane like that goes over the edge because the weight sort of. So I said, well, why don't you do what I did, what we did at Weyerhaeuser, because we're a tidal community and you do, you float the logs in and then you have chains that pull them up like this. So you don't have any crane that has to reach over and it can go up and down. And so if you have 12, 20 foot tides, it doesn't matter because you just have the chains go down.\n\nSo I drew that out for them because what we were talking about at one time and I just drew that out and says, here is something you can do. And sure enough, they did it. So that was, again, is my night teaching that is where I had an impact. Can I take a quick break?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:59:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:59:47", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my impact from my night job were really, uh, to me, to me the significant part of doing what part of the Peace Corps trying to help the other. Because in one sense, I had one day where I really wanted to quit and, uh. I was downtown and our institute was out and I could walk across Namsan, which is the big mountain in downtown Seoul. It's like a Central Park sort of thing. And I decided I needed some time to think, and I would walk across there and I'd walk into the and tell them I'm quitting. Just I've had it. The sexism was really apparent. I didn't feel like my job was worth diddly squat. And but it was in my second year.\n\nSo anyway, I walked across and it was, it was not in the middle of summer. It was kind of cold. So I think it was in the spring. And so I'm kind of dressed warmly. And it would take about 2 hours to walk across that. But I gave that. So I'm walking across and I, the view part where you sit and look at downtown Seoul and the attractive part of the park, but then there's the back side and I'm on the back side. And I come across this group of retired people that I could tell by their clothing were not well-to-do, either lower middle class or poor. And there were about 20 of them, but they were singing songs and dancing, and their music was created by hitting with a stick on pots and pans. And they invited me to join them in dancing.\n\nWell, I refused because I'm really down and I'm not doing this anymore. And I, that's my big regret, I never, I should have joined them. And later on, it becomes even more significant why I should have joined them. And I'm walking away from them and I said, they have almost nothing and yet they're celebrating and they're enjoying each other. What? What, what are you so tied up about? Trying to save the world? And you're not frustrated because the Peace Corps volunteer, you're not saving the world. You got to learn from them just to enjoy life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "01:02:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "01:02:23", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that was really significant for me. The, the other part of that became, which was almost in a different paradox, was my sister had written me that she would come out. I told her the fall was the best time to visit and she was going to fly to Korea and spend a week with us. And I said, come in October because that's my favorite month. And that, that would be really great if you could do that. And then two weeks later, I get a call from Peace Corps that my sister's dying in New York and I have this tremendous gratefulness of. They didn't need to fly me back, but they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "01:03:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "01:03:11", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I got a call that they would be sending a car out with my tickets, they've already made the arrangements. The next day I was to take such and such a flight that would take me to New York City, and I would meet my mother there. And they had made all those arrangements without my, you know, just quickly to be able to deal with that, because she, she was in New York. The company she worked with was in New Jersey, but her home was in New York City. She had had a cough and went to a ear, nose, and throat specialist. And he put her in the hospital and 21 days later she was dead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "01:03:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "01:03:49", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But anyway, I got to spend several days with her, and I just thought that was wonderful. And my dad got back there. So again, there were three of us that, at the beginning of Peace Corps. We had had our time, wonderful time at the World's Fair together, which then had double significance. But they flew me back for that, and I made the arrangements because we had her cremated. We had a service in New York at the church she went to, and then I made arrangements. My folks went back and then I knew that they couldn't fly back with her ashes emotionally. So I made this crazy idea, I had to meet a lawyer or something, and which was my friends were lawyers. My friend in the Peace Corps was a really good lawyer.\n\nAnd so I did that. And when we got to my house, I picked Jan, my first wife. We were engaged. She had, she'd actually come over in the midterm and we'd had a Korean engagement ceremony." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "01:05:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "01:05:01", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Korean clothes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "01:05:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "01:05:03", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Korean toasts, a whole thing, like my Korean family sponsored the engagement ceremony. So, um, it just is an important part of my life that we really like intertwined. You know, my engagement party to Jan was done by my Korean family. So that was, so we had a Korean engagement party. So I met Jan in Portland, Oregon, and drove the 4 hours down and we actually stopped and saw Ken's parents and had lunch in Eugene, Oregon. We got to my, uh, my mom walked out of the house and walked out to our car and said, we're going to the, your dad's in critical condition. So I got another two week family emergency leave because my dad almost died that night. But they operated for 5 hours, took out 12 pounds of his lower intestine. And so that gave me another. So I was gone actually a month on this trip and, uh, so that that made it really a different sort of experience for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "01:06:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then you went back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "01:06:20", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I went back. And then that's when Houk, we made arrangements within the month for Houk to go to the United States. And that was another funny story. She was having trouble. I think one of the things that bugged me was the corruption in the government. And the guy wouldn't give her a visa because he wanted a bribe. So we worked out this wonderful how can we do this as a Korean situation. And so we arranged, very typical of when you give a bribe, you go to a coffee shop or something like that, and then you give somebody money for a taxi or something and so you're doing a favor. And of course, taxi's 50 won and you give them 10,000 or 15,000." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "01:07:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "01:07:07", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So this young guy at the embassy that was holding up her visa, we met at Chosun Hotel, which was the hotel in Korea. So it's all kind of feel this is really nice. I'm going to get this really big chunk of money. You figure that 15,000 won was what a teacher made. 10,000 was a significant amount of money. And anyway, so we met and we had tea and coffee and, uh, and we're talking with him. And Houk and I had all worked this out. So I said, now that I know your name and that you're responsible for Houk, I want you to know that Sunday, when I see the U.S. Ambassador to Korea. He and I go to the same church, which was true. We went to a Catholic church that was run by Dutch priests and there was only about 20 of us that went. But I, that was my one thing that I wanted, that's my American thing that I wanted to hold on to.\n\nSo my Sundays were very typical. I'd go to church downtown, then I'd meet a friend of mine. That's another great story. And so, so I told him. And so now that I have your name and I will be thanking him for your help in getting Houk, getting her visa. And you could just see his face just fall because he could tell he wasn't going to get any money and that if he didn't, he could be in trouble real quickly. It was the only time I tried to play a power play like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "01:08:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But it worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "01:08:43", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It worked. I actually wrote an article in the, uh, after I left Korea, I wrote an article for the Korea Times about how to handle bribes and corruption, you know, in a way, by using fees. Put a visa fee, and then it's a public sort of thing. And just as you. And my argument was that, uh, make it so that because the Korean government isn't paying you enough so you can't pay your people enough and use the fees as a way to get to get your stuff up. And so I did have my one public administration thing that they printed because I was teaching at Central Officials Training Institute." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "01:09:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "01:09:26", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The American Peace Corps volunteer that was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "01:09:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "01:09:30", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, yeah, it had some of a small impact. That was post going back and I made sure it was published after I left so nobody would be, family wouldn't be involved or something. And so that was interesting. The other thing I wanted to say about that church thing is then I would meet a friend that Dr. Pak again arranged. It was a young man that didn't go to Seoul National Institute, and all the Fulbright scholars were graduates of Seoul National. That's their Harvard. And, uh, and what they would do is be finalists. And then a group of wives from the Army base would come out and they'd interview them and see how they were and then rank order them for the for the Fulbright scholarships.\n\nAnyway, this person went to a, I can't remember the name of the college, one of my age problems now, but it's a college that specialized in foreign, in languages, all languages, sorts of things. And so he, he and I would go to a movie, generally one in English, almost always in English, and then we'd talk about it afterwards. And so I got his conversational level up, and then we had several sessions where I just worked on interview questions that are typical of what American wives might ask you about why you're interested in and all that stuff. So he got very fluent. He was the first, he was ranked number one, and much to the chagrin of Seoul National. It wasn't a Seoul National person, and I always took my little personal pride." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "01:11:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "01:11:05", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That I made a difference, you know, into the power structure to be able to deal with that. But, but that's the way I went. So, so I had him on Sundays, which was a non family, non work, non sort of thing. It's just like my closest Korean friend, well, to do that, while Houk and Il are family related sort of things. So I felt that I'd made an impact on that. But I, as you can see, my, my Peace Corps experience with my job wasn't my Peace Corps impact." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "01:11:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which was fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "01:11:38", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which was fine. I just had, I was able to take advantage of the friendliness of Korean people to be able to do that. I have other really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "01:11:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "01:11:49", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The big question is, what did it do for your life?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "01:11:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "01:11:54", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "01:11:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was about to ask that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "01:11:57", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the personal side, you've already seen because Houk and Il became part of my family and she actually visited my, came back and visited my parents before they died when they were both in a nursing home. And I have always greatly appreciated that. But she appreciated what they did for her. They took her on family vacations for four years, so she got Pacific Northwest because they'd go out and they were retired. They didn't have any time restrictions, so they could just, they'd take her around to meet people, that my mother had a lot of friends all over sort of thing. So that was just a really great impact.\n\nProfessionally, um, I came back and immediately started my doctorate. I taught for a year at Central Washington for another year and got married in that period of time and then did my doctorate at the University of Oregon. And my doctorate with, focused on training high school teachers. Again, missing, still mad that I didn't get to go to Tonga. But by this time, the family stuff and my personal contacts were such that, so what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "01:13:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, right, exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "01:13:08", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just, it was a great, great experience for me. Now, professionally, it helped because in the mid seventies, or '74, in the field of communication, which was then called speech or speech communication depending upon your department, there was a new movement for an idea called intercultural communication. It came from the work in anthropology that focused on the difference between cultures and learning cultures and that sort of thing. Intercultural communication deals with the communication between people of different cultures, not that you want to know what's the difference between when the American goes to Japan and, because that's kind of the anthropology view. What are the differences of culture that influence communication?\n\nThis is how is your communication change when you? And so the general principles that you have, it doesn't matter whether I'm talking to someone from Turkey or someone from China or someone from Indonesia or someone from Brazil. And so they, our national organization had a big conference to introduce that, people like Bob Coles, my director, was one of the speakers. It was really fun getting to see him. But so there's about 50 to 60 people gathered in Chicago. And my second year of teaching or third year, I can't remember which, second year of teaching at Central Michigan. They sent me to the conference. So I got to the conference and I participated and they split up into committees on how can we promote intercultural communication. I was on a committee of four people and I was chair of the committee that said, well, we need to have a model syllabus of how and what should be the basics in that.\n\nSo I was chair of the committee because of my Peace Corps experience. I had all these wonderful stories about things that you need to adapt to and how you, you know, attitudes you need and all that sort of stuff. So I got to write the first big national syllabus for intercultural communication. There were other groups that had things done, but I, mine was, this was how do you approach it just from a communication perspective. And now there are so many people. There is an international and intercultural division of our association." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "01:15:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "01:15:28", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's gone in ways that I, very different from what I think they should be doing. But anyway, that doesn't bother me. You reach an age and you just can't keep up anymore. So my primary focus of training high school teachers shifted then to intercultural communication. And then my career and my background academically is rhetoric and public address. But my 27 years at George Mason teaching at college level, I became an intercultural communication specialist. And that, that always made me feel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "01:16:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Full circle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "01:16:09", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Full circle. Peace Corps. I would never have been able to do that. I would not have had anything that I could have done. So the last ten years of my teaching at George Mason is always at least two courses in intercultural communication. And I, and I loved it. I had some unique approaches. For example, just give me one example. In our training, they wanted us to get an experience in an interculture, how could you integrate into a village when you don't have any real contacts or background? So we, in one blustery cold December day, we got on busses in Bisbee and drove all the way up to the Hopi River, one of the plateaus in, on the Hopis, which are in the middle of the Navajo, but we were dropped off, 45, 46 of us. We were given a sack lunch that had a sandwich and stuff, so we didn't put a burden on the people.\n\nAll right. We were supposed to get inside a hogan. That's the Navajo term, so I can't remember the Hopi term, but we're supposed to get inside a house and be able to meet with them and spend the day with them. And then at 4:00, at 5:00, we'd leave and then the bus would come back up to the top and then we'd all get on the bus." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "01:17:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "01:17:32", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I was wearing my London Fog raincoat that I had purchased when I was teaching beforehand. And because we wanted to dress nicely and of course I had as much clothes and sweaters on as I could get because it was really cold, below freezing up there. And we spread out and by 10:00, we were dropped off at 8:00. By 10:00, all but two or three were in places. And every time I approached people, they'd run away. And I spent the whole day, I was the only Peace Corps volunteer. Of course, I'm thinking I'm going to get kicked out of Peace Corps because I couldn't figure out how to integrate. So finally, at 4:15, a little boy came up to me and said, you want to come to my grandmother's house? Of course I wanted to hug him, which was inappropriate. But yeah, I just wanted to say, thank God. I could say I made it into something.\n\nVery interesting. I got into her little hut that she was in, or whatever they called it. And the amazing thing to me, it just blew my mind, was a whole wall where pictures of Kennedy and his assassination and newspaper articles on the assassination. And of course, being what I call this, you know, I call, I'm part of what I think the Kennedy generation was, volunteers in the sixties. They just idolized Kennedy and thought this was reason we should go in. And here I am. She's saved. He's saved. I'm in the house with somebody that appreciates the same person, that I thought was really cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "01:19:15", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's very cool. Very nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "01:19:17", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so that was just a really. And so we talked for 45 minutes and then I left. And then I found out why some other people got told because I was wearing a London Fog, which is what the Social Security inspectors wear when they come up. And they're trying to catch people that are claiming too many kids. They have a feeling that one, one or three, you know, that a five year old or a six year old might be credited to seven or eight huts. And they had been trying, they were in '69 were trying to figure that out. And they figured that I had integrated that, the Peace Corps thing. But people had said, there's this guy out there and they said, well, we think you got a person. And they looked out. And then I'd walk by and they'd say, oh, no, that's Don Boileau, he's part of our group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "01:20:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how did you find that out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "01:20:14", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From other volunteers because they came up to me and said, I heard about you. People would tell them that they thought that they weren't quite trustworthy, that Peace Corps was trying to let this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "01:20:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Non-verbal communication." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "01:20:27", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Non-verbal communication with them. So it was a, to me it was just a really interesting. And then I didn't mind, but boy was I cold all day long. It was just, the wind was up there and it was something else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "01:20:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So. So one more question before we end. So you've talked about the impact on you and your family. You've talked about the impact of Peace Corps on Korea, English, as well as friendships. What do you think has been the impact of Peace Corps on the United States, or has there been any?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "01:21:09", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh. Another big story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "01:21:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "01:21:11", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Teaching in Central Michigan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "01:21:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "01:21:14", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A volun-, one of my students. She was, I was her adviser on her master's degree. One of my students was a Peace Corps volunteer in Columbia, and she was fairly active. And I got a call at 8:00 in the morning. She said, Don. Or 7:30 actually. She said, Don, when you go to church today, get your church to be willing to sponsor a Cambodian refugee. So Joni and I organized, we got, 30 refugees came to Mt. Pleasant, we got five churches. I got my church. Joni didn't have a church, so she was dependent. But we got five churches to work together to bring in 30 people from a refugee camp in Thailand that were Cambodians. Um.\n\nAnd Sit and Kenai Train were the couple that we had, they had lost a child in the march out of Cambodia, starved to death and died in Sit's arms. And Kenai, Sit couldn't stand up, Kenai could. That's the wife. And she, she did that. Anyway, we met them at the airport in Saginaw. And your life possession are in one paper bag. And you have a picture of a son that died. They have had two kids. Kathy and I been to both their weddings. We saw Sit and Kenai last April when we were out in California, spent a day with them. And so Peace Corps' impact is, I think it's been huge on the United States.\n\nIf you look at my work with the first model syllabus for intercultural communication. And we brought in another group of Cambodians, about 40 or 50, and then we expanded and took some of the other smaller towns around Mount Pleasant. So there's about a community, there are about 100 people now. Sit and Kenai, having lost their child, when Dofu, which is their first child now. Uh, he has an American name everybody calls him, but I'm still Dofu. Here's the little things. When Dofu got pneumonia, Kenai goes to the hospital and climbs in the oxygen tent and holding him because she's not going to let him die without her being in there. I get a call from the hospital and the administrator said, how in the hell, what are we going to do? This is against, we can't do this, it's a violation of stuff.\n\nSo I worked out a compromise. Maybe my argument was basic. You've got to understand, she lost one child. She can sit cross-legged all night long. Don't worry about that. She will not break your tent. You know, that's their concern. Don't worry about germs. If he dies because of germs from his mother, that's different from, he's dying because with his mother outside the tent. And you have to adapt to that. Well, we can't by. I said, you just do. You just do that because that's the human thing to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "01:24:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "01:24:27", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I, and I just, you know, we had training in Peace Corps about what do you do when you got this cultural difference and how do you offer and how do you. The first thing is you sympathize with their standards and that sort of thing. And I says, I know, you know, your whole thing is, but who's going to say anything? We're not going to complain. We're going to hope that Dofu is alive in the morning and Dofu is out of the oxygen tent in whatever your doctor says, two days. It actually was the next day. He improved so much, he was out of the tent. And I said, those are the little things that Peace Corps volunteers suddenly gets called to.\n\nI, one other thing that whenever. The first day of class, I walk around the George Mason for 20, 26 or 27 years. First day of class I look around, I'm looking for international students holding a map and just completely lost. Their English isn't good enough. And I walk over and volunteer to help. And I just did that because I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Because I was two years getting lost in Korea and people helped me so much. I had this huge debt I got to take care of I just felt for the rest of my life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "01:25:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good. And always the people to volunteer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "01:25:45", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And so, you know, I'm active in the Northern Virginia Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "01:25:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "01:25:52", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm on the board. You just kind of do those things. And I look at, Peace Corps is verified. It's not that what we've changed the world like we thought we were going to do to help the huts and villages. It's that we changed the world by coming back and, and doing things and, uh, I. Saturday night at a party, I met a couple that were Peace Corps volunteers in Nigeria, and they spent 51 years in Saint Croix helping them try to develop economically, as economic advisers. But they'll tell you the same thing that I just said, that it's what they did when they came back. Saint Croix is part of the Virgin Islands, you know, that are part of the U.S." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "01:26:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "01:26:45", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so you just do those things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "01:26:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "01:26:48", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And some are more direct, you know, like Phil with his camps and stuff that have a really direct, some are indirect like myself. But it's, but it's your whole lifetime of being able to, to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "01:27:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. So thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "01:27:06", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "01:27:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Excellent interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "01:27:08", + "speaker": "Don M. Boileau", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Love to talk about it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00259", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HoltJD/holtjd.htm", + "original_file_name": "HoltJD_12-1-04.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HoltJD/HoltJD_12-1-04.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John D. Holt", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 1 December 2004" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John D. Holt" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 1, 2004. This oral history interview with Denny Holt is being conducted in Houston, Texas for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. This interview is the second session with Mr. Holt and will focus on his days with NASA after the completion of Skylab.\\n\\n We’d like to start today by asking you what your duties were after Skylab and how you became involved with the Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right after Skylab, at this time, [Christopher C.] Kraft was the Center Director, and there was a major reorganization at the center, to put the flight crew and all the flight planning and flight crew training that had been separate under [Donald K.] Deke Slayton back in the Apollo days and through Skylab. That then got merged with the flight operations, flight control function. That was always something that Kraft wanted. So he never liked the division of having the flight crews and their training to be separate from the flight controllers and their training and their preparation. So the split in the Center became one of the expertise to go implement the flight, the flight controllers and flight crews. Then they threw the airplanes in because of support elements there, and all the training activities associated were all then part of flight operations.\\n\\n Then the development of the Control Center, the actual building of crew trainers, the mission profiles, and the mission planning, and all the detailed analysis was classified as a development activity. That was left under [Howard W.] Bill Tindall in the Data Systems Analysis Directorate. So you had the Flight Operations Directorate, and you had the Systems Analysis Directorate and right after it. So we were all in a new organization, and everybody that had hired into Flight Ops [Operations] in the old days spent their careers over in Building 30.\\n\\n The first thing that happened was we all moved to Building 4. That was to get us closer to the crews and get us closer to the crew trainers. So we just moved our operation. So everybody moved. That was the first thing that happened after Skylab.\\n\\n We had a lot of people that were affiliated with Martin Marietta [Corporation] or Ball Brothers Research [Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation] or the companies that were no longer going to support, that had been part of Skylab. A lot of those guys moved on, so you didn’t have as much turnover as you did going from Apollo into Skylab, and there were a lot of guys that—we’d been an extended family, and it was a badgeless society. You lived with the contractors, and you sat in the same offices, and it was really—you might as well take your badges off when you walked in the door. Everybody knew who we worked for. It was Kraft and, you know, [Eugene F.] Kranz, and that was it.\\n\\n The development contracts, like Singer-Link [Corporation] for the trainers, they were managed more in a product-oriented environment. We were all skills, so flight controllers were going to be flight controllers regardless of what their affiliation was.\\n\\n So we had a good mix of Philco-Ford [Corporation]. McDonnell Douglas [Corporation] got the integration contract for Shuttle Program, so we had a lot of new and an influx of McDonnell Douglas that we had to deal with. They had gotten the contract based on low cost, so they came in with a few senior middle-level guys and a whole bunch of “fresh-outs.” So it was kind of interesting from the standpoint of all us who’d been fresh-outs as civil servants, had been trained by the old Philco-Ford tech reps [technical representatives], and the guys who were ’37, born in 1937, since we were their slave labor.\\n\\n So all of a sudden we were the five-year, six-year, seven-year employees with the experience, and now we were having to educate the next round, and this time they were McDonnell Douglas contractors. A lot of them, the way it’s worked in the past out here is JSC’s always been the social society that says once you got a good one, if you could, you hired him and converted him to civil service. So there was a lot of that as well. That works well at some times, doesn’t work well at others. Under Mr. [James M.] Beggs, it didn’t work at all, because he put down a rule that said you can’t hire anybody that’s been out school over two years into civil service. He didn’t want you training them up as [contractors]—he wanted you to go straight to college and get them. He said, “I’ve already got the other ones. Why should I go buy them?” So it was a different environment back in those days. So you get some of that.\\n\\n But in the days right after Skylab and in the formation of Shuttle, the Ops guys really weren’t that busy. We did the Apollo-Soyuz Program, which was the 1976 stunt we did with the Russians, and it was programmed pretty much as a gap filler. It kept people fairly busy and gave them something to do while people were starting to work on Shuttle.\\n\\n Kranz had justified keeping the whole team together, and Kraft wanted to keep the whole team together, so they justified maintaining a level, pretty much, across there. But there really wasn’t that much work. So from those of us who were sitting down in the bowels of the system, we knew what the grand plan was, but we also knew that we had an awful lot of time on our hands compared to what we’d been used to. They probably won’t like to hear that, but we filled out our timecards just like we—but the days that you really wish you could have done something, you know, there just really weren’t that many good days at work back in there. If Shuttle had been on schedule, then it wouldn’t have been that way, but Shuttle was slipping.\\n\\n So I did a little work back with Apollo-Soyuz, but not much. Most of the things I started working on as soon as I got over there were requirements for crew training and crew trainers. We were trying to build a training program under—[James W.] Jim Bilodeau was the Division Chief, Crew Training and Procedures. Jim had been in the Crew Procedures business. Then Carl [B.] Shelley was the Deputy. Carl had done the training job for Apollo over on the Flight Control Operations side. [Charles R.] Chuck Lewis was the Branch Chief and had come out of Flight Directors. All the guys that had been Flight Directors back there in Skylab, Kranz had to sprinkle them around and make them real managers instead of having them in staff jobs. So they all went into management jobs.\\n\\n Our job then became one of trying to figure out what crew training was going to be like, trying to build a program, trying to figure out what this was going to entail. It came in two flavors, the Approach and Landing Test program, which weren’t that many people who actually worked on Approach and Landing Test, especially in Operations. [Donald R.] Don Puddy was the Flight Director, and you only had one team of folks. Then you had two crews, Fred [W.] Haise, [Charles] Gordon Fullerton, and then Joe [Henry] Engle and [Richard H.] Dick Truly.\\n\\n So I ended up as the Lead Simulation Instructor over in Building 5 on the crew trainer. We had the responsibilities, then, to go conduct exercises with the crews for the daunting challenge of flying from 22,000 feet all the way to the ground and getting hauled in back of a [Boeing] 747. It was interesting. Simulators are really complicated devices, and especially the Shuttle simulator was kind of a departure from the way they’d always developed simulators, because we took the Shuttle flight computer and loaded the flight code in there. So you actually trained with what you were going to fly with, the difference being that you really weren’t wiggling rudders and speed brakes, so all that had to be simulated. So the simulator itself was a very, very complicated beast, a great big visual scene board, about maybe forty feet long and twenty feet wide, down to where it was—you could actually see sagebrush out at [NASA] Dryden [Flight Research Center, Edwards, California]. So it was a very, very complicated system, a high-resolution system built by Singer.\\n\\n So we’d all gone through the procurement, and Singer won that, and then Singer would eventually be the contractor on the Shuttle Mission Simulator. NASA was always—Singer-Link guys were mostly from Binghamton, New York. It was kind of an interesting clash of cultures. They did it their way, much to the chagrin of pretty much everybody that managed them from down here. And it worked. It just wasn’t exactly the way we’d have liked to have seen it done, and they really didn’t care. So we went through quite a few rounds with them over their approach. It was kind of like everybody worked together against each other for a common cause, you know, that type of thing. So it was interesting times back then.\\n\\n You weren’t quite sure, when you saw things happening to where the simulator wasn’t acting properly, you weren’t quite sure whether that was flight code or whether that was a simulation problem. Naturally you had IBM [International Business Machine] tech [technical] support there, and everything they saw obviously was a simulation problem. Everything Singer-Link saw was “Probably that could be [flight] software.” So there was an awful lot of discussion that we had. It was really a proving ground for a lot of the way the flight code ran.\\n\\n The first closed-loop demonstration of the flight code with a manual input was in the crew trainer, which was quite a departure from what you’d had in previous days. Usually you’d have a big iron bird somewhere, and you’d go run all your training. In this case, we learned an awful lot about the flight code just by osmosis. It was interesting times.\\n\\n When we bought the simulator—probably the classic of how interesting they could get, Singer-Link—the day they bought it off, we were in Building 5, and they just had been throwing out the Lunar Module simulator to make a spot for this. It was a big motion-based simulator. It is today’s motion-base [of the Shuttle Mission Simulator]. Okay, so we had the start of that. But it was running on a different computer platform altogether.\\n\\n The day they sold that simulator was in September, hotter than blue blazes outside. It was about 32 degrees inside. I think I’ve never been in that building when it was that cold. I know Singer-Link had it down as cold as they could get it just to make sure everything that had electronics in it was not going to overheat. They were bound and determined they were going to sell that simulator.\\n\\n We had the crew. Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton were flying. As soon as the crew would separate from the 747, get ready to fly straight in, then it would take only about maybe one or two seconds, and all of a sudden, this monster simulator is up here going just side to side, and the hydraulics in the big legs are going up and down, and it’s hissing and moaning and everything, and it’s slamming against the stops. Then it would settle in when it finally violated its limits. We did this for about an hour and a half. Finally Fred Haise says, “I just think I’ve had enough of this.” So we all got in the conference room. Fred says, “Look, guys, this Shuttle is not going to fly like this.”\\n\\n They [Singer-Link] said, “Well, Al Ragsdale,” who was one of the simulation guys, “Al’s figured out how to fly this.”\\n\\n So they go back out and get in the simulator. I was listening in to the intercom. So at separation, Al says, “See now, right here, Fred. See now, when the needle goes all the way to the left, you stomp on the wrong rudder pedal and it’ll re-center it. And if you just kind of hang on, it’ll fly it on in here.”\\n\\n They landed, and Fred says, “Al, airplanes don’t fly like that.”\\n\\n He says, “Yeah, I know.” [Laughs]\\n\\n So we go back in there, and he says, “Okay. You guys need to go to work on this a little more.”\\n\\n It turned out that the answer was fairly simple. The rate gyros in the Orbiter are in the back end of the vehicle. The accelerometers are in the front of the vehicle. The guy that worked on the rate gyros and accelerometers, the Singer-Link engineer, was doing both of them at the same time. Unfortunately, he coded them such that the accelerometers ended up in the back.\\n\\n Well, anytime you put an input like this, the vehicle would sense it, and it was sensing it the wrong way. It was adding to it. So the next thing you know, this thing’s going back and forth, and it’s making—it was really interesting. So we watched that pinball machine for a year over there.\\n\\n So we had two teams of simulator instructors, myself and Olan [J.] Bertrand, a team of two, and Jerry [W.] Mill and [Robert L.] Bob Hahne, a team of two. We split up and went through with—did four-hour blocks with Haise and Fullerton and Dick and Joe just all the way through the program. Then we’d do some integrated training with Don Puddy’s flight control team. They were limited only by the fact that you didn’t get all the data down; you only got one string of data out of the system. So when we did integrated training, the crew actually had more data on the board than the ground did. So it was kind of more of a—they did the ground control approach for winds and stuff like this, but it wasn’t really a big—the training exercises were more intense for the crew than they were for the combined team, which is somewhat different than what you get into in full-up Shuttle.\\n\\n The classic crews were good enough to where Dick Truly and Joe Engle were also known as the ALT [Approach and Landing Test] a cappella choir for their rendition of “Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille,” just probably one of the worst songs that—their rendition was poor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They entertained the troops, huh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They entertained the troops, yes. We spent a lot of time being down. It’s all in the simulators. They’d go down, they’d come back up. So we learned a lot about patience in that environment.\\n\\n But that was our first real introduction to what Shuttle was going to be like and how complicated it was, because you had all the redundant systems. When you think about it, the Shuttle failures that we’ve had have really been failures of the structure and something very large and structural failures. Your training that you do for the crews is really a training of the timeline, procedures, malfunctions, all of the things that can go wrong in the systems, things that you can do something about. If the wing falls off, there’s just nothing you can do about that. So we had built training flows and went through and laid down a program that’s pretty much the structure that they have today, although they’re much more organized than we were. We were still trying to figure out exactly what you would do.\\n\\n So at the end of ALT we took all the crews through, and everybody got to play, got their stick time, and everybody got their chance. During the landing for the last ALT flight, there was a PIO, problem-induced oscillation, so you got a little of that.\\n\\n Everybody that showed up was convinced that they understood it better than anybody else, and they all wanted to give it a try, only to find out that anything they did within five feet of the runway, whether you tried to push the stick down, pull the stick back, anything you did ended up with you bounced, and it was a bad idea. It was pretty much, with this vehicle, when you’re getting ready to land, you just let it land. There’s not much you can do except just let it mush on in there and do its thing. I remember every one of them came over, and we had to go through that discussion with everybody. You just let them go do their thing. Then when they got through, they said, “That didn’t work, did it?”\\n\\n I said “No. Nobody else made it work either, but thanks for trying.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a little competition between the crews?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, there’s always competition. Yes, they’re all that way. Actually, it’s not just the crews. Competition’s what fueled the whole engine for Apollo. The comment I made a while ago about everybody working against each other for a common cause, there were days when you swore up and down that there were people who were out to get you. But teams had natural competitions. Flight directors all were running for Center Director. So everybody was competing with everybody else. But the kind of competition was to be the best. It rarely was mean-spirited. It was almost always one-upmanship and “We’re smarter than you are.” In fact, I’m convinced, after spending the time I did in simulation, that there were guys who worked here just to be able to go do sims [simulations] and show that they were smarter than everybody else, because they’re natural problem solvers and they loved it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was technology advancements affecting your job as far as technology changing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. Start of Skylab, we still didn’t have a word processor. Memos were typewritten, and we wore out Xerox machines on a daily basis. It was probably 1983 or so before we got the first word processors in there, and they were the Xerox system that was right before the Xerox Wordstar. That was the first time we ever got—that was probably 1984. So, no, we were still in the Dark Ages relative to that. The computers that were running the simulators were. We were seeing the first minicomputers at that time, which were Interdata [832s], all running then off of a central [Univac] host.\\n\\n When we went to the SMS, the Shuttle Mission Simulator, then that was the first big technological leap, because you had a digital video system for crew visual. There were all kinds of arguments over whether that would be acceptable or not. Well, today’s video games pretty much show that that’s possible. Today’s video games are so far ahead of—we might as well have been playing Pong compared to what they’ve got today. Crews would come flying in, and depending on how busy the computer was, buildings could come and go out of the field of view. That was kind of disconcerting sometimes.\\n\\n But that was a big effort, and we had lots and lots of development problems with the simulators. By the time I did the entry training flow for Shuttle, Frank Hughes did the ascent, Anne [L.] Accola did the orbit, and we laid out then what we thought—the numbers of hours it would take in order to do this. For the first flight, we figured it was about 500 hours of crew training plus sims, the integrated training with the flight controllers.\\n\\n I can remember the day that it was finally—[Melvin L.] Mel Richmond and I put together this package for George [W. S.] Abbey and Gene Kranz, who were Director and Deputy Director of Flight Operations. I’d been through the fourteenth dry run of this package, and Carl Shelley finally says, “Okay now, take your conclusions chart and put it on the front.”\\n\\n I said, “No. You’ve got to be kidding me.” I said, “Look, I’ve made enough pitches to Kranz in my lifetime, I know that the conclusions have to be on the back.”\\n\\n He said, “Yeah, but George is going to be there.” He says, “You need to put it on in both places.”\\n\\n I told Carl, I said, “No, I just don’t think that’s going to work.” So I did it anyhow.\\n\\n Carl’s six-five and weighs about 260 pounds, and was my boss, so I did pretty much what he told me to do.\\n\\n So in the meeting, we put the second chart up, and it says “Here’s how many hours for the first flight, and here’s how many for STS-2.” George says, “Well, I don’t understand your STS-2 numbers because they’re x.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, no. If you go back to chart 400,” wherever it was in this monster package—and we went though a couple of steps.\\n\\n George says, “Okay. There’s just one more question.” Then he says, “Okay. That looks about right.”\\n\\n Of course, Gene’s sitting there, and Gene says, “What do you mean it looks about right?” He says, “We’re going to go through this whole package.” [Laughs] And we did.\\n\\n So George says, “Well, when you guys have satisfied Gene, y’all can go,” and we knew it was going to be awhile. So about 400 action items later, we got down to the conclusions chart, and Gene read the conclusions, agreed with the conclusions, and then handed us our action items and told us, “Here’s what you can do for the next six months.” So it was interesting.\\n\\n But we really were struggling with the ideas of a program for training, because all the way through Apollo, each flight had been unique. Each vehicle was new. You had no reuse. You weren’t trying to run an airline-type operation or a military-type operation.\\n\\n We had talked to Boeing, and they had brought in the Boeing head of training from Seattle [Washington]. We had a good four-hour discussion with him. He pretty much laid out how they went about their business, and we showed him what we had in mind. Along about three hours into our four hours, we started probing. One of the questions was, “Well, just how do you deal with change?”\\n\\n He said, “Well, changes are not a problem.” He says, “If we get a change every couple of months, we’re able to keep that up.”\\n\\n I said, “Okay. So how do you handle a thing that says you get a change a day?”\\n\\n He said, “Well, you guys don’t have an operations program. You’re still R&D [research and development].” And we really were.\\n\\n So we struggled with the trappings of the program and trying to put the wrapper on it at the same time, when we were just scrambling to be able to keep up with the development activity in the Shuttle. Every time you dropped a new version of flight software, we had a big checkout activity we had to go through. Every time Singer-Link updated the configuration in the simulator, it was like something that was working didn’t work now. You had to go back and find all those. So we were in this constant cycle of trying to get it all together.\\n\\n For the first Shuttle flight, I took over as the First Simulation Supervisor, so I was over setting up the integrated training runs, which was the training with the flight control team in Building 30 and the crew running over in Building 5 in the simulators. We were doing about right at thirty hours a week, thirty-two hours a week, of training. The other eight hours of that week we wrote scripts. We had three teams of flight controllers—ascent, orbit, and entry—and I had one team of simulation guys, and we did all three phases. So literally, all we did was write scripts.\\n\\n The amount of time just getting the two buildings [SMS and the Mission Control Center] to play with each other was kind of a monumental-type thing, too, because the simulator had been set up for crew training and it really wasn’t ideal for ground controller training. All the parameters that came across to Building 30 didn’t look right. So the first thing we did—we did about a month and gave up—we did a big exercise to go through methodically and have the flight controllers and the training guys go through every parameter and document exactly what the problems were and look at all the systems.\\n\\n It was beneficial from the standpoint of the guys who were working in the flight control world who were following the development of Shuttle. They had to take that knowledge and plow it back into the simulator at a level that says, this simulator is not doing as well as it needs to. Quite frankly, if it was not needed by the flight computer to run, then it wasn’t that big of a deal. So it’s the kind of thing that says, when it rises to a level on your priority list where it suddenly becomes an irritant, then you go work on it. That’s literally what we did. We just went around stomping on tall poles trying to get ready." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the slip in schedule affect what you were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we’d have never made it if—literally, the slip in schedule just changed everything. When they updated flight software—flight software was behind. Certain systems were behind. So every time they updated, we updated, and we just tried to keep up to see what the effects would be.\\n\\n There were a few really very good decisions made. One of them was to keep the one flight plan for the entire period there for the first flight, so we trained with one flight plan. Then it changed about two months before we flew, because by then they had to pick up all the things that they knew had changed to where you really couldn’t operate. This wasn’t the optimum flight. There were only three days for STS-1. You just were able to kind of get into a rhythm, and you were able to then work through it.\\n\\n But the teams—literally, guys walked in, a lot of them hadn’t been in the Control Center since Apollo, and some of them hadn’t ever been in the Control Center. About the time we started integrated training in 1979, a lot of those guys didn’t work Skylab, so it was 1972 since they had seen their last flight. So even though you had guys that had a lot of experience, you had to start building the teams all over again. And you had three teams, and the teams were large. You made sure that you had enough people there to go look at all the systems. The idea was that as soon as we started flying fifty-two flights a year, of course, on the Shuttle, you would cut it back to where we only had four people in the Control Center at all times, because the crew was doing all the work.\\n\\n That operations concept was so far out of—it just never had any ground in reality. It was part of the sales pitch for Shuttle, and the problem was that your staffing levels and your budgets were all based on that. So, retracting a lot of that stuff was painful throughout the system, and most of us who then moved into management positions had to deal with the pain from a standpoint of saying, “That ain’t gonna work.” So we spent a lot of time building rationale for why you had to have more people and why you had to do certain things and why you needed five teams and that type of stuff.\\n\\n We ran a bunch of training sims. We ran our first long simulations that we did, where we brought in the extended team. The engineering support team at Rockwell [International Corporation] had the Mission Evaluation Room. JSC Engineering felt that all the pieces of the puzzle are going to be there when you fly. We were going to do our first thirty-hour exercise. The simulator wasn’t good at staying up for more than maybe an hour or four hours at a lick, and we were going to start up and do thirty overnight, so it was kind of touch-and-go. We brought up the first day, and Neil [B.] Hutchinson comes in, who’s ascent team. It’s seven o’clock in the morning, and I’m back in my cubbyhole with my team, and we get a call from over in the simulators. They said, “We’re down.”\\n\\n I asked, “When do you think you’re going to be back up?”\\n\\n The guy said, “Well, not real sure. It looks like maybe we had the emergency stop button pushed.”\\n\\n My experience with emergency stop buttons, from my days in Building 5, was that you were lucky to get back up the next day, much less that day. So I called Neil and said, “Neil, you go ahead and dismiss your team. We’re going to try this tomorrow.”\\n\\n I got the usual, “What?”\\n\\n So pretty much I said, “I’m not even going to attempt it.”\\n\\n I got a call from George Abbey who was over in Building 5, and George says, “What are you doing?”\\n\\n I said, “I turned it off.”\\n\\n George says, “Well, they’re telling me over here they’ll be up in an hour.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, get me twenty dollars of that.”\\n\\n Somewhere around four-thirty, five o’clock in the afternoon, they finally got the computer to where it would come up and talk to itself, much less try to run a simulation, and the next morning we were able to get going. At some point of time in there, we went up and down a few times, but we actually, I think, managed to crank out about twenty-two consecutive hours of running there at one lick through there.\\n\\n So it was the kind of thing to where you got—simulators are always very interesting devices. In the sim world, you always got accused of just letting the simulator spit out whatever freebies that it could do and whatever failures it dreamed up on its own and then trying to react to them.\\n\\n To an extent, that was true. You showed up with your script—I know on one exercise we were going to do fifty-six hours. We’d been running for about a year, and I was taking some heat from the flight directors, especially Hutchinson, about not having objectives written for the training exercises. So we started the sim, and about an hour and a half into the simulation, one of the [flight] computer strings in the simulator just suddenly decided that it didn’t want to participate anymore. So we took our whole script and just chucked it and had to start all over again rewriting the script. Between Anne Accola and I, we had two teams by now, so we just kind of survived this thing.\\n\\n I was on the hook to go debrief the flight control team with the script after the sim, on the day after. So I took what happened and built a case around that and showed up and briefed them with exactly what happened and the objectives for every one of them. As I walked out of there, Neil Hutchinson said, “I don’t believe you did that.” [Laughs]\\n\\n I said, “Well I can’t understand why you’d say that, Neil.”\\n\\n He said, “Because Anne’s already told me that you’re over there inventing the case that goes with the things that happened this time.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, she ratted on me.” [Laughs]\\n\\n We were able to react, just to take whatever was there and turn it into a fifty-six-hour training run. You had the whole team up and running. It was like, you’re only going to get this opportunity every so often, and you’d better find a way to make the most of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you sat to write scripts, what were some of the components that you were looking for to build into those scripts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like I mentioned, the Orbiter is such an integrated vehicle, and it all has to come through—the computer controls an awful lot, and there are four individual computers here and a voting scheme. So it’s the kind of thing that says, when you want redundancy, you go—let’s say we have three IMUs [inertial measurement units] for platform alignments, and we have four sets of rate gyros, we have four independent actuators for each—we have ports to where you can actuate, drive the [aero] surfaces, and the jets are then sprinkled around through the computer strings so that you don’t want to lose all the capability with one failure. Then you bring it all in and you put four computers together. Each computer then has a primary and a backup, and they have a big voting scheme.\\n\\n What we found in the sim days—and of course we’d known it from approach and landing tests—was that if you could just lob a failure in between the responsibilities of two flight controllers, then you could just stand there and watch them jump back at first till somebody finally figured out whose responsibility it was. So for about the first six months of training, literally it was like shooting ducks in a barrel. You could just throw a failure in between two guys and just see which one of them was going to pick it up and run with it first.\\n\\n The flight directors, during debriefings—the debriefings were pretty brutal. The system has always been hard on itself. Nobody gets away with anything. So if you didn’t handle it very well, if the team didn’t debrief it that way, then the simulation supervisor was obligated to go in and say, “You guys didn’t handle that very well. You missed it flat out here here, here, and here, and this thing started on this time, and you didn’t find till over there.” So it’s a pretty intense-type operation.\\n\\n So after about six months, you started to see procedures coming together. Rules were written, responsibilities were then aligned, and the team formation came through. You had your entry and ascent. They came together. The orbit was a little slower just because we didn’t train them as much. A lot of training was ascent and orbit. God, we must have failed four thousand engines in that period of time, and, literally, there’s a lot of ways to do it. So we found as many as we could. You find as many paths as you can to mask failures to see if you can get people to call critical—to shut something down based on bad data.\\n\\n It’s a pretty tough environment, and you want to make sure that when the—but literally, when you go back to Apollo 11, the computer malfunction and the light that was on the Moon, that had been simulated. So [Stephen G.] Steve Bales and [John R.] Jack Garman had seen that failure before in a sim. [Richard H.] Dick Koos had put a case together, and they came up with that. So when they saw it, when the chips were down, they were able to say, “Keep going.” Other than that, we probably wouldn’t have landed on the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Based on all the training, the simulations, and all the processes that you were involved with during that time period, what were your thoughts about sending a manned mission on this new spacecraft compared to doing unmanned missions that you had been witness to before?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We really hadn’t done that many unmanned missions. The biggest single concern you had, as I got out of—let’s see. I was the simulation supervisor up until 1980, and then I took over the Propulsion Section down in the Systems Division. There, literally, I went from training people to being responsible for one of the disciplines in OMS [Orbital Maneuvering System] and RCS [Reaction Control System] procedures. They were behind when I got there. But by then, when I got down there, my concern more at that time was, there’s an awful lot of work to go, and there’s an awful lot of fundamental-type things that hadn’t been formed.\\n\\n The thing that scared us all was the engines. They were still blowing engines up over on test stands over in Mississippi. In fact, [Richard H.] Dick Kohrs finally made them stop testing engines for the last three months prior to STS-1, just so we didn’t have to react to another blow up an engine then go figure out why it didn’t make any difference for what we had sitting on the pad.\\n\\n I think probably the one most vivid memory I have of STS-1 is from watching it on TV, because I was back in the SPAN [spacecraft analysis] area in the Control Center on the next shift, but watching the three main engines going downrange, going upside down, actually, and I watched those three globes as long as you could watch them, with the hope that they never were going to go out. We were very concerned that the engines were the weak link and that if an engine failed, no telling how it would fail, because you’d seen failures on the test stands of engines to where they had a slow scan update and one scan it was there and the next scan it was a molten pile of rubble.\\n\\n Engines don’t fail gracefully. When you’re pumping, I think it was, 17,000 gallons a second through a seventeen-inch line, you can’t even shut the valves immediately. You have to slow the flow down with pre-valves so that you can actually shut the engine off. If you shut it real fast, it’ll just take all the—right on downstream with it.\\n\\n We knew the engines were high-tech. The engines were unproven. The tiles were always going to be a concern just because they were the other departure from what we’d done in the past, and you knew they were a critical system. Other than that, SRBs [Solid Rocket Boosters] honestly didn’t concern us as much, because there really wasn’t much that you could do about them. There was no way to throttle an SRB. There was no way to turn one off. There was nothing you could—if the SRBs blew, you just blew. Pretty much everybody knew that.\\n\\n Of course, on\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n [STS-51-L] everybody found out just how much you couldn’t do. We had procedures in place to where crews could have theoretically separated, but it would have peeled you like a banana and put you right back into—the Orbiter wasn’t going to survive. It was the kind of thing that says, okay, if you had a really good day, after you had a bad day, maybe this would work, but pretty much nobody expected it to survive.\\n\\n So what we had then in the early Shuttle days, going from the simulations to getting in and being down into the systems preparation, and I told you we had, like, one flight plan we ran for all this period of time, and we wanted to get all the procedures right on that plan before we started looking at the next thing. We put all our energies into the first flight. We had virtually nothing going into the next flight. Tommy [W.] Holloway was running flight techniques for launch at that time, ascent, and we had tons of issues over just what would you do under certain situations. You had to be able to get it down to something—launch only lasts nine minutes, so you had to get it down to something that you could deal with and that the crew could do off of a cue card, because if you’re under 3 Gs [gravity], lifting your arm and touching a switch, in a simulator you can reach up to do it, but if you take your arm and you put a thirty-pound weight on it and try to figure out that you’re on the right switch and you’re hitting it while you’re doing this, then you had to be convinced that the procedures that you were doing were going to buy you something and that since the vehicle was so integrated and so wired together, some of the steps you took based on one failure were to keep the next failure from being catastrophic.\\n\\n So you had reconfigurations you did, and you wanted to be very careful on those. The flight techniques activity that Tommy ran was probably the most intense set of rules and procedures that we got into. And we had arguments. We had procedures for what we would do under certain conditions with forward RCS, which was part of my responsibility. Rockwell International sent a letter to Aaron Cohen and the Orbiter Project objecting to our procedures that we were using under certain leak conditions, convinced that we might—they were pretty much telling us that we were on our own if we used those procedures, that they didn’t have enough data to stand behind them. It was pretty much a contract-scope-type discussion. They knew there wasn’t anything else we could do either, but corporately, they didn’t like the procedures.\\n\\n I talked to Sy Rubenstein [Vice President and Program Manager, Space Shuttle Development, Rockwell International] years later, and Sy told me, he said, “Yeah, well, we knew there wasn’t anything else you could do, but we were obligated to tell you that we weren’t sure what would happen if you pulled it off.”\\n\\n So we had a lot of those types of discussions, and I think, just from the perspective of the difference in today’s world and then, literally the whole Center worked on Shuttle. So when you look at other programs as they’ve come down the pike, and I know, like in [International Space] Station when people tried to compare budgets and levels of effort that you had working on different programs, everybody worked on Shuttle. So the whole institution was aligned to support the program. There was not that much wasted effort out here, because there wasn’t anything else on the horizon, so we were going to do Shuttle, and we were going to get it all done right. So anything that the Center could do was going to be done that way.\\n\\n John [F.] Yardley, who was the Associate Administrator for Space Flight, when the schedule problems were just to the point where they almost couldn’t deal with them anymore and slips were on us all the time, he made the Center Directors, Kraft and [William R.] Bill Lucas [NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] and Kurt [H.] Debus in Florida [NASA Kennedy Space Center], responsible for the schedule. So it was the thing that said, “There will be no slips, unless you guys can tell me that there’s a real good reason for it.” It was no longer a [dat-for-day]—and I know the day that it came home to us was—we had a routine. Gene Kranz had a weekly session where we’d go through systems issues with Gene, and anything that was then scheduled for a Program or Project Control Board to be dispositioned, we’d run those issues past the management and within MOD [Mission Operations Directorate].\\n\\n We had some valves in the forward RCS, and, like anything else, once you get into it, you realize that the valve you bought, you wish you hadn’t bought. The valves were big ball-valves, and they had steel bumpers at the end where they ended traveling, and they had nylon gears. Now, most people would rather have nylon bumpers and steel gears, but these had a failure-mode to where—at the Cape [Canaveral, Kennedy Space Center, Florida], they had actually chewed them up in some testing down there. So they stopped working. The gears just stripped.\\n\\n So the answer was—the right answer was to go pull the forward RCS module out of the Orbiter, which was supposed to take five days. That was Rockwell’s and the Cape’s first input. It was going to take five days. Well, they didn’t want to take a five-day hit. But we were talking to Gene, and one of my guys was briefing the issue, and he put it up. So the answer is, you need to pull the forward RCS. And Gene says, “Why?”\\n\\n And I thought to myself, “Now, that’s not the answer I was expecting.” I looked at him, and I said, “Did you just ask me why we wouldn’t want to fly in the situation we’re in?”\\n\\n He says, “Right.”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t think that was a rhetorical question.”\\n\\n And he says, “You got it.”\\n\\n I said, “Okay.”\\n\\n We had a simulation that started, one of our long fifty-six-hour sims. We had Rockwell International re-engineering and rewiring the Orbiter, sending us things on console, faxing them in all night long. Then we had to go through and look at all of the failure modes of everything that they were wanting to do to bypass these two valves that had the failure. Finally we had to show up in Aaron Cohen’s office. He was running the Orbiter Project. It was the Director of Engineering and [Clifford E.] Cliff Charlesworth sitting on a couch. There was this little team, and we’re all standing around. Gary Cohen and Ron [D.] Dittemore had done—Ron had finally gone through and figured out all of the things that the software didn’t like about the way Rockwell had wired it together. So we spit that out, and it took about thirty minutes. When it was over with, Cohen says, “Well, I think we’ve got to go pull it.”\\n\\n Charlesworth says, “I’ll go tell Kraft.” It was like, “Okay.”\\n\\n So I know the Subsystem Manager, [Donald R.] Don Blevins—Don and I had gone to college together back in Tennessee, and Don had decided that he was going to have them do some other work while they were in there. He came in the next morning, since he knew he had five days. They’d already pulled it and put it back in. [Laughs] They weren’t going to give anybody another shot at this thing down at the Cape. They had figured out how to take four and a half days out of the flow. They had that thing out of there, had those valves replaced, had them back in the bird and zipped back up before anybody could say, “Oh, by the way, while you’re in there—.”\\n\\n So from that point on, it was like everything was dead serious. There’s no wasted motion between now and then. You have to get your procedures together, you have to be right, you have to—it was like all of a sudden, the whole system reacted to this thing that says, we’re going to go do it finally, and it’s time. So there’s no slack.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we take the next step, let’s change the tapes out for just a second. We’ll take a quick break.\\n\\n [pause]\n\nThat seemed to be the event where people started taking things serious." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was right before STS-1. About that last six months to a year, you really knew you had to get it together. Also, it was at that time when the day of reckoning on all of the promises that had been made everywhere. The system has always kept very good records on—when you made a decision, the programs and the projects are paid to make sure that they know—for example, that says, “We accepted risk on this particular item because there were going to be procedures put in place to do x. Okay. Well, all of a sudden, people started asking where x was. And it had been a lot of years, so they had very good records. At the same time when we were trying to train, putting people in the Control Center on a daily basis, trying to support whatever activities were going on in the design, the program’s intensity level was up over there in the program world, the intensity level was up in the projects. It was always somebody wanted an evaluation on some change. There was just a lot of activity level all of a sudden. At the same time, we had to go through and document where in all of our procedures all of these operational workarounds that had been signed up to over the years, where they were all documented; flight rules, procedures, whatever.\\n\\n So that was all part of being able to do a certification flight readiness out of—MOD’s part of that. So it just kind of was part of the snowball. You just tried to keep running before it ran over you, because it was definitely coming.\\n\\n The day we flew STS-1, the flight was almost flawless. It literally was just the kind of thing to where you couldn’t imagine that it would have gone any better. Start to finish, there were just really almost no problems.\\n\\n Then we got the vehicle back, and they did some of the inspections. My favorite was the candy wrapper that they finally figured out was in a propellant line. The stuff had lodged itself in an OMS engine. Going back and looking at it, there was this minuscule little blip in the chamber pressure on the engine while it was running. It was still running fine, but you could tell that on one of the engines it just took a little drop, and that little drop was a foreign substance that had gotten lodged. Upon further examination and over a period of time, they finally figured out it was probably a candy wrapper that somebody had thrown in there at some point of time, God knows when. It just gummed—there were little things like that.\\n\\n At launch on the first flight, the pressure wave rebound off of the engines was enough to where, if you look at the Orbiter, it always kind of does this [gestures indicating a slight leaning off vertical], and then it comes back in alignment and takes off. That’s called “twang.” They’ve got a term for everything, and that’s not even an acronym. So it comes back and it takes off. The pressure wave had actually bounced off the bottom of the flame bucket and sent a shockwave back through the Orbiter, and we found a shock-absorber strut on the forward RCS tank. The same tank that we had this discussion with Rockwell over whether or not they liked our leak procedures or not, had kinked. So it took enough of a ding there to where there were forces that were above the forces that the strut would take, but the tank held. Now, if you notice, they start this big water deluge well before the engines ignite. That was the change for that, to try to make sure that you dampen that force. If you’ve been to the Cape for a launch, you see that big ball of smoke, the steam that goes out to the sides. Well, that’s the steam that’s caused by the evaporation of that water. Those were the things, after you got it back, you knew that you’d kind of gotten lucky on a couple of things.\\n\\n The next flight, we had an APU [Auxiliary Power Unit]. Again, you’re in the early days, Engle, Truly, and the crew on the pad. We bring up an APU, and there’s something that’s not quite right in the APU. We were back here in Houston, and the first thing you heard was from the guy at the Cape, and he says, “I got such-and-such on the APU. I recommend we go.” It was almost like he never even bothered stopping.\\n\\n George [F.] Page, who was the Launch Director at the time, says, “Now, wait a minute.” So he called back to—Hutchinson was the Flight Director, and they had some conversation, “Do you guys have any explanation for this?” In the meantime, the APUs are running. They’re a consumable, so they burn off hydrazine, and they’re running and they’re running. They talk for a couple of minutes, and finally George says, “Well,” he says, “what do you think, Neil?” or pretty much, not quite in those words. They were still dealing with whether or not—and Kraft came on and says, “Well I think we ought to wait until tomorrow.”\\n\\n George Page says, “Okay. Let’s shut this down.”\\n\\n All they wanted was somebody to say—see, you take the old guys who’d been there, says, “There’s no reason to have to go fly today.” Everybody else is still out there thinking they’d go make it work.\\n\\n Chris just kind of came over the top and said, “No, I don’t think so.”\\n\\n I understand he and Mr. Beggs had quite a few conversations over the roles of Center Directors and all that. We were getting ready to go into the brave new world of NASA, and Center Directors and Administrators always kind of had this pull and tug. It’s traditional. It’s probably going to always be that way. But at that point you started realizing that they went off, they looked at the APUs, they came back and said, “Okay, we’ll go ahead and fly.”\\n\\n Then we had an APU go out during flight. It was one of the APUs that they had rebuilt. They had another rebuilt APU on board, and they were worried that maybe we had a generic failure. We actually terminated that flight and brought it down early. That was a real scramble, because the two-man crew in the Orbiter really are busy. I know Dick and Joe were extremely busy getting everything buttoned up and getting out of orbit.\\n\\n In today’s world we wouldn’t ever try to come down on the second day. We would always go to the third. But at that time you didn’t have crew rest, you didn’t have all those settling time things built in, so that’s part of what you did in the early days.\\n\\n You just always had in the back of your mind that—every flight was an R&D flight. The one we landed out in Albuquerque [New Mexico], during an approach and landing, we were doing a guidance demonstration on that flight. We were within seconds of touching down before the gear finally got down. Going back and thinking about them after it’s over with, it’s the kind of thing that says, man, we were operating awfully close to the margins. But at the same time, we had the team, probably, at that time, that had a greater depth of appreciation for what the system was capable of than at any other time, because they’d been immersed, and the Rockwell team was still immersed, and JSC Engineering. So the whole team had been through the war to get it ready to fly and had probably a good understanding of what it could do.\\n\\n In today’s world, now, we’ve got people sitting in the Control Center who probably were not born when we flew the first Shuttle flight. So that’s the kind of—when you’re looking for perspective, you know, in 1969 we landed on the Moon. There’s a heck of a lot of people around that weren’t alive in 1969." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For the third Shuttle flight, you were serving as the Chief of the Guidance Propulsion Systems Branch. You had changed jobs. Tell us how that job was different from the previous one you had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had three sections. The Prop [Propulsion] Section had the OMS and RCS. They had the on-orbit maneuvering system and the entry ascent control. But the Branch had responsibilities for the main engines and the SRB systems, which were the hydraulics, since once you light the fuse you’re on your way. Then all of the guidance and navigation and control systems as well, the accelerometers and platform and the hand controllers, displays for the crew. So there’s that whole set of systems, then, that flew, that were responsible for flying the vehicle, and we had three sections, then, to do that.\\n\\n The engines were particularly—[John A.] Jack Kamman was the section head there, and then Jack came into the branch after I did. He had worked—Marshall was responsible for the engines, and their contractor then was Rocketdyne. We were implementing procedures that had been hammered out with Rocketdyne and with Marshall. And that had been a big argument. On Apollo, Marshall had actually had a branch of people who were Marshall Space Flight Center employees [in the Flight Control Division], who were responsible for the booster. On this vehicle, since the engines were part of the Orbiter, the tankage, you know, is just—the argument, and it had been a fairly substantial argument—we had to operate it all as one vehicle, and that section then would be JSC employees instead of Marshall employees. That seemed to have worked out pretty well.\\n\\n You ended up with some groups that were fairly insular, because once the engines shot, they were gone, and you didn’t do that anymore. Everybody else worked the whole mission. So, nine minutes into it, they wrote their post-mission report. So it was a little different.\\n\\n In the GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control] world, I think the biggest single problem in that time frame was we’d all honed our edge on flying\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n , and then all of a sudden, here comes flight five, and it’s\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . I can remember the first time somebody walked into my office and said, “They’ve changed such-and-such.” I can’t remember whether it was some system. “And all the parameters are different.” They were rattling on all this stuff.\\n\\n So I said, “Maybe we ought to sit down and talk about this.”\\n\\n So we sat down. Pretty much it came down—I said, “Well why did they change this?”\\n\\n He says, “Well, they’re flying another vehicle.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, you know we’re going to fly another one after this, so we’d better learn how to do this.” [Laughs]\\n\\n So, literally, the next step was, just about the time you caught your breath from flying the first Shuttle flights and congratulating yourself on being able to do them, you had a new vehicle. It was like, now, “This vehicle doesn’t look exactly like that vehicle, but in simulations, it doesn’t look too much different. Now what do we have to go be prepared for?”\\n\\n And the vehicles had some changes to them. Obviously\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n was the first vehicle, and it was always heavier and it always had more instrumentation, it always had more stuff in it.\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n and each vehicle successively either had some system or minor changes to them, and the crews could sure tell you which ones were different. The guys at the Cape that processed them, they all had personalities, so you had to learn to deal with the change.\\n\\n At that time is when it really set in that the process was the only way you were going to survive, that standardizing products, standardizing different things to where you always knew what template you were on. The initial work was started up by IBM and the guys doing flight software to try to go pull together all of the dependencies and the critical path for every flight, as to what inputs had to be due at what time to make what product to deliver to the trainers, to deliver to the test rigs, to deliver to the Control Center. So at that point in time it started sinking in on everybody just how much all that free software was really going to cost you. It was always a lot easier to change out hardware than it was to change out software, because software required you to then go back and revalidate. The hardware, a lot of times all you had to do was turn it on to see if it would take power.\\n\\n So that was the next thing you learned, that Shuttle wasn’t going to fly fifty-two times a year. It also wasn’t going to be real easy to turn it around, and it wasn’t going to be real easy to make changes just because they were software, especially if you had to make it all work before you flew. A lot of times, once you got up in flight, you could fix some stuff, and you did because you had to do it, but you wanted to lift off with a system that was a good system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You only stayed in that position for a year before you got moved to become Chief of the Payload Operations Branch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did they move you over to—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My good friend Carl Shelley, who was deputy to Gene Kranz at that time—well, there was two things going on. [James D.] Jim Shannon was running the Payload Operations Branch over in John [W.] O’Neill’s Ops Division. At this time, since everybody was getting worried about schedules and all these things—and Jim’s very, very meticulous and a very, very structure-oriented type of guy. They took Jim and had him then start working on the operations side of all these schedules and all these templates and all that activity that had to go—and trying to build a system that would then keep up with this stuff.\\n\\n In the meantime, I had some payload background so they offered me a job to go over there. They didn’t ask me whether I wanted to or not; they just offered me the job and said, “The job is over there in that building.” So I left a job that I was very happy with and went over and did another one, and I was very happy with that, too.\\n\\n It was different. When I got to Payloads, we were at the point of getting ready to fly the first—I think we were getting ready to fly Palapa/Westar [satellites]. No, it wasn’t Palapa/Westar. That was after I got there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were getting ready to do the first night launch and the first Spacelab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It was the first Spacelab. All the promises that had been made and all of the processes that had been set up, you now started to see the Orbiter processes play out. You now were to the point where you knew some of the stuff that was going to change on a flight-to-flight basis, based on the changes in vehicle and all. So that was starting to become a little more apparent, how we were going to deal with that. The payload world, then, was right on the heels of “Now you have an Orbiter that’s been through a few things. Now it’s time to go start working on flying payload content.”\\n\\n The payload process was administered by Shuttle—I can’t remember what SPIDPO [Shuttle Payload Integration and Development Program Office] stood for, actually, at that time. It was Glynn [S.] Lunney and Leonard [S.] Nicholson ran the process. The payload integration planning process was a pretty good-sized effort. It had been split up to where the customers had to pretty much—the onus was on the customer to come in and bring you the information. So it was not like what we’d done in the past, where we’d actually gone off, sat down, written it ourselves, and gone off and done it. So at this point, things were more negotiation-sensitive than they were.\\n\\n I can remember what I realized when I went into the payloads arena at that time, was it looked an awful lot like what I’d seen when I first walked into Flight Control Division. They hadn’t really started flying yet, and they were trying to take what they thought the environment was and trying to map into that. The payload guys were trying to do everything the same for every customer and for everybody, and the environment was really different.\\n\\n We had a lot of commercial payloads, Hughes 376 PAM [Payload Assist Module] operations with McDonnell Douglas and all. Those guys would hit town with a customer, and they’d sit down in an afternoon and write up the agreements. We had the blank books from the Program Office. Our guys would just go through and fill out the blanks and send it to them. They’d sign on the dotted line and send them back, and they were ready to go.\\n\\n The same operation with the government. We’d take a government customer like Marshall with the Spacelabs, and they had enough staff to where they—it was like everything was a pull-and-tug, because everything was an argument over control. So we had this back-and-forth with them, and it was all the way up the chain. It was not just at our end of operations side. It was at the engineering level. It was at the program level.\\n\\n JSC would have just as soon never had Marshall in the business of operating anything, and Marshall would just as soon that JSC would just leave them alone. So we’ve always had that kind of relationship with the guys in Huntsville.\\n\\n Then you had the DoD [Department of Defense]. What was interesting there was, the first meeting you’d have with a DoD payload customer was—you could never have much with them, because it was always going to be hush-hush, even if it wasn’t. The second meeting you had was always with a second lieutenant who was speaking for the general and who was not quite sure that he wasn’t the general. So, finally, we just got to the point where we had to take and—we reorganized payloads and operations to where we took the commercials and put them in one section, we took the government, Spacelabs and things we operated with JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California], and put them in another, and we put the military stuff down the hall behind a cipher-lock. Literally, at that point we said, they’re not the same, we’re not even going to try to treat them the same. You’ve got to show good for everything. They’ve all got to go through the process.\\n\\n At that point we just literally made some simplifications. Earl [W.] Thompson was Director of Information Systems out here when he retired. Earl was my deputy at that time. We had an interesting group. We had a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had a lot of people work for you. You had over a hundred people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we had fifty civil servants in that world, and we had about another fifty level-of-effort contractors. We were all cramped into the upstairs admin side of Building 29, where the water tank was over there—the WETF [Weightless Environment Test Facility].\\n\\n The thing I remember the most was they’d leave the doors open downstairs because it gets stuffy in there, and we could always tell they’d left the doors open because our computers quit. [Laughs]\\n\\n That was the point in time where we really started—you asked earlier about that. That’s really where we started seeing the effects of technology, because at that point, we had the Xerox Wordstar that we had adopted within MOD. I think Engineering was running on Apples [computers]. Jack Garman, over in the Data Systems and Analysis side, he was all PC [personal computer, IBM compatible]. At one time, Gene Kranz, the Mission Operations Director, had the largest ethernet operation, Wordstar Ethernet, outside of PARC [Xerox Palo Alto Research Center] out in San Jose or wherever, in Redwood City, and we got the greatest tech support you’ve ever seen. The problem with it was that the system really was only the secretarial support system, but it was the first real Windows. It’s what [William H.] Bill Gates parasited to start up [Microsoft] Windows with. [Xerox sued Microsoft over the design.]\\n\\n It was a great system. I remember being in Building 29 and handing Connie [R.] Dunaway a set of charts. She could type them and print them out on the server in Kranz’s office, and I could pick them up walking into his office.\\n\\n At that time I learned a lot about how much time you could really milk out of the system with it. [Laughs] And I remember getting burned one day when, all of a sudden, the server wasn’t up over there and I showed up with no charts and Kranz is looking at me like, “Well, what are you here for?” [Laughs]\\n\\n That system made all the difference, because it was at that time—we were getting to the point where we had nothing—in the old days we hired in a secretary for every section, and sections were maybe six to eight people. Here, there’s fifty people with one secretary and a helper, and she was in a trainee program.\\n\\n Connie Dunaway was my secretary at that time, and she had been working for NASA since she got out of high school. She knew everybody, and she was intimidated by none. Every so often, you just kind of needed somebody to guard the moat, and Connie was very capable. You need a very, very mean alligator in your moat, and Connie was capable of that. She loved the role, too.\\n\\n We had a lot of young people, and a lot of them showed up in different places. I know in that branch, the people that I gave—[W. Michael] Mike Hawes got a section there. [William H.] Bill Gerstenmaier got a section in there, hired several people that are still with us. [James L.] Jim Clement is now Deputy Division Chief in Operations. Kathy Laurini is over in the Station Program Office, because she was the NASA rep [representative] in the European Space Program. We were able to, at that time, attract some really good people. That’s a partial list. They had [Robert M.] Rob Kelso over there. It was a lot of people that have done well in their careers.\\n\\n I had the same good fortune back in the guidance and propulsion systems world. The first section I had, I had Ron Dittemore, Bill Gerstenmaier, [N.] Wayne Hale, [Jr.], Rich Jackson, [James] Jim Oberg. It was really an interesting group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That should be an interesting mix, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and they were all extremely competent people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During these two positions, the schedule of flights was pretty intense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. They were all different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you share with us about how you were able to be debriefing one, doing one, and planning the other ones? And with all the payloads being different, you also brought in another Shuttle on board, on flights?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Give us an idea of what all was going on and how you were able manage all of that at one time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I mentioned that Shannon had gone off to set up an organization, well, there was a complementary-type operation going on over in the flight software world and in the Control Center world. The Shuttle Program was at that point starting to put real structure into the data products and their timing, and so it was no longer something—early on everybody had said, “I need to know all these inputs by this time, so I need the customers to provide this. I need this from so-and-so,” and they had just written it down. Now it had gotten to the point where it says, now you’ve got to justify why you need it now.\\n\\n I can remember going to a set of meetings with guys like [Lawrence G.] Larry Williams, who were fairly crusty old guys, over in the Shuttle Program Office. After listening to everybody go through justifications, then Larry came out and said, “Well, we’re going to do it all in one day, and we’re going to do it right there.” Everybody howled and screamed and everything. Larry says, “Well, look, I don’t understand what your problem is. You guys today are coming over here individually to tell me all the things that aren’t right and all the things that aren’t delivered when you wanted them. Now, I want to do that one time. I’m getting tired of having to hear that thirteen times. I’m hearing it from the Cape. I’m hearing it from Engineering. I’m hearing it from Flight [Ops].”\\n\\n So literally it was the thing that says, we��re no longer running an R&D operation. We’re now going to make this transition to Operations. When you get to that point, then you just literally don’t get to have it your way. This is not Burger King.\\n\\n It was a tough adjustment. In a lot of areas we got it right, and in some areas we didn’t. In that time frame, you had to get—and it was tough on the customers. I mentioned we had had our normal battles with Marshall Space Flight Center. We ran through a flight ops review, which were formal program milestones that we had for the Shuttle Program. We had to take all of the documents and flight rules and procedures and trot those out for the customers and have them go tell us what they liked and didn’t like.\\n\\n In some areas, like the Marshall Space Flight Center and its first Spacelab, the guy over there just decided that he wasn’t going to work on all the Control Center displays and stuff until he was ready to, so he just ignored it. When we got to the Flight Ops review, I sat down with Carolyn [S.] Griner, and Carolyn and I—I don’t know if you’ve run into Carolyn or not. She was the Deputy Center Director when she retired, over in Huntsville. She was the mission manager on a flight.\\n\\n I said, “Carolyn, I’ve got to have this, and I’ve got to have it tomorrow.”\\n\\n She said, “I don’t understand why this is such a crisis.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, it’s been a crisis now, since you guys are now four months late.”\\n\\n She says, “This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”\\n\\n So they had some stuff to go fix, we had some stuff to go fix, and we hammered it out. But it was that type of thing, that there were some really tough nose-to-nose-type negotiations back in those days. But it got to the point that says, okay, the dates are real, and they’re going to be saluted, and you have to have them. If you can’t make them, you’d better have reasons why. Then you’ve got to go come up with a plan to go put it into place.\\n\\n At the same time, we did some very creative things. We went and did Palapa/Westar. We did that on a quick turnaround-type operation. In fact, we did the flight operations review before they had completed the design of the engineering for the payload bay, which was—normally that’s done first, and then you go do the operations stuff.\\n\\n I have a picture of that flight, of [Joseph P.] Joe Allen [IV] holding onto a PAM, a 3,000-pound PAM. He’s on the foot restraint on the sill holding it with his hands. Dale [A.] Gardner is laying on his back in the payload bay with a four-foot-long torque wrench putting on this thing that you had to have to be able to bring it home in the bay. I thought to myself, I said, people talk about all the things that we do today, yet if you really look back at what we did, it was like, well, that was the only way you could come up with to do it, and so that’s just what we did. They’d have never done that today. No way, José.\\n\\n Every flight had that kind of thing in it. The first Spacelab flight, the crew—John [W. Young] reported this loud pop. Nobody ever figured out what the loud pop was. They figured it was thermal, but it scared the hell out of the crew, and we spent a lot of time, all night long, looking through all the data and everything and never found anything.\\n\\n It was those kinds of things, to where everything was—you took nothing for granted. At the same time, you had to just pretty much—when a guy told you he thought he could do it, you just let him. It was okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your thoughts when they tested the EMU [Extravehicular Mobility Unit]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was the kind of thing where, on that flight it was like, my god, here we are with—we’ve been flying now, and we’re up on our third flight, and we finally decide to go test the [EMUs]? We’ve already flown two times assuming we had [an EMU], and neither of [the EMUs] worked. So it was like, here we’ve been into orbit three times, and we didn’t even have an EVA [Extravehicular Activity] capability, although we thought we did.\\n\\n Those were pretty sobering times. We had glitches in the arms. So it was all of the growing pains of an R&D program, and some of those things were very serious. It was the kind of thing to where it says, “Well, we got away with one.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were the chief on [STS] 51-A, you not only delivered two satellites but you brought two home. That was a little unique in itself. Can you share any thoughts about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was actually not that big a deal. It just kind of—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seemed natural?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had done it before. It was the kind of thing to where you’d done it before. Literally, it kind of got to the point where once I’d done a flight operations review as a Branch Chief, I assumed the flight was done until we got down to go do it. Literally, the whole training period in there was done—my section heads watched out for that. Their guys were part of the flight control team. So literally, unless there was a problem, we had somebody we were worried about on console or certification issues or the flight directors had had heartburn over somebody, and we had to move people around every so often, but I just pretty much didn’t pay much attention to the implementation.\\n\\n That’s part of getting operational. Once I could get to the point that says, “We’re lined up, we know what to go do,” the team has to go do it. So there was never a problem in operations with accountability. It was assumed that you were accountable. On the day that you were deemed to be not accountable, then it was pretty obvious to you that you were—that was not something that was taken lightly. The day you didn’t take the responsibility for your own actions or the day you ducked one, then you were probably a candidate to go find a job somewhere else.\\n\\n We talk about training programs, and we talk about all that, but we ran a sink-or-swim operation. We give you all the opportunities to train, we give you all the information that we could get you trained with, and we gave you the best structure we could get you into, and if you couldn’t cut it, we’d take you out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned earlier that the area was for your customers and your commercial and then your interagency and then the DoD. Were there certain other certification processes that you had to do with DoD differently for their payloads that—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, the real difference with DoD was we had to conduct a lot of our operations behind closed doors and with secret labels on them. So it was an overhead more than anything else. We ran the first flight operations review for the first big DoD payload, and you only had a few places that you could go do them, so we ended up in [Building 1, Room] 966, up in the ninth floor conference room, for a week up there. Like I said, it was all paper process, so all of the discrepancies came in.\\n\\n The things that made those things kind of hard, that was easier with the commercial guys, the commercial guys really were more economical. They were in a point that says, time is money. So unless it was a big deal, they didn’t bother writing up discrepancies. Some of the DoD contractors were the worst. They got paid by the discrepancy notice, so you ended up with a lot more overhead for some of their flights.\\n\\n The first time we ever ran into Aerospace [Corporation], who was the system integrator for the Air Force, it was like, “Who are these people?” It was like dot every i and cross every t, and it was like, “Good lord, here we go again.” We learned. We very much had a disdain for some of the people we ran into and the way they did business, but that was their business model." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the slippage in Shuttle flight schedule affect your job as a payload operations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, not that much. Once you got it going, you bought time, actually. You had to redo some things, and you always had a re-planning process. When they pushed flights too close together, then the guys—the guys that were doing the facility turnarounds had the biggest single problems. They literally had to be able to get one set of customers off of consoles and onto others. This was in the days when all the consoles still had those lights on them, and all this stuff was running off of the old [system before PCs]—it wasn’t running on PCs [yet]. We were literally making the transition in that time frame. So we didn’t have the ease of reconfiguration that the system does today. We got some gotchas. Every so often we’d find one. Then we’d go figure out why that happened, and we’d put a process in place to make sure it didn’t happen again.\\n\\n A lot of times, you got to a point where you had to go identify somebody who was going to be accountable for it and somebody who was going to put the system on notice as to when things had to be done, because we didn’t have the neat template charts that the Shuttle Program runs and the Station Program just run with today. They’re up and they’re running on big interrelational databases. You put the one number in, it changes everything across the system.\\n\\n Well, that wasn’t that way. We had systems that were diverse and they didn’t play with each other. It was a tough environment. Holding it all together was an awful lot of baling wire and chewing gum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was a time, too, that NASA was dealing more with international venues, with the European passengers, Canadian crews. Did that affect your job at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That made it fun, because the diversity has always been part of the fun of doing this business. Doing the same thing over and over and over again wasn’t what people signed on to do. I think, in today’s market, finding guys who want to sit in the Control Center day in and day out, you have to have those people, but they’re not the same people that you went to the Moon with. But a lot of those guys that went to the Moon go stir-crazy doing those jobs. So it’s that balance of the guys who just want to come in for the excitement, the fun, and when it’s over with, they’d like to move on, versus the guys who really like to do this for a living and are satisfied with making every shift count and making small changes here and there, and that’s what punches their ticket." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any challenges working with international customers at this point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Most of the challenges internationally were just the—it was always the first-time-education-type thing. They were eager to work with us. That was not a problem. The Europeans were in it to learn, because they wanted to do it themselves. At the same time, they did learn, and a lot of the lessons they learned were things that said, when we get around the Space Station, we aren’t going to do that again. So that was the kind of thing. But the first time through they were more than willing to go through our processes.\\n\\n We were starting to see some of the vestiges of international competition. I know Mike Hawes had gone out with the [Space Shuttle] Program teams and had done a set of briefings, had gone around to India and several different countries making a pitch. One of the real criticisms of the Shuttle at that time was the numbers of products and the numbers of interfaces, because if you wanted to go ride on Ariane [European expendable launch vehicle], for example, you didn’t have to go do but four books, and with the Shuttle you had to do eleven. It was that type of thing. It was known then that there was going to be competition.\\n\\n What I think was the thing that caught everybody by surprise was how invasive the concept of crew safety and operational safety was going to drive everything you did. It’s obvious when you think about it that that’s the case, but when you build up an unmanned spacecraft, safety is something you deal with on the ground, and then once you light the match, it’s over. So you deal with reliability and quality issues in your ground safety program.\\n\\n Well, here you had to fly your ground safety program, and it also had to be a flight safety program. It also had to be a return-from-flight program. So you had a lot more activity and a lot more of everything—like if your payload didn’t operate, you didn’t worry about it on the ground. Well, it operates in space. So now is it safe? So the payload safety environment was always a big driver on the operation, and it was always an extreme irritant for the payload customers, because they had to produce so much more information than they normally had to go fly any unmanned satellites that they had been accustomed to. Typically, those were the guys that we did business with. [C. Harold] Hal Lambert, [Jr.] might be able to give you some really good perspective on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, we’re at a point where I think we’d be able to stop in a few minutes, but before we do that, I wanted to see if there was anything else about this time period that we talked about today that you might have thought about but we didn’t get a chance to talk about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just to couch the environment, we had all those years to where we hadn’t flown anything, and we’d been getting ready to fly, and then we’d been getting ready to get ready to fly. So all of a sudden, from this time, we’d hired a lot of people. George brought in a lot of people into Operations starting about 1978, ’79, ’77. So we were at the point where we had hired a lot very good young talent, and a lot of those folks were becoming big producers, because they now had five years.\\n\\n At the same time, a lot of guys that had been around for a long time had five years’ experience, too, and they were fifteen years older, or ten, or whatever. It was becoming really obvious to us that a lot of the young talent was moving really fast. So promotions in that time—it was the kind of thing that says that if you didn’t get yours in a hurry, you were going to get run over.\\n\\n I know if you go back and think in terms of the guys that did Apollo 11, Gene was thirty-five. Don Puddy was thirty, in that range. Steve Bales was twenty-seven, twenty-eight. We were a couple of years younger than all of them. We were twenty-four. When I got my section, I was thirty-five years old. I had five rejection slips when I got that one, because we had just now started staffing up. George had done a pretty good job of finding opportunities for guys that he didn’t think were going to be part of the future of flight operations over in Building 1. He’d managed to usher them into jobs over there and managed to get them out, and Kraft helped him. So that opened up section jobs for a lot of us.\\n\\n Like I say, it was the kind of thing back in those days where you applied, and you hoped you got it, and I finally got one, and I got it outside of my area of expertise. There was no way I was a propulsion guy. But Steve Bales was the Branch Chief, and Steve says, “I don’t need another propulsion guy. I need somebody to organize what’s here.” So that’s what I did, and it was a good—they really were. They were excellent. You got three Program Managers out of that crowd, and there’s not much you can say about that.\\n\\n Then the same thing over in the payloads world. It was like there’s always the—you’re in the startups, and if you liked to do startups then you’re in hog heaven. The nice thing about startups for those of us who do like to do them is you can make your own rules for a period of time until they catch up with you. You can take what works and use it, and what doesn’t work, you can discard it and move on.\\n\\n So we had a lot of young talent again coming into the program. We had a lot of opportunities for landing parties, again. And there was time between them to where you could really—the flights started and the flights ended. Station flights really don’t end; they just keep going on and on and on. It was that kind of thing to where you knew you had a pretty good time of it.\\n\\n We would have never had a problem keeping up at a flight a month or even eighteen months. If the vehicle and the system could have processed them that fast, I don’t think it would have been a problem running them, because you would inherently have missions that you could implement, because you wouldn’t have been so—try to optimize everything to the extent that you have to. Today you optimize the flights, because flight time’s precious. The fifty-two-flight-a-year Shuttle was a non-optimized system. I know when Don Puddy in the GNC Branch, we were at the point where we were supposed to start operating the new operating concepts. We were supposed to start evacuating the front room in the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room] over there and having guys then operate out of the back with a shift supervisor back there. [Richard N.] Rick Fitts was the section head that took over from me after I moved out of the prop section.\\n\\n I asked Rick, I said, “Rick, let’s just go through and figure out—.” And Rick’s a tremendous analyst. I said, “How many people difference is it to do what we’re talking about here with people in the back room versus if we just stayed with the Control Center model?”\\n\\n He went back and ran the numbers, and it turns out it was six people total in the Flight Control Division. So we went back and talked to Don. We said, “Don, this not going to work, because the Flight Director is going to sit out there.” Don had been a Flight Director enough to know. He says, “The minute something comes up, he’s going to want to see your happy smiling face out there in front of him. He doesn’t want to talk to you back in some back room and talk to somebody else in some back room. He wants everybody out there on console.”\\n\\n So that was not exactly the cheeriest news that we got to give at that time, and apparently we let a budget cycle go by, but then we didn’t know anything about budgets cycles at that time. We didn’t worry about it. But we were able at that time to go change the thinking. Even Gene had to admit that, yeah, that’s not going to work.\\n\\n We had a couple of other things like that. I know that the day we were sitting over in the Payload Ops, and we were responsible for setting up—had a group that also did the Control Center configuration. At one point in time, there was scheduled that the Mission Operations Director, who at this point in time would have been Kranz, that console was going to leave the Flight Control Room. The guys that worked for me came around, and Lyle [T.] White—and Lyle’s just was a real old-timer. Lyle was born old. But he came around, and he says, “Now, I’m just going to tell you this once, but you need to be aware.” He says, “We’re not going to have a mission operations console in the Flight Control Room after this flight out here,” whichever one it was.\\n\\n I said, “I don’t understand that.”\\n\\n He says, “No.” He says, “It’s been in the plans that way.”\\n\\n I said, “When was it put in the plans?”\\n\\n He said, “About six years ago.” He says, “So the guys over there are planning to take that console out and reconfigure everything.”\\n\\n I said, “Now, are you sure that that—?”\\n\\n So I went gingerly around the system and everything. I was talking to Gene, and Gene says, “Well, that’s right. I’m not going over there anymore. We’re not going to have that console position. We don’t need it. I’m going to throw that back room—I’m going to give it all to the Flight Director and let them run it.”\\n\\n I said, “Okay.”\\n\\n As he was talking, Cliff Charlesworth had just come in. By then we were starting to reorganize. Cliff says, “We’re going to do what?” He says, “You’re not going to do that, are you?” He says, “How are you going to keep those guys out of there anyhow?” [meaning the Shuttle Program management] He says, “Gene, you don’t want to do that.” [Laughs]\\n\\n Gene says, “I really don’t want to do that, but I don’t want to give up the whole plan.”\\n\\n Charlesworth says, “You don’t want to do that.” [Laughs]\\n\\n So we went out of there, and Gene says, “Well, just go tell them that we want to delay it for a while.”\\n\\n So I went back and told them it was going to be delayed, and of course, the next thing you know, they all go up in smoke because they got five years of planning. [Laughs]\\n\\n So those were the kinds of things that say you get your plans in place, and you plan to go do them on a schedule, and the whole system lines up to go do them on that schedule, and then typically you get close and you say, “God, that doesn’t make any sense. We’d better stop.” Then it gets kind of ugly. So we saw some of that.\\n\\n So I expect that next time, if you think about all that—then when the STSOC [Space Transportation System Operations Contract] contract came along and all that, that was part of an agency initiative at that point in time, because Jim Beggs was running the agency by then and it was part of the [President Ronald W.] Reagan Administration. He brought in [James A.] Abrahamson from the DoD, soon to go to Star Wars, and the whole thrust—the Cape was doing a Shuttle processing contract. It was a big completion form contract. Our piece was to do STSOC for STS operations and consolidate all that work completion. The head-shed, out of Washington, was going to get its control over Shuttle operations by forcing the way we did contracts.\\n\\n I think next time we’ll just spend a little time talking about some of that, how much fun I had with all that. It was interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It should be interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was. It was very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So we look forward to the next time we visit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John D. Holt", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I enjoyed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00729", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle Carrier Aircraft", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/STS-R/SmithGW/smithgw.htm", + "original_file_name": "SmithGW_5-12-11.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/STS-R/SmithGW/SmithGW_5-12-11.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA STS Recordation Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Gerald W. Smith", + "location_date": "Huntsville, Alabama – 12 May 2011" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Gerald W. Smith" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is May 12, 2011. This interview is being conducted with Gerald Smith in Huntsville, Alabama, for the STS Recordation Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal.\\n\\n Thanks again for taking time out of your day to visit with us on this project. We know you joined NASA originally in 1961 and then left for a few years and came back in ’67, where you started working on the Orbital Workshop, and then after that you were assigned to the SRB [solid rocket booster] Project Office. Can you share with us that transition to your assignment for the SRBs and then how your involvement and that project evolved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working, as you indicated, in a group that was responsible for auxiliary propulsion systems, small thrusters to control attitude of the workshop. I’d been in that group for several years, and then the Shuttle Program was getting started. The SRB Project was just getting started out at Thiokol, and I volunteered to work on the program. Charlie Woods was the program manager, and I was assigned to Charlie. We were planning to build a separation system, which are small solid rocket motors that staged the solid rocket boosters away from the vehicle. It was a new program, and I asked to work on that. I thought this would be fun, because you had to go through a Source Evaluation Board, pick a contractor, and then be the project manager. I was called a subsystem manager, but I managed the project.\\n\\n It started out as a rather traditional program where we planned to use state-of-the-art propellants for small motors. We were involved in many separation studies and analysis conducted by the [NASA] Johnson Space Center [Houston, Texas] looking at sizing the motors, making sure that even with the motor out we could still separate safely away from the Orbiter and the tank. Early on in that program, we ran tests up at Tullahoma [Tennessee] where we tested a motor against some Orbiter tiles. I think they were about 20 feet away, which was the approximate distance we thought that we would have the motors separate from Orbiter, and it destroyed the tiles. We thought, “This is a major problem,” because this was a traditional propellant with a lot of aluminum additives. Aluminum is a material that causes a very bright light when you see a booster fire, and the solid rocket industry used the aluminum as the fuel. I don’t remember the percentage, but a major amount.\\n\\n This started a major investigation on what we can do to avoid both impinging on the Orbiter with the motor firing, and at the same time what kind of propellant could we use to mitigate the damage. I remember in a telecon [teleconference] with Max [Maxime A.] Faget from JSC discussing the issue; my thought at the time was, “Why don’t we just do something about the tile?” I learned very quickly that we do not do anything to this tile. They’d spent years developing a material to withstand reentry heating. I was a young engineer in this telecon, and I said, “Why can’t we change the tile?” Later it was explained to me that a lot of research had gone into developing the tile, and there’s no way we’re going to change it out.\\n\\n So we had to fix this problem on the separation motor side. We started going around and working with the industry, the Navy and others that were looking at that time at what they call smokeless propellant, which is the same thing as reducing the amount of aluminum, so that both the rockets being fired from aircraft wouldn’t have a bright signature that could be traced by radar. They were working extensively on reduced additive propellants.\\n\\n We did a lot of research and traveling around to the Air Force and Navy installations and found out what they’re doing, and we did settle on a propellant that had about a 2 percent aluminum additive, which was far below traditional propellants. It was really pushing the state of the art at the time, which necessitated a lot of testing because the aluminum is a stabilizer for combustion stability. We had to know whether or not we could produce this material and have the motor be stable, because if it goes unstable it can explode since you get pressure oscillations inside the chamber. It was critical to us to establish a stable propellant design, so we did a lot of testing.\\n\\n We had planned to put the motors on the side of the forward skirt, and we realized we needed to move the motors more forward and try to terminate the burn so that we fired quickly and then brought the pressure down before the Orbiter would fly through the plume. That drove us to moving the motors forward, canting the nozzle away from the Orbiter, and then controlling the burn so that at about eight-tenths of a second the motor firing was terminated. You blink your eye, and you miss it. All those things drove the design of the motor: the placement on the vehicle, the canting of the nozzle, the enhanced propellant, looking at even the igniter. We couldn’t have pieces of the igniter that lights the motor be expelled and damage the Orbiter, so we placed propellant inside a Velostat or plastic bag inside the igniter and let that burn away quickly. We were very conscious of any kind of debris that would come out of the motor that could damage the Orbiter. It took a major test program to verify that we had accomplished our objective.\\n\\n There are four motors on the forward end of the vehicle and four on the aft end, on the aft skirt. We didn’t have to do anything to the aft motors since the exhaust plume did not impact the Orbiter. On the forward end of the vehicle we were worried about the nozzles being canted upward. During ascent, the ascent heating could prematurely light the propellant so we had to put a cover over it. We looked at a lot of different cover designs, and everything we looked at might generate debris. When you ignited the motor and blew the cover off, it could hit the Orbiter. We went through an evaluation and even considered some rubberized kind of materials (Kevlar) that would open up when you ignited the motor. We would score the material, and it would open up like a petal. But we were still concerned that we might burn off one of those petals and hit the Orbiter, so that wouldn’t work.\\n\\n Finally, we decided on a metal cover design that would cover the forward motors that would swing open at motor ignition. It had a ratchet device that once it swung open it would keep the cover open and lock it in place, and that solved the problem. It had never been done before, a first in the business. We did a lot of testing, a lot of experimentation on different cover designs, and finally found one that would ratchet open and at the same time not come off and generate debris.\\n\\n This was a major challenge for a small motor. It was a great project to work on because it was small, about $7 million, and with all the other problems that the program was encountering, we were kind of off having a great time, and I did. Chemical Systems Division was the contractor out in [San Jose] California, and so was just the kind of program to learn to be a project manager.\\n\\n We had an extensive test program, which included testing the motors under the coldest conditions, 30 degrees [Fahrenheit], and the hottest conditions, 120 degrees [Fahrenheit]. We would condition the motors to those temperatures and then fire them. Then we had to worry about aging the motors. We were going to produce these motors and then it’d be years before they’d fly. You’ve got to worry about what happens to the propellant during this extended period of time. Does the chemistry change? So we did what they call accelerated aging, where you put it under specific temperature conditions for an extended period of time and then take it out and fire it. It simulates the conditions the motor would see over several years’ storage time, hot to cold.\\n\\n We conducted an extensive test program. I think we had 8 development motors and 21 qualification motors that we tested to the range of environmental conditions, temperatures, shock, vibration, all the conditions the motor would see on the Shuttle. A relatively easy development and qualification program became quite challenging with interesting problems to solve. All the motors have fired successfully for every Shuttle mission, and there’s really never been a problem. A very successful program, that was my introduction to project management.\\n\\n I was later asked to work on the Space Shuttle main engine [SSME]. I declined because I thought I really knew very little about the main engine, especially the turbo machinery, which was the position to be filled. I graciously declined, and then I was informed that the following Monday my desk would be moved to the SSME Program. In fact, many career decisions along the way have been urged and encouraged by management. I started working on the Shuttle main engine and really knew nothing about turbo machinery. I had worked in advanced propulsion before in 1967 where we were doing some of the early component work on high-pressure engines. That was with Pratt & Whitney. I���d worked on that a short time, but really had very little knowledge about the turbo machinery and all the challenges to be faced in developing it.\\n\\n This was at a time when we were just starting to test, and what we got into was failure after failure. We would fire the motor maybe a second and a half, and it would explode. This was when we realized an earlier decision had created a major problem in the development program. In an attempt to save money an engine was cancelled from the budget, and that engine was to be very highly instrumented with pressures, temperatures, strain gages, all kinds of measurements so that when we fired, we would know the conditions inside the motor. The decision to not build the motor drove us to a flight configuration where there are almost no pressure taps, no temperature sensors, none of the information that you need to know what’s happening inside the motor.\\n\\n Incidentally, in comparison, when I was working at General Electric [Company] from ’65 to ’67, the first supersonic transport engine to be tested was covered with instrumentation. What we were doing was just the opposite of what the aviation industry had always done. A bad decision made for probably good reasons, but it was a bad decision. We were faced with a flight configuration motor with very little pressure and temperature capability. What we were faced with was determining the engine health with the little instrumentation coming off the engine, and the visual and the photographic images. We found we had to go to very high-speed cameras, because early in the testing you’d have a video of the engine, and the next thing, there’s nothing but a huge cloud. You couldn’t tell what happened to it. We went to very high-speed cameras and film so we could start to see as the engine ruptures or comes apart where the first indication of failure was occurring.\\n\\n We tried to do internal instrumentation, and in one instance one of the internal sensors caused a fire and we blew the engine up. So there was trepidation against adding much instrumentation inside the engine, which we really needed. We did a lot of testing and failure investigation, failure analysis, which on one hand was bad because we lost a $20 or $30 million piece of equipment. On the other hand, it was exciting trying to understand what happened to the engine. Examining all the pressures, temperatures, and other data where did things look like they were starting to happen, and then try and identify, if it’s happening there, what’s failing? It was things like turbine blades and sheet metal failures, and all of these things one after the other we kept encountering as we learned to get enough testing and design changes to get a full-duration test. We kept learning from testing.\\n\\n That’s how we developed the engine, which is not, in retrospect, the most intelligent way to do it, but that’s what we had to do. That’s what we were faced with, a lot of testing, some spectacular failures, and then all the investigation that ensued. It’s remarkable today, even to this day, we’ve never had an engine failure. I believe anyone close to the program early on, Challenger [STS 51-L accident] as an example, felt if we ever had a failure, it would be the engine. I think everybody believed that. Certainly I believed it. I was in Washington, DC at the time, and I was totally convinced we had an SSME problem before I learned it was the solid rocket motor.\\n\\n That was my involvement in the SSME. I was on that program until we flew two or three times, and then I went from that to deputy associate director of Engineering. Going back, though, I recall this. One of the problems we had, in addition to turbine blades cracking, we had bearing problems. We would run a test and then take the pump apart, and we’d find pieces spalled off the bearings. In the engine environment, that’s not good to have metal pieces running around. We tested exhaustively and could never quite figure out where the loads were coming from and when they were occurring that would cause the bearings to spall. We were really concerned. This was a major problem, and we were approaching the first flight of the Shuttle.\\n\\n J.R. [James R.] Thompson [Jr.] was the program manager of the engine at the time. A decision was made by J.R.—and management supported it both at the Center level and at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC]—to build a pump that had spalled bearings. We ran a test for 800-plus seconds, which was a return-to-launch-site or abort of the mission simulation. The SSME normally runs for a little over eight minutes. In this case it was over 14 minutes, and we ran it with the spalled bearings. The reason we ran the test was because we didn’t know where in the engine firing time spalling was occurring. The logic then was that the worst possible situation is where you actually start out with them spalled. You run a full-duration test, and if that’s successful, it would clear the engines to fly the first Shuttle mission. It was a gutsy test, and I thought J.R. was absolutely out of his mind. We sat and listened to that test in his office, and 828 seconds was about a year long in terms of just sweating this thing out, because we knew if we blew the engine, we would set the Shuttle Program back years since we didn’t understand the problem at that time. We didn’t know how it was occurring, or where the loads were coming from. So we ran the test, and that cleared the engines for flight.\\n\\n Because of the various problems we had encountered during our testing, we had to pull the pump after each flight and examine them. Initially, the SSME was designed to fly 55 missions before replacement. We were having to pull the engines and the pumps after every flight and inspect them, and, in many cases, replace bearings and other parts. As a result, we never remotely achieved the life expectancy we had planned for the engines. As a matter of fact, when we finally built the first engines and we learned how hot the engines were running and the stresses and temperatures on the turbine blades, we decided to meet with the aircraft industry, Delta Air Lines specifically. They told us that with the materials we were using, they would never operate under those conditions. Well, we didn’t have a choice. The engine was built, it had high temperatures and extremely high pressures.\\n\\n So we changed to single-crystal materials for the blades, the best material we could find in the industry, and then we restricted the engine to 100 percent power level to reduce temperature and stress levels. It was originally designed for a full-power level of 113 percent. In fact we tested several times at that power level, but it really was creating a lot of damage to the engine. So we never allowed the full-power-level operation, and we stopped it at 100 percent just because of the temperatures and pressures.\\n\\n It was a very successful program and an outstanding contractor in Rocketdyne. We had a very close working relationship, the engineering people at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville (MSFC), Alabama] and the engineering people at Rocketdyne. NASA did individual post-test analysis, and Rocketdyne did theirs. After every test we looked at all the data, we compared notes to assess any and all anomalies that might have occurred. We built a competency on the NASA side, where we were technically capable of challenging the contractor. People like Otto [K.] Goetz and even J.R. were very competent people and helped to ensure that we were doing the best job possible. There was excellent coordination and rapport with the Rocketdyne engineers and management.\\n\\n It was a challenging and interesting program. It’s been an outstanding success that I would have never guessed we would have achieved this many missions without an engine failure. Quite honestly, when I started working on the engine, I knew very little about it. By the time I left the program, I was very knowledgeable of the engine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned cameras. Where you were taking photos so you could actually see what had happened. Where were those located on the test stands?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were on the stand close to the engine. We lost some cameras, too, when the engines blew. We had them located on the stand and in close proximity to the stand, anyplace we could put them where we could see what was happening. It provided invaluable data because we were filming up to 2,000 frames a second and greater, whatever camera speeds we could find with the technology we were using, so we could see exactly where something started to fail. A little puff of smoke coming out of the engine or something like that. It gave us a lot of information, along with the instrumentation, as we tried to improve our ability to monitor the engine tests. As I previously noted, the engine has very limited pressure and temperature measurements so we were constrained and relied heavily on the visual aspects of what was happening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By the time you started working on the engine, had they closed the facility for testing out in [Santa Susana] California?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they basically had. They tried to build a facility that would simulate the pumps, and that facility got so complex that they never really used it. It was very expensive to create the conditions in a high-pressure fuel pump or a LOX (liquid oxygen) pump. So, to my knowledge, they never used it.\\n\\n When I was assigned to the program, we had moved the testing to Stennis [Space Center (SSC), Mississippi], and of course we did some testing at Marshall, but most of the testing was at Stennis. There might have been a test or two at Santa Susana, but it was being phased out at the time that I got on the program. During the development program we spent a lot of time at Canoga Park [California]. We had NASA teams rotating to California working with the contractor. I was gone a lot, working very long hours, especially as we did the failure investigations and design reviews. Almost all the testing that I was involved in was at Stennis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about some of the more memorable tests that you took part in out at Stennis Space Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The most memorable one was the one with the spalled bearings. That was a gutsy call. Again, that’s where a project manager earns his pay and J.R. earned his. A memorable one was a test at Stennis. We had the NASA Administrator [Robert A. Frosch] there witnessing an SSME firing. When you fire the engine the combustion process produces water, which in this instance caused a cloud behind the engine as we were testing. The cloud drifted over the building where we were standing on the roof with the administrator, and it started to rain on us. We’re all scrambling to get umbrellas on a perfectly clear day, and it’s raining on the administrator. Pretty embarrassing when you’re not ready for something like that. That was kind of an interesting phenomenon.\\n\\n What other tests were memorable? They were all memorable in terms of the problems we encountered, and what’s going to happen next. Like I say, some of the failures were spectacular, and trying to understand what caused those was always a very interesting exercise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were the investigations done with the team that you had in place, or did you bring in outside people to investigate them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had outside people that were supporting us and doing related research. We had one professor at Texas A&M [University, College Station] helping us with research, trying to understand the environments affecting the turbopump parts. Dr. Gene [Eugene E.] Covert from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge] was a consultant. He was examining the same kinds of performance parameters that we were to try to help us determine what we might do differently to correct the problems. We drew on any resource we could find, including consulting with some of the aircraft manufacturers, Boeing and certainly Delta, to see what we could learn about their best practices that we could use in terms of materials, inspections, operating restrictions, etc. So we did use experts that we thought could help us, because it was a major engineering challenge.\\n\\n You’ve got to understand that the high-pressure fuel pump, in terms of power density (size and the power that’s generated) generated 75,000 horsepower and would almost fit under the hood of your car. We were harnessing an enormous amount of power in something not much longer than this table here, not even that wide. It was a huge engineering accomplishment to do that. We faced challenges every day in every test and learning as we went along.\\n\\n Again, a very successful program, but not meeting the reusability requirements that we really wanted to achieve made the program quite expensive. The Shuttle is an expensive vehicle to operate, but there’s never been a vehicle like it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you solve some of the problems that you faced commonly, like subsynchronous whirl or problems with the turbo blades? Can you talk about how some of those issues eventually got resolved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Subsynchronous whirl was a concern for us at one time. We ran tests where the vibration levels got very high and we got into subsynchronous whirl, which could lead to total destruction of the turbopump. We did studies to learn how we could decouple some of the frequencies by making a stiffer shaft, and that’s what I recall we ultimately decided to do, to change the frequency of the operation of the pump and eliminate conditions that would tend to drive these frequencies that could damage the pump. That was one of the areas that we really worked with A&M on, the subsynchronous whirl. Dr. Dara W. Childs did a lot of research in frequency response and how to mitigate it.\\n\\n That was just one of the many problems that we had: bearings, turbine blades, sheet metal. We had sheet metal failures, and we investigated how we were exciting the sheet metal, which was failing under high-cycle vibration. So learning everything we could about the frequency response of the entire system and how they feed on each other was essential. One of the things you’ve got to make sure is we don’t generate some kind of a frequency that affects the vehicle and hence the Orbiter. All of that required major studies, analysis, and tests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you talk to us about the ISTB [Integrated Subsystem Test Bed] and the testing out at Stennis? Can you tell us about why it was conceived at that point and how it was successful?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, I can’t. I’m vague on that, I can’t give you anything definitive. I don’t remember exactly when we did the ISTB. Maybe some of the other guys could help you, but I can’t. It’s has been a long time, since I worked on the project and the things I remember were the mistakes I made that we had to fix. Those are vivid. The other things aren’t that memorable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever feel pressure from Johnson or from Headquarters because the engines were such a pacing item for the Shuttle Program? Was there ever any insistence that you’ve got to hurry it up or costing too much money?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "J.R. was the one that felt the pressure, as the program manager, although he dealt with that better than anybody I’ve ever seen. Yes, we had pressure from our own management that kept looking at failure after failure in this marching schedule to get to flight, and I think that was felt by everybody on the project. I felt it because the major problem on the engine was the thing that I was the deputy chief engineer on (the turbopumps). So at the time we’ve got all these problems, I’m learning about what the thing looks like and how it operates.\\n\\n Yes, I felt an enormous amount of pressure personally, simply because it was my project, and we’ll talk about that later on the SRB. I think there was a sense throughout the project by all the people that we really have got to learn as much as we can, as quick as we can, so that we can be successful on this program. I think that just permeated the entire organization.\\n\\n Of course, the Orbiter was off having its own problems, too. We were not worried about the Orbiter, but we knew that we had to be successful in getting the engine to run full-duration missions so we could fly. I think we all felt the pressure of the schedule and certainly the pressure of the technical problems, and that was coming from Headquarters to our management, to the project manager, to all of us to try to solve these problems.\\n\\n There’s a lot of stress that people not having been there will never understand. There really is. It’s very rewarding in retrospect as you look back and think, “We did it,” but, yes, certainly I felt pressure and I think everyone else did too to varying degrees, depending on the individual. I’ve seen people that don’t appear to be feeling the pressure, but really do, some of them much more obvious than others, no question about it. J.R., as the project manager where it’s your project, your responsibility, had to feel that pressure, but you would hardly ever have known it, being around him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the media interest like in the SSME as you were working on the project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nothing like it was on the SRB later after the Challenger accident. The media, I’m sure, followed it. In my role, I had very little interaction with the media. I’m sure getting ready to fly the Shuttle there was media attention being placed on it, but nothing like it was later on the solid rocket booster. I think the media was following the progress of the program, but not that close. They got much closer later.\\n\\n The other interesting thing, too, was the transition from the Apollo Program to the Shuttle Program, which offered different challenges for project managers versus the Apollo days. Apollo had unlimited funding and a very tight schedule. The staffers in the Congress knew very little about the space program or the vehicle, and so you were able to really do all the things you wanted to do. You had the money, and you could be very successful. Throwing enough money at it, you could really make it happen.\\n\\n Shuttle comes along, and now staffers think they really know everything there is to know about the program. Therefore, they start setting budget limits, and you’re finding all of a sudden you’ve got a very constrained budget, a very tight schedule, and it became much, much harder to manage. This is my view of management in Apollo versus Shuttle. A very different environment where you didn’t have unlimited money and couldn’t do all the things you’d like to do. As you were developing the system, the requirements would change, and you had to work smarter. Again, the money wasn’t there, so you’re really trying to manage a very tight schedule and very tight budgets. It was just an entirely different management challenge and certainly as technically difficult as Apollo.\\n\\n The Shuttle is just an amazing vehicle and very complex. So you had all the technical challenge that I’m sure the Apollo people had under a much more constrained environment. It made managing much harder with much more accountability. If you overran, everybody was in your knickers, so to speak. Media interest back then I’m sure was there, but not to the extent of Challenger. My involvement was less so I really don’t know much about how extensively they followed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any changes that were made after the first flight of STS-1 to the main engine itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. After many missions, we went to a different contractor, Pratt & Whitney, to build the turbopumps. A lot of criticism from the Congress and others that the rising costs of this program was because Rocketdyne was not doing a good job of building the hardware and improving it. A decision was made, by NASA Headquarters, to go to a different contractor for the pumps, so we did change contractors to Pratt & Whitney.\\n\\n We were always changing and improving the engine in subtle ways as we learned from flight and all the testing we were doing. One of the things that J.R. put in place was a fleet leader concept. We had to test an engine on the ground so that it had at least twice the test exposure of any experience we would have on a flight motor. We ran an extensive test program at Stennis, always trying to extend the life of the hardware, so that we never flew something that we had not tested at least twice the duration on the ground. It was a very extensive test program that ran throughout the entire Shuttle Program. Lead the fleet was probably one of the major reasons we were successful on the engine and never had a problem.\\n\\n We did have a failure prior to a launch. We had a shutdown on the launchpad where a valve did not open and had a shutdown on the pad. A major investigation ensued that was pretty exciting. I was involved in that investigation. We thought the engine controller had caused the valve to malfunction and did extensive testing of the valves and the controller over several months.\\n\\n I was the deputy program manager at the time, and Bill [William E.] Taylor was the program manager. We tested and tested and couldn’t specifically identify the failure. We had to brief the administrator before the next mission and were supposed to explain to him what happened. As it turns out, for reasons not clear in my mind, I had to brief the administrator. The night before, I briefed senior MSFC management and they didn’t like my charts. So I was up all night long with Rocketdyne on the phone, redoing all the charts.\\n\\n The next morning, I got on a plane in Huntsville to fly to Washington. We had to pick up Dr. [William R.] Lucas, the Center Director, who was in Virginia. Dr. Lucas was a taskmaster, technically very competent and very demanding of other people as far as technical competency. We picked him up and I thought, “I’m going to get killed right here,” because he got on the plane and I had to brief him. I had to tell him we didn’t know what caused the problem. We had a most-probable explanation, which was contamination in an actuator, but we had contaminated actuators and tried to simulate what we thought could have happened and could never get the actuator to fail. So now we’re going to Washington to tell the administrator we don’t know what happened, and we’re getting ready to fly two weeks later.\\n\\n When we got there, after I had two hours sleep, there were other meetings that lasted all day. About six o’clock in the evening, we were in the administrator’s conference room with all the deputy administrators there. It was an audience that I had never previously been exposed to and, needless to say, I was very nervous. The air conditioning at Headquarters had been turned off about five o’clock, and it was getting very warm. There were two instances that we had to present to the administrator; there had been a fire on the pad that Bob [Robert B.] Sieck from KSC was going to have to explain, and I’m to explain what had happened with the SSME.\\n\\n We start the briefing, and the administrator says, “Tell me what happened.”\\n\\n It was [James M.] Beggs. I said, “Mr. Beggs, we don’t know what happened, but we have a most-probable cause and, if I could, I’d like to take you through this presentation.”\\n\\n I could tell he was really irritated. It had been a long day; it’s hot. He said, “Okay, go ahead.”\\n\\n I gave the briefing, which was probably an hour and a half long. When finished, I said, “This is the most-probable cause, and this is what we think.”\\n\\n I never will forget this. He looked at his staff, all the deputy administrators, and he said, “Does anybody here have any other ideas?” He looked back in the room, there were a few people in the back, “Any of you have any ideas?” He looked up the ceiling and he says, “Do you have any ideas?” I felt a tremendous sense of relief, and his comments broke the tension in the meeting. Because of the heat and the stress of the briefing I was soaking wet.\\n\\n He accepted the briefing, and we flew a successful mission a couple of weeks later. But talk about stress. I’d flunked the internal review and I had to change the charts, in fact in ways I didn’t even like. So I’m briefing charts I really don’t care for, but it went fine. That was the first time that I’d ever been exposed to that level of management, and it was a tough time to be there. That was memorable for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did things change once the Shuttle became operational?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It didn’t change. Everybody said we were we’re operational, and it was never that. People kept declaring we’re operational, but we were doing the same flight readiness reviews, all the analysis, and continuing to test at Stennis. Really nothing changed. We didn’t reduce manpower because we recognized this vehicle was so complex, we have got to stay on top of it. So we never changed that as long as I was on the program. It was just extremely challenging, and we recognized that. There was no difference operationally that I ever recall. We looked at ways to improve processing at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] reducing the timelines, and as I recall there really wasn’t a lot we were able to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you provide any assistance at the Cape for launch? Was that one of your responsibilities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the SSME, I was always in the Huntsville Operations Support Center and not at the Cape. We were monitoring all the information from consoles and the chief engineer was at the Cape. On the SRB, I was monitoring the consoles in the Launch Control Center (LCC)." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We haven’t heard about this Huntsville Operations Support Center before. Can you tell us about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had all the consoles set up, monitoring all the systems: the tank, the engine, the boosters. We had a large support group in this Huntsville Operations Support Center that was monitoring what was happening at the Cape. We’d have a planeload of people fly to the Cape and be there at the consoles, but we had the support group in Huntsville. Contractors were tied in during the missions and doing their own monitoring. We had a very elaborate system monitoring the vehicle during the launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever do any sort of sims [simulations] like they might do at Mission Control?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did sims. The simulations were challenging. There would be one failure after another to challenge the whole team. The sims were very important as to how the teams responded, how they dealt with problems, and I was always astounded at how well each of the subsystems managed the crisis they were faced with. I think the simulations exercised the people and their knowledge of the systems extremely well, so we did those throughout, and that was quite helpful.\\n\\n It was just a very exciting program. Unfortunately, the young people today at NASA can’t ever get a program going and continue it through design, development, and testing. They miss the opportunity to learn so much and you do learn in that environment.\\n\\n During my tenure on the SSME, the head of Science and Engineering Jim [James E.] Kingsbury decided I needed management experience. I’d not had people working for me that I’d supervised. I was working for the chief engineer on turbo machinery at the time. So Jim decided that I needed management experience and named me as branch chief in the Propulsion Division over combustion devices and turbo machinery. Now all of a sudden I’ve got a branch of people in propulsion, the same people who had been doing all this heavy involvement in development of the engine and doing all of the data analysis. I was having a great time there, loved it, because it was where most of the action was on the engine.\\n\\n So I’m having a great time in Science and Engineering, and I get a call from the head of Personnel and he said, “Bob [Robert E.] Lindstrom, the MSFC Shuttle Program manager, would like for you to become the deputy SSME project manager.”\\n\\n I explained to Don Bean, who was head of Human Resources, “I like where I’m at, and I’m not interested.”\\n\\n Three months later he called and said, “Lindstrom would really like for you to come over and be the deputy engine program manager.” Again, I told him that I wasn’t interested. This went on for several months.\\n\\n Then I went to the MSFC first-level supervisory training, a management development program at a state park in Guntersville [Lake Guntersville State Park, Alabama]. It was my first exposure to the entire Center organization and what everyone does. I’d been working in Science and Engineering all these years, and I just really didn’t have much knowledge of the way programs were run, what programs the Center was involved in, and how administration worked. I was very naïve, even though I’d been at NASA for many years. It was quite an eye-opener for me. We had all the department heads and project heads giving briefings, and I never will forget Bob Lindstrom’s presentation. I didn’t know Bob Lindstrom, other than who he was.\\n\\n It reminds me of something on the SSME, regarding Lindstrom. There was a problem during the development program where occasionally we would rotate the pumps to check the torque. The torque had to be low so that during the start transient the pump wouldn’t seize up. What could have happened if the fuel pump doesn’t come to speed quickly and the oxidizer flows in, and there isn’t enough fuel, it can cause a fire. The fuel pump’s got to start up at the same time as the oxidizer pump, so we would do a torque test. A mechanic would take a wrench and rotate the fuel pump to check against established limits that said if the torque is greater than some value, we’d pull the pump and check to see what’s causing the high torque. It was something we had learned during the test program that could affect the way the engine starts and possibly cause a failure.\\n\\n We were getting ready to run a test and checked the torque. The fuel pump was a little high, but in my opinion, it was fine. We had enough information for me to believe it’s not going to be a problem. But the chief engineer I worked for wanted to pull the pump and inspect it.\\n\\n There was a meeting with the program office, J.R., and Lindstrom, to review the situation, and my boss, the chief engineer, couldn’t go. He sent me to the meeting, and the discussion came around to this particular instance, and Lindstrom asked me what to do. I said, “The S&E [Science and Engineering] position is we should pull the pump.”\\n\\n He said, “What’s your opinion?”\\n\\n I said, “Bob, the Science and Engineering position is we should pull the pump.”\\n\\n He said, “I want to know what you think.”\\n\\n I said, “It’s fine. It’s okay.”\\n\\n So we tested, and it was okay. But my boss was very upset with me. Even though I explained, “I told him what the S&E position was, what the recommendation was, but he kept asking me mine. I had to tell him, ‘This is what I think.’”\\n\\n There are instances along the way where you get kind of in a bind with your boss and somebody higher up wanting to know what is your opinion. I think Lindstrom respected my opinion because I had worked so long on the project, even though the chief engineer was outstanding too in his own way. Some of the situations you get into, you’ve got to call it the way you see it, which was something that I had learned along the way, always be honest with people. In my career I had people that misled me, did not tell the truth, and I promised myself I would never do that with people. I’ve tried never to do that.\\n\\n Lindstrom gave this briefing at Guntersville. The thing that kept impressing me as people gave presentations—that “I must always know what you’re doing, because I’ve got to talk to the boss, so I’ve got to know everything,” and my chief engineer was like that. Lindstrom gets up and explains what he as the program manager for Shuttle does, with his program managers, J.R. Thompson and George [B.] Hardy (SRB) and the external tank manager Jim [James B.] Odom. “My responsibility is to keep the Center Director informed, but that can be either through me or through my project managers. As long as he’s being informed, it’s fine. It doesn’t all have to come from me.”\\n\\n I thought, “Well, that’s refreshing,” because he’s flowing down responsibility to the project managers. And I thought, I really like that idea. That had impressed me.\\n\\n Later I’m at the Cape at a Manned Flight Awareness Honoree Award watching a launch, and Lindstrom corners me and says, “I want you to come work for me on the SSME Program.”\\n\\n So I did although at the time I didn’t know if I wanted to be in the project office because I liked engineering challenges. I initially worked for Jud [Judson A.] Lovingood, who was the SSME Project manager and really had a great time and enjoyed it. Jud gave me a lot of latitude to follow the testing. Jud had been a laboratory director and was wanting to learn more about running the project, the budgets, and the schedules. He said, “You take care of the technical,” which I did, and enjoyed the assignment.\\n\\n Then Judd moved on to deputy Shuttle Program manager, and at that point in time they separated the SSME Project into two pieces. One was a flight project, the other a development project. Joe [Joseph A.] Lombardo was named to head up the development program. Bill [William F.] Taylor had the flight program, and I became Bill Taylor’s deputy. So I worked for Bill for a year or two. Bill was a different kind of manager and wanted to be the face of the project to everyone. Basically I just supported Bill, and somewhere along the way I realized I can’t do this. All my responsibilities had been taken away. I was really responsible for nothing as a deputy and decided that being a deputy sucks. It really did.\\n\\n Finally, Bill and I had a meeting of the minds. I said, “Bill, you’re a good guy. Your management style requires certain things from a deputy that I’m not, and I can’t do this.”\\n\\n So Lindstrom moved me, and at that point in time I was named deputy associate director of Engineering, my first SES [senior executive service] position. That was a great job because it overviewed all projects at Marshall, and I was learning more about all these other little projects and big projects. I was familiar with Shuttle, but the Hubble Space Telescope and other projects the Center was doing were just exciting. All the chief engineers reported into that office. [J.] Wayne Littles was my boss at the time, and I was having a great time.\\n\\n Approximately six months later, I was named to lead a Source Evaluation Board for TDRSS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System). Now I’m off on an SEB, cloistered in a building out in test area for months. We got through most of the SEB activity, and at the time there were overtures coming from Headquarters for me to go to Washington and be the project manager for the SSME in Washington Headquarters. I was not interested since I had been to Washington many times, and I had no desire to go. I kept being quizzed by Center management and Jim Kingsbury. They’d keep asking, “What are you telling them?”\\n\\n I said, “Jim, I don’t want to go. It’s nothing I’m doing.”\\n\\n But they kept requesting the Center assign me to Headquarters, and I kept being told, “You’re not going,” which was fine with me.\\n\\n As I’m working on this Source Evaluation Board, I get a call to Dr. Lucas’ office. He’d had a bad situation occurring in a meeting with the administrator about a problem we had on the engine. There was a lot of misinformation going around, and he either got embarrassed or he was upset that nobody in Washington seemed to know what was going on. He said, “I want you to go up there and head up that program,” which I did.\\n\\n I was in Washington as director of the SSME Project in the Office of Space Flight. It was a good experience because I got to see kind of the problems that Headquarters deals with and had a greater appreciation for what they did. It was an excellent experience for me to get to work in Washington.\\n\\n I was there at the time of the Challenger accident. The day it happened, I was in the conference room watching the launch, and as soon as I saw the explosion, I said, “We’ve lost it.” I watched it for no more than four or five minutes, walked out of there into my office, turned off the lights. I was convinced the engine had caused the failure, and I was asking myself all day long if maybe something I had done, some decision I had made, caused the accident, and it gave me a major problem for a long time.\\n\\n I sat there all day and went home. There was a blackout of Marshall Space Flight Center to the media and Center officials would not talk to them or me. Even though I was a Marshall employee, they wouldn’t even talk to me. I called Lindstrom and said, “Bob, we’re getting all kinds of media requests, and I don’t know what’s happened. I don’t know what’s going on. Can you tell me something?” He was under blackout orders like everybody else and couldn’t talk to me.\\n\\n So my boss, the division chief, says, “You’ve got to go talk to the press.”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t know anything.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, you have to talk to them anyway.”\\n\\n So I’m talking to the New York Times, people like this, with no knowledge of what happened. They had followed the progression of the SSME development, so they’re quizzing me about turbine blades, bearings, etc. I explained, “I have no idea what caused the failure, and I don’t know if the engine was involved. Anything I say is just historical information, and it has no bearing on what happened, because I don’t know.” That was very hard talking to the media, and they asked question after question. When I had no knowledge what had happened. I was upset at the Center that I was put in this position of talking to the media.\\n\\n Then we learned it was the booster. I had spent a year in Washington, and the associate administrator for Space Flight, Jesse [W.] Moore, had asked the Center to extend me at least six months maybe longer to go through another budget-cycle review with the administrator. I was on that extension when the Challenger occurred. But the Center wanted me to come back to work on the redesign of the booster, so I came back to the Center. Jim Kingsbury, the director of Science and Engineering, was leading the redesign team at Marshall. We had a redesign team at Thiokol and a redesign team at Marshall, working pretty much independently to come up with ideas about what we should do to the motor. I worked for Jim Kingsbury for quite a while. Then later they named John [W.] Thomas to head the redesign team, and about that time I was asked to take over the SRB Project from Larry [Lawrence] Mulloy, because Larry was going to be leaving the agency.\\n\\n I might add there was no way I wanted to be the SRB manager. I thought, “I do not need this.” I had been led to believe that I was going to be offered a position in Science and Engineering. When I came back though, after the accident, I spoke to Dr. Lucas and said, “You know, I feel terrible about what’s happened.” Morale at the Center and at Thiokol was awful. “If there is anything I can do to help, I’ll do it.” Well, that was a mistake. I was called into Dr. Lucas’ office, and he asked me to head up the SRB Project. Again, he asked in a way that you don’t say no, and I thought, “I don’t need this.”\\n\\n So I took over the job. Larry and I overlapped for about a month, and then he left so now I’m managing the SRB Project. Other than the small project on the booster separation motor, I had never really managed a project, certainly not of this magnitude. I felt that MSFC was making a mistake by naming me, since I felt NASA should have the best manager the agency had to manage that project because of the criticality of the project to the Shuttle Program.\\n\\n About that time, J.R. was named Center Director and Dr. Lucas retired. I’d worked with J.R. for years, and his new assignment was the best thing that ever happened to the Center and to me personally. I had great admiration for him since I’d worked for him on Skylab. I wanted him as Center Director since I now had to lead the SRB Project and the SRB redesign. In fact, I bugged him constantly to leave Princeton [University, Princeton, New Jersey] and come to Marshall. He once called and told me, “Gerald, don’t you have anything to do but call me and ask me to take the job?”\\n\\n The media was contacting me all the time. I never will forget Kathy Sawyer, a Washington Post writer, a very knowledgeable lady and one very critical of NASA. Somewhere in the redesign effort Kathy called and she was following up a lead for a story which was totally wrong. I don’t remember what the subject was, but she had bad information. I said, “Kathy, that’s not right. Here’s what I know, and I’m reasonably certain that I’m correct.” I told her what the real story was, and I said, “Kathy, let me tell you something, here’s my home number and my cell phone. You call me anytime day or night, and I will give you the correct information.” She seemed startled with that. After that she never called, and I never had a problem and really no negative articles. I just said, “Look, anything you hear, call me.” That was the rapport I tried to build with the local newspapers and media outlets.\\n\\n Interestingly enough, I had an assistant who came out of Public Affairs, and up until J.R. came, you could not meet with the media unless someone from the Center staff was there. You didn’t talk to the media at all without them present. J.R. came along and changed the policy to allow me and others to talk to the media which I thought was reflective of a Lindstrom philosophy, which puts responsibility on the project manager, and you didn’t have Big Brother looking over your head.\\n\\n I would meet with the media and my assistant would say, “You talk too much, you just answer the questions. Don’t talk so much.” She’d debrief me after every one of these. Same information each time, “You talk too much, and I’m going to send you to charm school (a media relations course).” They scheduled me time and again to go and learn how to interact with the media, and I never had time to do it so I never got training. I’m sure that most of what I did was wrong, but I thought, “This is crazy. Why can’t you be honest and open with people?” Even though sometimes an article would come out and it would totally be in error in terms of what I said versus the way the person either heard it or the emphasis they wanted to place on something. I struggled with that, but that’s what you get dealing with the media." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to provide real information for them, or were you constantly doing damage control?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was both. A lot of times it would be information, because I built a pretty good rapport and they would talk to me. Then a lot of times it was damage control, because there were just a lot of rumors flying around. We had hired people, job shoppers that at least in one instance started making fallacious claims about things that Thiokol was doing and covering up. We had all of that. In fact, we even had an FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] investigation in a situation where we had some damaged O-rings that had gotten packaged, and we were trying to find the source. We were even being criticized that we were not cooperating with the FBI, and I had one of my people assigned to the FBI working with them constantly. I went to the FBI, and I said, “Look, tell the media that we’re cooperating.” They refused and wouldn’t talk to the media. We went through many investigations from the Inspector General’s office and the GAO [Government Accountability Office].\\n\\n On the SRM Project, we were doing things in parallel. We were building development motors and flight motors at the same time. Normally it’s sequential. You design the hardware, you build the development hardware, you test it, you qualify it, then you build the flight motors. Well, we were doing both concurrently, taking a huge risk that the design wouldn’t change to the point that we would have to scrap all these motors we’re building for flight.\\n\\n Again, it was a very tight schedule. We worked a three-shift-a-day, seven-day-a-week schedule for two years at Thiokol. We were building test stands at Thiokol and test facilities at MSFC to test joints and nozzles. These were major facilities, all being built concurrently with doing the redesign.\\n\\n I had a project team at Thiokol led by Royce [E.] Mitchell. John Thomas was at Thiokol assigned by the Center Director’s office. We also had the National Research Council [NRC], Dr. [H. Guyford] Stever, providing oversight. So I had a lot of help managing my project. Every morning on Monday, I met with J.R. at six-thirty in the morning in his office, and they were very interesting sessions where we would meet for about an hour and he wanted to know what’s going on and how I was going to solve the myriad of problems I was facing. But part of it was a learning process, I think he was teaching in a lot of ways. The other was he wanted to know, “Do you need any help from anybody?” And I’d tell him.\\n\\n [Robert J.] Schwinghamer is a classic example of providing help to my project. Schwinghamer is another character, brilliant guy, very opinionated. I had great respect for him, but he didn’t want any one else managing his lab. Not that I wanted to manage the lab, but I’d have a situation where I might ask for some materials person to be sent out to Thiokol, and I’d ask by name. Well, he didn’t like that. He said, “You just tell me your requirement. I’ll figure out who to do it.” I’d had a few meetings with him, and in one meeting with J.R. I told him, “I need this from Schwinghamer.” I leave, and I’m waiting, sitting at my phone, knowing the phone’s going to ring. Schwinghamer called and was very upset, because he’s having to send somebody out there and it wasn’t his decision. J.R. had told him. It was one of the many ways J.R. helped me.\\n\\n Then there was the NRC Stever Committee that provided oversight and reported to the NASA Administrator. I was always amazed that Guy could take these guys, all very opinionated, very bright, from throughout industry and manage them in such a way that they could come up with a recommendation of the majority of the members. They were a great help because they did provide a lot of oversight, really challenged us, and made us work very hard to answer their questions. They also imposed requirements above and beyond things we had planned, which gave me budget problems. Each year when I established my budget, I never knew what they would ask for, maybe additional testing or analysis, so I was always fighting a budget problem managing that project, driven by so many people providing oversight. It was quite an experience, and I had great respect for that committee and their contribution to the success of the motor redesign.\\n\\n We had an extensive test program, eight full-scale motors, which was more than the original Solid Rocket Motor Project. We built a full scale and subscale test facilities to assess joint operation and conducted extensive materials testing of O-ring materials and insulation. In the latter part of the test program certain engineering managers wanted to test a full scale motor with flaws since we had redundancy throughout the motor, and they wanted to go in and flaw the motor in ways beyond anything we would ever build.\\n\\n I disagreed since we would be creating flaws that would be easily detected during the manufacturing and development process and significantly risk a motor failure. Therefore I was adamantly opposed to the idea. “I don’t want to do this,” but S&E was pushing me to do it. I thought this was overkill. If we blow this motor up because of flawing it, first of all, I’ll be fired—I’m the project manager—even though I didn’t want to do it. So my first thought, “Well, my career will end here,” and secondly a failure will set the Shuttle Program back again years. We just couldn’t afford to do that over what I was felt was totally unrealistic tests.\\n\\n I lost the argument. We did it, and the result is that you have ultimate confidence in this motor, because we have tested something far worse than anything we will ever build and would not find in the assembly and inspection process. It gave me great confidence, “the motor’s fine,” although I didn’t need that. I was already convinced that we had fixed the motor problem with the redesign.\\n\\n We built a building to go over the motor so we could condition it to the worst case hot and cold conditions at KSC. This had never been done in the original certification. We had certified it by analysis. We were wrong because the joint opened rather than closed and allowed the O-rings to leak, and that’s what caused the accident. We tested at 120 degrees and to do that you’ve got to condition the motor for about 30 days because there are tons of propellant in the motor. It takes a long time for the temperature of the propellant to reach that desired temperature of 120 degrees. The same was also true at the minimum temperature conditions.\\n\\n As a part of the redesign effort, we reviewed every requirement that existed for the motor and how we verified the requirement. We had to show that every one of these requirements was traceable to either tests or analysis to make sure that we had verified the requirement. This was a major activity that disclosed the many areas in the original certification we had not done. Testing hot and cold were examples.\\n\\n The redesign effort included a failure modes and effects analysis, which assessed how can this part or subsystem system fail? The analysis identified all the ways the part/subsystem might fail and what can we do to mitigate it. Solutions might include providing redundancy, changing the design, or doing a more thorough analysis and making sure that we’ve identified all Crit-1 [Criticality-1] failure modes, which says it could be catastrophic. It was essential we protected against all the failure modes. In addition, we performed hazards analyses, which was top-down, looking at what hazards the design might generate and how to mitigate them. It was an enormous task for both the contractors and MSFC.\\n\\n The design process included multiple reviews including requirements, preliminary design, critical design, and then a certification review at the end for all the different systems. The reviews consisted of engineers reading a document or examining a drawing and if they saw a discrepancy, it is written up as a review item discrepancy [RID]. The RID has to be got to be cleared or closed before we can complete the review. It’s in essence a concern that somebody has raised, either the contractor or the engineers at MSFC.\\n\\n Needless to say, the engineering community post-Challenger was very risk-averse. If it was something that they had any responsibility for, they would write it up. As a consequence there were thousands of RIDs generated in these reviews. So we’re months away from flying, and we have had six to seven thousand review item discrepancies written, some of them multiple pages. I had a room set aside to house the books of all of these RIDs that had to be closed. The contractor had to respond to the RID and try to close it, and sometimes it cycled three times through to try to get a resolution to that. When we couldn’t get resolutions, the chief engineer and I would sit in my office and using our best judgment would disposition the RID because I couldn’t get Engineering to sign off.\\n\\n In one of the Monday meetings with J.R. he asked, “What are you doing about those 6,000 RIDs?”\\n\\n I said, “I’m working on it.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, what are you doing?”\\n\\n I said, “Let me explain something. Those six thousand RIDs were written by Science and Engineering, and the last time I looked they worked for you. I’m not generating these, but I’ve got the task of closing them. I’m trying to, but I wish you would lean on Engineering and say quit writing these things, because it’s killing us.” It was a huge task, and we were trying to get ready for the flight certification review at KSC. We successfully closed the RIDs and then we got ready to fly. We had gone through this extensive testing and evaluation to get there.\\n\\n SRB side—when I talk about SRB, I’m talking about the aft skirt, the separation system, the nose frustum, and the recovery parachute system. In a similar way, we had to do the design changes, testing, and evaluation on the motor project. Thiokol was the motor contractor, and USBI [United Space Boosters, Inc.] was the contractor for the SRB. USBI was located both at Huntsville and at KSC. We had to do the same thing on the booster side, relative to the review of documentation. Interestingly enough, the SRB had been an in-house MSFC design.\\n\\n We learned a great lesson from this; NASA is not a good designer. We did the design and handed it over to McDonnell Douglas to produce on a fixed-price contract. NASA Headquarters had decided that “We’re going to quit doing cost-plus contracts because it cost us a lot of money. We’re going to fix-price this project.” So we went into a fixed-price contract, and they ate us alive with changes, because, first of all, we had not done a good job at documenting the design. As a consequence we had major cost overruns on the booster.\\n\\n Then once we were getting the hardware manufactured, USBI won a contract for the booster. They were a part of United Technologies. We went through all the same kind of paperwork verification, testing, all the same things that we did on the motor for the booster. There were many design changes, I can’t even think of all of them. We did major redesign and testing of the separation system, the separation bolts, igniter systems, and then we had to do design and develop a flight instrumentation package. For the first three or four flights we had extensive instrumentation on the booster to better define the environment and to better understand its operation, and we had not done that originally in the Shuttle Program. So we were faced with installing a lot of instrumentation to define the environments for the boosters which included the separation sequence and the extensive use of cameras.\\n\\n We were always dealing with a debris problem that ultimately caused the second failure on Columbia [STS-107 accident] where the insulation came off the external tank. The program had always been getting tile damage. Based on complex flow analyses the ET [external tank] Project, had rationalized that nothing big enough to really cause a problem will come off. And there was always finger pointing, “It’s coming off the booster; it’s coming off the external tank.” We were convinced it wasn’t coming off the booster, and the tank people felt that “It’s not our insulation.” We were always going through that and continued to assess ways we could mitigate any debris coming off the motor. It was a major focus area.\\n\\n When we got ready to fly, we had been identified as the tall pole in the program, at least we thought. In fact the Orbiter was not ready to fly before we were, but they were under our umbrella. Had we been able to fly two months earlier they couldn’t have, so we got there about the same time. For a project manager, this entire effort was very rewarding, and I’m glad I did it, but would never want to do it again. I was working probably between 70 and 80 hours a week for two years until we flew. It took a toll on the family and on me physically.\\n\\n There was a question asked about crew involvement. We had extensive astronaut involvement during the redesign. They attended all of our design reviews and were in my office quite a bit. They monitored the design effort, knew how it worked, and knew how we got to a final design both motor and boosters. They were very inquisitive, including the flight crew. Rick [Frederick H.] Hauck reminded me, “We’re depending on you,” and I told him I understood that and my people understood it. When I went to work on the SRB I had a picture of the flight crew on Challenger, “Lest We Forget” under it, and that’s what would motivate me on weekends and at night. That would keep me going, and we all felt that way. I kept that as a reminder when I’d get tired. We can’t let it happen again. By the time we flew three or four times, I was burned out. Fortunately for me, although I didn’t want to do it, I was transferred to Stennis as the deputy director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the biggest challenge that you had on the redesigned SRM [solid rocket motor] and then redesigning the SRB? Is there one challenge you can point to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Initially the morale was terrible at MSFC and at Thiokol. They were both being blamed for the accident so the morale was really, really bad. The way I dealt with my own team and with Thiokol is I tried to build one team, because there was a lot of finger-pointing. NASA was blaming Thiokol; Thiokol was blaming NASA for putting pressure on them to fly.\\n\\n We had new faces, a new motor project manager, Royce Mitchell, with no propulsion background. We had new people at Thiokol leading the Thiokol effort, even though several of them had solid rocket motor experience. So basically you had a Marshall team with very little solid rocket motor experience. I had the most, coming from the booster separation world, but essentially we had no propulsion experience. Trying to get the people to believe in themselves again and stop the “blame game” was difficult. I constantly focused on our challenge to build the best solid rocket motor that’s ever been built and getting them to believe that was a major challenge. It took a long time.\\n\\n The other thing that I would do is at every meeting with my staff and the people that worked for me, when they would start being critical of Thiokol I’d say, “Wait a minute, let me explain something, we’re one team. This is not us and them, it’s us, all of us, Thiokol and the project office.” I had to really deal with that and keep reminding people, “This is one team, it’s the only way we’ll be successful.” That was another major challenge.\\n\\n After the Challenger accident, a deputy administrator for Safety and Mission Assurance was established. The big push then was the independence of the Quality people from the project, which I had a problem with. Not the independence, but I had Quality people sitting down in another building critiquing what we’re doing, and all I got was notes, “This is a problem; this is a problem.”\\n\\n I said, “Wait a minute. I want you helping me, I want you to identify the problem, and I want you to help me solve it.” I lobbied for a long time and finally got the head of Quality on the SRB Project as a part of my team co-located in the project office because I wanted him there. I wanted him to know what we were doing. I didn’t want to put any pressure on him, but I wanted him to be a part of not only identifying problems but helping me solve them. So we were able to change the organization, get him on my team and it worked great, improved the communication flow. That was a major change and a significant help to me in trying to run the program.\\n\\n The magnitude of the task was a major challenge—seven days a week, three shifts a day—it was just an incredible pace. Every time I’d show J.R. a schedule, he’d say, “You’ve got a little contingency here, take it out.”\\n\\n I said, “I’ve got to have some contingency, J.R., or I will never be able to do the schedule.”\\n\\n He said, “I know it, but we’re going to do seven days a week, three shifts a day because we’ll get there faster that way. If I give you contingency you’ll use it all up.” That was his philosophy.\\n\\n As a project manager, you normally measure yourself against, “How am I doing on schedule?” I had an impossible schedule, and we couldn’t do it. Somewhere through all this I’m in his office, and I said, “You know, J.R., I don’t know whether I should get a grade of C, F, or A. I have no idea what my performance is as a project manager, because I’m overrun on my budget because I’ve got requirements proliferation and behind schedule with no contingency. Things I hadn’t planned for were flowing in from the NRC and JSC, Level Two, driving a lot of requirements.” It’s hard to understand, are you doing good, bad, or otherwise? In retrospect, I never did know.\\n\\n Since he didn’t fire me, I assumed I was doing okay. You never get a feedback from him, and he’d never say you’re doing a good job or whatever. It’s just “Go do your damn job.” I’m in there complaining; he’s telling me, “Go do your job.” That was difficult, to be working that hard and having no idea how you should grade your report card. I always felt that probably a better program manager might have managed better and done it better, but who knows? That was a challenge.\\n\\n We struggled with our contractor management. John [D.] Thirkill was managing the program at Thiokol and his attitude was, “We’re the experts. Just send us the money and we’ll take care of everything.” I had trouble explaining to John, “It doesn’t work that way. We’re going to be in your knickers making sure that we agree with what’s going on, and that we feel the money’s being properly spent.” We had a rather strained relationship throughout much of the time.\\n\\n There were many issues that we had to deal with, and pressure on the people out there working day and night made it difficult. When somebody would get fired at Thiokol for whatever the reason, a lot of times we’d get feedback that we had asked the contractor to fire them, which was never true. We had those kind of relationship problems, and it took a long time to build a good working relationship and get past the morale problem that we had.\\n\\n Budget was a major problem that I had to contend with. We were always in an overrun situation trying to anticipate what are the right set of requirements that we should budget for. Arnie [Arnold D.] Aldrich and I had a lot of discussions about my budget problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you had a six-thirty a.m. Monday morning meeting with J.R. Thompson, and you just mentioned Arnie Aldrich. Did you have specific times that you had to report to all of those people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Dick [Richard H.] Kohrs was in charge of JSC Shuttle engineering, so Dick and I gave a lot of briefings and presentations to Level Two and to Arnie at NASA Headquarters. I’m probably not one of Arnie’s favorite people, because he always had this budget problem that I introduced early in the program as a result of underestimating the extent of the design and documentation requirements. I used up most of his reserve just on my program, and he wanted it for other places, so Arnie Aldrich would probably not grade my report card high as a project manager.\\n\\n As a project manager the one thing I did not do well, along with others, was a closer communication with Level Two at JSC. I liked the people, it wasn’t that, it’s just that I had a job to do and I had my head down trying to get the job done. When I’d need to ask for money for some new requirement out of Level Two, I would hit him cold with it, and that didn’t go down well. As I looked back and observed other people like the JSC projects, they were always talking to Arnie and Dick. They were always in communication, and they would get funded and I wouldn’t. I was perplexed by that because I thought, “I have a real need for this money.”\\n\\n I think that I could have done a far better job keeping that communication loop open with Dick and with Arnie. I was communicating with the Center and even Headquarters, but I wasn’t doing nearly the job with JSC that I should have. That’s just a side comment that as I look back over my career, that’s one of the things I could have done better. I’m really not a great networker. Give me a job and let me go do it, and I’ll do it the best I can. One of the things I tell my sons is that networking is really important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess your report card finally came with the launch of STS-26. Will you tell us about preparing for that flight and then being at the Cape and witnessing the launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As you know we redesigned the motor segment joints, and we put heaters around the SRB to keep them warm so that we wouldn’t get into a cold resiliency problem with the O-rings. We made sure that the temperature was controlled. It was either STS-26 or a subsequent launch that we had a short in one of the wires on the heater. I’d gone to bed about midnight because I was working an SRB problem at the Cape with the USBI people. When we’d gotten that resolved, I went to bed. I got a call from Bob Sieck, the launch director, indicating we’ve got a problem. The problem was a heater short, and the concern was it might have pitted the motor case where the short occurred. We tried to assess the problem knowing we were getting ready to launch. All night long we had the engineers at Marshall and Thiokol trying to do analysis to see whether or not there was enough energy to pit the motor case. Number one, could that pit be such that once you pressurize the motor, it would fail? The analysis and debate went back and forth all night.\\n\\n Sieck walks in and says to me, “Gerald, we’re about to wake the crew, and I don’t want to wake them if we’re not going to be able to fly today. What do you think?”\\n\\n I said, “Bob, I believe when all the dust settles we’re going to solve this problem, so go ahead and wake the crew,” which I was really taking a risk because I wasn’t sure we could solve the problem. We did clear the problem before the launch and had a successful launch.\\n\\n I don’t recall whether that was STS-26 or a later flight, but that was pretty nerve-wracking. I had total confidence in the motor working, but the thing that kept me awake at night was both motors had to light simultaneously because if one lights and one doesn’t, it’s a bad day. We had no way for the crew to escape, and you’re just going to tumble the vehicle. My thought going to sleep at night was, “Both motors have to light.”\\n\\n In an earlier test as we were doing our development test program, we commanded ignition and the motor didn’t fire, so we were standing there stunned. We learned later that design changes to the test stand caused a voltage drop such that there wasn’t enough energy to charge the motor igniter and fire. We made sure that a similar condition couldn’t exist on the flight motor. Having had that experience and knowing that if both motors don’t light at the same time it is a very bad day, and I’d go to bed at night praying that both of them would fire at the same time.\\n\\n On STS-26 I’m sitting at the console in the LCC, and the contractor program manager is sitting beside me. As we get motor ignition I’m looking out and I see the motor start to light, but there’s no pressure on the gauges we’re looking at. We’re sitting there and it’s two seconds, three seconds and I’m watching and it looks like it’s fired, but there’s no pressure reading on the console. The contractor program manager grabbed my leg and said, “Gerald, we didn’t get ignition” even though I was looking at it. That was pretty nerve-wracking.\\n\\n Later we learned that there was a time delay of about four seconds in the update of our screen and what was actually happening on the motor, but that was a pretty tense time. You literally hold your breath for about two minutes until separation, and I just about did. Because of the Challenger and the vivid memories of the accident, you just want to get through SRB separation, which we did, and the flight was successful.\\n\\n I remember I got a call, while still sitting at the console, from a local reporter from the Huntsville Times. He was a young reporter that I had never built a rapport with. He always thought we were not totally telling the truth, no matter what I told him. He was just one of those investigative reporters that thinks, “Somewhere, someplace there’s a story here, and I’m not getting it.” So, he calls me and says, “I think I saw a puff of smoke or something coming out of the booster. What about it?”\\n\\n Of course, I had not seen anything other than the launch and the console data. It really annoyed me. I chewed him out and told him, “Can’t we once just sit back and enjoy the fact that we had a successful flight for a few minutes before we start delving into what could have gone wrong, what might have gone wrong?” I was pretty upset with him.\\n\\n It was a great day, because I knew Rick and the entire crew. They’d been out several times and I’d met with them. In fact, later I got a Silver Snoopy from them. I valued very highly the recognition coming from the crew. Rick and his crew were gutsy people to climb aboard Discovery after the Challenger accident. The astronauts were my heroes. During my career I’ve worked for [Richard H.] Truly at Georgia Tech Research Institute [Atlanta, Georgia] and later for Crip [Robert L.] Crippen at Thiokol, and of course, I’ve known many of the astronaut corps members through our working relationship and monitoring the SRB Project.\\n\\n Every launch you kind of hold your breath. It never gets old, ever. I was at many launches before I finally went to Stennis, and then I followed the launches at Stennis. The director at SSC, Roy [S.] Estess, and I would alternate going to all the launches and sitting in the flight readiness reviews, and it was always exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For people who aren’t from Marshall, if you could differentiate between Science and Engineering, that directorate, and then the difference between the program offices, the relationships between those two organizations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Basically you have a matrix structure where there is a project/program office, but you’re being supported by Engineering, Safety/Quality, and other organizations matrixed in to support the program office. As opposed to a program office that’s has all the Engineering and support personnel reporting to the project manager, these people reported in to different organizations but worked for the program manager.\\n\\n My chief engineer and all the engineers down in the laboratories—Propulsion, Structural, Electrical—all worked for the director of Science and Engineering, but they were matrixed to my program. You’d never know the difference. They worked for me just as if they reported to me. It’s a matrixed structure that worked very well.\\n\\n One reason it worked very well was Bob Lindstrom was the MSFC Shuttle Program manager. Jim Kingsbury, Director of S&E, and Lindstrom had been at Redstone Arsenal [Huntsville, Alabama] as enlisted men in the Army early in their careers and had worked together and were good friends. So you’ve got an excellent relationship at the top, which is important. They knew their responsibilities and they supported each other as well.\\n\\n At one time during the development of the SSME we were having so many failures that J.R. moved his office over into our building where propulsion engineering was located. He co-located with us to further improve the communications, which I thought was a great move. I always felt that it was the better management configuration, where you’re co-located together so that that there’s no reason to say, “You’re not communicating,” versus being located in different buildings. It worked very well for us to have J.R. co-located with us" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve mentioned many of the people that you worked with—Bob Lindstrom, J.R., Kingsbury. What impact did their leadership have on the Space Shuttle Program and its successes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In my opinion, Lindstrom, with his project team of Jim Odom, George Hardy, and J.R., had the finest project team that Marshall’s ever had. I don’t think any of us measured up to those guys. That’s not to take anything away from other people, but Lindstrom and those three guys were outstanding in terms of their ability to deal with the myriad of problems in developing the systems, the tank, the SRB, and the engines.\\n\\n Lindstrom was a manager’s manager. That was one thing I learned when I was being asked by Lindstrom to take over as deputy manager for the SSME. I called J.R., Jim Odom, and George Hardy, just to get their views of really whether I should take the job. One of the constant feedbacks that I got from those guys was Lindstrom is really a project manager’s manager. He lets project managers do their job. He’s not totally hands-off, I don’t want to imply that, but he really delegates and lets people do their job. He had three very, very strong managers, and I think they were the key to the success of the program, no question. There was very good engineering support, but I think their management skills were just outstanding. They set the example for me and my peers.\\n\\n At one time I tried to emulate J.R. as a manager, and I gave up. I thought, there’s no way, because in some ways we’re the same, but we’re very different. You try to pick the best attributes of each manager since they were all different, but all very good at what they did. I think the Shuttle Program was blessed to have those four people at one time during the development of this program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You talked a little bit about your relationship with Arnie Aldrich. Could you give us a sense of the relationship between Marshall and JSC during the Shuttle Program, from your perspective?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Early on, Bob [Robert F.] Thompson was head of the Shuttle Program at JSC. I think management got along well. I think there’s always been—how do I say this—a culture at Marshall that felt that we were more technically competent than the people at JSC. We were more hands-on because of the nature of the hardware development programs. I don’t think that feeling persisted at the working level. The people at JSC that were doing our separation analysis did a great job, and we had a great rapport. I think there was some friction at the senior level, maybe even between the Center Directors between JSC and Marshall, but I think at the working level we didn’t have a problem.\\n\\n The friction that Arnie and I had was strictly early on. I presented a huge budget problem to him that persisted for a long time, and so I think he was frustrated with that. But otherwise Arnie, Dick Kohrs, and the other JSC people I interfaced with were excellent. I don’t know if there was some jealousy between the two Centers, but if there was it was more at the senior level. I did detect a certain degree of arrogance on the part of Marshall when I was in Washington. Certain senior management had the attitude, “Headquarters, send me the money, and we’ll take care of it.” They did not communicate well with Headquarters, and I suspect that was true with JSC.\\n\\n This might be explained by the early competition between Centers as they were evolving. We had [Wernher] von Braun and JSC had their leaders, KSC theirs. It’s normal competition between very strong leaders during the Apollo Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned working at NASA Headquarters for a while representing the SSME. What were your duties up there and how did they differ from working at Marshall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As the Headquarters SSME Project manager I tried to stay abreast of what was happening with the test program because I would have to brief the associate administrator, Jesse Moore, and the NASA administrator. So a primary responsibility was the communication and staying on top of the program. I had good relationships with the Marshall people since I had worked with them on the engine program. Since I was the engine expert at Headquarters, if there was a question they would come to me. Also if somebody had to brief the media about the SSME I was assigned that task.\\n\\n Another responsibility was presenting the budget in reviews with the administrator. I recall the chief financial officer and I got into a debate in front of Beggs (the administrator) about the SSME budget. Knowing the program really well enabled me to defend the budget, and Beggs enjoyed the interchange between me and his chief financial officer.\\n\\n Jesse Moore, the associate administrator, had asked that I extend several months beyond my one year assignment to go through another budget cycle. By virtue of my knowledge of the program, I could represent to the people at Headquarters the SSME Program and why it was important, why we needed the money. That was my principal responsibility, to be the resident expert on the engine, so if there was any question they could come and talk to me.\\n\\n An example of an issue I had to deal with was the Stennis Space Center. MSFC had always used Stennis as the test site for the SSME, but kept the money and we gave them money and a budget. MSFC gave SSC the money to support the facilities and do the testing. Stennis wanted to be more independent and get that part of the SSME and then manage it, and Marshall did not want to give it to them. I happened to be at Headquarters at the time, and I remember Jess Moore called me in and wanted to know what I thought about it. I said, “I think we should give them the money, because they should have the responsibility for how they manage their facilities and their contractors that do the testing,” and he did.\\n\\n Dr. Lucas was very upset with me about that, and some of the people in the engine program office were very unhappy. They thought, “We just lost a part of the budget,” but it really belonged at Stennis. So that’s how the associate administrator would use me as a sounding board, “What do you think?” That was my function at Headquarters, and that’s the reason they transferred me there. They needed somebody that knew the engine program well enough to defend it.\\n\\n It was an excellent learning experience to deal with congressional staffers in a way that I had not previously done. It took me a long time to accept that certain decisions are made politically. We were trying to get an engine test bed at Marshall for testing technology and to modify a stand to test the SSME. It was in the MSFC capital budget, and Senator [John C.] Stennis stopped it because he wanted all the SSME testing be done at Stennis. I met with his staffer and explained that this doesn’t make sense. Marshall, with all their expertise, should be responsible for propulsion technology. Stennis should be responsible for the development testing.\\n\\n He said, “You don’t understand. You’ve got to put together a story to show how Stennis benefits from Marshall having this test bed.”\\n\\n So I had to put together a different presentation entirely and explain to the staffer that as MSFC develops new propulsion technology, new propulsion systems, Stennis would be the beneficiary because the development and flight testing would be done there. They agreed, and we were able to release the money. These were the kind of issues I dealt with at Headquarters. I had to learn that in some instances there had to be some political advantage to another state or another constituency. As an engineer I was taught to use logic whereas they weren’t interested, they were interested in “How does it benefit my state?” It was quite a learning experience.\\n\\n After the Challenger accident, J.R. was asked to lead the failure investigation at KSC and to take a leave of absence from Princeton. Dick Truly had convinced J.R. to take the job, and then J.R. asked for me to go with him and assist in the investigation. As we were doing the early failure investigation we were starting to brief the Rogers Commission [Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident] about the investigation.\\n\\n Another little insight into J.R. He’d want to get up at four o’clock in the morning and do wheels-up at four, and then we’d ride all over the Cocoa Beach area trying to find a restaurant that served breakfast. So I had this brilliant idea, why don’t we get up at six o’clock because the restaurants will be open and then we can eat breakfast and can go to work. Just one of the things that was constantly playing out between me and J.R.\\n\\n I subsequently went back to Headquarters, and that’s when MSFC asked that I be assigned back to the Center. I’ve always felt that one reason, and probably the only reason, that they picked me as the SRB Project manager was not because of my wealth of experience or demonstrated capabilities, but many of the candidates at Marshall had been implicated by their participation in the telecon the night before the Challenger launch. That cast a cloud over a lot of very capable people that thought they were making the right decision.\\n\\n So you rule that group out, and you had to have somebody that was acceptable to Headquarters. This was no small assignment, putting a project manager over the SRB redesign; this was a major assignment, and they had to have somebody acceptable to Headquarters. Well I worked there, knew the associate administrator, and had worked for him. So when you stack all these cards, I think Marshall didn’t have a lot of options for picking somebody. It’s my own opinion that I got the job—not by default, but I think all of those things interplay into what happens to you in your career. I just happened to be at Headquarters at the time of the accident, happened to know the people at Headquarters, was probably acceptable to them, and had a strong a propulsion background. All of these things played together in an interesting way that as you look back, if it hadn’t been for that it wouldn’t have happened.\\n\\n Luck is key, in my opinion, to the success of many people, because there are so many hardworking, very bright people out there. I keep telling my sons, “You are not going to be the brightest person in your field, so you’ve got to work hard to achieve your goals.” That’s what I did, and being in the right place at the right time made the difference. I had a great career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you just share with us for a few minutes about your transition to ATK [Alliant Techsystems, Inc.] and Thiokol?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "After five years at Stennis I decided to retire, and I called J.R., Jim Odom, and Bob Lindstrom about what I should do. They said, “If you’re going to retire from NASA and continue to work, retire at 55, because then you’re more marketable.” So I retired without a job. A few companies were talking to me, but I got a call from Admiral Truly to come work for him at GTRI (Georgia Tech Research Institute). I accepted and I worked there for about two and a half years. Richard (Dick) was a great guy and an excellent manager, and GTRI was a fascinating place to work because of the diversity of the research and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Dick left to become Director at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Boulder, Colorado.\\n\\n Shortly afterwards I got a call from Bob Crippen, who had been named the president of Thiokol. He talked to me about replacing Joe Lombardo, who was his vice president of Space Operations. Joe was approaching a mandatory retirement age of 65. I wasn’t really interested because I was enjoying GTRI and was acting director of all of their labs at the time.\\n\\n I met with Crippen at dinner, and he made the offer. At the time this was occurring, my daughter lived in Logan, Utah. Her husband was the basketball coach at Utah State University, [Logan], and they had two children. At night I’d get a call from this little voice saying, “Granddaddy, are you going to come out here and live with us?”\\n\\n I’d tell my daughter, “This is undue pressure that I don’t need.” This went on for two or three months, so I had my daughter and grandkids really wanting us to move out. With that and after the meeting with Crippen, I took the job and went to ATK as the vice president for Space Operations.\\n\\n During the next few years we were got bought a couple of times, the first time by Alcoa. They bought us because there was a Fastener Division in Condant, our parent company. Alcoa decided they didn’t need a rocket company and put us up for sale, and we were bought by ATK. Crippen had a buy-out clause and retired and ATK named me president of Thiokol.\\n\\n I agreed to stay two years, and we merged Thiokol with Alliant into one company that I had to manage. This was another interesting challenge because the two biggest competitors in the solid rocket business were now merged. We kept the Thiokol name because of the strength of the brand, even though Alliant personnel felt they bought us, and therefore should keep the Alliant name. This was a cause of significant resentment on the part of Alliant. I had to deal with this and other issues while trying to build a rapport with a group that didn’t want to be a part of us. Even up to my retirement this was a major challenge.\\n\\n All this time, I moved my wife around these places, Mississippi, Washington DC, and Utah. None of which she wanted to go to, but she supported my career. She was a real trooper. It was an amalgam of lots of opportunities that I would never have expected. I have been very fortunate and truly blessed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you. Anything else you have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, thank you very much for your time. We certainly appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Gerald W. Smith", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re quite welcome, I’ve enjoyed it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00069", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-030.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Klug, Thomas (1972-1974): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-030", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-030", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Thomas Klug served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana from July 1972 to July 1974 as a chemistry and math teacher. He taught at St. Peter's Secondary School, which was run by Catholic missionaries but financially supported by the Ghanaian government and thus followed the government curriculum. The school was a compound with student dormitories and staff housing a mile from the village of Nkwatia (in the Kwahu region) so Klug didn't interact much with people in the village. The Ghanaian teachers almost considered Peace Corps volunteers to be part of the white school administration, while the administrators considered them staff. Therefore, Klug interacted more with the British, Irish, and French teachers at the school than with Ghanaian teachers and staff. He discusses the importance of passing school exams for students' future prospects and his success in helping his students pass these exams. He also talks about his travels in Nigeria during his service; in addition, he toured Europe for three months on his way home. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, November 5, 2018. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "5 November 2018", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 61 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "034. Ghana.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Ghana. Klug, Thomas (1972-1974): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Ghana", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-030", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-030-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/tc6ah660764eh57e4b73782002gtl2we.pdf?odc=20231115174201-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/4ec6d832-5506-4462-9877-4f722dfb79ac/b8553b4d-1dab-4e15-805d-f497ba6b15d0/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI4NTdfOWEzZTNiMGViZTRkOTQ5MjgwMDUwYjFiMTY2ZmZjOTdlOWY5ZTdlMTVlODM4ZDRiMWYxZDY2ZWM1MmRjNDgwY18vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS80ZWM2ZDgzMi01NTA2LTQ0NjItOTg3Ny00ZjcyMmRmYjc5YWMvYjg1NTNiNGQtMWRhYi00ZTE1LTgwNWQtZjQ5N2JhNmIxNWQwL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Blue Bell, Pennsylvania", + "length": "33 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 12, 2018, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Thomas Klug Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Evelyn Ganzglass" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Thomas Klug" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Evelyn Ganzglass. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. Today is November 5th, 2018, and I'm interviewing Thomas Klug, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ghana from 1972 to 1974, and he was in a teaching program. Tom, why did you decide to join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:31", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had always kind of wanted to volunteer and thought I was going to join VISTA, which was the U.S. program, kind of like Teach America and some other programs now. And I thought, my thinking was that it was better, that there was plenty of needs in the United States and I didn't need to go overseas to do those things, and I'd be better to go to the United States. But as I looked at it, it didn't seem like there were many teaching positions in the VISTA program. And I wanted to really teach and get some experience teaching. And my intent was to become a teacher when I came back. Um. So I decided to apply for the Peace Corps. There did seem to be a lot more teaching positions and I guess I got accepted.\n\nI had been looking for teaching positions. I had completed my master's degree, or I was completing my master's degree at the University of Wisconsin. I was studying chemistry, which I really didn't like to do. I found out, it took me a master's degree unfortunately, I found out I didn't like to do it, but I kind of liked to teach it. I liked the subject. I really didn't feel like I was the type of person to advance and I didn't really like working the lab and things of that nature. So it seemed like a good opportunity to see the world and get away. And for various reasons, I didn't serve in Vietnam and I felt like it was a way to provide some service to the U.S. I kind of felt that, you know, everybody had to provide some type of service to the United States.\n\nAnd I probably wasn't as dedicated as the 19, you know, those in the 1960s who were starting this program. But I met some of them in recent meetings who were really the founders and felt like they were making a real contribution. I think in the seventies I found it a little, little different. Maybe not everybody in the sixties was that way, but in the seventies I think people just wanted to see the world some more." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:02:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think there was a lot of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:02:49", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They did have more of a, they had a devotion and, you know, wanted to serve, but maybe not quite as gung-ho I found as the people that I met recently at the, uh, who had served in the early to mid sixties, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:03:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So some of that may change over time as well as they tell their stories. So I think it was a total, being from the sixties, let me tell you, people wanted to see the world. They wanted to escape Vietnam. There were many reasons people joined, including not liking whatever they were studying and trying to do a reset." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:03:25", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And of course, when you've only got two to 300 of the 220,000 volunteers, you've got the really enthusiastic people who come to the national meeting. And many of them seem to come every year or many years when they can. So it isn't probably everybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:03:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Don't feel bad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:03:41", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A good sampling. No, I don't. I didn't, I didn't feel bad about it. I just, I think most of us and some of them had actually done a program, a teaching program, ahead of time and had planned to do it. So I think most of us really, really wanted to work hard and things. But I think coming in, I was too young, but coming in in the sixties would have been interesting. And, you know, with the Kennedy development of the program and his speeches about what we were going to do, I think you really probably came in a little more, more gung ho. And by the seventies, it was kind of there, I won't say passé, but a little bit more of a, just an important thing to do, but maybe not quite as changing overall that Kennedy had sold." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:04:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. But you were still inspired by him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:04:28", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:04:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how old were you when you were, when you went in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:04:32", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good question. I was. I just turned 26, I believe, and I was out by 28. And at the time I was 28, I did two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:04:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And where did you grow up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:04:43", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Went to school, went to college at Purdue. The Indiana Purdue campus in Fort Wayne for three years, went to the main campus for one year, then went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison for three years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:05:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So definitely Midwest. Had you traveled at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:05:05", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not a lot. I'd been to Montreal for the World's Fair, been to Florida with my parents to see my uncle. Went to New York on the way back from Montreal. But, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:05:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No international travel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:05:21", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Didn't see the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:05:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Montreal's international." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:05:23", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually during graduate school, we took a road trip to the Grand Canyon. So I'd never been, other than Canada, I'd never been out of the country. In fact, this is kind of off the topic, but I think it was kind of interesting when I went to Canada. It was, and now it's so much different than nowadays. I had never really met somebody that didn't speak English as a primary or secondary language, and really there were probably others, but I can remember only one. And we had an exchange student when I was in grade school who was from a foreign country. I mean, in Fort Wayne, there probably just weren't that many, many foreigners. Now, you can go anywhere in small towns in Minnesota and, you know, you go to a grocery store and some are speaking Spanish, some are speaking German. It's, it's, it's, uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:06:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:06:19", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Amazing change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:06:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that's all part of it. What did your parents think about your joining the Peace Corps, your friends?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:06:27", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hmm. My dad thought I should go to work and get a job and prepare for retirement. Maybe in retrospect, he was right. And my mother. I had had a lot of illnesses when I was young between almost kindergarten through high school. I had had a lot of pulmonary lung and lung problems and had missed almost half of my freshman year of high school with pneumonia and a kidney infection. Finally, the doctor, after I got pneumonia the second time, the doctor said stay home until it gets warm. So my mother thought I was going to get sick. Although through from college, you know, from freshman year of college on, I didn't really, wasn't really ill. My health had kind of turned around. I'd had every illness I think that was possible. So I was immune to a lot of things. And so she was worried that I'd get sick and die." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:07:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a good thing for a mother to worry about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:07:34", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, she was worried. As it turned out, I made it through most of the time. I think the worst thing I had was I think I got food poisoning one time at one of the better restaurants in Ghana. I ate off the street and things, but then never got sick. But ate at a good Chinese restaurant and I got sick, so I don't know whether I had probably a food poisoning from pork or something that I had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:08:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So we'll get, we'll get to that later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:08:06", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:08:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you applied. How did you even know about the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:08:11", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good question. That I'm having a hard time, you know, I just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:08:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just knew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:08:14", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just heard about it, I mean, there was so much out from the Kennedy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:08:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There wasn't a recruiter who recruited you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:08:18", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think I ever met a recruiter. I just, you know, wrote for probably an application, filled out the application, and didn't know if I was going to get called." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:08:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did it take for you to hear back? Was it a long time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:08:33", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't. I would think I applied in like February and found out in like April of the year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:08:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so it was pretty fast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:08:40", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It wasn't too long. They needed science teachers. And I was a chemistry teacher and could teach math." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:08:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you apply for a specific part of the world?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:08:51", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was just, we were talking about this this morning on our way up and before you came. And I guess I put in places, but I really didn't know much. I think I put in like South America first, which probably wasn't a good choice for me. I may have thrown in Africa as a secondary choice, but it was, you know, in the end, I realized it was more logical to send me to a place like Ghana, which was English speaking, and where I could teach chemistry easily. It would not have been easy in a Spanish speaking country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:09:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you applied to be a teacher and a chemist?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:09:25", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I believe my main interest was in teaching so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:09:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, so you got the letter and then where did you have your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:09:35", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We went to Philadelphia for about three days, and then there were people from four countries I think. Maybe it was, I know it was Ghana, Togo, and maybe Dahomey, which is, there are two very thin countries next to Ghana, between Ghana and Nigeria. And then the others went to Uganda, flew off to Uganda afterwards. There might have been another East African country that they went to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was really just getting shots and things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:10:13", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, then we did our training basically in country. Went to, uh, about, after our first thing we went, I think we went out to a relatively small village and did some language training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:10:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In country?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:10:31", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:10:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you met in Philadelphia, you were there three or four days, and then you flew off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:10:38", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Flew off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:10:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How big was your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:10:43", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were well over 200 going to all the countries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:10:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So all the countries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:10:49", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say, and I really don't know, 60 to 80 maybe in Ghana, a lot of them teachers. Ghana needed teachers at that time. In fact, Ghana was the very first country. There's some argument, but Ghana was a very first country to, I think, have volunteers in the country. Several people are fighting over who was, uh, who was the first. I believe the Philippines was maybe the first to sign the document. And Ghana was the first to have volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:11:15", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then there are some people that say Nigeria as well. So maybe they were all at the same time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:11:20", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they, in '62, I believe, '61, '62, they went to several different places and I don't know. I think boots on the ground they were in Ghana first, but other people did some training in the United States before the Ghana thing started. So it gets to be kind of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:11:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had been on a plane before because you had gone to Montreal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:11:42", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well, Montreal. Had ever been on a plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:11:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, maybe you hadn't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:11:47", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I'd been on a plane to Montreal. I don't know if I'd ever done any other flying. Maybe once or twice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:11:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you flew from Philadelphia to somewhere in Europe, I assume. And then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:11:58", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we flew to the Canary Islands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:12:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, to the Canary Islands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:12:01", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was our stop, I guess, gas up spot. And then we flew to Ghana from there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:12:07", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was your impression when you got off the plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:12:12", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we were in the airport first. And, you know, a lot of, a lot of people there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:12:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it look like the Philadelphia airport?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:12:20", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At first they didn't want to let us in because we hadn't had all our shots. But they, the staff, the in-country staff, managed to get us through and we got additional shots the next morning. So they kind of cut corners a little bit. Um, Accra was a fairly big airport, but nothing like Philadelphia maybe. I'm from Fort Wayne, Indiana, maybe somewhere between Fort Wayne and Philadelphia. Nothing like a huge airport like Philadelphia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:12:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:12:59", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But, uh, not in those days, although it's gotten bigger now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:13:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you all hopped on a bus and then you went to this training site. Is that how it worked?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:13:07", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I guess. I guess we got there on a bus. And then what was interesting is the people, and this was the middle of the night, we got started late at about 2:00 and then we didn't get there until pretty late in the evening. I don't even remember what time. But then the poor people who went to Togo had to hop on another bus and go, I don't know, another hour or two to Togo. So it was a challenge. I was glad I was getting Ghana." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:13:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. And what kind of training site was this? Was it a college or do you know? But was it in the, it wasn't in Accra?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:13:46", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think it was near Accra. But I don't really. We weren't there very long. We were only there a couple of days. I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:13:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:13:52", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, that part of it, I don't. I can't recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:13:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, so what happened? So what happened in this training site? Language instruction?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:13:58", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the initial site, they kind of just reorganized us all. And we went out with a group of only four. There were four of us I can remember, maybe one or two more. I think there were only four of us went to, I can't remember the town, but we went to a town past Kumasi, which is, oh, about an hour and a half, 2 hours. That's the other big city. And I should be able to remember the town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:14:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doesn't matter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:14:32", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I can't. But we were there and then we were in maybe, maybe school dormitories. I guess they're out of school during the summer. And there were at least two guys and one girl. And it wasn't really all that near the place. And I'm just trying to think. The girl went up north where, but if we all learned the language of Twi, which is T-W- I, and I don't learn. I'm very good at writing languages, but I'm not very good at, uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:15:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:15:10", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At speaking them, which got me through well in high school Latin where we didn't have to speak it much, but it was tough. It was tough for me. So anyway, mostly language training. We had Ghanaian trainers who got us oriented to the culture and things and people in town and a little bit. I particularly met a boy who was, I can't think of his name. Michael. Michael Ageymang, I don't know how to spell it. A-G-E- Y-M-A-N-G, something like that. And he was crippled on crutches and things and we became kind of good friends, although I didn't follow up much with him afterwards, although he followed up with some of my sister's friends and things and managed to talk them into sending him watches and things of that nature. But that was okay. They liked it, I guess they enjoyed doing it and they had the money to do it.\n\nSo but anyway, that training lasted, oh, maybe four weeks. And then we went to a university, Cape Coast, which is a teaching, which a teacher's university, and did a little bit more of the orientation into what the teaching was going to be like. Although I can't remember learning a whole lot from that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:16:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you do practice teaching?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:16:38", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Really not. I had, uh, I had been a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin teaching chemistry. So I, you know, I had a pretty good idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:16:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you knew what you were doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:16:53", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty good, as much as you, you know, I mean, you're usually following a professor's lead that's there and trying to guess what he's going to put on the test. So anything that happens in college. And so I wasn't too nervous about the teaching, although in, unlike the United States, you have to pass tests after you take so many years. And I was in a school that had both ordinary, which is sort of middle school, to high school. And then it had an advanced level, which is sort of a junior college. So you had five years of the middle high school, ordinary level, and you had two years of the advanced level. And after each of those, after the grade school actually, to get into the ordinary level, you have to take an exam. How you do determines whether you go back on the farm and use your machete, or whether you go on to ordinary school.\n\nIt also determines whether you get into a good ordinary school or not. After the ordinary five years, you take another test to get into the advanced level. And after the advanced level, you take a test to get into college. And these are very important tests. So it was a lot of, a lot of pressure on me, unlike in high schools, which are important here in the United States, but they don't test quite as well, although now there are, now a lot of these states are doing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:18:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But so were you teaching at the high school level? What level were you teaching?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:18:27", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It kind of ran, it was a seven year program. It kind of ran from junior high, you know, like seventh, eighth grade, to high school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:18:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that's where you were teaching. What was the name of the school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:18:39", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "St. Peter's. And the town was Nkwatia, N-K-W-A-T-I-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:18:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "N-K-W." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:18:50", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A-T-I-A. And it was in the Kwahu region. That's K-W-A-H-U. And it was a mission, actually a mission school run by the Divine Word Order. And the principal was a priest named Father. He was German named Father William Glossel, G-A." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:19:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you can tell me that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:19:28", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, all right, want me to tell you that later, after the thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:19:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:19:30", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. And the vice principal was an Irish layperson, meaning he wasn't a priest or." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:19:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:19:41", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But so it was a mission school, which made it actually, not always the mission schools were this way, but a lot of times they were this way. It was away from the village, a mile away from our village. So in some ways the experience was good and it was a very good school and I had good students. In some ways it was not as good because a lot of my friends, you know, just had a house in the middle of the village and actually learned the language a lot better and got to live in a village." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:20:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you live at the school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:20:16", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I lived, yeah. They had houses at the school that we got. And so the first year I had a house alone and in the second year, two more volunteers came and we got a bigger house together so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:20:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So were you the first Peace Corps volunteer there or had there been others before?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:20:32", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not at all. The person that who had been there the year before named Dennis White had a PhD in chemistry, and he was stolen, as they might say, by the University of Cape Coast. And he moved on there and then I took his place. In fact, the while I was at Cape Coast, the head of the chemistry department wanted to steal me too, because they needed teachers there, but they wouldn't let him steal me in addition, because I had a master's degree so looked good. But and there had been Peace Corps volunteers before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:21:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they were used to having Peace Corps volunteers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:21:25", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were used to having Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:21:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the other teachers speak English?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:21:28", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It's a, I guess the official language is English. The, um, the language in. There's probably at least four or five languages in different parts of the country. So it, um. Educated, you know, students who had been to school spoke English although somewhat of a Ghanaian English. Use the word aluminum and they used a lot of British pronunciation and they, you know, had spellings and had some of their own, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:22:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Words." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:22:13", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Words that were, you know, Ghanaian of origin. And they spoke with a little bit of a Ghanaian accent that you had to get used to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:22:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you basically got by on English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:22:22", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Basically, no. Basically, by the time they were out of, um, out of elementary school, they were supposed to know English pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:22:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how was your teaching experience in Ghana different than your teaching experience in the United States?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:22:39", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was only taught in college in the United States, and I only taught as a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:22:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were basically in middle school, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:22:46", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:22:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Advanced?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:22:48", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was all the way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:22:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, you did all of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:22:50", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of it. I had been, I've done, um, from, this was like junior college. I did a little bit of first year. I did some third year. They threw me in in math because they were short on math teachers. I did third year math. I did. And then I took over. It's a five year program. I took over when I came fourth year chemistry and then the next year I did fifth year because that was when they were taking the exams. So I took the kids through that and then I did first year junior college or advanced level the first year, and then I did the second year to take them through the test the second year. And sometimes it'd be in a year I'd have, you know, I'd have 27 or 28, 40 minute periods or so because teachers didn't show up. They tried to avoid going. This was awful in the bushes. They all wanted to teach in the big cities. So they tried to avoid coming after their assignments. And so we'd start the year short on teachers and they'd throw you in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:23:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So let's spend a little bit of time. So where, where were you? Which part of the country was this in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:24:05", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I was in the. I was about probably 40 to 50 miles north of the capital, Accra, which is on the, uh, I've got to think direction, east end of the country, on the ocean. And I was north and a little bit east of Ghana, which I would say is in the far southwest of Accra. Which is in the far southwest of the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:24:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How big was the town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:24:45", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't really get a population figure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:24:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:24:47", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'd say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:24:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tiny?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:24:50", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Relatively small, probably under probably 1,000 people or so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:24:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was life like in 1972 in this small city, small town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:25:02", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as I say, I wasn't in the town. I was on the campus. I didn't. I had a nice cement house and a shower and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:25:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh you did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:25:20", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had showers. And although I tended. We had, in a second house I had. I can't remember if I did in the first house. Second year we had, uh, maybe the first year too. We had a, we collected the water off the roof of the house and it went under the house and the second year I had about 6,000 gallon water tank of rainwater, basically. So the water was very hard, rusty. And so for showers, I used to warm it up and use a bucket for showers because the other water would make you feel dirtier than." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:26:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. So the first year, were there are other teachers, other Peace Corps there the first year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:26:07", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was the only Peace Corps, although we had a British couple, an Irish couple, who were almost kind of more permanent there. But and then we had the French also sent volunteers. The British couple was a well-paid, were well-paid non, they were really teachers who did this kind of thing long term. Actually the man was a math teacher, his wife was a nurse. So she served as kind of the school nurse, and they were paid well and had been in Kenya and other countries. Actually, she was originally from South Africa. She was, uh, she was colored, that is, a mix. Her father was Russian, her mother was Afrikaans or whatever. Not Afrikaans, or whatever they call it, was black basically. And which is an interesting. I don't want to get off on.\n\nBut the interesting, it was interesting that the colored had a very interesting point of view of South Africa. They kind of, they were in kind of that middle segment where, and you'd think that they would be for independence, but they really weren't. But anyway. And then the Irish couple were, I think, also paid British, relatively well-paid British. They were both English teachers and he also was headmaster, or assistant headmaster. And they were, I think, a very religious couple. And in fact, I sometimes wondered if they had both, you know, maybe been a priest or a nun or something. I don't know. They kind of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:27:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had that feel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:27:52", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had that feel. But I never asked, I thought it was none of my business. And while they were there, they had a daughter, and the British couple had about a five or six year old son. And then the French couple were young and were serving like they're doing their service much like the Peace Corps. I think they had to do service somewhere. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:28:15", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was that your social group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:28:17", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that was. I don't know if I've said this before, but that was kind of the difficulty of the school too. The administration considered you part of the overall staff. The staff kind of considered you a part of the administration because you're white. And so it was. Maybe it was me, but I think generally we tended to, tended to, you know, group together and didn't have strong relationships with the other staff other than on an academic, you know, point of view. We were pretty much together, although I was basically the only chemistry teacher. We had a biology, basically had a biology teacher. And although what, I guess we did have. I did have a second and we did have a second chemistry teacher. But a lot of times, you know, they went off to their house, they had families." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:29:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you really didn't interact that much?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:29:15", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Didn't interact too much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:29:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you stay in touch with the British or Irish or French couples?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:29:21", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, actually, I visited the French and Irish couple on my way back, but didn't keep contact with them. I think a couple of times I wrote and I don't know, I can't remember whether they didn't write or write back or what but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:29:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what were your students like? Did you spend a lot of time with the students?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:29:40", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, yeah. I mean, there was a lot of work to be done. And they were. Actually it was one of the better, better schools and sometimes argued to be. I never sure whether it was true or not, but they argued they were the best school in the country and had the best scores in the country. So there was quite a bit of pressure by the school and the students themselves to do well. I had probably my best student in, um, who took the ordinary level exam. They used to say he came from a farm and, you know, really wanted to get ahead. He didn't want to go back to having to work every day. And they used to say that, some kids told me he had a flashlight and he used to, they were supposed to go to bed, you know, at 10:00, 9:00, 10:00. And he had a flashlight and used to study well into the night so. And he was very bright. Although surprisingly, the school scores on the exams were from 1 to 9. And I think surprisingly on chemistry, about half of my kids got ones. Half my kids got." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:30:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One is top or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:30:51", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One is top. One is top, and about half got a two. I think I had maybe a couple threes and a four. So they were very good students. And I think I saw, I think I got a list of scores. I think he might have gotten a two, which was surprising, but he was very good at math and everything. He was amazing. I wish I could remember his name. I may have my book, actually, but I'd like to find out what he." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:31:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What happened to him? Did he go to, did he go away to college while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:31:21", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no, because he was in the ordinary level. So he had to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:31:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, he had to still go up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:31:27", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He had to go on to the advanced level. Yeah. Some of my kids did go to college and a couple of them, I should have followed up more, but I got. I got busy and I feel bad, you know, I feel bad about that. I should have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:31:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But did you travel while you were in Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:31:42", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the Peace Corps? While in the Peace Corps, we went to the beach often. That was kind of our favorite hang." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:31:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How far were you from the beach? Hours away or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:31:57", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably 2 hours total. Sometimes there was a, there was a hostel in Accra, and we used to always meet in Accra and hang out at the hostel, sometimes for several days. And the beds were crude things like that. But I don't know, we were only paying a few bucks a night, so it was cheap. And a lot of people there from the Peace Corps and other places, you know, just traveling around. And so we usually met there and then went down to a beach called Takoradi. And the interesting thing about beaches there is that Ghanaians don't go to the beach, they don't swim, and they think that it's, swimming is for fishermen, which is a low level job. So we used to be on the beach and, you know, maybe we'd have a beach almost all to ourselves. Maybe we'd have no more than ten people pass us all day. So yeah, I went to Hawaii one time and it was like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:33:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All these people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:33:02", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hawaii and the Jersey beaches and everywhere else. Whoa, whoa. Where's my, where's Takoradi?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:33:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, your private beach." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:33:09", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, private beach. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:33:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you saw Peace Corps volunteers a lot?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:33:15", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, a fair amount. Although we were kind of, not at the beach. We didn't. We kind of hung out with the same people. And always, one fact, what we did was we, there was a castle, an old castle near there and we used to get a room for about a dollar a night there. And it had straw mattresses. And so it was kind of crude, but it was cheap." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:33:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is a Ghanaian king's castle or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:33:44", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was a British, former British castle, as I recall. And, you know, that used to protect their, um, their hold. They were the, they were the ruling class. And they owned it before, if you will. And actually, Ghana was the first country in the early sixties, I think like '60, '61, that got its independence from Britain." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:34:15", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:34:16", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was called the Gold Coast before that. And then other trip I took. Well, actually, we took one trip up to, um, well, this was called Upper Volta. And I now I think it's back to a French name. It was a French colony just north of Ghana." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:34:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Burkina Faso?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:34:35", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I believe so. And then we went to, on New Year's Eve, we were at the border of Niger. And I was going to visit a Peace Corps person I had met, but we kind of were running out of time and there were these, like wooden seated trucks that you had to go. And we kind of chickened out to go up there, and we were kind of running out of time. We had to get back to teach. So anyway, I'm disappointed that I didn't do that, but I didn't know if I could handle after the travel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:35:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's your most memorable memory of your time teaching? If you think back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:35:19", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Other than teaching itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:35:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, was teaching itself the most memorable thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:35:23", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's pretty memorable. I guess, we did. I did a trip on my own, actually, to Nigeria, which is west of Ghana. There's two little countries, as I mentioned before, Togo and Dahomey [now Benin], and went to Nigeria and did a circular path in Nigeria. And that trip was kind of exciting. I met someone in Ghana who said, oh, come visit me in Nigeria and I went to, I can't think of the town, but it had been part of the Biafran War movement in the sixties and seventies and it was a little bit wild. And I went there and tried to find this guy, but I couldn't. So I don't know whether he was playing a joke on me or whether they just wouldn't refer me or not. But eventually I found a place to stay and then took off from there. And then I went up to the northern Muslim, um, Islam." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:36:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Part of Nigeria?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:36:24", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Called Kano is probably the biggest city, K-A-N-O. And that was interesting and safer, I think, than it is nowadays because that's where they've had a lot of, up in the, um, where they had a lot of the kidnappings and things most recently. The ride up there was very interesting. I happen to be seated next to a young man who had read Time magazine and he was very upset that, uh, the way we wrote about Nigeria in Time magazine and, you know, and how we had sort of indicated, how the article had sort of indicated they were a backward country and everything else. And that Time, for a while I was kind of worried about the views, a little bit, of upsetting the type of person who I was afraid was going to get upset." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:37:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you respond to him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:37:19", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just listened to him. You know, I said, you know, that's. We write about, you know, we write about our own country and ghettos and things being bad too. I said, you know, you've got to expect that some people who've lived all their life in the United States are going to see it different than you. So I tried to keep him calm. Eventually he got off the train. And but I was worried about him for a while. And the train was interesting in that it was certainly a local and people would get on with their chickens. And I think they had goats. Some people had goats on the train and it was like, oh my goodness. But I, you know, kind of been up to that. And then I got up to Kano and that was interesting. Then I went to Ibadan, which is back near Lagos, and actually they had an interesting zoo there that I thought was more of the today zoo of, you know, open and letting the animals roam and things. It wasn't as big as some of the biggest zoos here in the United States. But it was interesting.\n\nAnd I guess I was in Lagos, I guess it was in Lagos. I went back to Lagos and Lagos is a very narrow town. It's got four big roads going and you get on a bus and it just, you don't move. So I met some people on the bus who, you know, I was a little leery of, but they were very nice and they said, oh, let's get off this bus and start walking and we can outwalk this bus. So they showed me around and were very nice. Nigeria was an interesting country in that it, there had been war and, you know, it was and it was more, a lot more concentrated population, a lot bigger concentration, a little bigger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:39:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Than Ghana?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:39:05", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ghana. And so, you know, people told me there was going to be a, I was going to have trouble with the border and getting by and they were going to give me trouble at the border. But actually, the border guards were very friendly. I was, you know, I'm six, I was 6'7\", 6'8\" at that time. And one of the border guards was almost as tall as I was. And so he was joking around with me. And they were very, they were very friendly to me at the border. Sometimes you get away with the height and sometimes it hurts. But in Nigeria, sometimes they want to pick on you because you're tall. But in Nigeria, I had really no difficulties and they were, to me, most of them were very friendly. Although they were a little more intense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:39:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it seem culturally? More intense?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:39:51", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The town, you know, like Lagos is just packed. And, you know, some, you know, you'll see big buildings, but off in the distance, you'll see squalor, you know, just huts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:40:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you don't have that in Ghana?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:40:03", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not so much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:40:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You didn't have that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:40:05", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not so much in Ghana. Accra was crowded, but didn't have the feel of Nigeria, didn't have the feel of squalor in Nigeria, that Nigeria had. Kind of some. One person told me this, I guess my friend who had been in Kenya, my British friend who'd been in Kenya, said that Nairobi, Kenya, is very modern and looks like a European city. Accra looks like the rest of, in a lot of ways, it looks like the rest of the country. But the villages in Nigeria are very primitive, and whereas the villages in Ghana are much better. So it's a more even distribution of things. The city, Accra, had open sewers and things so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:40:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where was this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:40:59", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Accra, in the capital. And Kumasi, which is the, which is the other big tribal town. Kumasi is K-U-M-A-S-I. So they're a little different. And Nigeria was just, you know, they had oil at the time and it was just a kind of a very crowded. And I think they're doing better now, as is Ghana, actually. But it's just very crowded. Very crowded." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:41:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You spent two years teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:41:36", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pardon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:41:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You spent two years teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:41:38", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two years teaching, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:41:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then what happened after Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:41:41", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "After Peace Corps, I came home and, well, actually, I spent about three months in Europe. London, France. Went down to visit my friends in southern France, trying to think of the town, but I can't right now. And then went to Switzerland and Germany. I'm German. So actually I did go back to, I did not go back to visit my relatives there, but I kind of would have liked to. But did some hitchhiking and took trains and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:42:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you on your own then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:42:15", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, pretty much on my own, yeah. I did hook up with a person in Germany who had a car and gave me a ride for a little while. Hooked up with a few people here and there, but pretty much on my own. I could have made it more interesting had I planned it out a little better. I was kind of just doing a wandering, a little bit of a wandering trip, but it was interesting. And then I got tickets to fly back on Icelandic Airlines. So I went to, uh, at that time I was flying out of Luxembourg, pretty much flying out of Luxembourg only for Europe. And I flew from Luxembourg and spent about three or four days in Iceland and then flew back to New York, visited a friend, and came home on the bus." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:43:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To Indiana?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:43:03", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fort Wayne." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:43:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:43:04", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In fact, I didn't. My mother was going to go down to the bus station, pick me up. I didn't know that. But I took the, I took the regular Fort Wayne busses home and just showed up. So, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:43:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what did you do then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:43:23", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:43:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the reentry hard?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:43:26", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, um, I, you know, you get this feeling that, boy, we're wasting a lot of resources here in the United States. And, boy, I mean, we're spending 50 times, a kid is using 50 times the resources of a kid in Ghana, so had a little bit of a guilt feeling. I think, I don't know what they're doing. I was talking to them at the Peace Corps meeting. I don't know if they're doing more now, but I thought they could have done a little more because you come back with that enthusiasm. They could have done a little more to, you know, at least general suggestions of how to get involved in the community and things like that. I know they didn't have to connect us with people, but say, you know, have maybe a checklist of, you know, if you're interested in teaching, you can maybe volunteer to tutor and things like that, which I wound up finding some. I did a little tutoring for the university, got paid a little bit but.\n\nAnd but was looking for a job. I actually went back and started to get my teaching certificate. But another job came up and my father was getting very nervous by that time. I got to get a job, you got to get a job. Teaching is not going to be any good. And so I really had two choices. I could have gotten a, he was driving me a little bit crazy. So I had really two choices. I could have, I had enough money to, you know, get a hotel for the eight months or so, or not a hotel, but a place for the 12 months that it would have taken to get my teaching certificate. Or a job came up with the American Chemical Society, and I decided to take the job in Columbus, Ohio, and get out of there. And so and by that time, I was 28 years old. So it was, he was, to a certain extent, he was right.\n\nI was with, I had the intention of going back to teaching but I don't know, the situation didn't. Situations change. And there are a couple of times I could have done it and I should have done it, but only recently, only in the last ten years have I got my teaching certificate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:45:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:45:44", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But that has some work anyway. And mostly I'm doing substitute teaching. I've found that regular teaching is pretty hard. I just don't have that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:45:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you, did you stay with the American Chemical Association?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:45:58", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I stayed there 11 years, actually working for a place called Chemical Abstracts Service in Columbus. Their main office is in Washington, D.C. But Chemical Abstracts Service is the tail that wags the dog, they say, the American chemists say. We had about 1,200 employees at the time I was there. And we, and the American Chemical Society has about 350 in D.C." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:46:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:46:25", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But what Chemical Abstracts does is abstract and index the chemical literature." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:46:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:46:31", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And uh, they had started computerizing everything because there are, well, now there's I think a million documents published. I believe there are half a million documents that they index and abstract every year. Patents, articles, conference proceedings, everything in chemistry. Chemistry is very big. And it was growing after the World War II, it was growing very rapidly. And so it was taking, they had almost shut down their operation for four months to create a five year index. They had an index, I believe, that was every six months that they published. And it took them like four months to do, to insert cards by hand to, because there are millions of, you know, there are millions of entries. And so and, you know, doing the compounds and things was difficult. So in the early sixties, actually, there were three organizations, I'm kind of going off topic.\n\nBut there were three organizations, British, Germans, and American Chemical Society, that published indexing and half drafting books. The other two went out of business in the late sixties because they didn't computerize. But from very smart thing, they computerized and even put compounds via connection tables. What atoms connected to what atoms. So now what that did for them is it speeded up their indexing tremendously. But it also created a file, a computerized file of chemical compounds. And now that file is probably 125 million different compounds." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:48:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My goodness." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:48:13", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And you can search it by a picture basically. You can say, I want a molecule that has this as a part. And then you go into the whole file and it comes up with all the molecules that have that as a part, which is useful to a drug. For example, it's useful to a drug company who may say, I want this, I want a, this is not quite working. It has a bad side effect that's putting you asleep. And have there been other things made like it that we could, you know, we could consider and test or? So that you can find everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:48:49", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you are involved in all that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:48:51", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I got lucky. I originally started by drawing the compounds from the article, but I got moved into marketing and coordinated their workshop program for a while, which was a boring, senseless type of job. But eventually I got, um, I got a chance to get out of there and get into product development. And actually one of the things I pushed first was they used to come. Besides doing the workshops, they used to call me with technical questions about how to search for this or how to find this so. And I started seeing that we don't, we really didn't have a complete search service that would allow us to do that. So I said, you know, we had to get a search service and do this for people and, you know, get paid for it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:49:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:49:47", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so I started that and we hired some. They said, do you want to run it? And I said, I don't know. It just doesn't seem like, it's interesting but doesn't seem like it's going to go anywhere. So we hired somebody. I helped him coordinate it and let him do it. Actually, it's grown to about 12 to 15 employees. I thought it had some potential, but at the time to grow. But now it's a really big thing. And they've actually not only have their files online, but they have a whole bunch of other people's files online. So it's a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:50:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a big deal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:50:19", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not big there, but not big in the total scheme of the organization. But it is, but it got, grew a lot more than I did. And then I got to, then I took over projects that connected reactants with products, chemical reaction file. And I didn't do the technical part of that, but I was a business marketing coordinator and project leader for those things, and also a thing that covers patent formulas, which are vague formulas. You know, it has an X and says X can be chlorine, bromine, methyl and things like that. And so it covered those. So I coordinated both of those projects until I left in '76? '86. And both of them are at least, I don't know how they're doing, but they're at least still running. So that's nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:51:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how did Peace Corps have an impact on your life? You've gone back to teaching I hear." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:51:21", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:51:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Has it had an, do you think it's had an impact on your life?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:51:28", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think it's, you know, I feel that it's an experience that, um. You know, you can't just visit a country and really understand it. I felt that I got to know people, got to know students at least, not people quite as, not the regular town people, which I wish I had done better. I had more chance to do. But you get to know the kids in the countries and their goals and things like that, that I don't think anybody can do by just visiting for a week or two. And so maybe I'm not even that thrilled about travel. Just, you know, I'm not a real, let's go see this art museum thing. So maybe I don't appreciate travel as much as I could because I feel you're not getting much of an experience sometimes. But it was a good experience. I mean, it's kind of hard to look back and say, oh, I did this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:52:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, for some people, they, you know, they became teachers or whatever it is that they did. They spent the rest of their careers overseas. But that really didn't happen with you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:52:35", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I don't know. I just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:52:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a good experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:52:39", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a good experience. And, you know, I actually I did interview for some jobs overseas, but by that time I had friends and things and didn't really go. I could have taught in a Saudi Arabian school. Actually I had an interview with a, with somebody from Saudi Arabia and I thought he asked me all sorts of difficult questions and I thought, oh, he's, we're not connecting at all. And it was about three or four months later, they wrote and said, are you interested? By then I just didn't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:53:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Want to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:53:14", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably could have made some decent money there, but just didn't, uh, by that time I was just kind of connected in Columbus and didn't want to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:53:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think your Peace Corps experience had any impact on the country itself, or more broadly, all the teachers that were there and your students? You're a good chemistry teacher." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:53:37", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think hopefully I, you know, kind of set an example of, you know, working hard and digging into things. I think that, um, that had hopefully had an influence on some of the students." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:53:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And any thoughts about Peace Corps, its impact on the United States? Has it had any, do you think?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:54:03", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think, you know, when you see all. When you go to these big meetings and see a lot of people and probably not all of them are there, and what they've done afterwards, I think it's, you know, I think it is. And, you know, I don't know how many. I know you were busy with different things, but one speaker had been, had a high position with the United Nations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:54:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Kul Chandra Gautam of Nepal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:54:32", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nepal. Had Peace Corps teachers, and they had a great influence in what was it, Ecuador? What country was it? That somebody, the head of state, you know, had a real good experience with and felt that the Peace Corps volunteer had made a real difference in his life. So I think there are a lot of them. I wish I would have followed more of my students to find out. I did run into one person. I don't know that I ever had him in class, but he kind of remembers me. I don't remember him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:55:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You met him here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:55:04", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't really meet him, you know, I ran into him on LinkedIn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:55:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:55:08", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And we talked a little bit. But, um, but I, again, if I can still. I'm going to have to go back and see if I can find my grade books and things and see if I can look some of these kids up on the internet and see what they're, if I can figure out what they're doing but uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:55:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, great. So are you in touch with any of the people from your Nigeria group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:55:33", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, Ghana group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:55:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I meant Ghana group. I'm sorry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:55:36", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A few of my Peace Corps friends there, but not with any of my students. Actually, I had the interesting. I had the son of the head of state while I, in Ghana, was in our school. And I taught him math, I believe, and his dad eventually was overthrown and executed. But I guess he got to Europe for a while. And I happened to run into somebody who knew him and had been going to military school, you know, young military school, when he was young. And they were saying that he's going kind of crazy, I guess, over the whole thing. I guess he's back in Ghana and I don't know. I think I was reading about him, which is a very sad story because he seemed like a pretty nice kid, I guess a little off I read somewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:56:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And his father was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:56:33", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "His father was basically president." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:56:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:56:36", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Acheampong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "00:56:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was overthrown?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "00:56:40", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the early ‘70s, he was overthrown by, uh, shoot, somebody with an American name who has since been, who has since left. But he's the guy who took over was in power for a long time. There was always articles at the, in the newspapers, full of articles that the previous administration, Tu Acheampong, had been corrupt. And it, uh, which isn't unlike the United States especially today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:57:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So are there any other, anything else you want to talk about your experience? I'm basically out of questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:57:23", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, um. It was a good experience and I'm glad I did it. And, you know, there were things during and afterwards I wish I had, you know, had followed up on, done better. I did have one. I'll give you one more experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "00:57:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "00:57:42", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My next-door neighbor was Ghanaian and he was a biology teacher. And we got along pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:57:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your next-door neighbor in Ghana?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:57:51", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Ghana, you know, he was a teacher and had a place. Anyway, he, um. I was over. The Irish couple and their daughter were over at his place one day and I had my camera and wanted to take a picture of the daughter who was, I don't know, near the chicken coops or something. But so I took a picture of her and he got very upset. And eventually I had to give up the camera and the film because he said, had done, had some, had stayed with or and had, you know, was friends with some other Peace Corps people who had taken pictures of him while he was asleep. And I don't know, that was kind of taboo. And he was very upset by that. So he was upset with my having taken picture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:58:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Takes your spirit away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:58:45", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so, I don't know. It kind of, it was kind of upsetting to me that I. And we didn't talk much, although we worked very close together. But eventually we became friends and he helped me, you know, eventually we got back together and he helped me. He took me down to get the chemicals I needed for the final laboratory exam. And they did actually, I think I mentioned before, they did actual laboratory exams for their final exams in both ordinary. And so at the advanced level, you had to find some strange chemicals and things sometimes. So he had taken me down and we got to be, our relationship got a little bit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:59:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:59:26", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Got a little better again. But, uh. And there was also, we had a snake. He had had a snake in his place. It was a Gaboon viper, which is very poisonous. And he kept it in his lab and the students were supposed to feed it, go out and get mice or whatever, and they didn't do it. So it was a very hungry Gaboon viper. And he'd come in there. It wanted to eat you. But uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:59:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great pet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:59:55", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. And we were always a little, I guess, another little thing. We were always a little. We were supposed to take flashlights and things, but sometimes I couldn't find mine, so I'd go through the. You had to watch out because they could be under a rock or anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "01:00:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These vipers, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "01:00:11", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, Gaboon vipers. But, um, so I used to remember, I used to kind of stomp if I. I didn't go over to the chemistry lab too much at night, but if I did, I'd kind of stomp a lot, wake them up and things. I didn't want to surprise any of them. And then when I got back, I was playing tennis one night. And now I have somewhat of an idea what flashbacks, because this wasn't a really terrifying experience in Ghana. But I kind of have an idea of what flashbacks are. I was playing tennis and I went to get some balls out in the, and all of a sudden I had a flashback of, you know, I'd better stomp and things because there may be snakes out here. And this was in Columbus, in the middle of Columbus, Ohio. So I can see how people who have been in, you know, attacked and things like that have terrible flashbacks and things. But that's all, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "01:00:57", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So keep stomping, keep stomping." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "01:00:58", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I've told you all the little details. I've told you a lot of little detail, a lot of little trivia tonight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "01:01:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it's good. It was a good interview, so thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "01:01:06", + "speaker": "Thomas Klug", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00839", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/LightfootRM/lightfootrm.htm", + "original_file_name": "LightfootRM_7-26-18.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/LightfootRM/LightfootRM_7-26-18.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "location_date": "Huntsville, Alabama – 26 July 2018" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert M. Lightfoot" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 26, 2018. This oral history interview with Robert Lightfoot is being conducted by phone in Huntsville, Alabama and Houston, Texas for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. Interviewer is Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you again for joining me today to continue this oral history.\\n\\n The last time we talked, we were around the 2005 time period. You had been at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] for a period of time working with the [Space] Shuttle Program and you were getting ready to return to [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. You returned in 2005 as the manager of the Shuttle Propulsion Office. How did that opportunity come about, and why did you go back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I pretty much committed to stay in DC through Return to Flight [post-Space Shuttle Columbia STS-107 accident]. So once STS-114 occurred, I was interested in getting back to the field centers and out of the DC environment. My kids were at an age where it made more sense, and it could be a little bit better from a family standpoint.\\n\\n At the time, Dave [David A.] King, who was the Center Director of Marshall, approached me. If you remember STS-114, we had the PAL [Protuberance Air Load] ramp come off. There needed to be a pretty big effort to get to the next flight, because we didn’t expect that to occur. We basically had a big foam loss that did not hit the orbiter, thank god.\\n\\n We were going to have to do some work to get going on that. He asked me if I’d come back to run Shuttle Propulsion Office because he was moving Mike [Michael U.] Rudolphi, who had the job before me. He asked him to go run all of Marshall engineering. It was a good opportunity for me and my family to get back to Huntsville, so I went back and became Shuttle Propulsion Manager.\\n\\n You’re responsible for the [solid rocket] boosters, the solid rocket motors, the external tank, and the main engine. You’re also part of the Mission Management Team. I think [N.] Wayne Hale [Jr.] was the program manager at the time, if I remember correctly. Wayne treated me almost as a pseudo-deputy in that role, along with John [P.] Shannon and Lucy [V.] Kranz." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about that mission a little bit. As you mentioned, there was a problem with 114. In fact, Wayne Hale said in some of the things he’s written since then that we nearly lost [Space Shuttle] Discovery on that flight. It was, again, almost an accident. Not quite, but it was a stressful time, trying to get to the next flight after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I walked into the office, as you might imagine the same external tank team that had gone through all the recovery from Columbia, worked through all the foam stuff—in the middle of all that had been Katrina, the hurricane that basically devastated the same area where those people lived. You get back to flight, and your first flight we lost that big piece of PAL ramp, after we thought we had these problems behind us.\\n\\n You almost were in a very similar return-to-flight mode, if that makes sense, because we knew we couldn’t fly again until we fixed that issue. You’re taking a team—honestly, the external tank team that was already pretty spent from what they’d been through emotionally, technically. It was tough, it was a tough time.\\n\\n So when I got there, that team was pretty—I don’t know what the right word is, but morale was not good obviously. And for the right reasons, by the way. Good lord, we’d been a contributor to losing a crew, and then a contributor to a big piece of foam coming off and could have been another accident that happened. Part of my time was spent really trying to help build the team up, and almost reempower them.\\n\\n One of the things that I noticed was that, in my opinion, the team was very reactive, for lack of a better word. Instead of taking ownership, they were just exhausted. It was a case of “Just tell me what you want to do and we’ll go do it.” As opposed to saying, “Hey, this is what I want to go do. Are you guys okay with it?” There was a lot of consternation, as you might imagine, around that going forward. So that was what I walked into.\\n\\n We got through it, and fortunately we got [STS-]121 out. When it happened, it was all kind of a blur from that standpoint, but it took us a while to get to that flight. I think I was in the job for 115 and 11[6], if I remember correctly. I can’t remember the exact dates and which ones, because my next job was the Deputy Center Director, so I was still covering the launches from there too. They run together in my memory, which ones I was in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Going back, you mentioned that the teams were exhausted, and with good reason at that point. You said you walked into that, and part of it was trying to turn that feeling around that they had. If you want to talk for a minute—in the lessons learned from both those accidents, from Columbia and then [STS-]51L [Challenger accident] there were a lot of reports that came out afterwards. Of course the CAIB [Columbia Accident Investigation Board], part of it talks about the culture and the attitudes. How did you work with those teams to help ensure that the lessons learned from those accidents were applied to the engineering culture at NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We spent a lot of time working on decision making. Not tools, but really how to help make sure we’re making decisions where we have everyone’s input. Almost a forceful way of doing that. Wayne Hale set the bit pretty hard for the program manager. “Hey, these are the kind of things that aren’t acceptable. We got to make sure we don’t have groupthink, we got to make sure all voices are being heard.”\\n\\n A couple things we did along the way—I can remember specifically a particular issue with the main engines that a particular engineer had a real concern about. Even though the main engine program accepted the risk, I accepted the risk as the propulsion manager, and the program accepted the risk at Wayne’s level, we still had him come to the flight readiness review so Bill [William H.] Gerstenmaier could hear it. Bill Gerstenmaier and Bryan [D.] O’Connor at the time, they chaired the flight readiness review.\\n\\n We had him come provide his dissenting opinion, and ended up rewarding the gentleman for bringing it forward. That was some of the ways we tried to make sure people knew that we valued their voices and their opinions. Whether we took action on it or not, at least we flew eyes wide open, if that makes sense. We would have the discussion, and that’s one example I remember very specifically that the guy came.\\n\\n That’s hard, that’s tough. That can be a very intimidating environment. You can imagine, you walk in and you’re telling 200 or 300 people that you don’t agree with the fact that we’re ready to fly when everybody else does. That’s an intimidating environment. We wanted to reward that, and I remember doing that specifically. There were a lot of things we did like that.\\n\\n They actually put all of us, as Mission Management Team, through training on decision support. Making sure you’re not decision bias, have unconscious bias to things that you don’t even know that influence the way you make decisions. That was a result of the CAIB Report, and things that we said we’d do in the Return to Flight Implementation Plan. As you know, that was one of my jobs at Headquarters was to get that out, even before 114." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned, Discovery did fly again, and it was July 4, 2006, which was a good day for that. But you were still in that first position as the Manager of the Shuttle Propulsion Office. At that time it had already been announced—we talked about it a little bit before—that Shuttle was going to close out.\\n\\n You had mentioned that 2010 seemed a long way off. But as you were at Marshall it was approaching quickly at that point, as you moved through those different positions. Talk about that. You were following other flights and working with other flights, but as each one progressed to be the last, talk about those positions and how you worked through that time at Marshall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It really started from my time in DC. As soon as President [George W.] Bush announced we were going to retire the Shuttle—that was ’04, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because of the job I had in DC as the AAA [Assistant Associate Administrator] for Shuttle, I was asked to start putting together a transition and retirement plan, even in 2004. I had a team that helped me really start putting the framework around how we would execute an actual transition. After 30 years of flying, how in the world are you going to transition and retire all this stuff?\\n\\n We started in ’04. Really just the framework, not necessarily doing anything yet. But you began to lay out a schedule. At the time it was 2010. If my last flight is in 2010, hardware has got to be at the [NASA] Cape [Canaveral, Florida] by 2009, 2008, depending on what hardware it is. We had many, many discussions about “If there is no follow-on—”\\n\\n At the time they had announced Constellation [Program], so we knew we had something, but what goes with Constellation and what doesn’t? I’ll give you an example of what we thought about. Let’s say I need 10 of a certain item to get through the end of flight, and I may have been getting those 10 at the same cadence as the flight rate.\\n\\n What if I went and just told the vendor, “I want you to go and deliver me all 10, and then I’m going to shut you down”? I can get a pretty good price on the 10 because I’m buying them all at once. But then I take a risk that that vendor—if I have a problem with those in the ’09, ’10 timeframe—they might not be there to answer questions. There was a balance to think about how we do all that.\\n\\n At the time, at Marshall, most of the propulsion elements were going to transition over to Constellation. So I would say it was a fairly easy transition just from a planning perspective, but Constellation had a different flight rate, they had a different plan. You had different contracts, even though they might have been with the same companies.\\n\\n While I was in the propulsion manager job, we really were just laying out “Hey, when’s the last time we need this vendor, and can Constellation pick up that infrastructure?” One of the things that was fascinating was as we were going through that process—we began to realize just how much the Shuttle Program was paying for, as far as the institutional capabilities at a lot of the Centers.\\n\\n There were a lot of interesting discussions because Constellation was going to be cheaper, so they didn’t want to pay for all that. Somebody had to pay for it. The Shuttle Program paid for a lot of it and Constellation wanted to buy it by the yard, if that makes sense. It was an interesting time to do that.\\n\\n The bigger challenge was when we actually got to the end of Shuttle and Constellation got canceled. A lot of that planning all of a sudden—and I wasn’t in the propulsion job at the time, I was actually Center-level at the time. That was a very difficult time, very difficult. I like to talk about monkey bars. To move from one monkey bar to the other, you’ve got to have another monkey bar to go to. We had convinced everybody on the team, “Hey, hang in there with Shuttle to the end. There’s going to be a job for you afterwards, you can work in Constellation.” Then poof, it went away, and that was hard.\\n\\n That was one of the hardest—from my perspective, from a just pure leadership standpoint, I probably learned more and I’m probably most proud of that time. I was the Center Director at Marshall then. Trying to manage Marshall through that transition of Shuttle retiring, about the same time we got told we were going to cancel Constellation. All the layoffs. How we went through that—it was a tough, but also the most rewarding time in terms of how we treated people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about that for a minute, because the Shuttle was closing down. The last flight was 2011. They had already announced that Constellation was going to end. In 2010 they announced it, but then the funding was still there. We still had to work on Constellation even though we knew it was going to end. I can imagine it was a very frustrating time, an uncertain time. It was here [at Johnson Space Center], and I know it was at other Centers.\\n\\n Talk about how you helped get people through that. If there were any programs that were started to help people transition through the end. How did you keep people focused through the next program, and then the Ares [launch vehicle] development, and whatever would come from that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The best way for me to explain it—I took the approach that I was going to talk to the team more than we’ve ever talked to the team before. When I say the team, the entire Center. I had more all-hands [meetings] during that time period than I think I had combined my whole time as Center Director, about a nine-month period there.\\n\\n I told my team we were going to talk to them and “you know what, if I don’t know I’m going to tell them I don’t know.” Because if I don’t say anything we will be in a mode where people think we’re up to something. “Oh, they must be doing something up there on the ninth floor [executive offices].”\\n\\n I walked in front of them many times, and I reminded them exactly what you just said. “Look, we’re working this. I’m trying to figure out how we’re going to wade through this. But in the meantime, we have got to fly the Shuttle safely. We’ve got to make our milestones on Constellation, because Congress could turn that decision around.” We didn’t need to give any excuses for them to turn that decision around.\\n\\n That said, we still lost some momentum obviously. But I was most proud of the fact that we flew that Shuttle out safely, and I truly believe that last flight—and not just at Marshall, but this was affecting all the Centers. It was affecting [NASA] Kennedy [Space Center, Florida], it was affecting Johnson, it was affecting Marshall, [NASA] Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi].\\n\\n I don’t remember the exact dates, but it was like the Thursday [July 21, 2011] when we landed [Space Shuttle] Atlantis for [STS-]135. There were probably, I don’t know, 1,500, 2,000 people there when it landed. Most of those got a pink slip [termination notice] the next day. And they knew they were getting a pink slip the next day, but they were there. They helped bring that bird home.\\n\\n To me it’s still one of the most emotional parts of this, just the pure teamwork and dedication to the mission that you just can’t believe. It’s funny because even today I see a lot of people that I know got laid off, but they’re back. Heck, they may be working at SpaceX [Space Exploration Technologies Corp.], they may be working at Blue Origin [LLC], they may be working at NASA.\\n\\n But what we do is in their blood, and you saw it. You saw it. We talk about that all the time, “It’s in your DNA.” People love these missions, they’re all great. We talk about that a lot, and it’s true. But boy, when you get to see it in action it just pounds it home.\\n\\n That was part of it. The key was you just remind them, “Hey, we still got a job to do, so keep your head down coloring. I promise you I’m trying to figure out what to do, and working with the folks in the Agency. I will let you know, I’ll keep you updated.” Honestly, I received several notes from people. Even people that got laid off said, “Thank you so much for the way you communicated during that time. It helped us to stay focused on what we were doing, knowing that these things were still going to occur.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think communication, especially during a stressful time like that, is probably one of the most important things you can do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I will tell you that I learned in that time period—I’m a student of leadership at some level, how you lead people. I had remembered a statement somebody made a long time ago that “It’s easy to lead when things are good, but real leadership is when things are hard.” That all sounds good, that’s a nice statement. And I’m sure it’s true. At the time I thought it was true.\\n\\n I can tell you I exercised every leadership muscle I’ve ever had, some I didn’t even know I had, during that time. That’s why I said from a leadership perspective it was very rewarding. From an overall perspective it was very hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know [NASA Administrator] Charlie [Charles F.] Bolden [Jr.] made a statement in 2010 that to the people working on these programs, this was like a death in the family, it was one more knockdown. Did you worry about losing that engineering expertise after both cancellations? You mentioned that a lot of people were coming back and some of them in the commercial programs, but at the time was that a real concern? Especially for Marshall. You are an engineering center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were worried about it. I think by the time everything shook out though, people knew Space Launch System [launch vehicle] was going to be there. That’s something that Congress and the White House had worked out. So we didn’t have that huge gap, if that makes sense. By the time Shuttle retired, they had already worked out that we were going to do Space Launch System. I think it gave some hope. We still lost a lot of people, but it gave some hope.\\n\\n I think the bigger thing that I saw honestly was a lot of—I don’t even know what the right word is - Survivor guilt, where the people that didn’t get laid off—you’re in a bullpen with 10 people. On Monday you come in and there’s only two of you. Why did you survive? I saw that to be one of the hardest things that we dealt with.\\n\\n I spent a lot of time with my Employee Assistance Program folks [EAP]. We really pushed the workforce to use the EAP as much as possible, so what I had asked them to do was bucket concerns they were hearing. I didn’t want to know who. I wanted to know how many people were coming, but I wanted to understand the concerns as well, so that I could change my communication strategy to maybe address some of the concerns that people were having.\\n\\n Was it purely financial? Was it struggle at home? Was it stress in the workplace? They have a set of categories, and they were just amazing. What they did to help me to understand how to talk to my workforce, and actually help my workforce through this as we were doing it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Around that time, the National Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems was formed in May 2011. I think Charlie signed a letter of intent around that time because there was a concern about this erosion of rocket propulsion capabilities, and they housed it at Marshall. Can you talk about that for a few minutes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s actually kind of funny—there’s an irony associated with that that I’ll get to.\\n\\n One of the things that I got worried about with the cancellation of Constellation and the Shuttle Program—while SLS [Space Launch System] had come in, it certainly showed a risk I think to Marshall, and actually to the nation around that capability. If we’re at the whim of a programmatic change, and all of a sudden a pure national capability of all that expertise doesn’t have anything to do, how are we going to handle that? I personally thought it was a national risk.\\n\\n I decided to ask for some help around forming some strategies around that. At the time, one of the support contracts at Marshall had a small company that was helping with strategic communications. I found out that they did more than that, and so I pulled on them to come in and help me. This is 2010 and ’11. It was about a six-month effort we went through where my team worked with them, I worked with them, and we came up with some strategies. By the way—just to tell you what’s interesting about it—that small company is where I am today, LSINC [Corp.]. They’ve morphed since then, but the irony associated with that I obviously find odd.\\n\\n They helped me through that, and one of the things that our team came up with, with them—it wasn’t their idea, but they helped us figure out this thing. From a national perspective, [NASA] Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] has a lot of institutes, “I wonder if that model would work for rocket propulsion systems.” Most of the institutes are usually built around science fields, not necessarily engineering fields. So that’s what we did. We went up and said, “I think rocket propulsion systems would be something that Marshall could be responsible for. We’ll get industry involved, we’ll get academia involved. It’s a way to collect the total skillset this nation has in one place.” That was a strategy that came out of that discussion.\\n\\n That was all about we need to have some—I would just call it basis or foundation of what we do and what we provide. Not just NASA but the nation, and not be at the whim of a programmatic decision, that that expertise stays in place. That was our strategy going in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like that’s what it’s accomplishing, or that’s working?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a great question. My goal at the time was to have it in place by 2016. They took on some actions, and it’s morphed over time. Some of it yes, but probably not complete. They actually got some of the stuff done long before 2016. It probably hasn’t taken off the way I expected, but that’s probably because of funding, because you’re also having to fund those people. That’s the other piece.\\n\\n But it’s done a lot of things. It’s done a couple studies for the Department of Defense. It actually took over some of the propulsion conferences that used to be run by other groups. I would say it’s been medium successful, how about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about the COTS [Commercial Orbital Transportation Services] Program and the commercial development. Was there testing happening out at Marshall during that time, once COTS was started around 2005?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. I don’t think we were that engaged in that because it was commercial. We did some help, more on the engineering side. But for the most part it was being run out of Johnson, with some help from Kennedy. On the [Commercial] Crew Program, I think after I left there’s been a lot more involvement. Mainly around the propulsion systems, using the expertise there to help with making sure that the two providers of the propulsion systems are working fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve been at more than one Center—you were at Stennis and you were at Marshall, which were somewhat similar because of the testing—and then you’ve been at Headquarters a couple of times. Traditionally there was always some competition, I guess is a nice way of putting it, between Johnson and Marshall. Do you want to talk about some of those relationships between Marshall and some of the other Centers and how that worked, what those relationships were like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I saw it probably as much as anybody in the Shuttle Program because I spent a lot of time at Johnson and Kennedy, too. Then at Headquarters, once I became the Associate Administrator and the Acting Administrator, I spent a lot of time trying to get us to act as NASA, not as 10 separate entities that just happen to be at NASA. Most of that that I did when I got up to Headquarters was because I’d seen what I consider—I mean there’s a lot of strength in having that diverse background, but there’s also a lot of challenges that come with that. The competition—I’m just going to say it—you need a respectful environment. What’s interesting is what I saw was the cultures of the Centers were pretty much based on probably their strongest leader over time, whoever that had been.\\n\\n Marshall—I used to joke about the fact that we’d go to Program Requirements [Control] Board (PRCB) for Shuttle, and the Marshall teams always wanted to be matched up before we walked into the big room with everybody. They didn’t want Marshall Engineering to not have the same opinion as the Marshall Program. I’m like, “Why?” At JSC, JSC Engineering and Orbiter would argue in the PRCB all the time, worked out fine.\\n\\n There was just a difference in cultures in terms of “Hey, we want to make sure we seem unified.” I’ll never forget the one time I disagreed with my Marshall engineering team doing Shuttle propulsion and said that I was good to go fly, and they weren’t. Wow, that was an interesting day inside the culture of Marshall.\\n\\n But yet it began to change the dynamic. My whole goal that I can remember from my career is bridge-building. When I moved to Stennis it was about bridge-building, when I started working with the guys at Johnson for Return to Flight it was about bridge-building. I saw just tremendous—sometimes it was animosity, and sometimes it was just lack of understanding of what each group was trying to do.\\n\\n I think when you get to the situation where you find a respectful place for everybody to know “We all have the same mission and we’re trying to achieve that mission”—that was my goal all along. When I got to Headquarters I had very little patience with the competition piece between Centers, because there’s plenty of work to go around. That’s why I started some of the stuff I did when I was up there. What I did was try to get the Centers to identify what is their identity, what do they think the Administrator is going to call them about at any given time. “Nobody else, they’re going to call you. What is that?” It was interesting to get that feedback, and it was interesting to see how certain stuff had morphed over time.\\n\\n I believe at the end of the Shuttle Program, one of the things that Wayne Hale and John Shannon did that I was most impressed with was they refused to let the Center boundaries get in the way. They made sure we, as a team, were a team. That was critically important. We talk about the technical success of the last part of the Shuttle, but when we have an accident we talk about the cultural piece. It always comes up. Challenger, Columbia—always talked about the culture. Never really talked about the cultural success of the last few Shuttle missions.\\n\\n I believe frankly that there was a cultural success, that there was more of an intercenter team than intercenter competition. That’s why I brought that to Headquarters, because it felt like it took Wayne and John’s leadership to make sure that occurred. Does that help?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it does. That’s interesting, the cultural success. It is something that we don’t hear a lot about. Like you mentioned, how hard everybody was working at the end of Shuttle, just as hard as they were at the beginning, to make sure that those were successful flights. I think that’s a good point to raise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is such a small example, but I think it’s a microcosm of what I’m talking about. I was told before I got there—and I wasn’t intimately involved in the Shuttle Program before, so this may not be true. I’m just going on urban legend. When you’re at the Cape for FRR [Flight Readiness Review] and flights, the JSC guys went to dinner together, the Marshall guys went to dinner together.\\n\\n There were probably three or four of us in the program that would not let that happen after Columbia. It wasn’t so much about the CAIB Report. It was about “We’ve got to be a team. We’ve got to be able to call each other when we’re not doing the right things.” It’s different when it’s “those Marshall guys” or “those JSC guys.” Different when you say, “Hey, that’s Steve. That’s Lucy, that’s Jerry.” Totally different when you’re in that mode. That’s what I think we really tried to build.\\n\\n I’m not saying it wasn’t there before, but there was a conscious effort to do that. If we had had a failure, god forbid if we’d had a failure in that last one, I think most of us wanted to make sure it wasn’t because of that. We wanted to not hear that story again. It would have come out that, I’m sure. I’m convinced that you’ll always find cultural challenges. But we worked really hard to try to make sure we had a team. The team couldn’t just be the Marshall team and the JSC team and leave each other alone. It had to be us together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s an accomplishment to get that to actually happen. Let’s talk about your move to Headquarters. You moved in 2012 after Charlie Bolden had been there a couple years, as the Associate Administrator. Talk about that position, and that time helping to guide the Agency after the cancellation of Constellation, the beginning of SLS.\\n\\n That first time when you went in 2003 up to Headquarters, it was a little bit different. You mentioned that you’d never been to Headquarters before. I saw an interview with Charlie Bolden a few days ago, I guess it was Monday. He made the statement that the first two years as Administrator he was a lousy Administrator, because he didn’t understand the DC world and how you had to work through that. You talked about that a little bit the last time.\\n\\n Talk about that transition. Going from a Center Director to going back to Headquarters, but as Associate Administrator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I often wonder about that decision. Charlie asked me a couple times to come up. Just to give you the dominoes, Rob [Robert D.] Strain, who’s now the president of Ball Aerospace [& Technologies Corporation], was the Center Director at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland]. He was retiring and Chris [Christopher J.] Scolese, who was the Associate Administrator at the time, grew up at Goddard. He had never been a Center Director, and this was a great opportunity for him to go be a Center Director. As the Center Director of Marshall, Chris was my boss, because the Associate Administrator, all the Center Directors work for them.\\n\\n Let me step back just a minute and share something else that I did when I was the Center Director. We didn’t talk about much when I was the Center Director. One of the things that I created and started as the Center Director was what I called the Center Director Forum. What we did is we, as Center Directors, went around. I would bring a group of Center Directors to every Center. The whole goal in that was to show that the Center Directors are united. There were a lot of challenge between the Centers and Headquarters at the time. So we would bring human spaceflight Center Directors to Goddard, and vice-versa, and do all-hands. I started that. I usually had five or six Center Directors at every Center, not everybody could go to everything.\\n\\n I can remember specifically—and I promise I’ll tell you why this links to why when I came up to DC it made a difference. When I got to doing those things—I remember I was at Ames. Ames always felt like because it’s on the west coast, [it was] left out. I had an employee come up to me and said, “I’m so glad you did this. It’s fascinating to hear the Center Director at Marshall and the Center Director at Johnson and the Center Director at Glenn all have the same problems we’re having here. Not just us.”\\n\\n I had told the Center Directors at the time—there was not a real forum for the Center Directors to meet together. What would happen is we’d all walk into Headquarters meetings, and it was almost like Headquarters and each Center Director was an individual instead of—I used to say, “Hey, as Center Directors, we’re a pretty strong voting bloc. We’ll have some time together.” What I tried to do was get us as Center Directors to be more of a team. Again, bridge-building kind of stuff going on.\\n\\n Fast-forward to when I move up to DC. Now here are all my peers, I’m now their boss. Think about it. Trust me, I was not anybody’s boss. On paper maybe. But these are people I respect tremendously and I’ve worked with for the last two or three years as a Center Director myself. Now I’m supposed to be leading them, and oh, by the way, my boss Chris Scolese is now working for me. From a personal perspective, it was an interesting time from that standpoint. Just how you make that swap. I think it went fine, I think. You can probably ask them. They’ll probably talk about it if you ask them, if you interview them.\\n\\n But the bigger challenge for me when I got up there was Headquarters was kind of disconnected in some places. Chris had been at it for a while. It’s a hard job, Associate Administrator is a hard job. You’re the pinch point between the career folks and the political folks. Because of all the changes and because of all the push, it was really hard on that person, because that person is getting pretty much pounded by the Center Directors, “What are y’all doing?” And at the same time getting direction from a political perspective, “Hey, we need to change this, you got to go do this differently, we’re going to cancel Constellation.”\\n\\n Trying to actually explain why some of those decisions might not have been such a good decision, they don’t want to hear it, and I understand. They’ve got four years or eight years, depending [on reelection]. They need to make their decisions and move on. I understood both sides of that in terms of what they’re doing. My job, once I got there, was to try to recreate communication. Communication had pretty much stalled out.\\n\\n That’s what I did. I walked into that environment, and I actually tried to create things that the Center Directors—the Center Directors and the mission directors all officially worked for me, so I created a couple of forums. I created something called the NBA, which was Nonbudget Action is what I called it. It was just a place for technical authorities, Center Directors, and the mission directors. We could all have a meeting and nobody else was in there. By calling it nonbudget action, NBA, we could have conversations that didn’t get—I’m just going to say politicized. We could have the real conversations we needed to have, because we were the career team. We were the folks that were going to be there after an administration change. We needed to make sure that the core values of the Agency were at least being kept. We can change missions all day long, but the Agency has a set of values.\\n\\n That was what I was trying to do when I moved up there. I felt I was pretty successful, honestly, in running that. I felt like I really contributed from an Agency perspective. But frankly it was because the team around me, the Center Directors and the mission directors—we’d spent all that time when I was the Center Director honestly just becoming friends. Some cases—friend doesn’t mean you’re like best buddies, it just means you had a respectful relationship with a peer, and that allowed us to have some really hard conversations. You don’t want to have a hard conversation with somebody the first time you talk to them. You want to make sure you’ve built that relationship and you understand how they are. That’s what I felt like I tried to do. I tried to change some things about the way we performed as an Agency.\\n\\n My job in that role was the day-to-day performance of the Agency. Did we do great? We did okay. We did good in some areas, and some areas—the ones you see in the news—we didn’t do so well from performance around cost and schedule. But it was an interesting time. When I look back on that particular part of it, it was not—I’m going to say the word fun. It was not fun. But it was very rewarding because I had such a great set of Center Directors and mission directors. By the way, some of them came and went. I had great chief engineer, great safety, great health and medical folks. They helped me so much.\\n\\n Over the course of time I began to expand that NBA and I included the chief financial officer, CIO [chief information officer]. I brought in different people to be part of that discussion. Tried not to be completely inclusive, because then you’re talking about the Administrator meeting, but have a real understanding of what my role is. But it was not easy. I don’t want to be horribly blunt, but there were a few disconnects up there that were just hard to work through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Disconnects at Headquarters?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There was a few disconnects between the political and the career. The political direction—frankly, the political direction of the White House and the political direction of Congress were oftentimes different. We’re an executive branch agency, and we supported the budget that the President proposed. It’s our job. If you don’t want to do it, put your badge on the table and walk out the door.\\n\\n But that was really hard sometimes when you knew Congress was not going to allow certain things to happen. It almost in some ways felt like you were in a do-loop [repeated blocks of software code]. You knew “Okay, we’re going to propose that, Congress isn’t going to accept it. We’re going to be right back where we are, but we’re going to do a lot of work in the middle of all this. And it’s really wasted work.” At this point I would call that whining on my part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did come in there in an interesting time too, because once Constellation was canceled there was that whole period of disappointment, and it wasn’t just at NASA. Like you mentioned it was Congress, it was former astronauts that were very vocal about some of their opinions about going back to the Moon and things that we should be doing. There was a lot of testimony before Congress that dealt with all that.\\n\\n I know when we talked to Mr. Bolden he tried to convince people. Some people saw him one way and other people saw him another way. I know part of what you were doing was trying to, as you mentioned, keep the Center Directors all talking. I can imagine that that time period before there was a true direction—even though you knew SLS was coming, and you knew that the [Orion] Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle was possibly going to come out of it.\\n\\n It seems like it would have been a difficult time to keep everyone focused on what to do, and explain it to the public and to Congress and everyone else that was concerned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, I had a blast working with Charlie. As far as empowering and supporting employees, he was probably the best I’ve ever had from that perspective. He would listen to the people that really knew, and then he would try to support us as best he could. When I say really knew, I mean the details. As you know, sometimes the technical details get lost in the political arena. It was really quite an honor to work for him and watch how he tried to navigate that.\\n\\n But it was hard, and he took a lot of personal grief. If you haven’t been in it, I don’t think you really understand how much of it is theater, in some ways. I have two things that I stuck with the whole time, that ran through my head all the time. The first was you have to have the courage to accept unjust criticism. I watched Charlie, and he was just amazing at that. He got criticized a lot. Sometimes, probably he’ll tell you, “Yes, I didn’t do that right.” He’ll tell you that. He accepted all that. I would say the Marine in him always did the right thing. But the unjust criticism was the part that was hard, that was the hardest part.\\n\\n But for me there was another quote that was actually inside the folder of my retirement party because people knew I talked about it all the time. It’s the [President] Teddy [Theodore] Roosevelt [Jr.] “man in the arena” quote. For me that was Washington, DC. If you’ve never heard the quote—I haven’t unpacked my boxes here in my new office, because we’re moving. I usually have it on my wall right by my door. It’s a long quote, and it basically says “It’s not the critic that counts, it’s the man in the arena whose face is marred with dust, sweat, blood, tears, who fights the good fight and sometimes may not win, but at least knows the joys of victory and the spoils of defeat, unlike those cold timid souls that just sit in the stands and watch, or criticize.” I messed that up. It’s a long quote.\\n\\n [It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.]\\n\\n But that’s how it felt. People throw rocks all the time. Sometimes, by the way, we deserved them. Oh my god, did we deserve them. But other times you just have to let it roll off your back; that was the only thing we could do.\\n\\n Sometimes I just got really legalistic with it with the team. I’d say, “We have an appropriations bill. That is the law of the land. Congress put it in there, the President signed it. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing. I don’t care what anybody else tells you. It’s the law, do it.” Kind of a legalistic view, but it was also true, so that was how we managed to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think part of the criticism is a lot of people felt—and I’m talking the public and Congress. It was the dependence on the Russians to get us to ISS [International Space Station]. It was a difficult time for people to accept that, I think at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, but—I have to be nice, I’ll get myself in trouble. Some of that was actually inflicted for a lot of reasons. Blame it on anybody you want, but I could give you probably 10 different stories and pieces of all of them are correct. The way I looked at it is you can talk about it all you want, but that’s what we have.\\n\\n As long as that’s what you got, then I kind of recommend that we as a team—the team that I was dealing with—deal with what we got. What can we control? Today we can control getting our own capabilities ready as fast as we can, based on the budgets we got, and in the meantime trust our partners in Russia because we need them. There’s really no sense debating how we got there, why we got there, whose fault it was. A lot of times when those kind of issues popped up, that’s the position I took.\\n\\n There’s a scene in Apollo 13, the movie. I have no idea if it actually happened on-orbit, but there’s a scene in Apollo 13 where Fred [W.] Haise [Jr.] and [John L. “Jack”] Swigert [Jr.] start yelling at each other. Tom Hanks [playing James A. Lovell Jr.] looks at them and goes, “Guys, you may as well stop because you’re going to get done yelling after 15 minutes, and we’re going to be right where we are. Nothing’s changed.”\\n\\n That was the approach I took. We can debate why we’re here, what happened all we want, but we are where we are and we need to deal with the conditions we’ve been given. Let’s make sure we’re successful, because at the end of the day the mission was what needed to be successful. Getting crews to and from the Station safely is our job, let’s make sure we’re doing that right. That’s the approach I took. And what’s funny is NASA is always famous for dealing pretty well with the cards we’re given." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. And accomplishing quite a lot in a short period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that’s the innovation. When I look at it I think that’s what NASA is most innovative with, honestly. We are pretty amazing when it comes to that. Or can be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you said, with NASA, sometimes you’re told this is what you’re directed to do, you have to go do it. And then things come along and get canceled, like Constellation. One of them was the Asteroid Redirect Mission.\\n\\n Talk about that, about that plan and maybe dealing with those kinds of things at Headquarters. When you’re directed to do one thing, everybody gets up and running on it, and then the next presidential administration comes in and decides “No, that’s not what I want to do anymore”? And doing this over and over it seems like. As you said, NASA, one of its strengths is being able to change directions. But it’s back to that motivation. How do you keep people motivated?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the one thing within NASA is you’ve got to look at the whole portfolio. That’s how you keep people motivated. There’ll be changes in pieces of the portfolio, but we’re talking a lot about human spaceflight here. Look at what we’re doing in science, look at what we’re doing in technology, look at what we’re doing in aeronautics. It was a way to say, “Look, there’s more to this.” Did I grow up in human spaceflight? Absolutely. My blood is human spaceflight, there’s no doubt about it. But the things we do in science are amazing, and we’re still doing them. I kept telling them, “We’re still flying on the International Space Station.”\\n\\n The most incredible lab [laboratory] ever built, period. There’s nothing like it. I may be wrong, but I think history will show that it was at least equal to putting humans on the Moon, at some point. It wasn’t a small step and a giant leap that had such a dramatic effect, but the fact that that thing is flying, and flying as long as it has, is just an engineering marvel. It was expensive, sure. But anything hard like that is going to be. Because of that, it’s been the thing that’s allowed us to have these commercial programs come along. That’s their destination. If we didn’t have that destination, where would they be? That’s what started all that.\\n\\n I think at the end of the day most NASA folks are used to programs and projects coming and going. But what I tried to do—this was my goal, especially when the administration changed in ’16. All of us, I think, in the Agency went through—I don’t want to say the word we got “paralyzed” when the [President Barack] Obama administration change occurred. I don’t care if you agree or disagree with the change in policy that they did. It doesn’t matter to me, I don’t really care. You were told what to go do, and we got paralyzed because we were like, “Oh wow, Congress doesn’t like it. Are we really going to do it, or do we just lock up?”\\n\\n What we tried to do, and what I really pushed the team to do—again, it’s one of those things that I’m pretty proud of in terms of what we accomplished. Whether it was [Donald J.] Trump or [Hillary D. R.] Clinton [2016 presidential candidates], we went in and talked about “What does NASA do that they care about?”\\n\\n When you do that kind of assessment, if you’re really honest with yourself, an administration or Congress—except for individuals. There’s some individuals that are like this, and I’ll talk about some in particular. But they really are more interested in “What can you do for me from a domestic policy perspective? What can you do from a foreign policy perspective, what can you do about the economic security of this country? What can you do about the nation’s industrial base, and oh by the way, what else do you bring to the table?”\\n\\n That’s when I went and said, “Okay, from a domestic policy, we provide jobs, create jobs.” Whether it’s the commercial program or the government-tax programs. From an international perspective, look, we’re in countries all over this world. NASA is a respected entity, and that’s what we can help you do. From an industrial base, we share a lot of the common industrial base with the Department of Defense. We’re part of your national security, both economically and just from an industrial base standpoint. Then what do we bring to the table that not many bring to the table? We bring inspiration and American leadership.\\n\\n Let me tell you. I didn’t say anything in there about sensors, telescopes, humans on Station, humans on Mars. And that story resonated big-time. Big-time. We were lucky, we had Vice President [Michael R. “Mike”] Pence who truly was interested. He’s truly interested in what we’re doing.\\n\\n That’s how you have to talk, that’s how to work through this. Are there going to be puts and takes around all that programmatically? Absolutely. But as long as NASA is doing what I just described at that level, NASA will always be relevant. We stop doing those things, we won’t be relevant anymore. I think that’s the way I looked at it, and the way I tried to address it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Going back to communication, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of things NASA does. There’s a lot now about Mars, I think just this week more information about water on Mars. The general public will hear those announcements every once in a while, but in between, the robotic missions are just doing incredible amazing things, and we don’t necessarily hear about it as much.\\n\\n When it was announced that Shuttle was going to close and then Constellation, just in our area we would have people ask us, “Well, we heard JSC closed.” People think that if we’re not flying humans on a NASA-built machine then NASA is not doing anything. Talk about that communication. What part does Headquarters play in educating the public, and how important is that for NASA’s goals? I know you have to educate congresspeople, but is educating the public also important?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That’s a hard thing to do, because the public is a pretty amorphous entity. There’s a lot of the public that follows NASA very closely, and then there’s a lot of the public that doesn’t. I will tell you that for the most part our own, I’ll say, unscientific discussions with the public was “NASA is a source of leadership and inspiration for our nation.”\\n\\n What does NASA do? We’re not really sure, but the trademark of NASA is pretty deep and pretty far-reaching. If you look at the data and the facts, during Charlie’s time we were the number one. All the media, anything you can do publicly, we were the number one in federal government. Social media, hits on websites, all that stuff—we’re number one in federal government. Yet people still don’t really know sometimes what we’re doing. It was always a challenge, it’s always a challenge to communicate what we’re doing. It’s always a challenge to talk about the level of detail of some of what we’re doing so that the public—that word carefully again—understands what we’re doing. It’s just hard.\\n\\n What I saw mostly is the inspirational value. Think about the [solar] eclipse in August [2017]. I think the data was 25 percent of the people in the United States did something to see the eclipse. That’s an enormous number. NASA didn’t cause the eclipse, it happened naturally. But we were on the front of the train of trying to educate the public about the situation and what you do, what you’re not going to do, all those different things that come with it.\\n\\n To me that was the piece that was probably most important —I think it’s just a hard thing to do. I think our public affairs folks do just an amazing job. They just do an amazing job, but they’re pretty limited. It’s not like a New York City marketing firm that comes out. Yet they still do just an incredible job, what they do.\\n\\n I think public capture of what we do is always a challenge, but I also think that bringing in SpaceX, bringing in Blue Origin and Virgin [Galactic], all these guys that are coming in—I think that’s exciting too. I think that excites the public, and that’s not bad. That’s where I used to get frustrated. It’s not an “or,” it’s an “and.” We all help each other with what we’re trying to do in this whole exploration journey." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know it was important to Charlie Bolden, the “inspire” part of it. I know that was always very important. He took every opportunity he could to talk to children and schoolkids to try to inspire that next generation, especially with the STEM [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] education." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before you stepped in after Charlie left, during that time are there some other things that you worked on as Associate Administrator? I know there’s lots of stuff, and we could talk for the next three days probably about everything that you did during that time, but is there anything that stands out in your mind that you want to talk about or mention? Or you feel like there’s any accomplishments?\\n\\n Maybe even going back to Marshall. Do you feel like you accomplished everything as a Center Director that you wanted to at Marshall before you went to Headquarters? Then once you were in that Associate Administrator position, do you feel like you accomplished what you had set out to do, or had time to do it before things changed again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m going to answer the Marshall piece real quick. I’m sure I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish, because I got pulled out before I was done. But I put some things in motion, then you let the person behind you pick those up. They can either do them or not, it’s not mine anymore. That was something I learned pretty early in my career. When you move to a new job, you have a new job. You don’t get to do your old job anymore. There was somebody there before you, there’ll be somebody there after you. Let them do their job. That was really important for me.\\n\\n I think probably since my days when I first moved to Stennis—that was when I first realized that I was a new guy at Stennis, even though I knew the subject really well, and they let me run it. I didn’t have a whole lot of people telling me, or the previous person telling me, “Oh no, you got to do it this way.” They let me do it. I think that was a lesson I took.\\n\\n When I moved to Headquarters, I had a few goals. If I had one goal—I wanted to put a capability leadership model in place. We did that. We can debate whether it’s successful, but this was a way to have the Centers understand what all the capabilities are across the Agency. Quit duplicating and start sharing, not only in the technical arena, but in the business services as well. That’s a pretty big change. And it was a lot of work, a lot of effort associated with that, while you’re still trying to do all the missions we were trying to do too. But my goal was to try to get the Agency more efficient, while staying effective in our ability to do stuff. It’s not that we weren’t efficient, it’s not that we weren’t effective. But we have lots of places we could go to be better.\\n\\n As NASA’s budget went up, the budget for running the place actually stayed flat or went down. So my goal was to always try to do that better. You guys know that in your [History] Office down there, because I think you were a victim of some of that at one point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I felt like there were plenty of places where we could get more efficient. I’ll use you guys as an example. Why couldn’t you do history for the whole Agency? Why do I have three or four people at every Center doing history? My guess is we could probably get away having a NASA history office. I’m not trying to say it was good or bad, I’m just saying that was my thinking. The thing that really struck me—one Center in particular was having trouble hiring as fast as they needed to hire, and two Centers in the Agency were under freezes, couldn’t hire. That Center didn’t even think to look for help in hiring from those two Centers that were frozen, and yet what are all those people doing while they’re frozen?\\n\\n That’s when it hit me that “My god, we have got to talk across the Centers.” That’s hard though. There’s all sorts of reasons why you can’t do it. Some will tell you that; everybody shared them with me, trust me. That was a really hard process to go through. It’s still going, they’re still working on it. I think frankly the results remain to be seen. I think we found some efficiencies. I don’t know if we found enough efficiencies to justify all the work I put everybody through, but I do think it was the right direction to go.\\n\\n If I had something that was left undone when I left the Agency—and I said it in my last speech that I gave at the Space Symposium in Colorado near the end of April [2017], right before I retired. I think the Agency needs to come to grips with the risk discussion. We have to talk about risk. My honest fear, and I’m on the record as saying this, is would we send Neil [A. Armstrong] to the Moon today knowing what we knew then? Would we have launched Crip [Robert L. Crippen] and John [W.] Young on the first Shuttle with the knowledge they had when we did that? Would we actually do that today? Our risk appetite is something that really needs to be discussed. I tried, but I ran out of time on that one.\\n\\n Where I went, honestly, in my speech at Colorado was we have to become risk leaders. I’ll probably write a book on this one day, we’ll see if I do it. We have to become risk leaders, not risk managers. What I mean by that is if you look at a definition of leadership and a definition of management—managers do things right, leaders do the right things. If you put the word “risk” in front of that—risk managers do things right, risk leaders do the right things. And that is hard. We have become risk managers and not risk leaders. Sometimes, as a leader, you have to accept the risk and move on. What we do will never be risk-free. It’s hard, that’s hard. You never know.\\n\\n I was talking about a decision I made for a vehicle that was probably not going to take that risk and got brought up to my level, and I accepted the risk. This was in 2016. That vehicle is probably not going to fly till 2020, with crew on it I mean. That could end up being a stupid decision. But at some point you take the data you’ve got, and somebody has to make that decision. So I did. I made a decision and we moved on.\\n\\n Now I’m not talking about just me, I’m talking about everybody. It’s not about me. I remember in my speech I closed it with this. I said, “The least risky thing for us to do is not fly. If you don’t want to take any risk, don’t fly. But as a country, as a nation, that’s the most risky thing for us to do.” Finding that balance between those is something—I just didn’t get there.\\n\\n I have a couple white papers I’ve written, and just trying to work through with Ralph [R.] Roe [Jr.] in my Chief Engineer’s office. Really good stuff, but I ran out of time. That’s the one thing that I wish I had—it’s not a regret, I think it’s more I just ran out of time. It was the next thing on my list to attack." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I read that speech, and I thought it was interesting because I did pull some of those quotes. In this risk-averse culture we’re in now, I agree, it gets to the point where you just don’t fly. That’s the only way of actually avoiding risk. But one of these statements was “Risk is simply a discussion between likelihood and consequence.” It becomes more about the process than the product." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that’s what I mean by risk management. I had somebody tell me once—this is kind of interesting. I said, “Hey, what are we doing about this risk?”\\n\\n They said, “Oh we put it in the risk system, so it’s taken care of.”\\n\\n I went, “No, it’s not, no.” Just because you entered it into a system it is taken care of? Oh my god, no. But that’s the management part. “I got risk, I got to put it in the system. It’s now in the system so I’m done, let’s move on.” No. That’s what I meant by “the process becomes the product.”\\n\\n But here’s the other point. Those risks, they also have to be accepted by our stakeholders. Or understood. Not accepted, understood by our stakeholders. Because sometimes they can be the ones that drive us to be risk-averse more than anybody. Congress, the White House. Think about it. If we have a failure, I’m really not allowed to even work the failure. I’ve got to go respond to a million questions.\\n\\n It’s hard to say, but you’ve got to be willing to accept that you may have another tragedy. If you’re not willing to accept that, then we just don’t need to fly. Since this is a history thing, the last thing I want anybody to think is that I think we’re going to have—I don’t want anybody to think that I’m accepting another tragedy. I just know the reality of where we are.\\n\\n Because hey, I can get in my car this afternoon and I can have a wreck going home. But that doesn’t stop me from getting in my car. Somewhere in there I’m doing some kind of risks process. We all do it, internally. It’s that risk-reward thing. By the way, there has to be a reward. We send soldiers into battle for hopefully a reward that someone’s thought about, or benefit that someone’s thought about.\\n\\n If I send crews back to the Moon, or even further to Mars, we need to make sure that the public, our stakeholders, and everybody understands the benefit. I think I said in that speech, that often we talk about the benefit of something when we sell the project, but by the time we get ready to fly, all we’re talking about is the risk. You forget about it. The risk-benefit discussion, which is similar to likelihood and consequence, is a whole other piece that we have to work on. But I digress now. We’re not talking history, we’re talking philosophy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay. If it was something you were trying to implement, that is history, so that’s good. I’m glad you mentioned that.\\n\\n Let’s quickly talk about when Charlie stepped down with the new President [Trump], and you became the Acting Administrator. You ended up being the longest-serving person in that position. Talk about that very recent time period, and how you approached that as an Acting Administrator as opposed to a named Administrator. How that affected the day-to-day work coming out of the Administrator’s office, or if it did at all as far as what NASA was doing.\\n\\n Again, changing directions once we knew what the new President wanted to do, and also about the National Space Council. You mentioned Mike Pence earlier. I know we only have 10 minutes left, but maybe we can talk for a few minutes and then we can schedule another time to finish out the discussion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think for me it was pretty simple. I talked about being paralyzed when the previous administration changed. What I didn’t want our team to do was be paralyzed. I pretty much stood in front of everybody and probably about as cavalierly as you can I said, “We’re going to run till apprehended. We have an appropriations bill. We have missions we need to get done. I have crews on orbit, I got crews coming home, I got crews going up. What in that makes you think we can stop and wait for somebody to tell us what to do? I’ve got a bill, so let’s go.”\\n\\n Now I did that knowing that the typical Acting Administrator is only four to six months. It’s real easy to be bold and obnoxious like that when that’s the case. I will tell you that near the end there I’m looking over my shoulder, “Is somebody going to stop me, somebody going to apprehend me?” But the point was I just didn’t feel any reason for us—there was nothing that said “Stop doing anything.”\\n\\n I told you what we did with the new administration, in terms of the goals of NASA, were goals where NASA can be part of your team. I didn’t feel like I was at any disadvantage personally because I was the Acting Administrator as far as the White House goes. What I did feel like was we needed an Administrator, because it’s always better to have the president’s selection leading the Agency. It’s always going to be better.\\n\\n Did I have access to the folks in the White House? Of course I did. I talked to Vice President Pence several times. Just genuine interest, he was so excited about running the National Space Council, visibly excited when he talked to all of us on the Space Council. I still had a seat at the table as if I was the Administrator. They never treated me any differently, which I greatly appreciated. Congress worked with me as much as they could, until I think they got pretty frustrated near the end. I think for me it was actually a pretty exciting time. I didn’t think about the fact that I was Acting too terribly often. Occasionally things would happen. There would be Center Directors that would leave and people would go, “Well, you really can’t appoint the next Center Director.”\\n\\n I said, “I’ve got to have a Center Director, sorry.” You had to do things, there were a lot of times where that came into play. I would call it more bureaucratic stuff of whether the Acting Administrator can do it or not. But the other part that was cool was my team stepped up, and they were so awesome. The Center Directors that were there, the mission directors that were there. All my team around me. I just got to tell you, Lesa [B.] Roe was a godsend during that time. She was just phenomenal. I don’t know if I could have done it without her help. She was unbelievable. Then, when she retired, Krista [C.] Paquin stepped in and same thing. These were two people—you need a sounding board when you’re in those positions, and they were both very good sounding boards for me. Just to keep the sanity.\\n\\n I had great support from Ellen Ochoa, Todd May, [Robert D. “Bob”] Cabana. These are people that were just—Janet [L.] Kavandi, David [D.] McBride, Dave [David E.] Bowles, Chris Scolese. Scolese had been through this—he lived it during the other change—so he was a really big adviser for me and helper for me. Rick [Richard J.] Gilbrech is an old friend of mine from years ago when I was at Stennis, we were at Stennis together. Even Mike [Michael M.] Watkins out at [NASA] JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] was a big help. Eugene [L.] Tu who ran Ames. These folks, they helped me tremendously from the Centers.\\n\\n Then I had Gerst, Bill Gerstenmaier, who just—I think a hundred years from now, whatever encyclopedias look like, if they say “human spaceflight” there’s going to be a picture of Bill Gerstenmaier. He is the man. I had a good friend, Thomas [H.] Zurbuchen, he came. I didn’t even know him, and we talked him into coming to run Science [Mission Directorate], and he just became a tremendous friend and asset to me. Steve [Stephen G.] Jurczyk, who replaced me as the AA. Jaiwon Shin—these are people that I couldn’t have done it. Andrew [J.] Hunter will go down in history to me during that transition as probably—people will wonder “Andrew who?” He was the acting CFO [chief financial officer] for a year and a half. So he had an Acting job just as long as me, and he stepped up too for a role.\\n\\n There were so many people that did that, that helped me run the Agency. The nice thing was I knew them already, I had such a great trust in them. I will say that the one thing that was probably most—I don’t know if interesting is the right word. But one of my newer challenges that worked out pretty well I think—well, I shouldn’t speak for myself like that—was the international engagement. Charlie had really owned the international engagement. Having meetings with my counterparts throughout the world was a tremendous experience. Al [Albert] Condes and his team at Headquarters—you talk about unsung heroes in the Agency and how they run the international program, it’s just phenomenal. I was fortunate enough to go to Russia, Japan, Australia during this, Germany, France—I got to meet with so many world leaders in space. That was just unbelievable, unbelievable. Those guys did a great job setting all that up.\\n\\n What was interesting to me—I’d heard it from Charlie, and I’ve seen it through these experiences—they want us to lead. Our partners want us to lead. If we lead, they’ll come with us. We’ve just got to lead. If there was a new piece that came to me as part of the Acting time, that was the bigger part of the new piece. Everything else I had been through, because Charlie had pretty much let me participate.\\n\\n You see how good this team is—or that team, I can’t say “this” anymore. You see how good that team is and how dedicated they are to the mission. Those are the leaders that helped me, but their teams stepped up below them. When I asked them to take on extra duties, they had people take on extra duties at their Centers too. It was an incredibly rewarding time. When it was time to go, I was ready, but it was an incredibly rewarding time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I don’t want to keep you any longer than we have to, and I think that’s probably a good place to stop. I have some more questions, so hopefully we can talk again soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. Thank you very much, hang in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, I will. Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00786", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project 1998 - 1999", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/CappsTE/cappste.htm", + "original_file_name": "CappsTE_8-18-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/CappsTE/CappsTE_8-18-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Tommy E. Capps", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 18 August 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Tommy E. Capps" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 18, 1998. We're speaking with Tommy Capps with the Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project. Rebecca Wright, Paul Rollins and Franklin Tarazona.\\n\\n Thanks again for taking time out of your busy schedule to visit with us. We'd like to start with you telling us about your role and responsibilities with the Shuttle-Mir Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you, Rebecca. It started out, actually, as we first learned about the Shuttle-Mir Program in October of '92, I was working with a small group of training managers, [as] the lead of that group handling the training for Shuttle Program. We got our first notification that we were going to do a joint program with the Russians, which was, at first, very exciting, but we had a lot of unknowns and we had a lot of questions immediately.\\n\\n But after a few phone calls, initial phone calls, to Sergei Krikalev and Vladimir Titov, because we really didn't know who to work with at the time, these were the first cosmonauts that were coming over for STS-60. Sergei Krikalev was the prime and Valogi Titov, Vladimir Titov, was the back-up. So our first initial conversations with them were new and exciting and telecons.\\n\\n So we started at that point. The first docking was planned so that we needed to start training very, very quickly. So we initially got them over here in the November time frame. We first talked to them [Russian cosmonauts] in October, got them here in November time frame. Then we had from November to February of '93, which was the very start of training for STS-60, an important milestone for us in the Shuttle world, because that's when the crew comes together, starts training in the Shuttle mission simulator.\\n\\n So we had from November to February to get two new guys [trained in basic Shuttle knowledge] whose language skills were being improved daily, but were pretty far down the road from the foreign nationals we'd worked with before. So we had from November to February to get them up to speed on the Shuttle, basic training for Shuttle, understanding what Shuttle was, understanding a little bit about their roles and responsibilities. So it was a very difficult job for all of us. We had a lot of initial contacts with the Russians on training plans, trying to learn to communicate with each other, even though through an interpreter it was [still] a different language after we communicated.\\n\\n What we were doing then is trying to get them familiar with the Shuttle systems, getting them up to the point where they could join the rest of the crew in February and start training. We did that successfully with a lot of their cooperation. But some of the interesting things that none of us thought about before is, well [for example], can they drive in the United States? We were really worried. I basically starting off, initially from MOD, looking at it from a training perspective--but with Don Puddy, and later Steve Nagel, and I, in a Crew Exchange Training Working Group, and [in] that working group, we had two Russian friends join us, Aleksandr Aleksandrov as co-chair and Yuri Kargapolov. So the four of us with Steve Nagel working [with us] occasionally were trying to get in place the training and the crew exchange issues.\\n\\n So little things like driving was very, very important suddenly, because here we had two new guys coming to the States with very limited language skills. Even though Krikalev had been studying English and did have a start, in his own words, he was about seventy percent of understanding what we were talking about. Not being able to speak [at that level] as we all learned, a foreign language is more difficult to speak, but he could understand a lot.\\n\\n So we started trying to do things like take them out for driving lessons. We were really apprehensive about them driving in Houston in all of our aggressive traffic and freeway traffic and so forth. What's ironic is Don and I made our--well, Don made one or so trips, but our first trip to Russia came in like May of that same year. After a few hours in Moscow, I realized that we were totally silly for wasting our time trying to teach these guys how to drive in Texas. If they could survive Moscow traffic, then they had no problem whatsoever driving. It was an experience. A lot of new experiences.\\n\\n I remember very vividly our first Christmas together [with the cosmonauts and their families]. This was an introduction. You've got to realize Russia had not been celebrating Christmas that long, and so they were interested in a lot of our customs. Very, very enjoyable time for everybody, but a difficult time because they were trying to adjust to our training materials.\\n\\n But basically what I did is put in place a group of instructors that tailored the training to their needs. We had had a lot of foreign nationals here before and trained them and they worked on the Shuttle, but they always came to us with pretty good English skills. They didn't have the culture differences that we had with the Russians. The unique thing for us was learning what the Russian culture was, trying to understand it. They, the same for us. So many things that are a given, very simple adjustments for a lot of other foreign nationals, the Japanese, the Europeans, and so forth, were difficult for the Russians. So there was a lot of time and effort in addition to the formal training. . Our instructors helped them understand how to live here, how to work here, how to understand our approach. But basically we had to develop a training program that was very much tailored to them.\\n\\n STS-60 was a very successful flight. We learned a tremendous amount of information on how to approach training with the Russians, how we should adjust our program as necessary. So those were very, very valuable experiences for us.\\n\\n Stepping forward in time, we flew other Russians on the Shuttle. We had to develop programs for varying degrees of involvement with the Shuttle. Some were just passengers. Some, again, were much more involved as mission specialists. Basically my role evolved as the Crew Exchange Training Working Group role [evolved], working with Don and Yuri and Aleksandr in all the aspects of the Shuttle-Mir Program, at the same time I was managing a group of individuals that held the management end of training for Shuttle.\\n\\n So basically my role became defined as all the Russian activities. I did that purposefully. I set that up for myself, because I just felt like we needed the focus and concentration, so I could let the other people in my group go worry about all the other flights. I just concentrated on the Shuttle-Mir flights, because we were having a number of those.\\n\\n Basically that involved the training for cosmonauts when they came to the U.S. to ride on the Shuttle, either as passengers or as full MS. I got very involved in those flights. The training for astronauts in Russia, Mir training for astronauts in Russia, our long-duration crew members starting out with Norm [Norman Thagard] and Bonnie [Dunbar] as his back-up. Then Shannon [Lucid], John Blaha, and [Jerry] Linenger and [Michael] Foale and [David] Wolf and [Andy] Thomas. I don't think I'm leaving anybody out. But all those guys were concerned with the Shuttle-Mir training that they received in Russia. Obviously, when they came here for science training, I got very heavily involved in making sure that the management of that went well.\\n\\n At the same time, cosmonauts that came here, riding as passengers on the Shuttle, or if we were docked with the Shuttle, that was an important aspect that none of us really anticipated, but you realize if you're on Mir and been there for a while and then Shuttle docks and then you're moving to the Shuttle, you've got a lot of Shuttle safety-related-type aspects that we needed to make sure they understood, so we put in place a mini program. It wasn't real involved, but about a week's worth of training to get a familiarization with the Shuttle. Not that they would do ascent or entry on the Shuttle, but actually just visit the Shuttle from the Mir.\\n\\n Obviously, with the cosmonauts, we had probably every scenario we could have developed. The cosmonauts that would just go uphill on the Shuttle, stay on the Mir; we had cosmonauts that would come down on the Shuttle, that had not done ascent; we had our own long-duration crew members we were bringing back. So that led us to try to get an understanding of the post-flight experiences.\\n\\n Probably, for me, one of the most rewarding aspects [of Phase 1] was the post-flight period for our crew members and also dealing with the Russians coming back on the Shuttle after a period of time on the Mir. Basically, from the three auspices of the Crew Exchange and Training Working Group, I managed a small team of individuals that met every day after the landing and did an assessment of where the crew member was, what kind of requirements we had from different communities, and making sure that was all coordinated and worked, and then I went back to my MOD counterparts, who handled the scheduling of that post-flight experience, and what it is, put together a little team of a flight surgeon, myself, from a management perspective, but the flight surgeon, the scheduler, an MOD-type individual, and then the baseline data-collection person, the science-type person, and then the rehab, which was probably the most critical piece of that. So we all basically met and assessed the needs of the crew member and tried to make sure that we metered out their experiences.\\n\\n The reason we evolved to that, our first experience, in my opinion, with Norm Thagard, was just horrible for him and for everybody. We oversubscribed his time. We basically had not got a good handle of what the demands would be press-wise, PAO activities. We didn't understand, because we're all science, engineer-type people, we don't really think of the ramifications of the politics and public policy and all involved in these kind of missions, investigations by inspector generals and congressional committees and so forth.\\n\\n Basically a lot of those demands spill over in a post-flight experience, too, so we very quickly learned we had to put together a team and go manage that. We did that. I'm so thankful by Andy's flight, we felt like we did a really good job of that. To me, one of the most rewarding experiences is from a chaotic mess, we evolved to a very structured, organized, reasonable post-flight experience, that the crew member's health is first priority, obviously.\\n\\n We had a very strict priority list whereby the events that were scheduled came under the category of--crew health was always first. Rehab, obviously was second, and very closely tied there. Then we would get into baseline data collection, which gave the scientists their valuable science experience through the crew members' eyes. Then we would work debriefs, and then other events, PAO and type events. So we put a lot of structure into that.\\n\\n In this whole process, the post-flight experience had to evolve through the training, all the way through the period of training, for the crew members. Talking about the LDM crew members now. Their periods of training in Russia and so forth in many ways was very similar to this post-flight experience. We found that because it was very easy to oversubscribe them, we had to get very intimately involved in the Russian scheduling aspects and coordinating with our schedulers back here to make sure that the transition from when they were in Russia would come back here for science training, all that blended very well. So we found that we had to get very, very--in fact, Don Puddy and I had to get very involved in actual crew schedules and so forth there in Russia.\\n\\n We had in place a director of Russian operations. We call them DORs. The astronauts that were there basically worked under Don's Crew Exchange and Training Working Group. We coordinated with them. They did a lot of the in-country-type negotiations with the Russians. But we found ourselves having to get very involved in those schedules. The reason for that is, basically the language was a tremendous burden. And some new things for our crew members like testing and quizzing and things that they went through, we found that the language was a tremendous burden. So, to be able to accommodate the needs of the crew members, we needed to basically have a very structured scheduling program.\\n\\n The Russians were very, very good about making sure that the work week was forty-two hours and things like that. But what didn't count in that was the self-study and the time at home, trying to get a lot of the language down. So we had to keep that all smooth, which kind of was not unlike post-flight periods. So I think we had our lessons learned that kind of merged together there.\\n\\n One of the things that I found useful for me is, I spent a good bit of time with the Europeans that already had worked with the Russians for a long time. A new concept for a lot of us, being very ignorant at the time of the Russian culture and so forth, we took culture courses. In fact, NASA put together an extremely good Russian culture course. Steve Jones put that together and we took it. Every trip to Russia validated how good a job he really did on the course. But one of the things we didn't understand very well is basically the Russians are very Oriental in nature, so a lot of their culture and aspects are somewhat Oriental-related. We stereotype them as Europeans. They look like us. They look like Europeans. They in many ways communicate like Europeans. But we found that many of the things that drive them, their decision-making process, the ability to work on something for years and years and years and not have to see an immediate finish or reward like we have to have, is very, very different for us.\\n\\n So what I was trying to do is to get into their heads a little bit through the Europeans and understand how Europeans dealt with a lot of the common problems that we had. It was very rewarding for me. The Europeans were very candid and open. The folks from CNES, the French Space Agency, were extremely cooperative. I made a couple of trips there to try to understand their training program, but mostly spent time talking about how can we jointly crack the nut of understanding the Russian program and how can we accommodate the Russians needs and desires, but at the same time take care of our crews.\\n\\n They had in place [in Star City, Russia]a similar-type function as the Director of Russian operations that we had there. They had a training counterpart. They had kind of counterpart, my counterpart, that basically was responsible for the training for their crews there, for Euro-Mir Program and so forth. We spent many, many hours together strategizing, well, how should we approach negotiations and so forth. They had a tremendous advantage on us, because they could just hand the Russians cash and make things happen. We can't do that with our procurement processes and so forth.\\n\\n But I probably should say a couple of words about the contract deliverables. For me, one of the best things that happened for us on making things actually happen in a very slow-to-change environment was the contract deliverables, whereby if we needed to upgrade things in Star City to accommodate our crew training, we were able to do that through a contract. Obviously, we were paying the Russians money to deliver items that we need, including models and their simulator, including visuals for their simulators, and those kind of things. So we could actually pay for those things to be upgraded in order to provide for our crews the training for the level we thought that they should have. That's a difference in the ISS [International Space Station] Program and people are struggling with that right now.\\n\\n But I found the Russians, even though many times economically or the wherewithal was not for them to come through on a deliverable as timely as we would like, they did come through, their heart was in the right place, they did try to deliver. But we did have that lever of not paying if they didn't deliver. Therefore, there was a lot of motivation to provide what we needed.\\n\\n A very simple example is a very simple model of the Mir in the correct configuration. It was important to us that all the modules that we were docking with, our astronauts in Russia understood what the configuration of the Mir was in, were the Spektr and Priroda modules in the right position and so forth. The Russians didn't necessarily see the importance of that fidelity. Because we thought it was important, we thought it was safety important, we thought it was important because of the orientation of the crew members, we were willing to pay for a new model to be built. Basically, we're talking about a long tube with a model and a light shining through it, so your visual actually shows in your simulator for your hand-control motions, shows an accurate model. We could talk about that concept all day long, but we had a difference in philosophy of training. The only way we could get to our philosophy, the U.S. philosophy, that we thought was important was to pay for it, and we did, and it worked. So that was kind of a lever that we had, and I'm very pleased that we did that.\\n\\n The other thing that I felt was extremely successful for our crew members that we were able to negotiate through money is a crew onboard support system. We call it the COSS system. Basically, that was a system whereby it's just a laptop computer with a CD-ROM and so forth, where we could put in video images of, for instance, science equipment. If it's a particular science experiment, we could set up all the equipment, take photos of it, put it into the computer, so that on orbit, the night before a crew member was to spend time-line hours the next day putting that experiment together, they could look at it, look at the parts of it visually, look at some key notes about it that they entered themselves, or we entered for them. Basically, that system gave them a nice refresher, because you realize you may have had that training months before you fly and it would not be fresh in your mind. So it was a good refresher, but it also, in my opinion, technically was a good tool to get the accuracy. Did this item plug into this item, and those types of analogies. So we were very pleased with that.\\n\\n At first the Russians were very resistant to that [concept]. I remember Don Puddy and I negotiating, hours of negotiation, talking about it. But then they locked on and just love it now. I mean, it's something that they think is extremely important. But our role was to try to find a champion on the Russian side that understood the importance of the concept. We were lucky that Aleksandr Aleksandrov backed us and he understood the benefits..\\n\\n That concept of reinforcing the training with materials was very, very important to us. Basically the Russian culture, for many reasons, there were not many training materials available. That was one of the biggest problems that we had to face, is that our crew members were used to a lot of visual cues and a lot of training materials. Now, you think about, of course, I'm a little older, so I can remember the lectures back in college where we didn't have much visual reinforcement. You just took notes and you studied your notes and you had a textbook and so forth. But the generation of astronauts that, basically, we're dealing with, a lot of them grew up in the computer age. A lot of us had to learn that the hard way and they actually had it in school. So they had a lot of visual reinforcement, whether it was Gameboys at home, or whether it was computer toys, and so forth.\\n\\n The Russian environment basically was much like the old days of our schooling system, whereby you took notes, you listened to the professor, you studied those notes. You'd never really dream of many handouts or pieces of paper that helped. It just was not a published-type system. It was basically a listening-type system. So this was very, very difficult for our crew members, particularly in a new language, because they did not have the luxury--we got into Phase One so quickly and we were flying so quickly, we didn't have the luxury of giving our astronauts months of Russian language training before they went to Russia. Basically they had to learn it very quickly. It's a difficult language.\\n\\n So what we would find is that lack of materials to reinforce their lectures was a phenomenally big problem. The Russians were very, very reluctant to give us those materials, because, number one, they felt that it was giving away a lot of their secrets. Now, realize they had just come from a Cold War era and it very difficult for them to fork over that [their training materials]. Another is, they'd been selling a lot to the Europeans, so it's kind of and issue of getting monetary return for that. This is my opinion, but a lot of it also was a resistance to publish the knowledge that you had, because in their old system that basically knowledge was power. So if you had a piece of information, a concept, or you were the instructor in a particular area, you guarded that very, very carefully, because if you put it all down in writing and you handed it to someone, you were at that point dispensable, and if things were not working well for you with your management or whatever, you could be moved on out into another area.\\n\\n So there were many, many reasons why we didn't have a lot of materials. We found that by buying what we call komspecs, basically buying a contract deliverable, was to give us the written material for our crew members. Of course, it was in Russian, a lot of it was outdated, and part of the problem was to try to verify the data. So those were very difficult times for our crew members, very difficult times for all of us.\\n\\n But we've evolved where we did get a lot of those materials. We were able to take those and put people in place to try to turn them into useful training materials. Therefore, [we] evolved to a point where the more common things that we have now in training, the visual cues, the computer-aided things, were more in place and we were using more complex visuals by the end of the program. So that Andy Thomas was able to debrief and say, \"Hey, these items really, really did help me,\" and so forth. So that was an evolution.\\n\\n Part of the adjustment for a lot of us in the early days was just learning to adjust to the climate, learning to adjust to deal with meeting in remote areas and meeting in a culturally different environment than here. We had a lot of adjustments. We wanted to make sure we didn't offend our [Russian] friends. I remember many, many times, it is a custom in Russia to take off your coat and hang it. It's almost a ceremony, in my opinion, to hang it at a certain place. But I would find that we were in meetings, Don Puddy and I, particularly, met a lot in an area in the edge of Moscow, Mitishi, where it was very cold, very difficult environment. We'd go in, and basically you had to just layer clothes. I learned that I would wear a big thermal jacket with a good thermal liner, and I would unzip my outer jacket and then make a big ceremony of hanging it, but wear my liner through the whole meeting with insulated underwear under that and the whole bit. I'm not very cold-natured, but I found that there's a lot of adjustments.\\n\\n Some of the things we learned was just surviving and how you survive in Russia. I think the Russians had the same problems here with our hot summers and how to dress accordingly. We had a lot of cultural exchange that was fun in a way and wonderful experiences in a way, but, I think, very difficult at the time. When we [in the U.S.] were used to going into a meeting with an agenda, one, two, three, four, and get through that agenda, and maybe after a week of meetings we were past item number one and we had this big plate. Don Puddy and I and Yuri Kargapolov and Aleksandrov worked really well together, because we became very good friends. We became a real team. I think one of our successes was that we could move through a lot of material very quickly. Now, we found ourselves, if we had to join a larger meeting, that we got bogged down immediately. But the four of us together could crank and we had an awful heavy workload for a long time, so we had to move through the material. But we found we could have our differences, our negotiations, our arguments, whatever, but we would work them out and get past them very quickly and move through the agenda.\\n\\n I think one of the things that we learned together was what were the battles that we fought, what was really worth fighting for and what was not, and try to come to some mutual understanding. We would find by the end that Don and I could write the protocol, which is basically a document of the meeting and so forth, before we ever left the country. We would write it and then we would work to that protocol together. We would basically share that with our Russian friends and we would sit down together and negotiate to the point that by the end of the meeting we may have revised that protocol some, but we had a good starting place. It was a very good technique for us we learned early.\\n\\n The other lessons learned that was critical, I think, is a small working group, our working group of four people, and we would bring in who we needed. Don't misunderstand that. If we needed expertise from the science area, we would bring in Dr. Bogomalov from the Russian side, or John Uri, or somebody from the U.S. side. We would sit there and work those particular issues, but basically reconvene back to our small group to make things happen.\\n\\n The science training piece, I got involved in that. We were having a lot of difficulties with the integration of the science training into the Russian world. You can imagine our scientists learning to deal with the environments in Star City. Moving people in and out of there was a logistical problem, housing and all of the ramifications of that. I still wore my hat as Crew Exchange Working Group member, but joined Rick Nygren's science group, for about a year or so, just as a matrix, just to try to help lend some mission operations experience, some training experience, some scheduling experience, to his folks. Also we had some things working well with the Russians at that time. I went over and headed up one of his IPTs, his Integrated Product Teams. I got Lisa Spence, a young lady here in mission operations in my organization, to work for me over in Russia. We had a very successful experience in trying to get the science training integrated into the Russian program and try to reach some agreements and some understanding of what we needed. Basically what we needed was a crew support-type person to go in and understand the procedures. If this was U.S. training provided to the cosmonauts or to our astronauts there, to understand those procedures backward and forward and integrate those into the Russian system.\\n\\n The difficulties we came about was the different way of writing procedures in the different countries. What our astronauts were used to here was very, very different, 180 out, probably, from what the Russians were used to. So we had to get some folks together procedure-wise. A lot of the procedures were almost just in time-type procedures, because the science program was evolving and developing as we go. So it wasn't like we had a lot of structure already in the program. But that team pulled together.\\n\\n I found it very rewarding that we actually accomplished a lot of the science that we needed to, as far as the science training. I was worried about the training of the science, not so much just the end product. But we were able to do that, improve the quality of the training on both sides of the ocean jointly. We actually together worked very, very hard. The Russians counterparts there, I know Ivonti Zorinand some of those guys were just interested in it as we were, in making sure that the product was a good product for the crew training.\\n\\n But that was an era that was very interesting for me. It was fun. But it was rewarding. I think it was about a year and a half or so that I spent working in that, at the same time Working Crew Exchange work, crew-type issues. I never left that, I just did less MOD-type duties at the time so I could do that.\\n\\n I guess, we're up to today, twenty-four trips later to Russia and several trips down to the Cape during the launches. I guess I should comment that was always a good experience for me, is we'd go down and support the launch of each of the Shuttle-Mir docking programs where we had a lot of fellowships with the Russians. We had a lot of technical problems to solve immediately. The training was usually over with at that point, and Don and I both were into more a logistics mode, making sure that our friends from Russia understood what was happening at the Cape, understood what was happening with the launch and share the launch experience together. That was always very rewarding.\\n\\n I'll share one story that always I get a little emotional with, because it was, I guess, the first year. Up until '92, October of '92 time frame, up until October, November, December, our Shuttle mission simulator basically was very, very closed to foreign nationals, particularly Russians, so the last person in the world I would ever think that I would take in to a fairly secure simulator, because we had done a lot of the military, joint military Shuttle flights. We all had secret clearances. It was a very closed environment, and I remember after things loosened up and the Air Force or military got away from a lot of the flights for the Shuttle, we were able to actually loosen up a little bit. So I could take people into the simulator that normally I could not take. So I took General [Yuri] Glazkov over for a tour of the simulator, the motion base, and went through it and set him in the flight deck. We talked a lot together and shared that experience.\\n\\n We walked out of the building and I said, \"General, I just realized that just a few months ago I would have never, ever have been able to show you this simulator.\" We had a good hug and we had a lot of conversation about how far we had come in a short period of time from the Cold War days.\\n\\n My first trip to Russia, the very first thing he wanted to do is to get me over in their simulator, which we did and we went over there. We did almost the identical thing. We were in Star City, we walked outside, looking around, and he said, \"Tommy, do you remember you took me through a simulator in Houston?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Yes, I really do.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, I feel the same way right now.\" And so we both shared that moment. But it really brought home to me the value of the Phase One Program, how quickly we came from a very, very--well, all of us, a very much lack of understanding of each other's cultures. We had a lot of negative feelings. A lot of us--you realize that I grew up in the era in East Texas, where we had the practice bomb raids. We hid under our desks and drilled if the Russians were going to basically invade or whatever, or bomb us. And the Russians of my age group did the same thing over there. Of course, we all, in different military experiences and different civilian experiences, both were guarded against each other's culture. So I think the reality [is] that [now] we could sit together or work jointly a program that brought our two countries together.\\n\\n A young man in Russia that's working right now for me on this ISS Program just got through with a very similar experience for himself with a driver there. One of the NASA drivers was going to have a birthday party. Ron's leaving, I think, Friday on the NASA plane and not going to get to participate in the party. So I think they're having a separate little party. But Ron said, \"Tommy, you were right. You told me when I went over here that the whole reason we're doing this thing is not just the NASA technical aspect. It's not the space program or a way to get money to Russia and all. It's basically the blending of the two cultures, so that our offsprings and so forth will be basically joint-ventured and working together and not necessarily doing military numbers on each other.\" I think the reality hit him after several weeks in Russia. But the real value of what he's doing right now as a young person in Russia, besides the technical and supporting the crews and all that, the real value is getting to understand the Russian people and working with them.\\n\\n That's my data dump. Any questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Laughter] And a very, very good one, at that. For six years you watched it grow and you watched it change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there ever a time that you thought maybe it was just so difficult, whatever you were going through, that the benefits wouldn't be worth the agony?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I really did. There was a period of time, actually more recent than you might expect, that I felt like that [Daniel] Goldin had an opportunity to pull out of the ISS Program with the Russians and he should have taken it. I think that would have been the right thing to do, for many, many reasons at the time. Right now I still think the right thing to do is to go do it [continue the program] because of the side benefits, besides the Space Program. But I think that all of us need to search our soul and figure out what's the best way to spend American dollars. I still feel like that it's a lot cheaper to jointly work together in space, because if we did not do that, those guys have got to have jobs and they can't all drive their cars as taxi drivers. We feel like that--I personally feel like that the money is well spent. It helps the Russian economy. It would be very easy to go to a military environment, I think, for a country in trouble. That's one way to get out of it. I think the U.S. is an example of that in the past. But I think my view right now is, yes, it's worth it. It's the right thing to do.\\n\\n But, yes, there was a point. We were just agonizing, we could not reach agreement on some crew training and so forth. It was at the point, it was a very low point for me, because I felt like we weren't making the transition from the momentum from Phase One to Phase Two. I saw a lot of momentum in Phase One. I saw a lot of successes, saw a lot of agony. Don't misunderstand. But I felt like we weren't making the transition. Now I kind of see some transition and I've got very high hopes that we'll get the right people in place and the right people working the program that will benefit from the experiences on both sides, the Russian and the U.S. side. So I think it's well worth it. But I will admit that there was a point where I was very jaded about it. Not for long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kept your momentum going?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it's working with the Russian people was fun and the rewards of seeing the changes in both sides on understanding each other's culture. I think that was a big one for me. I think just watching the career opportunities for our own young people, getting some experience working with the Russians, now they've got something they can bring to the table that nobody else has, nobody else in the U.S. has very much so.\\n\\n I think looking at some of those young folks that now have a set of credentials that they are able to go into a very, very difficult environment, work in a different language through an interpreter, or of their own skills in Russian, and able to perform very, very difficult tasks, I think that experience is fantastic for them. I think they have grown very quickly, matured career-wise that might have taken them years here. But I know one or two young folks that, maybe twenty years from NASA, they would get to the credible level they are right now, that they're walking in after a year or two of experience, because they have been there, done it, they've performed in a very hostile environment and performed well. So I think that's a driver for me, was to watch the people move through it.\\n\\n The other was just the close relationships of working with Yuri Kargapolov and Aleksandr and Don Puddy and Charlie Brown, being able to actually count our successes. You have to do that in this kind of program. You have to take, hey, we went to this meeting, we needed twelve things to accomplish and we got seven of them, and they were important ones and we have them prioritized. We came back and we felt like that the long plane trip and the long period there--for me, working in Russia is a very draining experience. Most of us worked twelve- to sixteen-hour days. When you're there it's very difficult, because basically you work with the Russians all day and then you stay on the phone all night trying to work with people here. So it can be very, very tiring. By the time you get back, you're just devastated. My wife teases me, because the one thing I want to do immediately when I get back is go to my lake house. She said, \"Tommy, it's a wasted trip, because you're going to sleep for two days. Why are we going to get in the car and break our neck to get to the lake?\" But I think it's an environmental shift that I usually need. But I found that it is extremely tiring.\\n\\n I do think burnout is going to be problem an ISS. We need to understand that for people. We need to have the support mechanisms in place to try to help folks on both sides of the ocean. I mean, the Russians need it here just as well, because they're doing the same thing. They're on the phone all night talking to Russia, or all day and all night, a lot of times. So it works both ways. So we do have to understand the people aspects and put in place the support mechanisms for people.\\n\\n I guess, to also answer your question, one of the most rewarding things for me was to try to help support and keep the people in Russia going and feeling good about what they were doing. One of the most frustrating aspects of working from Russia, or in Russia, is trying to make things happen back here, because you have this window of opportunity to quickly negotiate with the Russians, reach a conclusion, and move out and make something happen. You have this narrow window that the time has finally come, and you call back here and you need this piece of data or this information. Well, people here have a dozen meetings and their own world, too. Your little bit is in their priority somewhere, but it's still not necessarily the top thing to do. If they don't get back to you, because you're nine hours' time difference, it's very difficult. So you've got to catch them. Your twelve o'clock at night is when you're talking to them. If they don't come through for you, you've missed your opportunity the next day, because they're asleep when your window of opportunity has presented itself in Russia.\\n\\n So it's extremely frustrating for our folks in Russia not to have the support mechanisms back here or the response back here. What may seem a very trivial thing here may be a big deal in Russia. You have a chance to really respond back to Kargapolov with an answer that will let him make the plans for the crew for the following day. Little simple things, but it can be a big deal in Russia. Particularly the crew members, all of us, everybody in Russia go through a psychological adjustment and some tough periods. Depending on where you are at that point in your life, whether you're having a tough period or not, many times thing become amplified. What may be very simple and mundane here and is no big deal is a big deal there, because it's amplified because of conditions or language or whatever.\\n\\n My opinion is, our support mechanisms have to be very, very much in place here. I am very proud, even though it was very difficult, there were many times when we did support our folks appropriately in Russia and we did give them those quick responses they needed. I think that was something that was very important to me from the beginning. I think it helped us.\\n\\n The Europeans told me that, and I listened very carefully. They told me that you've got to have people in place that are fast movers, that are movers and shakers, basically, real go-getters in Russia. If you've got that and people respond to them back home, then you can be successful. They put some of their just outstanding people over there and found out real quick that part of our secret was the quality of people we put in Russia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The twenty-fourth trip, how was it different from the first time that you went?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it was tougher, I will admit. The first two or three trips you're just in such awe of everything and the culture and learning everything. But then the trip itself becomes more tiring. There's no question about that. Learning to adjust to the larger decisions groups for the International Space Program, which obviously involves bigger groups, and some of the issues that I thought ought to be resolved fairly quickly, because they were in larger groups, didn't get resolved. So it was a little bit frustrating there.\\n\\n Culturally, I guess, every trip I learned something new. Every trip is rewarding, from being able to understand more about the Russian culture, more experiences culturally, be able to see my friends there, my Russian friends, their children growing up and watching them adjust. It's interesting that you can go to Star City and look out the window of the Prophi [NASA Office area] and you'll see \"Best Buy Sacks being used as Kites\" and strange things that look so out of place. But what I'm seeing is their children really benefiting from their experiences with us and, I hope, vice versa. So it's very rewarding to watch the opportunities that are now there for some of the Russian children. I think that's a unique experience.\\n\\n Of course, twenty-four trips later, I know my way around a lot more, so it's much easier to get around. I like to function in small groups there. I found it very difficult to go do tourist-type things in larger groups, because everybody wants to do something different. I found that it just draws a lot more attention.\\n\\n Basically my best experiences there, particularly Charlie Brown and I, Don and I were real compatible, Steve Nagel, of course, always. What we would do is just kind of strike off on our own, away from a bigger group, dress down so we blended in with the Russian culture. We'll never be taken for Russians, but I think that's a successful [technique]. And then basically just going and getting an opportunity to see the city and getting involved with the culture a little bit. It's much easier now for me and I find that very rewarding. I tend to kind of strike off on my own and do that.\\n\\n It's interesting to watch--I guess Charlie and I have a lot of common interests, so it makes it real easy for us to travel together. We're very quick to make a decision where we want to go and we don't have to worry about waiting on a lot of people to get all their stuff together. We're kind of real portable. So we have a lot of fun. You don't have a lot of time there to do much tourist-type things, but we can really make our time count, because we know the city real well. It's very, very easy for us to get around on the Metro and all.\\n\\n How is it different, twenty-four trips later? I think you're just so much more independent. If you get stopped by the police, which I have a few times, I'm able to work through that without any problems. My language skills have gotten better, so I have a lot better understanding of what's going on around me and how to get in and out of different environments, different stores, that type thing.\\n\\n I like some of the museums there, not so much the art museums and so forth, but the military museums. Charlie and I like to go through unique-type places. We have enough contacts now that are real friends in Russia that they take care of us really well, and we try to do that for them here, take them up to our lake house and stuff like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those early days when the cosmonauts were here, did you feel somewhat as an ambassador?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Yes. Yes, I really did. I remember I took Titov up to our lake house in East Texas, which is nice. Basically, Cynthia and I don't have any children, so we're able to spend our money on toys and stuff. But it's interesting in the culture, we'd go up there and it was a very rewarding experience, I think, for him and his family. He had, at the time, a seven-year-old boy and a freshmen-in-college girl. Sweet kids, really nice kids. But it was interesting in that East Texas is much like part of Star City. He felt like he was at home in the woods and all. Of course, this was after a period of time here with city life and in Houston and studying hard and so forth. I think, we get out on the Wave-runners, which he thoroughly enjoyed doing a lot of things like that, but it was very difficult for him to understand how can an average NASA guy afford this kind of situation. Well, the deal is, that's one reason, we put our priority there. But every year you save up, you buy one nice thing, whether it's a four-wheeler or a Wave-runner. It was hard for them to understand that we didn't suddenly just buy everything. It wasn't like one day we went up and we bought everything. So those little concepts are hard for them to understand, the understanding of material wealth and understanding of just things. Well, I built my house myself, so I saved money and could afford to do it and those kind of things.\\n\\n It's interesting, in the culture, well, they like to do a lot of that kind of stuff. They like to build in a different fashion. So we have a lot of things in common. So I think part of the cultural exchange is how you accomplish things and things you enjoy and in sharing those experiences. We do a lot of that.\\n\\n I think Charlie Brown and I both feel very strongly that that's an important thing to share with each other, is how do you do things. Simple concepts that we take for granted, we need to stop and remember now Moscow has a lot of McDonald's and things like that. So it's a little different. But at the time, I took a couple of good friends of mine up to the lake. We loaded up our van with them and I took them up there. Well, we wanted to go to eat. At Dayton, Texas, just pulled into a chicken place there and ordered chicken and we went on. We ate it on the way up to the lake. I never thought anything about it. Well, the next time I was in Russia, Maxine and Igor said, \"Tommy, Tommy, come here. We want to show you something.\"\\n\\n I said, \"What? What?\"\\n\\n They drug me into the gym, the astronaut gym there, and they wanted me to meet this guy. So I met him and so forth. I didn't catch on what exactly was happening. Well, what they were trying to do is to explain to him--he'd basically called them liars. They had talked to him about us going in and getting the chicken and all. He just wouldn't believe them. This could not happen. There's no physical way you could go up and order and receive it within a few minutes and then get it and eat it and be on your way. I guess just by showing him the person they were with and the pictures was some kind of proof that helped. But what they wanted me to do is the next time Cynthia and I go by and take a videocamera with time-tags. [Laughter] So that you go up and you order the food, you receive the food, you pay for it, and you get on your way, and you have it all time tagged in a matter of minutes there. But, of course, now in Moscow, McDonald's has a drive-thru. At the time it was just unheard of. This guy could not be convinced that nowhere could you have an ability to have that kind of service that quickly and all. It was just a concept that he would not believe in.\\n\\n The cultural exchange has been really good both ways. A lot of the concepts in Russia that we wouldn't--we miss a lot of the emotional experiences of the culture, unless we get very involved with the people. I think that's one of the fun things about dealing with this program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've been in this business a long time. You were able to share information with the Russians. Did you learn also valuable pieces of information from them on how we can redo or enhance our training program, as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. See, we had never done, except Skylab era, and I'm always quick to point out we had the first space station with Skylab, but I think the long-duration flight piece, I think one of the biggest pieces of information for me personally is we needed, and we still need, to understand the psychological ramifications of long-duration flight. The Russians had a much better handle on that, I think. So that immediately was a lesson learned. Don and I felt very strongly about that we needed to understand that, because the psychological experience of a long training period, plus the long flight, is a critical thing.\\n\\n As far as technical advances, I'm not sure that I can say we learn a lot. I think we learned a lot about how to work in a strained environment or with a different culture. I think, yes, the Russians understood more about working with different cultures than we did, because they've doing it a good it. And if you start thinking, Russia is so big, you got a mongol world and they're totally different from Moscow guys. So those were the kind of things we learned.\\n\\n But technically, I'm not sure how much we picked up there. I have a lot of respect for their program. I have a tremendous amount of respect for what they were able to do with the amount of funding and economics that the Russians had during the latter part of their program. It's hard for us to understand how, with very little, what you can accomplish. They were a real testament to the ability to use resources very, very prudently, very well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you glad you did it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are we glad we did the program? Yes, I really am. I look back at it as probably one the most rewarding things that I've ever done. It was a real challenge. Some things about myself, personally, I learned about, that I can be much more tolerant to a different culture than I thought I could. I think my wife kind of thought, \"Boy, how is this guy going to go over to Russia, a redneck East Texas guy, and work with an ex-Communist world?\" And I will admit there's a few times that I was very, very annoyed that we were spending money in some ways, and our net return I couldn't see very well. Having had five or six years dealing with it, I realized that we were getting a lot more return on our dollar than a lot of people think we were. You can't measure it in technical data, by any means. But I think the return on our dollar--so, yes, I'm very glad we did it.\\n\\n The people, I think, everybody that you interview will say probably the people aspects is probably one of the most rewarding experiences, including working with the people that I wouldn't have had an opportunity to work with here in the States, even, wouldn't have a natural reason to sync up with, because we're all in our Shuttle world and locked into that. Because of the type of involvements we have with the Shuttle-Mir Program, we reached out to even other organizations that MOD would have not even had to really deal with, or someone else would have dealt with them and not us personally. So I think the Crew Exchange Training Working Group, because of all the different ramifications of crew exchange, when you start thinking about what all that involves and then training what all that involves, you reach across the center to a lot of areas. For me, personally, working with the other directorates, working with the other aspects of centers, was extremely rewarding.\\n\\n Before I came to MOD, I did a lot of that. I worked with the engineering director a lot and science director a lot. So I came with a lot of understanding of those directorates and people and the management of those directorates. So that gave me a real edge. Coming through the MOD world and the Shuttle world and the console world and all that, I had lost some of that working with other directors. So this program gave me a chance to go back in and renew some friendships and fellowships and all with those, I think not just the Russian aspect, but the community itself.\\n\\n I challenge you to find, other than maybe Apollo, a different era in NASA that as many people have pulled together as willingly and as aggressively to form a team to make something happen in a short period of time as the Shuttle-Mir Program. I think that's probably one of the big successes. I think George Abbey understands that very, very well. I think it's important to him that we take the same people in Phase One and we move them into maybe different roles, but at least into Phase Two, so we get that experience, because I think teamwork was one of the biggest assets that he had going for him in the Shuttle-Mir Program, was the real team together. When I say the Phase One team, that doesn't just mean the program office Phase One team, that means all the directorates on the team, science and engineering, safety, SR and QA and the world. Probably a good experience for NASA, probably a deepening of NASA's team concept occurred during the Phase One program. My personal opinion.\n\nWhy were you stopped by the police in Russia? [Laughter]\n\nJust random. Actually, I've been stopped three times, so I think it's because I have a beard and they think I'm Chetzkian [phonetic]. Because I usually go in fatigues or dress down pretty good. I try to blend. I think it's important to blend, so you're not a target. I think it's important.\\n\\n I learned real quick that the random stops are just random stops. They're not necessarily after an individual for any particular thing. I certainly wasn't doing anything wrong. Each time it's been in different locations in Moscow. What I do, I've learned very quickly to just show them my letter of invitation in Russian, because obviously you give it to them in English, that's pretty stupid. But if you give it in Russian that shows you're official and then certainly I make photocopies of my passport and those kind of things and don't drag out [the original]--I usually have my passport on me, but I drag out the photocopies first.\\n\\n Each time I felt like that it was more of a--they felt like it was an obligation just to see, just a random stop. I don't think I was a target to extort. Now, other folks have had a little problem on trying to extort money from them and this kind of stuff, but I usually go with my papers and go prepared and I'm usually pretty firm in my interaction with them and with my limited Russian was able to get away. But I'm usually, each time--well, I guess once with two of us, but each time was by myself. I think it was just random.\n\nThey didn't take you to the police station?\n\nOh, no, just--\n\nYou have an exchange in the street, when you realize--\n\nYes. Right. Yes, I think part of it is they might be thinking in terms of, \"Here's an American. I can get twenty bucks if I don't take him to the police station,\" and stuff. I was very polite and courteous and didn't let it upset me visibly. Just basically drug [my documentation] out the very first thing, I started talking about documentation. Get them from the aspect of what am I doing, or whatever, to a documentation point, because I know that's what they're after. So you get quickly into that mode, I think is important. Then I always have a copy of my letter of invitation in Russian with me at all times.\\n\\n Once I was running from Ismoliva to the Metro to get bananas and I had my backpack in the van and didn't have it with me. It's one of these typical things, you know, things become real important in Moscow that wouldn't here. Never would I run a block and a half to get bananas while the van is waiting on me, but fruit is one thing I miss a lot of in Russia. I eat a lot of fruit and stuff here. The van was at the Ismoliva Park, so I was running up by the hotel over to close to the Metro to a fruit stand there, and a policeman just, I think, thought maybe I was running from something or whatever, and he stopped me. I started explaining very quick, bananas, and where I was going, and the NASA van was there and pointed to it, and that if he needed documentation I would go get it. No problem. So that was kind of a funny experience. Bananas are real important in Russia. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the three weeks at a time that you were in Russia, did it go quickly? Were your days full?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, your days and nights are extremely full when you're there. It doesn't go quickly in that you miss your family and dogs and all those kind of things. Or I do. But, yes, there's never enough time to get all the work done. Our agendas are always too full. We are extremely bad about saying we've got all this stuff to accomplish and we've got X period of time to accomplish, and that makes it very difficult. We're too aggressive, I think. We've got to learn that. We've got to learn to be careful about that, because we'll burn everybody out. You're physically tired. At the end of the three weeks, I was really ready to get home. Now, I think the longest I stayed was four and a half weeks a couple of times, and a lot of three-week trips.\\n\\n Some of the hardest trips, we'd be there for like three weeks, get back home and then for some problem we'd have to turn around and fly right back. Charlie Brown and I did that one time. It was just really difficult for us, because you hadn't even really synced up from the jet lag. I do great going over, which is a real advantage for your negotiations, because if you fly in there on--in the early days we'd try to get there on Sunday afternoon and go to work Monday morning. Well, you're still jet-lagged and a zombie and the Russians have a lot of advantage because you are out of it. So I adjust real good going over. Really, I guess, the adrenaline or something makes it pretty easy. But coming back I'm usually just dead, just devastated by the time I get back. I think, yes and no, time goes quickly, because you've got more to do than you can do, but then you miss home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the negotiations, were they different from those early days to what you're doing now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were different in the early days because we were path-finding so many things. I would like to think that we've got past a lot of the early somewhat controversial-type issues and we're more into just arguing about when the crews are going, rather than that they are going, that type of thing. They're somewhat different.\\n\\n The negotiations are stressful on everybody, particularly if you just disagree. I think the hardest things on the U.S. side is we're used to resolution at the end of a meeting, of some type, and you just don't necessarily get that. That was difficult.\n\nIs that the lake house behind you there, that we've heard so much about?\n\nYes. Yes, I enjoy my lake house. Six years away I'm going to be up there. I spend a lot of time on the tractor and playing. I've got about eight acres on a lake, so I have fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It will be interesting, the next six years. A good period of your life, six years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We've kind of been on a Phase One high. We've been very intense, it's very rewarding, very stressful, obviously, but it will be interesting to see. We need to be flying right now. We're used to flying. If we're not--the Shuttle or Shuttle-Mir, if some of our crew members are in orbit, then everything's clicking and falling into place. That's a mission operations directorate mind-set. So the adjustments for a guy like me, or a lot of folks like me, to a program that's not flying, to the ISS Program, until we get something in orbit, it's difficult.\n\nIt's a long dry spell.\n\nYes, it's difficult. I will admit that. I like planning and stuff like that, but I think the real motivation is the successes and the challenges of space flight. I think we thrive on that, is why we're in this business. Almost every waking moment, to a certain extent, if you've got somebody in orbit, you're thinking about them or the systems that are keeping them in orbit and that kind of stuff.\\n\\n I think probably I should say a couple of comments about the last--STS-91. I think, for me, a very emotional experience. I think, if you remember, we were down at the Cape, we were ready to get ready for the launch, and Mir had a computer problem. Suddenly we brought a team together that could not have happened a few years before, I mean, in the Phase One Program, whereby in real time we had a laptop with the Mir orbital status on it. We had Victor Blagov there to work it. We had a full team sitting together, NASA and Russia, constantly communicating with each other as to what was happening on Mir, what was happening getting ready for the Shuttle launch, and pulled together as a team.\\n\\n It was a very emotional experience. Really, it was a sobering experience for me, because I really got to thinking about how far we have come, because we would have had a lot of side-stepping and sashaying back and forth, and either reluctance to share information or maybe uncomfortable that we could share information, whereas by the 91 stuff we were there. We were clicking and we were a program. That's a very, very rewarding experience. Then obviously, go out and launch the Shuttle and have a great flight and everybody's safe and everything is fine. We haven't done that yet for ISS, so, for me, until we do that, it's hard for me to get emotionally behind the program. We can do it, but we've got to see the reality of it.\\n\\n After the Challenger instance, a lot of us kind of went through some of that. Until we flew again, we were all kind of fumbling around, and we were all doing our thing. We were doing a lot of paper. We were having a lot of meetings and we were doing a lot of discussions. Some of it was productive and some was not. But then when we flew again after that, that was the best thing that ever happened to any of us. So I think it's kind of the same emotional state I'm in right now for ISS.\\n\\n So I guess I'm getting my little rewards by trying to support the guys in Russia. So I'll bring it down that way. But until we get a vehicle into space, we're all going to go through that. Flight directors, it has to be agonizing for them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We look forward to hearing from you again, all the new accomplishments that you'll be doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You may be up at the lake house in six years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you'll come interview me in about six years up there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We'll do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I love what I do, but I'm looking forward to moving up to the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can understand why. Thanks, Tommy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tommy E. Capps", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00921", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA at 50 OHP 2007 - 2008", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/NAF/WordenSP/wordensp.htm", + "original_file_name": "WordenSP_12-3-07.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/NAF/WordenSP/WordenSP_12-3-07.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA at 50 Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Pete Worden", + "location_date": "Moffett Field, California – 3 December 2007" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "S. Pete Worden" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 3rd, 2007. We are at the [NASA] Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California to speak with Center Director Dr. Pete Worden for the NASA at 50 Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. In preparation for the space agency's 50th anniversary, the NASA Headquarters History Office commissioned this oral history project to gather the thoughts, experiences, and reflections from NASA's top managers. Information recorded today will be transcribed and sent to the history archives in Washington, DC where it can be accessed for future projects. Are there any questions that I can answer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that sounds great. Great project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, thanks again for taking the time. We'd like to begin today by asking you to describe your background for us, and how you came to the current position of Center Director at Ames." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A long and interesting question. I started out in the 1950s as a young kid, give away my age that way, being marched into elementary school dining rooms to watch little black-and-white very small television to see the country's first rockets being launched, and blowing up quite frankly. I got very excited about the space program. About the same time I had a great-aunt who traveled widely throughout the world, very rare in Michigan at that point. My family was from a small town in Michigan, although I grew up in the Detroit area. But at any rate, she came back from the UK [United Kingdom] and had bought a book on astronomy. It was really a book for high school students. I was a little younger than that. But I read the book and got really, really excited about astronomy, so decided I wanted to be an astronomer, and with the country going into the space program it dovetailed very nicely. So at any rate, I told everybody I was going to be an astronomer.\\n\\n I went to the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor, Michigan] in 1967 and there were 120 people that were going to be astronomers, largely because of the Apollo program. In the end, six of us got undergraduate degrees in astronomy, then three of us went on to graduate school, and two of us got doctorates. I think I'm the only one that's actually doing astronomy now. So it was a very narrowing experience.\\n\\n But at any rate, my true love was always space exploration. My interest really was in a longer-term topic of are there Earth-like planets around other stars and other life on those and so forth. That's been a guiding interest. But I had a slight detour of 29 years in the Air Force. Also when I was an undergraduate we were involved in the Vietnam War, and my father was an Air National Guard pilot and a corporate pilot as well. So I was persuaded to become an Air Force ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] cadet. During the late '60s I was at the University of Michigan as both a science officer and Air Force officer student. When I graduated in 1971 there was the option of going to pilot training or going off to graduate school. The Vietnam War was winding down. I really didn't see they had a lot of need for pilots. So I chose to go to graduate school, which I was given what's called an educational delay. I went to the University of Arizona [Tucson, Arizona]. In 1975 I finished graduate work. It wasn't clear whether the Air Force needed me or not. But in the end they said they did. We wangled an assignment at the National Solar Observatory in New Mexico where I'd done some of my dissertation work.\\n\\n That's where I began to understand the power of political connections. Part of the reason that I got that assignment is that the director of the National [Solar] Observatory in Tucson was a good friend of Senator Barry Goldwater, who at that time was the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee. He contacted the Air Force and helped get me an assignment to do astronomy. I spent the next few years as an astronomer, also as an Air Force officer. It worked out pretty well because my only other job offer was a postdoctoral position at Harvard [Cambridge, Massachusetts]. A lieutenant in the Air Force gets paid more than a postdoctoral fellow. I was also getting to do what I liked, which was really observational astronomy.\\n\\n I spent four years at that observatory. Ended up marrying the librarian. I had no intention of really staying in the Air Force, but we came up with this clever ploy that I would move to Los Angeles [California] and be an adjunct faculty member at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles, California] of astronomy, but I had this day job as a captain in the Air Force at what's now the Space and Missile [Systems] Center.\\n\\n I was excited about it, because I got assigned to a highly classified program. I still can't tell you what it did. But what was interesting about it is when I went in for an interview, it was in one of these set of three or four vault doors that slam shut and everything, so it looked like Get Smart [1965 television program], and they wouldn't tell me what they did other than it was really cool. It turned out to be really cool. One thing led to another. I got involved in various exciting programs. I got promoted early to Major. Then someone decided I'd be good to go to the Pentagon [Washington, DC] and work on the Secretary of Defense's staff. But it turned out the day I showed up was the day that President [Ronald W.] Reagan had given the so-called “Star Wars” [Strategic Defense Initiative, (SDI)] speech [March 23, 1983]. So I got involved right at the beginning of that program, ended up being assigned as the military assistant to James [C.] Fletcher, who was running the study that recommended what we were going to do technically in missile defense. He had been the NASA Administrator during the latter part of Apollo [Program] and was to be the Administrator again. Once again I had a connection with space science. I might add when I was in graduate school and at the Observatory I was involved in a couple of NASA solar physics Spacelab missions – I was a coinvestigator. It was fun. I always had this strong interest in space science.\\n\\n I'd spent quite a little bit of time after that in missile defense, was on an arms control delegation in Geneva [Switzerland] for a year and a half. It was interesting. It was just like out of a movie, this big table, and on that side was the Soviets, and with the little Soviet flag, and the other side was Americans. You looked at yourself and said well, this is real, that's the real Soviets, it isn't a movie. It was clear to me that space was a key part of that. But that got me more and more involved in a lot of the policy issues.\\n\\n I was the special assistant to the head of the Missile Defense Program, the SDI program, General James Abramson, whom you might remember was the second Director of Space Operations at NASA with the Space Shuttle. He had been selected for an astronaut in the 1960s but never flew. I might add, when I was a captain I was one of the Air Force nominees to be an astronaut but wasn't selected for reasons I never understood. I thought I was great. [Laughter] So I always had a little bit of jealousy to the people that got selected and got to fly. It's worked out well despite that.\\n\\n I spent most of the 1980s and '90s involved in missile defense development policy and so forth. But probably the key job I had was because I knew various political types, including what was then Senator [James Danforth “Dan”] Quayle and soon-to-be Vice President Quayle. When he was elected as Vice President I was asked to come and serve on the National Space Council at the White House, which was reconstituted from the 1960s National Aeronautics and Space Council. I was the staff officer there for initiatives, and particularly the Moon-Mars initiative [Space Exploration Initiative]. I got very excited about space exploration. As you might recall the senior President [George H. W.] Bush announced the Space Exploration Initiative. So it was really exciting, although at that time I became a bit of a skeptic of NASA's commitment to those kind of things and frankly fought with NASA quite a little bit. We were particularly at odds with the NASA Administrator. Our whole office at the White House thought we ought to be able to get to the Moon a lot cheaper than NASA proposed. In fact I and a couple of the other folks wrote the speech where Vice President Quayle first used the words faster, cheaper, better. Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin later perverted it to faster, better, cheaper, but it was faster, cheaper, and better.\\n\\n I was there for about two years. The initiative failed for a whole lot of reasons. But then Mike [Michael D.] Griffin, a name we're pretty familiar with today, was the head of technology in the Missile Defense Program and an old colleague of mine and friend, wanted to go run the exploration program. We arranged for him to go to NASA while it [the Space Exploration Initiative] was still going. I took his old job as the head of technology in the Missile Defense Program. I was only there two years, but it was a neat job. I was the world's second richest colonel after [Muammar al-] Qaddafi. I had $2 billion a year to spend.\\n\\n It was a fun program, and we did a lot of space things. Two of them were particularly exciting. One was the mission called Clementine. It was the first US mission back to the Moon in 20 years. It was basically a sneaky space weapon test. But it was also a way to get to the Moon. We were originally supposed to go to an asteroid. The second one was the DCX Delta Clipper, a reusable rocket. Both of these had been started when Mike Griffin was the head of technology. I finished them. But the Clementine mission wasn't done by the time the election occurred [1992].\\n\\n The new administration was a little bit disorganized – the [President William Jefferson] Clinton administration. I don't know why anybody would think the Clinton administration was disorganized (smile), but so it wasn't until late in 1993 that they finally got around to putting a new director into the Missile Defense Program. The new administration wasn't very happy about space weapons or anything that smacked of that. But I was fairly hard over that we ought to do that, and I eventually got fired over it. But the mission got launched. It was the one that might have discovered ice on the Moon. It's still an open issue. But it did discover something interesting. I feel that was a start of our current effort to refocus on going back to the Moon.\\n\\n It was an interesting couple of years. After that I was back in the Air Force, but some Air Force senior generals thought I was a good guy, so they made me a Wing Commander. I ran one of the four space wings. Our wing actually flew most of the military satellites. I used to tell people I was the commander of the US Star Fleet for about a year and a half – the 50th Space Wing. During that period that wing took over this entire base here at Moffett Field. This is the second time that I've had a senior position related to Moffett Field. But our headquarters were in Colorado Springs [Colorado]. I was there for a few years – various staff jobs, and got promoted to brigadier general.\\n\\n Then 9/11 [September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, New York, New York, and the Pentagon, Washington, DC] happened. I was well known to people like Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary [Paul D.] Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Policy Doug [Douglas J.] Feith. They asked me to come and run the information war. In late October 2001 I was the “minister of information” – I guess some would say “minister of propaganda,” for the Defense Department, and worked with a number of folks that were quite impressive, including Newt [Newton L.] Gingrich. We came up with a program which I still maintain was the right approach to understanding that the long-term problem with terrorism was that it’s an information war, a war of ideas. We started a number of things, including providing direct broadcast radios and direct internet connections to a lot of these [terrorist] areas that were denied open information and help with education.\\n\\n Not everybody thought what I was doing was great, and I was accused by various folks, including I think some of the people that worked for the Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs in the Pentagon that we were doing disinformation. I once again learned the negative power of the press. My picture appeared in the front page of the New York Times. My wife called me up and asked me why it was there, and I said “Dear, it's never good news for a government employee to be on the front page of the New York Times.” Within a few weeks or a few days actually they disestablished the office, and I was sent back to the Air Force with pious promises, “Oh your career will be great.” It wasn't. Within a few years I was politely asked to retire. But as I like to tell people, that actually opened more options than it closed.\\n\\n I ended up taking a job as a professor at the University of Arizona, professor of astronomy, and later optical sciences and planetary sciences. But very quickly turned around and went back to Washington to work as a congressional fellow for Senator Sam [Samuel D.] Brownback, who was at that time the chairman of the subcommittee in the Senate that does the NASA authorizing legislation. He brought me there because President [George W.] Bush was starting the Vision for Space Exploration. I got to spend about ten months as a congressional staffer. I was a rather old congressional staffer, older than everybody in the office, including the Senator. But I gained new respect for the people that work in congressional staffs, and the members. I helped write a lot of the legislation that the next year got passed – our authorizing legislation for the Vision for Space Exploration.\\n\\n I then went back to the university. I think Senator Brownback threw my name in the hat to be the NASA Administrator. Wasn't sure I really wanted it then, and when they picked Mike Griffin I said that's the right guy, not me. He is the right choice. It was really a good opportunity. I talked to him several times and he had me work on the ESAS study, the Exploration Systems Architecture Studies, in I think it was 2005, in the summer after he came in. So once again I got very excited about space exploration and hardware.\\n\\n Eventually Mike Griffin suggested that if I was interested in coming to be a Director of a NASA Center that he thought I would be very competitive. Initially he mentioned some other Centers, but he finally said well, I think Ames is going to become open. Are you interested in that? I said I'd be delighted. This is an area I've always had a lot of excitement for, but I competed for the job and showed up here as the Director in May of 2006. That's how I got here, but it's been the most fun job I ever had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like your life moves into other ventures." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Until I get fired from this job. I tell people never be afraid to push new things. You may lose a few jobs over it and people will be upset, but in the end other opportunities will open. So the vector tends to be in the right direction." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, the Center has always been recognized for its cutting edge on flight research and aeronautics. Share with us your thoughts of what you believe to be historically the mission of Ames, and what you believe today's mission is, and your strategic vision for what you want it to be in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ames, as I've told people, is the coolest part of the agency. I'm sure the other Center Directors would disagree, but they're wrong. This has always been—I'm going to use the word the “un-center”. It's always been the place that has the freest thinkers; some people would say the most out-of-control thinkers and doers. Our historian, Jack Boyd, who by the way is a phenomenal individual and been a huge asset to me, tells me that Ames was founded in the late '30s with the radicals from [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] that wanted to try a different approach. I think that character has held true, that partly has to do with why we're here in Silicon Valley even long before it was Silicon Valley. California usually appeals to the more free spirits. That has obviously continued throughout all of its [Ames] history.\\n\\n Ames started as an aeronautics Center. But it became, over the last few decades, equally divided between aeronautics, exploration-related advanced technology, and science. I think my objective is to build on that tradition of innovation, and there are a couple particular areas I really want to focus on, that we are in Silicon Valley, the Vision for Space Exploration has as one of its tenets that the private sector and private development, is essential for our expansion into space. Our job is to be in the entrepreneurial center of the world, and to start making those connections. My predecessor had already done a pretty good job of that with people like Google [Incorporated] and others. We're building on those connections, looking at other companies as well, not just Google. But things like the Google [Lunar] X Prize that was just announced – that Google is going to finance going to the Moon, is an example. I played a small role in helping persuade some of the folks over there that was a good idea. I hope they think it's a good idea. But that's an example of what I mean.\\n\\n I think first and foremost Ames is to be a place that we can do entrepreneurial things. I think this is in the best tradition of this Center and probably the research centers in general that grew out of NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics]. Our job was to midwife new industries under NACA. I think our job is now to midwife new space industries. This Center is particularly well situated to do that.\\n\\n Second, Ames has always been a place that can come up with the one percent solution. During the '60s we did the Pioneer probes here that were the low-cost way to get early to the outer solar system and the inner solar system as well. In the 1990s we did the Lunar Prospector mission, which was a novel private sector approach. It was the next Lunar mission after Clementine, my mission in DoD [Department of Defense]. Lunar Prospector confirmed that there was something interesting at the poles of the Moon, whether it's water or other hydrogen compounds still remains to be determined, but it was an interesting program.\\n\\n What I've tried to bring here is the idea that following on the faster, cheaper, better effort of a decade or so ago that we can do low-cost missions. Low-cost missions that are largely robotic, but not just robotic, can journey throughout the solar system. We've set up a small satellite program here, which has huge promise. We've got a couple small satellite programs going now, including the LCROSS [Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite] mission, which actually got started before I was here, but it's a $75 million capped mission that will be a secondary on the lunar reconnaissance orbiter mission going to the Moon in late 2008. It'll impact a polar crater and blow material 100 kilometers or so above the Moon that we'll be able to assay and hopefully see evidence of water. It's the kind of mission that is after my own heart, and we hope to do a lot more like that.\\n\\n Another objective is that the Vision for Space Exploration is incredibly exciting. It will be the vision that wraps everything NASA does together. Over the last decade or so I think a lot of the things NASA did, because there didn't seem to be this overarching vision, wandered off into different unrelated areas. I'd like to get this Center back integrated into a lot of things, and we've had a lot of help from the rest of the agency, very positive help, to put us in critical paths of some of the key exploration programs thermal protection systems for example, software, human factors work, and so forth. I'm quite excited about the role of this Center. We retain a central role in traditional areas of expertise like science, aeronautics, and that's one to continue. But I've been really impressed since I've been here with the quality of the people. Ames really has and continues to attract the best and brightest from around the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Part of what the future involves is with the Lunar Science Institute?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to talk just a few minutes about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the reasons I came here was to work on lunar missions. There was an unfortunate decision [in 2006] to take the management of the overall lunar robotics away from this Center. There might have been good reasons to do that. To use the military term, it was above my pay grade. But it was unfortunate and disappointing. But I think in some sense, again, like most things that you look as negative at the time, it might have turned out positive in the end.\\n\\n The real forte here at Ames is probably not building large-scale missions but to do small fast-paced creative things. A recognition of that I think was the decision recently made to place a Lunar Science Institute here, modeled on the very successful Astrobiology Institute that is using 21st century technologies of networking and so on to be the virtual center of scientific development of the Moon and science from the Moon, on the Moon, and about the Moon. We're just in the preliminary stages of setting that up. We're searching for a director. The number of people who will be here will be small obviously, under ten or twelve. But the idea is to develop a new community of lunar scientists. In the '60s there were hundreds of lunar scientists in the United States. I think there's now probably a dozen or so, frankly most of which are not “spring chickens” anymore. Neither am I for that matter. But we need to have a focal point for developing the next generation of scientists.\\n\\n So by having a virtual institute that will cover a number of universities and other research centers, I think our goal is to develop 50-100 scientific experts at various places that can really make use of the science opportunities the Vision is going to afford. We hope to have by March of 2008, the institute up and running. Seems now we have a couple foreign partners interested in setting up parallel institutes. So this will really be a global institute, very much as the Astrobiology Institute is. I'm delighted to see that here. I think this is the right place for it. It's more than just a couple scientists here thinking about the Moon. It's going to be really the center of a global effort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you move forward putting Ames into the future, what about the importance of aeronautics and the role for NASA? Where do you feel it's going to fall especially here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Aeronautics is a critical part of NASA. It always has been, and I think it always will be. There are two areas that are particularly exciting to me. That doesn't mean that the rest aren't important. But NASA needs to retain its position at the forefront of aeronautics research, and I mean research, not just support. A lot of people can help figure out how to do air traffic control and so forth, but very few people are able to do the research that's necessary to support where we're going in this next century. An example is figuring out how to get a lot more traffic in the limited airspace. A lot of the software capabilities are being developed here. That's an example of aeronautics at its finest.\\n\\n Another area is that at some point we're going to have hypersonic aircraft, aircraft that can take you anyplace in the planet in an hour or so. Time is incredibly valuable. It gets more valuable the older one gets actually. So I think that from an aeronautics standpoint—strictly what the public would consider aeronautics, both taking care of the research ends of current aeronautics things, that includes advanced information technologies, as well as things like hypersonics and so forth, are really important.\\n\\n The other area—and this is really something that I don't think people understand to the degree that it's important—and what the Vision for Space Exploration is all about, is we're going to settle the solar system. We're going to settle Mars at some point. To get there you have to go through the Martian atmosphere, and to get back you have to get back into our own atmosphere. That's an aeronautics problem, not a space transportation problem. As we enter planetary atmospheres, either for science or eventually for settlement, we need to provide the technology and the basic research underpinning for that. I see aeronautics as really critical. Indeed, the ability to build thermal protection systems for atmospheric entry is one of the things that we've always been an expert on, and that will be even more important in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of that, what do you believe to be the relative importance of the human and the robotic space flight and the interplay between the two to reach the success?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I like to say that humans and robots are going to settle the solar system hand in claw, that it's really like anything one does now. We are linked to robots today and robotic systems. When I get in my car, that's a robot. As it gets more and more sophisticated, it tells you which way to turn and so on. The human could go walk someplace, but if you're going to get where you want to go, you are connected to a robot. The same thing is true in space. As we get to more and more hostile environments into more difficult areas, from the initial exploration and science all the way to the settlement, we're going to have to be linked with robots. In a second sense is, I frankly think that as the century goes on we will find that robotic systems are going to be more and more integrated in our human existence.\\n\\n We had a conference here this last week with Ray [Raymond] Kurzweil who's written extensively on this topic, called the singularity, that he believes eventually we're going to be merged with artificial life. Now I don't know whether that's going to happen the way he suggests, but certainly more and more you see we walk around with these little BlackBerrys [wireless handheld device] all the time, particularly if you're a senior NASA official, so we’ve already begun. But I see eventually robots to be more and more integrated with us and more and more through a direct connection. We are going to become one with the robots, particularly as we expand in the solar system. I don't see it as either-or. It's got to be together. Robots can go some places we can't, but as we become more and more part of a virtual reality with them, then we're going to travel with them, and merge with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You explained to us how your career moved you along the path that it did, and so much of it was parallel and distantly but still somewhat connected with NASA. So you've been an observer and you've also been involved with it. Tell us how NASA has changed over time and how you see it changing in the future for its next 50 years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, NASA is an interesting agency. I guess I wouldn't say it's linear. It's fairly circular. It's a continuous circle. We started out as NACA as I mentioned, and our job was to midwife new industries. I think that's going to be more and more important in the future. I think we might have gotten away from that a little bit with Apollo and through the '70s and '80s and '90s. But I think we're coming back to that with the new space industries, the private sector development of systems to get to space such as the commercial orbital transport system, things like Virgin Galactic and other things that people are doing – Jeff [Jeffrey P.] Bezos's Blue Origin [privately-funded aerospace] organization and so on. It is our job not to run those things, nor to ignore them, but to assist them, assist them with expertise, assist them with customers, assist them with facilities and so forth. I see that we're returning to that initial NACA mission.\\n\\n Second, of course NASA meets the needs of the nation and the taxpayers. In the '60s that was a security. We were part of the national security apparatus. I think in the next decade we're going to be part of the national security in a different sense. I would call it part of soft power. When I worked at the White House I got an interesting lesson. Most of the people ignored the National Space Council until the President had to go someplace and talk to some leader, that he didn't have anything much to talk about with. They'd come down and say look, we can't agree with President whoever it is of this country on anything, but we know they're interested in space, so we need some space thing to discuss. We found that space was really a glue that had a lot of policy implications. I call it soft power. The Europeans call it that too. I see that what NASA is doing in the next decade or two—and we're already seeing that with the [International] Space Station—is that space cooperation becomes a means to bring countries closer together, an instrument of influence of formidable capability. So the national security mission that we had in the '60s is returning in a different way.\\n\\n Finally, I think that NASA is at the verge of its most fundamental mission, as I noted before, which is leading the settlement of the solar system. That's an entirely new mission. It's one that we've always talked about. In fact we thought it was going to start in the '60s, but it’s now real. I think we're seeing that technology has gotten to the point, the world economy has gotten to the point where this is an imperative. It's going to happen regardless. Again NASA is in the best position to lead that. I don't think I'd have been enthused about NASA if it was just midwifing new industries. I'd rather go work in those industries. Or if it was just some refurbished security issue. But if you add on top of that the human imperative to expand, it is really incredibly exciting.\\n\\n Last and certainly not the least, NASA has always been a science agency. The scientific returns from NASA are phenomenal. I speak as a scientist. That continues unabated. I think if anything it's increased. But it's really all four of those, where NASA is going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What lessons that you've learned and skills that you've acquired through the years will you be able to apply in your leadership role here at Ames?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "NASA is an interesting agency. Obviously with any organization there's good and bad things. Let me start with the good ones, which vastly outweigh the bad. In the good sense, I have never worked for an agency that is more competent. The people are both very competent and very dedicated. People don't come to work for NASA to get rich or just because they didn't have anything else to do like some in the military, but because they believe in the things that we do, these things I mentioned. They're also very good; it's very competitive to become a NASA employee. It's a great honor. So I think from that perspective it is really a fabulous agency.\\n\\n The second point about NASA is that you can go around the world, like I said, I used to work for the Air Force, and you tended not to tell people in airlines, particularly if you were in the Middle East or something, that you worked for the US Air Force – but you can tell people everywhere that you work for NASA. I was in Korea a month or so ago and was visiting some places, and I told one of my hosts, “I forgot to bring my passport.” But I had a NASA badge on a little pin on my lapel.\\n\\n He said, “You've got all the passport you need with that NASA pin.” I found it's really true that you go someplace, if people see that pin, say “Oh you work for NASA, come right this way, let's show you this or that or whatever.” So it really is America's brand. People can be mad at us over some policy issue or security issue or economic issue, but they all love NASA. I think that's a second point. As I mentioned, we have the most exciting missions.\\n\\n On the downside is that because NASA's products are in the future, it's hard to get the same level of immediacy that some of the other agencies have. If you're in the Defense Department, somebody says if you don't do your job then some enemy army shows up. That's a very immediate thing. Or if you're in the Education Department if the young people don't get educated, then our economy collapses and so on. Those are very immediate kinds of things. But you say well look, if NASA doesn't do its job, it means that somebody else will settle Mars 50 years from now. Well that's okay with most people. It's a little harder to sell. You find that although the support is very broad, it's diffuse. It also means then that we're a lot more susceptible to particular agendas, it might be congressional agendas. I've always criticized that NASA is what I called a self-licking ice cream cone, that a lot of times you did things because it got the support, jobs and so forth. So that's a problem.\\n\\n I think that this Administrator has done a fabulous job of undoing some of that. He's changed the governance structure so that Center leadership is not involved in deciding programmatics. And secondly he's linked all the Centers into the Vision for Space Exploration, so it's not an us versus them activity. That's helped defray some of the problems. Although local political leaders are very excited about what we're doing here, they always want to help you more than you want. They often say, “Can I take this program from somebody else and put it here?” Now I can legitimately say, “That doesn't help us, because if you take it from them then you're going to destroy an effort that we have other things in. You need to work with us to help the overall program.” But that's a challenge. It's a lot more living in a fishbowl if you will.\\n\\n The other thing is again both a positive and negative thing. The fact I can talk about everything I do is neat, but the fact is that everybody knows what you're doing. If we make some decision within I think nanoseconds it's on the Web. So you're in that fishbowl. At least The Defense Department can count on a few days of secret things staying secret. But again it's a different environment. All in all the downsides are pretty minor. Naturally we don't have enough money, but who does?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, the agency is going to celebrate or note its 50th anniversary next October. What do you feel is NASA's impact on society and what would you like to see it be, the impact, in the next 50 years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think NASA's central impact is really it's helped define America and Americans as a sense that we lead on frontiers, and that the frontier remains part of our psyche. There is nobody else that does that. Yes, there are scientific frontiers and so on, but real physical frontiers matter. NASA is continuing that character of America which makes it unique. America would obviously exist if NASA went away tomorrow, but it wouldn't be our America I think. The idea that others are now leading on frontiers would change our view of ourselves, and I think much to the worse. So that's the single most important thing that we can do, is to say if you're an American we are there, we're at the very edge of the known moving into the unknown." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, as it begins its next phase of its life of the agency and people are needed to accomplish the goals that have been set out, why would you encourage someone to begin a career with NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, you'll have a lot of fun, and you'll have the most interesting intellectual and stimulating job, and you'll be part of the future of mankind, and that's worth a lot. You don't come and work for the government for the pay. You certainly don't come for all of the side benefits and the short hours. But in the end it's really that intellectual high that one gets for being on the edge of the unknown. That takes a special person, but there's a lot of them in America. I think that especially with the Vision for Space Exploration we have no shortage of people, the very finest the country has to offer, and the world for that matter, wanting to come and work for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, as we close out this afternoon's session, is there anything you'd like to add, or any other thoughts that have come to mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Again this has been the coolest job I ever had, and I hope I don't get fired, and continue to be able to make progress." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we wish you the best of luck in the next years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "S. Pete Worden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "veterans-oral-histories-00004", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Jason Glover", + "description": "Cpl. Jason Glover served in the United States Marine Corps from 1996 to 2000. In his interview, he talks about volunteering for the U.S. Marine Corps Honor Guard; standing guard next to the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives on July 4th, 1997, as the public filed by; struggling to keep emotions in check while participating in funerals at Arlington National Cemetery; participating in Presidential parades; appreciating diversity in the Marine Corps; an interesting use of masking tape to perfect his uniform; and using his operational and leadership skills learned in the military in his positions at NARA.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/Veterans/jason-glover.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/veterans-oral-histories", + "original_file_name": "jason-glover.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:22", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "10/12/2017" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "veterans_oral_histories", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Erik Moshe" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jason Glover" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you living at the time that you enlisted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was living in Forest Park, Georgia, just south of Atlanta." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why did you decide to join?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My father had been a sergeant major in the Army, and was a Vietnam veteran, so from an early age, I knew that I would also go into the military. My dad was actually an Army veteran, and I was looking at what service that I was going to join myself, and you might think that I would have tended to join the Army, since he had been in the Army, but a story he told me actually sent me towards the Marines. He told me that when he enlisted, he had wanted to join the Marines, and he had a buddy program, he was signing up for the Marines with a friend of his, and that friend backed out, and when his friend backed out, my dad backed out also. He was too nervous to go into the Marines without his friend, and so he decided to go into the Army instead, and so for me, part of choosing the Marines was probably to honor his original desire to be a Marine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember your first days in the service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. My three months at Paris Island are certainly burned into my brain, I think pretty much every minute of those three months is right there, I can recall from memory very quickly, because it was all so very intense, and it was probably the most defining period of my life, though, in terms of the things that it taught me, and the characteristics that it gave me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did it feel like when you were going through that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was hard. It was very difficult. I had been kind of the nerdy or geeky high school kid. I was a little bit chubby. I wasn’t your stereotypical jock that was joining the Marines to be the macho Marine guy. For me, it was a challenge. It was something outside of my comfort zone, and so boot camp was very hard. Physically, it was difficult, and mentally, it was taxing, but I persevered, and it was very rewarding at the end of those three months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember your instructors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Our senior drill instructor was Staff Sergeant James, and we had some other drill instructors, Staff Sergeant Green, Sergeant Williams, Sergeant Osborne, and Sergeant Kerry, and it’s very much, I’ve learned in retrospect, that you don’t—Marine boot camp is, for all of the chaos that it appears to be if you’re a recruit, it’s actually a very organized dance of sorts, and every drill instructor has a different role that they play on the team, and the things that they’re doing that seem insane are actually very deliberate, and they’re designed to evoke certain actions and emotions from the recruits, and so in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense. But when you’re there and you’re doing it, those guys seem like they hate you and they’re your worst enemy, but they’re not, they’re trying to break you down and then build you back up and make you a Marine. About two-thirds of the way through boot camp, I had a final inspection for the platoon, and with the final inspection, the commanding officer was coming around, and was going to inspect us personally, and when he got in front of me, I brought my M16 up and did my inspection arms, and he looked at the weapon, and then I put it down, and then he asked me some questions. And I remember him asking me something along the lines of, how did I view myself as a recruit? And it was a really interesting question, because it was such an odd, sort of self-reflective question, and most of the questions are about Marine Corps history, or the weapon, or some tactical knowledge. But this was a very self-reflective question about what I thought of myself as a recruit, and I had always considered myself, up until that point, that was about two months or so into boot camp, I had considered myself to be at best an average recruit, maybe even a bit below average. Again, I wasn’t super physically fit or super gung-ho or macho, and so I said to the battalion commander, I said, hey, “this recruit feels like he’s a pretty ordinary recruit, average on his rifle marksmanship or his PT,” and I kind of gave the answer to indicate that I just looked at myself as average. And my senior drill instructor was standing there next to the commanding officer during this inspection, and he spoke up at that time. He didn’t have to speak up, but he spoke up at that time, and he said something to the effect of, Recruit Glover is actually an above-average recruit, and he gave some reasons for me being an above- average recruit, in that I was someone who followed orders, who didn’t question authority, who helped my fellow recruits when they had difficulty with tasks. And I don’t remember everything he said, but I do remember him speaking up when he didn’t have to, and saying that I was above average, and that was a real confidence boost, because of course, you look at your drill instructor as a father figure of sorts, and you’re looking for his approval, and to receive his approval in that circumstance really boosted my confidence, and I don’t know that it made me feel like a Marine, but it made me feel like, for the first time in boot camp that I could really handle my time in the Marine Corps, that I wasn’t just an average guy, that I could do more, and I think that helped me going forward. There was a possibility of actually excelling, and I had not considered that before. I had assumed that I was just going to skate through, and I was concerned about if the Marine Corps was going to be like boot camp in any way, you know, was I going to be able to do anything besides just skate through, do the mediocre level of work, and make it. And then I realized, when he said that, something in my realized that there was potential there for more, there was potential for leadership or excellence, and that was very helpful. I’m very thankful that he spoke up that day, when he didn’t have to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you go once you graduated from boot camp?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went to my military occupational specialty training, which was the School of Infantry at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and that was because I was slated to become an infantry machine gunner, and that was about a month and a half, two months, I can’t completely recall, but I remember it was cold, and we were out in the woods a lot. We were shooting a lot of machine guns, we were patrolling, we were hanging out and eating in the rain, and I remember it was a lot of fun, it was a completely new world to me, but yes, I had to spend a couple of months there in that sort of military occupational specialty, like your job training. When I signed up for the Marines, I picked the infantry broadly as a job specialty. I did very well in the ASVAB [Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery test], and could have done just about anything in the Marines, but I kind of knew that if I was going to do it, I wanted to go all the way, so I went for the infantry, and then when I got to the School of Infantry, they ask you what your particular specialty within the infantry that you would like to do is, and there are a lot of different ones. Working with mortars, or with TOW missiles on top of Humvees and demolitions, but I decided machine gunner, because I think as a little kid— the movies that are out there that you watch, Rambo or whatnot, and the guys get the machine gun and the belt of ammunition, it’s blasting away, and it just seemed cool, really, that’s really all that went into it, so I went machine gunner. The thing that surprised me, or was—I had maybe not expected about being a machine gunner was that when we would go on forced marches or humps, that’s basically a very long, very fast-paced walk with all of your gear, the machine gunners, who are on a 50-caliber machine gun, or a Mark 19 machine gun, you’re toting these machine guns. They break down into several pieces, but ultimately, you and your team are toting these things around, and the receivers for these weapons can weigh between 60 and 75 pounds, and that’s on top of all the other gear that you’re wearing, and so it was heavy, it was heavy, and miserable at times, but it was also a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell me about a couple of your most memorable experiences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the reasons I wanted to do this interview is because when I left the School of Infantry and got assigned to my first unit, I actually was not assigned to a Fleet Marine Force Infantry unit. I actually volunteered for and was chosen to go to the Marine Honor Guard in the Presidential Honor Guard up in Washington, DC, which is at Marine Barracks 8th & I [Streets]. It’s in the southeast quadrant of the city, and it’s famous for the Silent Drill Team. Some people have seen the Marine Silent Drill Team, but there are actually six different platoons of Honor Guard Marines there, and only one of those platoons is the Silent Drill Team. The rest of the platoons do less fancy stuff. They do very important things. They do a lot of funerals at Arlington National Cemetery. We did a lot of Presidential and diplomatic receptions at the White House, at the Pentagon, State Department, things like that, and we do parades for the public during the summer also. So I was stationed there at Marine Barracks, Washington, DC., after the School of Infantry, and one of the first things that I got to do, which was pretty interesting, was the second inauguration of Bill Clinton, and that’s a really massive undertaking, if anyone has ever been to an inauguration parade. It’s a lot of people, and we actually marched in a formation that was nine by nine, so it was nine people in the front and nine people deep behind him. It was a huge formation of Marines that were marching in that parade. That was really interesting. Probably the most interesting thing about my time at the Presidential Honor Guard, and this directly relates to the National Archives, actually, is that in July of 1997, on July 4, 1997, the Archives, A1, downtown, or just off the National Mall, was opening their doors, like I believe they do every July 4th, for the public to come in, and they have presentations. And they have—most importantly, I think for the public’s sake, is the ability for folks to come in and go through the Rotunda and see the original Declaration and Constitution and whatnot, and on July 4th, they do a special—they do, like, a special viewing with members of the Armed Services Honor Guards there. So what it was, was a volunteer situation, and I volunteered on that July 4th to go and be a part of this joint Honor Guard there in the Rotunda, and it was a 14-hour day. I did 30 minutes on, one hour off, 30 minutes on, one hour off, and what our job was, was one member from each Service branch, we would march into the Rotunda and take up various posts around the Rotunda. Two of those posts were sort of by the entrance to the Rotunda, the fence gates, you might call them, for people who have been there, and then there was the commander of that particular detail in the center of the rotunda, and then there were two more posts on either side of the—I believe it’s the Constitution in the middle, and there’s like, a little—if anyone who has ever been to the Rotunda, seen the Constitution, just to either side of the Constitution, there’s a little recess in the wall next to a pillar, and so there are two positions on either side of the Constitution in these recess areas where a couple of members of the Honor Guard would line up, and I was chosen to be at the first of those two positions. In terms of as the public approached the Constitution, I would be on their left, and then directly past me would be the Constitution on the left, so I was standing right next to the Constitution, and it was a really interesting experience, because it was the most I’ve ever been tested at the Honor Guard, and I spent four years at Honor Guard, almost my entire time in the Marine Corps was at Honor Guard. It was the most I had ever been tested, because much like a Buckingham Palace guard that you see on TV, the public were literally filing within 1’ 18\" of me, and they were coming to see the Constitution, and I had to maintain military bearing at the position of attention for 30 minutes. Eyes straight ahead, not moving, etc., and there was a lot of people coming by who wanted to try to get me to break that military bearing, and were doing all sorts of crazy things to get me to do that, and I don’t think at the time, I understood the importance of what I was standing next to, and certainly at the time, I had no idea what the National Archives really was. It was just another ceremonial job that we were doing, much like we would go to Arlington or the White House, but then, that was in ‘97. But then less than a decade later, in 2005, I started a career with NARA as a student, and when I started my career with NARA as a student, I remember it being one of the first things that I realized, as I learned that one of the primary public missions of the Archives is there at AI, and it’s to have the original documents on display for the public to come see, and it brought back that memory of me standing there that day, and it was just really interesting to think how I had spent that time in the Marines right there in the Rotunda, with no expectation that I would ever work for the National Archives. Then a decade later or a little less, there I was, working for the agency, and I’ve since been in the Rotunda as an Archives employee, and I’ve stood there and looked at that spot where I was standing that day with some nostalgia and déjà vu, and it was just a really sort of interesting story I thought that tied together my time in the Marines and my time here with NARA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which one was the most emotional place for you to go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Definitely Arlington National Cemetery. I mean, nothing can really compare with Arlington, and I do remember the first funeral that I did, we would often be dropped off at the Fort Myer chapel, which is right next to Arlington, and has been featured in many movies that feature Arlington. During the funeral, our platoon would stand out front of the chapel and provide sort of a backdrop to the body-bearer or casket-bearer, pallbearers, who are also Marines, but are a distinct group within the Honor Guard of very strong guys. We would provide sort of the backdrop as the platoon, but we would stand during the funeral, we would stand out front of the chapel, and of course, you have to stand motionless, maintain military bearing, and then the casket would be brought out and placed onto the wagon. It would be carried into Arlington, and we would march behind the casket, much like people have seen on the JFK funeral footage or the Ronald Reagan funeral footage, and it’s a pretty long march. It’s about two miles from that chapel to the newer section of Arlington where people are being buried now. Arlington is very big, of course, and I remember my first funeral, marching through the gate from the chapel area out to the cemetery, and about a two-mile march, and that takes a little while when you’re doing a horse-drawn carriage. The platoon is marching and whatnot, and I remember just being completely, like you said, overcome with emotion, to the point that I was—had tears welling up in my eyes as I marched, and just the enormity of the place, and all of the white headstones that just—row after row, line after line, dot that landscape, and it was very powerful. Sometimes, when we got to the grave side, we would be in a position to see family members as the body- bearers folded the flag and presented the flag to the family members. We had to be careful not to let your emotions take over during that time, because we had to maintain the military bearing, but it was certainly sometimes a challenge to keep it together, and that really didn’t diminish over my four years there. I mean, I certainly experienced it my first time out. You might think that you would grow used to it, or it would be something that eventually, you would not be affected by as much, but truthfully, it was much like a rollercoaster. Some days, you might go into Arlington to do a funeral, and you might be fine, and then the next day, you might go into Arlington to do a funeral, and something triggers you, you can’t—it was a very emotional experience, and it certainly was a very emotional experience to be in Arlington. Whenever we were doing our drill movements, like present arms, with our rifles, we wanted to do it in the most excellent way possible, to all be together on cadence, to present the best that we could for the family, because we knew that ultimately, there was the family of this fallen Service member, sitting there and watching us, and we were representing his wife and his career, and the thing that he had devoted, he or she had devoted their life to, so it was a definite motivator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see combat at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did not, I was in the Marines from ‘96 to 2000, actually, and so I spent my entire time at the Honor Guard, which is a little bit unusual. Usually, people do two years in Honor Guard and then move out to the Fleet Marine Force, but they do retain a small number of people who have picked up NCO, non- commissioned officer, and they retain those people to teach the new crop of guys coming into the barracks. I was part of a handful of corporals that were retained to teach the new group, and so I ended up spending my entire four years there at 8th, and because I got out in 2000, because 9/11, there were really very few conflicts going on in the world. I had friends who went to Kosovo, Eastern Europe, but for the most part, it was a peaceful time. It’s a good thing, and it’s also sort of disappointing in a weird way. You know, you don’t want to train your whole life to play football and then sit on the bench, but on the other hand, I did have friends who stayed in the Marines, and who did go to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, and one of my friends had his leg blown off by an IED, so there’s certainly the aspect of, you want to play in the game, but nobody wants to be mangled or killed in combat, either, so it’s a strange dichotomy of emotions about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You stayed in the Honor Guard for a long time, so you must have had an excellent posture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and my back pays for it today. Yeah, it was a lot of standing, and it did a lot of damage to—I imagine it must have done a lot of damage to my lower back, because it’s something I struggle with still, and I think it’s probably attributed to four years of standing at attention like a backdrop of toy soldiers, so I appreciate that time, it was a great time in my life, but it had a cost associated with it physically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have an exercise regiment you did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, you would that think we might have had—and I guess nowadays, you would think that we might have some specific exercise tailored to strengthening the lower back, for example. Back then, it was still an old school mindset. I think some of that specific sort of tailored exercise is more of a contemporary mindset for us today in America, and more of a contemporary mindset in the Marine Corps today, which I found has recently put together some sort of collateral duty positions called force fitness trainers, I think. They’ve maybe moved more that way, but back then, it was just an old school mindset of, we run, and we do pushups, and we do crunches, we do pull ups. It was calisthenics and running, calisthenics and running, and so there wasn’t really anything specific to help build up our backs at that point. Now, we did spend a lot of hours practicing the drill, and so if practicing the drill is in some way helping prepare your back, I guess that was good, but not enough stretching, for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you awarded any medals or citations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I have a handful of different things that I received, but I think the things that I’m most proud of are—I received two Navy and Marine Corps achievement medals, and I received one of those as an E3, as a lance corporal. It’s pretty unusual to receive an achievement medal as an E3. I received both of them for essentially the same thing. The Marine barracks up in Washington, DC, during the summer does a parade in-house, in our barracks, and we do it every Friday night, and we invite the public to come, and there’s typically about 5,000 people that show up. We have bleachers set up on the parade field so that folks can come see that, and before the parade starts, there’s a handful of Marines that have been chosen to go out and play the role of crowd educator or crowd warmer, and each of us are assigned a section of about 500 people, section of the bleachers. It’s our job to spend about 20 or 30 minutes warming the crowd up, introducing ourselves, explaining what the parade is all about, explaining some of the etiquette that’s expected during the parade, maybe tell them some jokes, or just interacting with the public. There’s about 15 crowd warmers each parade season who are chosen to go out and do that, and every year, the best crowd warmer for the year is awarded a Navy and Marine Corps achievement medal, and for two consecutive years out of the three years that I did that job, I was selected and awarded the achievement medal for best crowd warmer. It was definitely something I enjoyed doing. It was difficult in its own way, and it gave me appreciation for people, like stand-up comics or improv artists who have to be put on the spot and entertain folks, keep their attention, and make them happy, and so I enjoyed doing it, and getting that one achievement medal as an E3 was something I was very proud of. It definitely helps that I can be very loud when I need to be, because there’s a lot of people to talk to, and it also helped me, like you said, really develop sort of under fire, in a way, really develop my public speaking skills, and to be able to respond quickly to interesting questions or to unusual circumstances." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Throughout your military journey, how did you stay in touch with your family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was from ‘96 to 2000, so it was prior to the age of social media, and it was really just at the forefront of the age of cell phones, so from that perspective, I used a lot of calling cards and payphones, to be honest. Some folks will remember those days, will go to gas stations and buy prepaid phone cards, and then I’d use a payphone, and dial whatever number was on my prepaid card, and stayed in touch with my family, generally through that method. I would usually, once a year, around the holidays, either Thanksgiving or Christmas, I would try to take a little bit of leave and fly out or drive out to see my family, but I didn’t see them a lot during my enlistment, to be honest with you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the food like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In boot camp, you don’t pay much attention to it. There are so many other things competing for your attention that eating is just a chore. It’s just about getting calories at that point, so I don’t think I even have any recollection of what the food tasted like in boot camp. Once I got to the School of Infantry, I remember that I probably put on five pounds, because they had a really massive chow hall with pretty good food, and I would pig out pretty considerably, because when we were training out in the woods, of course, we were eating the old meal ready to eat, which is not terribly appetizing. When we got back into the garrison situation there, in the base area, we go to the chow hall, and I would pig out, because I had been eating those meals ready to eat for days or weeks, and so the opportunity to have some real food that tasted great. They also had endless ice cream, I remember, like a soft serve machine that was probably frequented too much by me, but then once I got to the Honor Guard Barracks at 8th they had a small chow hall that was not very good, and then actually was just really dimly lit. I remember just not liking the ambiance of it being so dimly lit, to sit down and eat in there, and so the good news was that you only spent on year in the barracks, living in the barracks and eating in the barracks, and then they don’t have enough room to keep you there. After your first year, they send you out to live in town, and so I spent three years living in an apartment in Washington, DC, and primarily eating out on the town, or making my own meals in my apartment, but it wasn’t bad. It was what it was. I didn’t join the Marines for gourmet food, but it was survivable. I think that one thing I did love about the Marine Corps was the massive amount of diversity that I found amongst my fellow marines. Once I got out of boot camp and was actually interacting with these guys on a social basis, we had every range of person from every geographical part of the country, and every ethnicity and every religion you can imagine. We were all put together with a single sort of common mission and a common bond, and that was a really great experience. That was even furthered by being stationed in Washington, DC, and the vast amount of diversity you have up there, and the diversity with cuisine. The food the Marine Corps itself provided, not that memorable maybe, but when I was living out on my own, and able to go to different restaurants, I was able to experience a lot of foods that I never would have experienced if I had just stayed here in the South Metro Atlantic area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you feel a lot of pressure or stress?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn’t, really, after the first probably six months or so. The first six months of Honor Guard, you have to learn the Honor Guard style of drill, which is a little bit different. You get a few of those ceremonial commitments under your belt. You do a few Arlington funerals, you do a White House, or you do a State Department, but once you get the hang of it, it’s kind of repetitive, to be honest, at that point, and so it’s not really taxing or difficult. The only thing is, once you do pick up corporal, then you are placed in more of a formal leadership role, and so at that point, the difficulty arises in finding ways to lead and motivate the Marines under your charge. But that wasn’t really even super hard, primarily because the caliber of Marine that is generally selected to come to Honor Guard is a pretty high caliber of Marine, so the guys are already self-motivated and pretty much go-getters, and so just a little bit of direction, they can run with it. It was, in some sense, probably a much easier job in the Marine Corps than many guys, you know, who would be in a fleet infantry unit, or would have to go to combat, for example, than they would be having. I had it a little cushy, maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there something that you did for good luck?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know if there was anything we did for good luck. My ritual was—actually used masking tape to hold my pants up, so your dress blue pants, you can use a belt, you can use suspenders, things like that, typically. But what I found is that in Honor Guard, we’re very particular about the way we look. You want the back of your trouser, the very bottom of the cuff of your trouser, you want that to rest when you’re standing up, you want it to rest right where your heel, the back of your heel meets the top part of your shoe. You don’t want it higher, you don’t want it lower, you want it to rest right there, where the heel meets the shoe. In order for me to achieve that without it sagging or without it coming up, I found that actually using masking tape, so grabbing my pants, getting them to the right position, having a guy behind me spotting it to make sure it’s where it’s supposed to be, and then just masking taping—girdle onto myself with the tape, would hold the pants, and the other thing it would do was sort of provide a little bit of a back brace. We would go through masking tape pretty quickly because we’d use a lot of it to make sure it would hold, and also to provide that bit of a brace, but that was sort of me and a lot of other guys, that was our tradition, if we had one. We looked pretty funny when, at the end of the commitment, when we got back to the barracks, we were just tripping—looked like a mummy just taking off strand after strand of masking tape, creating these huge balls of masking tape at the end of the day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did people entertain themselves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were all infantry and Marines in Honor Guard, which meant prior to the recent lifting of the combat arms, that we were all males, so there was a lot of immature male frat boy type behavior. There was a lot of physical exercise, people would exercise for fun. There was, during our liberty time, a lot of carousing out on the town, drinking, so it was sometimes unsavory on the entertaining ourselves side, but I think that’s to be expected often with young enlisted servicemen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any pranks that you or others would pull?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sometimes, we would do this. When we lived in the barracks our first year, all the guys from my platoon lived on the same deck, on the same floor of the barracks, it was a multi-floor building. We had sort of a central hallway, and our barracks rooms were off either side of this hallway, and during the day, we would typically all leave our doors unlocked, because if we weren’t out at a ceremonial commitment, we were there in the barracks, and we were resting or training or preparing our uniforms. We would all kind of leave our doors unlocked, and ultimately, leave our doors just wide open, because people would kind of wander from one room to another. You might have to borrow an iron or borrow some starch or whatever, and so sometimes, what we would do is, we would go in, and we would jack somebody’s thermostat up, and maybe it was the middle of summer, and we would go over to some guy’s room, and just kind of pop his door open, and if he wasn’t in there, for example, pop his door open and jack his thermostat up to like, 90 degrees on heat, and then we’d shut the door and walk out. 30 minutes or an hour later, the kid would go back to his room, and it would be like a sauna in there, so we would do little stuff like that for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did you decide to leave the service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was at the end of my four years. It would have been late spring, early summer of 2000, and at that point, I had come to realize that I was on the verge of picking up sergeant and going to the Fleet Marine Force, to an Infantry battalion, and I just realized at that point that I had come to learn something, that people who reenlist, people who stay in the Marine Corps, they have to be willing to make the Marine Corps their number-one priority in life. The Marine Corps doesn’t settle for less. It’s not a military branch that prides itself on a work/life balance. It is a military branch that asks for total dedication and commitment, and honestly, to be a very successful career Marine, generally speaking, means that you’re going to have a very hard time balancing a family life. I had seen that firsthand with the leaders that we had in the Marines, and experiences that I’ve had, and I don’t say that in any kind of a negative way. I believe that the Marine Corps is special, and it’s special because it requires such a high level of commitment from its Marines, and particularly from its Marine leaders. With that said, I didn’t want to sacrifice my future and what I was hoping to do in terms of building a family. I didn’t want to sacrifice my family’s priority to the Marine Corps, and so I decided at that point, it would be better for me to move on and do something else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember the day that your service ended?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I do. I had a buddy that I had been at Honor Guard with, and he had gone to the Fleet Marine Force instead of staying at Honor Guard, and he had been to combat in Kosovo, and my last day that I was getting out, he was actually back in town on some leave, so we got together, and that night, or that day. I remember walking around and saying goodbyes to different people, and I remember, I guess, before I go into that night, that day, I remember in particular, going and finding my former company commander. He was a gentleman who is now a colonel in the Marine Corps, who now runs the Senate Liaison Office for the Marine Corps, that he was the epitome of Marine to me, and to pretty much everybody else who had ever worked with him or for him. He was a really amazing guy, and I remember specifically on my last day, going, seeking him out. He had moved to a support role for a tour, and just having a little conversation with him, thanking him for his leadership and his example, and that was really powerful for me. Then I was leaving, going home to my apartment, and I was packing, I was preparing to leave the DC area. My friend, this guy from Boston, who had been a roommate of mine at the barracks years before had come back to DC on some liberty, we went out that night, and we went to a bar. My friend got jumped, and together we fought like six guys that night, and we successfully won that, and were injury-free, and made it home, and the next morning, I was loading up a truck and driving to Georgia. So maybe that was a fitting end in some way, to my time in the Marine Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you go back to school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I went and got a degree in political science, actually. I assumed I was going to work in the realm of politics, and began to follow politics a little bit, living up in the DC area. Politics was something that was interesting to me more and more, as I had lived up there for those four years, and so when I went to school, I decided to get a degree in political science, and thought I’d work in politics, maybe on a campaign, eventually running a campaign. I spent some time working at the Georgia State Capitol, and that very much jaded me. I became very cynical towards politics. I think my problem was that I was more of a political idealist, or someone who was into political philosophy, more than I was a political pragmatist, and the actual process of making a sausage, so to speak, was not very appealing to me. I realized that that was not going to be my career, which led me to getting a job with the Archives, and led me to working my way up here at the Archives and making this my career for the last 13 or so years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was your education supported by the GI Bill?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the GI Bill was probably one of the best things that came out of my military service, besides the character development that I received. The GI Bill was amazing, and it was amazing in part because Georgia had a scholarship program, funded by the Georgia lottery, that allowed me to actually go to school for free. I was able to capitalize on my GI Bill and utilize it to help with additional school-related expenses, like a place to live, a vehicle, you know, extra in dues, and things like that, that the Georgia lottery scholarship didn’t cover. If it had it not been for the GI Bill, this would definitely have been much harder, those years at college." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you continue any of those close relationships and friendships that you had outside the military?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I kept in touch with some guys while I was finishing up school, MySpace and then Facebook were starting up, and so I was able to reach out and find some guys, but really, there was only one person that I kept in real contact with. That was my friend from Boston who had been in the six-man brawl with me. Him and I remained close for several years, was in his wedding, took some trips to Boston with him, and we kept a pretty close friendship. Eventually, we drifted apart a little bit, I think because of him continuing to live in the DC area and me having moved down to Atlanta, and him pursuing an occupation as a police officer, and me moving into civil service, I think eventually, we drifted apart a little bit. I still maintained some contact with him and some other guys via social media these days, but not much beyond that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you join a veterans’ organization?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I’ve thought about it before, about the Marine Corps League in particular, but I’m married with three small boys of my own now, and I have enough going on with those guys these days that I haven’t really had much time to think about joining something for myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your services and experiences affect your life overall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That really is probably the most important aspect of my story. Growing up, as I alluded to earlier, I was sort of a geeky, nerdy kid. I didn’t have much confidence in myself. I wasn’t very assertive, I wasn’t very physically fit, I didn’t see a lot of direction for my life, but then when I went into the Marine Corps. They really do a phenomenal job of building your character, if you’re willing to tough it out and adhere to their program, and they taught me some really invaluable things about confidence and leadership and punctuality and organization, and never quitting. It was that character development that I received, especially in boot camp, and then also throughout my time in Honor Guard. That character development really changed who I was, and provided me with a foundation to succeed then in college, and also to succeed here with the National Archives. My current position is a little bit different. After I joined the Archives, I moved up from student to management intern role, and then to a supervisor, and then to the Assistant Director of a Federal Records Center here in Atlanta, and all of those roles were sort of matching with my personality and skillset. They were operational, they were leadership-oriented, but about 18 months ago, I took a position as a management analyst. It has been nice in terms of a better work life balance, teleworking, and sort of less supervisory responsibility. To be honest with you, it really doesn’t suit my personality and my skillset long- term, and I’m itching to get back into the operational leadership deals. To that end, I have recently applied for and interviewed for a Director of FRC role for the Atlanta FRC, or the Riverside California FRC, and I’m just waiting to hear back to see if I’m going to be potentially selected for one of those two director positions. I’m really, really hoping I get one of them, too. I think it’ll be a perfect fit for my life experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else you would like to add, Jason, that we haven’t covered yet in the interview?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jason Glover", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I just appreciate the opportunity to share some of this, especially the story about my July 4th spent guarding the Constitution. I thought that was a very serendipitous occasion for me, and just appreciate the opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Erik Moshe", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for your service and thank you for the interview." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00714", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle Carrier Aircraft", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/STS-R/ThomasJW/thomasjw.htm", + "original_file_name": "ThomasJW_6-29-10.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/STS-R/ThomasJW/ThomasJW_6-29-10.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA STS Recordation Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John W. Thomas", + "location_date": "Huntsville, Alabama – 29 June 2010" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John W. Thomas" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 29th, 2010. This interview is being conducted with John Thomas in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the STS Recordation Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for joining us this morning. We certainly appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’d like to begin by asking you to briefly describe your career at NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I began work at NASA in 1961. I graduated from College in ’60, spent one year with the Army Ballistic Missile Agency [Redstone Arsenal, Alabama] locally, and then went to work for Marshall Space Flight Center [Huntsville, Alabama (MSFC)] in their test lab. I was running a static test stand for testing the H-1 Rocket engine for the first stage of the Saturn IB Apollo Rocket. I spent a couple years there and then moved to the Engine Project Office developing the H-1 Engine. I stayed there until 1966 when I went to work on the Apollo Applications Program that was the predecessor to Skylab. I stayed with Skylab until it was completed in’73.\\n\\n After Skylab I was involved with the international Spacelab Program until 1987. I began as an engineer in the Chief Engineer’s Office and then ran a systems engineering division, was chief engineer, deputy program manager, and finally program manager. In addition to the Spacelab program manager, I had a secondary assignment with Marshall as manager of the Special Projects Office at the time of the [Space Shuttle] Challenger accident [STS 51-L]. In that capacity of manager of the Special Projects Office, I had a payload aboard Challenger. It was the Inertial Upper Stage [IUS] that was the propulsion element of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System [TDRSS] satellite deployment. I was in the operations support center at Marshall monitoring the TDRSS/IUS at the time of the accident.\\n\\n Immediately after the accident I was assigned to the NASA Accident Analysis Team as deputy to Team Lead J. R. [James R.] Thompson [Jr.] who was also deputy to Admiral [Richard H. “Dick”] Truly, the head of the NASA task force established to support the presidential commission. J. R. spent most of his time at Kennedy [Space Center, Florida (KSC)], as Admiral Truly resided in NASA Headquarters, so I essentially ran the Accident Analysis Panel.\\n\\n After we submitted the accident analysis report [printed in volume 2 of the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident] in May of ’86, I was assigned to lead the NASA solid rocket motor [SRM] design team. Following successful return to flight, I retired from NASA in 1989 and accepted employment as site director for Lockheed Space Operations Company at KSC where I was responsible for prelaunch processing all the Shuttle elements and for all Shuttle launch operations for NASA KSC.\\n\\n While I was at KSC, NASA had embarked on developing the advanced solid rocket motor [ASRM]. The program had gotten off to a slow start, so NASA urged Lockheed to consider replacing the program manager. They suggested that I would be a candidate for program manager based on my experience with the RSRM [reusable solid rocket motor]. Lockheed acquiesced to NASA’s desires, and in mid-1990, I was transferred off the beach in Florida to Iuka, Mississippi to be ASRM vice president and program manager to design, develop, and test the new motor; build the manufacturing facilities; construct a test stand down at [NASA] Stennis Space Center [Mississippi]; and deliver the advanced solid rocket motors. We progressed well, but in 1994 we were just beginning to produce development hardware when the [US] Congress decided to cancel the program. Following ASRM termination and asset liquidation, I returned to work for Lockheed Space Operations Company to become vice president and general manager of Lockheed Stennis Operations, established to provide test and technical services for the Stennis Space Center.\\n\\n I retired from Lockheed Martin in 1998 with no intention of working anymore, but [Thomas] Jack Lee, former Marshall Space Flight Center Director, formed a small consulting services company known as Lee and Associates. He was supporting a new engine that NASA was developing, designated Fast Track, which was being tested at Stennis, and I was asked as part of his Marshall task to monitor the test program at Stennis. That began my current consulting services which I have practiced since 1998, all with Lee and Associates." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you’ve been working over 40 years in the space program, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Closer to 50." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s pretty amazing. What we’d like to focus on today is the redesign of the solid rocket motor. You had mentioned earlier that after the Challenger accident you were assigned to the Accident Analysis Team. Would you share some more details with us about that assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Presidential Commission divided their membership into subpanels, and the one that was overseeing the part that I was involved in was the Accident Analysis Panel. The four Panel members were Neil [A.] Armstrong, Gene [Eugene E.] Covert from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge], Dr. [Richard P.] Feynman from California [Institute of Technology, Pasadena], and Air Force General Don [Donald J.] Kutyna. There were three other panels; production that looked at all the production records, ground operations, and mission operations.\\n\\n Our role was to support that panel, but we were of course interested in doing everything possible to understand the cause of the accident for NASA. We met at Marshall Space Flight Center, and had all NASA and their contractor resources to do whatever was needed in terms of analysis, test, records research, postulating failures, and building fault trees on the various potential causes of the failure. Using this information and data, the team traced each leg of the fault tree until they either produced the results pointing to the cause of the accident or were cleared as not being causal.\\n\\n Obviously, in the beginning there was nothing pointing to the cause, so we had to look at every aspect of the hardware design, test, production, and operation of all elements and systems of the shuttle main engines, orbiter, and SRBs [solid rocket boosters] as well as flight down linked instrumentation and ground based photography. The payload was also included because the IUS, a solid rocket motor, was the propulsive element of the TDRSS that was flying in the orbiter payload bay. So we started at the very top and cleared all of those down to the fundamental cause of the accident that we determined to be the aft field joint of the right solid rocket motor.\\n\\n The team determined that the failure was caused by a faulty design of the field joints on the solid rocket motor that caused the sealing surfaces to open during motor ignition in combination with a cold temperature that did not permit the sealing O-rings to be resilient enough to follow the joint opening rate. A third contributing cause was a breach in the sealing material joining insulation on the mating segments that keeps the several thousand-degree combustion gas temperature from burning through the O-ring seals and the steel case material.\\n\\n This insulation joint is created when the four-segment motor is assembled at the launch site. A putty material was utilized to seal the insulation joint and it was susceptible to voids and paths going all the way through into the metal and O-ring sealing area of the field joint. Those three contributing factors led to hot gas penetrating the putty, blowing by and eroding the O-ring seals, and eventually melting the steel motor case. That scenario began at liftoff leading to a complete burn-through at 71 seconds into the flight and based on the SRM breach circumferential location, the hot gas plume impinged on the external tank [ET], weakening it to the point of failure after which the Shuttle disintegrated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because of your participation you were named to head of the SRB redesign team, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about that redesign team? How did you decide how you were going to redesign these solid rocket motors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Knowing the source of the fault going in, our fundamental job was to determine how to redesign the joint to preclude any further hot gas breaching the joint. We began by forming a NASA Design Team composed of members from the various NASA Centers and any contractor support that was deemed necessary. [Morton] Thiokol [Incorporated], now Alliant [Techsystems Inc.] were already looking at different designs. The NASA team developed independent joint designs while Thiokol was maturing their design configurations.\\n\\n Around the end of 1986, we began bringing those two different team’s independent joint concepts together to arrive at one that we wanted to design, manufacture, and incorporate into the flight motors. About that same time I took a few of the NASA design team members and relocated to Thiokol in Promontory, Utah, where we began narrowing the concepts to the one that we eventually proposed as the final design and to continue the development and verification program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you start the process? Would you walk us through some examples of ideas that you had that you didn’t end up using?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As you can imagine by listening to what is going on now with the [BP] oil spill in the Gulf [of Mexico], they’re getting all kinds of suggestions on what can and should done to stop the leak. We experienced the same thing. I had many people during the accident analysis not only telling me what they thought happened, but also telling me what we should do to fix it, and that continued through the early phases of the design process. The fact that those proposing fixes didn’t appreciate is that the solid rocket motor is 12 feet in diameter and weighs over 300,000 pounds; it won’t fit into most large conference rooms. Most of the solutions proposed were implausible because of manufacturing complexity and/or handling considerations.\\n\\n Our fundamental job was to stop the joint from opening when the motor was pressurized at ignition; if it didn’t open, then the O-rings would remain in contact with the metal sealing surfaces providing the necessary sealing function. The O-rings then didn’t have to be so resilient to prevent hot combustion gas blowing past them. The second and most challenging part of it was to determine how to close the gap between the internal motor insulation at the joint. To prevent the joint metallic parts from opening, we incorporated a capture feature on one side of the joint to prevent it from opening excessively. That was a reasonably straightforward design, but with these O-rings and their ability to be resilient and seal, the joint opening had to be constrained to few 1,000ths of an inch. On a case joint that’s 12 feet in diameter, holding that tolerance is a challenge. The challenge was not the design but it was the fabrication of these large metal parts. Thiokol and their vendors rose to the manufacturing challenge and that capture feature was the design finally adopted.\\n\\n The next challenge was to seal the insulation at the field joints. After evaluating several concepts, we selected one that produced an interference fit between the insulation mating surfaces of the adjoining motor segments. This configuration is what is known as the “J-Seal” and is the first line of defense for hot combustion gases reaching the O-ring seals. With this compression fit, hot gas was not able to penetrate the insulation barrier and reach the metal sealing surfaces.\\n\\n As an additional sealing enhancement, an adhesive similar to that used on “post-it” note pads was added between the J-Seal mating surfaces. The third part of the failed field joint redesign was to be able to leak-check the O-rings, and in a particular, in the direction which they would be sealing during motor operation. That led to adding another O-ring seal in the metal capture feature for a total of three at each joint. This became known as the leak-check O-ring, and it was the first one that the hot gas would encounter if the insulation J-Seal leaked.\\n\\n There was one remaining concern expressed by National Research Council group led by [H.] Guy Stever overseeing our design; that was the temperature at the joint. They wanted the temperature to remain relatively constant at the joint so the O-rings would not be subjected to cold temperatures again if the temperature at launch would be below 50-degrees. Their concern was that low temperature would cause the O-rings to lose their resilient properties. Our teams were not particularly concerned with this design feature because tests showed that the O-rings would track joint opening under the specified temperatures at launch; but external heater elements were added to the joints to make the design even more robust.\\n\\n In summary, the combination of the capture feature, the J-seal insulation, the leak-check methodology and the heaters to maintain the joint temperature, precluded any recurrence of the joint failure mode. Although the focus was on the failed joint, we incorporated changes in other areas of the Motor. Specifically, design improvements were made at the joint that affixes the nozzle to the aft motor segment, at the case factory joints that are assembled before the motor is actually cast with propellant, and the igniter joint." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you come to that consensus? You mentioned there were two separate teams working on a design, and then you came together. How did you finally agree on what would be the final design?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When we merged the NASA and Thiokol teams in Utah, both approached the redesign open-mindedly. We evaluated all design solutions, using analyses and testing, to select the best of all approaches. There was not necessarily always consensus, but we moved on as I had the final vote." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people originally worked on the design team here at Marshall? Then you mentioned you’d taken some of your team out to Utah—how many people was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It varied with time, but the average would be on the order of 120 locally. We were using mostly the engineering subject matter experts in materials, design, analysis, and safety disciplines. We had an integrated, co-located team with few managers and extraordinarily talented engineers. When we merged the teams in Utah we had eight to ten people that established residence there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did you stay in Utah before you came back to Alabama?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Our team relocated there in late ��86, early ’87, and most returned to Huntsville after the DM [Development Motor]-8 test, which I believe was in August of ’87. I had planned to return to MSFC following test, but the MSFC Center Director decided that I should to be at KSC for prelaunch processing of the return to flight hardware. So I went from Utah to Kennedy and remained there until STS-26 was launched in 1988." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was morale like when you first arrived in Utah at the Thiokol plant?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was actually very positive; there was no hostility or being protective, resentful, or anything of that nature one might expect under those circumstances. Their sole interest was initially finding the cause of the accident, finding the remedies to prevent it from happening in the future, and regaining their pride in producing the quality Shuttle motors. They were very positive, very cooperative, and we evolved into a good cohesive team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about the testing program once you had come up with this design and how you wanted to test it? Would you talk about the different tests that you conducted on the motors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some very unique test facilities that were constructed specifically for developing and testing the redesigned motor at both subscale and full-scale test articles. We developed and constructed a field joint test article facility that consisted of two inert full-scale half-motor segments with a forward dome, aft dome, and a nozzle simulator. We could place differing amounts of propellant inside test article and simulate the joint performance as the pressure increased at motor ignition on the launch pad.\\n\\n We constructed another similar facility in the MSFC Test Division where the former Apollo J-2 engine test stand was converted into a motor test facility where we could apply the external loads associated with structural members that attach the motors to the external tank. This facility was brought online because there was some speculation that there were unusual loads induced into the motor aft field joint by these attach struts causing the joint to open and leak. We had to produce a test that could prove this hypothesis to be either positive or negative; and it turned out to be negative as we always thought.\\n\\n We also constructed a test facility for the case-to-nozzle joint which was redesigned. It served the same purpose for the case nozzle joint as the field joint test facility did for the case field joint. Additionally, we tested small test motors, 48-inch vice, 12 foot in diameter at MSFC, as well as many smaller motors at Thiokol, to explore different concepts and to verify our analysis tools. Finally we had three full-scale motors; DM-8 and 9 [development motor] and QM-6 [qualification motor] that were tested in Utah. A second full scale motor test stand was constructed at Thiokol to test the motors as rapidly as possible and to modernize the stand data acquisition system.\\n\\n The existing facility was designated T-24, and the new one was T-97. Everything redesigned and everything that was questioned prior to design had a test fixture or test stand to prove or disprove the hypothesis, or to demonstrate that the design was successful. For example, prior to Challenger, the motor had never been tested at low temperature, so we covered the test stand, installed a conditioning system, and brought the temperature down in the range of 40 degrees. The cover was then quickly removed and the motor was fired right away. We demonstrated that it would operate properly at the lower temperatures.\\n\\n We also performed some unique testing that had not been done previously on large solid rocket motors and those involved intentionally flawing the joint seals and sealing surfaces in the redesigned joints. We began by inducing flaws the insulation, then the first O-ring, and followed with the secondary O-ring. All these tests were successful, and thus demonstrated that the motor would perform satisfactorily even if flaws found their way into the joints." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did people think when you suggested that idea to perform a test with flaws?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When intentionally flawing the motor first came up, I was among those that said, “You mean what?” But the more we thought about it, and the more confidence that we gained in our design, we thought it to be a good idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it proved that the SRM was safe?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, completely safe. The only unusual observation to date was a small amount of combustion gas by-products, soot, penetrated the insulation J-Seal. They attributed the small blow-by to a change in the adhesive by the vendor. Many were upset about it, but it actually was of no consequence whatsoever. We in fact discussed the need for that adhesive after we got into testing; I didn’t think it was necessary but we kept it as a redundant way of keeping the insulation joint mating surfaces closed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve been reading the book Truth, Lies and O-Rings [:Inside the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster], and Al [Allan J.] McDonald talks about after some of the tests how you and he or Royce [E.] Mitchell would actually physically go into the SRM to check things out. Would you tell us about your recollections of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we entered the motors for pretest inspections and after every flight configured motor test; we did the same in the field joint test article motors. The full motors were tested horizontal so we would climb inside the motor and inspect the three field joints. To go inside the motor after the test required that we don bunny suits and oxygen supplied, breathing masks because the insulation contained asbestos. Everything looked normal in every case. We did essentially the same thing for the field joint test articles, except because they were tested vertically, it was necessary that we use a bosun’s chair to go down into the motor and inspect the insulation seals. These post test inspections gave us an early indication of any anomaly, but understanding the real joint performance was not possible until the motors and test articles were demated several days following the tests.\\n\\n We did similar inspections for the first couple of flight sets of return to flight motors when they were assembled at Kennedy Space Center. The forward motor segment has a different propellant grain configuration, called a star pattern, in the forward end that provides more surface area for burning that accelerates the motor ignition transition. There had been a propensity for some cracks to appear in the propellant, which required that we enter that segment in the horizontal position. We performed joint inspections using a bosun’s chair as the segments were assembled in the Vehicle Assembly Building [VAB]. The motors are also inspected in the horizontal position as they are disassembled at KSC after they have been retrieved from the ocean following the flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. McDonald also said that the redesigned SRM was tested six more times than the original qualification program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t recall exactly how many." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How were you able to achieve so much so quickly, in such a short amount of time, in terms of testing and then requalifying the SRB for flight in a period of less than three years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were working quite intensely; many hours a day, six and seven days a week. We had a talented, dedicated team with focused leadership who did not have to get permission from many levels of management and organizations to implement designs, conduct tests, and perform analyses. This process allowed us to move quite rapidly in that environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did any changes have to be made to the design you had decided upon after any of the tests that you conducted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No changes were made in the joint areas after we baselined the configuration, but we did have to tweak the design of a nozzle component following test DM-9. I understand that there has been some refinements in the case nozzle and igniter joints in the years since returning to flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s remarkable. Tell us about the media interest in the redesign effort out in Utah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The media was quite interested both at MSFC and in Utah. Our Marshall public affairs organization was quite accommodating in releasing information and arranging for rather frequent, periodic press conferences where I would inform the press on our progress, our problems, how our design was evolving, and would respond to any questions they might have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you had much experience working with the press before this event?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had some experience in dealing with the media but had to come up very quickly on the learning curve. When we were executing Spacelab and Skylab, I had some media interactive training where specialists came in and suggested to us what to do, what not to do, and how to behave. That training was very beneficial." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the [William P.] Rogers Commission [also known as the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident] affect the redesign effort, the analysis and the eventual outcome of what you were working on at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Rogers Commission finished their work and released their report in June 1986, which completed their task. They were therefore not around to influence the redesign, but NASA stood up the National Research Council [NRC] panel comprised of recognized subject matter experts that reported directly to the Administrator. They reviewed our work but did not try to influence us one way or another on any particular design solution. Instead they would come into either at MSFC or Utah for our team to brief them on our design solutions, analysis, and test results.\\n\\n The only thing that they were really insistent upon was the joint heaters on the field joint O-rings. Of course they had their thoughts about other design aspects and objectively reviewed our solutions, analyses, and tests substantiating our decisions. I didn’t think the heaters were necessary based on our tests, but it was a way of making the overall joint performance more robust." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it challenging to include the heaters in the SRM?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Incorporating the joint heaters was a nuisance more than anything else. In fact the Constellation Program has removed the heaters on the Ares I first stage, which is the same motor but with one additional segment.\\n\\n There was another oversight group that was established by the Marshall Center to review our work, and that was an engineering group that was headed by Al [Allan] Norton, who was the former external tank chief engineer. His team was composed of a number of engineering managers including such recognized experts as Jim [James E.] Kingsbury from Marshall, Max [Maxime A.] Faget from Houston [JSC], and Horace [L.] Lamberth from KSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find that to be challenging with so many cooks in the kitchen so to speak?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It distracted us a little bit, but it was probably productive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Congress was also very interested in the redesign of the SRM. I think I saw that you had testified. Would you tell us about their oversight and the interest that they had?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were before congress and staff several times, giving them the results of our design work and test results. They in fact produced a voluminous report of three or four volumes, based on their staff work. We had staff members that would come occasionally to understand what we were doing. We gave them the same type of information as that given the NRC panel and others." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they in any way influence the design or testing effort that you were working under?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they were more interested in progress" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the astronauts? I know that there were some astronauts who were following the redesign effort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Astronaut Office assigned two crew members to participate with our team. The senior astronaut was Hoot [Robert L.] Gibson and the other was Steve [Stephen S.] Oswald and both stayed with us from the very start until we finished the design. There were others, like John [W.] Young, who attended our major reviews. The dedicated members didn’t reside with us, but they came as they felt necessary to participate in the design process, testing, test reviews, etc." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they pleased with the final design that you had come up with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, all were in agreement with design and test results." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mr. Mitchell had mentioned the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel [ASAP] was also very interested in following the redesign effort. Can you talk about their efforts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We briefed the ASAP giving them the same type of information that we gave our other oversight panels. I don’t recall them having any direct opposition to any of our design or test plan or results." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It almost seems like there’s so many people overseeing the work that you were doing that you may have spent more time handling these groups than maybe doing the redesign and testing. Would that be an accurate assessment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, even though it took quite a bit of planning, logistics, and briefings, they were actually quite supportive in their quest to be sure that we were considering all aspects that might have influence or led to the accident." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When was the redesigned SRM finally qualified for flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The certification process begins with design and design reviews through development and qualification testing to the flight readiness review, where certification of flight worthiness is executed. We had qualification motor tests, other full and subscale testing, extensive analyses, and manufacturing process records to support the certification for flightworthiness process. That certification process culminated in the flight readiness review prior to STS-26 that flew September of ’88." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had given us a broad overview, but I thought it might be nice to have on the record the difference between the redesigned SRM and the SRM that was flown for the first 24 flights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First let me reiterate that the SRM design team’s job was to understand the failure and determine the redesign and the testing necessary to assure that that did not happen again. Gerald [W.] Smith was the solid rocket booster project manager, and under him was Royce Mitchell who was the RSRM project manager. They had the task of going back and reviewing all of the failure modes and effects analysis, all the hazards analysis, and the pedigree of the production processes and hardware. There were some manufacturing process changes, management practices, and inspections and checkouts that were instituted as a result of their activity that was separate from ours.\\n\\n The major hardware configuration difference between the previous motor and post-Challenger motor designated the RSRM, were differences in the field joint design covering O-ring material, insulation interface design, metal capture feature, and heaters. We also made some design changes in the case nozzle and igniter joints. There were profile changes in the external insulation that protected the motor from ascent heating and reentry and splash-down loads as it goes back into atmosphere and water respectively. There were other minor change but those were not related to the Challenger accident." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Pretty impressive efforts as you look back. Were there any new quality assurance or safety measures instituted during the redesign effort?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were S&MA [Safety and Mission Assurance] changes derived from re-evaluating the failure mode and effects analysis and single point failures. This led us to incorporate additional ports to leak-check both primary and secondary O-rings in the same direction that they would be sealing during motor operation. Other changes related to the amount of inspections including sealing surface smoothness inspections, dimensional measurements on the two joint mating segments, and case roundness. We even had a “round maker” tool that could return the case joints to a completely round condition before mating to preclude unacceptable stresses." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you moved from Utah to Florida in preparation for the return to flight effort. Would you tell us about going out to KSC and working on that effort?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I relocated to the Kennedy Space Center when the return to flight motors arrived there as the Marshall representative to the KSC processing team. This was to expedite anything requiring Marshall’s engineering disposition. At one point the processing team overzealous with the number of measurements and inspections, like grease discoloration presence of human hair and lint, etc. It got to the point where we were not making much progress, so the Center Directors at KSC, Forrest [S.] McCartney, and Marshall, J. R. Thompson, agreed that they would appoint me as the decision authority for processing SRBs in the VAB. As that became known, I never had to exercise that authority. The team just turned to and got on with the job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you walk us through, for people who don’t know, how the SRMs are properly assembled at KSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First, it is necessary to understand the facilities involved with SRB processing at KSC. The ARF [Assembly and Refurbishment Facility] refurbishes the booster forward frustum that houses the recovery parachutes, the aft skirt that contains some instruments, and the power system that operates the TVC [thrust vector control] system that vectors the nozzle for steering. The RPSF [Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility] is where the motor segments are received from Utah on railcars and prepared for assembly [stacking]. The other major motor processing facility is the Vehicle Assembly Building where the motor segments are stacked and all Shuttle elements are assembled for flight. There are other ground processing elements required to process the motors. The two major ones are the Mobile Launch Platform [MLP] and Crawler Transporter [CT].\\n\\n Now for the assembly process; the MLP sitting atop the CT is positioned inside one of four bays in the VAB awaiting delivery of the SRB elements. Meanwhile the aft skirt is brought over from the ARF to the RPSF where it is attached to the motor aft segment. This assembly is then moved to the VAB and lifted onto the MLP. The other three RSRM segments are moved to the VAB, one at a time, and stacked onto the aft segment. Finally the SRB frustum is transported from the ARF to the VAB and mated to the RSRM forward segment, which completes on SRB/RSRM stack. This process is repeated for the other SRB. The ET is lifted over from another cell in the VAB and mated to the two SRBs. The orbiter is transported from one of the Orbiter Processing Facilities [OPF] and mated to the ET to complete a Space Shuttle. Then following a thorough checkout of that integrated assembly, the VAB doors are opened, and the system is transported aboard the CT to the launch pad to be readied for flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long does it take to process and assemble the SRMs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It started out to be quite a long time, on the order of four months; but after the first two or three it began coming down, and now I think it’s under of 30 days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It doesn’t seem like it would take that long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes it does, but these are very large human space flight element that must be handled very deliberately with checkout and inspections performed as the assembly sequence progresses. The combination of the handling operations, inspections, and the checkout requirements lead to this processing timeline." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the redesigned SRM perform during the return to flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Perfect. We didn’t have any problems in the return to flight motors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any instrumentation on the SRBs as they flew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some pressure and thermal instrumentation, but most of the solid rocket motors hardware performance information is obtained by inspecting the motors after they are retrieved from the ocean and towed back into Hanger AF and disassembled after the flight.." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had the return to flight crew followed the redesign effort very closely, or were they too busy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were mostly tied up in their training; but we talked to Fred [Frederick H.] Hauck and Dick [Richard O.] Covey from time to time" + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand you remained at the Cape for the next flight of STS-27." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I stayed for the two flights and then returned to MSFC. I think it was on STS-27 that the Shuttle came back with a large number of damaged thermal protection tiles. I was asked to form a team and determine the culprit. We determined that the damage was attributable to insulation material shedding off the SRB nose cap during ascent and impacting the very fragile tile. Following that assignment I retired from NASA in April of ’89 and joined Lockheed at KSC launching Shuttles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wanted to ask you about the ASRM, when you started working for Lockheed. Can you tell us what the advanced solid rocket motor was compared to the redesigned solid rocket motor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a perception that there were still some safety issues with the redesigned RSRM because it had the same type joints, although they had extensive modifications. Moreover, there was a need for more Shuttle payload performance and the ASRM could provide another 12,000 pounds lifting capability. The ASRM concept was developed, an RFP [Request for Proposal] was issued, and Lockheed Missiles & Space Company [Inc.] was awarded the contract.\\n\\n The major configuration differences between the ASRM and RSRM were: 1) the ASRM was a three-segment motor rather than four for the RSRM, and that reduced the number of joints, and 2) the ASRM had bolted flanged joints which are inherently more stable and reliable than the RSRM pin-and-clevis joint. That was perceived, and in fact it was, a safer design. The ASRM used about the same type of insulation that was on the RSRM, but it had a more energetic propellant to gain the additional performance. Another ASRM goal was to introduce more automation into the manufacturing processes by more automation particularly in insulation application and propellant manufacturing.\\n\\n The current method for installing insulation in RSRM motor cases is a manual process where the insulation is cut into large sheets and technicians go inside the motor case and lay it up on the internal case surface until the proper thickness and profile is achieved. The ASRM developed an automated process of strip-winding the insulation layup. This involved placing ribbons of insulation into a machine that automatically applied the material to the internal case wall until the proper thickness and configuration was achieved. That process produced a more consistent insulation lay-up than the hand lay-up, and it was faster, more efficient, and less costly.\\n\\n More significantly, the process for mixing and casting propellant in the RSRM uses mixing stations where certain quantities of the propellant ingredients are loaded and mixed in the large kitchen style mixer. The mixing bowl containing the propellant is then transported over to the casting building and dumped into the motor segment. This process is repeated several times until the motor is filled with propellant and left to cure or harden. The ASRM was to use a cutting edge technology process of continuously mixing and casting propellant into a segment in the cast building. In this process all the ingredients are mixed and piped into the case continuously negating transportation of many different mixes. This new process was intended to produce more homogeneous and higher-quality propellant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That brought to mind a question, since you said there were only three joints for this new design. How come it’s not possible to have an SRB that doesn’t have any joints?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That is in fact the practice with smaller motors. That is what’s called a monolithic motor, where there is just one large cylinder filled with propellant. But these large motors are heavy and difficult to lift, handle, and transport. The most significant drawback is transporting the large motors if they are produced any appreciable distance from the launch site. The ASRM plant was constructed adjacent to the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway that branches off the Tennessee River and makes its way through Mississippi and Alabama into the Mobile Bay. This permitted the ASRM to have larger [longer and slightly larger diameter] segments because they were going to be barged to KSC. So you see it would be impractical to produce large monolithic motors the size of the Shuttle motors and transport them to the launch site, and to construct launch processing facilities with sufficient height and crane capacity to accommodate such a long monolithic motor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was curious about that. Was NASA interested in a solid rocket motor that could propel more because of the [International] Space Station? Was that part of the interest in a redesigned SRM?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think the Shuttle at that time was not producing quite the originally advertised payload performance so they were looking for ways to increase performance. They had already reduced the mass of the original external tank to a lightweight tank configuration, and were looking at further reductions with a super lightweight tank by changing the material to aluminum lithium. This would produce on the order of 6,000 to 8,000 pounds whereas the ASRM could provide 12,000 pounds additional performance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why was the advanced solid rocket motor canceled?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was mostly political. There was an administration change and different NASA Administrators since the ASRM inception. Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin became the new Administrator and did not embrace the need for the ASRM and there was quite a bit of political activity between various segments of the country on whether the ASRM was needed. The Utah contingent was dead set against it, and of course the southeastern states were supportive. It was finally canceled in 1994." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seems like such a shame for being so close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had an expenditure of over $1 billion at the time it was terminated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I did want to go back to STS-26 and ask you what your thoughts were during the launch. Were you at the Launch Control Center at that time and could you tell us about that day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was very confident and excited, but a little bit apprehensive, because it was the first flight following Challenger. Several of us tried unsuccessfully to learn to hold our breath for two minutes [the SRB burn time in flight]. I was in the Launch Control Center with the NASA management team comprised mostly of Center Directors, Associate Administrators, and the Administrator. There was a high degree of confidence that we had corrected the Challenger accident problem; but still to this day, when CapCom [capsule communicator, JSC] gives the “Go” at throttle up [the point at which the Challenger accident occurred], it gets my attention. After SRB burnout and separation, there was great relief, satisfaction, and congratulations all around. I should point out that there has not been any hot gas reaching either the primary or secondary O-ring seal in the field joint on any test or flight since our redesign was incorporated post-Challenger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine [you’re proud of] being a part of that whole effort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was a great reward to have a part in recovering from such a devastating period in this nation’s human space flight endeavors. I was very fortunate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m going to ask Rebecca if she has any questions for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just have one. You were talking about your design team in Utah and moving toward final design and all the progress. Did you encounter setbacks where you thought maybe you weren’t going to be able to encounter that progress?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some disappointments but they were mostly related to schedule; we were trying to do things very rapidly to return to flight as soon as possible. But I don’t recall any great hurdles that we ran into that just “it doesn’t look like we’re going to be able to pull this off.” Early on, we took a motor of the Challenger configuration, attempted to trim away some of the insulation at the joint, and incorporate a different insulation seal configuration. When we finished manufacturing that design we looked at it and said, “We don’t want to do that, it’s not as safe as we’d like to see, and for sure we don’t want to lose another motor.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you explore using different vendors and manufacturers, or did you stay with the ones that had been chosen to do the original motor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We stayed with the same suppliers because they were providing quality hardware and were not at fault in the accident. It was also more expedient to remain with them from a schedule perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I did have a couple of other questions. Were there any new facilities built as you were working on the redesigned SRM?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Only the new test stands were constructed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you make any changes to the manufacturing process at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were changes made to accommodate the new joint design, but no fundamental changes other than improving the cleaning processes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think we have answered all the questions that I had come up with. Is there anything else that you think that we should know about the redesign effort?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. You questions were very comprehensive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we certainly thank you for coming in today. We very much appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John W. Thomas", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good, I hope it will be helpful in your project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, absolutely." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00450", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ParkerLA/parkerla.htm", + "original_file_name": "ParkerLA_12-6-11.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ParkerLA/ParkerLA_12-6-11.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Louis A. Parker", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 6 December 2011" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Louis A. Parker" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 6th, 2011. This oral history interview is being conducted with Louis Parker in Houston, Texas for the NASA Johnson Space Center [JSC] Oral History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. Mr. Parker serves as a Public Affairs Specialist, the JSC Exhibits Manager, and Outreach Lead for the Office of Communications and Public Affairs [PAO]. He begins the interview by sharing information about the quarter-scale space shuttle test article." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We are to the point where the [final] locations of the [space shuttle] orbiters have all been pretty much solidified, so we thought that we might want to recall that [quarter-scale model]. Actually, before the announcements for the orbiter locations were made, I kind of put the guys up there on notice to say we might be recalling this [artifact], so they could start looking at what the cost would be to take it out of the building.\\n\\n I don’t know if you know, but it’s at the Calgary International Airport [Alberta, Canada]. They have a science center there, called SpacePort. It’s an educational science center for kids, but it’s adjacent to one of the terminals at the airport. Back when they were building it, they came to us and wanted something big to put in it, and the orbiter model was available. They said, “Oh my gosh, we’ll take it.” NASA said, “Go ahead and loan it to them. We’re not going to use it around here.”\\n\\n They literally paid for it to go to Canada, which, I think at the time was $35,000 transported, because it’s oversized and it had to have a lead vehicle for the journey there. Then they had to figure out how to suspend it from the ceiling. For that, they actually talked with a couple of engineers from down here. They flew them up to Canada to help them get the model orchestrated into this facility. Then they built the walls behind it. To take it out of the building, they’re going to have to take a wall out. Then it is going to have to be transported to the Smithsonian [Institution]. Who knows what that will cost.\\n\\n The way loan agreements are set up—our loan agreement say that the organizations that get the item from NASA pays all the costs. We could exercise that and we most likely will exercise the take-down, take-out cost. The transportation costs,—I don’t know. If the Smithsonian wants it, they may negotiate. The Smithsonian, like everybody else, has no transportation money, but they have always wanted this particular Shuttle Program artifact, they do want the [quarter-scale] orbiter back. They do want it in the national collection.\\n\\n We have the mated external tank and SRBs [solid rocket boosters] that go with the model here in [JSC] Building 413. The Smithsonian wants the whole thing, and they want it at the [Steven F.] Udvar-Hazy Center [Washington, DC] to go with [Space Shuttle] Discovery. Of course, they are saying that they don’t have the money to ship it, but don’t want that to get away. Long story.\\n\\n We’re going to talk to them again. We’re supposed to talk to them this afternoon, just how we’re going to orchestrate releasing that the model, and then having it picked up by the Smithsonian. It’s got to go through this artifact screening system that’s been set up for shuttle artifacts through GSA [Government Services Administration]. The Smithsonian, if they acquire it, the accountability, then what they would do is turn that around and loan it back to this facility, but it would be a Smithsonian item instead of a GSA item. Much like the Saturn V [rocket] is a Smithsonian item, on loan to us [JSC] from the Smithsonian." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While we’re talking about the Smithsonian, would you like to talk more about how you work with the Smithsonian, and how these artifacts were loaned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My first responsibility when I came to work here back in 1972, ’73 was to work specifically with the Smithsonian to find homes for, back then, the old Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury artifacts that were still kind of floating around. The original artifact system that was set up by the agency, to the best of my knowledge, was set up by [Charles A.] Chuck Biggs. He started the filing system. He even designed the form that they used back then, which was a JSC Form 2275. The numbering system was a numbering system that he came up with, which was HOU and the number, and it started at 150. We used that system. The Smithsonian adopted it. He got me ingrained in all of that, and I kind of cut my teeth on space program activities by virtue of the artifacts that were residual of the Apollo program.\\n\\n Back in those days, I worked with one of the curators at the Smithsonian, a guy by the name of Louis R. Purnell, who was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was one of the original members of that group of aviators. As a matter of fact, his picture is with the group displayed at the Smithsonian. Heck of a nice guy. Great guy. The interesting thing about him—I worked with Lou for years and years before I finally met him. I didn’t realize it, that the guy was black. He had that Virginia accent, so I just thought he was an Easterner. The other thing is he had turquoise-colored eyes. Just a great guy.\\n\\n Lou and I got to know one another almost intimately over the phone, in trying to find locations for things like Apollo command module boiler plates, all of the Apollo parachutes that were used on all the flights, space suits. You name it. We were trying to find places for these.\\n\\n Back then, the [National] Air and Space Museum was run by a gentleman by the name of [Frederick C.] Fred Durant [III]. He didn’t want anything to not come to the Smithsonian. He wanted everything. It didn’t matter what it was. Nuts and bolts. You name it. If we offered it, they wanted it. Now, whether or not they would actually receive it in the collection at their facility up in Washington [D.C.], that was another thing. What we wound up doing back then, they would accept accountability, but then we would find—I would find, Lou would find—a home for it, a museum that would accept it. We would ship it to that museum, but the Smithsonian would accept accountability of it and issue the loan agreement to that museum. I did that for probably the first four, five, six years that I worked with Chuck, before I kind of jumped over to the [PAO] News side for a little while, and then jumped back. When I jumped back, I was back in the middle of the artifacts system again, but other things came along. As they’ve come and gone, I’ve really pretty much kept up with the Smithsonian people; like I’m now working with people like Valerie Neal and Allen Needell and those folks to talk about all this shuttle hardware that’s become available through the system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you find a lot of difference of how they’re dealing with the [closing of the] shuttle program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Obviously, they’re more selective. They don’t have the storage space that they once did. They still have the storage facilities up in Silver Hill, Maryland. They’ve got several warehouses there. If you ever have a chance to go tour those, they’ve got aircraft all over the place. That’s where they have their space suit morgue, if you will. It’s a climate-controlled refrigeration vault; when you go into it, literally it looks like you are walking into a morgue, because they have these space suits on these racks that look like bodies that are lying in state. That’s where they’re trying to maintain some of the space suits. Amanda Young, who was one of the curators that worked there, did a project where she received government grant money to do a study on the effects of space suits after being displayed compared to not displaying—UV [ultra violet light] effects, sunlight effects, and all that. Her conclusion was that the space suits were being deteriorated by putting them on display. Her concern was that, in a hundred years, the inside of the space suit that Neil [A.] Armstrong wore to the Moon, would be degraded so much it would be crumbling. They were trying to take actions to make sure that none of that would happen.\\n\\n Even now, some of the space suits that are displayed, some of the lunar space suits that are displayed in there—there are few of them. There are not that many at museums. We have one at Space Center Houston, the one that [Charles P.] Pete Conrad wore. The Smithsonian wanted to have that one recalled because they didn’t want it to deteriorate. I kind of fought them on that and they said if we would at least adhere to the guidelines that they had on how to display a space suit, we could keep it.\\n\\n Basically, what that means is that there’s a special kind of stainless steel armature that has to be made, that the suit actually goes on. When Space Center Houston was being built, and as they were buying things and procuring the right kinds of hardware to display suits, they literally went out and bought the armatures that met the Smithsonian specifications. Back then, those armatures were two, three thousand dollars a piece. Instead of having the helmet connected to the suit, they wanted to make sure that the helmet was not connected, or the gloves were not connected, so that ventilation could go through, and of course certain kind of lights had to be used. That supposedly will help deter any of the deterioration that might go on, because there are lots of plastics and rubbers inside in the glove area. Over time, these get real hard and start to crinkle. I think Amanda even did some tests on some, as far as immersing in certain kinds of liquids, to keep the suppleness. She did a lot of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Earlier you mentioned dealing with some of the legal issues associated with loaning artifacts. How did that also work into your job, and with the Smithsonian? Do you get contacted [by the NASA Office of Inspector General [IG]] when artifacts show up in collections or auctions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Here, lately, with the advent of all these online [sales] and all these auctions that come about we will get kind of unsolicited notes and letters from people saying that they have acquired a certain piece of what they think is a space object, space hardware, and are wanting us to authenticate what it is. Our standard response is, “We don’t authenticate” certain things. If it is hardware that has a traceable part number, serial number, that we think we may still have records of, then we might do that.\\n\\n A lot of the things that come to us, they wind up being early training, early prototype pieces, that literally may have been thrown in the dumpster. Somebody just picks it up and just walks off with it. You may recall that there was an issue with a piece of flag material that appeared on an auction. Somebody out in California had something that they were thinking about buying. Literally, it was a piece of scrap fabric that purportedly came from the fabric that was made by our tech services people for the flag that went on Apollo 11 to the Moon. What’s interesting about it, the gentleman who picked it up was a NASA employee. Apparently he picked that up and kept it, and then somehow or another, it got through somewhere, and it was being reported as, this is the fabric from the Moon flag that Neil Armstrong [left on the Moon.] It may have been an IG person that called me and said, “Is there any value to this?” Or it may have been a reporter, now that I think about it. I said, “I don’t think there’s any value at all.” That would be like going to ILC [Dover, Delaware], the people that make the space suits and looking in their dumpster, getting a piece of Beta cloth and saying, “This was probably made from the suits that the guys…” Does that make it worth anything?\\n\\n I said, “I don’t think it’s worth a plugged nickel.” If somebody pays $5 for it, that’s $5 more than I would ever pay for it. I kind of squashed it, but I think there was a story that came out, and it got a little bit of play. I may have been quoted as saying that I didn’t think it was really worth anything as a piece of scrap, because there’s lots of scrap all over the place.\\n\\n It’s things like that that we hear about. There’s a guy—I called him the consummate scrounger, because that guy could find hardware anywhere, just about anyplace—he would call me up sometimes, saying, “Have you seen the latest Christie’s [Inc.] auction book? There are space suit pieces. How did they get that? How did this person get those?” He would always ask me the question. I always said that sometimes stuff kind of falls through. It goes through the excess system, it gets screened, and no one catches it. Lo and behold, John Q. Public finds it and goes, “My gosh, there’s a piece of NASA whatever; I’m going to get it.”\\n\\n It comes up, I would say, more often than not that the pieces that people get, like I said, are mostly training prototypes or throwaways, things of that sort. The value of it is probably more to maybe a person who worked on it than it would be to somebody who’s not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were telling us that you probably have maybe 14 working days left [before you retire]. You’ve told me that it was by chance that you ended up out here [at JSC] at all. Do you want to tell us the story, how you chose NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My wife and I had been married just a few months. We both knew that we wanted to co-op somewhere. She was an education major, so she wanted to be a co-op at a school. Actually, I wanted to work at a television or a radio station. Back in those days, in Houston, the only TV stations were [channels] 2, 11, and 13. Channel 8 was run by U of H [University of Houston], which is where I went to school. Channel 39 was one of the newer UHF channels. Remember you used to have those little circular antennae? You had to have those because you couldn’t pick up the station, because it wasn’t a VHF station.\\n\\n Channel 39, back in those days, had workshops for all of the University of Houston communication majors, which I was. We would put on programs for Saturday morning, where the people from the writing classes would do the writing of the program, the people from the camera classes would run the cameras, the audio people would do that, and the director class people would direct, and all that. That’s how I worked at Channel 39, but it was all through the school. I went to all the TV stations, looking for any kind of anything—I’ll run cable, I’ll go get coffee, I want to get into the business. Nobody was hiring. No one had any co-op jobs. I went to radio stations. Same thing—I’ll do anything, I’ll mix, I’ll run tapes, I’ll do whatever.\\n\\n That first semester, actually, my wife wound up being a teacher’s aide, and I worked in downtown Houston as a stock runner, working for W.F. Hutton [& Co.]. Not E.F. Hutton, but W.F. Hutton. I learned about stocks and bonds and banks and securities and large sums of money. When the next semester was getting close, I started again trying to find places. The University of Houston Co-op Office sent me places. One of the places they sent me to was the University of Texas Dental School at the [Houston] Medical Center. I went down and interviewed with the gentleman there, and he wanted me to run all of the video systems for the dental school, basically take video of dental surgeries; run the cameras and all that. Told me how much I was going to make, when I could start, and I said, “Okay, I’m in. I’m there. I’m your guy.”\\n\\n So I went back to the University of Houston, and the guy there said, “I’ve got one more interview for you to go on.” I said, “Where is that going to be?” He said, “Go out to the Manned Spacecraft Center. NASA.” I said, “What am I going to be doing?” He said, “Go out there and find out. Go to the Public Affairs Office, and they’ll interview you, and you tell me what you think.” I thought, okay, what the heck?\\n\\n I came down here, came down NASA Road 1, which was a four-lane blacktop. There was almost nothing between JSC and the freeway [I-45]. You went through Webster, and then it was nothing.\\n\\n We [NASA] were in the midst of the Apollo 17 flight. I walked through Building 2, which back then was Building 1. Walked through there, media everywhere. I kept going. I thought, “Holy cow, this is a lot of stuff going on.” I interviewed with the gentleman who was the chief of the branch. His name was [J. C.] Jack Waite. He told me I would be working with a guy named Chuck Biggs. He said, “You’ll be working with exhibits, and displays, and artifacts.” He said, “We might even try to get you a period where you’ll work in the News branch and work with the guys who do commentary during the missions and all the things that go with it.” Film and photos. Back then, it was film. Video wasn’t as prevalent as it obviously is today.\\n\\n I said, “That sounds pretty good,” and then went and talked with the HR [Human Resources] guy. He told me how much my salary would be. When he told me that it was going to be, like, $180 a month more than what the other place was, I thought, “Golly, I think this would be kind of fun. The space program. On the Moon and all that.” So I took it, thinking that I’ll get my degree, and then I’ll go off and I’ll work in the broadcast industry and I’ll make my millions later on.\\n\\n I started working out here, and actually, the first few days that I was here, I did a lot of reading about the space program. More than what I ever thought I wanted to know about. The guy that I was going to work for, Chuck Biggs, I think at the time, was in Russia. I think he was negotiating for some exhibit space and I thought, “Man, I’d like to get involved with that kind of stuff.” The branch chief said, “You just sit in Chuck’s office. Sit behind his desk,” and after two or three weeks, I came in one day and I saw this little guy sitting behind Chuck’s desk. I thought, “Who the heck is this guy?” I walked in and I introduced myself. That was Chuck Biggs. He was back from Russia. A little guy, about 5’6”, with a beard. We got to know one another quite well. He was obviously my mentor in the area of exhibits and displays and artifacts.\\n\\n I’ll never forget one of my first assignments on locating and documenting artifacts. There was an Apollo fuel cell or something out of the Apollo spacecraft that was in one of the buildings. Back in those days, we always liked to get pictures of the item so we could certainly see what they were. The office had a Polaroid 60-second Land Camera, black-and-white Land Camera, where you take the picture, pull it out [of the camera], and let it sit for 60 seconds, then [separate the print from the negative]. He said, “Take the camera and go find this thing. It’s in Building 49. Take a picture of it and get as much data as you can. Here’s the guy you need to see.” I just said, “Okay, I’m off. Give me the camera.” I walked out the door.\\n\\n I can remember he said, “Building 49 is in that direction. You can walk there.” Building 49 is a pretty good walk from Building 1, or Building 2, but I didn’t know any better. I said, “Okay, I’m off.” So I’m walking, looking. Back in those days, they didn’t have numbers on the buildings. You just had to kind of walk in, look around. Of course, I probably walked into two or three buildings, asking, “Is this Building 49?” They said, “No, it’s...” So I went there, I located the gentleman, found the object, took pictures of it, and came back, just feeling all good about myself.\\n\\n That was the start of my training with Chuck Biggs. He would always kind of point me in the direction and say, “You can either talk to this person, or call this number, or do whatever.” Many times, I would call and that wouldn’t be the right number. I’d have to talk to somebody. That’s how I learned the business of artifacts and who people were. Of course, I would always preface my conversation with, “I’m working with Chuck Biggs on whatever,” and they would go, “Oh, okay, we know Chuck.” That kind of introduced me that they’ll talk to me because I’m working with this guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It helped you worked for a good guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It helped that I worked for a good guy back then. I would hope that, as Beth [Leblanc, new JSC Exhibits Manager] goes through her paces with people, if she happens to mention my name, they’ll say, “Okay, I know who you’re talking about and I know what you’re doing.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about some of the first exhibits that you were responsible for, or that you participated in, that stand out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I first started here, I did a lot of behind-the-scenes things as far as projects and events. Chuck was still the exhibits manager, and so he kind of got the nice trips. I say nice trips—anytime you go overseas or go to another country, or go anywhere, I think it’s a neat thing, a neat experience. I did a quick flip-flop from working for Chuck to working in the [PAO] News side, for a guy named [Douglas K.] Doug Ward. Actually, I wanted to get into that business more than exhibits and artifact. I went to work over there, and worked through the Skylab and ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project] programs. After ASTP, and we were flying the ALT [Approach and Landing Tests] getting ready for shuttle, Chuck, in the meantime, had gotten another gentleman who was working with him. That gentleman retired. They needed someone to work with Chuck. They knew that other people were retiring, and they thought Chuck might advance through the branch.\\n\\n They asked me if I would consider going back to work for Chuck. I said okay, but later on, I went back to my supervisor, Doug Ward, and said, “I’m not really sure I want to do that. Is there any way we can reverse my decision?” We went up and talked with the director of Public Affairs at the time, who was [Harold S.] Hal Stall. He said, “We kind of figured that you might have some second thoughts about that. In order to kind of entice you to come over, we’ll give you a promotion.” I said okay. Money talks. Again, being a young guy, trying to look out for future families and all that, I went back to work for Chuck.\\n\\n Even after a couple of years, I was getting kind of antsy about what it was I was in, what I was doing, and thought, maybe it’s time to kind of look outside [NASA]. It was about that time that, suddenly, Chuck was involving me more and more with some of these big projects. There was a big home show down in Mexico City and he wanted me to manage the exhibits. I did that, got to go down there.\\n\\n My very first Paris Air Show that he got me involved with was in 1979. While I didn’t actually go over there for the show, I did a lot of the pre-work for the exhibit that eventually was constructed over there. I worked with a gentleman who later became the exhibits coordinator at NASA Headquarters, a guy by the name of Jack Schmid, and got to know him very well. He’s still a great friend of mine. I just have a lot of admiration for him, because he was a true designer. He worked for USIA [United States Information Agency] for a long time, then worked independently, on his own, and went to work for Headquarters for 10 or 12 years or so before he retired.\\n\\n Suddenly this job started growing horns and eyes and started becoming very exciting. I started doing more and more of those types of projects, big projects where Chuck would literally have me coordinate all of the exhibits work to be done, and then, in some cases, actually be the on-site supervisor when the exhibit would have to be fabricated or shipped. I started doing many of the air shows, and then Headquarters seeing that we had a capability at JSC to provide exhibit production work for Headquarters, we started doing a lot of work and events for Headquarters. That’s when I was fortunate enough to go to a lot of very nice places overseas, Canada and South America—just all over the place.\\n\\n The World’s Fair came along in ’83. By that time, Chuck had become the branch chief. He literally just said, “This is your project.” I managed the NASA exhibit that was at the World’s Fair; it was there for six months. Part of that NASA existence at the ’83 World’s Fair in New Orleans [Louisiana] involved having the orbiter, the Enterprise, there. Prior to it going to New Orleans, we came up with this idea of taking it to a Paris Air Show (Spring 1983). He assigned that project to me. That was a really neat experience working with all that we had to work with and getting the tour set up, and working with the organizations in France, to have it land and do the things over there.\\n\\n [Originally] what happened was we thought we would take the orbiter to Paris and then bring it back. When people in Europe found out that it was going to be in Paris, they started immediately contacting their embassies and their ambassadors to say, “Can you bring the orbiter to Germany and land it over here? Can you bring it over to Finland? Can you take it to Holland, or Italy?” Actually, what happened was, because there was all this international involvement—we had a whole other group of people who were involved with that, along with the security folks who had to be with it—that really turned into almost a nightmare of trying to satisfy all these requests. Everybody wanted to have it come to their airport. And, [we were asked], “if it couldn’t come to their airport, could they at least fly over our airspace and drop down so people could see it?”\\n\\n One of the things that we did with the orbiter when it was in Paris—it was on display at the air show—each day, when it wasn’t going to some other place, it would fly around the [Boulevard] Peripherique, which is like the big loop around Paris, so people could see it and Paris could see it. The traffic in Paris is bad anyway, but every time the orbiter was flown around—and it would fly 1,000 feet, 1,500 feet, very visible—it just would create all sorts of havoc. As a matter of fact, that particular year, the French Open was happening at the same time as the Paris Air Show. John McEnroe was playing. He literally stopped a match one day because it was flying across. There was a picture in Sports Illustrated or Time [magazine] with him pointing at the Enterprise flying across the sky. That was a neat experience.\\n\\n Then, when it came back [to the United States], immediately we took it to New Orleans. To get it to New Orleans, we had to first fly it to Mobile, Alabama. We flew it in there. I went over for that. Of course, the people in Mobile had to have a big event. Actually, it was a two or three-day event where they invited thousands of school kids to come. The kids would literally walk by it. There was even a school for the handicapped that came; I think the kids were blind. They wanted them to literally be able to touch it. There was a picture of me that appeared in the Mobile newspaper, of holding a little blind kid up to touch the nose of the Enterprise. That was really kind of neat.\\n\\n From there, they had to take the orbiter off the back of the [Shuttle Carrier Aircraft] 747. To do that without a facility, you had to get two huge cranes and lift [the orbiter] up and set it down. The airport where we were located at Mobile was maybe a mile from the loading dock that goes into Mobile Bay, which goes into the Gulf of Mexico and the Intracoastal Canal. They wheeled it over to the barge, and then they went out into the Intracoastal. I got in the car with a PR [public relations] person from the World’s Fair, and we drove from Mobile to New Orleans. About a day later, here came the Enterprise. They wheeled it off of the barge, and they had a pad built up, a raised concrete pad, and wheeled it up onto that. It was outside of the pavilion where our exhibit was going to be.\\n\\n Our exhibit for the World’s Fair there—you always hear about this kind of stuff—was literally conceived at a bar on a napkin. Chuck Biggs and the gentleman at the Space and Rocket Center at the time, a guy by the name of Ed Buckbee, they were literally talking about what they [we NASA JSC] wanted to do. They took a napkin and kind of sketched it out, and from that, that’s what our exhibit became. We took the napkin-sketch and we designed our exhibit. I coordinated all of the elements to come in for the exhibit.\\n\\n The World’s Fair people had a lot of problems with the finances of the event. They had told us that on a certain day the building that we were going to occupy would be completed, they were going to put carpet down and have electricity all over, and be ready for us to move in with our structure and start putting things together. I was coordinating the shipment of things to arrive in New Orleans on certain days. We were going to be setting up the exhibit. We had things coming from Rockwell International. We had stuff coming from all over [NASA Centers].\\n\\n I remember going over there to prepare for all these shipments to literally arrive at our exhibit. I walked into that part of the building, and it was probably an area five, six thousand square feet. They didn’t have any carpet on the concrete floor. They hadn’t painted the walls. No lights were on. Nothing was ready. I had trucks literally arriving within a day or so. I remember having to go back to my hotel room and calling people saying, “Slow up if you can, because nothing is ready. If you come here, those trucks are going to have to sit out in the parking lots. This place is a mess, and it’s just not going to work.”\\n\\n We got to where we opened, and the show we thought was a success from the NASA standpoint. The World’s Fair people, I think, it failed miserably, actually. They were expecting over a six-month period of having six, eight million people, and they had about half that. They lost so much money.\\n\\n One of the companies that we had worked with was Sony [Corporation]. Back then, we used a lot of Sony tape players, and a lot of Sony monitors. Back then, the tape players were these big, humongous players for three-quarter inch pneumatic tape. They were big, honking players. We kind of cut a deal with them to loan us the monitors and the players, because we had videos all through our exhibit. Not only did they give us enough video equipment for our exhibit, but they gave us a lot of standby material in case something needed repair, maintenance, because it was a six-month period of time there. They gave us additional equipment. The Fair people set us up in what they felt was a secure, locked area within a big storage facility. It was a climate-controlled area that had a lot of cages where you could put your materials and then lock it up. Aside from 15, 20 or so units in our exhibit, we had another 15 or 20 that were being stored.\\n\\n We figured, because the Fair people lost their shirts, from a financial standpoint, they couldn’t pay their workers, their construction people, their electricians. We figured that they [the workers] somehow broke into these [locked] cages and they literally stole all that equipment. We had to put in a loss report with Sony and say, “We don’t know what to tell you. It was a secure area, but somebody got into it.” We figured the workers were trying to get money or trying to get something. That’s just my supposition there. We’re talking many, many thousands of dollars of AV [audio visual] equipment that got lifted.\\n\\n But good experience. I thought our exhibit was a neat exhibit. We sent people over to staff it. We had staffers from JSC, as well as from Marshall [Space Flight Center], because they were close. Went along for six months, and then at the end of six months, we came in and got everything out and went on our merry way.\\n\\n One of the other major projects that we did, that’s a little bit more recent, was the World Space Congress. The first one was in 1992, an event for AIAA [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics]. It was in D.C. Again, Headquarters wanted us [to put together the exhibit] because we had the capability to fabricate exhibits. The main part of this exhibit was a huge audio visual component, which was a 47-screen video wall. Not just 47 screens this way [along one wall], but kind of spotted all over the place. We built the structure for that, for the video units, and the video units were various sizes. Big video units, small ones. Remember, these are regular sized televisions, not flat screens. It was 1992. The idea behind this big project, this big exhibit, was, once we used it for this event, which was a four-day event; we also wanted to use it in the ’93 Paris Air Show in order to help justify the cost of it. The project was probably $2.5 million, which included the production of the video, which was done by a video company out in California. Made lots of trips out there to look at all that.\\n\\n We did that in ’92, and then in ’93, we took it to the Paris Air Show. The ’93 air show was the last time that NASA, by itself, went as the agency, and partook of the [U.S.] Commerce Department’s pavilion that they operated. After that, they tore the pavilion down. The only other time we went to Paris after that was when JSC went as part of the consortium with, back then, CLAEDF [Clear Lake Area Economic Development Foundation; soon afterwards became BAHEP–Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership] because the development foundation wanted to participate in an international event. We actually did it two times with them. NASA Headquarters has since gone to the air show with some aeronautics displays, but as far as it being a true agency exhibit that talked about all of the agency programs, it’s not been back since ’93.\\n\\n Fast forward 10 years from 1992 to 2002 to the next World Space Congress. AIAA had this plan where, every ten years they would have a World Space Congress. Next year [2012], they were supposed to have one, but I’ve heard that AIAA is probably not going to have it, just because of, again, the budget climate and the resources climate the way it is. The 2002 event was here in Houston and that was one of my big projects, to orchestrate an agency exhibit at the George R. Brown Convention Center. I worked with all of the NASA Centers that wanted to participate, and I think darn near every Center participated.\\n\\n When it was all over with, we had an exhibit at the World Space Congress that was about 18,000 square feet. We had a huge chunk of that main exhibit hall. We had stuff all over the place. CLAEDF was there, too. It was one of those deals where we started about a year and a half in advance. It’s fun to think about now. During the time, it was very stressful, just because trying to coordinate who was going to be bringing what, where they were going to be, working with AIAA guys as far as making sure we had the right amount of space and services. We had a new [NASA] administrator at the time. Sean O’Keefe was the guy. He came down and looked at everything. Nice memories from that as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From your explanation, these are huge commitments. You mentioned a year and a half in advance. Can you give us some specifics or help us understand more of what it takes to create an exhibit, and what it takes even to decide where and what type of exhibit you’re going to have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Once an event is identified, as far as it being a foreign event or a domestic event, you look at things like the agency theme that you want to portray. It’s fairly easy, because it’s pretty much the same anywhere you go, just depending on the timeframe. For instance, back then, we were certainly touting shuttle and all the things it would be doing. We were flying a lot of payloads, and we were doing a lot more commercial payloads. We were doing DOD [Department of Defense] flights. We were talking about this thing called space station. Talking about the capabilities of shuttle and how long is it going to fly, where are we going, what we’re going to be doing, what will be the launching pad from that into the next program.\\n\\n Even when the creators, I guess, of the Shuttle Program—I don’t know that they knew that we would be flying it 30 years, or 15 years, I think, as we were evolving through it—they just kept it going. Of course, we were all trying to build up to space station. I knew, ultimately, that’s where we would end up, and then, suddenly, shuttle would end. Then we probably thought, but we’ll have another program, Constellation or whatever, which we did for a while.\\n\\n You start with themes and messages. You obviously look at what kind of [physical] space that you are going to be relegated to, or what might be available to you. You look at things like resources, budgets. When we were doing many of the Paris Air Shows, the way we handled it was, we know, roughly, about how much space we would have at a U.S. pavilion, but we would put together an exhibit plan that would include the major NASA programs. Then we would literally go to the AA—the Associate Administrators—for that discipline, and we would say, “We’re going to be talking human space flight 60 percent. We figure that the budget for this is going to be this amount. You need to cough up about 60 percent of it.”\\n\\n Before we would do that, we would go to the NASA administrator and say, “Here’s our plan. Sixty percent shuttle or human space flight, 30 percent space sciences, 10 percent aeronautics. This is what it’s going to cost, so we need this kind of money from these people.” The administrator would virtually sign off on it. Then that would allow the exhibit guy and the Public Affairs guy to go to the AA and say, “Mr. Administrator has approved this. Here’s his signature. We need this kind of money from you guys.” Back then, the guys would say okay. They would pull all this money, and then we would go into the production mode, whatever it might be.\\n\\n We did a lot of on-site construction at the Paris Air Show. In order to do that, then, to be cost-effective with your money, once you had your exhibit plan together and that included things like drawings of what this thing is going to look like, you would bid it out, just like a contract. You would bid it out to European vendors. There was all this procurement rules that you had to follow to make sure that you were doing it correctly. Of course, you always had to justify--why are you doing it in Europe and not having a U.S. vendor do it? It was obvious why you did it that way. We were always able to go out and have a bid conference. It would involve somebody flying over to Paris and meeting with whomever was bidding and go over some stuff.\\n\\n They would award the contract, and then these guys, depending on where they were located, would start building pieces. Then we would fly over a month in advance, meet them. They would bring their stuff in and start their work. That’s where we would supervise the actual construction. I tell people it’s kind of like building a small house. Once you’ve got the plans and everything all done, and you’ve awarded the contract to the builder, you’re literally there on site. It’s saws and wood and metal, and electrical lines being run, and you’re sitting there looking and drawing, going, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. That wall has got to come over three feet.” That kind of thing. That was three or four weeks out.\\n\\n Then, of course, once it’s all done and the show happens—and back then, the show ran about 11 days—then when it was over, they would come in with a wrecking ball. In two days time, what took them a month and a half or a month to build, in two days, it was [makes sound effect] done. We generally built these exhibits to be that way, except for the last couple. Like I said, the World Space Congress video wall, we brought that back and we actually traveled it around the U.S.\\n\\n One year—it was the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11—we had a full-size Hubble Space Telescope mock-up over there, before we even flew Hubble Space Telescope. It was full-size. It even had a lot of the same thermo fabric. We spent a lot of money on it. On the flip side of it, it was a cutaway that showed the light pattern—the way the light would travel in and bounce off the mirrors, and how it would be recorded. It was all done with fluorescence and all sorts of different kinds of lights. Pretty neat. We brought that back, and it wound up at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center for a short period of time. One year, we built a space station module. We brought it back, and I think it went to the Space and Rocket Center, too, as well, for a period of time. For the most part, [makes sound effect] torn down. The million or whatever you spent on it kind of went away.\\n\\n That’s kind of the gist. Some of the smaller events, like some of the events that I did later on, those exhibits were a little bit smaller. Instead of 6,000, 5,000 square feet, it might be 1,200 square feet or whatever. Same general concept as far as themes and messages, and then coming up with a design concept, producing, literally fabricating, putting together, and then shipping, and then setting it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about the interaction and the protocol between Headquarters and the Centers for doing exhibits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Back then, we did a lot more for Headquarters, because we had the capabilities. I probably communicated with Headquarters, I would say, 60 percent of my day. They used to always have a log of everybody’s long-distance telephone calls and who they all called. We had to sign off to say that these are correct, and if there’s a personal call in there, then we would pay for it. If you looked at my call sheet, where most people might have a quarter of a page, half a page of long-distance calls, I’d have six or seven pages. They would all be the same number at Headquarters. I did a lot of back and forth with them.\\n\\n Whenever we were doing projects and we needed funding from Headquarters, they used to do it not like they do today, all electronic, where you just type a few things and it’s gone. They would fill out forms and they would fax the forms to us. Then I would have to look at it and take it to our budget people to have them code it so that the money could be applied on the contract. Then we would set up a job order, back then. Not a task order, but the same thing. We would have that specific funding code, and everything would get charged to that.\\n\\n Kind of a funny story on the first World Space Congress. We did the fabrication of that exhibit. The design of it was being done by a guy that actually worked at Headquarters. He was subcontracted. Working at Headquarters, but was being paid by a company that was our contractor at the time. It was funny. We were getting money from Headquarters, sent to Houston, to pay a guy back in D.C. for this assignment. He was doing a lot of changes. It was causing us a little bit of concern, because every time he would do a change, we’d have to change the exhibit. We’re talking about welding pieces. We had a lot of hard pieces. This went on for a long period of time. We were kind of getting down to where we were suddenly spending a lot of overtime to get this thing ready, because it had to be shipped and installed.\\n\\n Every time we’d get a change, I would just go to my contractor and say, “Here’s the newest drawing. Let’s get them done. Here’s what we have to do.” They’d all go, “Oh my gosh.” Spending money like crazy. A lot more than what I really realized. I got a call one Monday or Tuesday; actually, Chuck got the call, because he was the branch chief. [William] Bill Larsen was the COTR [contracting officer technical representative] over a portion of the contract. I was actually a COTR as well. He called us up and he said, “Let me tell you something. If we don’t get money from Headquarters before Friday of this week, I’m going to shut this contract down. You are going to send your people home, because you’re out of money. You have spent all of our institutional money. I know you’re getting the job done, but you’re not getting any reimbursement. If we don’t get money by this Friday, that’s it.”\\n\\n Boy, I called up my guy at Headquarters and said, “Jack, we need,” I think it was $600,000 or something like that. I said, “You need to get your budget guys to get this money down today, or guess what? You’re going to have a half-finished exhibit.” He got it done.\\n\\n That’s one of the things that I always tell people, that I almost bankrupted the PAO [Public Affairs Office] contract back in those days. It’s just one of those things where you get caught up in doing the work, and you know it’s going to get paid for, but sometimes you lose sight of the fact that we weren’t the only part of this contract that was being funded. We were literally spending other money from the contract. Of course, nowadays, they would never, never, ever let you do something like that. They’re always, “Send me the money first. Let’s get the contract. Then you can do your work.” Back then it was like, “The check is in the mail. The check is in the mail.” We just had stuff to get done. Fun times. Fun times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Learned some interesting lessons along the way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. Yes, I did. You can bankrupt a contract if you’re not careful. Bill Larsen, another guy who’s a champ. What I have learned about contracting, and about contracts, and the stuff that I used for source [evaluation] boards later on, came from that guy. Just brilliant, and a heck of a nice guy on top of that, too. He’s one of the guys that was truly one of my mentors, when I was a green, wet-behind-the-ears person, that treated me like someone who he thought would be okay. Again, I think a lot of it was the fact that I was associated with Chuck Biggs. He said, “Chuck’s not going to steer you wrong.” He said, “You’ll be okay.” Taught me a lot. Taught me a ton of stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was an interesting time when you got here, because Apollo was closing down, the shuttle wasn’t yet here. As you mentioned, you were finding places for all this hardware. You were learning so much because things were changing, so you were kind of learning what was coming and what was going?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The way Chuck treated me—I think he felt like the best way for you to learn about what we do, and how we use this, and how it applies to our Public Affairs mission to disseminate information, you have to literally go out and beat the bushes. You have to hit walls and you have to fall down, but once that happens don’t ever feel sorry. He was always there to help you, to help you understand what your mistakes may have been, and to point you in the direction. Not to necessarily give you the answer, but to point you in the direction and to keep going on.\\n\\n People think that I know a lot more than I really do, but it’s just because I know who to call. I know a lot of people in a lot of places. I know enough about command module interiors, but I don’t know as much as an engineer who created those, but I know who to call, who has the resources to go and find this information. I think that’s something that—I don’t know, I hate to stereotype people today, but I think much of that is missing in the people that come to work for us today in our office. Engineers, that’s different, that’s a different situation. We have a lot of people who certainly have a lot of knowledge, have a lot of capabilities, but there’s something missing there that should make them want to go out and search out and seek, and not be discouraged or rely on somebody else to give them the answer, necessarily. I think they can find it out themselves." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement with the Saturn V being moved to the Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually, I did. It was mostly from working with Center Operations, looking at the drawings of where it would eventually be, and of course, where it is now. When it first came here, we watched it come in on the barges through Clear Lake and come to the back gate. Once the pieces came, we had to bring it on site, like at two o’clock in the morning. We had to take down fences and roll it in. It was interesting. One day you’d see it sitting out at the loading dock at Clear Lake, and then people would go away, and the next day you’d come in and you’d go, “Where is it?” It’s over here by Building 14. Originally, they put it in the parking lot before we put it where it is now.\\n\\n I did a lot of the paperwork transfer between NASA and the Smithsonian, because that is a Smithsonian item. If you look at our loan agreements with them, it’s listed down there. Actually, before we even put the Saturn there, we put the Little Joe II there [in Rocket Park]; we put the Mercury-Redstone [there], because they used to be next to our building on that breezeway where now nothing is there. When I first came to work here, back in the 1970s, sitting out [on the west side of Building 2S], we had a mock-up lunar module, we had the Little Joe II, the command module, and we had the F-1 engine, and we had the other engines, the H-10 and the J-2. Then we had the Mercury-Redstone, all sitting on that pad. We knew we wanted to move it out there [to Rocket Park], so I was part of that, getting it all moved. With the Little Joe II, we had to get the launcher system. We had the command module and the boilerplate, but we had to get the launch system. That came from White Sands [Test Facility] and got shipped over here.\\n\\n I remember the day that we stacked that out in the Saturn V [building]. It was in February, and it was one of those rare times it was, like, 20 degrees, with the wind blowing. We had contractors putting that thing together and putting the launch tower together and stacking that. I thought I was going to freeze out there watching that thing go in. Then, of course, the Saturn got moved into place. I remember the transportation officer back then was a guy by the name of Horace [L.] Bell. As they were putting the second stage in the cradle that was built up for it, and they were shimmying it up, he said, “In about 20, 25 years, this is going to be somebody’s nightmare, because it’s outdoors.” Of course, it was 10 years later it was somebody’s nightmare.\\n\\n As you probably have heard, [the Saturn V] was kind of our signature item. You’d say, “To go to the Johnson Space Center, look for the big rocket on the side of the road, and you’re there.” People bellyached and cried and moaned and groaned when we put this “barn” around it but I tell them, if we hadn’t done that, we’d be tearing that rocket down right now [because of the deterioration]. It wouldn’t be there, because it was in really, really bad shape.\\n\\n The restoration of Saturn V was interesting. I got a call one day from Allen Needell at the Smithsonian. He said, “Are you aware of a program that [First Lady] Hillary Clinton started called Save America’s Treasures?” I said, “I don’t think so.” He directed me to a couple of news stories. It was one of those deals where historical items could be submitted for historical preservation. If approved and accepted by the program, the government would match funds raised to preserve or restore the so-called item. I said, “Hey, here’s how we can get this thing restored.” Of course, I started working with Allen Needell. We put together a plan. He had to submit it, because the program was not available to certain federal agencies, NASA being one of those, but it was certainly available to the Smithsonian. They had all sorts of things that needed preservation. As a matter of fact, the space suit preservation project that we talked about, that was about a $170,000 project that Amanda Young got the money for that.\\n\\n Allen and I worked together. He wrote up some write-ups for the RFIs [request for information]; I helped write them, and he submitted it. Sure enough, they accepted it. The next part of it was trying to get the money raised. Of course, we couldn’t raise money, so Allen did a lot of the footwork, trying to get people to put money up for the restoration. I certainly put him in contact with Space Center Houston, and they gave him names like the Houston Endowment [Inc.] and some other local places. Lockheed Martin [Corporation] and Boeing [Corporation] may have pitched in some money.\\n\\n When it was all said and done, I think he wound up getting close to $800,000. The government matched that with another $800,000. By that time, certainly Joel B. Walker [JSC Director of Center Operations], was on top of all this. Joel is a pretty crafty fellow when it comes to Center resources, and I think he had money set aside. He said, “I’ll pitch in to help put this facility around the rocket and do whatever.” It was kind of a combination of Smithsonian and the government, with the restoration money. The restoration work had to be done with a contract and Allen Needell, the Smithsonian, had to be the perpetrators or the keepers of the contract activity. They did allow us to co-coordinate, I guess, because it was our facility that we were building. It was the money that was being used to restore the Saturn V. I think Allen used the same company that actually did the restoration work of the Saturn V at the Cape [Kennedy Space Center, Florida]. He was able to get a lot for as much money that he had available. I think certainly if he had had more money, probably could have done some more. He orchestrated that, and I kind of watched out over it.\\n\\n Once the building was pretty much done and the restoration work was pretty much done, then I started asking Joel about additional resources to add things like concrete floors. I said, “Otherwise, you’ve got a big barn with a lot of grass growing around it, and a sidewalk.” Fortunately, again, Joel was able to kind of fill in with concrete. He did the grassy area with that artificial turf. It’s still dirt underneath it. He’s closed it in as much as you can close something in without literally building a concrete floor. Then after all that was done, the Smithsonian said, “We need to make sure that the conditions inside, as far as humidity and all that—we need to keep that pretty constant. Otherwise, we’re going to undo all this work.”\\n\\n Again, Joel came in and put the air conditioning units that are in there. We actually have little humidity meters, where we take readings of what the humidity is. Every month, we send that reading up to the Smithsonian to say what it is reading. As long as it’s between 45 and 65, or whatever it is, then we feel like there won’t be any further deterioration of the metals. Dust and stuff like that—from the dirt that’s underneath the artificial grass that’s there—that’s a different story. Still, I think for the amount of money that was put into this project, I think we probably did pretty well.\\n\\n We’d love to see a facility like what they have at KSC, the [Apollo/Saturn V Center] building over there. I’d love something like that, but you’re looking at another $60, 70 million project to do something like that, and I don’t think Space Center Houston would be able to do that. Plus, they’re getting ready to start their ten-year plan, which is going to involve getting this [mock] space shuttle from KSC, getting it placed over there, and then building out to it. Then, also, part of the plan is building onto the area that’s adjacent to where the big large-format theater is. They’re going to build a Mars display there, of sorts. Not just a little display, but a total immersion into a Mars landscape atmosphere. It’s a multimillion dollar project over the course of the next eight to ten years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in the design at the beginning of Space Center Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s funny. Our office, before Space Center Houston was even a thought in anybody’s head, we subcontracted with a designer to design a new visitor complex. As a matter of fact, he was one of our first designers way back when. Again, Hal Stall thought that we needed to do a better job for visitors, and he wanted to have something more than just a building and walking tour. He asked us what we thought about bringing on a contract designer to come up with some ideas. We went to this gentleman, Colin Kennedy was his name, and said, “Here’s what we want.” He designed the very first building that eventually would grow into what Space Center Houston was.\\n\\n Because he was subcontracted to my contract, I worked with him on all that. He later actually did some work for us as a contract person for the Paris Air Show, for the exhibit there. We used his services a lot, even after he left NASA. He was our designer when I first came to work for NASA in ’72. Then he left and was a freelancer, and then we went back and forth with him. Very early on.\\n\\n People think that Space Center Houston exists because of the Challenger accident, but we started that way before Challenger. We started what became Space Center Houston probably 1982, ’83. We started talking about how we could, somehow or another, build a new complex, how could we get it funded. Do we want to try to go for appropriated funds and make it NASA, or do we need to have it contract-run, or concessionaire? Hal Stall literally poured the latter part of his NASA career into trying to figure out how to create it. He did all of that. We came up with a 503c nonprofit organization, which people wonder if that was a smart thing, but it is what it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back on the years that you’ve spent here, what do you find as your most favorite memories of what you’ve done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think, certainly, everything that I’ve talked about as far as these projects, the events. Of course, going through them, I thought I was going to die from frustrations to just hard work. People don’t really realize the kind of work that goes into some of these major projects, these major events. The first time I heard of going to a Paris Air Show, like everybody, I go, “Oh my gosh, Paris Air Show. How do I get that assignment?”\\n\\n That was me, until I got over there and started working. If you do it properly, if you do your job, you come back and you go, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know if I want to do that again.” Then, of course—I’ll use the example my wife has always said: you go through childbirth and you think, I don’t ever want to do that again; then a couple years later, you forget about it. Really, that’s the same with this. The first time I went to an air show, I was in Paris for, I think, three weeks and five days, something like that. The very last day before I was supposed to fly back, I had an open afternoon. I said, “I’m going to get to see a little bit of Paris.” I really had not seen it. Chuck [Biggs] would say, “You’re going to be working pretty long hours. From seven in the morning until seven or so at night, eight o’clock. No days off.” I said, “I can handle that.”\\n\\n That first time I went there, that last day, I found myself climbing up on top of the Arc de Triomphe, because back then you could climb up there, and you have this beautiful panoramic view of Paris. I got up there and I got out my little 35-milimeter camera. It was kind of hazy, kind of a dreary day, actually. I took some pictures and I sat there for a while. I thought, “I am sick of this place.” I crawled down and went back to my hotel. Packed, took a nap. I said, “I’m ready to get out of this place.”\\n\\n All those events; when the next one came along, I’d get all psyched up for it. We’d go and have a great show, but you go through it, and after you’re there for however many days, it grates on you. It’s only the last few years that, suddenly, as I went to shows and I set exhibits up, and staffed or do whatever, then tear down—I think, “I’m tired of this.” This is just starting to grate on me. We would go to these big shows and we’d get everything all put together, and in would come the Headquarters people or whatever, in their suit and tie and their coats. They would sit there and go, “Oh man, what a great exhibit! This looks great. Man, you guys did a great job.” They are there for a day or so, they go to a reception or two, and then they’re gone. Then we’re there to manage the show to the end and then tear it down. I just think, “I want that job.” I want to come in for a couple of days, have wine at a wine and cheese place, and then go home and go, “Those guys did a great job! What a great exhibit. We got all this publicity, had all these people, and all that.”\\n\\n I never, in my wildest imagination, would have thought that I would work for anybody, let alone NASA, and do the stuff that I’ve been able to do, to create the things, be a part of the team. You have to have a good team, and I have been very fortunate in the contractors that have worked for us. Great people, very talented. Any success that people heave on me, if I didn’t have these guys supporting me, none of that would happen. No way.\\n\\n To go to the places that I’ve gone to, oh my gosh. I never would have thought that I’d be going to Jerusalem or Denmark or Holland or Japan or South America, places like that. Just great places. Not that I had been able to see a lot of stuff there, but the fact that I’m there and I’m representing the agency, and people entrusted that to me to do—that’s going to be something that will stick with me. Like I said, it’s been a great ride. I couldn’t have asked for any better career anywhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about some of the people that you learned from. Can you share with us some of those lessons that you might have learned from Chuck Biggs or Hal Stall that you might be leaving for the folks that will follow you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I try to tell people that when you go off and as you’re working things, just because you hit a door or a door shuts in your face, don’t let that be the end of it. We’ve actually had people come through the office and have that happen to them. They just quit. You can’t do that. You have to continuously keep going forward. You always have to be, especially in Public Affairs, you have to be in a state of always wanting to learn more about what’s going on, because there’s so much that “does” goes on.\\n\\n If you’re doing your job as a Public Affairs person, if you’re not learning about what’s out there, there’s something wrong. Public Affairs is supposed to know a little bit of everything, and people expect you to know. Even though we’re at a human space flight Center, a lot of times people will say, “What about the rovers that are going to Mars?” or “What about the James Webb Telescope?” You need to know something about other NASA projects; you need to learn about that.\\n\\n I tell people, always be in a mode of wanting to learn, wanting to do things. I tell people, volunteer for stuff. If they need somebody to take a tour, or staff an exhibit, or staff an event, whatever it is, volunteer to do that. Figure out how you can fit that into your schedule, because that’s the way you learn this stuff.\\n\\n When I was first here, besides working with exhibits and displays, I did protocol tours. One year, I think the Super Bowl was at Rice Stadium. They had the [football] teams coming out to go on tours, and they had people from Pittsburgh [Pennsylvania] coming out for tours. Not just a handful, but five and six buses. They needed people to be on the buses to corral. Even if you’re corralling, people are going to ask you, “You work at NASA? Tell me about this stuff.” You can interact with folks. You volunteer for stuff like that, because that’s how you learn what’s going on out here. I tell them, don’t sit back and think that stuff is going to come to you, because it may or may not, but when you’re more proactive, the other thing is, management sees that. The old adage about if you want to get stuff done, take it to a busy person—I think that’s true. Sometimes those people get frustrated, because I’ve felt myself feel that way. My boss will say, “Can you do this?” I’ll think, “What’s the matter with Joe over there?” But, it’s because he thinks enough of me that I can get it done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Public Affairs, or the name has been changed through the years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It will always be Public Affairs as far as I’m concerned. The directorate is External Relations; our division is now Office of Communication and Public Affairs. To me, it’s always going to be PAO." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "PAO has so many areas that it’s responsible for. You mentioned that you had wanted to be on the News side. Any regrets that you didn’t get to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. I don’t think so, because, really, I went to school to learn and to develop skills in writing and producing what would have been either film pieces or video pieces. Building an exhibit, to me, is not different than trying to produce something on video. You have a storyboard, you have a script, you have visuals. A lot of times, our exhibits have moving pieces to it. I think that I’m using a lot of what I learned in school to do what I’m doing. No regrets.\\n\\n One thing about the News side is during the shuttle program, you had stuff going on all the time. The next shuttle flight, next shuttle flight. Now, they’re in a little bit of a dry spell. Not really. They’re starting to get more, and certainly in the International Space Station [ISS], and the next program, Orion MPCV [Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle], but right now, it’s a little dry.\\n\\n Some of those guys are starting to do some things with us, because we’ve got the bulk of things that are going on. Right now, we’re doing a lot of work, obviously, with Space Center Houston on the [Explorer, the mock space shuttle] orbiter coming over. Our people are working with Space Center Houston to update the “On Human Destiny” film that’s there. Before you go into Starship Gallery, you see this film on the history of the space program. If you recall, it stops at space station, and the last image is a graphic rendering of what the space station looks like, and then it says, “to be continued.” They’re trying to continue that and use more actual footage, but still say that there’s more out there. They are working with Bob Rogers [& Co.], who originally produced this video, to add these new parts and pieces. The video folks over at JSC are working with him.\\n\\n We’re helping Space Center Houston with a new exhibit on space station, because they’re lacking in that area. We’re helping them with MPCV exhibitory, because, again, they’re lacking, and we can help them with that. We’re helping them with the tram stops. We’re trying to update the information for Building 9 to transition out of shuttle into ISS and robotics. We’re getting ready to open up Building 16, which is where the Shuttle Avionics [Integration] Lab[oratory] is located. That’s now going to be a tram stop where people can walk through, so we’re working with that area. Just a lot of things that are going on in our branch that may be or may not be going on over there.\\n\\n I have no regrets at all. I couldn’t have asked for a better job with a lot of neat, exciting things that go on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Every day the same, but every day different in its own way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I tell people, I’m going to be watching. I want to see a lot of things come to fruition. I can’t wait for the [mock space shuttle] orbiter to get here. I can’t wait for certain things to pop up. I can’t wait for Space Center Houston’s new things that they’re going to be doing.\\n\\n Actually, I can’t wait for KSC to get Atlantis on display. I’m certainly disappointed that we didn’t get an orbiter. I’ll probably be disappointed until the day I die. I don’t understand what happened there. Regardless of what people say, I think that something was not right, but we just go on with that. There are a lot of things that are going to happen, and it’s just a matter of who’s leading the ship, who the captain is, and how much the nation is willing to support, and I think the nation will be behind whatever course it is we take. It’s the people who have to be convinced. The people who have the coffers, who have their hands on the finances and the resources. That we have to, somehow or another—I’m hesitant to say better educate, because I don’t think that [educate] really is it. That’s one of the pet peeves that I have when our managers talk about how we need to do a better job of informing and educating. I just think that they get their information from skewed reports. To me, they’re not being advised appropriately. Do we need to do a better job? Yeah, we always could do a better job. We should never think that we’ve done the best that we could. You’re never there. You hear that all the time. We need to do a better job of this; we need to do a better job of that. Considering what we have to work with, I think we’re doing a pretty darn good job as it is, and we can do better, and we will do better, but when you start making those kinds of comments, you need to look at where are you getting that data from. You can take surveys, and you can get that stuff to tell you just about anything you want. If you want to try to motivate your people, you can get surveys that say, you’re not doing a very good job in this area.\\n\\n Too many times, we go to events, and people love us for the most part. We’ll get all this great feedback from places we go, from football games to racing events to marathons, rodeos. They love it, after they go, “Gosh, why are you here?” “Let me tell you why we’re here. We’ve got guys that are flying in a space station, that do exercises and do this.”\\n\\n They go, “Oh.”\\n\\n “The reason they’re doing that is because we’re getting ready to go to another planet, and it’s going to take a lot of time, and they have to make sure that their bodies can do it.”\\n\\n “Oh.”\\n\\n Then you have somebody go to an event, and one person will come back and say, “You know what? Our exhibit is kind of shoddy-looking. I wasn’t real sure what...” That comment will get elevated to the ninth floor [JSC Center administration], and they’ll come back and say, “Guys, you need to do a better job of...”\\n\\n I’m thinking, “Wait a minute.” What about the 500,000 people over here who love what we’re doing? Like I said, you can get anything from any situation that you want. I don’t think you need to continuously beat your people about the head and shoulders about how they need to be doing a better job. We are doing a great job.\\n\\n We have been participating over the last eight or nine years in a thing called Education Alley. It is an educational event that’s tagged to an AIAA event that’s, each year, out on the West Coast, called “Space.” Space 2009, Space 2010—you have the technical exhibition, where you’ve got your typical tradeshow exhibits. Companies like the Lockheeds and the USAs and Boeings, they come in and they have their tradeshow exhibits, and their guys with their suits and ties, and they’re talking to—we call it a choir event. They’re talking to each other about what we’re doing in space.\\n\\n With that Expo is also the conference part, which is where people talk about what they’re going to be doing next, which is a useful conference for space folks. Then there’s a section that’s called Education Alley, where they set aside an area and they invite selected people from agencies to come in and showcase stuff that’s going on that’s relative or would be of interest to education to students. Then they invite students from the areas to come in.\\n\\n Over the course of a three-day period, you might have about three or four thousand kids, about 1,000 a day, which is about all you can stand on a seven or eight hour day, because it has to be during the school time; they bus them there. These kids come in and they see this stuff, and they just eat it up. Granted, you get some that are “out there”, and they’re just running around. But, you can see the kids who look at this stuff, and they’re interested in the science of it, they’re interested in the mathematics of it, they’re interested in the technology of it. You have them for however long it is, but you can talk to them about going to Mars, or you can talk to them about what it would take to be an astronaut. Along with all these other agencies. It’s not just NASA, but it’s all different but NASA is the showcase. You see NASA there. Everybody wants to be there.\\n\\n This last Education Alley, we had very simple stuff. You guys probably saw the inflatable MPCV that we had during [JSC] Innovation [Day]. We took that there. It’s full-size. People go, “Oh man, that’s how big it is?” Yeah, that’s how big it is. Four people go inside them. Then we had our inflatable space station module. “Oh man, that’s how big it is?” That’s just one module, yeah. We had our space suit people there. “Oh man.” They just eat that stuff up.\\n\\n Now, you want to tell me that we’re doing, really, a poor job? The letters that these schoolteachers write back to AIAA say, “Thanks for inviting us. That was really neat. The NASA stuff was really neat. My kids came back and wanted to know more about it. We’re going to NASA.gov.” Take a survey with those people. You’re going to get a 95 percent rating of, “Hey, great job.” You can get what you want depending on where you are. I’m with these people that say we need to quit doing choir events. The technical conferences are where the space people go to. If each one of them would have an Education Alley, where they invite three or four thousand kids; unfortunately, these are all out in California, so we’re in Los Angeles or Anaheim or San Diego, whatever. If there was any way you could have those kinds of events tagged to another event—we had it here in Houston one time, and I think it was successful here—but if you could have those all over the place, I think we could tell a great story and get a lot of excited students who might, one day, want to be an engineer here or an astronaut here or whatever.\\n\\n One of my daughters is a teacher. She actually is a PE [physical education] teacher at a middle school in Pasadena. They had their Career Day a couple of weeks ago, and she invited me. I got to go talk to seventh and eighth-graders. Again, there are some that are just, “Yeah, yeah,” but there’s enough of them that go, “Hmm, how long is it going to take to get to Mars? How are they going to…”—that are interested enough that you can see that they’re thinking that this sounds pretty neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask Jennifer if she had a couple of questions for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I do have some questions. Tying into what you were talking about, how closely do you work with the Office of Education, or the Astronaut Office, to work on the exhibits and to get people excited about these kind of events?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Whenever we are doing an event where it is felt, or we feel, that there should be an education component to it, we’ll work with them. It’s just a matter of saying, “Here’s the event, here’s what we’re doing; do you guys want to come in and try to do workshops? Do you guys want to invite school kids, or do you want to do your educational thing? An example is, we are traveling around our Destination Station exhibit, which is an exhibit on ISS. The theme of that exhibit really is—it’s pretty high level—is to, number one, say space station is done. We’ve got it finished. We’re not here to say, “We’re going to build this thing.” We’re here to say, “We’ve got a football field-sized thing up there that’s manned 24/7, and oh, by the way, the real purpose of it is to do science and do experiments and do all that; here’s what we think you guys would be interested in.” And we explain, “How you might be able to fly, or get an experiment flown on that.” Now, that’s the exhibit part of it.\\n\\n The education people come in, and they contact the schools around the place where we’re going to be. We’re going to be in San Jose [California] in February [2012]. They will contact schools in that area to say, “We’re going to be in San Jose at this exhibit, and we’re going to have all these things. We’d like to send some speakers there. We’d like to do any workshops for you.” That’s how we integrate their work into what we do as a total package of an event. The exhibit is the centerpiece, and then you’ve got the educational component.\\n\\n Then we invite astronauts. They might go to a school, they might go to a hospital, they might go to a research facility. That’s how we bring in the astronaut appearance as part of it. Whenever we are coordinating any outreach event, if we feel, or if the organization says, is there any chance we can get an astronaut to come, we will coordinate with the astronaut appearances office to have them go to that event and try to get them to do something, a presentation. We don’t like, and the astronaut office doesn’t like this as well—we don’t want them going there just to sign autographs. We want them there to do a presentation.\\n\\n The last few months, there was an event involving crop circles, crop mazes. There’s an association that does this, a national association. This year, their theme was space. There were seven or eight places across the United States where the mazes were being cut into something related to space. Two of them were in our area. One was in Brookshire, which is up by Austin [Texas]. The other one was up in Nebraska. The folks in Nebraska, it was a pumpkin patch, had it in the shape of a space station. The one in Brookshire did one in the shape of a lunar boot. We sent some exhibits to Brookshire, and we sent an astronaut there because they asked for one and it was approved. It was over a weekend. We had an exhibit, a simple exhibit, because everything is outdoors.\\n\\n Our outdoor exhibits are not as prevalent as our indoors, just because we don’t have that kind of stuff. Same with Nebraska. [Astronaut Clayton B.] Clay Anderson went up there, and we sent some exhibits. We involve the astronauts when we can. Sometimes resources are the driver, and it helps if the organization can pay for travel if it’s involved. We try to integrate, coordinate, with other offices if there’s a part to play, so to speak. Most of the time, education certainly goes hand-in-hand with what we do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Earlier, you had mentioned that you were disappointed that Houston didn’t get a space shuttle [for permanent display]. Were you involved at all with Space Center Houston and their efforts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Other than just being aware of it, because that had to be done by them, because we really couldn’t get involved, I sat in on some of the very preliminary meetings that they had within marketing, who did the RFI [request for Information] response. I sat in with some of the guys that they were going to in the area, like [former Apollo astronaut Eugene A.] Gene Cernan and folks like that who were trying to build up support. That’s about as much as I was able to do on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement in the preservation of the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room]? It was cleared out at one point. All the consoles were taken out. Then they decided to make it a historic landmark." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Only from a standpoint of providing any display support, like the video that they show in there and some of the visuals that they put on the front screen. It was always of the mind that we wanted to make sure that the third-floor of the MOCR remained as is, and not being taken apart, like the second floor. There was a bit of a battle between Johnson Space Center and the Texas Historical Commission. I’m glad that they were able to keep the third floor the way it is. I did not know a whole lot, other than just situational awareness of what was going on. I did know Melody Nation, who was here back then, who worked heavily on that before she retired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you share with us some information about displaying Moon rocks in the exhibits, and some of the perils or concerns that you have showing those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Moon rocks have always been very interesting in this position. Going back to when Headquarters pretty much assigned the responsibility of managing the Lunar Sample Program, they gave it to JSC for a number of reasons. The rocks are here. It’s obvious that they didn’t want to handle it. I think they looked at it and thought for a moment that they might do it, but they said, “We don’t want to do that.” So, it’s always been at JSC.\\n\\n Here, lately, I��ve taken back the responsibility of coordinating the Lunar Sample Program. That was one of those responsibilities that I got from Chuck, and then we brought in another person. When Chuck became the branch chief, we brought in another person, and I said, “You’re the Lunar Sample guy. You take care of it.” He did that for a number of years, and then when he retired, in ’99, it fell back on me, and I’ve had it ever since.\\n\\n I think once we announced the Constellation Program—Moon, Mars and Beyond—I think that rejuvenated the program to where we were starting to get a lot more requests for samples, for display samples, for educational disk samples. It’s bubbled up. When the gentleman retired, Boyd Mounce—he retired in ’99—we had a total of about 50, 52 lunar sample displays, what we call long-term loans. Some people call them permanent [displays], but the government doesn’t like that term, so they say long-term. And these are around the world, in the United States and Europe, you name it. About 50, 52.\\n\\n Now we are getting ready to release the latest sample. A gentleman is coming from [Scienceworks], the Victoria science museum in Melbourne, Australia. He’s coming here on December 18 to pick up a long-term sample. His will be, I think, the 74th. Since ’99, we’ve increased to about 20 long-term lunar sample displays. People are just eating that stuff up. We released that one, and we have two or three others that are in works. There’s somewhat of a mystique about lunar material. Just the fact that we say it’s a lunar sample, and it’s in a nitrogen field encased environment—they love that stuff.\\n\\n Toward the end of this month—as a matter of fact, the day before I retire—some representatives from the Thailand Embassy out of Washington, D.C., are flying here to pick up one of our traveling samples to take to a science show over in Thailand. They’ll pick it up December 29, and they’re bringing it back January 29. My replacement will get to receive it back. Any time we get requests like that from those kinds of countries, we certainly have to get [NASA] International Affairs and Headquarters to make sure that everything is okay, political-wise. Once it’s okay, then we process the loan agreement, and they follow the same guidelines as far as having to carry it place to place, have to have it under surveillance while displayed, and locked in a safe. All the requirements. They followed all that.\\n\\n They contacted me and wanted to come to Houston to meet with me. I said, “If you have a trip already planned to Houston for whatever reason, I’ll be happy to meet with you, but the loan is set. There’s no real reason to meet.” I thought, “I’ll bet you, coming from Thailand, I’ll bet you they want to talk about a new science center over there.” Sure enough, they flew down here. There were two of them from the embassy at D.C. Flew here and that’s what they wanted to talk about. They said, “We are building a new space science museum in Thailand, and we need to know if NASA can help us with that.” We do this all the time. I said, “I can provide you with information sources,” and when I told them that I was getting ready to retire, they said, “No, you can’t do that.” Then they said, “Have you ever been to Thailand?”\\n\\n “No,” I said. “It would be kind of a neat project.” Anyway, they’re coming down here to pick the sample up and use it. We’ve got another organization from Bangladesh coming in in February to pick up a lunar sample. Then we’ve got another person coming from Italy in June or July. I get as much, if not more, requests from foreign folks than I do U.S. folks, for lunar sample material. I don’t know how to explain it, other than just people are really interested as we talk more and more about the possibility of going back to the Moon and all that. I think it’s neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The former Inspector General [IG] official, he’s been interested in figuring out where these lunar rocks have gone that NASA gave out after Apollo 11 and Apollo 17. Has there ever been any concern on your part or NASA’s part that some of these rocks are missing that had been on loan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so, because, number one, they’re big. They’re in big cases. For those samples to become missing, that, to me, would indicate that they would have to be stolen. Literally taken from a facility.\\n\\n One of the black eyes that I will take with me as I leave the agency is that one of my lunar sample disks that I had, that was on loan to a planetarium up in Delaware, is missing. The lunar sample disk is a six-inch diameter, one-inch thick, acrylic disk that has three rock samples and three solar samples. They’re all very little. It’s under 10 grams. It’s designed to be placed under a microscope. You can see the material, but it’s better if you look under the microscope, because with that, you can see the minerals. We have a curriculum guide that has a microscopic photograph of that sample that goes with the disk.\\n\\n This disk had been on loan to this planetarium for many years. They used it for many years. In updating loan agreements with the gentleman, I learned that I had a loan agreement that was expired, and for whatever reason, I didn’t contact him when I should have. As a matter of fact, it was two years after it expired. When I did contact him, I learned that he passed away the previous year. The person who I contacted had no knowledge of this disk. I said, “Here’s what you need to do. You need to tear that place apart, basically. Go to his secretary. Go to his house. Go to his widow. Go to anybody, everybody, to find out what happened to this disk.”\\n\\n The last emails that I had got from him said, “Yeah, I still have it and still want to use it.” It’s just that I didn’t contact him when I should have. This new guy looked all over. Finally, I said, “If you can’t locate the disk, I’m going to have to turn this over to the IG, and they’re going to be calling you.” I thought maybe something might turn up, but it never did. IG has contacted them. It’s an ongoing investigation, but they still haven’t located this disk. That is something that someone could put in their pocket and walk off with. I still think that either the gentleman put it somewhere and just didn’t tell anybody, or somebody put it somewhere, not knowing what it was, or somebody stole it.\\n\\n Just one of those things that I always said, “I don’t want to go out of here with something like that not resolved,” but it is what it is. The [lunar sample] curator has already written it off. The curator—they loan out thin sections and samples to principle investigators, and they know that in the course of work being done, they’re going to lose certain amounts. It’s chalked-up like that. They’ve already literally written it off their books, so to speak.\\n\\n Here, recently, there was an IG audit of the Lunar Sample Program. They’re ready to submit the final report to the NASA Administrator. One of the investigators sent me a note just yesterday, saying, “As far as that disk, is there any word on it?” I said, “Not that I have heard. Nothing on it.” It’s still MIA [missing in action], I guess. It would not totally surprise me, in another two, three years, if the thing pops up on eBay [online auction site]. When it does, somebody is going to have some “’splainin’ to do, Lucy.” The IG, they’ve got their eyes on eBay and all these places. I get notes periodically from them, saying, “Have you seen this? What do you think?” What they generally do is they look at the item. They’ll get not just my opinion, but if it’s hardware, they’ll contact people to say, “Do you think this is something that the agency should spend money to try to recover, or is it something that probably just got thrown away?” They contact me occasionally to say, “What do you think of this? What do you think of that?”\\n\\n You’ve probably heard of some of these others, like the lady that was given a piece of Moon rock that she said that her husband had gotten from Neil Armstrong. That got taken away from her. I don’t know what the agency would do with something like that. You talk to Neil Armstrong and he said, “I didn’t give anybody a Moon rock.” For people like Neil Armstrong, I don’t know that he would ever do anything like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What’s your relationship with the lunar curator and how do you approach him about getting some samples?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He’s actually part of the process. When we get requests in for long-term lunar samples, there’s a process. People say, “Send me the application.” There’s not really an application. There’s a process where they send in their request, and then we go back and say, “We’ve got some general guidelines that we need for you to put together and follow in order to submit your proposal to us.”\\n\\n There are two parts to it. There’s the display part, which we ask them for a very detailed narrative of how they’re planning to showcase it. We don’t want it to be on a bookcase. We don’t want it to be on a pedestal. We want to see it as part of an exhibit on lunar and planetary science. Show us everything that you can show us: the graphics, the texts. What happens is, when that comes in, when we get that package, I look at it to make sure that it meets the checkmarks. Then what I have to do with it is I send it to the curator, who, in turn, takes it to his curation team. The acronym is CAPTEM, C-A-P-T-E-M [Curation and Analysis Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials]. Gary [E.] Lofgren is the curator, and with this group of scientists that make up this team, they look at this presentation and they critique it.\\n\\n If it passes their criteria, then we approve it, we recommend the allocation of a sample. If not, they’ll send it back to them and explain what falls short in these areas. Then we send that back to the requestor and say, “Here’s what we need to do with this,” and then they correct it. If they come back and say, “Oh my gosh, this is really not very good; you need to focus more on this,” then we go back to the requestor and say, “I’m sorry, but here’s what we need to do if you want to do it.”\\n\\n We’ve had places like that. They have a couple of pictures and they have a base and we tell them that that’s not going to work. As a matter of fact, there’s an organization up in, I want to say South Dakota. We’ve been going back and forth with them, because their display is just not quite there. That’s the display part. The other part is the security plan. Requestors have to show us the case that the display is going to go in, and what it’s going to be made of. We need drawings, what kind of surveillance, what kind of alarms, what kind of locks which have to be combination locks. We need as many details as you can.\\n\\n Again, I look at it and I make sure that it meets the initial criteria, and then I have to send that to the security folks, and they look at it, and they have their little checklist. They go through and make sure that it meets all the criteria. If it does, they send it back and say it’s been approved. You get the two approvals together, and then I send the congratulatory letter.\\n\\n The sample has been allocated, so soon as the sample has been identified with the sample number, I have that number, I will issue the loan agreement. You sign the loan agreement. Once you have signed the addendum that says you will reimburse the government for the cost of the [display] case, they’ll make it. Then we contact you, you pick it up, and it’s yours to display.\\n\\n A lot of people say, reimburse the government? The cost of making one of those nice glass cases? Before, it used to be free. We’d just give it to them. Now, due to the cost accounting situation that we’re in, they have to reimburse the government $9,500. That’s the cost to process the sample, to order the materials which are all handmade, precision made, and then the assembly and the mounting. They get these stainless steel parts and pieces that are machine made, and they get the glass that’s ground properly, and it has to seal. Once they get all that together, they put it all together inside one of those cases. They pull a vacuum, inject the nitrogen gas, make it ready, and it’s ready to go. That process can take anywhere from six months to two years, because the scientific team that meets to look at the proposals, they meet at least once a year, and sometimes twice a year. They meet every year when they have the annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. They meet then, and then sometimes they meet in the summertime. You have to hit them when they’re around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How big is that sample that goes in that box?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The sample is anywhere from about 60, 70 grams, up to about 180 grams. About the size of maybe a large, large marble to the size a little bit larger than a golf ball." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m curious -- I think the last time I went to Space Center Houston, you could actually touch the Moon rock, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There are eight touchable Moon rocks in the world right now. The one that was at Space Center Houston was maybe the second one. We actually made that sample for a Paris Air Show. It came back here, and then we kept it in the vault. We never really used it. When Space Center Houston was being developed, one of the things that we wanted to have there was a touchable Moon rock. We put that in there. That display, as you can imagine, has a little bit more security. If you look at it, the way it’s mounted, it’s mounted in such a way that people have to curl their fingers. They can’t get a sharp object in there. That’s for that reason. The one at the Smithsonian is out in the open, but they have a guard sitting out there. They came to us and said, “We want to take our guard away.” We said, “Okay, then you are going to have to change your display. It can’t be open like that. It’s got to be such that you can’t get a screwdriver or a knife so people will chip at it.” They didn’t want to spend the money for a case, so guess what? They spend the money for a guard.\\n\\n There’s eight of those in the world. Three of those eight are transient Moon rocks. We’ve got one in our DTE, “Driven to Explore” [mobile display unit]. Headquarters has one that they use for Headquarters events. Then there’s another touchable sample in the mobile exhibit that Marshall [Space Flight Center] operates, the “Exploration Experience.” It’s a touchable sample. The other five are at museums. We have one, KSC has one, Pacific Science Center [Seattle, Washington] has one, Smithsonian has one, and then the science museum in Mexico City [University of Museum Science and Arts] has one.\\n\\n The curator told me he’d like to get more samples like that out. We have entertained requests, but like I said, it’s a little bit more involved when you start talking about security, surveillance, the display mount, and all that. We’ve had several people ask about it, but not any that have come back to give us full plans. JPL [NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] wanted one. They haven’t submitted us a plan. [NASA John H.] Glenn Research Center Visitors Center, the Great Lakes Science Center [Cleveland, Ohio], hasn’t submitted us a plan on that. We will entertain them, but we have to have the plans before we can do anything with the requests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think I only had one more question for you, and that was to ask you to talk a little bit about your work with the media. Of course, you wanted to be on the other side, but you found yourself on the flipside." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "While I didn’t work with the media side, I did do a lot of work with news media. I think, back in the days of Skylab and all the things that went on, with the problems that we had with that program in its beginning, I did a lot of work with media, from taking them into trainers and places like that. I met a lot of the media folks back then, like [ABC-TV Science Editor] Jules Bergman. You guys remember him? He’s since passed away. Also, Roy Neal [from NBC-TV]. Certainly all the local guys that were here.\\n\\n I did a lot of work with them in so many ways. I can remember, when Skylab fell, back in ’79 [for its deorbit]—that was about the time I was transient from the [JSC] media side to the outreach side. We were doing a lot of work. Of course, everybody in Public Affairs should be able to work on either side. When they needed people to help staff the news desk, they would bring us over, and since I had been around since Skylab, they said, “Come over and help us with that.” I did several on-camera interviews with local folks.\\n\\n It was funny. Back in that day, I ran into a guy who was a [KPRC-TV] Channel 2 reporter, beat reporter, a guy named Mike Capps. It just so happened that he and I went to Sam Houston State [University, Huntsville, Texas]. We were in the same courses together, and he was working for Channel 2 at the time. Eventually went on to work for CNN [Cable News Network]. When he saw me out here and he was covering Skylab falling, he said, “I want to do an interview with you.” A “Live at Five” type thing. So I said, “Sure, as long as you don’t set me up.” I had been set up before by news guys; you’ve got to watch them. He said, “I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to ask you.” I said, “Okay, I’ll do that.”\\n\\n A lot of fun. One of the things that we did back in those days, we did some work with some movie companies that did movies out here, one of which was a sequel to a movie called “Westworld.” It had Yul Brynner and James Brolin, about robots and people who would go on vacations and would go to these “places,” one of them being the Wild West. You could kind of live out your fantasy as a gun-slinger but the robots went wild and start killing people. The sequel to that was a thing called, “Futureworld,” with Blythe Danner. You know who she is, Blythe Danner? You ever hear of Gwyneth Paltrow? That’s her mother. I’ll tell you something about that in just a second, too. And also starred Peter Fonda. Again, it was a story about people going to these vacation places. One was where you could be an astronaut. You could fly all over the place, but the robots go wild and kill people.\\n\\n About 90 percent of it was filmed at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and down at the [Houston] Intercontinental Airport. Blythe Danner was the featured star. I really had not even heard of her. Her husband, at the time, was a guy by the name of Bruce Paltrow, was on site. He produced television series, one of them that I remember was called “St. Elsewhere” about a hospital. He was on site and had expressed an interest to go on a tour of the Center. People were asking, “Anybody want to take this guy on a tour?” I said, “I’ll do it.” Again, you volunteer for that kind of stuff.\\n\\n I took him to Mission Control. I took him all over the place. Actually, I think I even was able to take him inside the Control Room, and he sat behind the consoles and he just loved that stuff. Toward the end of the tour, he said, “You’ve got to meet my wife.” She had her own little trailer, because she had just had a baby. She had just had a baby, Gwyneth Paltrow. Six weeks old. He said, “Would you like to meet my wife?” I said, “Yeah, that would be great.”\\n\\n We go over and go into her trailer, and I meet Blythe Danner, and she brings out this little, tiny baby girl. At the time, I had no kids, so I’m holding this little baby girl, and thought, “Oh, how cute.” She said, “Would you like to have some red Zinger tea?” I said, “Sure.” So I’m sitting there drinking Red Zinger tea with Blythe Danner. Her husband finally said, “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you later, honey.” I said, “I better leave,” but she said, “No, sit and chat.” So I talked with her for I don’t know how long. I was so impressed with the fact that here was a new mom, working, with baby there, still nursing and all that. Later on, two or three years later, when I had my first child, I named her Holly Blythe, after Blythe Danner. I tell people, when that little girl [Gwyneth Paltrow] was a little, tiny baby, I actually held her. Now she’s a big movie star. That was a neat thing there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m going to have to check out that movie now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You can probably find it in the 50 cent bargain rack; it was really a pretty bad movie. Who else was in it? Stuart Margolin. I tell people, if you see that movie, if you know about Johnson Space Center and know how Building 29 looked before it looks like it is now, and the Control Center—they did a lot of filming inside of the electrical building, Building 25. They did a lot of filming inside of the vacuum chamber, with spiky-looking sound deafeners and all that. In Building 32, as a matter of fact, the climax scene was Peter Fonda and his clone fighting at the top of the chamber, Chamber A. One of them takes a dive off of it, into a big, big airbag. It was a neat scene to watch. You can get a good look of what the insides of the Johnson Space Center looked liked. I think some of it was even filmed in Building 2, our old office areas. It was a fun movie, it was a terrible movie, but it was a neat experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have much contact with the media in your current position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Occasionally, when people want to talk about Moon rocks and artifacts that appear on eBay. I did get a call from several people on this professor out in Arizona, since his students are calling, wanting to know where the locations of all the small world plaques. I’ve gotten several calls about that. That’s another one of those unfortunate situations where we tell people that the government and NASA does not give away Moon rocks, except only one—the exception of the Apollo 11 and the Apollo 17, what we call small world plaques. That’s the only time that the government has literally given away the Moon rocks. We’ve given those to either the states or the countries, with the idea that those states and those countries would put them on display in a government building.\\n\\n We do not give the rock to Arkansas to go to [former governor] Bill Clinton to go home with him, or we do not give it to the governor of Colorado for him to put in a shoebox and take home. We gave it to the people of that state. It just so happens that the governor accepted it, and we expected him to put it in a case somewhere in the governor’s mansion. Same with the countries. We gave them to Germany and Italy for them to put in a government building for it to be there forever.\\n\\n The ones that have surfaced are the ones you hear about, but I would almost bet that half of them probably aren’t where they’re supposed to be. When NASA hears about that, through whatever means, they still have a keen interest in trying to reacquire them. What they’ve done in some of the cases is that—one that was gotten back from one of the small countries, Honduras, I think, was to get it redone, get it back the way it’s supposed to be presented, and represent it to the people of Honduras. Now, whether or not that’s happened, I’m not real sure. Actually, what we did there is when we did those presentations back in ’72, 73, 74, we did that through the U.S. State Department. They’re as much on the hook as anybody as their locations.\\n\\n This latest program—I say latest; it started back in 2005—is the lunar sample distribution program, called the Ambassador of Exploration Lunar Sample display. Before they left, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and the then-director of Public Affairs came up with the idea of making small chips of samples, about one gram, one and a half grams, two grams, available to all of either the astronauts or the families of astronauts, starting from Mercury through the Apollo program, to present to them so they could then allocate to their own institution of choosing, whether it be a museum or a school or a university or whatever. We’ve been doing that, and 44, 45 of those have been remade. Not only did we give them to the astronauts, the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo astronauts, but we also gave one to the [President] John [F.] Kennedy family. Received by his daughter Caroline Kennedy, she designated Rice University [Houston, Texas] as a recipient for that. We gave one to [former JSC Director Christopher C.] Chris Kraft because of who he is. He gave his to his college, Virginia Tech [Blacksburg, Virginia] which was displayed in the building where the [campus] shootings took place. We gave on to [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz, and he designated his old high school in Ohio. Then we gave one to Walter Cronkite [former CBS News pioneer]. He gave his to the University of Texas [Austin, Texas] Center of American History.\\n\\n Those are the only non-astronauts that were presented these awards. We still have about seven or eight that have not been presented to that astronaut because that astronaut has not designated a recipient. This program has been going since 2005, ’06. Unfortunately, the lady at Headquarters who’s the Headquarters fulcrum, if you will, for this program, she’s retiring, too. After December 31st, the person who takes her place may or may not pick up the ball on this. These samples, like I said, they’re little samples, and they’re encapsulated in a cylinder, three inches in diameter, about four inches tall. It’s got a beveled edge, so you can see the sample, and it’s got a little inscription of where it came. We made a base for it. It’s illuminated from underneath. It’s a nice little display.\\n\\n Again, once a recipient has been identified, we enter into an agreement with them, and they have to, at a minimum, satisfy the same security requirements that a regular sample recipient or a display sample would have to go through. They’ve got to have surveillance, all of this elaborate stuff, because of the size of the sample. You could put that sample in your pocket and walk off with it if it’s not behind a case. The security is still there. These samples, as opposed to the small world plaque, I have files on each one of them. I have loan agreements on each one of these. I have contacts on each one of these. The other ones, once we gave them to the US State Department, who knows where they are.\\n\\n People ask me, “Do I have my retirement set up with some of my Moon rocks to take with me?” I said, no, I don’t want to wind up in Leavenworth for the rest of my life. That’s for sure.” Think about that. It’s like somebody that might try to steal a valuable painting. Why would you do it? Other than putting it in your house, in your basement, somewhere where nobody else is going to see it except you, what do you do with it? You steal a Moon rock; what are you going to do with it? Are you going to try to sell it? Come on. We had some pretty smart kids try to do that. That’s not going to work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We kept you a little bit longer than we originally agreed, but is there anything else you’d like to add, or some areas or special other stories that you can think of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wish that, somewhere in the beginning of my career, I would have been more focused about keeping a journal. There are so many things that went on, like when we were first negotiating with the World’s Fair people over in New Orleans, we were going over there pretty regularly. One particular time we were going over there to meet with them, I was with Hal Stall, the big boss, Chuck Biggs, the branch chief, and I think [Daniel R.] Dan Remington, the legal guy. We were going to go and meet with those guys. We were going to meet at the Michoud [Assembly] Facility, just outside of New Orleans. I, for some strange reason, was designated the driver of the vehicle.\\n\\n We’re in this car, and we are heading toward Michoud. I guess either no one really remembered being there before, or we thought we knew that the facility was along this road. Someone said, “We need to stop and get something to eat, real quick. Why don’t we stop at this McDonald’s and get a hamburger, and we’ll just eat on the way?” We go through the drive-through and get our hamburgers, and we’re heading out, going toward Michoud. I guess, driving along, everybody must have had their head down. We drive, and we pass by the entrance. We’re driving along. I’m thinking, it’s got to be here; it’s a big building. It’s got a big NASA [logo] on the side. [We] keep driving, keep driving. We drove so far, we literally drove into Mississippi.\\n\\n We drove so far that we literally had to stop and get gas, because we were getting low on gas. Still, we’re thinking, it’s got to be out here somewhere. We’re going down whatever that highway, not Interstate 10, but one of the U.S. highways [I-510], and finally I said, “Let’s find somebody and stop and ask where this place is.” We finally chased down, and I mean literally chased down, a [U.S. Postal] truck, and got him to pull over to the side of the road. I was flashing lights and stuff.\\n\\n I said, “We are from NASA and we’re trying to get to the NASA Michoud facility.” This poor guy just said, “The NASA Michoud? I have no idea.” The only thing left to do was to just get back and drive back into town and retrace our route. We drive back, and sure enough, we come to where it is, thinking, “How in the world did we miss this?” Of course, we’re about an hour and a half late for our meeting. We go in and we apologize. Finally we get done, and we’re heading back into New Orleans to go back to the hotel. Literally a mile from that McDonald’s is where Michoud was located, the exit that we missed. I figured we just must have had our heads down or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No cell phones, no GPS [global positioning system]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, exactly. None of that stuff. The first time I saw a cell phone—there was a Hollywood group that was here scouting some filming locations at JSC. I took them over to Building 9 to look at the mock-up and trainers. Building 9, the place where the FFT [Full Fuselage Trainer] is located. As a matter of fact, when the tours were on site, we took them through into the tail end of where the FFT is, and they could walk up and they could look down into the payload bay. We had a desk there for our tour guide. We were there, and this guy from Hollywood walked outside, and he pulled out his cell phone, which was the size of a brick. He was talking to his office back in California. I said, “Holy mackerel. Isn’t that neat?” I was thinking, that thing must weight 15 pounds. He’s sitting there, using it like a walkie-talkie, but he was talking to somebody in California. That was my first introduction to a cell phone. Now, good grief.\\n\\n What a ride. What a ride. I just hope that the people behind me have as much fun and have as much to tell in 40 years. I’ve got to believe they probably will, because some of the really exciting times—when we finally get to the point where we’ve got a vehicle, and we start taking it some place, whether it’s to an asteroid or the Moon or whatever—once we start going to places like that. when we go to Mars—I would hope that I might be alive, but I’m not sure about that. But when we go to Mars, you think the place was jumping during Apollo and during the first shuttle flights—when we go to Mars, that is going to be some kind of event." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We hope that you are around. Maybe you could be giving some commentary of the old days, even back then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Louis A. Parker", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know. They may not need a 95-year-old guy to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe you’ll just be enjoying it. Thanks so much, Louis. We enjoyed and learned a lot from you this morning." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00960", + "metadata": { + "category": "NACA OHP National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 2005 - 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/kordesee.htm", + "original_file_name": "KordesEE_2-19-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/KordesEE_2-19-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "location_date": "Tehachapi, California – 19 February 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Eldon E. Kordes" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is February 19, 2015. This oral history session is being conducted with Don Kordes at his home in Tehachapi, California, as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project, sponsored by the NASA Headquarters History Office. Interviewers are Rebecca Wright and Sandra Johnson. We’d like to thank you again for letting us in your home today to talk with us about this project. We’d like for you to start, if you would, by sharing with us how you first became part of the NACA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s a long story. I was at graduate school at Purdue [University, West Lafayette, Indiana], and I was working on my master’s degree, and I was also working on some research projects to pay my way. We did use the NACA technical reports in some of the classes I was in. Also, I was a lab instructor for the structures testing lab. I was also designing a little race airplane for a local flight instructor, and I used the NACA report on airfoils as a base for the design. And so I was familiar with some of the work that was going on at NACA, particularly Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia].\\n\\n Then my last year of Purdue I had a chance to talk with one of the people from Langley. Dr. [Eugene] Lundquist happened to be a personal friend of Professor [Elmer F.] Bruhn, who was head of the aero department at Purdue [School of Aeronautics and Astronautics], and Dr. Lundquist came to Purdue and gave a talk to the engineering group about the work going on at Langley, particularly in the area of structures. That was kind of my major. After the discussion session, I talked to him a while, and he said there were openings at Langley for new hires. Would I be interested? So I filled out an application and sent it in, and I got hired to go to Langley to work in the Structures Lab.\\n\\n Of course my first experience was a little bit negative because I found out when I got there that there was a budget crunch, and we had to buy our own paper and pencils. They didn’t have any supplies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in 1949. I went to work there in August of 1949. I was assigned to work with John [C.] Houbolt, and he was working at that time on advancing the concept of the loads response to clear air turbulence. Up to that time, all the airplanes had been designed as rigid bodies entering a so-called sharp-edged gust. John thought that the airplane flexibility of the wings and bending and torsion would have an impact on the loads and that it’d be more realistic than the rigid airplane response, especially when the airplanes were starting to become larger.\\n\\n John and I worked on theoretical analysis of several different types of transport aircraft to different kinds of gust inputs, sharp-edged gusts, sine wave gusts, and so on. We published several joint papers on the subject. Then John got promoted to Assistant Division Chief of the Loads Division, so I got reassigned to work on other programs.\\n\\n Most of the work that I did for the next few years was working on aircraft structural vibrations, both theoretical and experimental, on different structural types, straight wings, delta wings, swept wings. We did both the analytical and the lab tests on structures. We published several papers on the subject of that, different kinds of wing vibrations, and how well you could do the analysis to predict. And that was prior to NACA becoming NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you doing a lot of that testing in the wind tunnels?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of the work we ever did was in the Structures Lab. We were doing load tests and influence coefficient tests and vibration tests of large-scale structures. About that same time, we started to become aware at Langley in the Structures Lab that the [North American] X-15 [Hypersonic Research] Program was going. We got a little bit involved with instead of working with aluminum structures, looking at structures that would withstand higher temperatures, above Mach 3. I got involved with a phenomenon called panel flutter.\\n\\n Airplanes were experiencing severe noise levels in the cockpit and in the airplane with certain speed ranges, primarily transonic, and they discovered that what was happening was that the skin panels were vibrating, and acting like loudspeakers. I got involved in doing some of that, and we did both wind tunnel tests and theoretical analysis on trying to predict that phenomenon. About that time some of the concepts for high temperature structures were with corrugated skin backing and stuff for stiffening, and I got working on the test program in connection with Boeing, ran the tests in a Four-Foot Supersonic [Wind] Tunnel at Langley. These were steel panels.\\n\\n We found out that the design concept wasn’t quite right. Then we discovered that they were using the same kind of design on the fairing panels on the X-15. The X-15 was starting to push the Mach number up to around 3, and they were having problems with that, so they asked me to come down to Edwards [NASA Dryden Flight Research Center located adjacent to Edwards Air Force Base, California]—this was about 1960—for the X-15 Program.\\n\\n They were having panel flutter problems on the vertical tail and the side panels. We came up with fixes on that, and then we had structural problems with windshield cracking because of the thermal stresses in the window frames." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came out to Edwards, was that a temporary assignment, or did you take it as a transfer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a temporary transfer. When the X-15 Program got pretty well along, we had some other programs coming along at Edwards. We decided just not to go back. Part of it was a family choice, and we were starting to get involved with some of the aspects of the space program, primarily the Gemini. We did some work on the Parawing [also known as Rogallo Wing] for recovery instead of the parachutes. We built a Parawing [Paresev (Paraglider Research Vehicle)], and our test pilots flew it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to go back to that, but I want to ask you about the transition. When you were still at Langley, when you were still with the NACA, you were there during the time period where Sputnik [Russian satellite] was launched, and the move of the United States to a space age. Did you have an opportunity to move into some of that work at the beginning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I gave some thought to that from the list I got of potential things. The transition that I saw, because I was a working engineer, I wasn’t worried about budgets, so I don’t know what the administrative things were. But, the changes I saw was a change from working on aircraft problems to starting to work on the space program. In the Structures Lab at that time we were starting to look at things, real high temperature materials, ablation materials for heat shields, these high temperature panel studies.\\n\\n I did do a little work initially on the Mercury Program capsule. But when they decided to move to Houston [Texas, Manned Spacecraft Center, now Johnson Space Center], I decided not to go to Houston. I’d been there. But the main thing I noticed, I think, was the transition from—NACA was more of a technical supporting organization to the industry and DoD [Department of Defense]. When it became NASA, it started to become an agency that was working on their own projects, like Mercury, Gemini, and so on. That was the main thing that I noticed in the transition. As far as the technology was concerned, it was just shifting from aircraft type problems to what you might run into in launch and reentry, different loads caused by rocket separations and so on, rather than landing loads and gust loads.\\n\\n But when I got out to Edwards, one of the things that didn’t come around till later, and that was when they started going to the [Space] Shuttle. The flight test group out here had done a lot of work with pilot control, control systems, system augmentation. We had started doing a program with digital flight controls rather than mechanical. They had a flying airplane that was all digital flight control. So there was quite a bit of effort at that point in supporting the Shuttle Program with looking at different control laws.\\n\\n Also we developed the Lunar Lander Trainer [Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV)], it was developed out at Edwards, that finally it was used by Neil [A.] Armstrong and the rest of them for [training for] lunar landing. That was the main thing that I noticed, the transition was more from looking at things concerned with aeronautics and flight and atmosphere to the space program and supporting that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about differences of working at Langley, compared to working out here at the Flight Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The big difference is almost everything done at Langley is either through the wind tunnel labs or structures labs or various things. Of course out here it was all aircraft. Your philosophy was use the airplane. It was an in-flight lab tool rather than there being laboratory type tests.\\n\\n Of course you had all the additional problems associated with it, because it had to be done safely, it had to go through all kinds of inspections to be sure it was flightworthy and that the flight program was safe. In the lab you could pretty much design a specimen and test it pretty much any way you wanted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You found the actual flight test program to be more of your liking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think one of the reasons I stayed at Edwards was because I liked to be associated more with aircraft than satellites and capsules." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned when you were at Purdue you were actually building a plane for someone. Did you also fly? Were you a pilot?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m a private pilot. I got my pilot’s license in 1945. Now the design I did for the flight instructor, he actually built the airplane and did high speed taxi tests and liftoffs. Unfortunately, he flew a charter, and I think they ran into some kind of storm and crashed, so the airplane was never flown. But as I say, he did build it and taxi it and took off a short distance. Yes, I was always hoping he would—at that time in Cleveland they had the Goodyear Trophy Race, the air races. They had a light plane category, and he wanted to fly on that. That’s what I designed, an airplane to fly in that light plane category, limited to 65 horsepower, gross weight couldn’t be more than 600 pounds, restrictions like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite a project for a grad student." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, well, I was an instructor at the time. I was teaching structural analysis and aircraft vibrations at Purdue. It was in line with what I was doing. At that time I taught an elective class on wood construction, structural design of wood aircraft. Wood aircraft was the original composites." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s true. Are you from that part of the country, from the Indiana area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was born and raised in Missouri, just outside of Kansas City. When I got in the Navy they sent me to [University of] Notre Dame [South Bend, Indiana] for training, and so when the war was over I went to Purdue for graduate work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s a pretty good combination." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, there weren’t any jobs for graduate engineers in 1946, because the companies were changing over from trying to retool and redesign for commercial rather than military. In the transition period there was a few of the people that I graduated with that did get jobs in aircraft. But that was the semester before I got out. When I got out, I didn’t even get a reply back. I think I sent out 10 or 12 resumes and applications, and didn’t even get a postcard back that they received them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You feel like the NACA at that time when you went down to Langley that you felt it was a good learning experience? Did you learn a lot from the people that were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I think I was very fortunate to be able to work with people like John Houbolt and a few of the other people there, John [M.] Hedgepeth and Bernie [Bernard] Budiansky and [John] Lyell Sanders and Manny [Manuel] Stein. I worked with them for quite a bit, I guess about five years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like it was a nice exchange of ideas and hands-on learning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had both. We did theoretical analysis and then we also designed specimens and put them in the laboratory and tested them. We had to learn to design stuff and learn to set up test programs, get the equipment to do the programs. It was a real good background experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Even in budgetary lessons, right? You didn’t have anything when you walked in the door, and learned to do with nothing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We didn’t get much in the way of budgetary lessons, we finally got paper and pencil. But one of the interesting things, when John Houbolt and I were working on the flexible airplane program, Langley had just gotten one of the first digital computers. It was put out by Bell Laboratories, and it was banks of relays. In the digital system, the relay was either open or closed, a one or a zero. They had banks of these, so John and I looked into the possibility of using that for engineering calculations. We did do some calculations on that machine. I got a little pocket calculator I’ve had for 30 years that’ll do more in 5 minutes than that machine did in 3 hours. The whole building would shake when it was running.\\n\\n But then when they first got the first IBM computers, they were primarily for finance. By that time John had gone over to the Loads Division, and he found out that the IBM 650 could be used for some calculations. I think that was the machine he did for some of his early calculations on the minimum energy path to the Moon which he came up with.\\n\\n But they wouldn’t let engineers program. You couldn’t touch those machines. That was the main thing I found when I came out to Edwards, the computer system was off limits to everybody except the computer operators. They didn’t want anybody doing their own programming. It was primarily for data reduction. But later on I got a couple of engineers who ended up with Ph.Ds. in computer science at UCLA [University of California Los Angeles], and they could make those machines talk." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s what I understand. If you know how to make them work, it’ll do wonders for what you’re working on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the head of the computer department came over one day and wanted to know if he could use him for two or three days. They had a problem with a computer. They couldn’t get the data. So I called him and asked him. He said, “I’ll check into it.” He said, “Let me get back to you in an hour or so.”\\n\\n About an hour later, he comes back and he says, “You can forget about it.”\\n\\n I said, “What?”\\n\\n He said, “Oh, I took care of it.” They’d been working on it for three days. He did it in his lunch hour." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He became the wonder boy, didn’t he?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. He was a genius on that. I had a couple of guys that were. They could get in the machine, get their data off the airplane flight, and have it worked up before the technical people, the computer data people, had gotten their setup to run them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if you can maybe share with us when you were first here and how the technology changed. You mentioned the computers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The X-15 Program, all the data was recorded on a galvanometer film recorder drum. They did telemeter some data, which had primarily to do with the flight controls, like airspeed, altitude. Then those films had to be hand-read, and they had a machine that you run the film through, and cursors that you could take the measurements with off of the little traces. Of course later on it all went digital, and you could run it through the computer, and the computer would print out the final results with all the calibrations and everything else already in it, instead of having to read the film and put it into the process and convert it to engineering units and supply the calibrations and everything separate.\\n\\n Then of course the flight data packages became manageable, like on the X-15, they had an instrument bay that was so big by so big by so big and full of vacuum tube type stuff that was not that reliable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have to assume it added weight to the plane as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, the stuff was heavy, a lot heavier than the solid-state stuff. I think the space program is the one that made that big conversion from the old style electronics to the solid-state transistors and so on. Later programs, we were even flying airplanes—the early parts of this drone thing, the pilot had a ground cockpit. He was flying the instruments, and the instruments telemetered information from the airplane. Then the computer transmitted back to tell the airplane what to do. Earlier than that, you couldn’t do it.\\n\\n The simulator on the X-15 was semi-mechanical. It had all the control surfaces and stuff that moved. All the actuators were the same as in the airplane. Now a lot of the simulators are all electronic. The X-15 simulator didn’t move, just the control surfaces moved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you watching the X-15 when it would land or during the flight test, were you out on the flight line doing that? Or, were you monitoring the flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of the above. Certain flights I was monitoring the flights. One of the things I got involved with was the dynamics of the landing with the skid landing gear. We did some analysis of the loads in the landing, so yes, a lot of the flights, I was out on the flight line watching the actual touchdown." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you able to learn a lot from observation? Or was most of it learned from your instruments and other ways of monitoring?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re so far away from the landing itself that you really couldn’t tell a whole lot about it, except to see how the airplane actually transitioned. We got more from the analysis and then going out after the flight and tracking the skid marks from the landing gear and seeing how that agreed with what we predicted could happen. We came up with some solutions. A little problem getting the pilots to think about it, because a conventional airplane, the landing gear is near the center of gravity. On the X-15, it was clear at the back. The control surfaces were right over the landing gear, where on a fighter, or something like that, the tail was farther back from the landing gear. The pilots, I had a time convincing them that they couldn’t hold the nose off.\\n\\n All it did when they pulled back on the stick was load the landing gear at the time when it was taking that load from landing. We ended up with things like a switch in the landing gear when it touched down, the controls would go neutral. We took a lot of the loads off of the landing gear. We also found out that you could slightly steer the airplane—they thought they could steer it with rudder, but again, the rudder was right over the landing gear. We found out little things like if you wanted to turn left, you put in left aileron. What it would do is load one skid, and unload the other one, so they’d get more drag on one side. You could turn the airplane somewhat. But had trouble telling them. Pilots instinctively—in fact, they practiced all their landings in an F-104, because they had the same glide characteristics, with the full flaps. So, their tendency was to try instinctively to land it like a fighter plane. It didn’t work that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time period, was the process such that you were able to tell the pilots directly your results of your analysis? Or did you have to pass that up through specific people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, on that program, for every flight, there’d be a flight planning session. Everybody would talk about each maneuver for the whole flight program, and then things like this landing loads, they sat down with the pilots in between time and talked to them about it, got their reaction to trying stuff like putting in ailerons at landing, and see what it would do. Yes, it wasn’t a lot of formality and filing a lot of paperwork. But you did have to go through the flight qualification steps. If you wanted to put any kind of instrumentation on the airplane, it had to go through a review and be approved.\\n\\n The flights themselves was pretty much people involved in that particular flight sat down around the conference table with the pilot and crew chief and whoever else was involved, and discussed it step by step. After launch you do this, and the duration of the rocket burn, and what maneuvers would be done during that time period to check out the control systems and handling qualities. Everybody had to agree that that was a good sequence. Then they’d practice it on the simulator to be sure. It was a very inefficient glider, once the power was off, energy management to get it back to the base was a major consideration. The pilots and the flight planners worked long and hard on each flight, just to be sure that each maneuver would fit into the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you stay with the program until its end?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Then we transitioned to the Lifting Body Program, which was an early look at space return ships. Langley had their ideas, and Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] had their concept of what the return should be, and Houston had their ideas, and the Air Force had their ideas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All were good ideas, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were pushing for the Lifting Body concept, and Houston decided to go with the Shuttle concept. The Shuttle proved very successful. I don’t know whether the other concepts would have worked any better. But there were a lot of arguments going on technically about advantages and disadvantages of different shapes. We flew three different shapes out at Edwards. We flew the shape that was being pushed by Langley, and we flew the shape that was being pushed by Ames, and the shape that the Air Force wanted to work with. It was rocket-powered and dropped off the [Boeing] B-52 [Stratofortress], and the pilots flew them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite a sight to see I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was an interesting program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the challenges that you worked through as part of what you were doing at that time with the Lifting Body?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The main problem that I got involved with was primarily the problem that they had with structural interaction with the flight control systems. One of the problems we had was they had mounted the battery system on one of the doors in the equipment bay. They started getting some feedback into the control system and getting some oscillations. It turned out what was happening was that the door acted as a spring, the battery acted as a mass, and it was vibrating. It happened to be in the frequency range of the flight control instrumentation, so there was feedback into the gyros and the accelerometers in the flight control system. It wasn’t a major problem but it was a concern. We did things like change the characteristics of the mounting system, and the problems go away.\\n\\n Back on the X-15 Program we had some things like on one of the flights they came back and they landed, luckily with no problem, but the nose wheel tires were blown. We got in there after the flight and found out there was all kinds of melted tubing in the nose gear compartment. We did some tests in the lab then on the door and found out that the heating had warped the door in such a way that there was an opening and the hot gases were impinging into the compartment. It overheated everything and melted some of the aluminum tubing and blew the tires. Some problems like that.\\n\\n But, a lot of little things happened on the program. The X-15 was the first airplane that actually flew to Mach 6, and we had a number of different problems with heating, because the nose gear door thing was one thing, another one we had was that the windshield glass was cracked. Luckily it didn’t come out, it just became opaque, one side only. It turned out that was because of the design of the glass and the glass frame, and uneven heating was causing stress to be put on the glass and caused it to fracture. We got to talk to the contractor and Rockwell changed the shape of the thing and changed the way the glass was mounted. Never had any more problems with it. We had things like that.\\n\\n We initially had the panel flutter problems primarily on the vertical tails. Again, with the side panels we already knew there was going to be problems with that from the panel flutter standpoint, so that got taken care of. Then things like the wing leading edge was a heat sink, and they had slots for expansion slots, but they didn’t have enough of them. When they started going to the higher Mach numbers, come back and there’d be wrinkles in the wing skin. We had a few sessions on what to do about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the one that discovered the wrinkles?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t discover the wrinkles, but I helped find the solution." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much time does that involve? Looking back on it now, the problem was discovered, and then the problem was resolved. But was it months, weeks? How soon were you able to resolve these issues?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the issue of what was causing it and what the fix would be didn’t take all that long. But to actually do it on the airplane, make the corrections on the airplane, the first thing you had to do was put in more expansion slots. That’s difficult to do. Inconel X [alloy] is very difficult to work with to start with. Then without tearing the whole wing apart, how to get in there and increase the expansion. Then of course the buckles in the skin or wrinkles in the skin had to be straightened out. That had to be done. So the actual physical work to do it took weeks. But to discover what caused it and how to fix it was relatively simple." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I understand correctly, there were three X-15 vehicles. So each time you made a modification, was it made on each one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You worked closely with the aircraft manufacturer. Were you working close with their people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. They had people on site all the time, and they had a shuttle airplane that went every day back and forth to Inglewood [California]. We made a lot of trips down there, and people came up. It was a good working relationship between the company, and then of course the Air Force was supporting it, and they had people in there, and they had their own pilots involved in the program. It was a pretty well-run joint program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s a good thing there was a lot of communication and teamwork with that many people involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That many agencies. The people were no problem. The people who were working on that program, everybody was working for the same goal. It worked. In all phases of the program there was joint effort between the company and the Air Force and NASA. Well, the Navy was involved also. In fact one of the first pilots of it was Navy—the first three pilots, one was Navy, one was Air Force, one was NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the program, a couple of the planes were lost in crashes. What were some of the lessons or some of the information you were able to obtain from those incidents?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first accident they had was a contractor’s accident, when they blew up the engine. It turned out to be Number 3 ship, and that was the one that was scheduled to have the first of the designed engines. The original flights were done with four of the old X-1 engines, and so the throttling effect on the first airplanes was either they fired one rocket, two rockets, three rockets, or four rockets. But they didn’t have enough thrust to get to the design point, so they developed the Thiokol [Chemical Corporation, Reaction Motors Division] engine that was basically throttleable. That accident happened on the test stand.\\n\\n Then the first flight accident we had was the landing at Mud Lake [Nevada], where the rocket failed to ignite, and then the pilot didn’t have enough time to dump enough fuel, so he came in pretty heavy. That’s when we discovered that the pilot technique of trying to hold the nose off by pulling back on the stick actually overloaded the struts, and one of the struts collapsed, one of the skids. We went in to look and find out why it collapsed, and that’s when we discovered not only did they have landing heavy, but he landed fast, and the extra airloads. That’s when we started looking at the phenomenon of the skid type landing gear.\\n\\n Then of course the last accident they had was a reentry accident. I’m not sure what the final result was. In general he had the airplane not configured right because it was all in the reaction control. You had to set the airplane up at a certain attitude to do the reentry. Apparently something happened that he didn’t do that. Of course the airplane overloaded and came apart. But those are the only incidents they had. We had some others, some close calls that didn’t amount to anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You learned a lot from those too I guess. Where did you move on to then after the X-15? What were some of the projects that you were directly involved with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was involved somewhat with the Lifting Body Program. Then I got involved with the [North American] B-70 [Valkyrie] program and I worked up a program with the contractor to put little canards on the front of the airplane that we could change the frequency of, and do in-flight vibration testing, because Rockwell had the capabilities of doing structural analysis to predict the vibration characteristics. Then of course one of the things we were interested in was did the aerodynamics affect the aircraft structural vibrations, because all the vibration tests and stuff that they do on an airplane is done on the ground. That was part of the thing with the program. I worked primarily on the airplane part of it and the flight testing, and John [H.] Wykes at [North American] Rockwell did the analysis based on the design. Then he and I presented a paper at AGARD [Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Development] in France on the results of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if you have to present somewhere, that’s a good place to present, in France." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was a good little program. As a result of what we did there, the [Rockwell] B-1 [Lancer (Bomber)] came out with those little canards on the front. That was for load alleviation in the turbulence on low [altitude] flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite an accomplishment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It gave the pilots a better ride, if nothing else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure they appreciated that. Then you also had mentioned something during the Gemini Program. Were you involved with some of the checking out the parachutes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Gemini Program is when they were first thinking about altering things to water landing. We built a little test airplane, a glider with a Parawing, which the hang gliders have been using ever since. But then some group at Johnson Space Center wanted to take that a little further, so they got Rockwell to build a similar device. We used metal struts for the structure. They don’t fold too good, so the concept they had Rockwell working on, I think maybe they worked with Goodyear, to have inflatable booms.\\n\\n They built at least one model. It was a full-size, we had a weight on it. It was a Gemini capsule thing. They did drop that, made some tests, then it went away. I’m not sure what the real reason for dropping it. But we proved that you could fly it like a glider, and flare and land with it.\\n\\n For some reason the concept went away, and of course it wasn’t even considered for Apollo. I think packaging may have been the main reason, bulk and packaging to get the inflatable struts and then the gas source to pressurize it. Because they did the tests at Edwards, we were in on that to a certain extent but we never followed up on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also mentioned the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. Did you have some involvement in that project as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "More as consulting and some of the structural design, but in the concept and the actual test program I was not involved with it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you watch it fly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your thoughts about how that worked?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At that time NASA was pretty fairly small at Edwards, pretty small, and kind of a big family. Any time a project like that did anything, everybody had to go out and watch it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Structurally what were you thinking when you watched that apparatus get off the ground?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were concerned at the time not with the lunar lander but with the concept. Could it be used as a trainer? We weren’t concerned so much with things like weight that you’d have to do to package the whole thing and get it to the Moon. But the whole idea was could you simulate with the engine thrust the difference in gravity so that the pilot would only be working with the lesser gravity. We weren’t so much concerned with the design but as a test bed. It wasn’t really anything more than just mostly common sense. Don’t make it any heavier than you have to kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long were you with NASA here at Edwards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was out here about 21 years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you retired in what year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In 1980." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right at the beginning of the Shuttle Program. Were you here for the Approach and Landing Tests [Program (ALT)]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you working with that program as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was on the team to design primarily the pilot escape system out of the [modified Boeing] 747 [Shuttle Carrier Aircraft]. We were involved of course. But the primary modifications of the 747 was all done at Boeing. Because our pilots were going to be the ones to fly the 747, we got involved in coming up with an escape system, in case they had problems with the 747. It isn’t designed to get out of very easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe one of the pilots was explaining it, but I’m curious from your point of view, when you were working on it, how the system evolved. Could you share with us how you and your team came up with that escape system?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was basically a chute coming from the cockpit out to the bottom of the airplane that the pilot could drop into and come out the bottom, instead of being in danger of being hit by any of the other structure. An ejection seat would have been out of the question because it puts you right into the Shuttle, if it was still attached. So they had to come up with an alternate system. The general thinking I think at the time was that any emergency wouldn’t be a sudden emergency, it would be something that would mean that the airplane was not returnable, and the pilots would have time to make a quick exit. It was working with the chute. It wasn’t supposed to be a straight drop, and you couldn’t just put it right at the bottom, it was working around the landing gear and various other parts of the structure. That was primarily our involvement at Edwards with the program.\\n\\n Our pilots were very much involved with the program, because they were worried about the change in the handling qualities and the stability of the airplane. Some of our people that worked with the pilots on handling qualities were involved. As far as the aerodynamics and the structures and that part of it, that was all Boeing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you pretty comfortable with the design of the mate? Although like you mentioned it was Boeing. But as a structures person, did you feel like the combination was going to work as well as it did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The escape system as far as I know was never used. So that means it was a good system. We were just on the fringes of the actual structural modification. That was pretty much handled by Johnson. We were involved of course with the initial flights when they launched it off the back, mainly because our pilots were flying the airplane, and we were responsible for the landing.\\n\\n We didn’t get involved directly with the Shuttle Program that much. We had the High Temperature Structures Lab out at Edwards. We did do some testing. I wasn’t involved in that, but they did do some testing with some different components. At that time I think Edwards was the only one, I think it still is the only one that has High Temperature Structures Lab capabilities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you were there you moved up the management levels, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. When I retired, I was Engineering Division Chief." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a lot of responsibility, with all those engineers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had primarily airplane dynamics, flight control, and handling qualities in our division. We worked with that aspect of the thing. A couple of people that worked in my division worked with the early flights of the Shuttle. It indicated some pilot-induced oscillation problems with the control system, so Edwards was running some tests with our digital flight control airplane, and a couple of our pilots and a couple of my engineers worked on that program. They were able to help the Shuttle group come up with flight control system changes. But other than that, we weren’t all that much involved with the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What other airplanes were you working on close to the end of your career there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did some work on the structural dynamics and vibration of the [Lockheed] SR-71 [Blackbird]. We did a series of lab tests, vibration tests. I was involved in that. Lockheed, one of their engineers there did the structural analysis for the vibration stuff, and he and I presented a paper on that at one of the conferences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you like the SR-71? Did you find that plane to be an interesting plane to work on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an interesting plane all around. To work on it wasn’t all that much fun because it leaked fuel everywhere. You had to be very careful. When we were doing the vibration tests in the lab, you had to be very careful where you were during the test because of the dripping fuel. But yes, it’s an interesting airplane." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the last plane that you worked on, the SR-71? Or were there others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By that time I was pretty much into administrative work, because we had to work with budgets and we had to work with assignments, and we had project support. We had several projects going, and I’d be sure it had proper people assigned to the projects, the different phases of the program. That was pretty much the way things were going. The last program I had anything to do with was the high speed drone program [Rockwell RPRV-870 HiMAT (Highly Maneuverable Aircraft Technology)]. Not so much directly, but my people were working on the program. It was an interesting concept; it’s different from the drones they do now because it was designed to fly from the ground cockpit, like the pilot was in the airplane. I left about the time they started flying that, so I’m not sure exactly what all went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If it’s okay, I’m going to ask Sandra if she’s got any other questions that she wanted to ask you before we close today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was just thinking about the different airplanes you worked on, and being a pilot, would you have ever wanted to do some of that test-flying like the pilots that you worked with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The answer is dual. Yes, but I knew I didn’t have the skill level. You watch these pilots. I never flew with them in a test program, but I flew with them in other airplanes. These guys are so precise and reflexes are so good. I never felt like I would like to really fly the test programs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What airplanes did you get to fly with the test pilots?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We used to fly the Gooney Bird [Douglas C-47 Skytrain], and we had the Aero Commander [680F] most of the time. Sometimes they’d let me fly the Aero Commander. But that was about the size of it. I knew their skill levels and their dedication was 100 percent. I didn’t have that much time. I had too many other things to do. I enjoyed working with them, but I never really had the desire, mainly because I knew I couldn’t do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we’ve had other people who described it as they were natural pilots." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Some of them, they were so far ahead of the airplane, it was unbelievable. I don’t know how they could do it. But that’s what they did. I think we had some of the best pilots in the world out there at Edwards at different times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your favorite project that you worked on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would probably have to say the X-15, because that was a fairly long program, it lasted like nine years. It had a lot of challenges, because nobody had ever been there before. When we started flying the Lifting Bodies, we already knew that the characteristics of the approach and landing was very similar to the X-15. Then the Shuttle came along, it’s about the same L/D [lift to drag ratio] as that. Those programs, we already had the background, so it wasn’t quite the same as the X-15 Program where everything was new. There were a lot of new issues and new things.\\n\\n I enjoyed the B-70 program too, because it had some interesting aspects. We had structural problems with the landing gear on that. Then the in-flight vibration program was interesting. But I was getting more and more involved in the supervision and administration and budget cycles by that time, that the technical aspects and the details were lost." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else that you can remember, or anything else that you’d like to share with us, that part of your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I could mention a few other things. When I first went to work at Langley, I was surprised that personnel called me right after I got there, wanted to know if I would teach some night school classes for the University of Virginia [Charlottesville] graduate extension. I did that for 11 years. I taught advanced math. Then I worked on my Ph.D. at the same time, went to summer school at Virginia Tech [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg] and got my Ph.D. from that program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did some of the Langley employees take those classes from you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A lot of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was wondering if that’s why they wanted you to teach them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had been teaching at Purdue, so I had the background. The University of Virginia master’s program had just started an extension, and one of the things they were requiring in order to get into the program, you had to take one of the advanced math classes. Almost everybody that went through that program or even started the program I had in one of my classes. So I had 15 to 18, 20 every semester. By the time I left after 11 years, I had been acquainted with almost every engineer at Langley." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Coming from Purdue, a lot of astronauts came from Purdue too, that school is pretty well known for producing a lot of pretty accomplished people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All the way through NASA, engineers also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was at Purdue I was teaching the vibration class, a required course for seniors. A lot of the engineering graduates at Purdue the last two years I was there all had to go through my class on that. Almost all my students at Purdue were on the GI Bill [Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944]. Over half the class was older than I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you continue your teaching when you came out to Edwards? Did you teach out here as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did some. I taught a class for UCLA, and I taught undergraduate classes for Chapman College [now Chapman University, Orange, California], and I taught a couple of advanced engineering classes for Fresno State [California State University], all at night school at Edwards. Then after I retired, I taught for a couple of years for West Coast University, mostly math and physics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You stayed busy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thanks for sharing that. I was going to ask you what you did your dissertation on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My dissertation was done on the vibration analysis of a toroidal space station [rotating wheel design]. Shell station, you know, a big tire." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But they haven’t built those yet. At the time the thinking was that you had to have some gravity, because a long time in weightlessness could be a major physical problem. They were talking about having this doughnut spin, artificial gravity, so the centrifugal force would simulate gravity. I guess they decided they didn’t need to go that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thank you for sharing your time today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eldon E. Kordes", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00628", + "metadata": { + "category": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/RobinsonJA/robinsonja.htm", + "original_file_name": "RobinsonJA_8-26-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/RobinsonJA/RobinsonJA_8-26-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Julie A. Robinson", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 26 August 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Julie A. Robinson" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 26th, 2015. This oral history session is being conducted with Julie Robinson in Houston, Texas, as part of the International Space Station Program Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson. This is the second interview with Dr. Robinson, who’s the Chief Scientist for ISS. I want to thank you for agreeing to talk to us again.\\n\\n I want to talk about CASIS, the Center for Advancement of Science in Space. Until recently U.S. research space on board the ISS has been reserved mostly for government initiatives. But new opportunities for commercial and academic use of ISS are now available, and 50 percent is set aside for them and it’s facilitated by CASIS. I want to talk about that relationship between NASA and CASIS and when the decision was made to look for that and how CASIS was chosen and anything you had to do with that decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To go to the roots of where we are today on the Space Station, you have to go back to around 2003, 2004. Around that time NASA was really grappling with the fact that we needed to retire the Shuttle the minute that the Space Station was assembled. The NASA budget was all spent on different things and there was nothing available to start building whatever that new vehicle would be. As the Constellation Program stood up, the Agency also made a decision to focus its research on just exploration-related things rather than being the NSF [National Science Foundation] of space if you will, managing all research that anybody might want to do on the Space Station.\\n\\n It was really driven by budget realities. But up on the [Capitol] Hill among congressional staffers and especially among a very influential Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas, there was a lot of discussion about if the Agency cannot afford to fund all the research that should be done in space, who could take that place. Because everyone was concerned that after having made this great investment in the laboratory, the minute we were done assembling it, the support for the researchers would go away, and we wouldn’t get all of those powerful things that that laboratory could do for the nation.\\n\\n These were really strong space supporters, certain influential staffers, Kay Bailey Hutchison, others, that looked at this and were trying to think of some alternatives. One alternative that emerged, and it really came from earlier efforts that NASA had done to provide commercial access to spaceflight, things like the Space Product Development Division that at that time existed in OBPR, that’s the Office of Biological and Physical Research, which was an equivalent of Mission Directorate at the time. In the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, it was really an effort to rethink the way that we use space and put it in a context of enablement even in the middle of the budget realities.\\n\\n In that Authorization Act of 2005—and that was something that was really important to Senator Hutchison as I understand it, because that was an important legacy for her. At that time we hadn’t had a new authorization act in a really long time. One of her goals for that year was to influence that authorization act. One of the things the act did is it declared the Space Station a National Laboratory. It didn’t really define what a National Laboratory was. It said that the Space Station would become a National Laboratory when its assembly was complete, so really in 2010. But it set the stage saying, “Hey, coming up the Space Station is going to be a National Laboratory. It’s not going to be just for NASA.” Then it directed us to start Pathfinder projects to help define how we would use ISS as a National Laboratory.\\n\\n We as an agency had to do a report in 2005, reporting back on what resources were available for commercial and other government agencies to use, and to start initiatives where we could start opening up the Space Station to that as a Pathfinder for when it would become officially a National Lab in 2010, which at that time was the assembly complete date.\\n\\n That provided a really great opportunity within what’s now the Human Exploration Mission Directorate to put some creativity in place and to try different things and to use different capacities that maybe wouldn’t have been used in the traditional way that NASA had been doing research.\\n\\n Of course we talked in our last interview about all of the reorganizations that happened as that research went away or as the funding for research was shifted in focus. Some of the exciting things that happened in what I’ll call the Pathfinder period, from really 2005 to 2010. In the ISS Program we named a National Lab Manager. That was someone to work with all of these people that maybe had never worked on utilization before, maybe weren’t even sure if there was commercial value to using ISS, but to help them get on board ISS, because they wouldn’t be going through the same infrastructure that NASA had in place for the research it funded.\\n\\n Mark Uhran, who was basically the Division Director for ISS at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC], took that on, that Pathfinder aspect, as one of his major efforts. He emerged to really work at finding those Washington relationships with other government agencies for example. I was asked, because I could talk about everything that had been done in the past on ISS and what had been learned, I could talk the science part of it. So I had the opportunity to be really involved in a lot of the different discussions.\\n\\n What happened in that timeframe then is a lot of different companies started talking to NASA at different levels, and also Mark worked on a number of different MOUs [Memorandum of Understanding] with other government agencies. We had an MOU signed with the National Institutes of Health [NIH] for example, through a lot of contacts back and forth and a lot of meetings building relationships there. After that MOU was signed they actually had an announcement of opportunity where their research could apply to a specific grant program and propose to do their research in space.\\n\\n What was really unique about that is they didn’t set aside a space budget, they just let any of the institutes that wanted to participate if they thought it was of such merit that they’d rather fund that than other research, then they selected it. It competed head to head against all the other research those institutes could choose to fund. There were four projects selected under that Pathfinder.\\n\\n Those are flying right now. They were five-year projects and most of them had their flight at the end of the project. We just finished flying the first of those. One of them wound up being canceled along the way, and we’re in the process of getting ready to fly the others. Those things take time, but those are still bearing fruit today even.\\n\\n We also had a lot of discussions with USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture], discussions with National Science Foundation, and had a few different Pathfinders coming through different directions through all of those other government agencies.\\n\\n Then on the commercial side we did some different Pathfinder projects. There was a Space Act Agreement done with Astrogenetix, which was a company that was interested in building on some of the results from some of the microbial experiments on the Space Station and seeing if they could find a shortcut to vaccine development. It was privately funded.\\n\\n There were some other Space Act Agreements that were entered into, one with NanoRacks. We agreed that if they wanted to build a subdivided facility, basically be able to subdivide some of the space on ISS and facilitate users putting simple experiments in plug-and-play mode into that, we had that Space Act Agreement with them so that they could guarantee to their customers that if they paid them to do something they could fly it to ISS.\\n\\n We really set up a lot of different structures. It was an opportunity to try things, see how things worked out, get lessons learned as we were heading towards 2010, when ISS would officially become a National Laboratory." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It did become officially a National Laboratory and then in 2011 was completed. As you said, NanoRacks was already and some of those other things were working toward that. But then in 2011 then CASIS was selected to actually manage that 50 percent that was going to be dedicated to those other than government or NASA-related research. Talk about that decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In 2010 actually the Authorization Act gave us notice that we should seek a nonprofit organization to manage the ISS National Laboratory. A lot of the thinking behind that was commercial companies routinely when they talk to different staffers, different consultants that have been engaged, they would say, “We don’t trust NASA. We don’t want to work with NASA. We don’t want to work with the government.” The idea emerged that if it was a nonprofit organization they could sign nondisclosure agreements and they could work together.\\n\\n I had that experience myself. We had done a lot of work with a pharmaceutical company who was very interested in having a set of flight opportunities on ISS during that Pathfinder period. Before we went any further they wanted me to sign a nondisclosure agreement. NASA civil servants aren’t allowed to sign nondisclosure agreements. There are criminal statutes that are actually more severe than a nondisclosure agreement that govern if we were to release any proprietary information like that that we gain as part of our duties. But that is so foreign, that’s such a foreign concept that even though the NASA lawyer assures them that me not signing a nondisclosure agreement gives them more security, they just refused. They stopped the project, they said, “No, we’re not going to do that.”\\n\\n There’s some real basis for that idea that a nonprofit organization might be able to work more effectively, especially with commercial customers. There had been a consultant who had contacts with a number of members of Congress and staffers like Jeff [A.] Bingham. We had also competed a study to define what National Lab models would be. That report also was available by 2010. That report was out there and we had paid for it under a contract so we could put it out in the public domain.\\n\\n It had a model for how one might operate a National Laboratory, and it was specifically struggling with who pays for which pieces. If commercial customers don’t know they want to use ISS, why on Earth would they ever invest all that extra money and effort it takes to do something in spaceflight compared to just regular R&D [research and development] on the ground in the labs? It looked at some different models for that. We put that out in the public domain.\\n\\n Then we had a cooperative agreement notice to compete different alternatives for institutions. They had to be nonprofits. They had to be nonprofits that weren’t managing anything else. They would have to be spun off from some other entity and exist independently so they had a level of independence. We did a solicitation and looked at what kinds of proposals came in. That was how NASA emerged to look for—with all the lessons learned along the way—how we looked for a cooperative partner. It would be a nonprofit organization that managed the National Lab. In the end after the procurement process went through, then CASIS was selected to be that management organization." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When it was first selected how long was it before it actually started managing some of the research, and some of that actually started working, that relationship?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The relationship itself took place almost instantly because the CEO [Chief Executive Officer], for example, of the new CASIS organization, who was Jeanne Becker, she had been an ISS PI [Principal Investigator]. She was well known to all of us. She knew Marybeth Edeen, who was the National Lab Manager. We immediately started working together, and we started transitioning a number of these Pathfinder projects to CASIS management. But, that said, because they couldn’t be part of any other existing organization, they were a startup. They started with one employee, that Executive Director, Jeanne Becker. Then her first thing was to hire someone to help her hire other people. They had no staff. Even though people were smart and knew what was going on, there was going to be a lag phase as they sought talent.\\n\\n One of the challenges I think they had is NASA had had a corner on space for so long. Civil servants that knew how things had worked in the past, some of those are going to be entrenched in the old way of doing things, and they were pretty resistant even to the idea of a National Laboratory. Others were really excited to help in any way they could, but they certainly weren’t willing to leave their 30-year civil service careers to go to this startup organization. It took a while for them to staff up, to find the right mix of people. They needed people who had existing contacts. They set up a board of directors.\\n\\n I had the opportunity both to work with that board as it had its first members and then as it added additional members, as well as the staff. But it just took a lot of time. That startup phase I would say not surprisingly was about a three-year startup period. What we’re really seeing today is the organization actually come into its own and be actively managing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know it was forming, and as you said they were having to find the best people for the positions. She [Becker] ended up leaving and the management changed. Did that affect anything that was going on as far as the relationship with NASA and CASIS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it definitely didn’t. Our relationship—I remember when we first heard that Jeanne had decided to leave CASIS. On the NASA side, our viewpoint has always been, “How do we help this partner be successful?” They’re trying to be successful at doing something that is an absolutely innovative approach to research management in the U.S. government. This is not how any other organization ensures that we meet the government’s mission for research and development, by managing things with nonprofits. Everywhere else, whether it’s NIH or NSF—they might put out an institute every now and then. But mostly it’s a matter of government funding then being passed out to the most meritorious scientist. This is so novel because it’s saying, “Let’s find out where the private sector thinks the research is meritorious, and let’s let them do what they think is important, not what a government civil servant thinks is important. Let’s have that financial support be how you measure whether or not it’s important.”\\n\\n That’s really really innovative. Nobody knows how to do that. There was no organization out there, CASIS or any other competitors, that had experience in doing that. There was basically a white paper out there that said, “Here’s a model that might work.” That was not required for any of the people who applied to the cooperative agreement. It was just an idea of how you might make it work.\\n\\n This has really been an innovative experiment in public-private partnerships. Because of that I think people like myself or Bill [William H.] Gerstenmaier or Mark Uhran, we all recognize that this is really cutting-edge stuff, and it’s not going to be easy. It’s real simple for people who are maybe entrenched or even don’t understand this new concept in the way that research could be supported, and it’s real easy for them to take potshots at CASIS saying, “Why aren’t they doing this, that or the other?” But it’s such a novel approach. So much of what CASIS does doesn’t really show up in the public record because these are relationships. They’re agreements to exchange proprietary data. They’re discoveries that may not show up until a drug is approved for the market. It’s been something that when they’ve had difficulties, like any time an executive director leaves suddenly that’s going to be difficult for an organization, when they’ve had those difficulties, we’ve just always tried to do what we could to provide stable cooperation so that those things wouldn’t affect their ability to achieve their mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "NanoRacks for example, one of the things that they advertise is they can get things up within I think it’s nine months. They can get through all that paperwork quickly, and that’s one of the ways they’re attracting people to do those contracts with. But does any of that—not just them, but specifically the CASIS side—does any of that take away from what might be happening on the NASA side instead? Or is NASA focusing mainly on the Human Research Program [HRP] to go forward from here to go to Mars or beyond low-Earth orbit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You got to separate the ISS mission, the NASA civil servants in the ISS Program. Our job is to execute the research that comes to us under the strategies that we’re given. Things like shortening the integration time so things could fly quickly, that was really a joint objective that we had with commercial innovators like Jeff Manber from NanoRacks. But also working with CASIS as they stood up. Even during the Pathfinder phase we found a way to do these placeholders. We knew what type of thing was going to fly but we didn’t have to have selected the investigator yet. If you know you’re going to fly a facility that can grow plants and you’re going to put something in it, you can actually then select that PI much later in the flow. That benefited both NASA-funded researchers as well as National Lab researchers as we made that a different standard, rather than having to have everything in line and then get approved, to use that placeholder process.\\n\\n Those are examples of innovations that came in the way we plan and operate that just wouldn’t have come if we had behaved like the same old plan, overplan, replan, and then do something mode, which was the mode that had developed during the Shuttle Program, when you had five years to plan a mission like a Neurolab mission. You’d plan it for five years and then do it for two weeks and you were done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You work with the ISS Program Science Control Board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about that and just talk about what that board does and then what your role is with that board?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Program Science Control Board is a relatively recent way of codifying the way that the ISS Program has worked with its commercial customers really since 2005. The reason we had to codify it more recently is just because the resources have become much more limited. Going back to 2005, we were asked to write a report to Congress about the possibilities of making ISS a National Laboratory. They particularly asked us how many resources—how much isn’t going to be used by NASA for exploration that could be used for other purposes.\\n\\n As we looked at that, we found that 50 percent of what I’ll call the real estate, space in the racks, lab bench space, would be available to other users. We specifically said, “There’ll be no crew time available. Anything National Lab is going to do is going to have to be very light on crew time because human research is the most crew time-intensive thing that we do.” If I remember right, at that time I think they were using maybe three-fourths of the crew time on ISS at the time. We knew that that would go up when we got to six crew, but we also knew we could project ahead and see that we were never going to have that much crew time, because human research is by its nature so crew time intensive, and because human research is a big part of NASA’s exploration objectives.\\n\\n But in spite of that, in the Authorization [Act] of 2010 and then again in 2011, Congress specified when we selected this National Lab management organization that we’d get 50 percent of all the resources, including the crew time. I’ve talked to folks like Jeff Bingham about it later and said, “What were you thinking there?” Because we’ve been in I would say a resource crisis for the last couple of years because National Lab grew really quickly and then all of a sudden there’s not enough crew time to do what NASA was planning and what National Lab was planning. We have a law saying we have to give National Lab 50 percent of the crew time. Yet we also have another law saying we have to be done with our exploration research by the time ISS is complete. You can’t do that.\\n\\n He said to me, and I think it’s probably true, that he never in his wildest dreams thought National Lab could grow its use of ISS that quickly. But of course the reason he didn’t imagine that is because nobody thought about rodent research.\\n\\n The other thing that we did, because so many commercial users seemed to be interested in doing research using mice or rats as models, and because that had been very successfully done by Amgen during ISS assembly in some rodent flights that they flew during that period, then we reinstated the rodent research capability to support the National Lab. If you have rodent research and you’re having crew members do actually on-orbit dissections, on-orbit sample collection, all of a sudden you can need a lot of crew time really quickly. That’s really why National Lab grew so rapidly. We just didn’t think about that particular discipline because that wasn’t something—on a short Shuttle flight you couldn’t even open the cages. They just flew up and came home and you didn’t need to worry about it. But if you’re going to launch them on a SpaceX you’re not going to keep them on orbit necessarily till the next SpaceX comes home.\\n\\n You’re going to have to decide when that experiment ends and what things you’re going to collect. Long duration spaceflight for rodents really changed the crew time picture in a way we didn’t imagine at the time, because at the time we did the 2005 report, there was no rodent capability. That had all been canceled by NASA and we couldn’t imagine that it would come back at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading—[September 21,] 2014, is that when the first SpaceX, the rodent model animals went up? Was it then or was it before then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first SpaceX that flew rodents was SpaceX-[4, CRS-4], which was just in the last year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They took the mice up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. But that’s not the first mice that have flown to the Space Station. That’s the first mice in this new Rodent Research [Facility] system that we built because of the National Lab demand. Also then there were a bunch of NASA users who then said, “If we can build this we’ll use it too.” Everybody suddenly wanted this.\\n\\n The Italians [Italian Space Agency, ASI] flew an experiment called Mice Drawer System to the ISS. That actually had the record for how long mice have been in space. I’d have to look back to see exactly which flight that went up [STS-128, August 28, 2009] and back on [STS-129, November 27, 2009]. I think it was right before assembly complete if I remember right. I could be off.\\n\\n Then during assembly we had three times when Shuttle assembly flights to ISS did carry the legacy animal habitat research system. Two of those three times were completely commercial flights at the time. The first of those was joint commercial and noncommercial. In those cases the Shuttle docked to ISS. The whole mission wouldn’t have happened without ISS, so I think of them as part of the ISS legacy. But they really were in the Shuttle, and they never crossed them over. The air was shared, but the mice never went on board, I guess, they never came aboard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s an interesting addition though to have now.\\n\\n Also part of your position and your work with the Program Control Board, I was reading you’re the first avenue if an organization wants to appeal an ISS priority decision by that board. Is that something that happens often? How do you negotiate those appeals or work with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s always been a role of the Program Scientist or the Chief Scientist. But over the years who gets precedence and what the rules are for determining that change over time. My role has often been to try and get consensus on things or get people to understand why it might be best for the Agency to do things in a certain order. These aren’t what I call capital P priorities. These aren’t should the Agency ever do this. These are for this particular next six months on orbit what things should we put together to make a plan and what things do we have to wait on.\\n\\n Early in 2004, 2005 it was all about deciding which was the most important thing for exploration and postponing or delaying things that weren’t exploration-related. Then as the portfolios got reshuffled it really was very focused on human research. That was pretty much using all our resources. Then when ISS assembly was complete and we started getting more and more crew time, about that time we also set up the Space Life and Physical Sciences [Research and Applications Division] at Headquarters. They started getting more money to fund research. Then it started being a little bit about balancing and trying to help each user get their most important research done in every six-month period.\\n\\n But when ISS assembly was complete and CASIS started having research that couldn’t fit in the plan and we had to meet the 50 percent, then these prioritization discussions became much much more difficult, because we started getting to a point where since CASIS can use their 50 percent then if HRP does what they were planning, there’s no crew time left. That would mean there’s no crew time for other technology demonstration, which really is part of the Agency’s exploration mission, or also that there’s no crew time for fundamental research that might have been funded by NASA Space Life and Physical Sciences organization, thinking that there were plenty of resources, so they went ahead and funded PIs, and then all of a sudden CASIS brings in a bunch of new PIs and there’s not enough crew time to go around.\\n\\n In this most recent era we had over the last couple years two really difficult priority appeals to deal with. The first one we were able to resolve successfully by really coming to the Program Manager level. I had always been able to resolve the appeals on my own before. We had an appeal process. It on paper could have been appealed all the way to Mr. Gerstenmaier, but we were always able to find a consensus before that. But what happened about two years ago is Space Life and Physical Sciences wanted to fly their own rodent experiments, CASIS had customers who wanted to fly their own rodent experiments, and you couldn’t do both.\\n\\n That became a very difficult prioritization challenge, and there really aren’t clear guidelines in the law other than the 50 percent crew time piece. So that I didn’t get beaten to a bloody pulp by people fighting over crew time while I tried to do what the law says and what Mr. Gerstenmaier wanted, Mike [Michael T.] Suffredini decided it would be really good if I had Program Manager backing. He controls money too, and that helps him. He doesn’t have to find consensus with people, because he controls the budget.\\n\\n We formalized that in making this Program Science Control Board charter. We also took that consensus forum that I had always operated over the years, formalized that in something we call the Program Science Forum-U.S. Now we’ve had my Deputy operate that forum, so that there’s still an opportunity to get as much consensus as you can. But if you have an organization like Space Life and Physical Sciences coming in and being told they don’t get to do any research this expedition, that makes them very angry for obvious reasons. So you really needed a little more formal structure to hear those questions and handle those questions. Congress has put us in a tough position. Until we have commercial crew and we have a seventh crew member it’s going to stay tough on the crew time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask you as far as crew time, I’ve heard as much as it’ll double the amount of time with just the addition of the seventh crew member. Do you see that happening?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Our projection is that when we add a seventh crew member we’ll get about 33.5 to 35 hours per week out of them, because it doesn’t take a lot more effort to maintain the life support systems and keep the Space Station clean. But you have a whole other person’s hands to do all kinds of work. Right now the Space Station was designed for with 6 crew 70 hours a week, 35 Russian, 35 U.S. We typically get about 40, 42 hours a week. We push our system pretty hard, because we know we’re limited. The more we can get the crew to do, the more research we accomplish. There’s this urgency we have to get as much research done and have people wait as little as possible so that those results can be built on and the next experiment can fly too. That’s where you get that doubling number. If you have 35 in the U.S. Operating Segment [USOS] and you double it with another 35, that’s roughly where it comes from.\\n\\n But 35 hours a week, it’s a goofy number. It was in those old experiment designs. It’s a horrible misleading number. I’ve had people scream at me about how offended they are that all their tax dollars go in and all we get out of those three crew members is not even a week’s worth of work. I remember talking to a guy in business at the National Academies [of Sciences]. He had drawn a crowd because he was just screaming about how offended he was about that.\\n\\n I’m standing there, I had no idea, because I had just presented some of these numbers and showed them how much more we were getting with assembly complete. Because before assembly complete we were getting six hours a week sometimes. I was using it as a sign of our progress. He was just screaming at me how awful that was. “I don’t employ anyone that doesn’t work 60 hours a week. Businesses can’t be innovative and they can’t be profitable if you do that. You guys should be shut down.”\\n\\n I finally looked at him and I said, “I recognize you have really good employees. But I think our astronauts are pretty good too. Tell me. Do they recycle their own urine? Do they clean their own bathrooms? Do they make their own furniture?” It defused it because everybody laughed and the conversation was over. It’s a bad number because people compare it to what we work here in terms of your business hours. It really is just the hard scheduled time that we book them to do a task. Not all the time. Just like you and I check our e-mails and we plan our day at home on our own time and the astronauts do the same thing. It’s a very misleading number, but it is the number we have. It’s what we use." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve got to use what you have. Let’s talk about some of the international work as far as working with our international partners. As part of the ISS Program Science Forum you’re the chair of that forum. You work with senior scientists from all the other partner countries. Let’s talk about that relationship and how that works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a really neat evolution in our relationships with our partners as each of the modules came on board. As we were getting towards the 1E [assembly] flight when Columbus [Module, European Laboratory, European Space Agency] was getting ready to launch, all the European systems stood up and they had a bunch of experiments. We had been operating a Space Station and planning our little bit of research in the corners and suddenly they were coming in and they had a right to 8.25 percent of that little bit of crew time. They were trying to get research done. They made a lot of promises to their community.\\n\\n Then the same process happened as the Kibo [Japanese Experiment] Module got ready to launch [2008-2009]. We had to really create processes for working with our partners. That had to happen in engineering and operations and in safety and in all those different areas. But it also had to happen in terms of our science management, we realized in a number of the different meetings we had been having. The main meeting we had had was called the User Operations Panel [UOP]. It was very focused on projecting the future ISS resources and how they’d be divided up by the partners and comparing them to what everybody was planning to do.\\n\\n It still continues today. It’s an important thing you’ve got to do. I was the NASA representative to that forum. It’s a consensus forum with all the partners equal, all five partners treated equally. But NASA does the executive function. I had been named as the representative to that forum. One of the things that we were finding, especially as we were getting closer to 2015 and everybody was talking about how to get ISS life extended, and what we found is that all of the partners were really struggling with how to synergize, be more efficient with their experiments, how to communicate about the accomplishments better. We started having all these extra conversations at our UOP meetings and we saw even amongst ourselves people were fighting over crew time when we would have these UOP discussions saying, “I got only 86.2 hours and I deserve 86.45 hours.” These sorts of discussions happen when you’re dealing with accounting.\\n\\n Then the next day when we would have our set of topics about research collaboration, the meeting would be completely different, and it would be collaborative and it would be brainstorming and we especially got some tasks as we were doing National Lab Pathfinders. What do Nobel Prize winners think today about ISS? Now that we have this early data from during assembly, do they feel as negative about it as some of them were publicly negative about it when the go/no-go decision was made in Congress about the Space Station Program? We wound up chartering what we called the Program Science Forum.\\n\\n By that point I’d built really great relationships with my counterparts. Also we realized that it wasn’t always the same people. Sometimes you had a policy-type person or an integration-type person that was maybe representing that partner at the UOP. But yet the science people who I also was working with at our other two working groups, the ISLSWG and the MSPG, the International Space Life Sciences Working Group and the International Space Microgravity Planning Group, so some agencies had different reps [representatives] on those different forums.\\n\\n We realized we really needed a place for the ISS chief scientists or their equivalents to get together. In particular we had been reaching out to our Russian colleagues and we felt that the UOP tended to function as a USOS-only forum. The Russians were officially included but they never came. Things were just divided differently there. We really wanted to start working with our Russian colleagues on that as well.\\n\\n We worked with the [ISS] Program and worked with the Program Manager, who was Mike Suffredini by then. We put together a charter. We really built on this idea of we needed to get Nobel Prize winners together. We wanted to get together and have a workshop and get some feedback from the scientific community about what they saw as the potential of ISS today.\\n\\n We wanted to start working on benefits for humanity so that we had those all written down in a way that JAXA [Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency] could use to bring that forward to their government officials, especially those at MEXT [Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology].\\n\\n They wanted something to bring to their MEXT officials that really weren’t paying attention to space at all. We had a number of products we really needed to make. Those products took us all putting our scientific thoughts together. The other thing, Bill Gerstenmaier had asked me, because at these international meetings we would be there and you’d see a presentation from every partner. Each one would get up and present their statistics about what they’ve been doing on ISS. We were at one meeting one time and three partners in a row said, “See, we’re doing more on ISS than any other partner.”\\n\\n I’m sitting there doing the face-plant, throwing my hand against my forehead next to Bill. He’s like, “Can you fix that?”\\n\\n I said, “I’ll try.” We thought well, let’s at least count everything the same and show our collaboration and not just try to brag up against each other. That was crazy. I used the relationships that I’d built with the UOP and we decided to charter this as a separate forum. First they were going to meet together. But then over time because we got the UOP working really well we actually handed that off to integration people. The Program Science Forum continues on its own and has been a stand-alone since then.\\n\\n That’s been how we’ve worked with all of our partners. So now we have a database that has all the experiments that have ever been done all validated by everyone. We have the ability to represent all the collaborations when experiments were done by multiple partners. All the partners have worked together to put in a single database all the results so that we can actually do analyses of all the results, even the publications in Russian. Everything is in one place. There’s a record there. And we all count our experiments the same, for that matter.\\n\\n What’s been most important about it is having a place to think strategically to find synergies, so we’re not doing as many duplicative experiments. We can try to put them together a little quicker. The huge dividend that’s come from it is that our Russian colleagues have participated fully. From my career experience, that was when I started getting the opportunity to build relationships with my Russian colleagues. That has led to where we are today where we’re really doing significant and growing collaboration with them on a daily basis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you said that collaboration has grown. Do some of the shifting political problems between the two countries, does that ever affect the work that’s being done on the science on ISS?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Honestly it never does. Science is international. Russian scientists and U.S. scientists both have the same goal, seeking knowledge. Even at the more practical level, when they’re trying to seek funding, so they can go seek knowledge, they’re still interested in the same kinds of questions.\\n\\n As long as we can find ways to remove the institutional barriers, the scientists want to work together. They really do. We and Roscosmos [Russian Federal Space Agency] want to remove those institutional barriers because we both want to get as much as possible out of the Space Station, as much knowledge. When you think about it, even in exploration-related research, we’ll be going as a species to that new destination, so we’ll be in rough shape if the Europeans have one belief about bone loss and the Americans have another belief and the Russians have a third belief. We really need that state of the science to converge onto a set of truths that everyone gets comfortable with so that all the international crew that go to that next exploration destination have the right medical support.\\n\\n That shared goal really helps as well. You read the quotes and you just roll your eyes, because it has nothing to do with the way working together is on a day-to-day basis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "NanoRacks has announced that they’re going to be working with the Chinese too. It seems like it’s even more global. Some of the work on ISS can surpass some of the political problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the really innovative things about ISS as a National Laboratory is if you have a commercial user coming into ISS, providing different value-added goods and services, it doesn’t really matter the home country of that particular piece of research. If people are willing to pay to do it in space, that’s the beginning of that commercial demand for low-Earth orbit as a marketplace, low-Earth orbit as a place to do research. Just like there’s a commercial marketplace for deep ocean research, and there are companies that provide the ability to do deep ocean dives and collect data. Someday low-Earth orbit will be like that as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The ISS is the opportunity and these experiments can go up and do different things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s very true. That’s really true especially in our Earth sciences experiments. They don’t care about microgravity, which is the science platform that we built ISS for. But if you got a place with good power and data and a really nice low altitude, and somebody else is going to keep it there for you, it’s a great place to do Earth observations. Early on when ISS was still being assembled Earth sciences didn’t want to touch it, because if you were going to spend money they didn’t want their money to go to ISS. They wanted it to go to free fliers that they could put at exactly the orbit that they wanted. But now that ISS is built and it’s got all this great capacity, now the trade is well, do I want to build a new satellite, or should I just use this that’s there. There are a lot of cases where that makes good sense.\\n\\n There’s been this wonderful maturing of our relationship with Earth sciences and with the Science Mission Directorate in general as those opportunities have made sense and we have astrophysics experiments going up, because it’s a win-win.\\n\\n It helps them get more done in a time of really constrained budgets, and they can achieve decadal survey goals that otherwise would have been postponed years down the road, just by taking advantage of the fact that ISS is there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the decadal survey, the model animals, that was part of the requirements for the last one, or that capability was recommended." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was a big part in the decadal survey." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there other things that were recommended? Anything come to mind that has been implemented? Or something that maybe still needs to be implemented?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. One thing that was really recommended is moving forward towards more modern analysis techniques and open data. That’s really a trend in science as a whole that I would say NASA was behind on. Marshall Porterfield, who’s currently the Director of Space Life and Physical Sciences, when he came into NASA as an IPA [Intergovernmental Personnel Act], that was for him open data, having these data archives that people could analyze rather than having PIs hold the data for themselves, was something that was really important.\\n\\n Especially as related to omics data, that’s the studies of the different levels of genetics and how those influence all the way through physiology and looking at genes and proteins and RNA [ribonucleic acid]. That became a real hallmark of his strategic objectives for Space Life and Physical Sciences. But at the same time, OSTP [Office of Science and Technology Policy] has had a really strong emphasis under President [Barack] Obama over the last four years especially for federal agencies putting all their data out in ways that it could be analyzed and used by the scientific public but also by even the general public as a whole. I think there’s a trend in our society that’s been converging there as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the things I was reading, in 2013 you were asked to come up with a top 10 list of research results for the ISS. Is that top 10 list still about the same? Or has anything been shifted around on that list?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "People keep asking me to update it. Unfortunately it doesn’t change that fast, because science moves slowly. There’s a couple things I’d probably bump up. There’s a few things where the story has gotten better. But they’re still in the top 10. There are a lot of things I’m still watching, waiting to see if they change. Unfortunately, politicians, they want new results every year. Especially if you’re in the House of Representatives, every two years you feel like you’ve got to declare victory. A lot of our scientists take longer than that to publish the first paper. From the time we send them data from space until that first paper comes out is often two years or more. Things do move slowly, and I think there’s some really neat things in that top 10 list as well.\\n\\n One of the things that I’ve joked with people about is eventually we’re going to need different top 10 lists because there’s the top 10 benefits to health on Earth. You can do the top 10 surprising discoveries. You can cut it a lot of different ways because it’s such a broad research portfolio." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Top 10 things that are going to get us to Mars instead of benefit life on Earth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of the time limits or how long it takes to do research as far as ISS, it’s being extended now to 2024. You mentioned earlier that part of what we have to do on the NASA side is do what’s required of us in the time period that’s allowed for ISS. Do you feel like that’s going to give enough time to do what you’re being asked to do at this point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I get feedback on that both from our Human Research Program, who has a risk-based approach where they look at the different risks and they guess we’ll probably need to do two experiments to measure things and then maybe we’ll have to test a drug, so they guess. As they look across all the risks they have for the human body in space and behavioral health and performance, they’re not done in 2024. It’s maybe 2028. It’s not as heavy as it is now, and there are a lot of assumptions in there. Human research will not be fully ready.\\n\\n Right now our colleagues in technology demonstration are doing the same thing. They’re trying to figure out what all things do we need to prove out on ISS. If we need to show that a life support system is good for three years, then you’ve got to back that off. You got to operate it for three years on ISS, then you got to back that off. You got to design and build the system. It’s really not that long. Nine years is not that far between now and 2024.\\n\\n I do not think NASA will be done with everything it needs to do in 2024. Of course we know that the ISS itself should last 2028 or beyond, maybe 2030 or even longer. Its design life was 30 years, which would be 2028. I think that the Administration wants to keep us challenged. They don’t want us to sit back and just slow down our use because we can. There’s a desire to keep pushing the Agency to wrap it up so that budget can be deferred to other programs in the future. But also the new set of inputs are going to come from these National Lab users. NASA is an anchor tenant.\\n\\n As we have more and more commercial users doing experiments they want to follow up on, as we have more and more Earth sciences instruments—we have Earth sciences instruments right now that are helping model hurricane strengthening. Those are operational products that NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] is using. All of a sudden just retiring it in 2024 you start having to think about all those different values and data and the different research that people are planning to do. I think the goal is really by 2024 the cost-benefit will be swinging towards National Lab success. Then we’ll look at sustaining it maybe in a modified model, maybe where the commercial sector is taking more responsibility and the government is taking less. But government still is an anchor tenant for a little while longer.\\n\\n That’s my hope, that we’ll go there. Then at some point of course the ISS will be worn out and it will just have to go in the ocean. But at that point the hope is that the research demand will be high enough and the cost will have come down enough that maybe it’s SpaceX operating a DragonLab but those commercial users can keep using low-Earth orbit, and they can keep having access to it. Even though it won’t be the International Space Station anymore.\\n\\n If we do that, that’s that final mission of ISS, to really open up low-Earth orbit as a place that’s accessible and where you can do business forever." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel that adding the commercial side and now having more, with CASIS the 50 percent on that side, they can help as far as funding with Congress? Where NASA doesn’t have to be the only one asking for funding? Maybe these commercial entities, now they have a reason to keep ISS flying, and they can also put pressure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that there will be some of that certainly. It won’t be so much—it won’t be them wanting money to support their research. But it will be them saying, “If you take this infrastructure away, we’ll have nothing, and we really need to follow through on these things that are really going to help the economy.” We at NASA can talk till we’re blue in the face telling everyone how good we are for the economy. We can look back at the economic assessments of what Apollo accomplished, and everyone knows it was just this amazing jump-starter. The economic data is there to back it up, but you can’t do that till it’s all over.\\n\\n In the middle of that budget decision you can’t prove that it’s going to pay off economically. The big difference is if you have people who are businesspeople saying, “I can make a real contribution to developing a new market or doing something that’s going to have a long term impact on the economy if you just keep this asset in place.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you were looking back at your work with ISS, what would you consider to be your most significant contribution?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh gosh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s always a difficult question for people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say it’s probably in changing the way that we function from an inward-looking organization to one that is responsible to outside users. Whether that’s getting the program to realize building ISS isn’t the goal, it’s really getting the science done that’s the goal, or if it’s working with our international partners to help our politicians understand what we’re accomplishing.\\n\\n I think that I was in a place to have the opportunity—as the Space Station grew up I had the opportunity to be the one that was there and saying, “Hey. These things happen differently when your purpose is research. Think about this or think about that.” I had the opportunity to be in that place.\\n\\n Sometimes that’s difficult or sometimes it’s easy. Right now there’s just a momentum behind things. Things like RISE [Revolutionize ISS for Science and Exploration] are just roaring forward. That’s really exciting to see those changes happening over time. But at its core, I think the big contribution that I’ve made is seeing that big picture strategy without being biased towards any one particular discipline. My goal hasn’t been just to help astrophysics be successful on ISS. It’s been to help everybody be successful.\\n\\n When they have a conflict, if they’re fighting over crew time, I’m still trying to help each of them get what they need within the constraints of the law." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned RISE. Are you working with that group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say that group came after the influence that I had. I definitely meet with them and insert my two cents, but what’s beautiful about that is it’s got a momentum of its own. People are really changing the way that they’re thinking on their own. Engineering organizations are removing their own requirements. That’s the beauty of RISE, is that you’ve got change generated from within." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What would you consider your most significant challenge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the biggest challenge is that because we do have decentralized science selection we’ve got a lot of different scientific management organizations that are in control of their world except they’re not in control of ISS. We have a lot of people who are used to being in charge of their sphere and then they come into ISS and they’re wanting the same thing that somebody else is wanting.\\n\\n I’m trying to do the right thing for the Agency, but I can get caught between the politics of different organizations that have their own demands and their own schedules and their own desires. That can be ugly sometimes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine it would be. What do you think, based on your experiences, are the lessons learned for your work with ISS and in your position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I always think the most important lesson learned was not to peak too soon. We set up a science management organization that was going to be the NSF of space to be fully funded with 1,000 scientists and an $800 million budget all targeted at being ready when ISS assembly was complete based on the original ISS assembly complete date. Then that just made science this huge vulnerable honeypot. When people needed to find budget for Constellation, it was this big organ, ISS wasn’t done.\\n\\n By having those things out of sync on time, it made the research budget really really vulnerable. That’s always going to be a challenge for our Agency I think. The same thing would happen if we had a Mars mission and we said we were going to get there in 2023 and so then we would start standing up a bigger geological organization to decide what Mars samples you were going to take while you were there and how you were going to bring them home. We’d start hiring curators. Then that mission really winds up being 2030. We just get excited about it and we start building all of that, and we build it too soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking at ISS as far as—as you mentioned a lot of the benefits aren’t going to be known for years for some of the science that’s being done on there. But what do you think the legacy of ISS will be once it’s all said and done and it’s over with, and it’s in the ocean as you put it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the legacy really will be at its core scientific legacy. Right now I mostly talk about the benefits for humanity, because that’s what you have to talk about at this stage in the program. If we can point to people whose lives have been saved because they had brain surgery from a technology developed from ISS, that really helps put the story together for someone who’s questioning the value of ISS. But over the long term, I think the legacy is actually going to be much more fundamental than that.\\n\\n It is going to be a set of discoveries that you could not have made if you couldn’t have removed gravity from the equation. Eventually we’ll be able to trace little bits of information. Sometimes it’s a one-sentence conclusion that sent a discipline off in a different direction. I’m actually working with some colleagues to try and find ways to capture those. In the science of science they’ll talk about knowledge bursts. A lot of people are aware of a knowledge burst about nanomaterials, because you never heard of anything and then all of a sudden everyone was talking about nanomaterials, because there was this knowledge burst as people realized you could organize things at a molecular level if you were smart and actually make a material that worked better. That led to this huge burst of knowledge and publications. I think the legacy of ISS, someday we’ll be able to find knowledge bursts that happened because we could do a key experiment in a certain way, and we measured a property or we understood something else.\\n\\n What you’ll see are that there are all these little knowledge bursts where science wound up in a different place because we had access to the Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything we haven’t talked about as far as your work with ISS that you wanted to mention before we close?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess the one thing I would mention is that I think NASA as an agency, we’re really an engineering agency. Scientists in the Agency are always a little bit alien. The simplest way I’ll put it sometimes is that an engineer says, “Write down your science requirements.” A scientist when asked to do that sits there and they scratch their head a little bit. Eventually they write a hypothesis. The hypothesis is not a requirement.\\n\\n Then down the road some 20 months later, something doesn’t work on orbit. The scientist says, “Well, can we try it this other way?”\\n\\n The engineer says, “It’s not in your requirements. No.” That little silly dialogue, it happens thousands of times a day all around this Agency because we have an engineering culture and yet we’re trying to do what is inherently not.\\n\\n If you look behind me on the shelf it says, “If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research.” Engineers never do things they don’t know what they’re doing. They plan it all. We’re always under tension to give scientists the room to make the discoveries and have the eureka moments and not have the engineers completely squelch that creativity with requirements and paperwork and plans.\\n\\n We’re just always in that tension. The neat thing about the Space Station is that because we’re 24/7/365 we have a chance to get it right or try again. We never had that before. That makes it a really exciting platform, but it doesn’t make those tensions go away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for adding that. I guess if there’s nothing else we’ll let you go for the day. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Julie A. Robinson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Great. Thanks." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00319", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/KraftCC/kraftcc.htm", + "original_file_name": "KraftCC_4-14-09.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/KraftCC/KraftCC_4-14-09.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 14 April 2009" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Christopher C. Kraft" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 14th, 2009. We are honored today to be with Dr. Christopher Kraft, former Flight Director and Center Director for the Johnson Space Center. He is speaking with members of the JSC History Office staff, Jennifer Ross-Nazzal and Rebecca Wright, on the topic of the Space Shuttle development, a tremendous technical challenge for engineers at NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would like to say that being the Director of the Johnson Space Center, which I was from 1972 to 1982, was an interesting dichotomy. Up until that time I probably had the best job in the world as an engineer and as a manager. I don’t mean to say that I was home-free or anything; I had a lot of battles, but that was okay. Some parts of it I didn’t like, but 95 percent of what I did every day I enjoyed thoroughly. But after I became the Deputy Director and then Director, that changed significantly from a personal satisfaction point of view. There are a lot of reasons for that: people, associations, responsibilities, etc. Now what do I mean by that? Not sure I can explain that very well, but I’m going to try.\\n\\n From a technical engineering, engineering management, or contract management point of view, I loved every minute of it. For an aeronautical engineer, it was one of the greatest challenges you could have. Here we were going from the fastest speed that we could go [in an X-15, about Mach 6] to fly at Mach 25 both in and out of space. We were going to face some of the most formidable challenges that could ever face an aeronautical engineer.\\n\\n When we began the Shuttle Program, I had responsibility for Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. At that time we had a tremendous relationship with North American Aviation, North American Rockwell, North American Space Division—those were all the names the company went through. Before I even got in the space program, as a young aeronautical engineer, I had a great respect and admiration for North American Aviation. One of the first airplanes I ran a test on was an XP-51. They built the XP-51 in about three months, from zero to first airplane. So a lot of those people that I became associated with had been responsible for doing that.\\n\\n I was on the evaluation committee for choosing the contractor for the Shuttle. Had I been given the choice, I probably would have chosen Grumman [Aerospace Corporation] but for good reasons we chose North American. The relationship was outstanding between North American and the Johnson Space Center which had the responsibility for the overall program as well as the Orbiter. The relationship we had was probably the best relationship with a contractor that we had ever had. They had built the Apollo Command/Service Module [CSM]; we knew those people too. They had had a struggle with the CSM, did a lousy job at first, as stated by Mr. [Floyd L.] Thompson [Director of the Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia] in the review after the [Apollo 204] fire. So North American had come a long way with us.\\n\\n The work on the Shuttle couldn’t have been done without that kind of relationship. I’m making the point that these were good things. These were interesting ways of doing business, a rewarding way of doing business. We never had any disenchantment with each other no matter what we did. We went through a lot of hell together in those ten years [of development] until we flew.\\n\\n On the other side of the coin, though, was the management aspect of NASA. Now why was that so bad? Well, in the first place, everybody wanted a space program. Nobody wanted to do away with the space program but nobody was willing to pay for it, in any shape or form—the Congress or the White House or the OMB [Office of Management and Budget] that was a part of the White House.\\n\\n Many of the aerospace industries were absolutely nonsupportive. I mean that literally. You had guys like the president and creator of Lockheed Martin, [Norman R.] Augustine. He came in twice, at the request of the government, and said we shouldn’t build the Shuttle, and we ought to get rid of it. Why was he that way? I’m not quite sure I know, but I know he had a vehicle [Titan II] which the Shuttle was a competitor to and NASA’s spacecraft kept it from being the vehicle he wanted it to be. He’s classical of the people that were opposed to the Space Shuttle. They fought it at every turn: financially, technically. They didn’t see it.\\n\\n The White House in the form of Mr. [Richard M.] Nixon—he didn’t care about the space program. He showed up on the carrier [USS Hornet] when Apollo 11 landed and made the most of it politically. From that point on, he helped us none. When we came to the Shuttle, he did not support the space program. He just didn’t want to kill it, because he knew it was one of the most inspirational programs in the country, and he knew that stopping it would not go over very well. The same was true of the Congress.\\n\\n This was in contrast to the way it was in Apollo. In Apollo, we had a commitment in this country, not just from the 400,000 people who were space cadets working on the Apollo Program—they were marvelous. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the fact that we had the commitment from the Congress, we had the commitment from the White House, we had the commitment from the OMB or whatever they were called at that point in time. They argued with us, fought with us on many occasions, but they were dedicated to getting Apollo done. They were committed, and they knew the country was committed. When it came to the Shuttle, they didn’t give a damn. One of the biggest disappointments of anybody’s life in the space program was that at the end of Apollo, people could care less about the space program.\\n\\n That’s the way we saw it. Now, I don’t mean that we were angry. I don’t mean that we didn’t recognize that there were all kinds of reasons for that. There were. But the contrast in the support of the program in the ’60s to what we saw in the ’70s was black and white. Now that’s what made it a dichotomy. That was very hard for us space cadets to live with.\\n\\n So here I am, having the time of my life as an engineer but a terrible time as the guy now responsible for all, at least pretty much all of it from a NASA Center point of view. There were lots of people at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] above me that were responsible for the Shuttle Program and did a fantastic job, starting with George [M.] Low [Deputy Administrator of NASA, 1969-1976] and Jim [James C.] Fletcher [NASA Administrator, 1971-1977], and eventually Dale [D.] Myers [Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, 1970-1974] and John [F.] Yardley [Associate Administrator for Manned Space Flight, 1974-1976] and their organizations, and the NASA Headquarters organization, including [William E.] Lilly [NASA Comptroller]. My goodness, they all did a fantastic job of supporting the program but getting little support particularly from the White House and the OMB specifically. There were too many people in the Congress that didn’t want the program either, starting with [US Senator William] Proxmire and [US Senator Walter F.] Mondale." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you pointed out, the Shuttle Program seemed to be so unpopular with the Congress, OMB, the President. Was there any one person or one event that really helped to keep the Space Shuttle off of the chopping block? Because for so long it seemed like it might not make it. There were so many financial concerns." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think if you read the book History of the Space Shuttle [T.A. Heppenheimer, Volume 2], [George P.] Shultz [Director of OMB, 1970-1972] and [Caspar W.] Weinberger [Director of OMB, 1972-1973] both were saviors of the program from a financial point of view. They saw the value of the Shuttle. They helped us a hell of a lot, but we needed more. It’s just that they were in a position where they couldn’t do much to help us. We never got the fulfillment of the agreements, the commitments that we had gotten from them initially. We never came close to getting what they said we were going to get. That really made it, in the latter phases of the program, very difficult to manage.\\n\\n It was a challenge but I think we did a pretty good job. Bob [Robert F.] Thompson [Program Manager for the Space Shuttle Program, 1970-1981] and Aaron Cohen [Manager for the Orbiter Project Office, 1972-1982] at our level, and then John Yardley fought, fought, fought, oh, man, brilliantly. So did [Robert A.] Frosch [NASA Administrator, 1977-1981] and [Alan L.] Lovelace [Deputy Director of NASA, 1976-1981]. They were strong people. Fletcher was marvelous, and came back again, and died in office almost, contributing his life to the space program. There were a lot of really wonderful people that made the program, saved the program in the ’70s.\\n\\n We were very fortunate to have them. It’s just that it was distasteful as hell to watch the other side of the picture. Again I use that word dichotomy, because I go back to that statement I made. Everybody wanted to keep the space program. Nobody wanted to pay for it. Lord knows we didn’t ask for a lot, relatively speaking. We wanted to build a totally reusable machine. Well, that isn’t what we wanted to do at all. What we all wanted to do was what Mr. [Thomas O.] Paine [NASA Administrator, 1969-1970] and the Vice President’s commission [decided.] Both of those groups came up with what we wanted to do.\\n\\n Dr. Paine had said, “We’re going to have 100 people walking on Mars by 1986,” so I say the Shuttle was a fallback position, as far as we were concerned, from a glow in our eyes point of view. It was what we decided within NASA. If we were going to maintain the space program, and all we were going to get was a pittance relative to what we want to do, then the right thing to do is try to build a lower-cost totally reusable machine to go to and from orbit, because that’s where the next steps were going to take place.\\n\\n If you’re going to build a Space Station, if you’re going to go back to the Moon, if you’re going to go to Mars, if you’re going to do things that make space commonplace from an industrial point of view, then you have to have a viable workable space transportation system. That’s where it starts. That’s when we said, “Well, okay, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll go with that.” Then when we presented the bill for the totally reusable machine and it turned out to be about $14 billion, Nixon said, “No, you can’t have it. You can have half of that,” is about what he said.\\n\\n So we went back to the drawing board and came up with what we did. It was a compromise all the way around. It doesn’t look like it today, but it was. We didn’t have enough resources to build our dream machine. We didn’t have those kinds of resources.\\n\\n Shuttle was unlike Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, where we would use about 10 percent of our resources in developing new technology from which the next programs could benefit. Not so much in Mercury, but very much so in Gemini and Apollo. I’m talking about fuel cells and computers and automatic reference systems, and IMUs [inertial measurement units], advanced materials, a more resplendent communication system both from a spacecraft point of view and a data collection point of view, and so on. All of those things we developed as we were going along, with a certain amount of the resources to get those things that we would use for the next program.\\n\\n When we got to the Shuttle, we didn’t have a damn dime for this purpose. As a matter of fact, I used to fight for $100,000 [at a time] and Yardley begrudgingly would give it to me. He wanted to get me more, but he didn’t have it. That’s so much of what it is today. I have talked to [Michael D.] Griffin [NASA Administrator, 2005-2009] about that. I said, “My biggest disappointment in the Constellation Program is you’re not spending a dime on new technology.” He said, “Yes, you’re absolutely right. But I can’t do it.” He can’t. That’s what NASA is faced with today. They aren’t spending any money on new technology. They are forced to use yesterday’s technology, and they’re forced to use the machines they’ve got: the engines, the APUs [Auxiliary Power Unit], etc. They are having to resurrect those things to make them as good as they can, but this is not what they ought to be doing.\\n\\n We should be advancing the state-of-the-art. That’s what we should have done for the Shuttle. I blame that on [Daniel S.] Goldin [NASA Administrator, 1992-2001], because he got something like $1 billion a year for quite a few years to renovate the Shuttle, modernize the Shuttle, and he spent it on the Space Station.\\n\\n All of those things were difficult to deal with from a go-to-bed point of view. I don’t know about you guys, but I go to bed and I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about those kinds of things. Kind of ridiculous, but I guess that’s what I do. It’s hard to know that you could have done better. It’s hard to know that you can do better. It’s hard to know that we aren’t going to do better on the basis of what we can do.\\n\\n Everybody talks about, “Well, if we could go to the Moon, we ought to be able to do this.” Mr. [Barrack H.] Obama recently said, “We can go to the Moon, we ought to be able to solve the energy problem.” [President Obama] hasn’t got the slightest idea what he just said. It’s a catch saying. He doesn’t know the commitment and dedication that was required not just by the people that did it throughout the space and aerospace world, but throughout the government. Sure, we can do it. As a matter of fact, the biggest legacy of Apollo is that you can do anything you set your mind to, that is the biggest legacy. We forget it, but it is. We could solve the energy problem in a New York minute if we got the commitment to do it. He doesn’t know what he said when he said, “If we can go to the Moon, we can do anything.” He is right, but he doesn’t know what he said.\\n\\n This is a thought that I want to share when I stand up at the [Smithsonian National] Air and Space Museum [Washington, DC, on July 19, 2009] with the three astronauts who first went to the Moon during the [Annual John H.] Glenn Lecture. I’ve been asked to speak for 15 minutes. My chore is to set the stage but that’s how I’m going to end. I’m going to say, “I want you to know we all say, ‘Yes, if we can go to the Moon we can do anything,’ and you’re right, except you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what it means.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a very good point. You started out the interview telling us about how technically complicated the Space Shuttle was, and how exciting it was from an engineering point of view. Would you talk about the complexity of the vehicle and the challenges that you faced during development?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was sort of like Gemini. With Gemini, we made a list of all the things we had to do for Apollo and did them: EVA, guided reentry, fuel cell power, docking to another vehicle, rendezvous and docking, fourteen-day flight. We set those as goals and did them, made a list, and built Gemini to do that.\\n\\n If you made a list for the Shuttle, it would be the engine; it would be the automatic guidance and control system. All of these were technology challenges, which we did not have, such as a reusable thermal protection system that would stand temperatures up to 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit, structural development with extremely lightweight structures, and the use of graphite structures. First of all and last of all, the SSME [Space Shuttle Main Engine]. We were trying to build a hydrogen oxygen engine that was perfect from an energy recovery point of view. The highest Isp [specific impulse] you could get from mixing hydrogen and oxygen is 458. We got 456 in the SSME; that much efficiency is unheard of. So that’s a list of the things we had to accomplish.\\n\\n We were trying to build a machine which could do two major things besides being reusable of course. Number one was to be able to fly normal human beings to and from space without having to endure high G [force of gravity]. Look at the Russian vehicle [Soyuz-TM]; today it still comes in at nine G. The Space Shuttle comes in at one-half G because it’s a flying machine.\\n\\n Second, we wanted to be able to take payloads into space, which had a relatively benign environment. When you put a payload on the end of an Atlas or a Titan [rocket] today, it shakes, rattles, and rolls. With all kinds of shaking and vibrations, you have to build the payloads to withstand the very very difficult rough environment. We set out in the Shuttle to fly normal human beings to and from space, and fly payloads that could transpose their structural requirements into paybackable measurements or whatever you wanted to take up there. You didn’t have to design the spacecraft to be so structurally responsive to those heavy loads. We accomplished that. Now, that isn’t what the Air Force wanted but that’s what made the vehicle what it was.\\n\\n The Air Force, why did we have the [Air Force]? We had to have the Air Force because if we hadn’t had the Air Force, we would have never sold the Shuttle. It would have gone down the drain. The Air Force wanted to take a 65,000-pound payload and put that in orbit as a reconnaissance vehicle. They gave us the dimensions and that set the size of the payload bay. They wanted to be able to fly once around the Earth and land at the same spot and that set the second biggest requirement. Had to have a high L/D [lift to drag ratio] relatively speaking, or in other words it had to have a cross-range of somewhere between 900 and 1,100 miles to do that.\\n\\n Those two requirements, really, were the predominant requirements for the Air Force and therefore the Shuttle, and were not the requirements of NASA or the commercial industry. Now, I don’t want to belittle the fact that once we had it, it’s been a tremendous asset. Sixty-five thousand pounds into low-Earth orbit is pretty darn good. Everybody complains about the cost. Well, it does cost a lot. Frankly, the next challenge ought to be being able to launch the Shuttle with two people in the Launch Control Center. Two." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This coming from the first Flight Director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two. Well, I didn’t have anything to do with the launch activities. I didn’t set the launch requirements, and I didn’t design the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] facilities. I wish I had had that responsibility. Actually, I did have the opportunity, once in 1995, and told them how to get rid of two thirds of it. They didn’t listen. But I told them how to do it. That wasn’t good enough.\\n\\n We tried to build the Space Shuttle so it could be turned around in two weeks. The only way to do that was do away with Cape Canaveral, frankly. But to do that was to take the telemetry, look at the system performance, replace, and fix all those things that were wrong, and go again. You could do that today, if you wanted to, because it does have that capability. That was one of the other requirements of the Space Shuttle, which we tried and lost. I don’t think enough attention has been paid to that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk, if you would, about your relationship with the Air Force when you were Center Director and some of the challenges that you faced. You had worked in the 1960s as a very open agency, and now you were working with the Department of Defense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never had a problem with that. I said to my peers on many an occasion, “Look, we are here to serve the Air Force. We will do whatever is asked for us to do. You [Air Force] tell us what you want done, how you want it done, we will do it.” I never had that as a problem. Most people begrudge the fact that we had to work with the Air Force. I did not. That’s what we said we were going to do. We were committed to building a machine that would service the country. So I invited them into the tent; I trained 200 of their people continuously, because they had a group at JSC. We trained a group of flight directors, and we trained a group of flight controllers and sent them back to the Air Force.\\n\\n We used them, too. They were a great asset to the program. We had a whole continuous contingency of the Air Force. We taught them the space operations as well as space engineering. We sprinkled them all over our whole Center, both in Engineering and Operations, and taught them everything they ever needed to know about spaceflight. So I don’t cotton to the fact that a lot of people thought we did not get along with the Air Force. I don’t think that was a problem whatsoever. Frankly, without the Air Force we would have never had the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell me about working with some of the other NASA Centers, in particular Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] and Kennedy [Space Center, Florida]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s tough for me, but let me start my statement by saying, I thank God for Charlie [Charles J.] Donlan [Deputy Associate Administrator, Office of Manned Space Flight [Technical], 1968-1976]. Marshall wanted desperately to have its own space program from the get-go. At first, Marshall stayed out of NASA, hoping that they would get their own space program. Finally when they realized they couldn’t get their own, they decided to join NASA. They wanted what we [JSC] had all the time. They wanted the astronaut corps. They wanted the Mission Control Center. They even built a Control Center without anybody knowing that it was there. Did you know that? They built a Mission Control Center in Huntsville, Alabama, with the expectation of Skylab and they were going to run the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn’t know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. It was only because of this guy sitting right here that it didn’t happen. They were always extremely competitive with us. When we got to the Shuttle, they wanted to run the program. They were unhappy when it was decided, and with the discussions that were being had [of] not being able to do everything. They wanted to do everything on their own as opposed to being under the auspices of what we now call Level II organization. They didn’t like that. They didn’t want it that way. They wanted their financing, their orders, their technical control to come from Headquarters, not from another source under Headquarters.\\n\\n It was Charlie Donlan initially, and then under John Yardley, that it was recognized that that was foolishness. It was hard enough to build the Shuttle Program with one head, much less having two heads. So we always had a battle. Eventually after I was Center Director—it was ’72 or thereafter, we had a meeting in my office. Marshall came in, and we were arguing back and forth about who was going to do what to who organizationally. Charlie Donlan met with us and said, “This is the way it’s going to be.” Thank God." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us a little bit more about that conversation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was very distasteful to Eberhard Rees, who was their Center Director at the time. They were very upset about that, but they accepted it because they had to accept it. They eventually got their money from Headquarters. But we, Bob Thompson, who was really separated from me but under me, if that makes sense; he wore two—we all wore two or three hats—but he wore a hat that answered to me, but he also wore a hat that answered to Myers and eventually John Yardley. He was responsible for preparing the total budget from a Center point of view, and then the Manned Space Flight Organization Headquarters took that, put their own English on it and whatever else, and went forward with the total Manned Space Flight budget. Marshall would get their funds through that process. They got the money directly from Manned Space Flight. It’s ludicrous, but that’s the way it was. It was, “Well, okay, we’ll do it that way if that’ll make you feel better.”\\n\\n It’s always been that way. On and on. I’m just very prejudiced, though, so you have to take whatever I say with a grain of salt." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Everyone’s got their own perspective on things, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I realize that. I got along very well with Eberhard Rees. He and I were pretty close friends. [William R.] Lucas [Marshall Center Director, 1974-1986] was [not supportive]. I’d call him from my office when we would want to do things from the Center point of view, and I would ask him to support my ideas, and tell him specifically what my ideas were. He would agree to all that and then go to Washington and fight me tooth and nail, every time. The people that worked for Lucas, I’ll tell you, I really feel for those people. A couple people in recent years have gone over there and worked in the environment in Marshall and stayed there six months and quit—very bad environment over there. That originated from the German military type of management style. Nobody says anything without the boss saying you can say it. That’s the way it is. Still is. It’s still that way today, this very day, at Marshall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "JSC was the Lead Center for the Space Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about that and what impact that had on the program as a whole and perhaps the development, how that proceeded?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in any project if you start having multiple heads, you’re going to get in trouble. When I make my speech to the co-ops [cooperative education students at Johnson Space Center], I always start off with, “I don’t like to criticize other people’s work.” Because if and when you do that, you have to know what the constraints are, and then you have to know what the compromises are. Unless you know both of those things, you have no business criticizing other people’s work.\\n\\n When you start with a major objective, somebody has to decide what the constraints are, and then somebody has to make the compromise decisions that have to be made every day. It’s impossible to get everybody to agree that that’s the way to do it. But that’s management. That’s what program management is. When you don’t have somebody in charge, you lose that management or leadership tool. That’s the way I see it anyway. Therefore you have to have somebody in charge.\\n\\n We had somebody in charge in Headquarters, and then from a really technical management point of view you needed somebody below that level. Bob Thompson used to say, correctly so, “we’ll let them make 2 or 3 percent of the decisions, and we’ll make the other 97.” You can’t make those decisions at a very high level. You have to make those decisions at a consensus level. If you don’t, they aren’t very good decisions either. You have to battle out the real tough decisions; you have to know all the ifs, ands, and buts. If you don’t, then it isn’t the best decision, but it is a decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you give us an example of some of those decisions that were made?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. We made them every day. How much are you going to test this? Are you going to test it? Are you going to build a test configuration? Are you going to do this, which costs money, costs resources? Somebody has to decide whether that’s a requirement or not, every day. You can say, “Well, if I wait another few days or another few weeks or another few months, I can make a better decision.” Of course you can, but you might spend a hell of a lot of millions before you get there, and you’ll never get there if you make that kind of decision.\\n\\n That’s the reason scheduling is so important. You have to make a schedule which is realistic but forces the system. That’s what financial technical management is in the engineering world. You have to be willing to make the compromises. I think I said this to you before, relative to the software on Apollo—we couldn’t get it out of MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts]. Everybody needed it. The analysts needed it for structures, the trainers needed it for training astronauts, people needed it for making flight plans, on and on and on. We had to know what the software was going to do, how it was designed, what its tradeoffs were. We couldn’t get it out of MIT.\\n\\n George Low asked me to go up there. I wasn’t there ten minutes, not ten minutes was I there that I didn’t see what the problem was. They were all just continuously making it better and doing whatever anybody wanted done in the software. I just said, “Well, I’ll give you 30 days. In 30 days from now we’re going to freeze the software. No change will be made from that point on without my signature.” My God, the software came out of there like spitting out seeds. Literally.\\n\\n That’s all that had to be done. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know a thing about software, but I knew a little bit about management, and I knew that that’s what their problem was. Well, that’s what most engineering problems are, is that you just got to suck it up. You make some wrong ones [decisions]. You just have to go correct them when you find out they are wrong. We had to correct quite a few in the Shuttle.\\n\\n I don’t know if Bob Thompson talked about this or not [in his oral history]. He should have, because he had to carry it out. But when we started the detailed design and structural building, the actual building of the Shuttle, we decided, “look, we’ve got a lot of experience now in systems. We know environmental systems, we know hydraulic systems, we know flight control systems, etc., structures, on and on.” In the past when we have developed these things we always had a development set of hardware. A development environmental control system, a development of control systems, a development of the electronic systems all set up and operating. That’s what this total automatic control system was. We had those things which were actually hardware which was never meant to fly, or systems that were never meant to fly, or software that was never meant to fly that we would do first, learn all those things from that, and then build the actual flight or hardware or software.\\n\\n We said in the Shuttle, “We’re pretty smart now. We have all this experience. So we know what we think we can do without those development programs, because it will save a hell of a lot of money. Let’s just go build the hardware. Let’s go build the environmental control system without going through the step of a development system.” Did that on fuel cells, we did that on the hydraulic systems, etc., etc. We failed in some cases. We had to redesign the whole hydraulic system. Cost us a lot of money. We had hydraulics research built the first set, and it was terrible. We had to go to Moog [Inc., New York] and start all over again with a whole new company and a whole new system. But most of the ones we decided to do paid off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were some complications with a few of the systems, like the tiles for instance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about the challenge of coming up with that system, then attaching them to the Orbiter, and the problems that you encountered as Center Director?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With the tiles? Well, that’s quite a story. Yes, I can do that. I lived it. I spent many a day at Lockheed, Palo Alto [California], watching it being done, management meeting after management meeting. I’m not talking about all the technical stuff that was going on but what happened there in retrospect was a very, almost comical situation. We had General Electric [Company] and another company inventing reusable insulation. They were both using different approaches to develop the same material.\\n\\n Max [Maxime A.] Faget [Director of JSC Engineering and Development, 1961-81], and his people in thermal analysis had come up with this material. Any good insulation is air. Insulation is air, so what we tried to do was build a foam type insulation which could withstand high temperatures. We selected one of those approaches. Turns out it’s mostly glass. Take sand and make glass out of it, or insulation, that’s what we use.\\n\\n We knew what the concoction was. We didn’t know how to manufacture it very well, that is—build the foam and then figure out how to mix it and make the process a repeatable process, determine what size we could build it in, and how to machine it. We had some ideas. We had contracted through Rockwell with Lockheed to build a factory and produce the tiles, because they had a lot of experience with that kind of material. At that point, we didn’t know how we were going to put them on [the Orbiter] either. We had some ideas, but we didn’t know how we were going to put them on.\\n\\n Well, we produced a couple hundred tiles and measured the physical properties of the tiles. They were about what we wanted. One of the things we measured was the tensile strength of the tiles. We found that to be somewhere between 12 and 14 psi [pounds per square inch]. Okay, so that’s what we decided to use in the design of the Orbiter structurally. We’ve got a material here that will withstand 12 or 14 psi. The loads are aerodynamic loads, thermal loads, and internal stresses.\\n\\n We decided that we could build the structure out of titanium. However, there were three things wrong with it: very expensive, relatively heavy, and we don’t know a thing about the physical properties of titanium —I don’t mean that literally. But we didn’t have the engineering know-how and experience that we do with aluminum. We had been building airplanes with aluminum for 50, 60, 70 years. We know all the different classes of aluminum, different alloys of aluminum, 24ST, 22ST, 28ST, on and on and on. Some were built for various purposes and heavy stresses, heavy shear loads, temperature, constant temperature. We knew all the physical properties that you could possibly think of and had experienced them with aluminum. All the airplanes were that way; all that manufacturing, even welding with aluminum, which is very difficult. So we wanted to use aluminum. That said, we wanted the bond line temperature of where we put on this insulation to be no greater than 270 degrees Fahrenheit, because that’s where aluminum starts losing its strength. Actually it’s about 300, and 270 keeps you 30 degrees away from that.\\n\\n Okay, I’ve got this tile, and I am going to use this material. I’ve got 12-14 psi, and I know all the properties. I’m beginning to understand how I’m going to machine it. I know that I got these stresses and therefore I can’t build just any size pieces—I’d like to build big pieces, but if I do that and stick it on there, it’s going to break because of the structural loads which the aluminum is going to see. Any airplane wing goes up and down and moves. The wing on a [Boeing] 747, when you lift off, moves up six feet, from what it is on the ground. It deflects six feet, so the wing is doing this. [Demonstrates] It doesn’t look like that, but that’s what any wing on an airplane is, doing this. It flops, just like a bird. Now if you try to stick on too big a piece of tile, it’s going to crack, because it doesn’t have that kind of strength. We had to build small pieces and allow for the tile to move. That’s the reason there are gaps between the tiles, to allow the tiles to move up and down.\\n\\n At the time, I didn’t have the money to build a factory. It wasn’t a high enough priority yet, and I didn’t need the tiles until down the road. So I can’t build a factory, and when I do, it’s going to cost me 200 million bucks. It’s going to cost me almost that much to buy the machines because you have to have a five-axis machine. At that point there were 32,000 tiles on the machine. Every one of them has six different faces, all different. This way, bottom and top, and the sides. [Demonstrates] Six different surfaces that have to be done by drawings.\\n\\n We have to make the drawing for 32,000 tiles because all of them vary in thickness. Why? To keep the aluminum at 270-degree temperature maximum. Then, say I want the variation in temperature from here to here to be no greater than ten degrees. Why? It produces another stress. If this over here is 160 degrees, this over here is 180 degrees or 200 degrees, it moves. That puts another stress on the tiles. So I got to keep the surface temperature relatively constant all over the whole machine. The thickness varies. The thickness on those tiles on the machine varies somewhere between a half and four inches thick. Half to four inches thick. That’s a pretty big requirement for 32,000 tiles.\\n\\n So, I don’t have the money to build a factory. I don’t have the money to buy the machines yet, and I’ll have to buy those from Japan. They’re the only ones that make five-axis machines at that point in time, and each one of them cost something like $250,000 apiece. I don’t know how many we needed—somewhere between three and six. I know we ended up buying more than we thought we needed.\\n\\n We didn’t know how to make these ingots, out of this material, and have them all have the same properties all the time. We didn’t know at what temperatures to bake them to get this thing into the condition that I wanted the foam to be in. All these things I didn’t know how to do.\\n\\n I’ll tell you a side story there. We were having trouble trying to figure out how we would prove statistically what the strength and properties were. So we called in the Franklin Institute [Philadelphia, Pennsylvania], and they made all these studies for us. They came in and made this presentation to us. I’m sitting in the audience. They say, “You got to make all these tests to prove what the repeatability is and therefore what the statistics is of this material.” I asked them, “Well, how many do we have to do?” The guy says, “About 10,000.” I said, “We aren’t even going to build 10,000.” That’s what he said. You have to test 10,000 before you can believe the statistics. I think he’s right, probably true.\\n\\n Because NASA didn’t have the money to build the factory, we said, “We don’t need them until T minus 18 months. We’ll have the factory ready at that point in time. So we can delay that money until two years before we need them.” We finally got the money and got the factory built. We started producing the materials, and we had a lot of trouble with that, processes, control. What we ended up doing was buying a bread factory." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Literally bought a bread factory. You know those big paddles that you mix the dough with? We had two of those machines, and that’s where we put the glop. Put glop on this, add all these chemicals in there, and silicone. Do all this, bring them out. We had to figure out how to cast them, what size we pour in.\\n\\n Bread goes down a long belt controlled machine with electrical heaters in it, that’s the oven. The bread goes through there and that’s how you bake the bread. We bought a couple of those machines and baked the ingots. Ended up with these ingots about like this. [Demonstrates] Then figured out how to cut the ingot with a special saw and figured out how many we needed. Thirty-two thousand of them—had the drawings for all of these.\\n\\n We determined how to do the tests. We cut the tiles with a laser. We measured the density of the material, which we had to control very carefully, because if you don’t, you don’t get the consistency of the material and therefore they don’t get the thermal protection out of it. We had to determine how to measure when we got through, how to measure each tile, what the tolerances are in n-dimensions, etc. We got all that figured out. Started producing tiles, started cutting them, started getting them on machines.\\n\\n We came up with this idea of not gluing the tiles directly to the aluminum, but gluing the tile to a strain isolation pad, SIP, very fancy name for a piece of nylon felt. But we did that because that allowed the tiles to move. The skin would move. Instead of the tile giving, the SIP gives. We had a lot of people, a lot of very very famous people that told us that it wouldn’t work. But, that’s another story.\\n\\n We decided to use a specific kind of glue. We had to use it under a vacuum, because this glue has to be very carefully controlled in its temperature and its atmosphere, because if not, it changes the characteristics of the glue. So here’s the way the tiles are put on. You build these big squares full of tiles that are on the SIP. Then you put a big vacuum jacket around that one section, slap them up there, and glue the SIP to the aluminum. That sounds fine.\\n\\n Well, now we got this material, but what are the physical properties? Okay, we’re going to go measure it. You know what the tensile strength we got out of that was? Seven psi. Half of what we wanted. Half of what we wanted. Boy, you don’t think that crap didn’t hit the fan that day.\\n\\n Now how are you going to solve that? Pretty simple really. It is now. It is pretty simple. You just go where you’re going to glue the bottom surface of the tile to the SIP, go make it denser, because it turns out that only about half the fibers of the tile and the SIP are in contact. That’s the reason the strength is what it was. If you go densify the tiles, then you get the strength back. You can get it back to about 10, 11 psi. That’s what we did. That’s the tile story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a great story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is quite a story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s a hell of a story. Our guys, they did a great job figuring all that out. Now during this time we’re having quite a time getting the tiles on the machine. We would put them out there and then run a test on a big section of them. The things would fail until we figured out the process of how to do all that. Yardley is up there [at Headquarters] driving us crazy. We were taking tiles off, putting them back on continuously on the first machine. We’d get about 1,500 or 2,000 on, and then the analyst would come up with another story, and we’d have to rip them all off and put them back again. He got so mad about that he cursed me out one day. He literally cursed me out. He made this decree, “From now on you can’t take a single damn tile off that machine unless I approve it.” We absolutely ignored that [decision]. If we had done that we’d have still been out in California putting tiles on the machine. Those kinds of things were funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any other stories or examples of other systems on the Orbiter that you can recall, like the APU or other systems?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. The APU drove us crazy. That thing turns up at 72,000 rpm [revolutions per minute]. You know what an APU does? It’s got a wheel with all these fins, with all these blades on it like the internal guts of a jet engine—well, that’s what this is, only one blade. But you put steam in there and drip it onto a catalyst bed. That produces steam at about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and that’s what goes through the APU and turns it up at 72,000 rpm, drives a pump, which drives the hydraulic system. This thing is a bang bang system. You just put the amount of whatever that chemical is on the bed, depending on how much power you want to produce—and that varies with time or with use and depending on maintaining the hydraulic pressure at 3,000 psi. Very high pressure by the way.\\n\\n We wanted strength versus weight. We used a poppet valve, and it sits there as you drip this stuff out, and it induces very high loads into the valve, which has a seat. The valve is going like that [demonstrates up and down], and the seat—we couldn’t get the material in that seat to withstand the loads, both the thermal and impact loads. We tried material after material, and we’d come up with the answer, then go build it and work it, run tests on it, it didn’t work. That was a big struggle. We probably used six different very complex alloys to make that seat. They’re still changing the seat alloys. A couple flights ago they had to change the alloy again.\\n\\n Also, we were afraid the thing was going to explode on us because as these blades turn up to 72,000 rpm literally, the grain structure in the blades grows. Starts out [demonstrates], then it ends up being another quarter of an inch bigger in diameter because the centrifugal force makes the blades grow. You can’t have too much bypass at the cover where it is contained. The blade is going around and it’s got a cover, and so you don’t want it to bypass too much around the edge of the blade, but you don’t want it to run into the cover when it expands, because it’ll explode. It’ll get so hot in there the thing will blow up. We had several of them blow up. Plus, it’s sitting in the back end of the Orbiter. You don’t want one of those machines blowing up, blowing the side out of the Orbiter. That was a big problem. So it took us a long time to get a satisfactory APU.\\n\\n Structures—when we built the main fuselage, Convair had some very special machines that they had developed down in San Diego [California]. They’d been building rods—when you build a rod, you put an aluminum fixture on the end of it, and you either glue it or weld it to the end of the rod. It has a little shaft and a rod-end bearing inside that hole. You had to have that on both ends of this strut.\\n\\n They came up with this process of rolling graphite with fibers. You can build these metallic fibers to embed in the graphite and roll it and then put it in a very high-temperature and high pressure. They developed that process. That’s what we used to get a lot of weight out of the struts that we built the fuselage out of. That took a lot of doing, a lot of testing, a lot of process work, a lot of work on the machines that did that.\\n\\n We had to build a very strong lightweight thermal environment set of structures to take the loads of the engines in the back end of the Orbiter. The B-1 [Lancer Bomber] had been building its attach structure for the wing to the fuselage out of this process. They took pieces of titanium—we wanted to use titanium because it was lightweight and very high-strength and would withstand pretty high temperatures. They’d come up with this pressurized process on the device where you could get the pressure and the right temperature simultaneously. What you do is you lay up strips of titanium on the order of three quarters to one inch thick, and you just stack them up. The reason for doing that is that the strength of a bar is higher in the middle than it is on the sides, because the grain structure is different and you get better strength in the middle. But you can’t make the bar any more than about three quarters of an inch thick, because now it gets too weak.\\n\\n What they came up with was laying up little bars, and then with just the temperature and the pressure forcing that into one big piece of structure, which now is a big thing like this. [Demonstrates] It took us a while to figure out how to do that with such a large piece, and then how to machine it so the whole mass will be in the shape you wanted when you got it out of this device. This fusion bending process took us a long time, a lot of hard work, very expensive.\\n\\n Let’s talk about the lines that go from the tank into the three SSMEs, the hydrogen and oxygen lines. You’re delivering something like 4,000 pounds per second of oxygen and about half that in hydrogen through the pumps, pumping that from the tank. So we had to have jacketed lines, one of them was 17 inches in diameter, and the other one was eight inches in diameter. Those lines had to come all the way in from the interface with the tank all the way down into the three engines. They curled around inside the back end. They had these compound curvatures, and then were vacuum jacketed to insulate the liquid propellants to reduce the thermal loss.\\n\\n We had a hell of a time down at a place called Arrowhead in southern Los Angeles [California]. We had people living down there for about three months to figure out how to weld those pieces together and then maintain the validity of the vacuum, and run all the tests necessary to prove that it’s structurally sound as well as would do the job thermally. This place had an ex-Marine general running the company who didn’t know much about what we were doing. So we had to send a whole group of people from North American and JSC down there to live with them for something like three or four months until we got that stuff figured out, how to get it out of that factory. We were stuck with them. We had given them the contract. We had about 75 major subcontractors.\\n\\n I visited every one of the contractors at least three times along with Cohen and the Rockwell management. Some of them 20 times depending on what kind of problems we had. George [W.] Jeffs [North American Aviation/Rockwell], Ed Smith [North American Aviation/Rockwell] and their contracts guy, and Aaron Cohen and myself and whoever was the appropriate engineer from JSC, we got in a Sabreliner about once every—depending on what the problems were—about once every two, three months. We’d meet in Los Angeles, get on a Sabreliner, or they’d pick us up here, and we would visit about six to eight prime subcontractors in about two and a half days. We went everywhere.\\n\\n We went to Corning, New York, where they built the glass for the windshield. You ought to see that process, that was really something, I tell you. The way you make glass is you melt sand, and when you melt sand you make what they call boules. You grow it. You start with a little piece of melted sand, and you just build it up and build it up and build it up. That’s the only way you can get glass that would withstand 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit and still have structural integrity. So we built these big glass boules that were maybe about like that in three dimensions, [demonstrates] and then you cut the heart out of it. That’s the piece of glass you’d use. It’d have to be as close to optically perfect as you could make it and still withstand 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit and not be shattered by meteorite impact. That’s a piece of glass." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is, that is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had maybe about 10 or 12 pieces of glass in the cockpit. I went up there to look at those factories several times. We went in, and they’d show me the sand and show me the glass being done and the boules being made. It was very important for somebody like me to go there, not because I knew a thing about glass. But it was good for me to let them know that what they were doing was important to the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that similar to what you did during the Apollo Program? Was Shuttle development and Apollo development similar? Or were they very different?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. I think North American did most of it themselves, from a management point of view, not from an engineering point of view. All of our engineers were all over the place like ants. But I guess it was me. I don’t know.\\n\\n That’s what I wanted to do. They wanted me to do it. I’m Chris Kraft now. That doesn’t mean much in most places, but it does mean something in the space business. It was good that Aaron [Cohen] and I would show up—here’s the program manager from NASA, here’s the Director of NASA, here’s the president of Rockwell Aerospace, here’s the program manager, here’s the chief engineer, and the engineer that’s got the responsibility within North American for the APU. We were in Sundstrand [Iowa] one morning when it was minus 40 degrees." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow, that’s cold." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Went there a lot. Sundstrand is in the middle of the Corn Belt. We’d get off the airplane, one of these small airports, and drive down through the cornfields, these big cornfields. We landed in Binghamton, New York, in an ice storm. All kinds of experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Shuttle was so complicated. You were going to launch in what—’78 originally? Then it kept getting pushed back. Was there ever a sense from your perspective that gosh, we’re never going to get off the ground?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s one of the stories I came here to tell you about budget, about management. I don’t remember the exact dates. In about ’76 we had a big, big meeting at Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] with all the top management throughout the whole program. Initially it was just NASA, and then with the major contractors, where we discussed the budget problems. They were horrendous. We had been pushing about a 10 percent bow wave in dollars every year after about ’75. We had been promised a fixed amount of money. We accepted a fixed price contract. We had accepted a certain amount of money to be doled out in certain fiscal years with inflation, with contingencies. We never got any of that.\\n\\n They wouldn’t even admit that there was inflation in the OMB. They still don’t today. Whenever they do the budget they don’t mess with [inflation]; so when NASA gets its budget if inflation rate in 1975 was 3 percent, you got the dollars the same but the 3 percent less buying power. They were supposed to give us that in addition to the money. We were supposed to give us a certain amount of money every year. Never got a damn dime of it. Always got less, on the order of 5-10 percent less. Or you got a continuing resolution because Congress couldn’t come to an agreement, like they still do today. So we were fighting a big bow wave of money. In ’75, ’76 we needed probably—I’ll guess, it was about $400 million short." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a lot of money." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We couldn’t do these things that we should be doing. And we couldn’t lay the people off either because we’d never get them back again. We had them trained. We were in a real dilemma. We had these big things about here’s the total budget, the schedule, how we can play with the schedule. It took us two days to go through this with all the top management there. I remember talking in the back of the room—I’m a Center Director, but I’m in the back of the room—but I’m responsible for the budget for the Johnson Space Center, even though Thompson submits it. I’m still responsible for the $2 billion that JSC is spending.\\n\\n So I spoke up and said, “When are we going to tell these people what our problem is? We keep delaying and delaying, first thing you know we’re not going to be able to build this thing. We’re not going to meet any kind of schedule. We’re going to be behind the eight ball saying we could have done it, saying we could do it when we can’t. We know damn well we can’t do it.” I made that speech. That went over like a lead balloon. Nevertheless I felt better about it, even though nobody else felt better about it.\\n\\n But that kept going on and on. In 1978 we had a meeting in Room 45, 9th floor, big conference room. We had that place full of people. We had the top management of the agency there with all the program managers and the Center Directors—that’s probably 25 people with the Administrator, the Deputy Administrator, Bill Lilly the Comptroller and his henchmen, and several guys from our budget world and all the other managers.\\n\\n I laid it all on the table as to what our problems were. We didn’t know exactly at that point how much money we really needed. But we knew in that fiscal year we needed at least another $400 million or the whole Shuttle Program was going to be in jeopardy. Totally incapable of meeting any kind of flight schedule. We could have postponed it for another five years maybe, but when you do that now you’re really in a fix, because the nonproductive capability of your organization is too high. That’s just too many people on the payroll so that they’re just sucking up the money without producing anything, because you haven’t pushed them to a schedule. I don’t know whether that makes sense or not, but it’s true.\\n\\n So the discussion was maybe what we ought to do is declare this a research vehicle like the X-15, just build one of them instead of the five we have scheduled, and give up the fact that we’re going to be a viable delivery system to Earth orbit with the Shuttle. Let’s just take what we can get out of this machine and run tests on it, and just do it as a research vehicle. That was pretty much the consensus that came out of that meeting. Pretty much the consensus.\\n\\n Frosch and Lovelace, Frosch being the Administrator, Lovelace the Deputy Administrator, Yardley, Lilly went back to Washington with that in their minds. Mr. Frosch goes to the White House. There’s Mr. Jimmy [James E.] Carter who had just come back from the SALT [Strategic Arms Limitation] Talks. This is in here. [Points to book.] Not in the way I knew it, but the way it’s out of the literature.\\n\\n Jimmy Carter had made this big point at the SALT talks with the Russians that we were going to be able to fly the Shuttle over Moscow [USSR] continuously and do reconnaissance with this machine. He used that as a talking point to get them to do what he wanted them to do. He came back to Washington, and Frosch went to the White House when he got back about—I don’t know how long Jimmy Carter had been back. But he heard this discussion from the staff that Jimmy Carter had been over there bragging about how great the Shuttle was going to be. Frosch is about to declare this thing a research vehicle. He said, “What am I going to do with this?”\\n\\n He goes back to Headquarters and convenes his staff up there and they said, “Well, we’re just going to have to level with him.” Which they did. When they went and met with Mr. Carter and the people from the OMB, and I’m sure the science advisers, etc., Mr. Carter’s answer to that was, “How much do you need?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Finally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Literally that’s what he said. “How much do you need?” Now if you don’t think that didn’t create havoc at NASA. I won’t go through the machinations we went through there relative to that statement, but he came back and that filtered down to all organizations that said, “Go out to all your major primes, figure out what you need this year, what you need in the program, and come back. We’re going to build this budget, that’s what we’re going to take to the President, take to the OMB, and they’ll give you the support.”\\n\\n They didn’t say the Congress. Two weeks before that we’d been up there telling the Congress, “We don’t need any more money,” because that’s what the OMB tells you to tell them. “This is what you’re going to get, and you better not say that you need more because you ain’t going to get it, in the first place. In the second place, that’s what we don’t want you to do. We’re running this budget. We got an overall budget for the country. This is what you’re going to get and that’s it.” “Yes, sir.”\\n\\n We’d been up there briefing the Congress for several months now telling them, “Everything’s fine, we don’t need any more money, we’re doing okay.” We weren’t. Now they go back to the President—there are several stories here—go back to the President and tell the OMB, to the President, “We need an immediate $200 million supplement in this fiscal year, and we need $600 million in the next fiscal year, and we need this number of million dollars in the following”—two years I believe it was—“in order to meet a flight schedule of 1980.” That’s up from ’78. But most people knew we weren’t going to make ’78 at that point.\\n\\n The second story is when that goes to the Congress, they went bananas. They absolutely went bananas. They got their pint of blood and a pound of flesh out of all of us, but we got the money.\\n\\n Now internal to that, I want to tell this story. I’m head of the award fee committee. I’m the guy that gives the contractor their award fee which is based on a lot of inputs. It was North American Aviation at that time and we said, “Okay. Now this is the problem [explaining what we had just learned from DC]. This is what we want you to do. Tell us what you need.” So within about two weeks, they gave us their needs. JSC was responsible for submitting that, I was. We submitted that, and that was part of this buildup of money.\\n\\n After we had gotten that stuff all the way to the White House, Aaron Cohen got a call from Ed Smith [the Rockwell Chief Engineer and Program Manager] saying the initial estimate was incorrect. We need another X number of million dollars in this fiscal year, and we need this much more down the line. I was livid. I was absolutely livid. Here we asked them to tell us what they needed, and then what they had done was they had done it themselves without going out to their primes [contractors]. After they gave us their estimate, they went to the primes, the primes gave them the amounts, and they put that all together and beat it to death and then said, “Well, my God, we need X number of million dollars.”\\n\\n So when they came to the award fee six months later, I gave them zero. First time in the history of any program. I gave them zero. A lot of heads fell as a result of that at North American. I was sorry to see that, including Ed Smith, who was the program manager at that point in time. They relieved him of his duties, but it made me so damn mad. They deserved zero fee as a result of that. He never forgave me for that, by the way. To this day, I don’t think he ever forgave me for that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about finally getting to that point when you recognized that you were going to fly, and your memories of STS-1." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, from that point on it wasn’t a question of whether. We got off this kick of making it a research vehicle and back to the point that it’s going to be a viable delivery machine. From then on it was just a matter of solving the technical problems and getting them done on a schedule. The way you do schedules in any development program is you set optimistic schedules in order to drive the program. You have to be very careful how you do that, because you don’t want people making outlandish decisions, but you try to fit the schedule into what you think will properly drive the tenure of the program.\\n\\n So it was solving the tile problems, convincing other people and ourselves that we had the right software particularly, understood the reentry, understood the thermal values. As I said, we were putting the tiles on and taking them off just about as fast as we put them on, and you are doing analysis. Back in the ’70s, although we had good computers, it still took us a long time to do a thermal structural analysis. The first time it took us a year, to give you an idea how long that took. Even at that point in time, it took us maybe three months to make a complete analysis.\\n\\n We had to redesign the tank a couple of times, because the structures in the tank were not sufficient to carry the loads from the Orbiter, which were changing all the time. They were changing their capabilities, we were changing the loads where it is attached to the tank, had to redesign the hooks inside the tank. We were having trouble with the insulation on the tank, having trouble with the insulation on the Orbiter, and having thermal guys coming up and saying, “It isn’t thick enough there.” That sounds easy to fix. Well, that changes the whole contour of the vehicle. So there’s several ways you can do it. Take the tiles off and build up the aluminum with an epoxy RTV, [real-time vulcanization] and then put the tiles back on, or redo the tiles, or do it thicker or thinner. All of that took a lot of effort because we were still doing analysis, and we had a lot of kibitzers [outside engineers brought in to serve as an oversight committee].\\n\\n The kibitzers, as I said, we could not convince them that when we got through the reentry and this machine had seen those high 2,300-degree-Fahrenheit temperatures, that the tile was going to survive. We hadn’t convinced them of that. We built about eight or ten different test articles. We couldn’t test the whole machine. [That’s another story. We did test the whole machine structurally.] But we took pieces maybe about this big [demonstrates] and took them up to Langley, and Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California] where they ran combined loads tests [aerodynamic-acoustic and thermal].\\n\\n We ran all these tests. Tried to get the most combined loads we could—the vibration and thermal at the same time, or thermal and aero at the same time. Couldn’t do them all at once, because you didn’t have enough devices to make all that happen like it was going to see it in flight.\\n\\n The problem we had there was most of the time you used worst case loads. In nature, worst on worst on worst doesn’t happen. The thermal loads are highest here, the structural loads are highest here, the vibratory loads are highest here, and the aerodynamic loads are highest here. They don’t all occur at one time. Both during ascent and descent. By the time we’d run all those tests, we all felt pretty confident that except for worst on worst case we probably were pretty conservative.\\n\\n Same was true in the automatic controls for a reentry. We didn’t really know what the aerodynamics were. There was no wind tunnel, no blowdown surface types of devices that would give the right environmental conditions for the Mach number being flown. We had pretty good measurements up to Mach 6 but from Mach 6 to Mach 15 it was just pure guess. Above 15, it didn’t matter, because then you’re out of the sensible atmosphere and could use pure physics.\\n\\n We did it by analytical means. We used what is called Newtonian flow. That’s pretty simple to do, easy to make your calculations, easy to analyze the loads and therefore the structural analysis. But again, from Mach 6 to 15 we were really guessing.\\n\\n The Shuttle is both a spaceship and an airplane. Therefore, the forces required to stabilize and guide the vehicle require the guidance system to utilize the forces of the Orbiter control surfaces and the attitude control rockets [thrusters] depending on the flight regime. During launch, the Orbiter control surfaces can be used to trim the loads imposed by the aerodynamic forces. However, the capability to gimble the Shuttle Main Engines during launch provides the ability to control the direction of the vehicle during the entire launch phase.\\n\\n During entry, the automatic control system must utilize both the thrusters and the aerodynamic surfaces of the Orbiter to provide guidance, control, and stabilization of the vehicle. The use of these forces is complicated by both the density of the atmosphere and the speed at which the Orbiter is flying. When the Orbiter is above the sensible atmosphere, all of the forces necessary to provide stabilization and guidance are provided by the thrusters. However, as the Orbiter descends into the atmosphere it is necessary to start utilizing the aerodynamic forces produced by the Orbiter control surfaces. Initially these forces are small because of the low air density and must be blended in with the force of the thrusters.\\n\\n As the altitude decreases, the density of the air increases and the force produced by the control surfaces increases while the thrusters become less effective. Eventually the force of the thrusters becomes relatively small compared to the aerodynamic forces and is terminated. The other complexity that must be accounted for is the effect of Mach number [the ratio of vehicle speed to the speed of sound] on the aerodynamic parameters used to compute the aerodynamic forces. The Mach number effect is not well known at Mach numbers between about 2 and 8, which makes the forces produced somewhat indeterminate. As a result the gains in the autopilot are more complicated to formulate in order to provide a stable machine. [Gain is the amount of control deflection required to produce a given aerodynamic force.] The gains are varied during the entire entry and are a function of such factors as Mach number, air density, etc.\\n\\n Because of the uncertainty of the situation described above, it became necessary to utilize a mathematical process called a Monte Carlo Process. This statistical technique allows a random selection of the value of the parameters involved [approximately 35 parameters are included in the analysis]. Each test performs a thousand runs with a random selection of the parameters. Variations in parameters are used which take into account the range that might conceivably be expected. Then for each .1 Mach number a set of calculations is performed which predicts the ability of the automatic control system to stabilize and control the Orbiter. If the Orbiter is unstable or marginally stable, the gains are changed until the system can operate satisfactorily for all 1000 runs.\\n\\n The use of this complex and lengthy analysis allowed the engineers to confidently conclude that the automatic control system would perform satisfactorily for the entire reentry of the Orbiter.\\n\\n When you run the Monte Carlo analysis, if you have a single failure, you start over again and change the gains in the system. We did that. First time, probably took a couple of years, second time we got better. Then probably at the end we could run one in several weeks. The computers were improving too. We were at it for ten years, so the magnitude and capability of computers were going up too. We did that kind of thinking, that kind of analysis, that kind of judgment with the best brains that we had in the organization and outside the organization.\\n\\n At T minus three days, we took something like 100 tiles off the nose and replaced them because we had an analysis by the thermal guys that said some of them were going to fail. We had to build scaffolding on the pad to take those tiles off and then put them back on under a vacuum at T minus three days. Again, that would be a worst case situation. But we did it.\\n\\n Somebody asked me, “How did you know you were ready to fly?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t know what else to do. We did not know what else to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had done everything that you could." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had done everything we could think of. We convinced ourselves that we had done the best we could, we didn’t think it was going to fail. When you start out with just thrusters, these attitude thrusters are shooting and balancing the loads—the moments on the airplane, forces on the airplane. I said before the flight, “Well, we’ll probably have to change those gains after we get through the first flight.” After it landed I said, “We won’t touch a thing, it worked. Don’t touch it.” I don’t know whether they’ve touched them since or not. But it worked and we decided not to fool around with it anymore, the damn thing worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you think of that first flight being manned? Were you in favor of that, or were you in favor of unmanned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, oh, sure. The systems required the operation and the oversight of the pilots during reentry—not during launch, nothing they can do during launch. But during reentry if the Orbiter had gone unstable, they probably could have helped it; the systems on board had an awful lot of redundancy. So if you had a system fail, you could have them switch to another system. You had the crew’s brains thinking as well as the people on the ground having the capability of oversight.\\n\\n We went through a lot to prove that we should launch STS-1 manned instead of unmanned; it was the first time we ever tried to do anything like that. We convinced ourselves that the reliability was higher and the risk lower, even though we were risking the lives of two men. We convinced ourselves and the top NASA management that that was a better way to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After STS-1 landed, you’ve been quoted as saying, “We grew infinitely smarter.” Could you explain what you meant by that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Mostly from the aerodynamics and the thermal point of view. Thermally, we were more knowledgeable than a lot of people thought we were. We were not too worried about the machine to be able to withstand the thermal, environment, at least for a single entry.\\n\\n How good it would be for reuse—I don’t think we had more than a 90 percent confidence. But after the first flight, we certainly had a 99 percent confidence, maybe even 99.9. Aerodynamically, though, today they still don’t know what the aerodynamics is at Mach 10. You get maybe two or three or even four parameters that go together for the total effect, but you don’t know what the individual parameters were to make up that force—this is what we found out the most from the first flight.\\n\\n The rest of the machine, we were able to tell before the flight that the systems were going to perform adequately—the APUs, hydraulic system, thermal environment system for the crew, the computers, software, how we wanted to do the reentry from an operational control point of view [i.e., that to land at a given point you banked and reverse-banked and banked, to either add or kill off the lift]. We knew very well how to do that. We’d done that in Apollo, although we didn’t have the L/D capability in Apollo we had in the Orbiter.\\n\\n We were very confident about the basic systems of the machine. We probably had some concerns about the opening and closing of the payload bay doors. We certainly had some concern about the antenna system for returning the data from the onboard systems and anything you were carrying in the payload bay back to Earth because that antenna system was pretty fragile. Communications we understood, once you got it through the antenna.\\n\\n I don’t think we were ever worried about the windows, because we had enough capability on the ground to run the tests on the windows. But the tiles and the reusability of the tiles, that was really a rewarding result.\\n\\n The automatic control system—we had the most doubts about it. We didn’t doubt that we would get through it, but we believed that there would be a lot of places where we would want to change it. It turns out we didn’t have to.\\n\\n Having those questions answered and having done it, we were infinitely smarter than we were certainly ten years before that and certainly the day before that. We were hopeful from an overall STS, Space Transportation System point of view. We were all hopeful that we could reduce the cost a lot more than we did—that’s probably the most unsatisfactory part of the Shuttle, the cost of operations.\\n\\n In order to do something about that, you’re going to have to change the culture of NASA. Change the culture of the management of NASA itself and the expectant management of NASA. This is a dangerous business with a certain amount of risks associated with it. It’s run by people so the fallacies of the human being come to play. Therefore, going into an environment as harsh as space and the reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere, you are subject to failure.\\n\\n The people that sign the check and the people who manage you have to recognize that accidents are going to happen. We accept that in aviation. We accept that on the highway. We won’t accept that in space. We are going to have to, because we can’t make it perfect. It’s harder in space because of the environment—you can’t make a mistake. In an airplane, you can make a mistake sometimes and recover. In an automobile, you can do something wrong, you might destroy the machine, but not get killed. We accept 50,000 deaths a year in this country on the highways. We don’t stop driving.\\n\\n If you could change that thinking along with the culture of NASA itself [i.e., perfection], then you could get the cost down quite a bit. But it’s still going to cost a lot, relatively speaking. No matter what you do, it’s going to cost you more to fly in space.\\n\\n Now as you gain experience, as you gain guts, as you gain better technology, then I think it will become commonplace. It is pretty close to commonplace now, but it will become like flying airplanes. Going into space will become like airplanes. The best comparison is the jet engine. In my time, my history of experience, gee whiz, when we went from internal combustion engines and propellers to the jet engine, you could only fly for 30 minutes until you ran out of fuel. The on-time capability of the [Boeing] 707 when it first went into service was atrocious. I remember flying to Baltimore [Maryland] in order to fly to Los Angeles and have to spend the night, because some black box in the 707 didn’t work or wasn’t working or had just come down and had failed and they didn’t know what to do about it. That’s changed immeasurably since then. Most of the accidents you have these days are not mechanical failures, they’re mostly people failures.\\n\\n The operating cost was a big disappointment. I thought we could fly it for a lot less money. It isn’t that the machine isn’t reusable because it is. I think even now the engines have become fairly routine to maintain. If you hold to the schedules for changing the pumps and changing the insulation on the engine bells and the various parts of it, you can fly each one of those SSMEs now maybe seven times, probably ten times if you stretched it. That’s pretty good for a rocket engine, but we insist on testing it to death. We continue to insist that we have perfection.\\n\\n The other part of it that has never been used is the redundancy. We didn’t put the redundancy in there to make it more reliable from a risk point of view. We put it in there to make it more reliable from a use point of view. It’s quad-redundant in all of the critical systems. This term FO/FO/FS: fail-operational/fail-operational/fail-safe. What we tried to build into the machine was quad redundancy. We never used it.\\n\\n Today when you go to the pad, you have to have everything working. The philosophical design was not that way. We put the redundancy in there so when you went to the pad and something failed, you could still go. But they don’t use it that way.\\n\\n Now that makes it very difficult. Actually, what you do when you do that is make it less reliable, if that makes sense to you. The way to make it more reliable now is to take two of them off. It is, because now you only have two to make sure work instead of four. So they actually used FO/FO/FS in the opposite direction, which is stupid. They ought to be forced to do that, but they won’t. You can’t convince NASA of that. Probably can’t convince the astronauts of that. Probably can’t convince the Administrator of that. I’m not sure you could convince me of it, because I’m not there anymore. But that’s the reason we did it. That drives the people.\\n\\n The cost is in the people. Cost is not in the machine. Now, the tank does cost a lot of money. The tank probably costs I’d say maybe four times what it ought to cost. I think by working on the tank, you could get the cost of the tank cut by a factor of four. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but I think you could. One of those tanks I think today costs about $60 million. Our original estimates were $2 million. Literally. Go look at the literature. That’s about what it was. The total cost of operation of flying the Shuttle was about—when we first started said to be about $20-25 million. I don’t know what it is today, but it’s at least $400 million, if not $600 million because of the small number of flights.\\n\\n The standing army for the Shuttle is probably $3 billion a year, $3.5 billion a year. In today’s dollars, maybe $4 billion a year. I think the total cost of flying the Shuttle is about $5 billion a year in the NASA budget. Now that’s seven or eight flights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nowhere near your cost projections at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So that’s where you would have to attack the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your book, [Flight, My Life in Mission Control, 2001] you talked about the Space Shuttle just for maybe a sentence or two. You say that it had some positive impacts, and it’s had some major impacts on spaceflight. Can you talk about some of those positive impacts of the program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the advancement in the state-of-the-art in almost every system is tenfold what it was in 1970. If you took today’s technology in computers, in materials, in electrical power, you could replace all of the rotating machinery in the Orbiter. You would greatly improve the reusability and reliability and the cost. Take out all the hydraulics. You don’t need all those hydraulics anymore. You can do it all with electrical power. Got better motors, better supplies, better fuel cells you could build.\\n\\n There are a lot of ways that you could take the Shuttle and improve it and make it a more cost-productive and reliable piece of hardware. That��s what ought to have been done. It should still be done today. It’s just that they haven’t done it, so trying to do it now is very costly.\\n\\n But you can’t go buy a 1980 computer that’s on the Shuttle. You can’t buy that machine. It’s got to be specially built if you’re going to use that machine, so you ought to replace it, and they have done that to some extent, but not anywhere near like they ought to do. Everything on it could be made better and therefore more reliable, therefore more productive, therefore more operational. You could have approached doing 40 flights a year with five Orbiters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that type of goal is still achievable?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think a lot more achievable today than it was then, and I think it was achievable then. I don’t think that it was as good as Mathematica as I read yesterday in here [History of the Space Shuttle]. I don’t think it ever was as good as they produce, but they were playing the game. If they hadn’t played that game, they wouldn’t have got it. They had to beat the GAO [Government Accountability Office] down and prove them financially unsound in their projections and things. If they hadn’t done that, they probably wouldn’t have been able to get there.\\n\\n So it was good to have the absurd opposing the absurd. You got someplace in the middle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you look back over the Space Shuttle Program itself, what do you think was the biggest challenge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Still think it was the aerodynamics and the thermal protection. Certainly the engine, but the engine turned out to be I think better than we thought it might be. That’s usually what happens, isn’t it? The big thing that you think is going to be the biggest problem doesn’t turn out to be the biggest problem because you spent the biggest effort on it.\\n\\n Subsynchronous whirl, you know what that is? Well, the SSME has two big pumps—a hydrogen pump, an oxygen pump. They turn up at 35,000-37,000 rpm. They have staged wheels with the fins on, with the airfoils on them. It’s on a big shaft and they’re about 24 inches apart.\\n\\n When we first started the development of those pumps, we would wear the bearings out that support that shaft. I don’t know whether we had three or four shafts, but at any rate, that length of a shaft has an inherit problem that turbine designers call subsynchronous whirl. What happens is it gets in a resonance. At that high an RPM, the shaft is literally going up and down like this [demonstrates], vibrating at a given frequency called resonance. That going up and down wears the bearings out.\\n\\n That was a problem at those RPMs of delivery rates under those kinds of temperatures. See, the temperature of the stuff going in is very cold and then gets very hot. The variation of those temperatures across the face of the delivery—one end to the other, delivering the propellant from one end of the pump to the other, pump in, fluid in, fluid out, gas out—is a hell of an environment.\\n\\n That’s the program we started first and we tried to get a long lead time on building the engines. It took a lot of effort and it cost a lot of money to develop that engine. But the results are fantastic. However, it’s still a big problem and not an easy problem, and still has to be very carefully monitored. You have to check it after every flight, and then you have to tear it down after so many flights, like you do a jet engine. After so many hours in a jet engine, you have to tear it all the way down to the bare shaft, start over, build everything back up again. Now you could do that in this rocket engine after about seven uses. Frankly, I don’t know what that number is anymore. The last time I had a look at it was 1995 when I did a review and tried to get the cost down, wrote a report on all that—me and George Jeffs and Frank Borman, several others. You can say that was a hell of an accomplishment.\\n\\n The tiles, gee whiz. If you did that today, the material is there, the knowledge is there. You can do it. You can make a lot better tiles today than we did initially and they would be more resilient to damage. You could probably make them withstand a little higher temperature, just be overall better, and stronger, not quite so fragile. A lot of people wanted to build metal tiles using René [41] and all that kind of stuff. But Bob [Robert R.] Gilruth said, “You got to build a special factory to produce this metal. By the time you get through doing that you’d do a lot better with the tiles we got.” That’s what we did. Ames wanted us to use a special nickel titanium metal. Metal tiles would certainly be a lot stronger and a lot less penetrable by debris, but I’m not sure we’d ever built the material. It was a whole new world.\\n\\n It took a whole new factory and a whole new development of material to develop the consistency of physical properties. I don’t think you’d still do it that way today. We know how to build better tiles already today, and there’s no reason why you couldn’t use it.\\n\\n Now, about 25 percent of the orbiter surface no longer requires tiles. They use blankets, nylon type batts, and glue that to the surface to replace the tiles. The top part of the wing and parts of the tail and fuselage all have replaced the tiles with those blankets, FRSI [Felt Reusable Surface Insulation] they call it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think is the significance of the Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we proved that we could build a reusable rocket. Not as reusable as we wanted to, but it’s still pretty good. It was an extremely successful idea that we brought to fruition.\\n\\n We also made spaceflight one heck of a lot more routine. You certainly can carry 10 or 12 people into space regularly. You have a highly maneuverable machine where you can go to a lot of different orbits and to a lot of different places in orbit.\\n\\n It has promoted the idea of maintenance and repair in space. We don’t do it very often, but the Hubble Space Telescope is certainly a classic example of being able to take a costly machine and gain experience with it, and then come up with better ideas and still use it by changing the hardware on orbit. That’s very significant. You can put machines up there and bring them back to Earth and fix them and put them back up there. That’s something you couldn’t do without the Shuttle. So a lot has happened to have caused advancement in operational thinking about what you can do in space. It [all] just hasn’t been used, but it will be someday.\\n\\n Also from the space program, we didn’t invent simulators, but we improved the hell out of them, and made them extremely beneficial. Our capability to train people, to train systems, to make systems more reliable through simulation now is fantastic. That of course required the tremendous advancement in the state-of-the-art of computers and computer software and you can’t separate [the two]—can’t do the computer without talking about the software. The software is just as important today, if not more important, than the computer itself.\\n\\n Of course that’s what the space program from the 1960s did in communications. We didn’t do that with the Shuttle. We just made the delivery of the communication satellite more reasonable and less costly and more rational.\\n\\n I don’t think the impact of the Shuttle has been what the 1960s technology did, primarily because we didn’t make any effort to do that. We should have and could have, but we didn’t. We only worked on the technology required to get the job done. We could have worked on the technology to get the job done ten times better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that because of budget restraints?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, just simply because we didn’t have the resources to do it. That’s the biggest unknown to the general public about what the space program does or can do. The return on investment from the space program is probably 100 times better than the return on investment on anything that’s ever been done. If you’re on the board of directors of a company, you worry about the return on investment. Nobody appreciates that factor, that aspect of spending money on the space program. It’s the ROI [Return on Investment]. There are a lot of reasons for that, including lack of communication to what happened, or lack of willingness to make long term investments.\\n\\n You can’t go to Wall Street and get the money for the space program, because the ROI is too long. George [E.] Mueller couldn’t get the money for his rocket [Rocketplane Kistler] because the return on investment was too long. So we probably have helped that. Not enough. That’s what [NASA Administrator Mike] Griffin was trying to do with getting the use of commercial rocketry, was to try to promote that idea. Maybe that’s going to pay off. Who knows? Maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just thought of one other quick question. It’s more of a story that you might be able to tell. There’s a famous photo of you with [President] Ronald Reagan in the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room], I think, for STS-2. Can you tell us about your visit with him, and perhaps how he envisioned what the Space Shuttle Program could be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was kind of funny, because Reagan was a very simple human being. He’s dumb like a fox, but still not very knowledgeable in the technical world. Matter of fact, probably one of the lowest presidents in technology we’ve ever had, but that wasn’t important in his job, it didn’t mean anything.\\n\\n Trying to explain to him what we were doing in any form wasn’t easy. What he said to me was, “You know, Dr. Kraft, I can’t understand most of the stuff you’re telling me, and I don’t understand most of what’s going on here, because I was only in the cavalry.”\\n\\n When you see that picture of him and me, that’s exactly what he said to me, “I was only in the cavalry.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But he certainly appreciated what we were doing and what we did. We seem to have seen both ends of that spectrum from Reagan to Griffin. Griffin is too smart. You can’t be that smart and be a manager or be a NASA Administrator.\\n\\n Now [Griffin] was very important to NASA, he did a fantastic job, and he is what they needed at the time. But he also is not what is needed today. He made NASA a leaderless organization, because he was too smart." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who do you think should be the next Administrator?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Charlie [Charles F.] Bolden would be a great one I think. That’s only a guess. Because Charlie is smart but he’s not too smart. You don’t want managers to be too smart. You want them to build people, build leaders, build responsibility. If you take it on all yourself, which is what Joe [Joseph F.] Shea [Manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, 1963-1967] did, then you end up with a pretty tough situation, because nobody is that smart." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. We all need people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. If you’re too smart, you think you know everything. You don’t know everything. You’re a damn sight far away from knowing everything in any complex situation. You’re better off being a little dumb than you are being too smart because that makes the situation what it ought to be—you build more people, better people, and people that take and are willing to accept responsibility for getting the job done. They will do it a lot better when you teach them or allow them to be taught or allow them to gain the experience to do it. That’s a simple criterion that ought to be followed. Now if you could come up with both, that would be the ideal, but also idealistic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that your style when you were Center Director?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It was always my style, primarily because I’m not smart. Now maybe that sounds funny, but I don’t consider myself to be a smart guy. I’m not a physicist. I’m a fair aerodynamicist. A fair automatic controls guy. I understand all that stuff, but I couldn’t do it. I had to be surrounded by all the best people, by all the experts, by people that were willing to accept being the experts and making the decisions. That’s the reason I was good at being what I was. I made it that way. I made Flight Operations and Flight Control that way, because that was my style. I thought it was great. Others may think it was dumb.\\n\\n I know an interesting thing. Max [Faget] and I were always at each other. Friendly so, but we were always at each other. He didn’t see the need for all those operational things. Later, I went to work for him. Not literally, but I mean he asked me to do some things for him, but then he asked me to be on his board [of directors]. So I served on his board for quite some time. Anyway, one day Max said, “I didn’t realize what a good job you used to do, but I do now.”\\n\\n That’s a pretty good statement by him. He had learned himself from being president of that company what he had to do to run that company. So it takes both kinds. I depended on Max. I literally depended on him to be the top engineer, to come up with the ideas, to be the guy that ran the brains of the organization. He did a great job of it. But he wouldn’t have been a good Center Director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Too technical, again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. He would have been like Griffin is, too technical." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When he [Faget] came at you with this idea of building a Space Shuttle, what did you think initially? We’ve all heard the story of him throwing that balsa wood plane and people being surprised." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was an aeronautical engineer. If I was anything, I was an aeronautical engineer. That’s what I was trained to do as a college student, and that’s what I was trained to do for the first 15 years of my life. Sort of a specialized aerodynamicist, because I was in flight test. So gee whiz, the Shuttle, for Gilruth and me it was the epitome. What he [Gilruth] said was, “The Shuttle was dignified.” That’s a good statement. “The Shuttle is dignified.” It lands on a runway. Doesn’t dump the God blessed thing in the water and hope like hell it doesn’t sink or that the parachutes work. So the Shuttle is a lot more dignified than landing a [capsule].\\n\\n When we go and build Constellation, we’re going back to the future. Kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? You’re going to have to get the Navy trained again. In Mercury we had 10,000 sailors deployed. We had 50 ships, hundreds of airplanes, literally, when we flew the Mercury spacecraft. Why would you ever want to do that again?\\n\\n Now you don’t have to do quite that much probably. I’ll bet you do for the first flight. If you don’t, you’re foolish, and you better. It is better to be prepared for it to come down in any one of 360 degrees on the Earth. That’s where we were on Mercury.\\n\\n Why do that again? If you’re going to spend money that’s a good way to spend money, isn’t it? A bad way, whichever one you want to call it. But it’s done, so we have to go build it. NASA will build it, and they’ll do a good job of it. It just isn’t the way to do it. I don’t go around saying that, by the way. I don’t criticize them. That’s what he could get, that’s what Griffin could get, so that’s what he got. That isn’t the way he would have done it given his druthers. But you’re stuck with it now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Rebecca, do you have any questions for Dr. Kraft?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just have one. When you first started working on the development of the Shuttle, did you have a vision of what you wanted it to be and have you seen the Shuttle reach that expectation that you wanted for it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in terms of its capability yes. It more than met my expectations. As I said previously, think about putting 65,000 pounds into and out of orbit. To have said you were going to do that in 1960 was impossible, literally impossible in 1960. We did it in 1980. So yes, it more than met my expectations, even for 1972.\\n\\n As I started out by saying, it’s too bad we don’t have the commitment from the country to test ourselves, to give us an impossible task to accomplish in space. That’s what we need. We don’t need one, we need a number of challenges. That’s the way we ought to solve the energy problem. It’s just the politics of the world, not just the United States, but the politics of the world make it difficult to do.\\n\\n We can’t get enough people committed to it. They will, because you’re going to run out of fossil fuels. It’s improving. It’s certainly improving. I saw the other day where about 25 percent of the energy we’re using these days is solar. That’s pretty good. It really is pretty good.\\n\\n We can solve the energy problem from space. We can do it from space, but it would be too expensive. That’s not something we should tackle in my opinion. We should do the testing of those kinds of systems from space, i.e., put some solar panels first on the Space Station, which we already have, and transmit that to the ground and see how that works, and what the distribution problems are, etc. Then we should do it on the Moon.\\n\\n We could do the experiments for a piddly amount of money. Not solve the world’s energy problem doing it that way, because I think it then would be too expensive. But it’s by doing those kinds of things that give the idea about how to do it better on Earth. Every time we did an experiment in Gemini and Apollo and lately, what we found is yes, we can do it better in space, but it gave us a lot better idea about how to do it on the Earth. That was the big payoff.\\n\\n We did this thing called electrophoresis. Do you remember that term? By using the zero gravity and the magnetic attraction of electricity, you could separate things of different density and therefore manufacture medicine or whatever 1,000 times more pure doing it by electrophoresis. Well, the moment we started building all those machines, we found out we could do it on Earth. So you didn’t have to go to space to do it, and that brought the cost down even more. Those are the kinds of things we’ve learned. That’s okay. That’s a good use of the money, to do that kind of experimentation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we thank you for coming by today and sharing your recollections of Space Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher C. Kraft", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00037", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Michael L. Jackson", + "description": "Michael L. Jackson was an Exhibit Designer at the National Archives from 1994-2014. In his oral history he explains his duties and responsibilities as an Exhibit Designer, as well as the major projects he was involved with during his time at the National Archives.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/michael-l-jackson-5-22-14-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "michael-l-jackson-5-22-14-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:15", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "May 22, 2014" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Brian Knowles" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Michael L. Jackson" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today’s date is 22 May 2014. I am Brian Knowles, acting as an oral historian for the National Archives History Office. I am conducting an oral history interview with Michael L. Jackson. He is an exhibit designer with the National Archives Museum, Archives I, Washington, DC. Morning, sir. And if you would, could you go over the dates of service that you’ve been with the National Archive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started working at the National Archives in February of 1994. And prior to that I worked for the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art for eight years. I’ve been in Washington, DC area since 1986. And my educational background, and I have some other museum background prior to coming here in ‘86. I worked several years as a preparator in the Detroit Institute of Arts. I have a fine arts educational background, with a bachelor’s degree and a Master’s of Fine Arts degree, and have done a few years of adjunct teaching of studio art, drawing, painting, design. But I’ve been here since 1994. And I was hired here as an exhibit designer. I had been an exhibit designer at the Smithsonian for a few years before coming here, Smithsonian’s Museum of African Art, that is. And I’ve been an exhibit designer here from 1994 to the present. I’ve seen the organization go through some organizational, structural changes. Have been here for at least four Presidential appointees, Archivists, and some Acting Archivists—in between the appointees. So I’ve seen a lot of change here at the Archives in 20 years. My work as an exhibit designer is a little misleading because here at the Archives there’s a couple of us in the Exhibits Office, along with the curators and researchers, a couple of exhibit designers. But, typically here exhibit designers work with the curators to research. They come up with the exhibit ideas and, of course, the exhibit idea, the theme of the exhibit, goes through a lot of approval processes up and down the chain of command here, more so recently than 20 years ago. Twenty years ago it probably really didn’t go past the Assistant Archivist’s Office for Public Programs. And, at that time that person was a woman named Linda Brown. And Linda ran the Public Programs, which consisted of the Volunteers Program, the Education Program, and the Exhibits Program. And I was hired by a woman in that office named Emily Soapes, who was in charge of just the exhibit staff, the curators and the designers. And, at that time, our office was a little more autonomous than it is now. And we didn’t have a Foundation for the National Archives that was active in raising money for exhibits and therefore more interactive in planning, in the discussions of our exhibits as we have now. Back to what an exhibit designer does here at the National Archives. Typically, the exhibit designer works with the curator, comes up with a layout plan for the exhibit, has discussions about what graphics might be in the exhibit. So the exhibit designer typically did a layout of the gallery, of exhibit cases and anything that was on the walls, all graphics. The exhibit designer creates drawings for building new exhibit cases, if that’s the case. Whatever structures need to be built and fabricated to go into the exhibits here at the Archives is all done by outside exhibit fabrication contractors. The exhibit designer also usually does the exhibit graphics. That is, all of the in-case labeling and any kind of illustrations that go on the wall, any kind of text panels that go on the wall. We design the banners that go on the front of the building. We design the titles that go on the title wall. We work with the curator to, to come up with photographic or illustrative contextual images that go with the documents in the exhibit. And then the exhibit designer is also the contract officer’s technical representative for the process of soliciting bids to build our exhibits and install our exhibits. The Archives has never had, in the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve never had staff or facilities in-house, for building exhibits and installing exhibits. So all of that work is done by outside contractors. And in the time I’ve been here it falls on the exhibit designer to work with the contracting office, now in College Park, to come up with a statement of work, and solicit the work to be done by contractors. And then the designer and the contract officer review the proposals and make a choice. Typically, we would get three or four proposals for each exhibit project, each new exhibit. And once the contractor is chosen, the exhibit designer oversees, well, there’s a schedule of work that’s part of the statement of work, listing the schedule of when the exhibit opens, and all the steps of the work that’ll be done by dates from the time they get the contract until the time the exhibit is finally installed. And so it’s up to the exhibit designer to oversee that fabrication contractor making visits to the contractor’s fabrication facility. Then when it comes time to bring the exhibit into the space, the exhibit designer does all the preparation to get the fabricators into the building. And, that’s gotten a little more complicated in the last 12 years or 14 years, than it used to be before September of 2001. Meaning that our security here has been beefed up considerably from what it was in the 90s, prior to 2001. So just, just to review exhibit design, my title’s exhibit designer, but the exhibit designer does a lot more here because they don’t staff other kinds of people for soliciting the contractor and overseeing the contractor install the exhibits. And there’s a lot of more things that we do within our own staff and within the process of getting exhibit design built and installed. I would say the exhibit designer’s time, in my case, probably less than 20% of my time is actual design work. It’s more meetings, interacting with curators and other offices within the process of getting an exhibit approved, getting an exhibit designed, getting the exhibit built, and then installed. And that process, over the years, we’ve built a couple of permanent exhibits, including the Public Vaults Exhibit and the Records of Rights Exhibit in the Rubenstein Gallery. Those were very big exhibit projects. Marvin Pinkert, who ran the Exhibits Program for the last ten years up until two years ago, I think Marvin came here around 2000 or 2001. And he was the one that had the vision for building the Public Vaults. And, also, he had a pretty strong part in, in, in the vision of the Records of Rights exhibit in the Rubenstein Gallery before he left here. I think Marvin left the Archives in May of 2012. And that exhibit finally got installed in December of 2013. So it went through some change after Marvin left, but not a lot. I mean the basic concept and subject of the exhibit was basically his vision in collaboration with our curators. I’m kind of wandering here, so I’m not sure—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] No. You’re doing great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where I was going, I guess, is in these two major permanent exhibits, the designers here, Ray Ruskin and myself, were more involved in a team of people working with the outside designers. You know, dozens and dozens of meetings over two and three-year periods to get these exhibits designed and installed. So we became more like in-house experts in a way, just we worked with the designers in that we knew a little bit about how our documents needed to be exhibited, and so we were part of a larger team. We were not the designers for those exhibits, we became in-house consultants working with outside designers and that was perhaps more time-consuming than if we had designed the exhibits ourselves. I mean, , these two permanent exhibits, the Public Vaults exhibit and the Records of Rights exhibit were a tremendous amount of hours on a lot of Archives staff, including curators, conservators, registrars, heads of exhibits, Foundation staff, and exhibit designers, and our exhibit registrars. So the work has really changed in 20 years, since I started here. And, that’s kind of where we are today. These two large exhibits were funded by people, through the Foundation, funded by corporate people or individuals. Like Mr. Rubenstein, primarily funded the Records of Rights exhibit. Mr. Rubenstein provided the Magna Carta. And prior to the Records of Rights exhibit, we built an exhibit for the Magna Carta that we worked with an outside design firm to design it. And it was installed in the West Rotunda Gallery and Mr. Rubenstein paid for that temporary exhibit until—and it was all planned all along—that document would be the centerpiece of the Records of Rights exhibit, the Magna Carta, I’m speaking of. So that’s kind of where we’re at today. We opened that permanent exhibit in December of 2013. And currently, since that exhibit opened, Chris Smith, who was the head of our Exhibits Office. After Marvin Pinkert left in 2012, Chris became the head of Exhibits Office. She retired in December. Currently our office has an acting head. And, they will be hiring a new head of Exhibits within the next two or three months, I am told. Do you have any questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, lots. Well, not going too off the beaten path here, how did you become interested in working at the National Archive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was an exhibit designer at the Museum of African Art from 1987 till ‘94 when I came here at the Archives. And the Museum of African Art was a new museum. And the director at the Museum of African Art had announced to the entire staff, which was about 50 people top to bottom, that they should consider their jobs at the African Art Museum as a training ground, that they didn’t have the budget to give people promotions or raises and that you should consider this job as a good starting point in your career and a good experience in a museum atmosphere. The director’s name was Sylvia Williams. And she told the entire staff herself, whatever grade level you are, that’s what you’re going to be. Because, she said, we have about 125 world class pieces of African art. And she said, “In my tenure here, I intend to grow that number considerably so I’m using budget money as it comes in. I’m buying to grow the collection.” She said, “I see that as my vision here.” So I came to the National Archives when there was a job opening here. And came here, to be very honest, came here for a grade promotion. And I started here as a GS-12 in 1994. And I was a GS-11 at African Art. And African art was good training ground for me. And I had worked at the Detroit Institute of Arts, part-time and full-time over a fair number of years because I went to school in Detroit. I lived in Detroit. I went to Wayne State University in Detroit. And that’s where I first got interested in working in a museum environment but at that time I never would have thought of myself as working in an archives kind of environment. But that’s how it happened. To be very honest here, I came here because there was a one grade higher opportunity than where I was. And I knew that where I was, I wasn’t going any further than that grade level. So that’s totally honest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your first impression of the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I had been in the Rotunda and what we call the Circular Gallery, which no longer exists, but it was a semi-circular gallery, a hallway about 12 foot wide that wrapped around the Rotunda, that was our temporary exhibit space for many years. And the West Rotunda Gallery was also part of that exhibit space. It was used more as an introductory space. And the East Rotunda Gallery was a really small gift shop all crammed into that East Rotunda Gallery, where they had a cashier. So our temporary exhibits started in the West Rotunda Gallery, then you went around and you came out of the exhibit into the gift shop, which made a lot of sense. A lot of museums are like that. When they have major exhibits, they typically have a gift shop at the end of the exhibit, if you’ve been to art museum exhibits. My first impression was that it’s pretty darn dark and dingy in here. The Rotunda has always been pretty dark. And, it’s primarily because the light levels are kept so low in there to preserve the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence. Because those documents are on exhibit year- round, year after year after year after year. And, so that was my first impression, we need some more light in here. Of course that never quite happened, until recently. But I thought that the Rotunda was a grand space. But I thought it was, frankly, after having worked in other museums, I just thought the space was a little dark and dingy and took some getting used to. It’s still dark. I wouldn’t call it dingy anymore because I was involved in a recent upgrade of the lighting in there. So, hopefully, it’s better lighting in there than we’ve had in the time I’ve been here. Recently converted the whole lighting system in there to a new LED lighting system, happened this past February." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you mentioned your fine arts background. How did you feel beginning to work with archivists, historians, and conservators?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s definitely a change from your own vision as an independent painter and artist. But that was something that I accepted well before I came here. And, you know, I actually enjoyed working with many of the people that I worked with here. We have some pretty interesting curators here. When I got here, and one of them is still here. Bruce Bustard, who is a Ph.D. historian, was here when I got here. He’s been an excellent curator. He’s been great to work with over the years in the various projects I’ve worked with him on. And another curator that was here, her name was Stacey Bredhoff, who now works at the Kennedy Library. She left here to go to the Kennedy Library, I believe, about four or five years ago. And Stacey, I worked with Stacey on a number of projects. I’ve worked with a lot of conservators over the years, from our Conservation Lab. Because the exhibit designers have to work with the curators. There’s restrictions on how much light is on documents. There’s restrictions on how documents can be displayed, how they can be fastened or not fastened to a mount. If you’re displaying volumes or books, you have to work with the conservation people on specific openings and the angles of the openings. And so the exhibit designer interacts very much with the curator, the conservator, and the registrar that’s working on each exhibit. And my experience has been, overall, positive with all of them. I mean we certainly had our—if you get designers and conservators in the same exhibit, designers and conservators their interests are going to conflict. The designers want to enhance the presentation. And the conservators want to make sure there’s very minimal amount of light necessary. And minimal amount of handling and fastening of original documents within an exhibit case. So, yeah, there’s sometimes conflicts. But I believe that probably happens in every exhibit project where you have conservators and designers and registrars and curators. I mean it’s in everybody’s best interests that the documents are preserved a long time. So, you know, there’s some people that would rather we not exhibit original documents. In fact, the idea has come up over the years, at various times, of exhibiting facsimiles of documents. Having come from an art background and an art museum background, I believe people come here to see original documents, not facsimiles. I can’t imagine going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and seeing a facsimile of say a Rembrandt painting or in the more modern world, a facsimile of a Jackson Pollock painting. So I bring that kind of belief and feeling about that here. We used to exhibit new documents in all the Rotunda cases. And we changed them out once a year. And in between that documents that required less light exposure, we changed those out every three months or six months. But about five, four or five years ago, we went to all facsimiles in there that more or less tell the story of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. So gradually we’re moving in that direction where we show more and more facsimiles. And, of course, the electronic components of our exhibits, like the large computer table in Records of Rights exhibit, there probably are about 300 images of documents. But people have access to see more and learn more about the variety of documents we have through that process. But they’re not seeing real documents. They’re seeing, you know, digital images on a monitor. And so the positive thing is people can interact and go into folders and pull out various documents through the table and see a larger variety than we’d be able to show them if we were just showing originals in that space. My hope is that we continue to always have original documents in whatever new exhibits we come up with, along with the electronic exhibits where we can show them more content of what we have here in the Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well you came in with a lot of experience with already being trained. Did you come in and have a mentor or have somebody provide you guidance or training to work for the National Archive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I came here I was replacing another designer. And, so there were two designers here. The other designer that was here when I got here, his name was Steve Estrada. And Steve and I, I would say we were sort of on equal footing as far as experience. Stephen actually came here two years before me, maybe three, maybe even longer than that. And, and he worked at the Museum of American Art before he came here. And so there was another fellow that was working with Stephen here. And I can’t think of his name. But he left here to go work for the Museum of the American Indian. The Museum of American Indian on the Mall hadn’t been built yet in 1994, but it was in the planning stages. And, I believe they were doing exhibits up in New York where a lot of the Smithsonian’s American Indian material was stored in a facility up in New York City. So I can’t say that I had a mentor here. I had a mentor at African Art, whose name was Richard Franklin, who was a very disciplined and understated kind of exhibit designer. And I learned a lot from Richard. Two of which I try to pass on to people that I know here that are working in exhibits. Richard taught me that good exhibit design is the sum of all its details. And I take from that good exhibit installation is the sum of all its details. In other words, if you have sloppy detail here, and a sloppy detail there, that somebody’s let go because of time constraints or whatever, it lessens the quality of the installation. Most museums are very detail oriented. Everything’s done very well. So the exhibit will hold up over time. But two, because it’s been designed that way. Designers are very attentive to detail. You know, are the miters on the picture frames put together, you know, as well as they can be? That kind of detail. That’s my mentor. And, you know, another term for it, and, and I’ve heard it as kind of a cliché, but I think it’s true. Designers and artists have used this term for probably centuries, but I’ve heard the term, God is in the details. So that’s my overall mentor. The details have to be done well or the overall design is lessened. If the details aren’t paid attention to, if the details aren’t carried out. So Richard Franklin from the Museum of African Art was my mentor. And there was no design mentor when I came here. That’s not a criticism of the Archives, it was just the way we’re set up. I came in here as an equal to one other designer. And Emily Soapes was our supervisor in 1994. Chris Smith became our supervisor. Chris had been a long- time Archives employee, who was a curator before she became a supervisor of the curators and the exhibit designers. Chris became the supervisor, I believe in the late 90s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was there any sort of education or training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, in my generation, and I’m in my sixties, most of the people that worked in exhibits, in exhibit design, in the museum world, whether it was a history museum, a natural history museum, an art museum, most of the people came from either a graphic design background or a fine arts background. But, beginning in the 80s, as museums grew, as budgets grew, as there’s more and more exhibit work, there began to be college programs for exhibit designers. And even writing design was covered in some college programs. So there are several programs around the country now in universities where you can get a degree in exhibit design. But when I finished college in the 70s, I don’t believe any of those programs existed. Yet there was a need for exhibit designers in museums. For example, the guy that first hired me as an assistant designer to him at the Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian’s Museum of African Art—Richard Franklin. Richard, his first passion was, was art. And he had a graduate degree from Yale, a fine arts degree, has a painting degree. And, you know, painters have a pretty hard time making a living. And adjunct teaching doesn’t pay very much at all. And it’s even worse now, I think, than it was 30 years ago. So Richard started working as an independent designer and gradually got into a full-time opportunity at the Smithsonian. And I think that’s what happened to a lot of people who came out of art school with a bachelor’s degree or a fine arts degree. They either ended up teaching or some were successful and could make a living on their art and others moved toward the museum world to get jobs. And I was one of those that came from an art background. But I think most people in design now either come from an architectural background or they’ve gone through a graduate school program, younger people that are coming into museum design field. We’ve got a young lady in our office who’s a graphic designer. But she’s got a master’s degree in exhibit design. And I think she’s got an undergraduate degree in graphic design. The graduate degree is from a college up in Philadelphia and I don’t remember the name of it. And she got her undergraduate’s degree in an art school in New York. She’s very well educated. And those kind of programs were not around when I went through school. I don’t think people came out of school in the 60s or the 70s, and said, “I’m going to be an exhibit designer.” I’ve sort of just gravitated to it over the years because I needed, you know, I needed a job. I wasn’t making any money painting, so I needed a job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a good reason." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how does the process work for creating a new exhibit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, here at the Archives, it’s changed over the years. When I first got here, it was, you, you know, the curators, and the head of Exhibits would agree on a theme for an exhibit, say two or three years in advance of the exhibit’s opening. And a curator would do the research. And come up with the materials that were going to be in the exhibit after a theme is approved by the head of Public Programs and the curator or the head of Exhibits. And then once the curator did the research and chose the artifacts, whether they’re documents or a combination of documents and artifacts. And, typically some photographic materials that give some context to the documents and artifacts. Then the curator works with the designer. They discuss the curator’s vision or idea or the story that that curator’s trying to tell. And the designer works with the curator in a kind of cooperative effort to come up with an idea of the layout of the exhibit, the look and the feel of the exhibit. And then the designer proceeds to make the drawings. And as the drawings come along, you know, there’s more interaction with the curator. And I think at the end when the drawings are done or when the curator and the designer have pooled their efforts, they get approval for their final design layout, you know, the wall colors are chosen, the exhibit case designs are made. There’s a process where the conservators are brought in to approve the exhibit, the method of exhibiting documents or artifacts, and they often give guidance on that, working with both the curator and the designer. And then, and then once the designer has created all the fabrication drawings, created the layout of the exhibit, made color choices for graphics and wall colors, maybe fabrics inside cases, the finishes on the cases, all of those drawings and specifications are sent out to an exhibit fabrication company. We typically solicit three or four bids for, from known exhibit fabricators and, in the area. And, there are a lot of them in the D.C. area. And, and then we review their proposals. And we choose the one that—w e don’t always go with the lowest price—we go with what we describe as best value. We know what quality of work we’re going to get from different fabrication firms. And, you know, in that process there’s probably the head of Public Programs or the head of Exhibits takes what we’re doing to upper levels for, you know, for final approval. But over the years it seems like the process has—now we have the Foundation that’s involved in the planning of exhibits. They’re not necessarily involved in the planning of contenting for the exhibits. But, their interest has grown because more and more we are funded by outside either corporate funding or private funding that the Foundation goes out to solicit funding for our exhibits. It wasn’t that way until about the early 2003, 2004, we began to get funding for our exhibits from the Foundation for the National Archives. And through the 90s we had, you know, our office was budgeted. We had budgets with government funds for exhibits. And more and more we have less government funds. And we have to work with the Foundation. Therefore, as we plan, we go through the exhibit selection of subject, selection of title, selection of documents, there’s more and more interaction with the people in the Foundation. So that they have an idea of what we’re doing. And they are able to communicate more clearly to the outside people that they are trying to solicit funding from. And so it, so over the last ten years, the process, there’s been more and more people brought into the process of developing an exhibit from outside our office, including the Foundation. For several years, before the most recent restructuring, we were under the Office of Washington Records. And the head of Washington Records was a man named Mike Kurtz, who started working here right out of college in the early 1970s. He has since left. But, until recently he would be like the final approval. And I imagine that he would run whatever we were doing by the Archivist and let them know what the exhibit was going to be next year or six months down the road. So I’m sure everything that we’ve done, and I’m not in touch with this stuff, but I’m sure everything that we’ve done is taken to the highest level at some point before we proceed to get it built and installed. But more and more it seems there’s more-higher level people involved in it now than there was prior to around 2003, prior to 2003. And even in the last five years it seems like there’s more people involved than, than 2003 to say 2010." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So does the time frame from concept to opening the exhibit, has that time frame expanded with the more elaborate structure of processing the exhibit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a pretty good question. It depends on the size of the exhibit and the cost of the exhibit. We also do a lot of what we call feature document exhibits, which we set up either in the East Rotunda Gallery or the West Rotunda Gallery. And typically it’s a one case exhibit with one document and some graphic, some information about the document. And typically those exhibits are, you know, like the anniversary of the Constitution or some President dies. And I’ve been here for, through a few of those. Those are very impromptu exhibits. But, I remember when Ronald Reagan died. I don’t remember what document we exhibited but we put an exhibit, we put an exhibit together within a few days. I think the curator on that was prepared for that because everybody knew, because he was ill for a long period of time. And so the curator who did that exhibit had something picked out, probably a couple of years ahead of time. But we do a lot of impromptu exhibits. This facsimile of the U.S.S. Constitution, we exhibited that original drawing, which we have. It’s a record here at the Archives. That’s a facsimile copy. We exhibited that at the request of the Archivist, the current Archivist, three years ago, I think. Maybe for the anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812. I can’t remember specifically. So, small exhibits can happen within a very short time frame. But an exhibit like the Records of Rights, which was big money, lots of money, outside exhibit design firm, a lot of time, and a lot of bureaucracy to get it done. Because there were so many people involved in it, that, the concept of that exhibit, I believe, we started talking to the design firm about that exhibit two and a half to three years before that exhibit opened. So I would say the curators started talking to the design firm about two years. And our curators were researching the topic, the theme and coming up with ideas for documents, I believe, about three years before that exhibit opened. So that would be three years out beginning research for an exhibit to the time it opens to the public, for both the Public Vaults exhibit, as well as the Records of Rights exhibit, both permanent exhibits here. The Public Vaults Exhibit opened in November of 2004. And I believe the research for that exhibit probably started around 2001. And, again, that was an outside design firm. And, but an exhibit in the O’Brien Gallery. And that’s where we have our somewhat major, but temporary exhibits. I would say the idea, the theme of those exhibits, are being discussed sometimes three and four years out from the opening. And they go through approval process through the upper levels before they’re finalized, before they decide well, there’s an exhibit coming up in there that’s going to open, I believe, it’s going to open in the fall or next winter, on Prohibition. And the Archives has a lot of records on Prohibition, various posters and laws, and I believe there’s been talk amongst the exhibit staff of a Prohibition exhibit probably started three to four years ago. And it was a curator that came up with the idea. And, you know, curators come up with ideas and they get talked about in meetings and some of them take and some of them are discarded. And, but I would say that the ideas start to germinate three or four years in advance. But the actual work, the researching for documents and the writing of the script for the exhibit, the research starts, maybe two years ahead of the exhibit opening. And the designer gets involved maybe a year ahead of the exhibit opening, approximately. Ideally, further ahead but, in reality, it often doesn’t happen more than a year ahead. Because sometimes when a designer gets involved the curator is still coming up with final choices for documents. And there is input from other offices once they know what we have. Our curators go to the archivists for different Record Groups and seek out suggestions. We’re thinking about an exhibit on Prohibition so they go to these different Record Groups and ask them, “Do you have any records that we might consider for our exhibit?” So archivists are brought into this process too, but in that kind of way. I think every once in a while we’ll have an archivist come forward and make a suggestion for an exhibit. I think it happens, but it doesn’t happen often. I think they would like to have more input than they do. I don’t know that first hand. But it’s a big place and the Exhibits Office has become public face of the Archives in some ways. And I think that there are archivists that would like to be more involved in what’s exhibited. And I don’t have any specifics on that, but I do know that that goes on over the years. It’s not a problem, it’s just part of our process of developing exhibits and the content of exhibits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How has the touchscreen technology influenced exhibit design and creation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Touchscreen technology probably has been around maybe about ten years now. It’s gotten more and more complex. We have a big table touchscreen in the Records of Rights exhibit. I can’t remember the size of it. But I know it’s at least 20 feet long and 6 feet across. And people can work from four different positions. And they have access to the same records from two on one side and two on the other. And, and it’s a big draw up there in that exhibit. So how do touchscreens influence exhibits? I think that, you know, Marvin Pinkert, who was the Director of Exhibits and Public Programs here from around 2000 to the time he left about 2012. Marvin Pinkert is the one that introduced the use of touchscreens in our exhibits. We wanted more interactive exhibits. He believed that interactive exhibits were more attractive to younger people and would bring more families to the Archives. And make our exhibits more attractive to a wider audience. So I think they have influenced how we do exhibits because you bring kids through an exhibit and if you watch them, I mean that’s where they go. They go to the interactives. And they figure them out pretty quickly. They figure out how to use them. Sometimes I think a certain percentage of them are mostly interested in figuring out how they work. And then they move on to the next one, whether or not they get involved with the documents, I’m not sure how, how successful that is as far as getting people involved with more documents. I’m sure it has a certain level of success and is successful in that way. I just don’t know to what extent it is. I do know that interactive exhibits are very expensive to bring them into our exhibits. You pay an outside firm for the computer program. You pay our own people to do the research for the documents that we want in the program and the script, the text that we want in the program. We have to pay an outside exhibit fabrication firm that has the technical skills to purchase all that equipment, put it all together, and specify what we need. Typically our exhibits with interactives in them, computer interactives, we have to maintain a contract with outside firms so there’s a constant, monthly outlay of maintenance contracts for all of our interactive exhibits. And the more interactive exhibits in an exhibit, the bigger that monthly cost— currently we have a contract with a fabrication contractor in Lorton called Design and Production, they go by D&P Inc. They installed both the Public Vaults in 2004 and the Records of Rights in 2013. And the Foundation maintains a contract with them for servicing those exhibits, X number of hours per month. They show up here in the morning hours, prior to opening. So we have ongoing contracts. I don’t know exactly what those contracts are, but, you know, I think they’re a few thousand dollars a month. And just maintenance, not to mention stuff that breaks and needs repaired. Sometimes that’s covered within those contracts. And if it’s a major problem, then it’s probably not. But, you know, interactive exhibits have changed museum visitors’ experience greatly here at the Archives. And it’s going on across the country. I don’t know if you see them as often in big art museums. You see some of them, some in art museums, but not to the extent that we have them in the Public Vaults and in the, in the Public Vaults exhibit and the Record of Rights exhibit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I asked that because, compared to some of the other national museums here in D.C., the National Archives Museum actually has a lot more of them per gallery than most of the other museums do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think part of the reason is Marvin Pinkert came here in the year 2000. I believe he was hired in, 2000 or 2001. He came here from the Museum of Science and Industry, which at that time was a very progressive, large, well-funded museum. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but it’s along Lake Michigan, south of Chicago and it’s a huge place. And it’s a museum that is based on the concept of interactive experience as opposed to putting pictures on the wall or putting scientific gadgets, you know, in a vitrine, a display case. They have one of the early commercial airliners hanging up. That you can get on the airplane and sit in a seat and the pilot gets you ready for takeoff and you go through the process of taking off with the noise and, so Marvin brought that here. That, interactive experience, whether it was an interactive with a computer or it was interacting with an environment. They have a coal mine shaft there. I think that’s where I was with him when we went there. I think they have a coal, I may be thinking of a museum in Minneapolis that he took us to. When Marvin first came here in 2000 or 2001, he made a mission of teaching our staff about interactive experience, whether it’s interactive with an environment in a history museum or computer interactives. So, Marvin was the visionary behind the Public Vaults exhibit and the Records of Rights exhibit. And so you see more interactives in those exhibits because that’s part of his vision, part of his belief for museum exhibits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what’s your preference?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m still, you know, I’m an old codger. I still really like to walk in and see a document, a real document, a label describing the document, maybe a contextual image that gives me a little more idea about what the document’s about. I like to see real documents. That’s my preference. But I was working in exhibits long before computer interactives come along and I came from a fine arts background. I’m not a computer person, although I’ve used computer in my work for the last 20-some years. But I started doing all my drawings on the board. I actually have an associate degree right out of high school of architectural drawing. So I learned to draw. I went to college for two years to learn to draw architectural drawings for buildings and highways, and bridges and that sort of thing. So, it’s been an adjustment for me, interactive exhibits. But I sincerely believe they enhance our Public Vaults exhibit and our Records of Rights exhibit. It’s just, I think we have seven cases in the Records of Rights exhibit that have real original documents that we change out regularly, keep them fresh. And so there’s still enough people here that believe in original documents that we still have original documents interacted with the interactive exhibits. I wouldn’t be surprised to walk in here eight or ten years from now and find no more original documents in one of our temporary, you know, year-long exhibits. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that happen. I’m not saying that it will. But, you know, there’s a growing trend of more and more interactive, computer interactive, specifically, exhibits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, one particular question I had with the exhibits was how do you choose the voices for the narrating the audio exhibits?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wow. You know that’s a question I’m not sure I have the answer for. We have a couple of people on staff. And we have somebody down in the education department who works with outside contractors when we have to get a narrator for something or when we have to have footage put together in a, in a kind of a video for presentation in the exhibit. We work with outside businesses that do that kind of work for the museum industry, the advertising industry, the movie industry, whatever. And we have two people, Darlene McClurkin, who works in the Exhibits office. That’s when she usually gets involved with an exhibit, when it involves photographic imagery, when it involves footage of video. I mean the Archives, as you may know, has all kinds of footage of, you know, World War II, for instance, just an incredible amount of footage. So when a curator wants to bring some sort of footage and it needs to be narrated, usually Darlene and a man in our education program, Tom Nastick—Tom Nastick runs the film program here at the Archives where we show films down in the theatre on a regular basis. So those are the people that are brought into the exhibit design and conceptual stages of the exhibit to go out to the contractors that will get us a narrator or whether or not they’re looking for a specific voice, you know, whether they have this idea they want, say, Robert Redford to narrate. I don’t know if they go that far or if they just work with a narrator that’s a professional, local actor. I mean a lot of actors get into doing that, that’s part of their repertoire, in order to make a living. So I don’t know how the narrator is chosen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But, but there is a process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to say, you have a volunteer here if you need one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, I wouldn’t be surprised. Is that something that you would do, is that what you’re saying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And your interest in architecture. And I was touring one of the galleries last week and saw that there is a couple architectural drawings hanging up on the walls to showcase some of the documents that the Archive has. I was interested, why isn’t there anything about the Archives building itself? It’s such an interesting icon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing]—that exhibit’s been there since 2004. And I was not involved in exhibit, the early stage of it. And then for a period I was involved in changing out the original documents. Through the core of that exhibit, the big hallway, is called the Record of America. And when you come into the west side of the exhibit, the entrance to the west side, are records from our early history. There’s probably a George Washington letter in one of the cases on the left or right as you walk in. And as you go around and come out the other side, there’s more contemporary and different kinds of records, like sound. There’s some sound recording. There’s an interactive with some Vietnam War, I want to say casualty lists, but I’m not sure about that. But, the architectural drawings that you’re referring to are kind of in the middle, kind of like early 20th Century, or late 19th Century?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And there’s a chronologic order to the Record of America. And I’m not sure how the drawings are chosen. And the Archives has a lot of like what I call presentation drawings where architects have drawn—like sometimes we see elevations of a new building, like a new postal museum from the 30s or a new courthouse from early 20th Century. These projects that were funded by the government. We have, we have a lot of the architectural records. I don’t see too many actual architectural drawings. I think we did exhibit an architectural drawing of the Washington Monument in that space several years ago. And they’re typically originals, so they’re only out there for, depending what the media is, sometimes it is six months, sometimes it’s a year. If the drawing has watercolor in it or a certain kind of ink, they don’t like to leave it out there. Watercolor has some pretty strong restrictions by conservation, typically three to six months. Because light will eventually fade watercolors. Not all watercolors because they’re all made with different pigments and different metals. But some watercolors will fade quickly. And the same with oil painting over the long term. So there are a lot of drawings of this building, I’ve actually seen a lot of the blueprints. I think we have the original vellum drawings done by the architect John Russell Pope out in College Park in the records division that has the big map-size, you know, Richard Smith used to be the head of that operation until he retired about four years ago. But I can’t tell you for certain if I remember architectural drawings from this building. But I’ve actually been out there and looked at the architectural drawings myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was just, I was just curious about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So have you worked with any odd or strange or interesting materials?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably the most interesting project that I’ve worked on here at the Archives is when the Archives started planning for a renovation of the Rotunda. And the Rotunda was closed down from 2001, the summer of 2001 to September 2003. I think we reopened the Rotunda on Constitution Day, which is September 17 in 2003. And in that time, I was on a team of people, Archives people, and then there were a lot of people from the National Institute of Standards and Technology out in Gaithersburg. The acronym is NIST, N-I-S-T. The conservators, designers, engineers, optics engineers, paper conservators—there was a large team of people from inside the Archives. And then consultants from the outside of the Archives, a team of I would say 20 to 30 people, that began planning for the removal of the Charters from their old sealed encasements that were also built by NIST in the 1950, ‘51, ‘52, somewhere along there. And so when the Rotunda was closed we started these meetings and planning, I think in 1999. And most of the meetings took place out at College Park or out in Gaithersburg at National Institute of Standards and Technology. And it was a group of NARA people along with NIST people and some other private consultants, physics people, and engineering type people to come up with a new plan to take the Charters out of their present encasements, which were pretty thin. Encased between glass and I believe bronze frames. And they were sealed. And were sealed with helium gas to keep oxygen out—apparently oxygen’s not good for the documents long term. And so I was on that team representing the Exhibits Office from an aesthetic point of view. Because we had conservators, we had a lot of conservators on the group. We had, as I said, engineers, physics people, optics people, but we didn’t have anybody to have some say about how these are going to look in these new cases, what the new encasements are going to look like. And how they are going to appear in the new exhibit cases that are being built in the Rotunda for these encasements. And I was that person representing exhibits. My boss, Chris Smith, was on that team of people. And it was a two-year process, the design process. And, you know, Exhibits got to weigh in pretty well on the look of what’s out there now. The way the documents are sitting on a platform, kind of floating in a dark space so you can’t see the interior of those encasements. Just another example, we had lot of influence on the shape of the frames. Because we had some understanding of how the lighting would be in those cases, which nobody else did. Nobody else was an exhibit designer on this this team of people. And one other thing that we had a strong influence on is the gold frames. The materials for the encasements, the frames are made of titanium. And in the year 2000 titanium was kind of the metal du jour around the country. I don’t know if you’re a golfer, but that’s when titanium golf clubs became very popular. Because titanium shafts are lighter and stronger than steel. And so there was a lot of titanium in the atmosphere almost. So there was this company, somewhere in the northeast of the country, who heard of our project. And they wanted to donate the titanium that would be part of the encasements for the original Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. And there were some people in the project, in particular one guy who was one of the higher-up engineers in charge of the project, who had direct contact with this company that was donating the titanium, which is an expensive material. And these encasements are—I can’t remember the size of them, they’re about 30 inches or more high. No, they’re closer to 40 inches high because the documents are close to 30 inches. So the encasements are more like 40 inches high, 30, 32 inches wide. And so it’s a lot of material. And the Archives accepted the donation. So there were people who wanted to the frames to be raw titanium. You know, to sort of pay homage to the people who made the donation, not to put their name on the cases or anything like that, so my boss and I thought that was a bad idea, the raw titanium. Because raw titanium really looks like your stainless steel kitchen sink. It has that same gray, silvery, so we pushed for gold plating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So it can breathe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, and probably at that time, gold was probably $300 or $400 an ounce. And now it’s, you know, it fluctuates between, I don’t know, $1400 and $1800 an ounce now. Maybe if it was at that price, and I went out and did some research and I found a local company that did gold plating down in Lorton, right off, you know, like within a mile off 95. I can’t remember the exit. But I actually went down and visited them. And talked to them about it. And so what I learned is they can’t plate titanium. They have to put a nickel plate on the titanium, and then gold on the nickel. So I think that we ended up getting the nickel plating done somewhere else and the gold plating down there. And the, and the gold is 23.999% pure gold, 20 karat, 24 karat is pure. And this is 23.999. I mean this is pure as 24 karat. Yes. It’s pretty thin plate. I don’t know what the micron measurement aspect, but anyway, our office definitely made that happen or voiced loud enough that it happened. Our conservators weren’t crazy about the idea because they were concerned that, you know, if you touched it, it might scratch. Or if you, you know, people handling it, and they, they were going to be handling these things. There, the, the, the conservators have to maintain the, the vaults and the documents. And so they’re concerned about people touching, their staff touching them, and the fingerprints not coming off the gold very well, but that’s how we got gold plated. And of all the projects I’ve been involved here, I was involved in the project in ‘99, 2000, and 2001 until we had a final design. And then NIST built the encasements in their shops out in Gaithersburg in 2000, 2001, and 2002. And I wasn’t really privy to the budget, but it was a few million dollars to build those encasements. Because there were so many high level consultants involved in part of the team—you know, there was a lot of research on what glass we use. And how do we finish the interior of the aluminum bases, which turned out to be, again, Exhibits had a big influence here. We suggested a black interior so with the minimal light you couldn’t really see the interior. If you could see the interior of the bases are made of aluminum. The black that you see around the document on the platform are hard anodized aluminum. And if there was enough light in there you could probably see the machine marks. Because the aluminum, the bases, were machined from about 4 inch deep, 4-1/2 deep by 45 or 42 inch by 30 inch, 30-something inch blocks of aluminum. And there was research on what grade of aluminum are we going to use. I mean, I didn’t know there was so many different kinds of aluminum. But we used something that was referred to as aircraft quality. And there’s a designation for it, anyway. The NIST people were very knowledgeable and they made the recommendation of what aluminum we used. But, the bases are all machined out. There’s no welds. So those encasements with the frames and the bases are about that deep, outside dimensions. If you ever get a chance, up in the Public Vaults, which would be the southeast corner, is a little film of one of our meetings at NIST. And there’s kind of a quarter model, a full-scale quarter model of how the encasement is built. And it’s a pretty interesting thing. Because it’s machined just like, before they machined the final, so that we had some models to work with and approve. And so you can actually see how those encasements are built if you look. We have a quarter model in an exhibit case that’s the quarter model is displayed, I believe, on a 30 degree angle. Maybe it’s a 45, I can’t remember, with a mirror on the bottom so you can see what’s going on in the bottom of the encasement. And, so that was one of my major projects. Probably the project that I’ll always feel the best about. Very interesting project because I got to see the actual sheets of documents, actually, you know, set on the platforms and make sure they fit. And where that work was done in a secret location in College Park, where they were located for a few years. You know, while the Rotunda was closed down. So it was very interesting to get to see those like that close and outside of any kind of glass or encasement. I think that was your question, what interesting projects." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was, that is definitely fascinating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. The most recent project that I worked on that was a pretty interesting project to me, was the exhibit about the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis. Because in 1963, I think I was in seventh or eighth grade. And sat in our living room with my parents watching Kennedy give that speech about the danger that’s at hand because he gave the speech about the Russians have missiles in Cuba. And the missile range pretty much covers the United States. And, and that, you know, people need to be prepared. Because Kennedy was determined to force Khrushchev to take the missiles out. Anyway, the exhibit was designed by Ray Ruskin and me. And it was, 50 years, ‘63. So it was the 60th anniversary. No, 50th anniversary in 2013. It was called To the Brink: the Cuban Missile Crisis or, I think the Cuban Missile Crisis was the sub-title and To the Brink was the title. And a lot of original documents, and the curator was Stacey Bredhoff, who works at the Kennedy Library. She used to work here. And she worked with Ray and me to come up with that exhibit. So that’s another exhibit that I’m very proud of. And, you know, it was an exhibit that was important to me because it was an event that I remember very clearly. And it was a scary time. Because Kennedy went right on national television, you know, right after evening news. And made this announcement that this was happening. And, it was scary because it was at a time when people were making bomb shelters, you know. The threat of nuclear war was pretty high with the nuclear testing was going on. The Russians were testing and then we would test a bigger bomb. And then they would test a bigger bomb. And that was going on in that period. So I remember it well. And so working on that exhibit was very interesting for me. There’ve been a lot of other exhibits between now and when I started here in ‘94. But that one stands out. The Charters encasement project stands out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, do you have any interaction with tourists or with researchers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, our curators research their own exhibits. Do you mean if I have, oh, do I have interaction with tourists?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the process of conducting your job with the exhibits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I understand. It’s not part of my job to interact with tourists. But sometimes I’m up there. I mean, I’m up in our exhibits frequently. And if tourist asks questions, you know, typically they’ll see the badge. And, you know, so every once in a while a tourist will come up to me and ask a question about an exhibit. And if it’s something I have an answer for, I’ll interact with them. If it’s something I can’t answer, I will try to get information and either get a way to contact them or give them the name and a phone number to contact. Usually one of our curators. So I don’t have a lot of interaction with tourists, but it’s not part of my job. I’m not a spokesman for the Archives. I’m a behind the scenes guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well have there been any challenges that you’ve had to face working here at NARA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m going to try to say this as, as simply as I can. Having worked at the Detroit Institute of Arts, which was a quasi-city organization, but was run more by a foundation. Having worked there for a few years in the 70s and into the early 80s, and then working at the Smithsonian’s small Museum of African Art, which had a staff of 50 or 53 people top to bottom, the level of bureaucracy was very minimal in those places. And so, probably one of the biggest adjustments for me here at the Archives, to do your job, it’s a heavy bureaucracy. Sometimes I think that it’s that way, not because it’s a government agency, but it used to be part of the GSA. And I think when I first came here there was a lot of the paperwork, a lot of work orders and, you know, Form SF, standard form, number, number, number. I mean we had a lot of that. And I think it was a carry-over from when the Archives split and became an independent agency from the GSA, I believe in 1985. So I believe some of the bureaucracy has carried over. But, in my experience, it’s gotten heavier. Especially in the last five years. So that’s a challenge for any creative people. Now, I think the curators there’s maybe not as much so, but the designers, we’re involved in designing and getting the things built by outside contractors. And so there’s a lot of laws and restrictions about, you know, contracts can only be a certain amount. And if they’re over a certain amount, then they have to go out widely available to bidders. And there’s a lot of hoops to jump through. And, and I’m going to say this very straight forwardly, the most recent restructure, from where I sit, has not made anybody’s life better here. I haven’t talked to one person who feels that it’s made our operation more efficient and better. That’s just the way I feel about it. That’s been my experience. I hope it works out in the long run. But I’ve been here for 20 years. So, you know, every time we get a new Presidential appointee, two out of the four that have been here in the time I’ve been here, have restructured the place. The first one was John Carlin, who was, who was a governor. And he was a pretty dynamic Archivist. And I think that his restructure worked fairly well. He was here during the renovation, during the changeover from when we shut down the Rotunda for two years and had the renovation. But the most recent change, combined with the government budget cuts, I don’t know. A lot of people are not happy about the change, they don’t see how it’s really helped us. In my mind it makes more sense for the Archives to hire the Archivist and not the White House. And let the Archives hire, you know, either someone who knows how the place has worked in the past. And knows how to make it work better. Or, you know, or have a national search for an experienced Archivist, whether it’s the head of a state archives but, I don’t know that the Presidential appointee thing works best for the Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the sequestration of recent years, but has there been any other significant events that have, that’s affected your career? Like Presidential elections or September 11th attacks, any interesting stories?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, September, September 11th has had a big impact on the Archives in that the people who ran the security operation in the Archives prior to September 11, was, well, there were two people down here and there were more people out at College Park. And things were quite different. We didn’t have our bags inspected as we left each day. We didn’t have all of these magnetic passes from one part of the building to the other. People like myself and the curators had access to stack areas. And, of course, the stack areas that had the more valuable things, the priceless things, those were locked and those were maintained by archivists. And you had to make arrangements to get in to see, you know, for example, the Emancipation Proclamation was kept in a vault along with some other documents, and sometimes we would have to go up there for one reason or another, either to take a measurement because it’s going in our upcoming exhibit. So it’s a lot harder to get access to the storage areas now. Although, I just heard recently that they’re reintroducing the idea or somebody’s trying to reintroduce the idea to give curators access again because curators actually used to go into the vault areas when they’re looking for certain subject materials, they could go into these storage areas and go through the storage boxes and just kind of leaf through documents and look at them without having to check them out and go to a reading area or, you know, one of the public research areas out in College Park. In fact, I think, there was a time when curators checked out those materials and took them to their office to look at them more closely. There were proper procedures for doing that. It wasn’t just sort of they walk in and bring something back to their office. So the security of the building and the size of the security staff, the professional NARA staff, has changed a lot since 2001. And I think early on there was thought that those documents could be a target. I don’t know where you were September of 2001. But, you know, a lot of us were waiting for the next shoe to drop after those initial bombings. I remember I’d take the bus to go over to the Pentagon. I mean, I took the train to the Pentagon. I live in Annandale. I take the train to the Pentagon and then I take a bus from the Pentagon out to Annandale. That’s my public transportation route every day for a lot of years. And I remember after 9/11, my thought was Washington, you know, Washington is going to get hit again, sooner or later. And I always thought, in that period, we didn’t know if there was another hit coming shortly, the logic was, very possible there is. So I avoided the subway. I thought the subway, you know, a place like L’Enfant Plaza or, you know, these big intersections where there’s a number of trains stopped at once and a lot people, so L’Enfant Plaza and what’s the one up here on the Yellow Line, the first one up? Well, the next two stops on the Yellow Line where they intersect with the Red Line and those kind of places I thought there were perfect places for a bomb. So for six months I went out here on Seventh Street and caught a bus over to the Pentagon rather than the train. And in the morning I would transfer from one bus at the Pentagon to another bus, a local bus that came in here. For six months after 9/11. So, that was the effect on me personally. So I’m not surprised that the Archives’ security was beefed up and changed significantly. In fact, we have a lot of ex-military security people running the security operation here at the Archives. Dave Adams is a 20-year Air Force guy. I’m not sure what his position in the military was, but I think he was in security. So we have a lot of, Dave Adams, who’s the head guy here in this building. What was your question again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If any major events have affected your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Affected my career? Well, I think coming here in 1994 from the Museum of African Art changed my career a lot. Because it’s a very different kind of place than an art museum or a cultural, African Art is kind of a cultural museum as much as an art museum, African culture museum. And, you know, I stayed here. I stayed here a long time. I had one possible opportunity for another exhibit design position when I was about 50 years old. It was out in Kansas City, in Nelson-Atkins Museum. I had an interview but I wasn’t offered a position. But it was at a point in my career where I had to decide am I going to stay in the government or am I going to go back and work in an art museum where I came from? And after I had been given an interview date, I went out there and checked out the museum, incognito. I went out there on my own money. I wanted to look at the facility and their collection before I went out there a couple of weeks later for the interview. And so that’s when I made a choice to stay here at the Archives. And I had been here, at that point I had been here five or six years, I guess. So I think just coming here changed my career a lot. And, working here I’ve gained an appreciation for what the Archives does. And the rich variety of the kinds of material we have here, the history of the country. And, and I’ve come to appreciate these old, original documents, even these very simple 19th century typeset with the big signatures. I don’t know. And the only other thing I would say changed my career here, was being involved in that encasement project. I think I met a wider range of people who work here. And developed somewhat of a kind of a solid guy kind of reputation. Interacting with a number of people from other offices and outside people, including the people out at NIST. I became golfing buddies with a couple of people at NIST as a result of working with them for two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well do you have any associations or organizations you’re a part of, such as the SAA or any of the others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve been in and out of the American Association of Museums, as a member. I’ve gone to AAM conferences off and on through the last 25 years. But other than that, no. I don’t belong to any kind of exhibit design organization. I’m sure there are some out there. I’m not aware of them. No. I guess I’m just not that ambitious about this, this career, to be involved in a lot of different, frankly, for many years the job has been very demanding. And there’s just not a lot of time for a lot of other kinds of committees and outside organizations. At least from my perspective. A lot of other people, professional people, join organizations. I don’t know. It’s just never been my inclination." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That actually reminds me of a question I had for you earlier. In your work, do you have any connection with the Boeing Learning Center, since it’s also on the museum side of the building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I did not. One of the people in our staff who was a curator, left a few years ago to go work for the, I think he’s working for the White House Visitor Center. His name is Will Sandoval. And Will is a former military man. He was a major in the Army, who was in the Gulf War. And still talks about it with great fondness, his experience in the Gulf War. Of course, most military experience in the Gulf War was a lot different than the Iraq War. But Will was a very capable person. And he had the discipline, had the follow-through discipline of his military background. I was in the Navy a long time ago. So I kind of know there’s a discipline that you learn when you’re in the service. If you’re in the Army now, and you come out of boot camp and you go to Iraq. And then you come back for a few months and you go back to Iraq. I don’t know if you have that same discipline that you carry into your professional world after you get out, as Will might have had. But Will Sandoval was part of the planning, working with the Foundation and Marvin Pinkert and Lee Ann Potter, who was the head of the Education Program at that time. So, Will worked in our office. Lee Ann Potter worked for Marvin Pinkert. And between Lee Ann and Marvin and Thora Colot, who ran the Foundation at that time, the Boeing Learning Center is their vision, a combination of the group. And Will was the one from our office that worked with the contractor to get it built and installed. And we miss Will because Will gets things done. He knows how to communicate with the contracting world. And a respectful communication and therefore gets cooperation and we miss him here. But, Will Sandoval, in our office, was responsible for the fabrication, getting the fabrication and the installation done. And Marvin Pinkert, Lee Ann Potter, and, to some extent, the Foundation, who paid for it with Boeing’s funds. The Foundation is the one who solicited the funding from Boeing. They’re the ones responsible for the Learning Center, the in-house people that are responsible. I had nothing to do with that project. That work was all being planned and done in a period between 2001 and 2004. I can’t remember when the Learning Center opened. I think it opened around 2004. But Ray Ruskin and I were involved in planning and working on designs of the exhibits that were going to in the new O’Brien Gallery, which was also new in 2003, I think, when the building re-opened we opened a new exhibit in there. There may have been a few months delay on that. But, in the O’Brien Gallery we have changing exhibits. Some of the exhibits have been as short as three months. And other exhibits has been up almost a year over the last 10 or 11 years. But those will continue to be changing exhibits in that space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think it’s going to be difficult to let go of your duties and responsibilities from the Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do. And this is something that is sort of becoming clearer to me. I announced to my boss and our staff that I was going to retire sometime in late March. I made the announcement that I was going to retire April 30th. And then in April there were some financial advantages to changing to the end of May. And so, two weeks after I started processing for April 30, I changed my mind to May 30th. And since then I figured out I do have some apprehension about retirement. I feel like I have a lot invested our Rotunda. There is one other project that I would like to talk a little bit about that was very important to me. But I’ll talk about it after, we recently redid the lighting in the Rotunda and in the East and West Gallery and in what we call the Constitution Avenue Foyer, which is that area below the steps up into the Rotunda where the big vaulted ceiling is. And we used to bring the public in that way. But, what was your question again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Letting go of the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Letting, letting the work go, yeah. Yeah. I think I have cared about a lot of the work. I care about the Rotunda. And I care about the quality of the work in the galleries. And I care about the upkeep of the galleries. And part of me worries that, and maybe this is just an egoistic thing. But part of me worries that if I’m not here, other people don’t pay attention to those things. And you know how, if somebody in the office is taking care of something on a daily basis or weekly basis, nobody else worries about it, because so-and-so’s taking care of it. Now another guy in our office is tasked with overseeing the day-to-day maintenance and operation of the two permanent exhibits, the Records of Rights t and the Public Vaults. But, I don’t know. The Rotunda is kind of like this hallowed space. And, yeah. I kind of worry and it’s hard for me to let go of making sure that everything goes well up there, because I was involved in the design and the eventual production of the exhibit cases up there, all of them. I wasn’t the designer. But I was involved in the team of people that oversaw it, come up with the requirements, what we needed there. And in all those cases, so I have a lot of my work and time here is invested in a lot of what’s in the Rotunda. Even including the inside structures of the exhibit cases, the side cases on either side of them. So it’s, yeah, it’s hard to let go. Because right now we don’t have anyone really in charge of the Exhibits office. And I don’t know who they’re going to hire. But I hope they have a provision for maintaining. Because it really does take the Exhibits office to keep an eye on things, to keep things clean up there. And, because it’s kind of our exhibit areas. And so, if somebody’s not paying attention, stuff can go in disrepair and not be paid attention to and I’ve kind done a lot of that over the years. And so it’s hard to let go of that. And I’ve watched our exhibit program sort of be, well, more people from the outside are involved in our program. And I’m not always sure that’s for the best. And I’m worried about where that’s going. I’m not going to go into any detail about that, but I worry about the direction our Exhibit Program is going. Because we really haven’t had anybody in charge of it, anybody with a real strong vision since Marvin Pinkert left here two years ago. Chris Smith was our director in the time that Marvin was gone. And Chris is a long-time employee of the Archives who retired in December. And she was well-liked by a lot of people. And she did a good job of running the Exhibits Program. And, you know, her vision of the Exhibits Program was not the same as Marvin’s vision. And frankly, Marvin was a very dynamic person and I hope we get somebody like that to replace Chris, who has been gone now for nearly six months. And I hope we get a person to run the program that has vision and has influence with the people outside of our program, who has the trust of them. Yeah. I’m concerned about where we’re going. But, so, the Archives, you know, to a large extent, I’ve defined myself by my work here in the Archives, and the other museums that I worked in—I didn’t get married till later in life. I don’t have kids. So I think many of us who are single through most of our career, we tend to define our self-esteem and our identity is more about what we do rather than about our family, you know what I mean? I’m mean, it’s a generalization and I know. I have some, I have some apprehensions about the adjustment from being part of this all these years and getting up on the first Monday morning and realizing I’m not going to work anymore. But I’m also ready. I’m 65 and there have been a lot of stressful years, but it’s been pretty relaxed around here since we opened the Records of Right in December. And within our office it’s been a little more relaxed. There’s still a lot of work going on, but there’s a lot of pressures, exhibit deadlines, they’re never changed. That deadline got changed a month because of the government shutdown. The government shut down in November, October, I can’t remember when we were shut down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "October, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. It was, almost three weeks. And that exhibit was initially supposed to open in early November, I think. And it got pushed back to mid-December. I can’t remember if we opened, I think we opened before Christmas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And wasn’t the Archives, or the Federal government closed that day, when the exhibit opened? Or that was the Signatures exhibit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the Signature exhibit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was the closed the day of the snowstorm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The snow, yeah. No. But it wasn’t, yeah. I was here for the opening of the Records of Rights exhibit. I remember coming to work that day, going home, changing clothes, picking up my wife, and coming back for the evening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well you mentioned the lighting in the Rotunda, I wanted to the talk about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve been thinking about retirement for two years. And one of the things that I wanted to see finished that I had been sort of talking with the facilities manager about and talking to my boss about and we had a new lighting system put in the Rotunda when we opened in 2003. It was a fiber optic lighting system. And there had been some changes made to the fiber optic cabling that diminished the light quality a few years ago. And so we began to look into how to improve that. And meanwhile, LED lighting is sort of growing and getting better and better, the commercial LED lighting. And so I was involved in bringing an LED lighting designer and another company into the building who would install whatever lighting we put up there, whether we redo the cable, fiber optic cable lighting. They convinced me to not spend a couple hundred thousand dollars redoing the fiber optic or upgrading the fiber optic lighting that was already ten years old, and we would be better off investing a few more thousand dollars and tearing out all of the fiber optic lighting and putting all new LED lighting. And there was efforts on my part and my office’s part to have that happen. And we got facilities interested in the idea of having it happen, upgrading what we have. And so it was something that I started working on to make it happen, you know, kind of behind the scenes. I don’t have the authority to make something like that happen. But, over the years I have gained a certain amount of influence with certain people. And, and so we finally got to a point where people agreed with the idea of replacing the old system with the LED. So I worked with an engineer out in College Park, Ron McGanty, who’s a COR, who’s kind of in charge of big construction facilities projects like out at the libraries or this facility. And we wrote up a statement of work with some guidance by the LED people about what we needed. And so we wrote up a statement of work a year and a half ago. And got approval for it from people out at College Park, facilities management people, to go ahead. And when we got prices some people backed off and thought it was too much money. But in the end, the person in charge of facilities out at College Park said go ahead. And we were trying to get it done in a period, because scaffolding would have to be built. Because all these light fixtures up on the high ledges in the Rotunda and in the vaulted ceilings, everything’s up on high ledges. So, we thought scaffolding would have to be built. It would be on wheels and moved out into the work areas at night and moved back into the corner of the Rotunda in the daytime during public hours because we couldn’t shut the Rotunda down; the work had to be done at night. And we were working with Grunley, which a general contractor who’s been in the building now for, I don’t know, 12, 14, 15 years. And they get these kind of projects. The Archives does the funding through them. And they work as the general contractor. So I was determined to stay here till we finished up the Rotunda lighting. And finally got a contractor and got proposals last fall. And then we finally got a schedule to get it done in February. And our office certainly didn’t do it but I felt like I was part of that project and part of getting it done. And it goes in that territory where the lighting in there was kind of dingy, the fiber optic lighting. It had a certain color to it, and so we got this cooler light that’s a little cleaner looking with the new LED system. And, not to mention part of the reason the project got approved out in College Park by the facilities manager, the over-all facilities manager out there, was the Archives is on a mission—and it’s all in Federal government is on—to use less and less carbon energy. So by taking all of those 100, 200, 150 watt metal halide fiber projectors, the source of the light goes through the fiber into the light heads that disperse the light. By removing all of those and putting in this LED system we’re using about 20% of the energy that we were using for the same space just six months ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The LED fixtures are not cheap. And they only last six to eight years and you got to replace them. But, but they’re not using carbon. The fixtures themselves, you know, like 8 or 9 watts is equivalent to a 65 watt fixture, the LED 8 or 9 watt output is, produces the same light that a 60 or 65 watt fixture does. So—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we’re pulling a lot less electricity to light the Rotunda. Probably about 20 to 25% of what we were using before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well have you been recognized with any awards or citations in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I got an Archivist Achievement Award, a group, you know, along with a larger group of people, for both the Charters Encasement Project and the new Rubenstein Gallery project, Record of Rights exhibit. I certainly earned other spot awards over the years. I can’t really sit here and tell you what they are. I’ve never been motivated by awards. But I’m appreciative of the awards I’ve got. I may have gotten another one for the Magna Carta exhibit that we put up a couple of years ago, but I can’t remember. But I’m the kind of person that all of those certificates that I’ve gotten over the years are stuffed in a couple of folders in a file. I appreciate them but I’m not one of those guys that’s got them all up on the wall in my office. Not even one of them. But I do appreciate that I’ve been recognized. Yeah. I feel like I’ve been recognized, well-recognized for my work here at the Archives through the years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. What do you see as the biggest challenges for the National Archive in the future? From your perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well, I don’t have a lot of insight, I have no insight into the Archives side of the Archives. I don’t interact with the Archives side very much. And I don’t know the archivists in the Archives. I’ve always been on the exhibits area and pretty much stay to myself and within our office over the years. So I’m sure there’s a lot of Archives issues. I know that there’s a lot of issues with electronic records and how does the Archives collect those from government agencies? How do we store them? Because there’s so many different forms and formats. And I know that’s a big issue. I think that the, I think that the current structure of the Archives is going to be a challenge through the years with, in the incoming years. I know that the people who created the structure probably don’t like, hearing that, but that’s my perspective. I think, I’m not sure it’s going to work over the long term. I don’t know what the right answer is, so I don’t speak up a lot about it to them because I don’t have a better idea. I thought things worked okay before. And I don’t think that things work better now. So I think that that’s going to be a challenge. The, I think one of the big challenges for the Archives and will be for the Archives, I think the idea of a changing political appointment for the Archivist in the United States every time we change presidents, I think that, I don’t know that that works good for the Archives itself. I think they come in meaning well and wanting to make a difference, wanting to, but, you know, sometimes you’re, they’re only here for, we had one guy that was only here for two years, Mr. Weinstein. And I don’t know what the background reasons for that were. I mean I’ve heard things, but I, and then, and then we got the current Archivist after Mr. Weinstein left. And he’s the one that brought in the corporate structure. At least that’s the way I understand it. And I, I’ve heard it described that way. So I, I, I think that having a new Archivist every several years that wants to reinvent the wheel, and that’s happened several times in the 20 years I’ve been here, I don’t, I don’t know that that is, is good for the Archives. It frustrates the people who, the people, the career people here who, you know, nobody likes change. I mean sometimes change is necessary and sometimes change is good. But change for the sake of change is not always necessarily good. I’m not saying that’s what we have now. I don’t believe that the change we have now is for the sake of change. I believe that, that the Archivist and his team, you know, genuinely believed that a new structure would be beneficial. But I know a lot of employees around here who don’t see it. And so I think that’s going to be a challenge. And, but I’ve, I really, I have, I have, I have nothing against the current Archivist of the United States. I mean, I’m sure he’s doing the best he can do. And he’s doing it in good faith trying to do the best he can do. But I think we need career archivists who are excellent, to have the ability to rise to the level of the Archivist of the United States. And several years ago, and I can’t remember if George Bush appointed John Carlin or if he’s, if he’s, I think it was George Bush that, in early, no, it had to have been, it had to have been Clinton. John Carlin was a pretty good archivist even though he didn’t have any, he didn’t have any archives experience. He was a politician from Kansas. He was a conservative Democratic governor of Kansas. And a successful one that served, I believe he served two terms out there and then he got, and he was a pretty effective archivist because he trusted the Archives’ staff to, to reorganize itself. And he brought about the reorganization. And I think, I think, I don’t think he wanted to leave when, when the new president, I think it was George Bush that appointed Mr. Weinstein. And Mr. Weinstein replaced John Carlin. Are you familiar with, have you ever looked at the photographs over here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I think Carlin was, was pretty well liked by the staff. He was a, he was a hands-on archivist. Our current Archivist is a hands-on archivist. As far as the other challenge, it’s probably recovering from the drastic budget cuts that the Archives has taken, you know, in the last four years. And in that time the Exhibits Operation budget has been trimmed to, to very minimal amount. And now we’re depending on the Foundation to raise money for exhibits. And if we keep, if we keep trying to create these expensive interactive exhibits, they’re, they require a lot of funding and, and maintenance. And so, I think funding of exhibits is going to continue to be a challenge. But I, I think they always will because it’s a real positive face of the National Archives. It is our, the public face of National Archives and it introduces to the public that come in here as tourists to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And they happen to wander into our galleries. It, it opens their eyes to the fact that we’re, we have all this other stuff. And that, that our records of the history of the country or the history of the government of the country. And so I think there’ll always, you know, I think the exhibits will always be funded. I just think it, I think, I think the government, the Archives recovering from these budget cuts, which doesn’t look they’re going to grow anytime soon, or they’re going to grow our budget anytime soon. It’s going to take, take a while. It’s going to be a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well my last question for you is, what are you going to miss the most?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There’s a camaraderie here amongst the exhibit staff. So I’ll miss a number of people that I’ve worked with for a lot of years, especially within the Exhibits and the Public Programs part of the, part of the Archives. And, and frankly, the work has been very gratifying. The actual work, not, not the hoops that you have to jump through in the bureaucracy to get the work done. But, the actual work has been, has been very gratifying. And the exposure to a lot of very interesting documents. I mean, being with them, you know, on, on, you know, in, in back rooms and storage areas and seeing these things first hand. And just learning about what’s here. But I would say two things, the people that I’ve worked with, not all the people I’ve worked with, but a lot of the people I’ve worked with. And I’m being a little facetious. I think, I think if everybody’s honest, you know, you don’t enjoy working with all the people you work with, but you enjoy working with some or most of the people you work with. But, but the work and the people, you know, the people I’ve worked with has been the most, the most gratifying. And then, of course, within the work was, was the projects that I’ve mentioned, have been most, to me, it was a privilege to work on the, the encasement of the charters documents project. I mean, it was just downright lucky for a guy who grew up in a small town in Michigan. And fumbled his way through college on his own. And ended up here at the National Archives. And when I think about it, it’s pretty amazing to me because it wasn’t planned. Just, just kind of happened. So, working at the National Archives, for me, is a pretty big deal. And I’ll always be proud of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Is there anything else you want to discuss or mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I’ve talked and babbled on long enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Brian Knowles", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Thank you for your time sir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michael L. Jackson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks. Thanks for giving me this opportunity. I appreciate it. I—" + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00028", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/AlltonJH/alltonjh.htm", + "original_file_name": "AlltonJH_10-12-17.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/AlltonJH/AlltonJH_10-12-17.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Judith H. Allton", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 12 October 2017" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Judith H. Allton" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is October 12, 2017. This interview with Judy Allton is being conducted at the Johnson Space Center for the JSC Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for coming in this afternoon and walking across campus. My car said it was 91 degrees when we walked back, so we appreciate you coming over.\\n\\n Today we were going to talk about the Genesis Discovery [Program] mission. I was curious how you got involved with that mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an opportunity for me to participate in a flight mission. As you know, I’ve worked with the lunar samples for a long time, but I didn’t participate in actually collecting those since I didn’t come until ’74. This was an opportunity to see how you prepare something to fly and how to make it work.\\n\\n Also the planetary science community was very interested in determining the precise solar composition. All the studies on the lunar rocks and meteorites and other planetary bodies really needed to know the elemental and isotopic composition of the starting material, the solar nebula, thought to be captured in the Sun’s composition. There were a lot of science folks who thought, “Wow, that’s going to be critical information.”\\n\\n I was asked to participate in Genesis by Eileen [K.] Stansbery, who is currently JSC chief scientist. Eileen became the contamination control officer for this mission, even though Genesis was managed at [NASA] JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]. The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin [Corp.], but JPL built the payload containing the solar wind collectors.\\n\\n This, as the Discovery missions are, was a PI [principal investigator]-driven mission. The principal investigator was Don [Donald S.] Burnett of Caltech [California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California], who’s done a lot of work making laboratory measurements on lunar and meteorite rock chemistry and isotopes. He had been very keen to determine that key piece of information—the solar composition as determined by direct measurement of solar matter. Previously, estimates of solar composition were derived from meteorite analyses.\\n\\n All of the people on the Genesis Science Team are precision chemists in the lab, and persnickety, especially isotopers, who work in ultraclean laboratories. They have a reputation for washing down the lab walls and suiting up in cleanroom garments to keep the room clean. I came from that background, because my background is chemistry and isotope geology, and I worked in the Lunar Lab, which we keep in pristine shape. In the Lunar Lab, we care about the chemical composition of the paint on the wall, the floor, etc., because certain trace atoms can interfere with the age dating for Moon rocks.\\n\\n So I had the mindset, I think, of being a persnickety chemist, and Don Burnett was an amiable guy. I respected his work a lot, Eileen’s also. He picked Eileen to be contamination control officer, and that is what made this Discovery mission, I think, unique in a lot of respects, even though the mission was managed by JPL. Genesis was unique by funding sample curation and allocation included in the proposal, and unique in performing the cleanest payload assembly in ISO [International Organizations for Standardization] 4 (Class 10) environment. That Don and the science team expressed confidence in the curation expertise and long experience by JSC Astromaterials curation was indeed a compliment!\\n\\n Those Discovery missions were smaller than flagship missions. Right now I’ve been peripherally involved in some of the Mars 2020 meetings, and that program involves a lot of people. The management structure is quite large, but Discovery mission management was small, with closer professional relationships and respect among team members.\\n\\n By all accounts Don Burnett worked very well with the JPL management, had some input into who was going to be on the JPL engineering team, and, between him and the JPL managers they chose excellent team members. It worked out very well. The engineers cared about the science, the precise composition of the Sun, and did their very best to make it work. Don is a real hands-on principal investigator, checking details. Not all of the Discovery mission PIs were. Don would call up and ask what we were doing. He would suit up and come into the lab. He visited all the laboratories operated by the science team, which was comprised of leading planetary scientists world-wide. It wasn’t a very—what do you call when you—?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hierarchical?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Anybody could talk to anyone else on a first name basis. Everybody who had hands-on access to the hardware to be used for collecting these samples pretty much understood what science results were going to come out of the mission, and that they had to be very careful about contamination control. It was a team built on mutual respect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned it was unique because it was a smaller group. Do you recall about how many folks were participating in this mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If I think back to the telephone list we used, there were about 250 people across groups at JPL, LMA [Lockheed Martin Astronautics], LANL [Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico], JSC, UTTR [Utah Test and Training Range], KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida], and, of course, the science team members from various universities. The largest number of people were at JPL and LMA. JPL managed the mission, mission design, navigation, and payload design and fabrication. LMA built the spacecraft and sample return capsule (SRC), and controlled the mission during flight from their control room in Denver. Los Alamos people built and calibrated the concentrator, an active collector that concentrated ions of the principal science goals—O, N, C.\\n\\n People at KSC were involved with launch, and people at UTTR were extremely helpful during recovery, especially after the parachute deploy failure and resulting hard landing. I should talk later how the UTTR people furnished all kinds of help in salvaging the payload, they are a real “can do” outfit. Karen McNamara was the JSC curation point-of-contact working with UTTR folks to prepare for recovery in 2004.\\n\\n Burnett and his science team, about 30 people, and JSC contamination control team, about 10 people, were invested in the mission from beginning to end. At time of Genesis launch in 2001, Burnett had been working on Genesis and its first-attempt proposal called Suess-Urey for about 20 years. [The Suess-Urey mission was named after two prominent scientists in the field of cosmochemistry—Drs. Hans E. Suess and Harold C. Urey]. The original science team members defined the collector materials in the 1990s. I also count, from people I worked with directly, about 15 payload people from JPL, 5-10 people from LANL, and 10-15 recovery people from LMA as being involved from mission design through hardware fabrication, cleaning, assembly, flight operations, recovery and allocation of samples to investigators. Having these long-term relationships was very useful during the sample analysis period, which still continues today, because I often consulted the payload and spacecraft people concerning materials which might be contamination sources on the surfaces of the collectors. This is a unique strong point of Genesis planning and teamwork.\\n\\n Materials scientist A. J. G. (Amy) Jurewicz is an example of someone involved long-term with Genesis. She was the Genesis project scientist at JPL pre-flight and most knowledgeable about the collector materials. She continues to be the “go to” person as we document how the collected materials were subtly changed by the space radiation environment.\\n\\n We at JSC were mostly concerned with cleaning and assembling the payload in [Federal Standard 209E] Class 10 conditions. Today it would be ISO Class 4. It’s very clean. We suited up entirely, and in those days we had Teflon-coated suits, with helmets. Everything exhausted, that you breathed out or that came off your body, went through a HEPA [high efficiency particulate air]-filter on the back. It was like a lightweight spacesuit, but it wasn’t a pressure suit. It was merely to keep people from shedding into the lab.\\n\\n We built the lab here at JSC because we had extensive experience in cleaning hardware associated with science samples. So the JPL payload engineers arrived at JSC with their payload. We and they took it apart. We cleaned the parts. They put it back together, but it was a well-integrated process, a smooth interaction. The JPL folks came to Texas in August and stayed here for months. Their processes were very different than ours. For Eileen Stansbery and I, it was an interesting difference, watching the meeting of cultures.\\n\\n I can remember when the people from JPL showed up with a truck, with their payload in it in hot weather here. They stepped out wearing their Hawaiian shirts, Bermuda shorts, and sandals, and here we were in our blue jeans. Jack [L. Warren] had a gimme [baseball] cap on. It just looked like two cultures meeting each other.\\n\\n They came from a place where they do big missions. They put spacecraft together in enormous, multistory clean rooms that weren’t really so clean by our standards. We asked them to work in a room that had only an eight-foot ceiling height. Because the top of the room was covered with ULPA [ultra low penetration air] filters, and the air would go straight down through the floor and then back up the sidewall. We had a laminar flow that would sweep particles down and away, but the ceiling wasn’t very high.\\n\\n They were pretty good sports, because we said, “Now all of you have to work in this not-too-high ceiling room. You have to wear this suit, which completely encloses your body. The head gear encloses your face and allows vision through a plastic face shield, the suit motor pulls all exhaled breath and particles shed from your body through a small HEPA filter, and gloves and boots complete the enclosure. When you install screws in the hardware, you can’t touch the screws with the gloves, you have to use tweezers.” They were either good actors or good sports, because they did it without grumbling.\\n\\n They had new rules for us as well. JPL is very careful about controlling electrostatic discharge during spacecraft assembly because it can cause undetectable damage, so we had to take ESD [electrostatic discharge control] training and become sensitive to ESD safe protocols.\\n\\n In addition to assembling a payload in Class 10, we were cleaning the hardware with ultrapure water (UPW). Measuring the carbon isotope composition of the Sun was one of the science goals. We felt like organic solvents would leave some organic residue, so the final cleaning was just water that’s very, very pure – ultrapure water. UPW has very high resistivity and acts a little bit like an acid, a little bit like a base. It is “hungry” water and removes many contaminants without leaving a residue. Our UPW production was 10 gallons per minute.\\n\\n The JSC team cleaned the payload hardware in one cleanroom. There were only about five of us that did all that work. We felt like the A-Team [television series] or Skunk Works [Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs]. We would work right into the night. We would go out to the hardware store or other places and buy equipment needed to make the lab work using our own money. We have one picture of people scrubbing the threads on very tiny screws. Everyone is fully suited up, and the “dishwashers” were 2 PhDs and a Master’s level geochemists. Because everybody put in a lot of effort, it was team-building work. That’s the JSC side. We would hand-off the cleaned hardware to the JPL team in assembly cleanroom.\\n\\n We started every day with a meeting to review actions. Eileen Stansbery set that up. The JSC-JPL team just worked really well together, because there weren’t very many of us. There were about four or five of them, and there were about four or five of us. There were some problems getting hardware cleaned and assembled but that got worked out. That was getting ready for flight. I note here that the families of everyone working this mission deserve credit for mission success because of the long hours required. People who work flight missions know this.\\n\\n Finally, all was cleaned and assembled. Then the payload canister, containing the 300 solar wind collectors, was closed for the final time in this room. Everybody present and watching was enclosed in Teflon fabric suits with faceplates. I thought, “The arrays with the polished collectors are so beautiful. Wow, I wonder what it will look like when we get it back.” Genesis was supposed to be launched in 2000 but didn’t get launched till 2001. Genesis re-entered Earth in September 2004. I was there in Utah for the return September 8, 2004, at 10 a.m. Genesis had been parked in a halo orbit at Earth-Sun L1 and was open to collect solar wind for about 27 months. That was just barely enough time to gather enough solar atoms in these collectors so people could make solar wind measurements above background level. All of Genesis involved cutting-edge analytical challenges." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wanted to go back and ask a couple questions. You mentioned Eileen Stansbery. She approached you with the possibility of working on the team?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She did. I was at an age where I thought I could do anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you come up with that contamination control document? Just being over at the old LRL [Lunar Receiving Laboratory] today was amazing. I’m thinking about all the things that went into contamination control. You have a much smaller space, but you obviously had to think about all of those things. Can you talk about how you started, and how that idea evolved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For contamination control procedures and processes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually started after the LRL. The rocks were moved out of the LRL, because in general the geology people felt they couldn’t keep it clean enough because of the materials and animals required by the hazard detection people. Plus, the geologists wanted to keep the samples under positive pressure nitrogen, which is what they did after quarantine was no longer required. They designed the building that’s now 31N especially for the purpose of keeping the lunar rocks clean and pristine, and it was done by a committee of about five planetary scientists. Most of them were isotopers because they’re picky about keeping labs clean, and all of them had built ultraclean laboratories. Two of these lunar facility committee members are notable not only for detailed attention to the new lunar facility back the 1970s, but also for their long service to Genesis mission serving, until recent time, on the oversight committee for allocations of Genesis samples: Dimitri [A.] Papanastassiou and Laurence [E.] Nyquist.\\n\\n The lunar facility committee worked closely with the engineering people on Building 31 to screen the elemental content of the flooring, the paint, and the wires that plug into the lights. For example, this subcommittee required that the brass plaques identifying doors as fire-rated doors be removed from the doors for contamination control reasons; brass is composed of elements that interfere with science results. It was very tightly managed. Everyone who worked there was focused on not bringing certain elements into the lab where they could inadvertently get in the samples. My chemistry background was helpful in this respect.\\n\\n While I worked in the Lunar Lab, one of the things I did was dissect lunar cores. The drive tubes from the last three missions are the main ones that I worked on. To get those out of the tube takes a lot of equipment, which is assembled inside of a nitrogen-filled glovebox inside of a cleanroom. We had detailed procedures because the assembly had to be done in a precise sequence. Extrusion and dissection of Apollo drive tube samples was a controlled and documented process with attention to detail. We used the same thing approach to define what we should do for Genesis, which had even more stringent contamination requirements.\\n\\n We put that laminar flow clean room on the first floor of the Lunar Sample Building (Building 31N). We did not have enough money or time to build a new lab for Genesis. But we chose the Lunar Sample Building location because I figured—or maybe Jack and I did—that that building would not blow away in a hurricane. As you know, the lunar sample facility is very solidly built. The lunar samples are up above what was the predicted extreme storm surge at that time. For the Genesis Lab we chose a space on the first floor directly below the Pristine Lunar Sample Lab, because the building was solid, and it was built out of materials compatible with Genesis contamination control requirements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the Teflon suits that you wore and the faceplates. Was that something that was on the market? Or was that something that you had to look at and develop? Was there other hardware or tools that you had to develop unique to that lab?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, those suits were on the market. The brand name was Dryden suits. I say Teflon, you’re probably picturing something like a Teflon bag and crinkly. It wasn’t that. It was actually—I think it was a polyester fabric. It just had a Teflon coating on it. That was used to cut down on particles being shed off the suit. I think they may make something similar now. Just recently we started getting rid of the old Dryden suits because those things have a certain shelf life. After Genesis crashed, we just worked in regular full suits with only eyes exposed, without the HEPA filter headgear. It didn’t seem to be required after we had retrieved collectors off the desert floor. Some new labs are looking at similar suits now. Those suits are not as common.\\n\\n We were riding the crest of the semiconductor industry innovation when we put Genesis Lab together. They’re very conscious of operating low-particle labs. People are very dirty, they shed about 7 pounds of skin and hair annually. Those suits were used in semiconductor industry in ultraclean labs, back around 1998 when we were putting the lab together.\\n\\n The industry has moved on. Now there’s more robots and less people, so the need for those suits is not what it once was. I don’t know if we could find the same thing again. Similar suits have gone into the medical-surgical arena. I’m not sure they’d be exactly the same." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had talked about cleaning that container when JPL brought that payload out. Were there some other cleaning solvents that you may have used before that? How big of a container are we talking about? How long did that whole process take?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The payload itself was the shape of a tuna can, about 30 inches across, about 18 inches high. It opened with a hinge, like a clam shell, and it was constructed of bare aluminum. A lot of spacecraft designers will finish off their aluminum parts with anodized finish, but anodized finish is kind of porous and can trap a lot of contamination, so Genesis did not use anodization surface treatment on the interior parts next to the collectors. On the exterior, the cover top was painted white for thermal management, and the bottom was anodized.\\n\\n This was the first experiment that I know of—I think it was the first payload ever assembled in an ISO Class 4 clean room. The aluminum did not have an anodized finish on it, or any kind of finish. We cleaned it with the water. I’m sure we created some aluminum oxide on there, and in fact if you use too hot a water it would get a little bit brown. We were careful with that. But we could get the particle counts down really low to level 25, when you collect the rinse water on those two big pieces.\\n\\n We had an ultrapure water tank that was a little bigger than the tuna can. It was taken down to its piece parts. The lid, with exterior white paint, and the bottom, with exterior hard anodize, were not submerged. For those we had a wand that would take the ultrapure water and put megasonic energy in it, so you could hose down those two large pieces, with very clean water that had been megasonically energized and would lift particles off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What does that mean? I don’t understand what that means." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Many labs submerge hardware to be cleaned in ultrasonic cleaners. The ultrasonic energy loosens the particles so they can be washed away. Megasonic is a higher energy level. The cleaning effects are slightly different than ultrasonic. Our device provided a shower of megasonically energized ultrapure water aimed at the object to be cleaned. It’s like taking a shower versus taking a bath. In the bathtub you’re sitting with the dirt, in the shower the dirt is washed down the drain. There was that difference. By particle counts that we took, it worked really well, getting these large, odd-shape pieces particle-free and cleaned up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did that process take you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Trying to recall the dates. If we were to clean one piece, like the bottom or the top, it would be a daylong thing: getting it in there, cleaning it up. Then you had to take nitrogen jets and dry it. All of this was in a fairly particle-free room. You’d set that out overnight. It would be ready to assemble the next day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you say this was also manufactured in a clean room? So if it was, what was the idea or the intent behind having to clean the equipment again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think payload parts were manufactured in a regular machine shop, perhaps with care to keep it clean. Additionally parts arrived from JPL cleaned and bagged, but their typical flight cleaning requirements were not sufficient to meet the science requirements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, it was. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did some precleaning on it, you know wiping. We actually used a little bit of surfactant. In this case it was Joy [dishwashing liquid], two drops of Joy in a whole pan of water, but that was just to get handling debris off of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There was concern about contamination. Is that why it had to be clean? Were you concerned about bringing life here and sending it to the Sun? I’m just curious about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We weren’t concerned about biology. It’s just that small particles of any kind, if they got onto the collector surfaces, would make it harder to analyze the solar wind. Most of the solar wind collection surfaces were highly polished. Most of them were silicon wafers. That was a semiconductor product of the time. It’s another reason Genesis happened at the right time to match the semiconductor industry. They were making a lot of very pure silicon wafers and they knew how to get them superclean.\\n\\n We didn’t actually clean the polished wafers that we bought. They came off a process line from the suppliers that produced the cleanest wafers. Science team members analyzed several samples and determined who provided the purest, cleanest wafers.\\n\\n Those arrays, on which the mirror polished hexagonal-shaped wafers were mounted, were objects of beauty! This was an interesting lesson in the value of contamination control personnel having “eyes on” the fabrication processes. The arrays were delicately and precisely carved out with a process called electric discharge machining (EDM), which is a wire that cuts the metal using high voltage and is a relatively dirty process. Metal particles from the wire become embedded in the cut piece. These process details are not always obvious to the contamination control monitors, nor the science effects straightforward to the engineers tasked with fabricating the hardware.\\n\\n When cleaning the array frames at JSC, this problem was detected and mitigated by resurfacing the array frames. Residues of copper and zinc from the cutting process were detected by analysis of the cutting coupons collected and archived during fabrication. This example illustrates the value of acquiring and archiving reference and witness materials, for which Genesis curation is recognized. For Genesis we archived several kinds of reference materials: samples of all the materials used in constructing the Class 10 lab. This includes paint, fireproofing, flooring, caulk, and gaskets. Samples of spacecraft components: spare fasteners cleaned for flight, bags, RTV [room temperature vulcanizing] staking compound, lubricants, cutting oil, array frames including the outfall pieces from the EDM, engineering model spares. Most important reference materials were the non-flown collectors. These are critical for background measurements for analyzing solar wind collectors. In fact, over the years we have allocated 600 fragments of solar wind collectors and over 300 reference collectors. All of these reference materials are tracked in a database, just like Genesis-flown collectors.\\n\\n We were careful about clean hardware adjacent to the solar wind collectors. Micrometeorite impacts from interplanetary dust might hit the aluminum frame and splatter frame material on the collectors. That’s one reason we were so picky about everything that went into it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like it. You mentioned the suit. I’m just curious because also when we were over at [Building] 37 mentioned how every time somebody left that building they had to take a shower. Did you have other requirements beyond donning a suit for going in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we actually had people change out of their street clothes and put on scrubs under those suits just to keep from dragging particles from street clothes into the lab. Also that was cooler than most street clothes. The suits didn’t breathe all that well. Our precautions were for the purpose of keeping the interior of the suits clean and personnel comfort. The LRL procedure was for the purpose of containment of potential biohazards inside the LRL." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine with Teflon on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because the clean room—the air coming from the ceiling to the floor travels at 100 linear feet per minute. So what does that make, 12 air changes a minute? That “vertical breeze” cools things off a lot just because the air is moving. In the LRL the scrubs were the lab outfit. They made people take off everything and put on laboratory-furnished scrubs. They had to take off everything and shower out before they could leave. They were just trying to make sure no one carried anything hazardous out of the lab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever go visit any clean labs in Silicon Valley as you were creating this lab? Or did you just read up on literature and decide, “These are the things that we need to have as we’re constructing this lab”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We attended—between Eileen, Jack, and I—several semiconductor conferences. They provided clean room classes, suit classes, air shower classes. We went to the trade shows. That’s where we got our megasonic cleaner that we used and the cascade tanks. Most of those things were not very expensive. Back in those days several semiconductor trade shows were in Austin, so we could drive. It was very economical." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So most everything was off the shelf. It wasn’t anything newly created for JSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of our equipment was off the shelf, and one Genesis contribution was adapting ultrapure water for cleaning flight hardware and assembling the payload in a Class 10 environment. After the crash, we made another significant contribution by adapting a wafer spin cleaner and using it to megasonically spin clean selected Genesis collector fragments. That works well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you come up with that idea?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Using the spin cleaner to clean contaminant particles from Genesis samples, after the crash, was the idea of Michael [J.] Calaway. Using UPW to clean hardware was driven by the need to discontinue using Freon 113 to clean lunar tools. We had an enormous Freon still that was, I don’t know, six or eight feet high. Our metal parts that we cleaned for tools and containers for use in the lunar cabinets would be cleaned with Freon. Every once in a while we find a piece of hardware that was cleaned with Freon years ago and still bagged. Of course we haven’t used Freon in decades, but the Freon-cleaned pieces are exceptionally clean.\\n\\n When we had to move away from Freon, we moved to was ultrapure water. Curation built an ultrapure water system. It’s a water plant. It’s equivalent to Milli-Q water that people use in small quantities in labs. The resistivity is high, over 18-megaohm. We had several hundred feet of piping, supplying several labs, producing about eight gallons a minute. We produce enough to flush lunar glove boxes, meteorite glove boxes, clean hardware with UPW water heaters. We had that in place already. Don Burnett, thinking he didn’t want to have any organic residue left on the hardware, thought we could use UPW. So we did. A note about the ultrapure water—UPW cannot be captured in a container and used at another location. The UPW reacts with container walls and soon is no longer ultrapure. Labs using UPW have to be attached to the circulating loop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you briefing him on all of these developments as you were working on the clean room and the contamination plan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He knew about the water, because we had switched over to cleaning lunar tools that way. We picked a cleanliness level, and what we would need to achieve that cleanliness level. Since it was similar to the semiconductor industry, Don Burnett was agreeable, because they had already been buying materials cleaned by the semiconductor industry for collectors and analyzing them. They were satisfied that they were clean enough. They were probably the cleanest anyone could get things in those days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How far out had you been working on this clean room? Was it before they started building the spacecraft? Or was it as they were designing and building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Genesis was initially proposed as Discovery Mission called Suess-Urey. Suess-Urey Mission did not get selected that time, but our sister sample return mission Stardust did. However, many elements of the solar wind mission had been already developed. We’d already written the contamination control plan, of which I was a major contributor. When another round of Discovery competition opened, the basic elements of Suess-Urey plus improvements were submitted under the name Genesis, something that sounded more attractive, I guess. A lot of the Phase A work was already done.\\n\\n We had already thought about how to do this clean room, so when it was selected late in 1997 it was a matter of getting the Center (JSC) to support the facility, which Eileen Stansbery negotiated and is most knowledgeable about those details. JSC provided engineering support and funding for preparing an existing room in 31N into which a Class 10 cleanroom could be placed. The cost was very modest, since we were just setting a clean room inside of an existing room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The whole mission wasn’t that expensive. I saw the cost. It’s very modest, especially compared to a Space Shuttle flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. But what made it really go was the four or five of us were just all persnickety. We were after every detail. To prepare a clean room for this mission and to permit good analyses at that low sensitivity level, you have to watch all the details, and sometimes that’s not really appreciated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure some people, maybe facility people, got a little frustrated at times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The facility people back in ’98 and ’99, they were a pleasure to work with. We explained what we were trying to do. We met with hands-on workers every morning. We took particle counts in the laboratories adjacent to where workers were preparing the room in which the Class 10 room would be placed. We’d say, “Okay, the particle count was this yesterday.” So they knew we were measuring how much mess they were creating. Actually the particle counts were quite good, so that was encouraging. They were very careful. That worked very well.\\n\\n What the JSC site people did, they created a lovely shell. The shell was coated with clean room paint, the flooring was cleanroom compatible, the incipient fire detection system installed, and the air handler ductwork was sealed to prevent shedding. It was beautiful and still is today. An outside contractor with expertise in cleanroom construction built the cleanroom inside of the shell room. The walls, raised floor, and ceiling were assembled from pre-made struts and panels. The Genesis cleanroom consisted of total ceiling coverage with ULPA fan filter units. There were 55 FFUs [fan filter units] all hung from the bottom deck of the Lunar Lab. This was a creative solution from the contractor to save space and maximize room size.\\n\\n We got a fairly large size room in a small space. They knew what they were doing. Looking back, all that worked well, because we were meeting with them every day, monitoring the material composition, and explaining if we had concerns. I’m not sure you could do that on a larger scale." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How big is that room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The lower elevation room is something like 20 feet by 10 feet. The upper room is 15 feet by 15 feet. There’s a corridor that connects them on two levels. The original use for the rooms that became Genesis Lab included a public viewing room and restrooms. These rooms were dropped down two and a half feet lower to confine any water from the restrooms and prevent the water from entering lab areas where samples were handled. This was a wise original decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That makes sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The original Lunar Sample Building was well done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned JPL coming out here. Did you have the opportunity to go out to JPL or Lockheed at any time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did not go to JPL or LMA during mission development. One reason is that I was extremely busy at JSC getting the cleanroom ready. Eileen participated in meetings at JPL as the principal JSC representative. I interacted more with JPL, Lockheed Martin, and UTTR in the interval after launch and getting ready for recovery. What we were going to do in Utah, and how to get ready for that. There was still more procedures that needed to be written. How did we want to document the handling environment at UTTR, witness plates, etc.? What was the process of retrieving the payload and the sample return capsule?\\n\\n Genesis sample return capsule was scheduled to re-enter at UTTR at 10 a.m., September 8, 2004. The recovery plan called for a mid-air retrieval of the capsule. After the parachute was deployed, slowing down the descent, the parachute was to be snagged using a hook towed by a helicopter. The helicopter pilot was to snag the parachute, set it gently on the ground to secure it, and then fly the SRC to a clean room that we had set up nearby at UTTR. That cleanroom operated with a few HEPA FFUs and did not have a raised floor, so it was not the level of cleanliness in the JSC Genesis Lab. This cleanroom was placed at UTTR in order to saw open the SRC and put a nitrogen purge on the closed payload canister. Then the payload would go into a shipping box connected to a nitrogen cylinder. It would be transported under nitrogen purge all the way back to Houston, and only be opened when again back in the JSC clean room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn’t quite work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No it did not. That’s not what happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you all come up with that idea of that helicopter coming in and making that grab?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Lockheed engineers had an interest and the right connections to work out the mid-air retrieval. Bob Corwin was the LMA lead engineer for the mid-air retrieval effort. He and some of the UTTR personnel had been fascinated with snagging stuff coming back from space, and there was military precedent for that with round parachutes. The parafoil, or gliding parachute, invented in 1967, offered a much safer and more reliable alternative. The right connection for Bob Corwin was Roy A. Haggard, who invented the flyby intercept method for military application in the early 1990s. Those two became good friends and evangelists for mid-air retrieval for Genesis. By the time I was involved in the UTTR portion of the recovery planning, the mid-air retrieval had been demonstrated many times, and it did look easy, due to the great skill of the pilots.\\n\\n Cliff [Clifford T.] Fleming was a movie stunt pilot. He was a military veteran from, I think, probably Vietnam. We did get to watch them practice that. They never ever missed. It was so graceful; it was like a ballet in the sky. You’d think a re-entering spacecraft would be traveling a high velocity, so snagging that spacecraft parachute with a hook is going to be very hard to do. However, when the parafoil is deployed it slows down the capsule putting it into a big spiral, going about 20 miles an hour. So the prime helicopter and the backup helicopter both had several chances to make the snag, if missed. They never did miss.\\n\\n The doors to the helicopter were removed so the crew could operate a winch from the “back seat.” Cliff would lean out the window to get a good view of the target. He placed the hook just left of the centerline to make the snag. That would keep the parachute from flopping around. They practiced setting the SRC gently on the ground. But before the SRC was set down, the backup helicopter would first set out a clean tarp, to keep the SRC touching the dry lakebed. This interim set down, close to the snag site, was for the purpose of securing the SRC to the helicopter tow line. Then the SRC was towed to the cleanroom entry area and lowered into a cradle. Cliff could set the SRC down so gently in the practice runs. I just couldn’t believe it.\\n\\n I could look up and see the helicopter bouncing up and down [demonstrates], but the payload, the SRC, would be hanging straight and level, carefully and slowly lowered into the cradle. I do not know how they can do that, it was amazing, and that’s what they practiced. Of course, they didn’t get to do that, as it turned out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you also practicing simulations in terms of getting the payload, taking it back, and putting it in the nitrogen purge? Were you doing any of those things, or were you primarily focused on procedures?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was part of that rehearsal process. After the SRC was placed in the cradle, the cradle was to be rolled into the high bay. The next step was to have been sawing the latches open. This is one of those little “oops” things. There was no other way to open the capsule because they would have blown the hinge off to make a more aerodynamic entry. The plan was to take a saw and saw the latches off the outer capsule, the SRC.\\n\\n My job was to run the vacuum cleaner with the filter so it could trap all the particles from sawing. We all had little jobs like that to rehearse. I think Eileen might have been a backup for the people prepared to use a sniffer. This was to check that there were no toxic fumes coming off of the SRC from reentry heating.\\n\\n Then re-entry day arrived, September 8, 2004, 10 a.m. People at the Utah Test and Training Range and at Hill Air Force Base [Utah] were tracking the incoming capsule—they were actually calling out the altitude and the vector to Cliff and his crew and the second helicopter crew. They’d call out numbers of the altitude and the vector. The rest of us were watching this on long-range video, but the pilots weren’t. All they could do was hear the call out.\\n\\n The altitude numbers seemed to be dropping too fast to Roy [A.] Haggard who was in the cockpit with Cliff Fleming. Roy was uneasy. Then Range Control Officer Luke Topper at Hill Air Force Base said, “Impact.” Cliff couldn’t believe it. He asked Luke to repeat that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the mood like in the room watching the video at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I watched the re-entry sequence in the high bay of the building (Building 1112) at Dugway next to the cleanroom set up to receive the SRC. I was watching with the crew from JSC, LMA, and JPL who were prepared to open the SRC and, inside the cleanroom, put the nitrogen purge on the sample canister. We watched the capsule tumble downward and smack into the dry lakebed. Our heads turned toward the storage cabinets where we had placed kits for collecting shards off the desert floor, if the recovery did not go as planned. We were already looking at the cabinets, wanting to get the collecting kits, and go to the crash site to recover the collectors. These kits were buckets with pre-numbered containers, mostly bags, gloves, tweezers for cleanly picking up shards, but also included a camera, scale bar, and notebooks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had worked on those contingency plans just in case?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I brought terrain maps in case we needed them, but the people at Hill Air Force Base, they had their own maps too. I had written a documentation plan, which contained a section on documenting samples collected under this unhappy circumstance of scattered shards. Yes, we were ready for that. I’m not sure all the managers were ready for us to go out there. It took a while for that to settle out, and we workers had to obtain permission to go to the site and start recovering material." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, really? Why was that the case, do you think?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure as a scientist you were ready to get out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We knew what we wanted to do. I guess they wanted to double-check everything, which I thought would have been done already. I am sure those discussions were interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you go out and capture this material? Did you have to suit up? Or you could just go out dressed as we are today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were dressed very casually because it was hot, and we expected to be working in the cleanroom covered with smocks, hats, gloves, and shoe covers. The team that went to the crash site to recover the science canister and contents consisted of personnel from LMA, who designed the SRC, JPL, who designed the payload, and one person, Karen [N.] McNamara, from JSC representing curation. The field people were the people who knew the hardware best, and Karen served to instruct everyone the best way to recover and document the samples. The field team was in contact with Don Burnett and Genesis managers via radio to collaborate on decisions regarding the salvage operation.\\n\\n The field team rode to the crash site in vans. The UTTR road floats on the mud, and the capsule landed not that far off the road. McNamara had the collecting kits and instructed the field team members in how to document the collector pieces gathered at the crash site. The Lockheed people had to safe the pyros [pyrotechnics] that were not yet exploded. These pyros should have deployed the parachute. LMA people had to do sniffing tests for toxic gases and get a safety clearance.\\n\\n The SRC capsule had hit the ground “edge on,” like a dinner plate one third buried. Even though the lakebed was moist, and thus soft, the buried part of the SRC shell was mostly turned to powder. The field team started taking the outer capsule apart. Those of us near the cleanroom watched the fieldwork on long range video provided by UTTR. The canister containing the collectors was itself breached, it was broken. The bottom had been sheared off. After consultation with PI Burnett and Curation Manager Eileen Stansbery by radio, it was decided to roll the canister over onto a blue tarp, topside down because the canister cover was still intact. This configuration captured most of the collector fragments. It was overwrapped in a second tarp, put aboard an Army Blackhawk helicopter, and flown back to the building with the cleanroom. The big black helicopter was larger than Cliff’s little red one. I was in the cleanroom area when the Blackhawk arrived with tarp-wrapped canister, before sunset." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did that process take?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The field team had to wait a couple hours before they actually started picking up collector pieces—and they were still on long-range video, so we could watch them. The Army took out meals ready to eat for them to eat and water. It was hot out there on the dry lakebed. The Army folks knew what to do to help the recovery team. How long did that take? I’m thinking it was late afternoon by the time they got back to Building 1112, where the cleanroom was set up. The tarp-wrapped canister was rolled in. Over the next few hours there was some discussion as to whether the wrapped canister should be transported back to Houston for extraction of the individual collector pieces or whether to extract, photograph, and package the individual pieces at UTTR.\\n\\n The decision was the loose pieces would get more damaged in transport unless they were stabilized. So that’s what we did. We obtained tools for de-constructing the damaged canister so the collectors were accessible. We already had with us containers for 6,000 specimens. Our curation colleagues from Johnson Space Center arrived to document and package fragments. All of them were skilled in cleanroom work and handling astromaterial samples, so no on-the-job training was needed!\\n\\n That was September 8, 2004, when Genesis reentered and had a “hard landing.” Always a public affairs term. October 3, which was less than a month later, we flew everything back to Houston on the Gulfstream III and had all the samples in a cleanroom receiving area by afternoon. We spent that month in Utah picking fragments from the damaged canister, photographing, logging the individual pieces, and packaging collector pieces and hardware pieces. Some of the hardware pieces of the outer capsule went to Lockheed Martin first for use by the mishap investigation board. That was a separate activity, and Karen McNamara was the curation representative to that board. All the solar collectors and the payload canister came directly to JSC.\\n\\n While we were in Utah, we photographed and packaged more than 10,000 pieces from the original 301. Some of those were jars of very tiny fragments. Pick a number, it could be 15,000, 20,000. I think we really got every collector fragment. The impact site ground was damp and soft. The outer capsule was about 60 inches across. It hit edge on, so the half portion that buried was destroyed, even though the impact area was quite small, maybe 3 diameters of the capsule. Karen McNamara and some of the Lockheed people went back a second day and actually shoveled up 15 to 20 buckets of sand containing debris. So, I really think we got nearly everything from the spacecraft. We went through some of those buckets recently. We got rid of the mud." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you find anything in the dirt?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, a lot of it was not too useful. Then there were some collector fragments we pulled from the mud, which had been sitting in wet mud for 10 years or so. So we salvaged some of that, but we did finally discard some of the mud and crash debris that we had saved.\\n\\n We do have samples of lakebed sediments that were taken right before re-entry, which serves as reference material. We still have those. People have asked for samples of the Utah dirt, because they’re trying to distinguish between Utah dirt and solar wind. They have a basis for making that distinction. We do have those kind of samples. Curation-wise, we keep samples of reference materials, that would be anything that might contaminate the collectors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you package everything in? Did you package it in plastic or glass?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much plastic. We did have some glass jars. We used a lot of plastic vials, because that’s what’s used with some lunar samples that have been returned. Our cleaning process for hardware at JSC uses ultrapure water. Lots of plastic vials are cleaned to a high level of cleanliness and packaged. Since we are able to produce a lot of those, we sent several thousand vials to UTTR ahead of time.\\n\\n We also could call our JSC colleagues and ask for additional supplies to be sent to UTTR. The wonders of the government credit card! The whole JSC team was very responsive. Everybody said, “What can I do to help?” We’d call JSC and say, “We need this, this, and this.” It would show up the next day in a FedEx [Corp.] truck. At first I was wondering if FedEx delivered packages to the Utah Test and Training Range which is relatively remote, and I found out they do deliver there very promptly. We received clean packaging supplies this way.\\n\\n Same way with JPL. They needed different tools and hardware because their job was disassembling the mangled mess of the science canister. First thing they did, was drive to Home Depot [Inc.] in Salt Lake City. One tool they purchased was a large bolt cutter. I too went to Salt Lake City to the restaurant supply place and Sam’s Club for things that we still needed more of like stainless steel tables. The JPL engineers could call back to JPL and say, “I need X.” Everybody was sending things we needed, delivered the very next day. With a government credit card, a telephone, and FedEx, we got everything that we needed.\\n\\n A side note here on an image that remains in my mind. UTTR is isolated and the nearest cell phone tower, at that time, was atop Deseret Peak 30 miles distant, for which we had line of sight from the parking lot. Cell phones were not ubiquitous. To make those phone calls to request supplies, one had to stand in the parking lot. At any given time, 4-5 people would be in the parking lot with a phone to their ear, spread out for privacy, and trying to write using a knee for a table. Even the science team from around the world offered encouragement and help. Many of them emailed, said, “We’re going to do our best to make this analysis.” This encouragement was from investigators who had invested 5 to 10 years preparing for this mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you originally planning on taking the Gulfstream back with these samples, or were you going to fly commercial?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Had the crash not happened, the science canister was to be placed on nitrogen purge and shipped in a large metal crate equipped with a nitrogen cylinder. I think it was going to go by truck but maybe cargo plane. By October 3rd we had all of the collector pieces and canister hardware packed for transport in metal cases. The managers requested the Gulfstream as a “gentle” transport to keep from further damaging the collectors. Carol [M.] Schwarz and I were selected to escort those samples, and of course we agreed! It was my first ride in the Gulfstream." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get the Gulfstream? That’s a unique opportunity. Not everyone gets to fly on that plane." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was partly a perk for having stayed out there over a month and working long hours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s just for Center leadership, isn’t it, pretty much, the Gulfstream? At least it seems like it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we had an astronaut pilot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the reception like here when you finally came back? The Building 31 crew and then the Center as well. Do you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember we landed in a horrid rainstorm at Ellington [Airport, Houston, Texas]. Then we just unloaded the plane, and it must have been vans. I cannot remember that. It was a short trip from Ellington. We had a clean room we had set up for space-exposed hardware, so that’s where we put the boxes that we had unloaded from the Gulfstream at Ellington. Then a portion of those were moved into Genesis Lab.\\n\\n Lisa [A.] Fletcher (now Lisa Pace) had done an excellent job of logging thousands of samples in Utah. We had prenumbered tags with all these vials. We had a numbering system set up ahead of time for all this, so we had all these numbers to put on clean vials and whatever we put stuff in. All that was in a database, it was all logged in there in Utah, so we could check it out when we got back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you start when you came back? Were you immediately cataloging or curating?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m going to digress here a little bit. If things had gone perfectly, some of us would have had to fly back and stay up all night cleaning more tools to get ready for examination and storage of samples, because there was just too much to do.\\n\\n The landing changed all that, so we didn’t have to do those special examinations of complete hexagons. It gave us a little time to think about it. We got samples into a dry nitrogen environment, for the most part, and we already had a database set up, with our numbering scheme, but now we had a little bit different data problem. We had some things like that to work out.\\n\\n We got the samples back here in the JSC lab in October. We wrote some abstracts announcing the condition of the collection that were submitted in January, so that was part of it. I think the one I did was based a lot on notes we took in Utah. We were able to announce that we had samples for scientists to request before the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference [LPSC] in 2005." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That quickly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Now some of the experiments were for certain PIs. One of them had flown gold foil to look for nitrogen, another one flew a polished aluminum piece to look at noble gases. So we subdivided those materials in time for the abstracts that year. That’s what we would have been doing in the November, December timeframe.\\n\\n For instance, Alex [Alexander P.] Meshik came from Washington University [St. Louis, Missouri] to JSC, and we cut the polished aluminum up. He took some pieces back to his laboratory. We cut the gold foil—that might have been a little bit later, the timing on that. But we did announce it, I think, at the end of February and before LPSC of that year. In April, the LANL concentrator team came to JSC and we finished removing the concentrator target quadrants from the mounting. This included the silicon carbide target in which the oxygen isotopes were determined. In 2007, we sent that sample to Kevin [D.] McKeegan at UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], who did the analysis, and presented preliminary results at LPSC in 2009." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell me how you handle the samples. I’ve been in 31, and you see the glove boxes and handling. Do you have something similar for these samples, or are they just out on tables?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The samples are stored in nitrogen-purged cabinets within the Class 10 cleanroom where we also work on the samples. When we image or subdivide the samples, this work is done on stainless tables within the room. The samples have been exposed to Earth atmosphere when the canister broke open, but they’re stored under dry nitrogen. People are fully suited up, and the tools that are used are cleaned with ultrapure water.\\n\\n We’ve developed the capability to take those pieces that have fine debris on them and wash them with ultrapure water. We can wash away the loose micron, submicron size particles, and that helps people with their analyses. We don’t clean samples routinely, because there is a worry that the water might change something.\\n\\n The analyses so far—when they use beam instruments to measure solar wind—seem to indicate that that cleaning with ultrapure water does not do much damage, and it is more beneficial. But that would be the call of the person who wants to make the analysis if he would like us to clean them off with the water, so we can do that.\\n\\n I guess one difference with Genesis—part of the science team has helped try and figure out how to clean these things. We send samples back and forth to people who might have a cleaning proposal for a protocol to try. We do have numerous small pieces that can be used for that purpose. It’s probably a good use of those pieces. The oversight committee is aware of all this and keeps tabs on how this is done.\\n\\n For UPW cleaning of samples, picture the room: stainless steel table and stainless steel tweezers. Samples are placed on a little vacuum chuck and held under megasonically-energized UPW. The sample is spun at 3,000 rpm [revolutions per minute] under the flowing water. It’s a semiconductor device that we adapted for cleaning off these small parts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How does that work so you don’t get rid of those small grains of that solar wind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The atoms of the solar wind hit the collectors with such high energy they’re implanted a little below the surface, say under 100 nanometers (nm). The peak might be 40 nm deep or 20, which isn’t very much. Chemical changes on the surface from cleaning might affect atoms at that shallow depth, so care must be taken. Plus, dings or scratches from the crash debris can be deeper than the solar wind.\\n\\n We’re lucky in that a lot of the analytical techniques use an ion beam to drill into the collector, knocking off solar atoms that can be measured in a mass spec [spectrometer]. The area analyzed this way is quite small, less than 100 microns wide. Therefore, the analyst can pick a location on the fragment without scratches or gouges. Even so there are problems if there’s contamination on the top surface. The ion beam can garden the contaminant further into the surface. Investigators found a clever way around this problem. The collector fragment is glued face down (solar wind side down), and the ion beam analysis is performed from the back side, thereby measuring the solar wind before the contaminant is encountered. Investigators are getting more successful at that. This example illustrates a very important advantage of returning samples to Earth for analysis—many more options for recovering from disaster, like crashes or malfunctions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many of the samples have been used? Are there some like the Apollo rocks that have been set aside and will remain pristine for generations to come?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d like to acknowledge that setting aside portions of Apollo samples for future generations was a very wise thing to do. All of the astromaterial collections do this, generally by choosing a portion to be set aside, stored sealed under nitrogen, and a subset stored in a remote place. A year or two after sample return, about 2006, representative samples for each solar wind regime and each array collector material were preserved in a vault in a remote location from JSC. For the samples remaining as JSC, Genesis has a complicated sample retention plan that allows the portions to be retained recalculated periodically, based on the idea that these samples may have a shelf life, which is unknown. The solar wind atoms are embedded in the crystal structure of the collector. They could diffuse out with long periods of time.\\n\\n Fifteen different materials were flown to collect solar wind. The materials on the passive collector arrays, flown as hexagonal shapes polished like mirrors—very beautiful—were mostly pure silicon. Others were diamond on silicon, sapphire, aluminum on sapphire, gold on sapphire, silicon on sapphire and germanium. These 300 hexagons were distributed over 5 arrays. Two of these arrays collected solar wind atoms for the entire exposure time of 27 months. We called those samples bulk solar wind. The solar wind isn’t constant, but changes character with time among 3 conditions, or regimes, as distinguished by the Genesis spacecraft: interstream slow speed, high speed, or coronal mass ejections (CME). The CMEs are sporadic burps of material. Because of the suggestions, and perhaps insistence, to Don Burnett by Marcia Neugebauer during the very early mission concept discussions, the Genesis spacecraft was designed to capture separately these 3 regimes on individual arrays.\\n\\n The separate arrays for each regime allows investigators to measure differences in chemical and isotopic composition and fluence among solar wind regimes. The deployment of the regime arrays was mutually exclusive, and each regime collected solar wind for roughly one third of the total exposure. Had Genesis not crashed, the identification of the regime hexagon collectors would have been straightforward. Because of the crash, what we recovered was a jumble of fragments dislodged from the array frames. However, we can tell from which regime for each fragment because of clever planning. Bulk solar wind collectors are all 700 microns thick. Coronal mass ejections are 650 microns thick, high speed 600, low speed 550. So we just take a little tiny fragment and measure how thick it is, then we know which regime of the solar wind. Eileen Stansbery and Andy Stone deserve credit for implementing this mission saving idea.\\n\\n The concentrator’s target samples would be those that would be most judiciously saved for people that can make the very best measurements on it. There’s one piece of silicon carbide from which UCLA determined the solar oxygen isotopes. Subsequently that same sample piece was sent to Bernard Marty in France [Centre de Recherches Pétrographiques et Géochimiques, Nancy Université], who measured the nitrogen isotopes. Neon isotopes were measured by a Swiss team. Much science was accomplished by sequentially sharing the sample among several research teams. Each team made their own little ion beam holes, resulting in a sample appearance with a many small square shallow pits. Sharing is another alternative to subdividing samples." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who makes the decision on who gets the samples? Is there a committee? You mentioned an oversight committee. Are you part of that team?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The request for Genesis research samples comes to me as curator. I acknowledge receipt of the request and pass it along to the Genesis subcommittee of CAPTEM (Curation and Planning Team for Extraterrestrial Materials), a sample science advisory committee for NASA. The Genesis subcommittee is composed of active or emeritus Genesis scientists, and I provide to them information about sample availability. They render a finding about the scientific merit and recommendation about allocating sample, which I forward to the program scientists at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC] for concurrence. As curator, I’m allowed to make a few direct allocations of small samples for cleaning studies. That’s just to speed things up. The overarching goal of this review process is to assure good science use of samples and fair access among researchers.\\n\\n The Genesis sample allocation process is less formal than the larger collections like Apollo and Antarctic meteorites, because it involves ongoing review via email or telecon, which includes conversational exchanges between curator and requestor to clarify information. In contrast, the larger collections have review committees that meet face-to-face twice a year and catalogs of samples from which the investigator requests a specific sample. A Genesis investigator typically requests a specific material from a specific regime for which the curator searches for sample candidates for discussion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What have we learned from Genesis? Have there been any big questions answered?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me start by saying that Genesis mission highest priority science goal was determination of the oxygen isotopic composition of the Sun, and that was achieved. The general science goal was to determine the precise composition of the solar nebula—the gas and dust that coalesced into the Sun and planets, with the Sun retaining more than 99% of the original starting material. Until Genesis, the composition of the solar nebula was measured by precision analyses of primitive, first-formed minerals found in oldest meteorites and assuming this was original composition of the solar nebula. Genesis people contended that the best measurement of the starting material for the Sun and planets would be obtained directly analyzing solar material in the best laboratories on Earth; hence, the Genesis spacecraft set out to capture solar material and return it to Earth. The oxygen isotopic composition was surprising because it was not like the Earth’s, lending support, along with Stardust cometary analysis, to a more turbulent history in the early solar system.\\n\\n Until now, people were concentrating on bulk solar wind analysis because there’s more solar wind available to measure in these samples. The newest thing is people looking at regime samples. It turns out in 2003, at the end of October, they had a whopping series of coronal mass ejections [CME] over a few days. In fact, the CME energy went off scale from some of the other robotic spacecraft that detect these things, causing some to go into “safe” mode. Genesis just happened to have a coronal mass ejection array out which captured this big, energetic burp of solar material. These energetic CMEs became known as the Halloween storms, and Genesis has samples of this solar material that can be measured in the laboratory.\\n\\n I’m optimistic that somehow we’ll make more connections with the heliophysicists because solar atoms captured in the different Genesis regime samples should contribute to ideas about mechanisms for how the Sun operates. That wasn’t really the primary purpose of Genesis mission. Genesis was for planetary science. However, Genesis data may also help solar physics people of this generation, like those using Parker Solar Probe data, perhaps.\\n\\n Marcia Neugebauer, heliophysicist at JPL and early Suess-Urey/Genesis mission contributor, was the first person to use Mariner [Program] data to make solar wind measurements. I think it was Marcia that convinced Don Burnett that he needed to take the solar wind regimes as separate samples. It didn’t seem to be that much of an add-on for design of the mechanisms, because altogether Genesis had very simple mechanisms. People worry about reliability of robotic missions, and this was a fairly simple spacecraft. All those mechanisms worked well in flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had forgotten to ask you. Did you go out and see the launch at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]? Did you get a chance to see that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went to the Cape to see it launch, but we didn’t launch that day, or the next, and I came home. Eileen was the only one from our team who stayed the rest of the week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s disappointing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We hustled to get Genesis out the door to Denver, so it could be integrated onto the spacecraft in August of 2000. Then we had to sit and wait a whole year, because there was a Mars launch of some kind that needed that launch window." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hurry up and wait, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hurry up and wait." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people are working in the lab these days?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There’s two people that we call processors that work with the samples, and they’re doing inventory as we speak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That sounds like fun. What do you think your biggest challenge is working with the Genesis Program, from the time you started working on the contamination control plan until today? Do you have any major challenges?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have to say, I think we all had it lucky. The team worked well together. When I look at other missions and other teams—Don Burnett is the principal reason for this. He still holds a meeting every year of the people who are interested in working on Genesis samples. Many of the people that come are back from the original team. He refers to the team as family. In recovering from the crash, he asked people to collaborate who might normally be competing. They did. One, because they respected Don, and two, they wanted to help salvage the mission science. And I’m beginning to see that it’s unusual for relationships to work that well.\\n\\n The annual gathering of the science team family is about 40 researchers today. In the 8-10 years after sample return, the team photos show about 80 people. Don once estimated 100 scientists have participated on the science team. There were strong bonds of friendship among the engineers, scientists, and curators that outlasted the mission status of Genesis.\\n\\n On the 5th anniversary of sample return, about 20 people—many were technicians who helped salvage the samples from the desert floor—made a pilgrimage to UTTR to set a steel obelisk bearing the name “Genesis” and “September 8, 2004” to mark the landing spot. Inside the obelisk a time capsule was placed. The contents are mission documents and procedures, including a video of mid-air retrieval practice. JPL Genesis Project Manager Don Sweetnam personally commissioned the making of the marker. Now retired, Don Sweetnam still follows the Genesis science results." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You attribute that to Don? Or were there other factors?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly to Don." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Probably holds a special place in your heart then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think was your most significant contribution to the Genesis Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess overall I’m kind of a stickler for looking at the composition of everything that goes into the lab and checking it. But I could say they kind of hold me responsible for having them send 6,000 containers to Utah, just in case." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you a Girl Scout? That was good contingency planning on your part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we ran that one out as much as we could ahead of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think that we have exhausted my questions. I wasn’t sure—might there be something else that you want to talk about in relation to Genesis?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Judith H. Allton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, because we touched on the future, and I’m hoping that solar physics people, that we can be of service to them. I don’t know at what rate samples ought to be used up. I come from a background of being extremely stingy with samples from lunar days, but I also realize that these samples may not always be perfect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s important to know. Thank you so much for coming over today, I really appreciate it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00501", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/SeamansRC/seamansrc.htm", + "original_file_name": "SeamansRC_11-20-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/SeamansRC/SeamansRC_11-20-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert C. Seamans", + "location_date": "Beverly, Massachusetts – 20 November 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Michelle Kelly" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert C. Seamans" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, we're on the air." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, we are. What I'd first like to ask you is, I think, where we left off last time is we discussed the decision to go to the moon and how that decision came about. Can you talk a little bit about some of the committees that you put together, which conducted some studies in order to get to that decision?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I'd be happy to. First let me just say that I have a file at home and I tried to collect what I think are the pertinent memos and so on, related to this whole area. One of the subjects I'm still investigating myself is exactly which committees we had and the time sequence of the committees. I'm a little bit vague on it, I'll just tell you at the start.\\n\\n But there was the Heaton Committee. Donald [H.] Heaton was a colonel in the Air Force. He and somebody named Bill [William A.] Fleming worked directly for me, my assistants, and each one of them headed up a committee. Bill Fleming is, even now…interested in this very same thing we're talking about. I plan to meet with him and with somebody named Al Kelly [phonetic], who's [at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology], who comes here to work on a part-time basis, because we're all three interested in this subject.\\n\\n But one of the committees, I think it was the Heaton Committee, had to do with the best way to go to the moon. By \"way to go,\" I mean taking a look at direct ascent, which I think we discussed last time what it means, Earth Orbit Rendezvous. I tried to get the group to take a look at lunar orbit rendezvous, but they really didn't do very much on that subject. I think this is the Heaton Committee, as I've said. It's not that Don Heaton didn't want it to be that way, it's just that nobody in the organization really thought that was the right way to go and didn't want to spend any time on it. This is now in the period, I think, right after [Yuri A.] Gagarin flew, but maybe it carried out beyond when [President John F.] Kennedy went to the Hill. It was right in that period, we were getting information at that time.\\n\\n We got into such issues as, if you're going to orbit around the Earth and you [have] given-sized vehicles you want to put up about the same amount of weight each time, let's say you used just two launches to do it, then how do you divide up this kluge of stuff so they would have equal weight. The only way you could do it was to split up the fuel, because the fuel is an awful lot of the weight.\\n\\n That got us into the issues of fueling in orbit. It's a very difficult thing to do in a vacuum and weightless and all kinds of technical issues that came into it. You'd prefer to have the fuel contained in a can, and then you can put it together with other things and connect some hoses and turn it on, as it were, and not have to pump stuff back and forth. That was one of the issues we got into.\\n\\n The outcome, I'd say, was somewhat inconclusive. As a result of that study, we still had felt, at least as a backup, we had to consider the possibility of going direct. By going direct, it meant that we needed something that was at least twice as big as what we ultimately used. So we're talking about a massive piece of hardware that was called Nova. It is for that reason that we bought as much land as we did down at Merritt Island [Florida]. Merritt Island is just across the—I always forget whether it's the Banana or the Indian River. I think it's the Banana River from Cape Canaveral. We ended up acquiring 85,000 acres of land, which is a lot of land, for the NASA complex there. A lot of it was never used, because we never did have to build Nova.\\n\\n The Fleming Committee, I believe, if my recollection is correct, is what I want to investigate, had to do with trying to get some idea of the cost of doing this [mission]. To develop the cost figures, you had to figure out all of the so-called work packages. A work package could be building a launch pad, or a building, or recruiting astronauts, or training astronauts. I think we ended up with something like 10,000 work packages. Then you have to estimate how many man hours of work required on each of them on that basis and come out with some cost figures for [all those] package[s].\\n\\n Then you have to figure out which ones you can do in parallel and which ones you have to do in series. On that basis, you can figure out not only what the cost is going to be, but how long it's going to take. It's not a name you hear so much today, but it was very fashionable then, so-called PERT [phonetic] charts, where you had the whole thing plotted out. PERT is an acronym for something, I don't know, Performance Evaluation or something like that. I don't know what it stands for. I forget.\\n\\n As a result of these two studies, and there may have been another one, there was a related one that was not just a NASA study, it was a study to be carried out with the Department of Defense. I think it became known as the Golovin Committee. The purpose of that study was to be sure that [how]ever these boosters were built, that we got maximum benefit out of them, that is, that if NASA developed a booster, that it was configured so that it might take care of a military mission, conversely that the military, in developing boosters, would develop them in such a way that it could be available for NASA.\\n\\n As it turned out, the study was pretty hypothetical in the main. It also got into risk factors and the probability that these boosters were going to work. We were getting figures like failure rates of 50 percent and numbers like that, which were quite horrifying. But we're very much subject to guesswork, because you had to guess what all the parts, what each individual part, how reliable it was. Then on that basis you could figure out what the reliability of the whole machine was.\\n\\n So I didn't take too much stock in that, but at the same time, I had to worry about it, because if it came out that we were risking astronauts at the rate of 50 percent per launch, you can see that would be pretty horrifying from a public relations standpoint. Fortunately, it did not work out that way.\\n\\n The one outcome of the Golovin Committee was that the Defense Department did go ahead with the so-called Titan booster based on the Titan missile, and that's what we used in Gemini. Gemini was an overgrown Mercury capsule originally called Mercury II. I felt that we had to have a better name than that for it, and used an old trick my boss here, Dr. [C. Stark] Draper, used to use now and then, which is to put up a prize of a bottle of whiskey for whomever came up with the name that was selected. We got some pretty good names. But the name that we picked was Gemini, because the purpose of the Gemini Program was to give us advanced operational training and experience prior to the time we had the Apollo, which was going to be the vehicle to go to the moon.\\n\\n One of the biggest concerns ultimately when we selected lunar orbit rendezvous was the ability to rendezvous. So, when you rendezvous, there are obviously two objects that are going to rendezvous. Hence, the name Gemini, which is the star formation made up of Caster and Polux, two stars. So it's called the Gemini twins, hence, Gemini the vehicle was going to rendezvous with the Agena, unmanned, hence the terminology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who won the bottle of whiskey?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't win it myself. I had to buy a bottle of whiskey. It was worth it; it was a good name. [Laughter] I wasn't smart enough to think of the name.\\n\\n So out of all of that grew a committee, which I co-chaired with somebody named Brock [Brockway] McMillan. [I believe] it was called the Gemini Review [Board]...It’s genesis was a suggestion I made to Jim (James E.) Webb that we provide the DoD (Department of Defense) with an opportunity to fly their experiments on Gemini.] We took a look at the problems with the vehicle and the problems that we were having with the Gemini capsule itself, and the question of whether the Air Force might want some experiments and so on. I'm getting way ahead of my story.\\n\\n Coming back to the period right around May of '61, we had two issues that had to be faced before Kennedy made his speech. One was how soon could we go to the moon. The other one was how much was it going to cost. I think it's on the record, but just to be sure it is, on the cost side, our PERT investigation came out at, as I remember it, 12 million dollars. Kennedy was aware of this and so on, but Mr. Webb, who had been director of the budget for Harry Truman, knew something about cost figures from experience, hard experience, and he put in what he called an administrator's discount. Now, by that I don't mean he discounted the number. Rather, he discounted our ability to predict the number. So he said, \"It's going to be 20 billion dollars.\" He just about doubled the figure that we had, and that proved to be pretty accurate, actually. It finally came out to be, depending on what you throw in, somewhere in that ballpark, maybe 21 billion or something like that.\\n\\n The other was time. Going back to—I think I discussed testified before the House and being asked if we could go to the moon in '67, because that was the fiftieth anniversary of the Red Revolution, it might be a time they tried to go to the moon, so some congressman speculated. It did appear to be a reasonable date, and our PERT investigation sort of came out that way partly because, I guess, we made it come out that way. We were trying to see if we could go in '67.\\n\\n We were horror-stuck, however—and I may have mentioned this before—when Mr. Webb got a call from Ed Sorenson, who was a speech-writer for Kennedy, who said he was going to send over that part of the President's message to Congress that related to what became Apollo. When we read it, it said that the President would recommend to Congress that we go to the moon in 1967. We just felt that there were so many uncertainties at that time that we as a nation shouldn't—we didn't have to stick our necks out that far, though we knew we had to state what our goal was.\\n\\n So Sorenson obviously said, \"Well, what do you want me to put in, Jim?\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, why don't we put in 'within the decade.'\" So that's how the studies at that time tied in with what actually happened and was done.\\n\\n Do you want me to discuss the LOR [Lunar Orbit Rendezvous] situation or not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure, I'd love for you to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm sure I've already mentioned the fact that I went down to Langley the first week that I was in NASA, September of '60, and met John [C.] Houbolt. Of all the presentations that I had there, his was the least elegant. Some were looking at high-powered machinery and wind tunnels and mock-up of the Mercury capsule. His job was with a couple of guys in a room not much bigger than this one with an easel and a grease pencil. He'd obviously, maybe an hour before I arrived, put some stuff on paper to explain what lunar orbit rendezvous was. Then he explained, himself, what the advantages were.\\n\\n As I think I already mentioned, it made a lot of sense to me. You could see that the advantages, they're easy to understand. You can get away with a booster that's half the size, which is clearly advantageous. That was the one that at least I was thinking of at the time. There was still another advantage that turned out when it was studied more carefully; namely, that you could design a vehicle specifically for the lunar environment, entirely a vacuum. You don't have to worry about pressure of air or anything like that. One-sixth gravity when you land, it can be much lighter. More specifically, you can design it so that people can fly it, maneuver it, when it's coming down. You can get much better visibility from it and so on. But as I say, it proved to be very difficult to get people to even think about it.\\n\\n Are you going to see John Houbolt? Is somebody going to interview him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'd love to. I really would." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, he's been interviewed quite extensively. He will tell you that he had a lot of difficulty. Even when he was invited to meetings, people would tend to walk out of the room, or they wouldn't listen, or they'd say, \"Well, that's just crazy to try to do something as dangerous as that around the moon.\" It went on that way.\\n\\n From time to time, say, with the Heaton Committee, I'd say, \"Be sure you study lunar orbit rendezvous,\" and it would come back and it would be something like a paragraph that would define what the role of a rendezvous was, but then it would sort of give it the back of the hand.\\n\\n I think I received two letters from John. The first one was fairly mild. It said that he hoped that we were still considering lunar orbit rendezvous. I think I wrote back and said, \"Oh, yes.\" But the second one was a pretty stiff letter where he said, \"This is not going to be a very polite letter.\" He said that right at the start. He realized it was not protocol to jump over I don't know how many echelons to write me the letter, but he went on to say that it was just stupid for everybody to be building and considering these great big giant things like Nova, when by a much simpler process, mainly lunar orbit rendezvous, you could much more easily and much more cheaply and much more quickly go to the moon.\\n\\n I think I've already said, but maybe not, that when I first read it, my hackles went up. I thought, \"I'm getting sick of this guy. He's a pest.\" I thought, \"But, you know, I think maybe he's right.\"\\n\\n So I would go to the head of the Manned Space Program at that time, Brainerd Holmes, and say, \"We really should be considering this carefully.\" By then he had put together a good organization. Brainerd came from RCA, where he had managed a very large project. He really knew how to run things. Running something in NASA this big was not easy, because you had to pull together three major factions: people at the Cape, the people at Huntsville, and the people at Houston. You had to get them to agree on things and then go do it. But he also had to deal with Goddard, because they were ones who were building the electronic network around the world that was going to permit communication at all times with Apollo. So they were sort of a—they weren't a loose cannon, but that was another element that he had to deal with, if not directly, under his purview.\\n\\n By the time this whole decision was getting really hot and it had to be made, he had a very good team working with him. The principals were Bob [Dr. Robert R.] Gilruth from the Manned Spacecraft Center, Wernher von Braun from Huntsville, [Alabama], and [Dr.] Kurt [H.] Debus from the Cape. All three groups, particularly Huntsville, which was going to build the launch vehicle, and Houston, which were going to have to do the flying and train the astronauts and had to consider the risks of the astronauts and so on, obviously, involved.\\n\\n The first ones to come in strongly in favor was the Houston group under Bob Gilruth. I want to come back to that. It's a matter of history. The group at Huntsville were really very antagonistic. They knew launch vehicles. They knew they could build the biggest launch vehicle in the world and then build an even bigger one. Very confident. They had built the V-1 and V-2 and the Jupiter and the Saturn I and so on, or were about to. They had the Saturn I under way.\\n\\n It would be interesting to know, and I never did talk to Wernher about it, but somewhere along the line, on his own, without the support of the people who worked for him, he said he was for the lunar orbit rendezvous, which was quite shocking to his troops. Now, Wernher is a fascinating study, and the way he ran his center was with what he called his apostles. I think there were twelve. But whether there were or not makes no difference; he ran it that way. He would come to a meeting and he would throw out the issue and get his people to talk about it. Near the end of the meeting, he'd say, \"Here's what we're going to do,\" and everybody would salute and they'd go do it. But he wouldn't listen. So he wasn't completely Germanic in the way he ran things.\\n\\n I don't know this, it would be interesting to find out, whether that group of twelve discussed this and agreed on lunar orbit rendezvous or whether he, on this one, just left them all behind. But once he came in and said that's the way it would go, it was decided, because I know by then I felt it was the way to go, suddenly Brainerd was pretty sure that was the way to go. He always wanted to see what people reporting to him felt. Bob Gilruth by then had already come out for it. The people at the Cape didn't carry too large a vote on that one.\\n\\n Now, we still had a big problem in the White House, but before we get to that—if I'm repeating stuff, you tell me, from last time. There was a very unusual situation came about with regard to a prize for a major contribution. NASA had a fund such that they could give a prize of something like [100],000 dollars for somebody who was responsible for a major important innovation, NASA, and the question was whether or not Houbolt should get it or not. And it was decided he should get part of it. I think he got 10,000 dollars as part of it, but that we should until they knew whether it really worked or not before giving him the whole prize.\\n\\n Once it worked and a lunar module was built and we went to the moon and everything, questions came up as to whether this was really John's idea or not, and he eventually did not get the full amount, because there were dissenters on the committee. This is an interesting issue. Some of those at Houston felt that John deserved some of the credit, but not the full amount. Even today you could probably get a heated discussion on that subject. I'm not going to say here and now, because I'm really not sure exactly how that should have come out, because I wasn't involved in the committee decision on that. I don't know all the details.\\n\\n So where are we?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'd like to ask you one question that refers back to the LOR decision. What was the actual turning point in your opinion of actually deciding to go to the moon through lunar orbit rendezvous?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that the turning point was when Bob Gilruth came in and said it was definitely the way to go. I would suspect that, in part, that Wernher, who was certainly—he had very good sensitivity, politically speaking, realized that that's the way it was going and he wanted to be part of the decision. That may be unfair to Wernher. But, in any event, it was definitely when Bob and the group at what is now the Johnson Space Center decided that was what was best. They decided, as I sort of implied earlier, that it was not just to save on the size of the booster, but it was the ability to build a much better lander." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that technology had anything to do with that decision, or the advancement of the current technology that was around at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a good question. I don't think so. Well, let's see. In one area it certainly did, and that's in the area of ability to rendezvous and dock. That obviously required some radar and some computers and so on. I think that was an important element in the decision. But the element of the design of the spacecraft itself and its ability to maneuver and land, I think that was [thanks to] Mother Nature, just going to be an easier thing to do than to have….a massive heat shield and a lot of heavy things, where it would be very difficult to put the astronauts in a position where they could actually look down and see the moon. I think that's a very good point. I hadn't thought very much about that.\\n\\n What we were faced with [was] first [a] consensus [by] Brainerd and his team, and he kept me posted, so I didn't need any briefing or anything. I was involved really in what was going on as it went along. But then obviously there was going to have to be discussion with Dr. [Hugh L.] Dryden and with Mr. Webb, [although I had also kept them reasonably up-to-date.]\\n\\n Now, you were asking about my relation with Dr. Dryden, anyway, so I might just say a few words about him, then I can explain his view with this. He was a wonderful person. He was highly respected for his own scientific achievements, going back to the Bureau of Standards and later on when he was involved with the NACA and then became the director of the NACA, which had a board that was intimately involved in the running, but the actual day-to-day operation was his responsibility.\\n\\n He had friends, associates, not only in the United States, but around the world. He was on close terms with many of the people in aerodynamics, aeronautics, and so on, particularly in Great Britain, but also in other European countries. He worked very effectively with his counterpart, who was in the Soviet Union, a person named [Anatoliy Arkadyevich] Blagonravov. [Hugh] was in the National Academy of Sciences. He was the home secretary. He was a real presence. He was a very strong church person. I believe he was a Presbyterian. He was a reader. He took that very seriously. He was not the kind of person who liked to go out with the boys and have a good time. But he was a very, very pleasant person to be with.\\n\\n He was looked at by the NACA people, who became the focus for all of NASA in the beginning, as their leader. So when this whole matter of this decision came along, the question was, how did the NACA people feel about it. Their spokesman was a guy named Abe Silverstein. When I went down to NASA, Abe was in charge of all of the space programs, running them out of headquarters. He was a very able guy. He and Hugh Dryden were very close.\\n\\n Abe Silverstein felt that the lunar orbit rendezvous was a terrible way to go. Again, you talk about motivations. When it was decided that we were going to organize the way we did for going to the moon, it left Abe out. He and I discussed this even before the decision was made. He said, \"Now, if it ends up that I'm not running the lunar program, can I have a handshake that I can go back to Lewis and be the director there?\" That's where he'd come from. He was a propulsion person.\\n\\n So he was back there. Lewis was going to have a major role in the lander if it had been part of either the direct descent or Earth orbit rendezvous, we had to build [a vehicle] that…[would] land on the moon and then go back to Earth. So this decision meant that Lewis would not have a very sizeable part of the program.\\n\\n Now, in my discussions with Hugh as to the best way to go and the briefings that we had for him and for Mr. Webb, I would say, from my recollection, that he was not critical of it. He accepted the decision. He didn't say, \"Absolutely that's the way to go,\" but he didn't say, \"I think you're making a big mistake.\" I thought before it actually came down to the final decision, that he might, because I knew that Abe Silverstein was giving him a lot of the reasons why it would be a bad decision.\\n\\n However, even after we had nailed it down within NASA, we still had a big problem on that decision because of the White House. We didn't discuss this last time, did we?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, we didn't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "…I mentioned Nick [Nicholas E.] Golovin already. He carried out the large launch vehicle study that I've already referred to. Nick was working for NASA. Now, he was brought into NASA by my predecessor, Dick [Richard E.] Horner, to try to get a better handle on all the failures that were occurring, because in the early days there would be a countdown [getting] down to one and then [a] supposed lift off, and, instead, there would be a giant explosion. You know, that kind of thing was happening all too regularly. The first year I was in NASA, 50 percent of the launches were failures.\\n\\n So Nick was brought in to carry out reliability studies ahead of time, so that hopefully we could head off these explosions or these failures. I think that there is a role for reliability risk kinds of studies, but that should not be the sole basis for these decisions, and you shouldn't try to run the organization on that basis. But Nick was a bear of a man, very rugged, strong willed, and very uncompromising. By the time I got to NASA, he was cordially disliked. I tried to get across to him these studies could be helpful, but that it had to be just one of many tools, and sort of downgraded to some extent the work he was doing. On that basis, he resigned.\\n\\n About a month after he resigned, I got a call from Jerry [Jerome B.] Wiesner. I knew Jerry from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] days. After he left the White House, he was president here at MIT. He was a man of real substance… He called me on the phone and he said, \"We're thinking of hiring a person named Nick Golovin. Do you remember him?\"\\n\\n I said, \"I certainly do, Jerry.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, what do you think of him?\"\\n\\n Well, I tried to be reasonably positive, but point out some of the pitfalls. I really questioned in my mind whether that was the kind of person you wanted to have at the White House level. But anyway, I did my best to be fair and at same time point out the difficulties that might ensue.\\n\\n Finally, Jerry said, \"Well, thank you. I think we'll hire him.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Okay. Good.\"\\n\\n Nick Golovin was the one that took great exception to lunar orbit rendezvous because of the risk factor. If you don't connect, to get across into the landing vehicle, [the astronauts are] going to be left…around the moon forever, or their bodies will be. Obviously not a pleasant prospect, but there were so many possibilities…[of failure] that you had to think of all of the risk factors and then try and do something that would minimize all of the risk factors. You didn't want to have a landing on the moon and have the vehicle tip over. So it has men on the moon all right, but they couldn't lift off from the moon. There were so many things that could go wrong, that to just single out one of them was a big mistake.\\n\\n But he got Jerry to worry about it, and I think it was in '61, it might have been early '62, before this decision was finally made, and not because of the decision, but the President decided he wanted to go and take a look at the facilities and meet some of the people involved in the space program, and he wanted the Vice President to come with him.\\n\\n So we sent out a caravan, you could think of it, with two airplanes, because the President and Vice President can't go in the same airplane, the old risk factor. Jim Webb felt that I should go with Kennedy, because he said, \"You're younger. I'm more of the age of the Vice President, I'll go with him.\" So that's the way we set out.\\n\\n The first place we went to was Huntsville, and we saw a rocket being fired. Then we went into an assembly area where it was a mock-up of the Saturn I. It was a big building, and over at one side of it was this big rocket. Then there was a roped-off area and the press were all behind the rope all the way around this way. I don't know how many were there, 100 or something. We were out in the middle of a floor where Wernher was about to describe the vehicle, when Kennedy said, \"Could somebody tell me a little bit about lunar orbit rendezvous?\"\\n\\n It was an amazing discussion, because [we] had the science advisor from Great Britain there, Sir Zolli Zuckerman…[Secretary of Defense Robert S.] McNamara, and obviously you had—let's see, we didn't have Bob Gilruth there, but you had Brainerd Holmes, I was there, Webb was there, and here we were right out with the President haggling about lunar orbit versus the other possibilities.\\n\\n Afterwards, as you can imagine, the press, everybody they could see out there, they were saying, \"What was the discussion about?\" Because it was obviously—the people weren't smiling or anything. You know, they were really in there. They got a pretty good feel for what the discussion was about.\\n\\n I think it was soon after that trip that Kennedy invited Jerry—this is what Jerry's told me—and said, \"Look, Jerry, you've got you and your staff of four or five people. On the one hand, you feel this way about it, and on the other hand there's Jim Webb and he's sitting over there with 30,000 people all set to go. Is there anything I can do but support Jim Webb?\"\\n\\n Even after the successful landing on the moon, I talked to Jerry, and he still feels that we went the wrong way. In part, he feels we went the wrong way because he said we had to build something that was just special for that mission. The reason that there wasn't a follow-on program is because we had everything so specialized that it couldn't be used for general exploration. I disagree with that.\\n\\n So anyway, I think that's probably enough on how the decision was made, unless you have some more questions about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, actually right off the top of my head I don't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I should say that during the several months, and I can't quite remember when the trip was in relationship to the final decision, there were quite a few decisions and quite a few meetings and letter-writing and so on. Joe [Joseph F.] Shea was hired at just about that point to work with Brainerd Holmes. He came over to see me and what he remembers my saying—I don't remember this—I said, \"Joe, you've got one major assignment: sell lunar orbit rendezvous.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was given that task then to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, while working for Brainerd Holmes, I mean, but underlying the specific things he had to do, \"Just remember, your job is to sell it.\" By selling, I meant not out in the public, but I meant in discussions. We were already having discussions with the White House and eventually with Congress, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it really a matter of getting the opinion of the White House and Congress behind the decision, or was it a matter of—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think once the White House agreed, I don't think that we had any trouble with the Congress on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about the NASA workforce, the people actually building the launch vehicle and command module and all that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't recall any adverse reaction. I mentioned Abe Silverstein, him and some other people at the Lewis [Research] Center [Cleveland, Ohio]. I can't recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of the centers, I know that all of the centers at that time reported to you, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The answer is yes. I'm a little slow. I'm trying to remember the date when we changed it. That whole shifting of lines on the chart was a little troublesome. It started off, when I arrived there, with the old NACA Center, the Langley [Virginia], the Lewis [Ohio], the Ames [California], and the Dryden Flight Test Center [California] out in the desert, were coupled together and run almost the way the old NACA was, except that certain of the centers were doing some special projects for the space program, but they were still being run by Ez [Ira H. A.] Abbott…an old-time NACA type.\\n\\n The [unmanned earth orbital] flight programs were being run by Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland], which grew very rapidly; JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California], which [ran the unmanned lunar and planetary program] was acquired; the group at Huntsville [have already been mentioned]. Then down at Langley, about 1,000 people from that group had been shifted over to what's called a Space Task Group, and Bob Gilruth was in charge of it. When I say Langley, I'm talking about the part that was left behind. There's a question of how the programs and these centers lined up. The idea, of course, was to try to line them up so that the work that this program office was doing here would be carried out by one or two centers, that you wouldn't have every one of these programs involved in every one of the centers.\\n\\n After we got Brainerd Holmes and we were really proceeding with a brand-new, greatly expanded [agenda], it wasn't too clear how [all the centers were] going to fit together. So it was decided, at least for the time being, that while it was being sorted out, that I'd be in charge of all the centers, as well as all the programs, and then my job was to be just sort of switching engineer to try to get the locomotive[s] going down the right tracks to the right places and so on, and to try to tie it together. You [can] probably see that there were a lot of problems when you do that. Two program officers may want to see the same set of people at one center working for them. What's the center director going to do about it? How does he know what he's supposed to do? So that's when it would be my responsibility to try to sort it out and allocate the funds and all of that to the center.\\n\\n The program people disliked this intensely, particularly Brainerd Holmes. Brainerd was used to an in-line organization. All the people he needed worked directly for him. He didn't have to worry about anybody else. He was very upset that some things he wanted done by the old NACA labs, for example, weren't getting done. There was a meeting when he got very upset with Ez Abbott. There was a meeting with me and the other program officers and that night Ez Abbott handed in his resignation because of the pressures that were developing from all of this.\\n\\n After a couple of years, when it became obvious what the alignment was going to be, we turned it back and Brainerd became then responsible for the three principal centers. Two of them were obvious. I mean, by then what had been the Space Task Group was moved to Houston, but 1,010 people were asked to move, and all but one moved. They were really dedicated. Some of them moved, recognizing that it was probably the end of their marriages. They were a really dedicated group. So that was nailed down and that was obviously [the] manned spacecraft [center].\\n\\n The same was pretty much true of von Braun and his team. It was not so true down at the Cape. When I arrived in NASA, you had—I can't tell you exactly how many, I think [we] had four or five independent groups working down at the Cape, some of them working for Goddard, some of them working for the Space Task Group, some of them working for Huntsville, each for their own leader. And this was very awkward from the standpoint of working relations with the Air Force, which ran Cape Canaveral, because they had to deal with a whole bunch of different NASA people [who] could be putting demands on them for anything from range safety to photographic services.\\n\\n One of the things that [was] accomplished by having me take over was to take over that whole group and make a center out of it. Kurt Debus was clearly the most able of all of the people running the stuff down there. But to get something that, say, the Jet Propulsion Lab was doing, going to, say, a planetary mission, underneath Kurt Debus, who was very busy with Apollo, was difficult, but it had to be done that way.\\n\\n That was a very hectic period of time. I did have, working directly for me, this is after the period when I had Fleming and Heaton working for me, we hired two people from industry, and one of them had responsibility for the centers and the other had responsibility to see what was going on in the program area, to try to help me sort this out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working with Mr. Holmes, he then was in charge of working with the Apollo Program with the centers under him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not to begin with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then you had changed it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Remember, he had not only Apollo, but he had Gemini and he had Mercury. Even then we were trying to plan what we were going to do beyond going to the moon. So that would be actually four different projects." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He didn't stay in that position very long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he didn't, and that was sort of a sad situation. I guess you can say it was partly his background that he was used to running a one-man show. It had [the] specific objective of putting very large antennas in northern Greenland and Alaska and Great Britain so we could detect ICBMs [Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles]. That's what the project was, and a tremendously difficult project not unlike Apollo.\\n\\n Let's see if I can tell you when it started to come apart. I guess the real crunch was that after a couple of years—this would now be, we're now talking about '63, I think, in the spring—our budget had been rapidly increasing… It had gone from one billion under [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower to, I think, something like 3.7, right at that juncture, heading towards 6. Multiply those numbers by three if you want to have it in today's dollars.\\n\\n He came up with the idea, somewhere in the spring, with the idea that if we went for a supplemental, a 400-million-dollar supplemental, that we could go to the moon in '66 rather than '67. Even though we hadn't announced the '67 date, we were still working towards it. This is, from a political standpoint, very interesting to Kennedy, because he had a good chance of being reelected and that would have still been within his administration. And to do it a year sooner, so much the better.\\n\\n I know I was horror-struck when I heard that Brainerd had this idea. I immediately—I can't remember whether I had a meeting with Brainerd and Webb and Dryden, or whether I first told them about it. But all three of us, Webb, Dryden and myself, felt this was very unwise, that we already had our hands full, and the thought of trying to speed the program up even more seemed very unlikely. We felt that if [we] went for more money, it might make it easier to maintain the dates we had, [but] we were [not] going to be able to speed it up.\\n\\n Well, Brainerd was a very spectacular sort of person and the media loved him, because he said things that were sometimes a little outlandish and it made good copy. So all of sudden, in\\n\\n Time\\n\\n magazine there was an article that there was a big rift within NASA, and it then described what the issue was. It implied that the rift was so great that either Mr. Holmes or Mr. Webb might soon be leaving the agency.\\n\\n The White House is always alert to that kind of thing, you know, different parts of the government not getting along well, or particularly when it's internal, and particularly where something that was of very great interest to the President. So all of a sudden we were, almost overnight, faced with a meeting with the President, where Brainerd had an opportunity to explain to the President what he had in mind. Then it was up to us to rebut it.\\n\\n I took on the job of rebutting it from a standpoint of running the Apollo Program, but it soon got into a discussion more political in nature, which Mr. Webb then handled. Jim made the point that with all we were doing with the Congress, the thought of going out for a supplemental on top of already dealing with several sets of authorization committees and appropriation committees, was just mind-boggling.\\n\\n Then Kennedy said, \"All right, Jim, but why don't we take money from the other programs that you have at NASA, take 400 million from them and put it over in the space program,\" which could have been done. Well, Mr. Webb dealt with that. We never even thought about that when we went to the meeting. So he struggled to explain that the other programs were important in their own right and shouldn't be sacrificed for the Apollo Program. Because…this ha[d] always been his theme, that he didn't want all the other programs to become subservient to the Apollo Program. \"I don't want people going around here with an 'A' on their forehead. They work for NASA, they don't work for Apollo Program.\" And this is a hard thing to sell.\\n\\n But in any event, the President then said, \"Well, I don't know, Jim, I'm not sure that you and I really see eye to eye on our national objectives.\" He said, \"Tell me what you think our national objective is.\"\\n\\n See, Apollo had a DX priority for buying supplies or anything, a top priority in that sense. Jim gave a nice little speech on preeminence in space. \"We don't want to just be looked at as people going to the moon, we want to be looked at as doing the top science and doing whatever we can, the top technology, the top communications and weather forecasting.\"\\n\\n The President shook his head and said, \"I don't know, Jim. I guess I'd like a letter from you in twenty-four hours to express these views more cogently. I'm not sure we see eye to eye on this.\" And that's how we left the meeting.\\n\\n We really scurried around to write that letter. That was quite an exercise. It started with Hugh Dryden writing something. I took it from him and added some things that I thought might beef it up. I took it over to Mr. Webb's house, sat down at his dining room table. He loved to do this. By then it was about a seven-page letter, typed letter. He loved to cross things out and write stuff in the margin up this way and underneath.\\n\\n We sent the letter, and we never heard another word. If anybody wants to know what we were trying to accomplish in those days, at least seen by Mr. Webb, that was that letter.\\n\\n But at that point we were not endeared to Brainerd… Then Brainerd did a couple of sort of silly things, and it just became necessary to do something about it. Brainerd went on to become the chief operating officer of Raytheon for many years, doing a good job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was very successful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe after that, George [E.] Mueller came in to the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At that time, were you in the process of restructuring the NASA organization?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We already had. It had all been done. The final separation came at a time when I was just about to race a boat to Halifax. I wasn't sure that I ought to go. We already had some feelers out for a couple of people who might take Brainerd's place. Coming back from the race, there's an island on the main coast called Roeque Island, where seafaring people love to go. It's got a beautiful beach. If you've been out in the ocean being pounded and doused with saltwater, rendezvousing at that beach is heaven.\\n\\n We came out of the fog and we hadn't any more than came out, and…boats [were] already anchored there, people yelled out, \"Seamans aboard? Mr. Webb wants to speak to you.\"\\n\\n I went aboard another boat that had much more powerful radio transmitter. Jim Webb said, \"Well, Hugh and I have talked to George,\" and I knew George, anyway, \"and he's very interested. Before going ahead, I wanted to be sure and get your vote.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Absolutely.\"\\n\\n So George came that summer and he did a remarkable job. Brainerd did a great job, too. But what George added was, among other things, there were two things he did that were really important right at the start. One was to get more senior people running the program. We had a hard time hiring people from industry to come in and take jobs in NASA. Obviously they were going to take a big reduction in pay, and other reasons it wasn't really attractive. We did get some people to come. We got one person to come and run all the projects at Huntsville, a guy named Young, on a leave of absence from Aerospace, where he was the chief operating officer. But that's the kind of thing that's very hard to do.\\n\\n By the time George got there, which was just about the time I got back from the cruise, and I met with him, he said, \"You know, we've got to get some more people here. There are people I want to get.\" He had…a list of something like thirty Air Force generals and admirals that he wanted transferred.\\n\\n I said, \"That would be terrific to get all those people, but, geez, I don't know. Let's go up and see Jim Webb.\"\\n\\n We called a guy named Bozo McKee, who was the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force, whom Webb had known…for many years. He worked for [Curtis] LeMay. I can imagine how LeMay would probably react to something like this. And, by golly, we got most of them. That was something that Jim Webb helped execute.\\n\\n The other thing he had was this idea of all up system testing. By then we had fired four Saturn Is. It was just the first stage. The upper stages had nothing but sand in them. This was the Germanic way of testing, to have lots of vehicles and you take the thing step by step by step by step, adding a little bit each time. Before they got a successful V-2, they'd fired seventy-seven V-2s, for example.\\n\\n Even before George came, it was obvious to me that we weren't going to be able to land on the moon in the decade or even come close to it if we kept proceeding in the same sort of plodding way. But George came in and he said, \"All up system testing.\" He said, \"The very first Apollo launching will be with the complete vehicle, everything.\"\\n\\n The Huntsville people, in particular, were absolutely aghast at that. They said, \"It'll never work.\" The very first one, incidentally, was launched in November or December of '67. I remember seeing Wernher right afterwards, and he was shaking his head. He said, \"I never, never thought it'd be possible.\"\\n\\n But the idea was simple. It was, if you're going to go through the exercise and the hundreds of millions of dollars to test the first stage, you might as well put everything else on top of it. You may not get any data out of it, but you may. If you do, you're that much further ahead.\\n\\n So, George took over. Brainerd was a whirlwind, but George was a double whirlwind or something. The days of the week meant nothing to him. There were meetings on Saturdays and Sundays. George was indefatigable. I mean, he just traveled everywhere.\\n\\n He…formalized what Brainerd…had, anyway, which was to think of the organization as being made up of, like the chairman of the board, and then the directors of the board were the center directors. Then underneath him, George—by then Mercury didn't exist, but the head of Gemini and the head of Apollo, Sam [Samuel C.] Phillips, and the head of advanced planning. It would be up to them to come and present to the board weekly, or very frequently anyway, what the issues were, what the problems they faced, and so on. Then they would decide with this configuration how to go about solving it, and it would obviously be divided up into the various centers and who would execute what.\\n\\n In each one of the centers you had project people who were responsible, say, down at Huntsville for each one of the rocket stages. You go down to Houston and you have somebody in charge of the lunar module and somebody else in charge of the service module and somebody in charge of the Apollo capsule itself. Down at the Cape, similarly, you'd have people responsible for different things. It was set up so that Sam Phillips, running Apollo, did not have to go to Bob Gilruth, who was head of Houston, go through him, get his approval, before going to Joe Shea, who was in charge of the Apollo capsule. He'd go directly to him.\\n\\n You say, well, what's Bob Gilruth doing, anyway? Here's somebody who, on paper, works for him, but he is not involved in the decision. He's involved in the decision at the higher level. George made it work. No perfect way to organization. So, no matter how you do it, you're going to have stresses, but George and Sam Phillips and people like Joe Shea got the job done.\\n\\n Maybe we've got a few more minutes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I do have a few brief questions for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then maybe we can then go ahead and wrap up and, hopefully, if you wouldn't mind, I could have the opportunity to talk to you again. We can elaborate on these questions.\\n\\n When you came into NASA Headquarters, the Mercury Program was already under way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The astronauts were selected a year before I arrived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How were you involved in the Mercury Program, if at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let's see. Was I involved at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand on a much more top-level organization, you were working with the organization and helping Mr. Webb with the larger decisions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, there were still a few issues that had to be resolved, but, by and large, I was an observer. The first Mercurys, I didn't even go down to the Cape. Hugh Dryden went down. The end, I went down and came back with the astronauts. But in the beginning, I got something set up.\\n\\n We were located then in the Dolly Madison House there on Lafayette Square of their headquarters. The Goddard Center was responsible for communications on Mercury, around the world, so they had the best information available. I got a microwave set up, so that we had a small viewing room, if you want to call it that, in Washington, D.C. On the first launch, for example, of Shepard, I had a couple of people in my cell and we sat there to see what was going on, realizing that an awful lot was at stake. But I had no say in the matter.\\n\\n However, we had one really tough issue that came along, that I did get heavily involved in, on the Mercury Atlas. The Atlas is really a dirigible. It's kept erect before you launch it by the pressure inside of it, but the skin of that Atlas is only ten thousandths [0.010] of an inch thick, and it was not designed to have a Mercury sitting on top of it and then taking off with the…[stresses that developed from the lift off acceleration]. The thought was that—and it came up very late. It came up about the time Jim Webb arrived.\\n\\n We get a letter from [General] Benny [Bernard] Schriever where he said—just imagine the situation. Bennie Shreiver came in and said he felt that his studies showed that it would be unsafe to launch the Mercury Atlas. Now, this was the only way we had of putting somebody into orbit. I mean, to cancel that program at that time would have been devastating, yet, [as] Bennie said, we not only have to have a deterrent in our [stand-off] with the Soviet Union, but we have to appear to have. If, on public television, you should see the Mercury go [up] with the Atlas pushing it up there and it blew up, I mean, that would cast doubt upon our whole ICBM counterforce.\\n\\n Well, that was a really tough one. Abe Silverstein, who was still managing all the programs, including Mercury, obviously was immediately involved. The solution that he came up with—and I didn't come up with a solution, but Jim Webb and I had to sell it to McNamara and the Defense Department—was that we put what we called a bellyband on it… We made a [band] that would just fit, of about five one thousandths inch [0.005] thick, that would fit over the Atlas [nose cone] and add strength to it. We got it on by heating it up so it expanded and put it [on] and then let it shrink into place.\\n\\n It was on that basis we had, obviously, a zillion calculations as to whether the Atlas would collapse or not. It wasn't a simple calculation. We had to know that everything was perfect. You could show that there was no danger in going ahead with the Atlas the way it was, but if you had certain adverse things happen, it could possibly have been stressed so that [it] thing blew up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think, as I remember it now, that was my principal contribution." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they also use that with the Atlas Agena, in launching the Agena?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, but nobody worried by then. That's true. Yes, the Agena was launched by the Atlas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that you were significantly involved, and maybe we can talk about this extremely briefly here, and I can go ahead and conduct some more research into this. But I know that you were involved in the Gemini Program and, more specifically, you were noted for creating the Gemini Review Board, I believe, after the Gemini IX flight. I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit about your involvement in the Gemini Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, let's see. [I suggested the Gemini Review Board as discussed previously, but not after Gemini IX. I did revise the Accident Review Board protocol at the time of Gemini IX, but because of the near disaster on Gemini VIII not because of Gemini IX.]\\n\\n After the decision was made that we were going to go to the moon, the concern was, what were the astronauts going to do? How are we going to train them? How are we going to work out certain technical problems, particularly the rendezvous and docking? If we had to finish Mercury in '62 or '63 and then have to wait two or three years before we start to get the Apollo hardware, was there something we could do in the interim? I was very much involved in getting it started, though it was not my idea.\\n\\n The idea came from, I guess, by then—I don't think, I'm not sure whether we quite moved the Space Task Group to Houston or not. There was a guy named Jim [James A.] Chamberlin, anyway, who had come down from Canada with quite a big group [of AVRO engineers] when Canada canceled a big so-called CF-105. He'd come down with that group and he was sort of the thinker of the group. He came up with the idea of working with McDonnell-Douglas, of just expanding Mercury in every direction, so that it would be bigger. So you could put two people in and you could [run] quite a few of the tests that you could see were going to be required [for Apollo].\\n\\n Mercury II—I already talked about how the name became Gemini. It was going to be too big for the Atlas, but the new Titan 2 booster could handle it. So the formulation of that program was something that I was right in the middle of, with Abe Silverstein.\\n\\n Let's see. There were twelve missions spelled out, the first two unmanned and then manned. I'm trying to remember what happened along about IX—I guess it was VIII, [Gemini] VIII went, we almost lost—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mean Gemini VIII with [Neil A.] Armstrong?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Armstrong and [David R.] Scott, yes. That's the one where we did rendezvous [and dock] with the Agena, if I'm not mistaken. Then they started spinning, and they thought that was the fault of the Agena [so] they disconnected it. The fault was in the Gemini, and they really started spinning. Was the Review Board for that purpose? I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe it was created around Gemini IX, which was the [Thomas P.] Stafford and [Eugene A.] Cernan mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was the 76 [joint Gemini VII and Gemini VI mission]. That was the rendezvous one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was, I believe, Stafford and [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.], and then [Frank Borman] and [James A.] Lovell [Jr.] was VI and VII. Then I believe IX was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had the so-called 76 Project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where [Frank] Borman went up in VII and the idea was to clear the pad, we only had one pad, and put Gemini VI on it and go up and rendezvous. Wasn't that Stafford?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was, with Wally Schirra as command." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then I believe IX, Stafford commanded with Cernan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I forget the specifics of IX." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe they tried to dock with the ATDA [Augmented Target Docking Adaptor]—the angry alligator is what they called it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It didn't unfold properly. There was the target docking adapter, the Agena target docking adapter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They didn't quite get to dock with it, because, I guess, the cover on top of the ATDA did not unfold properly. In addition to that, they had a few space walks, and I believe Mr. Cernan had some trouble on his space walks where he lost about thirteen pounds just in trying to attempt the work package that was given." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Well, right in that period there, we were learning how difficult it was to get outside of a capsule and do anything worthwhile, because you'd try, with a screwdriver, to turn a screw this way and instead of the screw going, you'd start rotating yourself. We realized we had a lot to learn about how to operate in space, human beings operating in space. You had to have special footholds and handholds and all of those kinds of things. I think we did have a special committee to review that. I don't quite remember the specifics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The reason why I'm asking is because I've read about this Review Board in some of the history books, and they discuss that it was created after the IX mission, and I just wondered why it perhaps wasn't created under the VIII mission, because of the problem you had mentioned. But it didn't specifically say what the Review Board was for or give any of the results. That's why I was very curious if you might be able to shed some light on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let's see if we can find out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe I'll do a little bit deeper digging." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was a period when we were really trying to lay to rest our ability to rendezvous and dock, as well as to operate, because as a backup, if we somehow or other hadn't been able to latch the two together so that you could crawl from the lunar module through into the capsule for the return, the backup was going to [require the astronauts] to egress the lunar module and go across and go into the [return] capsule, which would have been a fairly tricky maneuver. But in desperation, it was possible. So that's one of the reasons that we had people outside for these so-called EVAs.\\n\\n [I believe I established a “special group” following Gemini IX to recommend experiments for the final Gemini missions. The purpose of these experiments was to better understand why it was so difficult for an astronaut to function outside the capsule—EVA—and to find ways to minimize the difficulty.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Michelle Kelly", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it seems like it's about time, so why don't we try to stop here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert C. Seamans", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think it is, because I've got to get in town." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00615", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WrenRJ/wrenrj.htm", + "original_file_name": "WrenRJ_10-16-07.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WrenRJ/WrenRJ_10-16-07.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert J. Wren", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 16 October 2007" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert J. Wren" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is October 16th, 2007. This oral history with Bob Wren is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal is the interviewer, and she is assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for joining us this morning. We appreciate it. I'd like to begin by asking you about your interest in engineering and spaceflight before you began working for NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Thank you very much, and I'm happy to be here. I guess my interest in engineering started with my dad, who had gone two years to [Southwest Texas State Teachers College] San Marcos [Texas] and got a teaching certificate. And he was going to go to [Texas] A&M [College Station, Texas] but he couldn't make it, because he had to support the family. So all when I was growing up he wanted me to become an engineer and go to A&M to do so. I did become an engineer. But unfortunately I went to University of Texas [Austin, Texas], and not A&M. (laughter)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ooh, sparking bad blood." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For him anyway. So that's how I got introduced to engineering. I went to school at UT, and then when I graduated there I interviewed several aerospace companies around the country. Republic and McDonnell in St. Louis [Missouri] and Boeing and so on and so forth. Anyway I ended up with General Dynamics [GD], Fort Worth [Texas] working on the B-58 Hustler Bomber. I was there for I guess five and a half, six years. Started associate engineer and then became a test engineer. I can go into what I did there.\\n\\n I guess the advantage to me of working at the bomber plant before I came to NASA -- now I'll get to NASA I guess in a little bit -- was that at the bomber plant I learned how to design and manufacture and test and operate an aircraft. What it took to do that. We had an assembly plant there that was vintage of World War II turning out World War II bombers. In one end of the plant would go some raw materials and out the other end would come a finished airplane. Inside was like a city and there was traffic lights and streets and all kinds of things.\\n\\n So I learned how you could take materials and fabricate those, design those, and put them together to make an operating vehicle that would function to achieve some kind of purpose. In this case it was a fighter-bomber. But I learned how to do all those things and learned how the designs worked, how the designs had to go with kind of materials and the manufacturing and fabrication capability that existed. And then once you fabricated it and put it together how you verified your design through testing as well as your analyses. I was on the drawing board when I first got there to learn the drafting room manual standard criteria for the company on how to do drawings and so forth.\\n\\n Worked a little while in the design group and then was sent out to the test lab, which was very fortunate for me, because there I got to get my hands on the hardware, which would serve me well later at NASA. So I got to static test and dynamic test, vibration test, acoustic test -- aircraft parts and hardware. And some upper stage spacecraft parts, because General Dynamics also had worked at San Diego [California] with the Centaur and Atlas stages and we did some of that test work at Fort Worth. So I was kind of familiar with some of the spacecraft hardware as well. And we did some work on the B-57 and some other ones. But the main plane was the B-58 Hustler.\\n\\n It was a honeycomb structure. Had a lot of advances to it. It was state-of-the-art. It had Coke-bottle shape for aerodynamic purposes so it could go supersonic with relative ease. Like I said, the structure was bonded honeycomb. It was fly-by-wire. Had a lot of advanced avionics. The airplane had an external pod stores, instead of a bomb bay. It was designed to have replaceable and interchangeable external pods.\\n\\n Some of these pods would be fuel pods that would stay with the aircraft. Some would be reconnaissance pods that stayed with the aircraft. Some then you could throw off and jettison. Those could be just drop pods with munitions or they could be propulsion pods. Once you dropped one they'd fly. The idea, ultimate idea, was that you'd go in over the adversary--subsonic--and then when you got close, why, you'd accelerate supersonic, you'd jettison your pod, which would have a nuclear device on it, you'd do a maneuver and pitch out, roll over and get out of Dodge as fast as you could go. (Laughter) You were going top speed at that point to vacate the area.\\n\\n The airplane itself was a delta wing. And so it handled much like the delta wing fighters that the company was making, which was F-102s and F-106s. It was more like a fighter plane than a bomber. When we turned it over to the Air Force across the field at Carswell [Air Force Base, Texas] for example, they were having some difficulty flying it and lost some crews, because what they did is they put multiengine pilots on it that were used to flying multiengine bombers. This is multiengine, four engines okay, but for example it took off and landed at a high angle of attack, because of the delta wing, more like a fighter than a bomber. So we convinced the Air Force to put fighter pilots on the crew. That pretty much solved the problem. They could handle that.\\n\\n Now big thing there that was different than when I got to NASA was it was an airplane, and we were very concerned in the structures area about cyclic fatigue because the airplane had to last so many years and so many cycles of usage and life. So we did a lot of cyclic fatigue testing in addition to static strength testing. We used whiffletrees and all kinds of devices to pull and tug on the different parts of the airplane. We would start with components and work up to subassemblies, assemblies, and finally the complete airplane. We did cyclic fatigue tests like for example on the wing. We did the same thing on the empennage, the vertical tail, and on the main landing gear, the nose gear. Finally we did it on a complete airplane, Airplane 29. So I was heavily involved in all that and learned quite a bit.\\n\\n I also had a little side project going on the side. I was kind of interested in magnetohydrodynamics. And so I had a little jury-rigged outfit over at the corner outside behind the building where I was trying to develop, or expand upon, a capability to use magnetics. A magnetic bottle to contain high temperatures. Where the temperature of the plasma for whatever use, either for arc jets or for propulsion, ion propulsion, was so high that we didn't have any materials that could contain the temperature involved. So I kind of messed with that. Later on, why, we had an arc jet here at NASA that we used, very very similar. We also have a lot of folks working on ion engines, which use the same basic principles. So I guess that's kind of what I did and started up at the bomber plant. Of course while I was there I went to school in the evening over at Dallas [Texas] at SMU [Southern Methodist University]. Worked on my master's, which I finally got.\\n\\n [Some of the people I worked with at GD: Henry Growald, Glenn Robinson, Haskell Nolan, Weldon Walker, Fred Cox, Charlie Archer, John Maulden, Bob Adel, Dick Schmiegel, Gene Varner, Phil Haught, Jim Bonner, John Lacey, Joe Bateman, Sam Glorioso, R.L. Johnston, R.E. Johnson. All that I can remember.]\\n\\n We did a lot of tennis playing and a lot of waterskiing. There was a lake right next door. (Laughter) And my roommate and I would go out there in the afternoon and then we had kind of taken over the slalom course that somebody had there. So we started conducting classes and teaching water skiing. We had the jump and the slalom course and so forth. We just had a lot of fun with that.\\n\\n [My son, Pat, said I should mix in some funny stories to liven things up a bit.] My roommate had two airplanes. He had a little T-craft, fabric-covered, that we used for proficiency training. And then he had a cross-country aircraft, a Cessna 180 that we flew to University of Texas Longhorn football games. So we'd go cross-country in that. But I guess one funny story is that we were going to do an overhaul on the T-craft and one of the compadres that worked with us was assigned to go to San Diego's GD plant for a year, so he loaded up his wife and his family and away they went. So we were to babysit his house for him, kind of look after it. So came time to do this overhaul, and so we found a kid's swing set that would make a perfect A-frame to hold the engine up when we took it out. We took the parts apart. We had the wing -- because you have to fabric-cover it, it's a lot of dope and paint. We had the wing in the hallway and the parts all over the house. Everything was going well. We were making good progress. All of a sudden we get a phone call. They're coming home early. So there was a mad rush to get all those parts out of that lady's house, but we made it. (laughter)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh good. They ever find out that you were doing that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, they never did. They may know now. Fred Cox was my roommate then. We scuba dived some. Nobody knew anything about scuba diving back in those days. So Fred and I went out to -- and Fred had gone to UT also. Was a good Longhorn. Fred and I went out to Possum Kingdom Lake and we found a dive shop with a double-hose regulator and just went and went diving. Of course there weren't any certificates, you know. It’s lucky we're still here today. But we did it anyway. [I also spent a lot of time with my son, Jamie, at Six Flags during the summers. Practically lived at that place, especially Skull Island and the Old West Shoot Out area.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did you start working at GD?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was in -- see, I graduated from UT in -- believe it was August of '56. I entered graduate school there at Austin to work on my master's. And so I had been working with the Bureau of Reclamation to work my way through school. I had many jobs. But the latest one at that time was with the Area Planning Office of the Bureau of Reclamation there in Austin. So I had been working part-time. So when I graduated I started working full-time and going to school part-time on my master's at UT. I went a semester and about a half I guess. In the spring of '57, I left there and went to General Dynamics. So that was the spring of '57. Then transferred everything to SMU so I could continue my studies there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were there when Sputnik went up. What are your recollections of Sputnik?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wow! It was pretty exciting. I got real interested in space while I was still -- naturally when I got to GD I got interested in space in addition to airplanes. The way I got interested in space, aside from Sputnik and Telstar and all those wonderful things that went up, is that the company had seminars set up with Space Technology Laboratories, STL. Which by the way Joe [Joseph F.] Shea was with at one time, who I later worked with. They had a whole series of seminars on what folks had done in trying to come up with the ways of operating in space for trajectory analysis, throw weights, how you build this and that. And the micrometeoroid environment. On and on and on.\\n\\n So I dove into that stuff and studied it like crazy. Here I am at the bomber plant and I'm getting more and more pumped up about space work. So that's kind of how that happened. Of course also at that time, why, [Wernher] von Braun had written a book about going to Mars. A lot of us had read that. So we were all excited about going to space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so when you heard that they were going to be building a space laboratory down here did you jump at that opportunity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, what happened there was that the Space Task Group -- I'll switch now. The Space Task Group up in Virginia do fantastic work. Can say nothing but good things about the old NACA, National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, and the Space Task Group in particular. A lot of my good friends through the years and still good friends to this day had their roots in the Space Task Group at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]. Well, when NASA was created in the Space Act of 1958, they started putting together the organization, and then finally it was determined to move it to Houston, it was very apparent that they were not going to have enough people to do the Gemini Project, and certainly the Apollo Project. So although the Space Task Group was all bright people, there weren't enough of them. So what they decided to do was to go out to industry and try to find some people to bring in to help them.\\n\\n That's what happened in my case. People came looking for folks to come on down and join the new NASA group. Aleck [C.] Bond I guess hired me and Max [Maxime A.] Faget. Anyway they came to GD looking for people and interviewed me and decided I might have something to offer. So brought me down. They wanted me down in the spring of '62. I couldn't make it because I said look, I'm just this close for getting my master's at SMU, and I'll finish up in August. “Oh, I've got to have you right now.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, I don't know, I want to come, but I want that master's.”\\n\\n So anyway it turned out that I was allowed to finish. And that's how I got my master's. I came down in August of '62. When I first arrived of course I was located in the Rich Fan Building on Telephone Road. [I distinctly remember one of the many fine people I immediately came to know was Alfred J. “Al” Ligrani. Such a kind and capable gentleman that I am proud to say is still a friend to this day. And we are both in the Space Center Rotary Club. The same goes for Jack R. Lister.] We were scattered all up and down Telephone Road with the temporary buildings. I can't remember them all but Farnsworth/Chambers is where we had a kind of a headquarters. We had the Rich Building, and we had Engineering in the Rich Building. ASPO, Apollo Spacecraft Program Office I think was located there. We had Franklin Apartments, Lane Wells, East End State Bank. We were all over the place in different groups in different places. So that's where I started out.\\n\\n You might help me. I was trying to remember. Was there anything exciting that happened in the Rich Building per se? It was an old fan manufacturing building. So it had offices over on the side and upstairs, there was a couple of levels. And it had a big old open bay area where they had manufactured fans I guess. So we set up some equipment in there for vibration and static test and so forth. But it was minimal because we knew we were going to go down to the site that was under construction. But I remember there was a day when JFK [President John F. Kennedy] came by and came through Rich Building. I can't remember exactly when it was and why he was there, other than just checking on how the space program was going. I can't remember if that was in conjunction with him going over to Rice [University, Houston, Texas] to make a speech at Rice Stadium or not. You might be able to help me with that. I can't remember the dates. But I do remember JFK. And somebody said, “Hey JFK's in the building.”\\n\\n I said, “Oh.”\\n\\n I was busy working hard. So I went downstairs and went over there and saw him. He walked by. Shook his hand and all that. But I was so involved in the challenge of trying to do what I was charged with doing that I didn't care too much about it. But now that I think back that was kind of silly. I mean here's this -- quite a man. Anyway he came through the building and it was pretty nice that he would actually take time to show up and see what we were up to. And trying to meet his request to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't you tell us a little bit more about the Rich Building. I understand that Aleck Bond had put other laboratories and other type of facilities in there besides the vibration testing lab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so. And I don't remember all that. So I probably can't help a whole lot with that. I don't remember what all was there. Like I said, I think we had some static test machines there, like Instrons and so forth. As best I remember it was mainly maybe a few vibration shakers and some static test machines. I can't recall if we had any mockups activity going there or not. We might have had. I don't remember. One of the reasons I don't remember too much is I was doing a lot of traveling too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, you were?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. See, what I was charged with -- and the reason why they kind of wanted me there, I guess -- is that Max and Aleck and Joe [Joseph N.] Kotanchik, [H.] Kurt Strass, those guys wanted somehow to be able to verify that the Apollo spacecraft could withstand the launch and boost environment for vibration and acoustics, as well as the traditional structural strength. We didn't care about cyclic fatigue now, because this is a spacecraft and not an airplane, so it's a one-shot deal, so you don't worry about cyclic fatigue.\\n\\n But we had to figure out now how are we going to verify this. Remembering that we are in a big rush. The environment was hectic to say the least. We had a big job to do. Not quite sure how to do it. We had spacecraft to build, design, check out, verify, and fly. And we weren't quite sure how to do it. We had to do it in a big rush because we had to meet the decade requirement. So and of course on the ops [operations] side of course we had all kinds of things to develop and create there. How do you control this beast and so forth and fly the mission once you've designed and built the hardware and put it in place and checked it out and verified it? Well, anyway one part of that was like I said the launch and boost.\\n\\n So what we said was that well we can simulate the vibration. We kind of know how to do that. We've done that before. We've got the equipment to do that. So we'll create a laboratory to enable us to do that. But that's pretty straightforward.\\n\\n But the one that had us was the acoustics. Where in the world does acoustics come from? Well, it comes from a couple of sources. One is the low-frequency sound waves of immense magnitude, amplitude that come from the firing of the first-stage engine at the launch pad. At that time we were contemplating not only the S-I but the Saturn V. And I guess I need to say something about that.\\n\\n The frequency of the sound wave that the spacecraft and the crew would see is a function of the diameter of the exhaust nozzle, the bell. The bigger the nozzle, the lower the frequency. Well, the size of the nozzle of the F1 engine on the Saturn V is humongous. I don't remember the exact feet or meters or whatever. But it was big. So what did that mean?\\n\\n What that meant was that the sound coming out of the exhaust that would radiate and come back up to the spacecraft was very very high-level at very low frequency. So we had to figure out a way to simulate all that and be sure that our spacecraft would withstand it; the structure of it, all the components, and of course the crew. The second source of sound came from when we accelerated off the pad and we went through what we call -- we go supersonic. We go through Max Q or maximum dynamic pressure. We get a series of shockwaves that pass by the payload if you like. In this case the payload is the Apollo Command/Service Module and LM [Lunar Module]. And we also get a lot of the turbulence that goes by, very similar to what you get in an airplane cockpit, fighter cockpit, at very high amplitude in the middle frequencies. This is why a lot of the guys that fly jets have a notch in their hearing at the mid frequency range because of that noise going around the cockpit.\\n\\n But anyway, so we were charged with trying to figure out a way to simulate all that and do it in a hurry. So what I did was I didn't know a whole lot about acoustics at that point. I'd been working in a lot of other areas. I decided I'd better learn in a hurry so I found out that the top acoustics people in the country were at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts]. There was some professors there who also had set up a consulting arrangement on the side, Bolt, Beranek and Newman [BBN]. I went and paid them a visit and said hey, we need help. Here's what we need. They said gee that'd be fine, we'd be happy to help you. And says matter of fact Leo [L.] Beranek's daughter married a fellow by the name of Ken [Kenneth McK.] Eldred.\\n\\n Ken Eldred was director of research with Wyle Labs, also located in Boston [Massachusetts] and El Segundo [California]. So they plugged me in to Ken. And all that was wonderful. That saved the day. Because Ken Eldred's one of the smartest people I've ever had the pleasure of knowing and working with, but at the same time that he could do his very deep detailed technical work, he had the ability to convey that to idiots like me, the laypeople, so we could understand it as he went through all of his equations. I made the best use of Ken Eldred and the Wyle Research Group as well as BBN and MIT to try to solve these problems. That's why I took a long time to explain why I wasn't in the Rich Building much, because I was traveling to El Segundo and Boston and so forth, trying to figure out how to simulate those environments in a ground test for Apollo.\\n\\n I don't know how we did all this. The task of trying to create the spacecraft that I've been talking about, at the same time we were trying to create the laboratories for longtime use as well as specifically for Apollo and perhaps Gemini. So we were trying to design and create facilities. So in the process of that and these studies that we were doing with Ken Eldred and Wyle, we created what we called Building 49 on site back in the back, which is the VATF or Vibration and Acoustic Test Facility.\\n\\n It looks kind of funny when you see it because it's some low buildings and then a couple of towers. Well my goodness, what are those towers for? Well, the reason for that was the low buildings were obvious, we had a general vibration laboratory in part of it and some low-level small component acoustic test capability, little chambers in the other parts of it. We put the static test back up in Building 13 with Jim [James] McBride, so we didn't have to fool with that. Jim [and Richard W. “Dick” Bricker] more than adequately handled all that. But at 49 then we had the general vibration laboratory and general kind of acoustic lab. But for the big pieces when we actually had the Apollo spacecraft in there it's pretty tall. We wanted to do the testing in the vertical position.\\n\\n So we created the towers, two of them. We had one for vibration. We could put the vehicle in there and put it on shakers and shake it free free mode or we could tie the end down and do a fixed-base mode, depending upon what kind of test conditions you were utilizing. Then we had the other tower where we were going to put great big old acoustic horns in there, like your speakers for your hi-fi or your stereo equipment. But these were huge, huge drivers. So we created all that and we created a sleeve, finally came up with kind of a sleeve arrangement to come over the top of the CSM [Command and Service Module]. We put the drivers up on top and drove the high-level high-amplitude sound down around the vehicle is how we solved that problem. It was a sight to see, and it was a lot of racket.\\n\\n One funny story -- I'll throw in a couple funny stories here, it's getting kind of boring I guess. One of the funny stories is that we created the driver -- we had to have huge drivers. When I say driver, when you have a speaker you’ve got coils and so forth to drive the cone you know and make the noise. So the noise come out -- or sound. By the way in acoustics -- I learned a lot about acoustics -- if it's pleasant that you like to hear, why, then it's sound. If it's unwanted sound it's called noise. (Laughter) But it's all the same thing. It's amplitude, wave amplitude of energy going through the air.\\n\\n So anyway we had these drivers that Wyle created for us up at their Huntsville [Alabama] location. The fellow that worked for Ken Eldred named Fancher [M.] Murray had this thing all fixed up, and they tested it out up there, and it was ready to ship it down to us and install it in our test rig. So we were in a big rush. So they couldn't get the shipping arranged quick enough. I mean we're working round the clock 24/7. We said oh we got to have those drivers down here, those speaker drivers. So Fancher says that's okay, I'll put it in my car and I'll drive it down there.\\n\\n So they loaded this thing in the back end of his sedan, big old Lincoln, and he comes driving across country right through the middle of the night down from Huntsville. Well he got down somewhere in Louisiana and he got pulled over by the gendarmes. (Laughter) Because his vehicle's going down the road with the tail dragging almost on the pavement, and they thought sure that he was you know a rumrunner or something, you know, had a still, and so they made him open up the trunk and they looked in there and they didn't understand the mess that was in there. Said, “What kind of still is that?” They thought he had a liquor still. But it finally got straightened out with a few phone calls and we got him released there and got him on down the way, delivering his drivers.\\n\\n Anyway the test went pretty well. I had another interesting story. It's kind of a sidelight, but at the time there was a lot of tie with the original astronaut crew, the seven, with Hollywood and the entertainers and Jose Jimenez and so on and so forth. Well they kind of continued in that vein and they were making a movie -- they always seemed to be making movies on site. They were making a movie with -- I think it was called\\n\\n The [Reluctant] Astronaut\\n\\n . It had -- oh what was that fellow's name? Time out. I’ve got to find his name. Don Knotts.\\n\\n Don Knotts, and he'd been on the television and movies and so forth, and he was kind of -- he played a goofy guy, kind of a goofy persona. Well he was on site and they're making this movie. He asked to go see some of the labs and so forth so he'd get a better feel to help him play his role in the movie. So they called me up and said hey can he come out and see the VATF and I said sure that's okay. So he came out in the middle of the night, and of course we were out there all hours of the night. I took him around and showed him this and that. And took him way up the towers and so forth. What was really funny to me was that here was this goofy guy, funny guy, and talking in person he was more like his real self. He was very cogent, very intelligent, he asked a lot of good questions, he was very interested in the details of what we were doing and why we were doing it; I was amazed. My God, that's the guy from the television. (Laughter) But that was a very pleasant surprise that he was so like that, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he wasn't like his [Barnie Fife] character." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, his [Barnie Fife], right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me ask you a couple questions about the Vibration and Acoustic Test Facility. You mentioned that the acoustics was going to be a major issue, but were there vibration test facilities across the country that you might have considered testing the Apollo Command Module and things in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. As a matter of fact, we did take some parts of the Command/Service Module out to an acoustic chamber that Ken had in El Segundo. We made use of that. I can't recall the details now on how big it was but it was of sufficient size to test the component or subassembly or assembly that we were testing at the time. That was an acoustic test. Some vibration tests might have been done at Downey [California], I don't recall. But we did most of it there in 49 in our general vibration lab. Then when we got the whole what we called boilerplate structures where you have mass simulators instead of actual systems we did most of that in the vibration tower or in the general vibration lab depending upon what size we were dealing with and so forth and what the test conditions were. But we did all that in 49, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your facilities differ from say the facilities out at North American [Aviation] or in El Segundo?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the general vibration lab was probably about the same. We may or may not have had more equipment. But they didn't have a tower like we created where we could put the whole stack up there and shake it in one unit and push on it and do bad things to it and try to tear it apart and so forth. And of course all the time making engineering measurements and so forth on strains and stresses and accelerations and so on and so forth. They didn't have that kind of capability.\\n\\n So that was unique that we could put the whole vertical stack in there and shake it and work on it, push on it, be mean to it, try to get it to break, as well as see what its response behavior characteristics were. And the same thing with the acoustic. Nobody had a capability to test the entire stack. So that's why we created that tower and had the big drivers that I was talking about, acoustic drivers, and the great big huge kind of like enveloping horn things that we encapsulated the spacecraft with these horns and drove the noise down through the horns.\\n\\n In other words, in effect I guess you'd say that we put the spacecraft up in the throat of a big old speaker, kind of is what we did. [Total, I believe, of 160,000 watts of power.] Nobody had that capability, because this was a big vehicle, you know. We had the Command/Service Module and the SLA in there, Spacecraft LM Adapter. So it's pretty high stack in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you do any work with Brown and Root?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Brown and Root, their role was -- everybody had roles, bless their hearts, but Brown and Root had the facility operations contract, or one of them, and with the Engineering Directorate. And so the Brown and Root folks, Pete Gist and Bruce [R. Vernier] supported the space chambers, SESL (Space Environment Simulation Laboratory) Building 32, and then VATF in Building 49, and also the general [structural] lab in Building 13, and a few others: [Robert H. “Bob” Jeffries, Stephen M. Suarez, etc]. So that's where the Brown and Root-Northrop came from or BRN, and it was a combined merger of Brown and Root, the construction company, and Northrop Aviation. I think Pete had come from Brown and Root and Bruce came from Northrop. I'm not sure but that's the BRN people or Brown and Root-Northrop people. So they operated the facilities for us. They had some lead engineers and so forth as well as their management. And then a whole bevy of technicians to actually operate the equipment for us.\\n\\n In essence on the civil service side we didn't have any technicians operating equipment. We depended upon the contract folks to do that for us. We had engineers but we didn't have technicians. I think we had one lead technician to kind of oversee things but beyond that it was Brown and Root-Northrop technicians." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you decide where to place the VATF on the Center site itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't recall who decided to put it back there at the corner across from the water tower where it's located. I don't recall. It was probably just part of the facility layout. The facilities folks were wonderful. They were going hard trying to create all this infrastructure. You know there's a tunnel system that goes underneath the site? A lot of people don't know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I did not know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There is an entire tunnel system underneath the site over here. It was put in place -- and the tunnel system's big enough you can walk in it. Most folks don't know it's there and fewer people have ever been in it. I've been in it all over the whole thing.\\n\\n Why is it there? It was put there so that you could have a central cooling and heating plant for one thing. Then you could send all of your heating and cooling pipes all over the Center to all the different facilities and buildings and not have to repeat that in every building. So there's a big old heating and cooling plant building over there that's at the apex or source of the tunnel supply system. The other reason for the tunnel is that we have all kinds of cables running under there. All of the electrical power to operate the site, building lights and so forth are all underground. They all go in that tunnel. The other reason is for communication. Everything's underground. There's no telephone wires overhead or anything. They're all running underground in those things. Then communication same thing. Communication and data-handling and so forth, they're all running through that series of tunnels under there. So we could hook up things in for example Building 49 VATF and communicate with the SESL, with Building 13, all over the place. So that's all down there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Interesting. I had no idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and every once in a while you get a clue -- now that you know it's there -- if you drive around the site every once in a while you'll see a little thing kind of sticks up and it's got some vents on the side of it, little holes with you know spaces there and maybe a manhole cover or something up on top. What that is is ventilation so you can get air down into the tunnels." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'll have to go look next time I'm on site. So when did the Vibration and Acoustic Test Facility officially open?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ooh, see, I'm going to refer to a note here. I know I remember I left the Rich Building and was headed for the site for 49, and 49 wasn't ready yet. I can't remember the exact time. I had to go to Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] for a few months while we were waiting for 49 Office Building to finish. When we finally got down there, golly, it was probably about '63 or [6]4, somewhere in there. I'm guessing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you guys have to do to get the building ready? What sort of testing did you have to do to prove that it was ready to work on the Apollo program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, okay, well the things like shaker equipment, that was pretty straightforward because that was off-the-shelf equipment that we purchased from Ling and different manufacturers. Ling was a big manufacturer of shaker equipment at the time. Of course when you have those kinds of things you have controls for the shakers. You have instrumentation to measure responses of the specimen you're testing. So we had big banks of control equipment and instrumentation equipment. So part of the checkout would be to put the forcing function, either the shakers or hydraulic pistons or whatever we were using to impart the force, in place and put it maybe on some kind of dummy something or other, and then hook the whole mess up and see if it would behave like it was supposed to to deliver the force and excitations and also that the instrumentation paths were all good and we were getting measurements and they were being processed okay and recorded on the tape recorders and the oscillographs or whatever we had and so forth. So all of that laboratory kind of equipment had to be put in place and then checked out and deemed to be operational. Before we actually put real specimens in for test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any challenges that you faced while you were working on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not so much on the vibration side, because that was fairly straightforward, like I said. But on the acoustic side is where we really had the challenges. Nobody had created speaker drivers of the size, immensity, of what we needed to get the kind of sound pressure levels that we needed to achieve and at the frequency ranges that we needed it. So to hook all that up was quite an effort. I can't recall whether we put a boilerplate, we must have, of some kind in to check out our shrouds and our drivers. I guess we did that and I'm sure we did, we must have, because it's logical that we would have done that so we'd have a mold line to fit our speakers around and be sure they all worked okay, and then take them back off and put them on the real vehicle. We must have done that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you do any testing of Gemini hardware? Or was this just for Apollo?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The way that worked was that you know McDonnell had the contract for Gemini. Gemini was kind of run independently of Apollo and what we were trying to do on site. So almost everything that was entailed in the Gemini Project was done at McDonnell or at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]. So we didn't have a whole lot of involvement in that. However, from time to time since we had the equipment there they would call us up and say hey can you test blah blah blah chunks of equipment. So they would send it to us and we would test that. So that's how we were involved in Gemini, with some help out kind of efforts on some of the vibration tests and maybe some of the acoustic, I don't recall. But that was the mode.\\n\\n The reason for that was more big picture kind of thing, was that the management wanted to keep the Gemini program separate from Apollo because Apollo was such a challenge that it wanted to kind of keep them going. We had to go in parallel. Why did we have to go in parallel? Well because a lot of the forcing functions for the Apollo designs depended upon answers we would get from Gemini. In other words we used Gemini, which is a big old Mercury, to check out rendezvous capabilities and docking capabilities and so on and so forth. These techniques and approaches then would lead to our requirements that we needed in the design of the Apollo hardware. So that's why we were running those things in parallel. And Chuck [Charles W.] Matthews and Jim [James A.] Chamberlin and some of the guys were doing the Gemini Project, mainly like I said working with the people in St. Louis at McDonnell. But that was our involvement at that lab, was just on a piecemeal basis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think that you learned from doing this task that you applied to the rest of your career at NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, for one thing I learned how to work hard and get no sleep. (Laughter) We were going -- like I keep saying and I'm sorry to beat that rabbit over and over, but we were working 24/7 around the clock. Now the good part was that we were all young. We were in our 20s and 30s. We wore short-sleeved white shirts with narrow black ties and crew cuts, flattops, and we were gung-ho and enthusiastic. Another funny one is that a lot of us were single in those early days, and we'd work round the clock and round the clock, and we just couldn't take it any longer. And so we'd jump on an airplane and we'd go down to Acapulco [Mexico] for two, three days and just party. (Laughter)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And not get any more sleep?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, right. Still not get any sleep, right. Well at least we had something else going on and lots of laughs and fun. Then we'd come back. I got stories about flying Pan Am and Aeronaves de Mexico down there, but that's probably another time. But anyway so that was a relief for us so we could get back and then hit it again 24/7. But we were working long and hard and going fast. So we didn't have a whole lot of time to do a lot of breathing. Plus doing our traveling like I said, you know, for creating approaches for the simulations, and then of course also helping with the actual hardware, flight hardware. I practically lived in Downey, like a lot of us did. And then later on Bethpage [New York], when we were working with Grumman to be involved intimately with the design and creation, fabrication and test and verification of the space hardware." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me ask you a few things about your social life. You mentioned a lot of you were single at that point. Were you still single at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you living here in the Clear Lake [Texas] area or did you live elsewhere?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well yes when I first came down from Fort Worth and Dallas I was single at that time. As a matter of fact we were in a located up and down Telephone Road, so most of us lived in that area. So there was a guy, [Duke Mitchum], I had run into over at Love Field [Dallas, Texas] at a party after school one night there who was a reservations manager with Tree Top Airlines, or Trans-Texas Airways. We called them Tree Top Airlines. (Laughter) Later became I guess what? TIA, Trans International Airways or something. Anyway he was reservations manager for the company in Dallas and he was going to become reservations manager in Houston, so he said, “Hey why don't we room together, I'm going down there.” So we did. So we got an apartment on Telephone Road, in the I think it was the Skylane Apartments or something. Just lived there, two of us for a while. Then later on we went our separate ways. But yes I lived on Telephone Road." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when you moved, did you move to the Clear Lake area? Or did you move--?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I kind of stayed up that way when we came down to the site. Golly, I can't remember where all I lived. Apartment living, you know, single guys lives in apartments and so forth. I always just tried to keep busy. I entered myself in the Ph.D. program at University of Houston [Houston, Texas]. So I was taking some classes and teaching some also over on the main campus there. So it was beneficial for me to kind of stay close there as against go ahead and move right away down to the Clear Lake area. So I kind of stayed in that vicinity. I can't remember where all I lived, but somewhere around between Telephone Road and U of H, in that vicinity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you think of Houston when you moved here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just another city, it was a nice city. But I mean I'd just come from Dallas/Fort Worth and they had a little rivalry going. And of course I remembered Houston from being up at Austin at University of Texas. Texas would come down to play Rice, and Jess Neely's Rice Owls would always whip us. We could not beat Rice. (Laughter)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I would think it'd be the other way around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well it came the other way around later on, when Darrell [K.] Royal showed up at University of Texas. But in those days we had Ed Price, and he didn't do us too well. So we kept coming down to Rice games and go away with oh well we had fun. But we didn't win but we had fun. So but no, Houston was a fine place. It's grown a lot. I mean it was pretty small back in those days.\\n\\n Of course down here at the site, why, it was just a ranch. Wasn't anything here. So I think it was what belonged to -- how did that work? Belonged to Exxon I guess. Humble Oil and Refining Company. They were going to donate it to the government for the site but they couldn't do it, couldn't give it because they were a private company. So they gave it to Rice and Rice then turned around and could deed it and give it to the government because they were a university, I think is the way it went. But anyway it was all part of Jim West's big ranch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned some of the other tasks that you were working on was traveling to Downey and then later to Bethpage to work with them on the LM. What would you do when you were out at Downey? You mentioned working on the hardware and testing. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. If it was test stuff it was mostly at El Segundo with Wyle, there by LAX [Los Angeles International Airport, Los Angeles, California] by the airport. You'd just go to their test site and witness the test that was done, be sure it was done properly and the proper procedures. Of course it was very elaborate procedures. When you're dealing with aircraft parts and spacecraft parts, it's all a controlled environment. So everything you do is controlled. You got process control, parts control, you're trying to maintain pedigree, so that no erroneous parts get into the vehicle or into the system or any bad parts get in, don't want any of those. So everything's controlled. So it gives rise to quite a bit of paperwork you need to keep track of all this process control.\\n\\n The same thing applies to testing when you're doing a test. You got test controls and test procedures and very elaborate, and you go through it, and you want to adhere to whatever it is that you set out to do and what you set up. You pass all these things through and you set up a system of boards and reviews and so forth, so everybody gets a chance to have their oar in, to be sure that it's done the way it should be done and everybody's happy. You all agree to that and once you agree to it then you adhere to that system and those processes.\\n\\n Same thing in the test part as well as the manufacturer, design manufacturer, is that you have elaborate TPSs, test procedure sheets, that you set up and you adhere to that. We actually set up just like in the design part of it. For tests we'd set up reviews, test readiness reviews. And we'd have those. Everybody that's involved in it, they're all ready. Equipment's all ready. The specimen's ready, etc., etc. When you go out for a test, why, then you would as a NASA civil service person out there having a contractor run a test on a part, why, you'd be observant that they're following the proper procedures and so forth. And that the test is done properly so that it has a proper pedigree and quality with it so that when you get a result you know you can count on it and it was the right thing. So there's a lot of rigor that goes into controlling it. We kind of had little jests sometimes but there's a lot of serious control involved in that. But that's what I would do. Like, you know, if there was a test going out there. There were some tests done in Downey. But most of it was, that I was involved in, was in El Segundo I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when you flew out there did you fly on a NASA plane or did you just fly commercial?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "(Laughter) No, we got to be regulars on the commercial planes out there. At the time it was, if I recall, it was Continental Airlines and National Airlines. The proud bird with the golden tail was Continental. We went at all hours of the day and night. So oftentimes we would catch the puddle-jumpers, what we called red eyes at night going both ways. If we were going to Downey if at all possible we'd try to time it with our flight so we wouldn't hit rush hour. Because rush hour out there on the freeways is, you know, it's gridlock. Of course we learned right away how to go up Imperial and Century Boulevard to get from LAX to Downey and not even go on the freeways. We could go zooming up. Finally got the lights timed pretty good, and you can get there pretty quick. But yes, that's the way we got out there.\\n\\n So no, I never did -- now some of the upper management would fly, we had a couple of executive aircraft. And they would use those. But most of us would just fly commercial. And sometimes nonstop, hopefully, but a lot of times the puddle-jumpers, up and down, up and down. Four, five stops between here and there. But we didn't have a choice because we needed to get back one direction or the other in a big rush.\\n\\n Now later on when we were doing a lot of work up at Huntsville, we had created a little short shuttle service that went from Ellington to Redstone Arsenal [Alabama]. We could fly that. It was a contract service. Used Lockheed Electras, I believe, turboprops, or Viscounts, I can't remember which now, or maybe both. You could go over and catch the flight in the morning at Ellington and then fly up to Redstone, take about an hour and a half or so, land and then they'd pick you up and take you over to wherever you were going, a lab or office building or whatever. To the von Braun Hilton or whatever. And do whatever you needed to do in the course of the day, and then they'd take you back over to Redstone Strip, and you'd catch the shuttle and come back. So point was you'd leave in the morning and take a commute all the way up 750 miles or whatever it is to Huntsville and do your daily work and then come back that night. (Laughter) So we did that for quite a while too. So anyway made use of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's not bad. The VATF, once you had it operational, did you ever make any changes to that facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't think we -- other than state-of-the-art updates that we thought ahead far enough that we had everything pretty much in place. We had a whole area for the control and instrumentation equipment and we had -- as a typical computer setup, we had false floors with cooling for all the equipment going underneath the floor and all that sort of thing like you'd have in -- this was long before, remember now, desktop computers. You have huge computers, you know, and so you had to have cooling because they put out a lot of heat. And of course you ran all your wire bundles underneath the floor that way and you have wire trays and so forth to run all the control and instrumentation wiring and equipment underneath the floors.\\n\\n That's kind of a funny -- when I was still at the bomber plant we were trying to run a test up there. All of a sudden half the power in the whole lab out there went down, and the control equipment wouldn't work. Everything went phooey and it took about a half a day to a day in semidarkness to finally find the problem. The problem was a squirrel. A squirrel had gotten inside the building and gotten into one of those wire trays and gnawed through and caused short circuits. (Laughter) And shut the whole place down. A squirrel. Anyway I don't know why I thought of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Darn rodents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned using the big mainframe computers. What other type of equipment did you use to do your job in the early '60s?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can remember that on the desk we had electric calculators. Of course some of us were still clinging to the slide rule days, and we had our circular slide rules. Hardly anybody had the long hanging slide rules anymore but certainly had electric calculators, Fridens and Marchants and so forth, that sat on top of the table, and you'd key in your calculations that you wanted to put in there, and then push go or something, and the thing would sit there and go rrr rrr rrr and the table would shake, carry on for a minute or two, and then finally it'd decide it was through and it'd quit and come to rest and you'd look up there and read your answer. So that was weird. And then of course later on when we got computers, real computers and all that, but that's some of the kind of equipment we had to work with.\\n\\n A lot's been said about the computers on Apollo, and that's true. I mean we just didn't have the technology. So they were very rudimentary computers that we had in the Command Module. But that's all we had. Those were the days when you wanted to do engineering calculations, you'd use Fortran and you'd use punch cards, and you'd punch it all up on punch cards and then you'd take it over to the computer lab and put it in, and then leave it there, and they'd run it for you overnight, next morning you'd go get your answers. The same thing at the universities. I mean that's all we had.\\n\\n Printing was the same idea. It was the technology at the time were ammonia blueprints. Ammonia prints. Ozalid prints. Stinky things, smelly things. Get on your fingers. Mimeograph machines, all that kind of stuff. Of course then Xerox came along and invented you know the dry process. So yes, things were a lot different back there, what we had to work with. Which later on I can talk a little bit about when we started working with the Russians, when they became our friends instead of our kind of competition, our adversaries. Our early days is how we had to deal with all that. But yes our technology was different back there -- the tools that the engineers had to work with as well as for analyzing and calculating and designing and so forth as well as testing and verifying.\\n\\n So tools make a big difference in what we can do today -- and we get some of the young people that can go bzz bzz bzz bzz like that and they've got the job done just in a blink, and it'd take us days and days and days to do that back then. When I sit back and think about, I haven't thought about it for a long time, but how in the world did we do what we did with what we had to work with and the time we had available?\\n\\n We didn't have much of a budget problem. The higher management, [James E.] Webb and [Robert C.] Seamans [Jr.] all those guys, Shea and all of them, they took care of the battles with the Congress over the monies. But us in the working trenches, we didn't have any money problems. If we needed something we got it. So our biggest problem was just the technical challenge of how the devil are we going to do this job and how are we going to do it in this timeframe. But we didn't have money problems back then.\\n\\n We didn't have much in the way of -- what would I call it -- institutional paperwork. We had a lot of technical paperwork on purpose, to control things. But we didn't have much in the way of institutional paperwork. We had to do a lot of shortcutting. We were kind of lean and mean and going like crazy. We didn't have a lot of overhead. We didn't have a lot of burden, if you like, burdensome things. We used to talk like we were the cream of the crop of industry joined the cream of the crop of the Space Task Group to get a high-tech job done in a hurry that nobody'd ever done before.\\n\\n No, Mr. John Q. Public, we were not like the usual government agency where they sit around and throw paper spit wads, you know, and not do anything all day long and all that like the Department of Agriculture or somebody else. I don't mean to demean anybody, but that was the general view. I remember we got faced with that quite often in the early days. What, another one of those government agencies? No, we're different. We are different. And we were. We were different. So no, we didn't have much institutional paperwork.\\n\\n Now as the years progressed we noticed that more and more of that was coming. And I suppose rightly so. It is a government agency after all. But we didn't have much at the start. If we needed to do something, we didn't have to get a lot of approvals either. This is why I like “Burt” [Elbert Leander] Rutan right now. Because he's kind of where we were back then. He had a lot of flexibility to be creative and just go do something.\\n\\n If you had an idea you could go out and try it and do it, you didn't have to get all these approvals, you didn't have to go through lots of hoops and so forth, you just went out and tried it. You didn't have to go to all kinds of review boards, you just went and tried it, and if it didn't work, okay, we'll try something else. So we had a lot of that going on. If something didn't work right on Mercury or Gemini and Apollo, why, you can get your chewing gum and -- it's RTV [Room Temperature Vulcanization], but we called it chewing gum -- and you go you know put it on there, hold it, do something. It's like the canopy that we put on Skylab. You know, that was kind of a jury-rigged thing that we did. I don't know if we could do that today, would be allowed to do that today. [And, by the way, we could not have done a lot of the things that we did without the help of Jack A. Kinzler of the Technical Services Division and his shop, machinery, and people.]\\n\\n Well I'm kind of veering here, sometimes I kind of think that the safety -- oh I'm a firm believer in it and you see later on that I kind of got involved in that aspect when I broadened out into systems engineering -- is very important but you can go overboard, like you can anything. I think sometimes we've gone way overboard and way, way, too protective. The safest you can be is don't fly at all. So you've got to take some risk if you're going to do these things. And yes it's sad that we lost the crew on Apollo 1 and\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n and\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n . But that's just the way it goes. The guys that fly it, they understand that, and they know that. We do the best as designers and creators of the hardware to mitigate all the bad things that could happen, but you can't insure it 100%, there's just no way. Can't do it. Minimize it, yes. Anyway I don't know how I got off on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why do you think the culture back in the '60s was so flexible?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably one thing was because we didn't have very many of us. Even with adding on the industry guys like me and Canadair and some of the others brought in, there still wasn't a whole lot of us. We didn't have a lot of layers of groups and -- I don't know, institutions and departments and stuff to have to go through. We just went and did it, kind of like a big old series of short circuits. For example, in Apollo we had the standard management hierarchy, both in line discipline management as well as project management, classic. And they were all set up, and of course they varied and changed because it was hectic and everybody was in a hurry.\\n\\n But we also had an underground -- I wouldn't say management, an underground connection if you like of technical people. They weren't necessarily always at the same level. There was no telling where they would be. They might be at a higher management level. They might be more at a grunt level.\\n\\n But you knew, you got to know real quick, where the sharp people and what they could contribute and help out with. You kind of drew in this not published, unpublished group of folks to work on things, and you'd grab them and get them together and do things. I know many many times when we were trying to solve some dynamic problems when I was still in VATF I grabbed people like Dick [Richard A.] Colonna and Owen [G.] Morris, all different levels. Dan Newbrough, and of course the guys from the contractors at all different levels. Heldenfels out at Downey. Just to get the job done technically.\\n\\n You're trying to work a technical problem and find a solution and an answer and a way to go. You didn't pay much attention to departments and levels and authorizations and all that sort of thing. So we had a lot of that going on with our small bunches. So that gave rise to a lot of flexibility. Because we knew that we can hey just call up the phone. Of course we didn't have emails back then. We actually talked to people, you know, either face to face or telephone. We didn't have cell phones so you had to pick up hard line. But we did a lot of that. We got people together all hours of the day and night in to try -- it was a continual series of problems. We were problem-solvers. Problem after problem after problem. We solved one problem, then we'd go on to the next one. Because we were doing things nobody had done before, so we didn't have anything to go by. We didn't have any criteria. So we had to kind of find our own way if you like.\\n\\n Now physics is physics, and engineering is engineering and math is math. So that's okay until we find out more about black holes and wormholes and things. But as we understand it, those principles still are true. But how do you utilize all that in specific applications nobody had done before? So we had a lot of inventing of the wheel so to speak to create this hardware to perform the function that it was asked to create, to perform, to do. I mean it's like the flag, you know, on the lunar surface. We got hit about that because we didn't go there. The Flat Earth Society said we went to New Mexico somewhere, Arizona. To prove it they said well you know there's no air on the Moon and yet the flag's standing up straight, like it's blowing in the wind. Well of course it is. We knew that. We put a wire in it so it would stand up. (Laughter) I mean you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you dealt with a lot of challenges during the Apollo program. Could you walk us through some of the ones that stand out to you that you worked so diligently on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the one I referred to earlier was trying to figure out some way to simulate that very unusual acoustic environment on our Apollo spacecraft, and we did that. We solved it. That was a challenge and fortunately we were successful. So that was a challenge.\\n\\n For me personally -- and this'll be -- I guess I haven't talked about that yet, but after I left VATF I went from -- how would I say it? Very narrow and very deep technically and research work and so -- I was very narrow. I was in structural areas and structural dynamics and had to learn acoustics and so forth. Little bit in some of the other technical disciplines but I was pretty narrow, pretty deep, and that's what I did my research and my graduate studies on. Then I did a whole paradigm shift when I got called upon -- and this I guess is another era.\\n\\n Getting ahead of myself, but I got called upon to go do something else, which was 2TV-1. Now all of a sudden I was pulled out of that environment. I gave up my group, my section. I was a section head. They don't have sections anymore. Back then we had sections and branches and divisions. Pulled out of that and put into what I would call a broad technical environment where I had to become a project person that dealt with more of a systems approach and system engineering, where I had to become capable of orchestrating a broad-based project with lots of disciplines and have just enough knowledge of all the different disciplines to know what smart people I needed and how to converse with them, but then let them go do all the work, because they were smart and they knew how to do it. So that was a whole different thing for me. It's to become kind of like a systems manager if you like, system engineering or project management. Well how did I do all that?\\n\\n Well, that was a challenge then. So that meant, ooh, well, I got to go to a different kind of school. Now I got to go to management school. So they sent me to a lot of them and some I signed up for. They're in some of this backup material, that's all the different management schools I went to. Of course I'd already been to some supervision schools because I was a section head. But I had to go to how to manage people schools and seminars and this, that and another thing. Some of them were here in Houston and some were across the country here and there. I can remember some of them were kind of funny.\\n\\n One of them I went wasn't necessarily that funny but I'll never forget it. I ended up in one seminar down at the Jack Tar Hotel in Galveston. It was a Kepner-Trego course and the guys that I would go on to work with later on were there with me at the time. And that was the first time I got to know them. People like Bob [Robert L.] Blount, Chris [C.] Chritzos, Clay [E.] McCullough, [Donald D. Arabian] I can't remember all the folks I worked with in that weeklong seminar down there. It was very good training, excellent training to teach me how to be a systems engineer and a project manager.\\n\\n Then another one I went to out in Ojai Valley, California; it was an encounter group, of all things. We went up the valley to this country club, golf club thing up there and came in and it was supposed to teach you how you interrelate with people. Went in and sat down and sat in a circle. The chairs were all in a circle and sat down in a circle and we sat there and sat there. It was about ten or fifteen of us. We waited and waited and the time went by and time went by. Of course when I was teaching, why, you got what was it? Ten- or fifteen-minute walk. If you weren't there, why, your students could leave.\\n\\n So we're sitting there and we're waiting. A half-hour went by. Where's the leader, where's the guy? And so then we started talking about this absent leader. What about this guy? He's not here. Then we started noticing there was one guy sitting there, and he wasn't saying much of anything. (Laughter) And everybody, this time, why, slowly everybody was chattering, and this one guy never did say -- and it turned out that that was our leader and he’d sitting there all that time. Dr. Henry Work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that some sort of test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he's a psychiatrist, emeritus something or other at the University of California –Berkeley [California] or somewhere. I don't know. But anyway as a technical engineer having to go through that encounter group, it was a strange thing for me. So that was new and different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the challenges that you faced moving from that very technical field to a much more broad management position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had to think in broader terms, be less prone to core-drill specific subjects unless [I] really needed to. Because I wouldn't understand them anyway. I had to become conversant though with avionics, with propulsion, with cryogenics, with batteries, all these other disciplines: communication and tracking, guidance and nav [navigation], on and on. Thermal, thermodynamics, passive thermal, active thermal control, all the different systems and approaches needed for those kinds of disciplines. I had to become familiar with all of that stuff. And I wasn't so much. So that was a challenge. I had to hit the books and learn that stuff real quick just sufficiently so I could work with it, work with the experts. I had to do that before 2TV-1 in a big rush because when we got to 2TV-1 that was a fully systemed vehicle with crew. I had to be conversant enough with the total system to be able to lead it. Anyway that's another chapter. But yes that was a challenge for me and I think I managed to do it okay, but it was new at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You moved out of the VATF and you moved into the SESL? Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, what happened was that the Block II Command/Service Module needed to be thermalvacuum tested. Block I was created for Earth orbit and it didn't have some of the features that we needed for the lunar mission, because we were in a rush and trying to do some things in parallel. So we did a lot of the structure testing for example, or quite a bit of it, on a Block I vehicle, because it didn't matter. It wouldn't know the difference. But when it came time for the lunar mission we needed a Block II vehicle with a transfer tunnel in the forward section and so forth. So we needed to test that to see if it would withstand the thermalvacuum environment that the bird would see going to the Moon, around the Moon and back again.\\n\\n So we had a chamber here in Houston in SESL, Space Environment Simulation Laboratory. Chamber A. There was Chamber B, a smaller one. Chamber A is huge. I don't remember the size of it. I think 32-foot or something. It was big. Anyway suffice it to say it was big enough to contain a whole Command/Service Module inside. So it was decided that that needed to be tested, and that was the place to do it. So they needed somebody to put all that together and do it. And so they called on me.\\n\\n There's announcements and stuff that went out and so forth. So what they did is they transferred me -- and I have to couch it in the context of what was going on at the time. Everything's helter-skelter, hurry, hurry, hurry. A lot of times things happened, and paperwork if any at all would catch up maybe sometime later. So what they really wanted me to do was to work with the program office but still be in the Engineering Directorate. So the way they solved it is I think they assigned me to Jim [James C.] McLane's SESL, to his organization. I kind of still worked with Jim in SESL and worked with Joe Kotanchik and Bob [Robert E.] Vale in the Structures Division and George [E.] Griffith and some of the others. I don't remember all the names. But what I was really doing is I was assigned to and working with the program office. For 2TV-1 I was assigned to work with Rolf [W.] Lanzkron, who was the manager for the Command/Service Module in the ASPO, in the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. So that was my task, and what I was charged to do was to mobilize the manpower and resources to get that test done. [I had a standup progress review with Rolf almost every morning, early, at 6:30 or 7:00 am, I believe. I also had periodic reviews with George M. Low, Robert R. Gilruth, Christopher C. Kraft, Faget, and others. We had plenty of support and keen interest from upper management.]\\n\\n That test became a direct constraint on Apollo 8. We could not fly Apollo 8 out and around the Moon and back with [Frank] Borman, [James A.] Lovell and [William A.] Anders. We couldn't fly that mission at Christmas. Turned out flew at Christmas and they read Genesis, all that. We couldn't do that if we didn't finish satisfactorily this thermovacuum test using 2TV-1. So we had to do it in a big rush. We had to do it with a lot of folks. I was asked to mobilize that effort and do it. Thank goodness I had just gone to all those management schools, so I kind of knew what it took to do it.\\n\\n Now the way we approached Apollo was a subsystem manager approach. What that meant was that it was set up so that we had a lot of civil service guys who were in charge of specific subsystems. For direct control to speed up the whole Apollo process, [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] set that up, [George E.] Mueller and them. So that meant I had -- what did I have? Well first of all had the facility. I had Jim McLane's chamber facility and all the people that it took to operate the facility, you know, to close the door, to pump down the vacuum, for the instrumentation they had set up. All the things it took to operate a vacuum chamber of huge size. That was a whole group of people. Okay, who else did I have? Now I had the spacecraft. So I had to have the subsystem managers, the NASA civil service, to do all their systems.\\n\\n I had to have their counterparts from the contractor, in this case North American at Downey. So I had a huge engineering bunch that was a counterpart to our subsystem managers from Downey, who when it came to actual test time quite a few of them actually showed up on site, as well as doing things from Downey. Then I also had from Downey all of the technicians, North American technicians, under John Stungis, that knew how to handle the actual spacecraft and the equipment. It was fully systemed, so you had to have the technicians from Downey who knew how to handle, turn on and operate and handle, the spacecraft systems. I had all those folks. That was John Stungis's bunch. And of course the engineering part from Downey was Ben Boykin and David Llorente and those guys. They provided the engineering or project back up.\\n\\n We had another thing set up in the program office. We had sometimes a single person and sometimes two, three, four people who were agents of our civil service project office who were in charge of keeping up with specific spacecraft. Spacecraft managers. And on 2TV-1 the lead guy as I recall was Don [L.] Teegarden. Very fine person, very sharp. I can't remember the name of what we called those people. But maybe you know. But anyway so he had counterparts, that's my point. He had counterparts out at Downey in engineering at Downey. So all those people were involved, either remotely or came.\\n\\n So all told I probably had -- gosh, I don't know, couple hundred folks involved in that thing. It lasted about oh, a little less than a year. I think it was 1968. I think we started in the first part of '68 and we finished towards the end of '68 as I recall. I think that's right. I think we did the actual testing during the spring of '68. I think that's right. Around March or so. And then of course we had to analyze all the results and write and publish the test reports and findings and so forth.\\n\\n But when we actually ran the test it was about a week long, I think it was about seven days. And oh, the other thing I had then left out -- how could you leave out? Is ops and the crew. So we had ops involved because ops had to be able to -- they were learning at the same time, they're learning how to operate the vehicle, because they're going to have to operate it when it actually flies. So I had all kinds of ops folks participating.\\n\\n Then I also had the crew. I had Joe [Joseph P.] Kerwin, Dr. Kerwin, which is another small world bit. I had worked with his brother up at MIT when I was doing that vibration research stuff. Joe always referred to his brother -- his name was Richard -- as the smart one. I says come on Joe, what do you mean, the smart one. (Laughter) But anyway so Joe's a great guy, love him. Joe was the commander, CDR and Vance [D.] Brand was the Command Module pilot, CMP.\\n\\n Joe [H.] Engle was the Lunar Module pilot, LMP. Joe had interesting background too. He's a character. I don't know if you know Joe but he's a lot of fun. Joe was an Eagle Scout among other things. Have you ever heard of the Blackbird SR-70? He flew the Blackbird, which is monumental. Of course it came out of the dark world, but I mean that thing goes like crazy and goes up real high. They had one up at Marshall sitting there on display for a long time. I don't know if it's still there or not. Of course they got one up at the National Air and Space Museum at Smithsonian in Washington [DC]. But anyway Joe came from that area. So I mean he was a hot jock, you know. But all three of them were fine, fine people. So I was responsible for their involvement in the effort. The crews always had a helper, kind of like a horse holder.\\n\\n These three had a helper by the name of Joe [Joseph A.] Gagliano. And Joe Gag was a riot. He was also a pilot and he would be the intermediary and he would be the kind of coordinator for the crew and their time and where they -- were they going to be at Downey or they're going to be here, there, you know, and all that sort of thing. And he'd come in sometimes to some of our meetings, and he'd say oh, and his neck would be all -- oh, holding his neck. I said what happened to you today, Joe. He said I was pulling too many Gs this morning. Got a crick in his neck. Joe Gagliano, he was a lot of fun. Joe Gagliano, by the way, that's another -- you want another funny?\\n\\n When I first got assigned to this job the first thing I was tasked to do was to go to Downey and meet all the folks and so forth. So flew out there and the night before the meeting got in and we all had agreed we were going to gather at the Tahitian Village and have a drink and so forth. We were there at the bar and having one of those things with an umbrella on top and all that. And all of a sudden this voice comes across the way. Somebody's approaching. He's yelling real loud. He says, “Where is that whiz kid I've heard so much about?” (Laughter) Turned it was Joe Gagliano. He was looking for me. With a little skinny tie and a flattop and 20 some years old or 31 or whatever I was at the time. I don't remember. But I just thought that was kind of funny. He didn't mince any words. He was fun. Of course I wasn't any whiz kid. But anyway that was the group of people that we had together. It was fun. It was fun. It was hard work. It was stressful. But it was fun. There was a lot of folks involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it sounds like it. … You mentioned you really started working on this about a year before you had the test. What sort of things did you have to work out before you could have this seven-day test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. Well, first of all we had to -- in conjunction with the smart people -- and when I say the smart people I'm talking about the technical experts for aerodynamics, thermodynamics, passive thermal control, so on and so forth. The people that knew about the capability of the surfaces of the vehicle to absorb the solar energy or reject solar energy. We called it alpha over E, emissions, absorption-emission ratios and all those kinds of things. We had to come up with the test conditions that would be appropriate for the solar environment. And of course the vacuum was pretty straightforward. We were going to pump it down as far down the vacuum as the chamber would go. So that was pretty straightforward. But the main thing was the thermal conditions.\\n\\n The other thing had been developed as part of the design of the vehicle for thermal control, passive thermal control, was what we called a barbecue mode. The barbecue mode was a roll maneuver where we rolled the CSM like on a barbecue spit around the central x-axis. We just rolled it, continuously rolled it. And why did we do that? We did that so that we would have even temperature control on all sides of the vehicle, external sides of the vehicle, so it wouldn't get real hot on one side and colder than the devil on the other side, because it's the vacuum of space. So that's what happens in the vacuum. You're either real hot or you're real cold. Because there's no air there so you don't get any convection for your thermal energy.\\n\\n We put the whole CSM on a turntable in the middle of the chamber. And the way the chamber was designed and set up, it had a bank of solar lamps to simulate the Sun, solar energy. So we put the CSM on this turntable and then we'd slowly rotate it at the same rate that we were planning to do it when we flew, so we'd get the barbecue mode simulated. You had to go through and calculate you know all that and what were the parameters involved in all that to do that job.\\n\\n I don't remember all the conditions. The smart guys had all that. Any time where you're blocked from the Sun or from some of the Earth's light albedo, then the thermal conditions would change. So we had programmed in to run the bank of lights either high speed, full speed or partial speed in addition to the barbecuing. All this was orchestrated very carefully. Once it was all orchestrated and so forth, then that became the test plan of what we wanted to do to do the proper simulation to cover all the parameters that the bird would encounter when it actually did the flight around the Moon and back, circumlunar. So once that was established then you had to put that down.\\n\\n Now we go back to our very tight process control. You had to put all that down in writing. So all the team members were all marching together. Everybody knew what to do. It was all playing together like an orchestra. It was very carefully controlled, the whole thing. What time do such-and-such lamps come on? When do they go off? You know, etc., etc. So all that had to be then put on what we called again TPSs or test preparation sheets. It essentially became the menu or guideline, the bible, if you'd like, for the test. Of course all that had its review cycles and we went through flight -- similar to flight readiness review. Test readiness reviews and so forth. All the technical disciplines had their oar in that, creation of that. And then the okay of that, the final versions of what we were going to do and so forth. So that entailed quite a bit of time before we ever got started on the test obviously.\\n\\n The other thing was to set up all of the systems for measuring what results we would get. We were taking a lot of thermal and what would I call it? Structural data. You know, how hot did things get, and so forth. We had thermocouples all over the place. And of course that was instrumentation, so it had to go to instrumentation processing equipment and so forth. Then recorders and so forth. You know, tape recorders, oscillographs, whatever we had at the time.\\n\\n Then on top of that then we also had all of the spacecraft operating systems since it was going to be operating, just like it would in flight. So all its subsystems and so forth were operating. So what had been created was something called Apollo Checkout Equipment, ACE, and then we also had a smaller version called PACE, Portable. But what this stuff was, it was created -- I think it was by GE [General Electric] if I remember right, but anyway it was a whole bunch of equipment that would operate the spacecraft systems even though you were on the ground just like you would be operating it either by the crew in flight or by mission control in flight. So it was a simulation of the operation, conducting the operations of the onboard systems.\\n\\n So we had all that stuff that we had to bring in from Downey and put in place. That's another reason why we needed so many technicians from Downey, to operate all that stuff, set it up and operate it. That made the bird come alive, if you like, powered up, and now it's humming and going. Its cooling systems are operating and its life support systems are operating. The oxygen systems are operating because we got a crew in there, and they got to breathe. It's got all to work right. And of course the coms [communications] systems and so forth. So all that had to be set up and put in place, and all the planning ahead of time to be sure that was done, and where were you going to put all that stuff, and who was going to operate it, and it all dovetailed into a massive plan and became these TPS sheets that everybody ascribed to.\\n\\n We did the same thing in mission control. We fly a mission at mission control, it's all on paper. Everything that's done by the ground controllers and the flight director is done with paperwork or on the computers, but its process set in place. And it's a lot of time and effort's going into that development ahead of time to be sure it's right. Now every once in a while you'll run into an anomaly and then you go off to a side room and you say work this problem. But those are anomalies, the way you work with anomalies. So we had to do all that for this test too. Same thing. We had like you have a flight director, we had a test director, so on and so forth, so set up the same way.\\n\\n Then for the crew, the same idea, we had all the things that went with the crew and their support equipment and so forth, put on the suits and carry their support equipment with them up until they enter, you know, and get inside the vehicle and all that to keep them cool and breathing and all that. And so we had that to deal with. Well, just everything it took to do it. Did I tell you about the water guy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh. That's another one of the nice things I liked about my career. When I got into doing this kind of project work I was a firm -- and still am -- a firm believer in giving credit to all the participants, due credit. Because so often they're never mentioned. I always went out of my way to be sure that they got awards, commendations, letters. I would send out letters of appreciation to the recipient and with copies to their management. So they would all know. I just believed in that. I thought it was a nice and right thing to do. My water guy, Sauer, Dick [Richard L.] Sauer, and he was a toxicologist in charge of being sure that the water didn't have any bad things in it so the crew would get sick in Apollo. So he was if you like the subsystem manager for water. Okay, and he was on our team, on my team, along with the rest of a lot of other ECLSS, what we called ECLSS folks, Environmental Control and Life Support Systems. Well years later -- and of course when I sent out the usual things when we finished 2TV-1 and years later I bumped into Dick in another venue doing something else; he came up to me and he says, “I want to thank you.” He had risen up through the ranks through the years. He said, “I want to thank you, I've never had an opportunity to.”\\n\\n I said, “Thank me for what?”\\n\\n He said, “Well because you're the reason why I managed to rise up through the management ranks in my career.”\\n\\n I said, “What?”\\n\\n He says, “Yes, because that letter that you sent to my management about my performance on 2TV-1 opened the doors and paved the way for me to go places that I desired to go.”\\n\\n I said, “Wow! All right.” So I take satisfaction that I helped somebody and I made a difference perhaps. So anyway I don't know why I happened to think of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But that was one of the guys that was involved of the couple hundred people or so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you ran the test were you running it 24 hours a day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Round the clock 24/7 for seven days. I think it was seven days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were you keeping those kind of crazy hours since you were in charge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, oh yes. Yes, you know I had other people doing things and a test director and all that. Oh yes I was there, practically lived there, right, right, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did everything go well or were there any anomalies that you recall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The bottom line out of that as I recall was that we had no problems with the Apollo Command/Service Module hardware or equipment. It all performed as advertised, thank goodness, because we didn't have much time, and we didn't have any room for error, and remember it's a constraint on Apollo 8. So we had to get an answer and it had to be right, and if we found something major wrong, (whistle) that hit the whole program schedule. The crew always when they participated in things like this wrote up crew reports.\\n\\n As I recall Joe and them came up with oh some small items like I think they said there was some water dripping off some of the condensate lines and so they had a little drip, drip, drip and maybe a little wetness. No big deal. They said as far as they were concerned it was no big deal, even though they had 10- or 12-page report. But they were selling it by the pound so they -- no, they had -- I think they had some trouble with some of the food bags. They had some trouble with some of the comm. equipment. I don't remember the details of some of it. But there were minor things. So the bottom line is that it was a success. Everything turned out fine, thank goodness. It was cleared to go and the constraint for Apollo 8 was lifted. And we were good to go to the Moon without a LM and get there and show the Russians that we could do this. Look, we're going around the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I think this'd be a good place for us to stop and pick up actually with the testing of LM-2 next time. What do you think about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, okay. That'd be great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well thank you very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. Well thank you. Appreciate it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00053", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-010.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Gottlieb, Jeanette Grayson (1965-1967): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-010", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-010", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1965 to 1967 in an elementary and secondary education program. She was initially assigned to the towns of Nowshahr and Chalus on the Caspian Sea to help English language teachers in two all-girls schools improve their English and teaching skills. Although she didn't teach the children, she taught adults in the evenings and started a crafts club for the students. Gottlieb didn't feel qualified to teach experienced teachers and even though she was busy, she experienced considerable loneliness from living by herself, the overcast weather, and being a single woman in a traditional society where women stayed home. In the second year, she transferred to the town of Hamadan where she taught her own classes in another all-girls school, held first-aid and craft classes, and lived with another volunteer. Although she reflects negatively on the deselection process during training, Gottlieb has good memories of her Peace Corps experience overall and says she learned to be alone. She also met her husband in the Peace Corps. She remains active in RPCV activities in Albany, New York, and served as president of the Peace Corps Iran Association. Interviewed and recorded by Evelyn Ganzglass, August 25, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "25 August 2018", + "extent": "2 digital files (audio; stereo; 85 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "042. Iran.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Iran. Gottlieb, Jeanette Grayson (1965-1967): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Iran", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-010", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-010-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/a1g83ajnf1x8cm2mqu23aywk2c170j0t.pdf?odc=20231115174225-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/8e14ded4-c3c7-49f7-b2ef-c53694d102c9/15314bee-747f-4484-a1ce-6a5ead22d2a2/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzJmNzlfZTllZjMxZThmYzJmMjdhMjAzY2E4NjliYWNhMjg1Njc2ZTU4YmVlMDM2ZGM3ZDRlMWFjNDkyZTM3MzEzMjI1NF8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS84ZTE0ZGVkNC1jM2M3LTQ5ZjctYjJlZi1jNTM2OTRkMTAyYzkvMTUzMTRiZWUtNzQ3Zi00NDg0LWExY2UtNmE1ZWFkMjJkMmEyL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania", + "length": "39 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 12, 2018, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Evelyn Ganzglass" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Evelyn Ganzglass. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Somalia from 1966 to 1968. Today is August 25th, 2018, and I'm interviewing Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Iran from 1965 to 1967, and she was in a TEFL, teaching English as a foreign language program. Jeanette, welcome to the interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:31", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So let's start by asking you, why did you actually join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:38", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I joined the Peace Corps because before Kennedy ever announced the Peace Corps, I had a desire to serve and as a desire to travel. And when he announced it, it was like the perfect answer. Because I'm of that generation. I had read The Ugly American. I wanted to go out into the world and show that not all Americans were ugly and consumer oriented and disregarding of other people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you grow up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:18", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I grew up in a little town in western North Carolina, right at the foot of the mountains, the town of Spindale. I always said it's 70 miles west of Charlotte and 26 miles straight down from Asheville." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So your family had, had you traveled at all? Your family traveled?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. We went to my mother's home in Virginia and back, and that was it. But both of my parents had served during World War II, and both of them sort of imbued a worldview of, you know, everybody's equal and you have to give back to the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. How old were you when you applied for the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:09", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was at the beginning of my senior year in college and, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:02:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, so, yeah, whatever that is, 20, 21." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:02:22", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was, I think I had just turned 20 because I didn't turn, I turned 21 in Iran. I was accepted before the end of the semester and assigned Iran. And so I went to my advisor and I switched my senior research for my second semester of my senior year from India to Iran." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:02:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm. And what, where did you go to school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:02:56", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was the Women's College of the University of North Carolina, now the University of Greensboro." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:03:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were you an international relations major or what was? Switching from India to Iran, what was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:03:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was history and international affairs. And I had a particular advisor and I had an independent study and that was. And, uh. So it was very easy to go to him and say, this is what's going to happen. And he was thrilled. He was a, this professor of history, was my professor for world history. And then I took other courses with him because he taught East Asia and the Middle East." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:03:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So a real mentor for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:03:53", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A real mentor. And, and I, I was very much interested in Asia and the Middle East." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:04:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you applied for the Peace Corps and you were accepted pretty quickly, was it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:04:05", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:04:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do, you got a letter saying, look, we're sending you to Iran?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:04:11", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We got a letter saying you have been accepted, and if you accept this assignment, you'll be going to Iran." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:04:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very good. So what, what did your friends think about all of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:04:24", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh. I had several friends in my class who also joined the Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:04:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:04:32", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think we were simply of that, that generation, that that was a very exciting thing to do. If you weren't getting married immediately." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:04:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was marriage or Peace Corps, is that it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:04:46", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But, you know, you have to stop and think about what attitudes were. You know, I was the first person in my family to go to college. And, you know, the question was, oh, you're going to college? What are you going to teach? And I rebelled. I wasn't going to teach because I ended up spending my life teaching in one form or another." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:05:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you think you were going to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:05:14", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't, I didn't know. I also went to college with the attitude that you get an education, you learn how to think, and then you look for the opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:05:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which is what life is all about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:05:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:05:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So where was your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:05:32", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Our training was in Austin, Texas, at the University of Texas, and we spent one week in Mexico City honing our TEFL skills, our English as a second language skills." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:05:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before you went to Austin or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:05:48", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:05:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was part of the training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:05:49", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was part of our training. We loaded on busses and went from Austin to Mexico City, and that was probably one of the most realistic pieces of training that we had since we traveled all over Iran on busses. And while we were in Mexico City doing our teaching, they had a significant earthquake." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:06:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh my goodness." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:06:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So all of us got to experience an earthquake, which we then experienced in Iran too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:06:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Probably hadn't planned that part of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:06:23", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think they planned that part." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:06:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that's not a short trip from Austin to Mexico City. That's a long bus ride." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:06:30", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a long bus ride, but it was just, you know, back then it was, it was nothing. I mean, this is just what you did. And it was a wonderful piece of the training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:06:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, so talk a little bit about what the training was like. Let's start with language training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:06:49", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:06:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you learn, Farsi?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:06:51", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We learned Farsi and we learned by the aural-oral method where you repeat the words and try to make sense out of it. Um. And most of our trainers were Iranian students. Men." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:07:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At UT?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:07:19", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At UT. And they pretty much stuck to the program until we were getting close to the end. Then I can remember the particular trainer I was with sitting a group of us down and he said, now these are words you need to know and they're not in your curriculum. You know, bathroom. And how do I get from here to there? And what is, what's polite and what's not polite to say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:07:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The more valuable things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:07:56", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Really important pieces." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:08:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How, how were your language skills leaving, leaving Texas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:08:09", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, that, not wonderful. I never made it. They were adequate for me to say hello, introduce myself, and ask basic directions. I remember getting to Iran and once I had my assignment, the way things work in the classrooms there was you taught a class and then there was a break after class and everybody went to the principal's office and drank a cup of, a small cup of tea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:08:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mean the teachers did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:08:51", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All the teachers. And then you go back and teach another class and you come and drink another cup of tea. And I remember just sitting in the, with the teachers, and this waterfall of language. And one day I'm sitting there and all of a sudden I realize that everybody is ordering oranges from one of the other teachers, that he had an in at the, at the research station. And so everybody was ordering their oranges. How many kilos of oranges he was going to bring them the next day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:09:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you understood that? That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:09:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It just all of a sudden started clicking in my head. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:09:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you order oranges as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:09:37", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. One person living alone, it's very hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:09:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So let's, let's stick with training a little bit. What was the cultural orientation like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:09:53", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had wonderful cultural orientation. First of all, we had the Iranian students who were good at talking to us about things. We had Richard Frye, who was incredible, sort of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:10:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was Richard Frye?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:10:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was a professor who was an Iran expert. He just died a few years ago. And he brought, he came and talked to us about the culture. And we also saw the movie Grass, which is just a classic of Iran and. I thought we had very good cultural orientation, but I also already had a fairly strong background because of the research I had done my senior year. It was more a history and political paper, but you learn a lot about the culture when you start doing that. So I thought we had a strong cultural." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:11:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then had you, what was the technical training? The TEFL training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:11:21", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, Gertrude Nye-Dorry came over. She was the one that coordinated the program. And a lot of our technical training was in our own language training because the methods that we used to learn the Farsi were also the methods that we used to teach English. And we had the books that we would be using, the standard textbooks that were being used in Iran." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:11:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For TEFL?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:11:57", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For TEFL, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:11:57", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what kind of textbooks were those? Were those government issued?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:12:02", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And they were a little bit like the Spot and Jane, but, um, very simple sentences, words that you could identify so that if you wanted to teach somebody table, what you did was you said this is a table and everybody would repeat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:12:33", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Point to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:12:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is a table. This is a chair." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:12:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And whom were you? This, was this an elementary school program or second year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:12:45", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was elementary and middle school. Iran had switched from French as a second language to English as a second language. And." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:13:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So. So talk a little bit about your trip to Mexico City. What was that like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:13:12", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was very interesting. I just remember sitting on that, that bus. A couple of the guys had gotten very experimental and coming back suffered from Montezuma's revenge. We stayed in a, a hotel. I have no real memory of where we stayed. It was just. But I, uh. The schools in Mexico City went in two shifts, morning and afternoon. So half of us had morning classes and half of us had afternoon classes. And I was assigned afternoon classes. And I worked with a, a teacher. And she was very wonderful, very gracious in accepting me into her classroom and letting me practice with her students." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:14:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So she was an English speaker." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:14:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was a, yes. And she was the English teacher for that class." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:14:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So was it a good bonding experience for your group as well, this field trip? To get to know people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:14:21", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we were pretty well bonded by then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:14:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people were in your group, about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:14:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think about 60, and I'm not sure how many actually went over." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:14:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask how many made it through. Was there big attrition?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:14:42", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh. It wasn't huge, but it would. It would. The deselection was painful. You probably had deselection in your group too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:14:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to talk about deselection? That's, that's a term from our era, not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:14:58", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a term of our era." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:14:59", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not from other eras." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:15:01", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Deselection. There was a psychologist who most of us thought was totally crazy, uh, who was supposed to determine our mental and emotional fitness to serve as volunteers. And deselection was sort of something that hung over all of us during training, and we tried to put it aside, but all of the deselection was not due to mental or emotional fitness. I mean, a few people turned up with health problems because we had, the health exams were part of training. Our inoculations. How many of us were inoculated for bubonic plague? That was the one that laid most people down on the floor when we got that shot.\n\nUm. I think the most painful selection that happened in our group was Mrs. Potter and, as near as we could tell her, her deselection was political because her son was Paul Potter, the head of SDS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:16:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:16:30", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And why they put her through the pain if they weren't going to let her serve, uh, because of her son's activities was just something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:16:45", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you don't know that, you're just surmising?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:16:46", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We don't know that. But since she was in my suite of rooms, we had a pretty close. And intense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:16:59", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So she was clearly an older volunteer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:17:01", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was an older volunteer. We had one older volunteer who was absolutely delightful. She had her. She was a retired English teacher from New England. Alice Finney. She was wonderful. I, my language skills never got really great because I was a teacher of English and everybody wanted to practice their English with me. From what I hear, Alice's were minimal, but they said she and the older women in her town would just chat away and she was talking. She would speak English and they would speak Farsi, and they seemed to know exactly what each other were saying all the time. She, she was beloved where she went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:17:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:17:47", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we had the range. We had retirees, we had active professionals. One of my better, my best friends was a college professor who was taking two years off in Peace Corps. And, um, then all of us AB generalists, as we were called then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:18:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And mid-career people. Great. So you finished training, you came back from Mexico City. Was that, that was the culmination of the training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:18:26", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had, we had another week or so after that. That was when they set us down and said, these are what you need to know. Don't go without these words. And then we had a break to go home and pack, and then we all got ourselves to New York City and from there to JFK and off we went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:18:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And off you went, and you flew. How did, how did one go to Iran in those days? Air what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:19:03", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pan Am." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:19:04", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, Pan Am from New York to Iran direct or did you to go via Europe somewhere?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:19:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we weren't allowed out of the airport, but we stopped at Orly. We stopped in Rome and we stopped in Lebanon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:19:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, a long trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:19:23", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But we were allowed to walk out of the plane and walk back on. You didn't go outside the gate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:19:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, so you got to Iran. Where did you fly to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:19:35", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We flew to Tehran, and I think we had about a week in Tehran, as, uh, with some orientation there until we were sent out on our assignments." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:19:52", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your impression of Tehran?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:19:59", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hot and dry. I just, I don't really. That's sort of the blur in my memory. I don't have a strong memory of that week. It was just, we're here. It's exciting. We'll try a little few of our words here and there. You know, this is the Peace Corps office. These are your field officers, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:20:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:20:21", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And of course, we all had jet lag and everything else. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:20:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So where were you assigned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:20:28", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was assigned to Nowshahr, which is directly north of Tehran on the Caspian Sea, and it's 100 feet below sea level. And when I was initially deposited, I was housed with a volunteer from Norway who was actually a Yugoslavian forestry volunteer. And she was in the, she was living in a compound at the Forestry Research Center. And it was really a very good initial thing. We got along well and she had already figured out a lot of the things about living, so that helped me a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:21:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the first Peace Corps volunteer in this town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:21:23", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:21:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, and she had been stationed, how had she been stationed there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:21:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She had gotten there like a month before I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:21:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:21:32", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was, it was a Norwegian program that had to do with forestry and, um. That was, that lasted about six weeks or so. And then the forestry department realized that they had an education department person living on their property, and that was a no-no. So then I was placed in a house by myself, and that was really an extraordinarily difficult situation. Um, I coped. I had made friends with the English teachers. We were assigned not to teach, but to help the English teachers, uh, improve their English and to, you know, bring this these new books and new methods up. And so basically, I went to class with the English teacher, listened to their lessons. We talked and sometimes, you know, I did the English practice with the students. And then I also organized an adult English class, which was men, and it was in the early evening. They were basically shopkeepers who wanted to improve their English for tourists. And the chief of police." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:23:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, so you said it was really difficult being placed by yourself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:23:26", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:23:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that because you hadn't lived alone before, or what was difficult about it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:23:32", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was true that I hadn't lived alone before. What was difficult about it is I was working in two towns. I was assigned to both Nowshahr and Chalus. So every other day I, you know, we worked six days a week. So I did three days in Chalus and three days in Nowshahr. And it was an every other day type of thing, where I took the, the carrier, the, a VW bus that carried 20 people between the towns. And I was doing all my own shopping. I had a single burner kerosene Aladdin heater for my cooking. I had a well. I was trying to do all my own laundry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:24:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have electricity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:24:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had electricity when it was working. I had a single 75 watt bulb in each room and I had an outlet. And electricity was an off and on thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:24:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:24:56", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:24:57", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you had water in the house?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:24:58", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, I had a well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:25:00", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, a well outside." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:25:01", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And my well was fine until the cat fell in and died or whatever. Fell in and died and contaminated the well. And then I had to carry water from the river. Um. The biggest part of living alone is you don't have a mentor, you don't have somebody. So when a bunch of the teenagers came and wanted me to go bicycling with them, I didn't have any quick ready reference because it was something that didn't get covered." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:25:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:25:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, and I didn't have anybody that I could ask quickly, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:25:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this a good idea? Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:25:42", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, am I going to create all kinds of problems if I do this? And I had an incident where it was a holiday and I was trying to do laundry, and one of the teachers and his whole family came to visit, which is, you know, a typical kind of thing. You go to visit people to show them that. And here I was out in the yard with this, it was called a hose. It's a, it's a little tank that you put water in and it looks like a little square pond and trying to wash sheets and hanging them on my wall that surrounded my house.\n\nSo that, that is a difficult kind of, of life when you have, when you have no one to. I mean, friends. I had friends, they had me over, but it was a very formal type of relationship. And, uh, I remember going after a few months to visit one of my Peace Corps friends down the coast, and she finally said to me, Jeanette, you've been here 8 hours and you haven't shut up, because it was just all pouring out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:27:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:27:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, it's a level of loneliness that you learn a lot about yourself. It was a very great growing experience. I read all 300 books in my book locker. That's because you didn't go out at night. You didn't go out after sundown." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:27:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And why was that? Just people didn't do it or was it dangerous?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:27:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "People didn't do it. And you don't put yourself in, at risk. There were no streetlights. You know, you went home into your compound and that was the end of the day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:27:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But were people generally friendly to you or was it really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:27:50", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "People were very friendly. And one of the best books they gave us in training was a book called The Silent Language. Because, um, we have a distance, you and I are sitting, oh, about a yard apart. And this is a comfortable distance for us to speak to each other. In Iran, the personal distance is much shorter, and until you realize what you're doing, they are usually within a foot to 18 inches for a conversation. And I can remember backing into a wall and then having that aha moment. Aha! This is what the book said. This is the difference between my personal space and their personal space.\n\nAnd that book is, it's an excellent book even now, because to read the things that people say with their bodies instead of with their words. Not necessarily even facial expressions, but things like comfort. I've got my legs crossed. This is a comfort sign, that I'm comfortable in your presence. And so that was another piece of really lifelong value out of my Peace Corps training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:29:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, so what, what, did you visit people's houses or they came to visit you? Was it mostly with women?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:29:25", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I visited, I visited people's houses. They invited me. Students invited me to meet their families. The English teachers, one of them, I got particularly close to her family and spent quite a lot of time with them. In fact, when they went on a trip, they asked me to come stay in the house and babysit the grandmother." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:29:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:29:47", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That, that was a phenomenal experience because this was a woman who was married to a subchief of the Bakhtiari tribe, and she was telling me all about living under Reza Shah, the, the father of the Shah that was in power when we were there. And camping in the desert and, and, you know, coping with scorpions and just an absolutely fascinating kind of thing. She taught me how to roll cigarettes too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:30:27", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which is also a lifelong skill, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:30:30", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it's one that, it's one that I parked and decided we didn't need that one. But that was just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:30:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. An opportunity to meet someone like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:30:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was. And some of my best memories in terms of people. This was a family. I was close enough that they allowed me to go out to the, it's, they had a separate house for cooking. You didn't cook in your main house generally. So I would go out with their bagi and that's how I learned to. She taught me how to cook." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:31:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is the bagi?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:31:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A bagi is sort of a maid of all work. Does cooking and laundry. Some of them lived in. Most of them were day workers. And that was another issue. I should have had a bagi but I didn't really know how to go about hiring a bagi. And I had a teenage girl offer to be my bagi, but if I had hired her, she would have dropped out of school. Now, it might have been a good thing, but once again, I didn't have a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:31:46", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Somebody to ask." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:31:47", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And even my friends. Just an example of not, of the cultural issues. You went to a public bath, to the hammam, to take a bath because you didn't have bathing facilities in the homes. And those were words we didn't get in training. So I went to my English friend, my friend, and I said, what do I say when I go to the hammam? And they said, you go to the hammam. And I said, what are the words in Farsi that I need? You just go. Well, I knew I was going to be dealing with people who had no English at all, and I was trying to find out what, what were the proper phrases to use. And they finally said, well, you ask for a room. Aha. This is what I needed to know. This was the word, the set of words I needed. [speaks Farsi] I want, I want a room. And then I said, well, what happens in the hammam? You know, because I had never been in one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:33:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:33:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But to them, it was such a common thing. It was like, why is she asking these questions, you know? So a lot of times trying to find, find out what was appropriate was a, an interesting challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:33:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that experience going by yourself to the hammam?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:33:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was the first time I was very timid. I was very tentative about it, and then I became very comfortable with it. And I had a chador made. I didn't wear it all the time. My modern, uh, my up-to- date friends, Iranian women, the only time they wore a chador was when they were coming back from the hammam because it covered up their wet hair and they could, they could put on some loose, comfortable clothing. One of the other things that occurred to me early on in Iran. In the sixties, and I went to a woman's school, so we were not allowed to wear pants on front campus. We always had to wear skirts, and all of us had our London Fog raincoats.\n\nAnd if you wanted to wear your jeans across front campus, you simply rolled them up to your knees and threw your London Fog raincoat on. If you wanted to wear your pajamas to breakfast, which was not allowed, you threw your London Fog raincoat over your pajamas and it covered up the world. And I got to Iran and everybody's going about how oppressed these Iranian women are having to wear their chadors. And I looked around at what they were wearing under their chadors, and I said, ah, London Fog raincoat. I mean, it, the more modern, the professional women tended to wear skirts, blouses, sweaters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:35:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Long skirts? Or just regular?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:35:39", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Moderately long. Not, not to the ankles, but they wore hose. Miniskirts were just coming in in this country. I did not take anything that did not come below my knees. Many of them wore scarves." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:35:59", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Head scarves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:36:00", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Head scarves, but not the hijab. They wore head scarves the same way we wore head scarves in this country in the fifties and early sixties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:36:09", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you wear a headscarf there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:36:12", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Frequently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:36:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not required?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:36:14", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not required. But I wore it to certain places, you know, when I was in the vicinity of a mosque or something. I always wore a headscarf just the same way that women who go into Catholic churches put those little lacy things on their heads. It's a lot of what we view as foreign is a matter of stepping back and trying to see it in terms of the context of where we came from. It's a little like women don't wear hats now, but I can remember when my mother never went out without putting on a hat and she had several hats. Women wore hats. Women wore gloves when they went out in the fifties. We don't wear gloves anymore.\n\nSo a lot of customs, we say we don't do things like that. You sit down and think about it, we do. We have lots of these little unwritten laws and customs that are there. They had something in Iran called parti. And it's, and it was like, oh, how awful. You have to have parti to get a visa. You have to have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:37:44", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is parti?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:37:45", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, parti is basically who do you know? You have to know somebody. And it's like, yeah, if you want to get something done, it helps to know somebody. It's, it's a little more formal there. It's a little more out in the open. We have a lot of the same things. We just don't, we're not as open about it. It's not as formalized.\n\nThere's taarof in Iran, and taarof is a, it's a system of manners. And it's, if somebody offers you something, they have to offer it to you three times in order for you to know that it's a sincere offer. Um. And. We have, we just don't acknowledge it as the same. But if somebody says, oh, let's get together, and you say, sure, you know that that's not real. It's not until you do something more concrete. Or drop by my house any time. Those are, that's, that's what taarof is about. But it's just a little more formalized than what we do here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:39:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were, you are in an all girls school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:39:16", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:39:16", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a nearby boys school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:39:19", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And I actually was invited to the boys school too, as a guest for the English classes to come in and talk and speak." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:39:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it always separate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:39:34", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:39:35", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Gender separate education. At all levels?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:39:39", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The very youngest children were in mixed classes, but basically, uh, you know, like kindergarten. But then once they got into school, it was separate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:39:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you, talk a little bit more about just the gender roles in the community. Were they, were they very separately defined? I mean, we think of Iran as having these very strict rules. Was that the case in the sixties as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:40:11", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Uh. Women were basically expected to have a male member of their family go with them. And that was one of the things that made me an anomaly. Questions. And the town, the small town I was in the first year, and I did transfer after my first year. The people got together and they said, you know, you're here by yourself. There were two ag volunteers, and occasionally they would come to my house. And they said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:40:56", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Male?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:40:58", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Men. And they said, these are your brothers, because they come from the same place that you come from and your family couldn't come with you. So they assigned them the roles of my brothers, and my field officer was assigned the role of my father by the town. And so when my field officer came to visit, the kids would come running down the kucheh saying, your father is here, your father is here! And my field officer got a great kick out of that because Bernie was Black. But he was assigned the role of my father coming to visit me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:41:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But when they were not around, or your brothers, were you able to go places?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:41:52", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:41:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And men felt comfortable, the Iranian men? Did they have a problem with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:42:00", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I, no one seemed to have a problem with it. They, they accepted me very readily. And, um, you know, I basically talked to shopkeepers on the street. I had a. You know, it didn't really bother me. One of the things I realized from when I was living by myself and I could listen to the conversations across the wall, because the walls of the houses run together or across the kucheh is that the women ruled inside the walls. They may have walked behind their husbands outside the walls, and he may have come home and been king of the roost. But he better bring the money home. And it was very much a female dominated inside the walls kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:43:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you don't learn that until you get close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:43:14", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no. You have to get close to see that that, that, you know, the public face is always male. And there are many restrictions on the women. But they have a lot of power once they get behind the walls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:43:31", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there anything memorable about your teaching experiences? In this first town. I guess we'll talk about the second in a moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:43:43", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, the teaching experiences with the students and the classrooms were very routine, and because I was working with teachers as opposed to teaching myself, that was not very. Uh. There aren't a lot of memorable things. The things that are memorable is that I started a crafts club. I did a summer day camp type of program, uh, for the girls where we practiced our English and we did sort of crafts. They were better craftsmen than I, but it was just fun to, I got them together and we spoke English and did things, made things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:44:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you got closer to them that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:44:43", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And then I had an adult class at the big hotel in Chalus. It was at the end of the Tehran or the jasmine Chalus Road, which is, goes over the mountains. It's, it's quite an exciting road to travel, zigzags all the way. And that was a really interesting English class because these were people who dealt with foreign tourists. And most of the people that I had were their waitstaff, and they were trying to learn English words for foods. So we're going out in their garden and trying to identify the foods. So it was a very stretching experience for me because here I was with my English Farsi and my Farsi English as well as everything I could find on botany, because I grew up in western North Carolina. I didn't know what a Jerusalem artichoke was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:46:05", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The harder you learn the English as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:46:08", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. I learned a whole lot, you know. And then it was, they took me down to the kitchens and showed me how they prepared the, the sturgeon. And so it was a wonderful learning experience. But it was a real challenge. And I can remember asparagus was like one of the hardest words for them to learn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:46:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, it's hard to pronounce, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:46:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:46:34", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how big was this town and how many, did lots of tourists come there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:46:40", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was right on the coast. Um. It was not as big a tourist area as some of the places further down which had beautiful beaches like Babol. And Nowshahr was about 4,000. Chalus was in the same, same range. They were, they were relatively small towns with a lot of agriculture. They grew rice and oranges at 100 feet below sea level and on the latitude almost of Labrador." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:47:22", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:47:23", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We don't think about that. Tehran's on the latitude of New York City. We think of it as being some way out there in the south and all that kind of stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:47:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That far north." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:47:32", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But it's just the orientation and, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:47:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But yet they were able to grow oranges?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:47:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it's 100 feet below sea level, so it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:47:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it's warmer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:47:44", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And, um. That particular class. Well, actually, the adult classes were very open with me because I had Baha'is and Jews and Zoroastrians, and they talked to me about the fact that they were different. And maybe it was because I was different that people opened up and told me about being different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:48:15", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:48:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had two friends who were nurses and they, they lived at the hospital in Chalus and once again, these were two young women and they were there without their family. So they lived in the hospital compound. And when one of them left, the other one and I would get together regularly. And when I talked to you about loneliness, she was so lonely that she made pets out of the mice in the wall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:48:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what nationality was she?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:48:54", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was Iranian." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:48:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "She was Iranian." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:48:56", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But she, she fed the mice and had a whole mouse family that was in the wall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:49:03", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's kind of sad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:49:04", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is. But, uh. And she basically did her job. But she was confined to the hospital compound because she didn't have her family there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:49:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because she couldn't go out without men?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:49:21", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. So I guess I was just a little bit more daring and I just went. I like I said, I have many wonderful memories of my time in Nowshahr and Chalus, but I realized that, uh, I was having issues with coping with being alone and also coping with the fact that at 100 feet were sea level, you have very little sunshine. It's always moist and damp and rainy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:50:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:50:05", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I had, I had exciting experiences. I have a wonderful story that I like to tell about making, trying to make cream puffs at 100 feet below sea level. We succeeded, but it was a challenging experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:50:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It needs more, uh, what is that called? Of tartar or whatever? Cream of tartar?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:50:27", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't know enough. I had never had a cream puff in my life. So this was not part of my cuisine growing up. And, uh, but they decided that since I was an American and they had an American cookbook and they loved cream puffs, that surely I could make cream puffs. And this is where you get into the challenges. First of all, it was a Good Housekeeping cookbook. None of their measurements are in cups and ounces, so all of it had to be converted to metric. The stove was in Centigrade, not in Fahrenheit, so we had to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:51:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It became a math problem." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:51:09", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It became a math problem. The first time we tried, they came out as goo because of the moisture in the, in the flour. When we, they realized that that was the problem. So one of the husbands went to Tehran, got flour in a sealed container, and brought it back. And there were two women. One had the stove, the other had a large enough space for us to work, for three of us to work together. So we go to the house where we can all work together and we follow the recipe and we make the cream puffs. We put them on the baking sheet, and the houseboy for the other woman is there on his bicycle. He grabs the sheet, holds it up in one hand above his head, tools his bicycle over to the other house where, and I'm running. And we pop them in the oven." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:52:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:52:12", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That has been set. While we are waiting for the cream puffs to bake, he then tells me about his introduction to the House of Strength, which is a gymnastics. It's sort of a. It's a, it's a big macho man thing, I guess. And then they bake. He takes the tray again, hops on his bicycle, goes back. We run, all run back to the other house. Open them up. Take the inside out. Make the cream. Put it in. He's sent to get the husbands from work because we've got the cream puffs right here. And the husbands come home from work and we all sit down and have tea and cream puffs before they collapse." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:53:07", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a wonderful story. That's really. It takes a village to, to make cream puffs. Right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:53:12", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:53:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:53:14", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was one of those, oh, you're an American. You can do this. Huh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:53:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you ever made a cream puff since?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:53:22", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:53:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they any good?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:53:25", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were wonderful. They were really delicious." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:53:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:53:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had to be with all the work we put into it. I transferred to Hamadan after the first year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:53:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At your request?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:53:37", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At my request. Part of it was there were two girls schools. There were at least six boys schools, and the high schools. And the reality was a male English teacher was, had, would have much more impact in terms of the education." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:54:01", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you taught and you worked in a male, in a boys school then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:54:06", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I, no, I didn't. I, I went as a guest on occasion to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:54:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so in Hamadan you were in a girls school as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:54:17", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was also in a girls school. I have one more story from Nowshahr that's, if you have time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:54:23", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:54:25", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was invited to the boys high school to give my lecture or to practice English with them, we did this thing where you go to the principal's office and drink your tea. Well, each of the schools had a religious teacher, an imam, or a mullah. And so we're in the principal's office at the boys high school. And there were a couple of women teachers there, more traditional. And the mullah would say to the English teacher, ask her where she comes from. And I would answer in Farsi, and then the English teacher would have to repeat my Farsi because the mullah pretended he didn't understand my Farsi. So we had this wonderful three way conversation. Ask her. I would answer in Farsi, and the English teacher would repeat my Farsi. And there we'd go again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:55:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think he really didn't understand or he didn't want to deal with a?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:55:40", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He didn't want to deal directly with me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:55:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "With you. And the teacher was a female or male?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:55:46", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Male." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "00:55:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Male. Were you ever challenged because of your religion?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "00:55:54", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:55:55", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nobody talked about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:55:57", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, nobody. They wanted to marry me off to, everybody wanted, thought I should be married. I mean, this was typical. I finally got around that by telling them they had to find me somebody who was over six feet tall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "00:56:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And nobody in town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "00:56:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There weren't any people over six feet tall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:56:19", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:56:20", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That way they weren't offended. It wasn't, I don't like your people. I need, I just need somebody who's six feet tall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:56:26", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. That's great. So talk about the second town and the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:56:31", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. I went to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:56:32", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The school you went to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:56:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hamadan. And Hamadan is 6,000 feet above sea level. So I went from 100 feet below sea level to 6,000 feet above sea level. In Hamadan, I lived with another Peace Corps volunteer. We lived in a family compound. We had a bagi that was shared, the various Peace Corps volunteers, and there were several of us in that town. Plus there was a Scottish Presbyterian hospital there. And. So we had a bagi that we shared. And that way we could afford to pay her. She worked for us one day and then she would work for the guys one day. And it worked out well.\n\nAnd they had a shortage of English teachers. So I ended up teaching my own classes and they were middle school age girls. I had classes of 65 students. And the. One day I got really frustrated and I kicked 15 kids out of class, which is like the ultimate punishment because they have to go stand outside in the courtyard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:58:02", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were they doing to deserve that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:58:08", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh. They were talking and giggling and making rude noises. And I just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "00:58:14", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were being teenage girls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "00:58:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And I had just had it up to my eyebrows and said, okay, that's it. Out. And it was so easy to teach 50. But I think part of that was the shock effect that I had actually done something. The big disappointment there. I mean, my classes went well. I had, I had after school, I had an after school crafts class. I had an after school first aid class. I was a first aid, a Red Cross first aid instructor when I went over. And I connected with the Iranian Red Cross and I taught first aid after school. And so I had several opportunities there that were very, you know, just to interact with the students.\n\nI also taught in the adult evening classes that we had organized in the town, and we had several classes there at several different levels of English. And, uh, the living situation was much easier. I also taught what they called a mele school. It was a, um. This one was sponsored by a group from France. They sort of like charter schools, I guess you would say. Um. And those students were really good. So it was very exciting and very challenging teaching, particularly since I was on my own in the classroom and really working with the skills that I'd been trained to use.\n\nAnd I wasn't, I wasn't in a situation where I was working with a teacher who had 20 years of experience and I'm supposed to tell them how to teach when I had, wet behind the ears. That was, the people in Nowshahr and Chalus were wonderful to me. But the. It was trying to, trying to advise people that, that had many more years of teaching experience than me. It was not a great situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "01:01:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "01:01:13", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So being on my own, teaching my own classes, that was challenging and very rewarding until it got to the final exams. And I gave them. I told them, you know. You're going to have to translate from English to Farsi and from Farsi to English. And here are the sample sentences. And I literally gave them like ten, ten sentences for each set. And then I randomly took a set from those. So, you know, if they had memorized those ten, no problem. Most of the kids flunked. Even though I knew they knew it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "01:02:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "01:02:10", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They could talk to me in English. So I said to the student, what? What did you study for the? No, why, why didn't you study what I gave you for the exam? It wasn't what my brother was studying. And I said, am I your brother's teacher? Get a. That was still another piece of culture, that they would study what their brother was studying rather than what." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "01:02:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The teacher said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "01:02:51", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or what they were assigned. And it just. So I can't say I ended on a high note, but I did have very positive experiences, and if I had it to do over again, I probably would have stuck it out in Nowshahr by myself. But it's very difficult to go straight from college into a foreign country and be able to say this living situation that, that is being paid for by somebody else. You know, it was provided by the Department of Education, to find a living situation that's appropriate. I finally, after I had been given the transfer, I finally met up with someone who had a compound with a separate house in it, and it would have been perfectly fine.\n\nBut I had already made the transfer. They had already assigned a new volunteer. I had already introduced him and oriented him to the town and to the schools. And so that was not the time for me to say, okay, I found the right living situation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "01:04:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm staying after all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "01:04:22", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but, but once again, you know, when they started putting volunteers with host country nationals as part of their training, you know, what that did is gave people that link, somebody who could tell them what was acceptable, what wasn't acceptable, that they could refer to. But, you know, we were in that early period when they were still experimenting and they were still, you know, taking volunteers out and saying, okay, here's your site. Do something wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "01:04:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "See ya. Yes, exactly. So as you think back, what, what are the highlights for you of your experience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "01:05:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My highlights, uh. They're mostly from Nowshahr. But." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "01:05:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Cream puffs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "01:05:26", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cream puffs. A long bus ride in which I exchanged, I spent hours talking to other women on the bus and being accepted. They were curious about me and I was curious about them. And we talked about their lives, you know, just these long bus rides. I had a mountain climbing experience in which I climbed with a group of male volunteers and we came to a Kurdish camp. And because I was a female, the woman, the mother, allowed us to take pictures of me with her, which frequently they didn't, you know, and they, because they had a female with them. She opened up to us and invited us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "01:06:25", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it sounds like your Farsi really got pretty good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "01:06:29", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My Farsi, well, one of the other volunteers said I spoke tea talk. He came back with an FS seven. I came back with a FS two. But I could talk to people about children and household things and. I wasn't really literate. I could read at first grade level, um, because I didn't, I didn't really have time to study Farsi. The people who were in colleges, they had time to take, hire tutors and study Farsi. I was, I was on the go until dark, from early morning until dark every day. And even though we, you always went home for lunch, you had an hour, an hour or an hour and a half break in the middle of the day for rest. Um. You know, there just was not a lot of time to sit down and be a, a student myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "01:07:41", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you, what did you do during vacations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "01:07:44", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "During vacations, um, I traveled in Iran. I travel to see other volunteers. My long vacation, my month off, I went with another volunteer and we went to. We went to Istanbul. We went to, um, to Athens. We went to Cyprus and we went to Beirut and traveled together and. That was, she was the college professor that I told you about who took off two years to do Peace Corps. And then, uh. I met my husband. I met him in that, oh, interval when I was making the change, and I wanted to go to the Tehran bazaar. We were both at Peace Corps headquarters and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "01:08:59", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was he a volunteer as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "01:09:00", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was a volunteer. He was in Shiraz, about 1,000 miles from me in any direction." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "01:09:07", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was in the same group with you or a different group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "01:09:09", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, he was in a different group. His group ended a few months after my group. They came later and ended later. We got married after we got back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "01:09:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what kind of romance was it with 1,000 miles apart? How did, how did that work out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "01:09:27", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, it worked out well. We've been married for 51 years, so that's, that's pretty good. That's good. But that was, uh. He and I traveled together the second Nowruz vacation that we had, went to visit southern parts of Iran that neither one of us had seen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "01:09:53", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "01:09:53", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Really got into some of the history and looking at things from the different dynasties. A lot of things are open now that were not open then, even, or you, you had to be in the know to know where they were. And now they're." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "01:10:10", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mean ruins?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "01:10:12", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, ruins. Buildings even. People ask me if I did this or that in Hamadan. It wasn't even something on the horizon to do when we were there. Nobody went into the caves unless you were a spelunker." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "01:10:33", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "01:10:34", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And now they take tours and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "01:10:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And after Peace Corps, did you travel to other countries or did you come straight home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "01:10:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. No. I fulfilled a lifelong wish and said, I'm halfway around the world, I'm going to see the other half. There's a good chance I'll get back to Europe. Who knows when I can get back to Asia. So I went overland from Iran through Afghanistan. Steve went with me, my husband, he took his leave and we traveled together overland. And across Afghanistan. Then we flew into Amritsar in India. And saw the Taj Mahal, did Delhi and Agra. Then he had to go back and finish his service. And I took, I went on, took the train across India and then went up to Nepal, to Thailand, to Hong Kong, to Taiwan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "01:11:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By yourself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "01:11:41", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By myself. California, Honolulu, Hawaii. And California. And then home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "01:11:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And home was North Carolina?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "01:11:52", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "North Carolina.\n\nSo you did go all around the world.\n\nI went to Japan. Yes. Yes, I had, uh. By then I had learned a whole lot about being alone and being on my own and being able to travel on my own. But it was, it was a growing experience and, uh. You know, I hooked up with various people. I met up with some American teachers who were in Thailand, and we traveled around together and, uh. I really had learned how to, to be alone and still have a, oh, a positive experience. But it was a, it was a long growing period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "01:12:51", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what happened when you got back to North Carolina?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "01:12:56", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh. I was glad to see everybody. I gave a bunch of talks to local groups about what I had been doing. Ran around and visited all the relatives. Went to New York and started job hunting and, uh, met Steve when he came home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "01:13:18", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why New York? Was he from New York?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "01:13:19", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He's from Brooklyn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "01:13:20", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "01:13:22", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was our standing joke. How does a guy from Brooklyn meet a girl from the hills of North Carolina? In Tehran." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "01:13:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Obviously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "01:13:33", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, um. So I found a job working at the Jewish Guild for the Blind. They needed a communication skills instructor, not something that anybody trained for. And they said, ah, you were in the Peace Corps. I bet you can do this. And I said sure. So I learned how to teach typing to people who had no sight and of a group of. It was a, an interesting, also an interesting challenge because basically what you were doing was working with people so that they could function. You know, how to turn on their radios, how to, how to use a template to sign a check." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "01:14:21", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they were all blind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "01:14:23", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were blind. And the most challenging client I had was deaf and blind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "01:14:30", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "01:14:30", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I had to teach her how to type. But what they were looking for was somebody who was willing to accept a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "01:14:40", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it was a perfect training. It was perfect training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "01:14:44", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then we got married and then I moved with him. We moved from New York to Saint Louis, and I taught in an inner city enrichment program as a volunteer. I taught about Iran. I taught these kids in the inner city how to make how to make Iranian rugs. We used greeting card boxes and created many miniature rugs. And I taught them about the alphabet and found one child. One of the classes there was this totally disruptive child, and the teacher was telling me she was about ready to pull her hair out. This child could read Farsi. And I realized he's dyslexic. Because Farsi is written." + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "01:15:39", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "01:15:40", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From right to left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "01:15:42", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right to left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "01:15:43", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And so when I put the stuff up, you know, it fascinated the kids. But he, he grabbed, he got into it. It was like, okay, I think somebody needs to do some testing here. Uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "01:15:58", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "01:15:59", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So and from there, we went back to New York City. And I volunteered. By then, we had one child and I volunteered in a nursery school. And then from there we went to West Virginia and I worked, I volunteered in the schools there. And then we came to Albany, New York, and serendipity. I just decided to renew my lifeguarding because it was a good way to challenge me myself. And then I picked up my WSI, which I had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 312, + "timestamp": "01:16:47", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What is WSI?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 313, + "timestamp": "01:16:48", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's water safety instructor for Red Cross. And then the, uh, the director of the program went on maternity leave and they asked me if I would sub for six months and she didn't come back. So 16 and a half years later, I retired from that job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 314, + "timestamp": "01:17:07", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 315, + "timestamp": "01:17:07", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was like, you know, you're just prepared to take on whatever comes along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 316, + "timestamp": "01:17:13", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "People who always plan their careers, I tell them, don't get too hung up on that. It may not happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 317, + "timestamp": "01:17:20", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And the thing is, our Iran experience has colored our lives throughout. I still cook Iranian food regularly. We celebrate Nowruz, the New Year. We, uh, we also have been very active since 1981. We've been active with the returned Peace Corps volunteer group that's in the Albany area. That's when Peace Corps tried, decided they were going to try to get volunteers together. It was a genesis. And then I'm now the president of the board of the Peace Corps Iran Association. Newly elected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 318, + "timestamp": "01:18:11", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Congratulations. And what does that group do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 319, + "timestamp": "01:18:17", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a group that formed 2011. There have been groups off and on but. And we are. I don't have the mission statement right in my head. But we, we are making an effort to locate all the people that served in Iran. We're trying to preserve the legacy of what Peace Corps did in Iran because Peace Corps left Iran in 1976. So we're all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 320, + "timestamp": "01:18:50", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When the Shah was overthrown?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 321, + "timestamp": "01:18:51", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he wasn't overthrown at that point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 322, + "timestamp": "01:18:54", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 323, + "timestamp": "01:18:54", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But the unrest and turmoil was beginning. And, uh, we advocate for better relations between the American people and the Iranian people, the people of Iran." + }, + { + "turn_id": 324, + "timestamp": "01:19:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you have a real challenge at the moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 325, + "timestamp": "01:19:15", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we have a very great challenge at the moment, but we have, we have several strains. And we are, we have someone that's writing a history of our group of Peace Corps in Iran. We're working with professors who are doing research on it. And we have a conference every two years that's a reunion and a, you know, let's update our knowledge kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 326, + "timestamp": "01:19:48", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Excellent. So you've brought Peace Corps back to the United States, clearly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 327, + "timestamp": "01:19:53", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Oh, I've done, I've done lots of schools program. And I brought back, I brought back a mullah's robe, a Kurdish turban, and a chador. And the kids love to see what it's like to dress up. And I have a whole box of, not your grand art. I have a pair of shoes that were made out of recycled rubber tires. I have a set of donkey beads, and I always put it out and say, you know, what is this? You know, who would wear this? And the kids, you know, I have. What is this? Where did it come from? Kind of thing set that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 328, + "timestamp": "01:20:38", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 329, + "timestamp": "01:20:40", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kids, even adults, enjoy looking at their, their ordinary day to day. I didn't have a lot of money. I mean, there are people that came back with wonderful carpets and things. I came back with an inexpensive tribal carpet, but I came back with a lot of these sort of daily life kind of things, which are a lot of fun for kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 330, + "timestamp": "01:21:06", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. So you've carried the spirit of Peace Corps forward?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 331, + "timestamp": "01:21:11", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I try." + }, + { + "turn_id": 332, + "timestamp": "01:21:12", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's, that's all we can do. Anything else you want to say before we conclude the interview?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 333, + "timestamp": "01:21:20", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would. I would like to go back to the training. I think that when we went through our exit interviews, I think that it was significant that I was the only one that I know of in my group who was by myself. All the other women were with other women. And I think we, we made it fairly clear that there were lots of issues that, that they needed to take into consideration when placing women. It wasn't that we couldn't do the job or didn't do the job. It was that, you know, just plunking a woman down by herself without a support group, without some kind of support, was very difficult. The guys, guys ended up pretty much, some of them were by themselves. But what happened with the men is a family would absorb them. Somehow we didn't get absorbed into a family the way the guys did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 334, + "timestamp": "01:22:36", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that's probably cultural." + }, + { + "turn_id": 335, + "timestamp": "01:22:38", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's very cultural. And, and of course, they could easily go out to, for dinner. It was much harder for us to go to a restaurant and there were very few and far between, at least in the small towns where I was. And in the, when I got to a city, women didn't go out by themselves to eat. It just wasn't done. So there were changes that came down because I, I think our group was fairly articulate about some of the issues that we faced. I think we were articulate about the fact that don't tell us to change your culture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 336, + "timestamp": "01:23:29", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, one of the people I've interviewed has said that Peace Corps is a learning organization. Sometimes it takes a while to learn, but over time has changed a lot with each experience. So I'm sure your, your experience fed into that as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 337, + "timestamp": "01:23:47", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm sure it did. And, um, and Peace Corps today is so different from, from what we did. And you were in the same era as me. So I called home, in order to call home, I had to make a journey to, to Tehran, sign up to make a phone call, wait for two days, get in line for my time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 338, + "timestamp": "01:24:17", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No satellite phones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 339, + "timestamp": "01:24:18", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No satellite phones, no digital age, no Skype, no Zoom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 340, + "timestamp": "01:24:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was not only in the developing world, it was just a different time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 341, + "timestamp": "01:24:28", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a different time. And so we have letters. We have letters home. We have written documents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 342, + "timestamp": "01:24:37", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 343, + "timestamp": "01:24:37", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And a lot of people I'm wondering today what kind of documentation they're going to have of their service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 344, + "timestamp": "01:24:43", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's why we're doing these interviews as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 345, + "timestamp": "01:24:46", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Well, also, there are an awful lot of us that are aging. We're looking at it. That was part of the impetus for the Peace Corps Iran group, I've talked forever, was that we realized that we are aging out and this is our opportunity to tell our story and get our legacy on record." + }, + { + "turn_id": 346, + "timestamp": "01:25:08", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 347, + "timestamp": "01:25:09", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And right now, we're, we're starting to look for a place to archive the writings and things that we have. So I think the interviews are really important, but they're only one piece of trying to archive the experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 348, + "timestamp": "01:25:24", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Definitely. Great. So, excellent interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 349, + "timestamp": "01:25:28", + "speaker": "Jeanette Grayson Gottlieb", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 350, + "timestamp": "01:25:28", + "speaker": "Evelyn Ganzglass", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00409", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McCrightGE/mccrightge.htm", + "original_file_name": "McCrightGE_3-7-00.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/McCrightGE/McCrightGE_3-7-00.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Grady E. McCright", + "location_date": "Las Cruces, New Mexico – 7 March 2000" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Carol Butler", + "Kevin M. Rusnak" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Grady E. McCright" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 7, 2000. This oral history with Grady McCright is being conducted at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Carol Butler is the interviewer and is assisted by Kevin Rusnak.\\n\\n Thank you so much for allowing us to come and talk with you today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you're more than welcome. I will enjoy doing it, I'm sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you. To begin with, if maybe you could tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in engineering and even the possibilities of becoming involved with the space program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think that from the time I was probably eight or nine years old, I knew I wanted to be an engineer. Some of the time I wanted to be an aeronautical engineer, and some of the time I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, and sometimes I wanted to be a civil engineer.\\n\\n When I was in the eighth grade, I had an uncle who was a ham radio operator and he sent me what was called a progressive education kit. You could build eight different electronic Morse code senders and one-tube receivers, and things like that. I went through that entire eight-project progressive education kit, and decided at that time I wanted to be an electrical engineer. So that was my goal from then on.\\n\\n Then when I struggled through college, as I was going to college, the space program was just being born. By the time I got out we were in the middle of the Gemini Program, when I got out of college. By that time, I had decided that if I could, I'd like to be a part of the space program.\\n\\n So my senior year in college, early in my senior year in college, I started sending applications to—I sent one to Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], one to KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida], and one to Johnson Space Center [JSC, Houston, Texas]. I also sent some to the Civil Service Commission in the region of Dallas, and I think in New Orleans I sent one.\\n\\n In the spring of the year I got out of college, I received an offer from Marshall and one from JSC. The JSC office was for a duty station at White Sands [Test Facility, White Sands, New Mexico]. I got an offer from the Department of Agriculture in New Orleans and several other offers. I had an offer from the phone company, from Southwestern Bell.\\n\\n I suppose I choose the JSC job because it kept me in Texas, and I was in Texas at the time, although that's the home office, was in Texas, although this would be out in New Mexico. I had been out here, not to Las Cruces, but into this area, while I was in college, and kind of liked it. From the description of the job they had out here, which would be a hands-on rocket engine test facility, data acquisition and control systems kind of a job, I just thought it was the best offer that I had of all of those. I never really seriously considered anything except the Marshall job and the JSC White Sands job, because they were NASA jobs and that's what I really wanted to do.\\n\\n So I accepted the JSC appointment to a duty station at White Sands in March of 1966, and I reported for duty on the 12th of September 1966 at White Sands. I got out of college in August and got here in September.\\n\\n For the first three years that I was here, three and a half years that I was at White Sands, it amazed me how quickly I was trusted to do things and to make configuration changes to the systems and to make—we did a lot of troubleshooting. It was a development job. The job had never been done before. I was working principally on the control systems for the lunar module [LM], ascent and descent engines, and some on the RCS [Reaction Control System] engines, reaction control engines for both the LM and the command service module. I spent about two and a half years of that three and a half years working on the altitude simulation control system.\\n\\n The Apollo engines, which were designed to fire only in space, never in the atmosphere, so we tested them at a reduced pressure. We'd test them at altitude, in other words, at about 150,000 feet equivalent. We had—and it still exists, it's a huge chemical steam generator that produces super saturated steam, super heated steam, at about 300 psi [pounds per square inch]. It's the equivalent of about a million horsepower and it's three modified X-15 rocket engines that burn alcohol and LOX [liquid oxygen]. You quench that rocket engine flame with large, large quantities of water which is converted to steam, and use the steam to be able to evacuate these large test chambers where the engines were, engine systems were. Then we could fire those engines in a vacuum.\\n\\n The chemical steam generator was built by Thiokol [Chemical Corporation] and delivered to NASA in a pretty sad state of completion, so we spent a lot of time perfecting that steam generator. The control systems on it were probably as complex as they were on the lunar module, if not more so, because if you happened to lose this steam while the gate valve, a big nine-foot gate valve, was open, you'd get a supersonic shockwave coming up the ejector and when it hit the nozzle of these little light spacecrafts, it'd just scattered them all over the test stand.\\n\\n So we had a nine-foot shutter valve, which is like a Venetian blind, that set in the ejector of that steam system, and if we sensed a loss of steam pressure at 270 psi decreasing pressure, we triggered this shutter valve, and the shutter valve was then fired with squibs and a fike-valve which opened about an eight-inch valve, it just ruptured the valve is what it did, and opened about 3,000 psi to an actuator that slammed that shutter valve closed and prevent that shockwave from getting to the vehicle. We had to use it several times.\\n\\n It was a very complicated control system for the altitude simulation system and these shutter valve, and I spent hours and hours and hours and days on end trying to calibrate the shutter valve. We finally redesigned the control circuitry and it finally became very reliable, but it took us probably most of the Apollo era to get that perfected.\\n\\n So that's principally what I did during Apollo. I spent a lot of time working on engine control systems and facility control, electrical control systems, and the control system for the altitude simulation system.\\n\\n But the office at White Sands at that time, which was the peak employment at White Sands Test Facility, was about 1,600 people. There were only six electrical engineers in the NASA office, so I worked some power distribution. I worked a lot of engine control systems on lunar module, a little bit on the command service module, which was at the 300 Test Area, and the lunar module was at the 400 Test Area.\\n\\n Because it was such a small office, it's probably the best thing that ever happened to my career, because I came fresh out of college, green as a gourd, came into White Sands where you had to be able, because of the small number of people in the office, you had to be able to be reasonably competent on power distribution systems, electronic control systems for the facility, and engine control systems, engine system control for the lunar module. So in three and a half years, almost four years that I was here during Apollo, I got a lot of knowledge about a lot of varied activity. I would consider myself at that time an expert at nothing, but a Jack-of-all-trades in the electrical business. I could do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, because that's the way we had to operate out here.\\n\\n So it probably proved to be the best thing that ever happened in my career, because it forced me to be independent and I got a lot of exposure in a broad variety of subjects very quickly. Of course, you say that sounds a lot for three and a half years. They weren't short days. We were working a lot of long days. When we were trying to calibrate the shutter valve, for example, I can remember one time when I was pretty young, that I would go out and work twelve hours and I'd get relieved by another engineer, and twelve hours later I'd come back and relieve him. That went on for probably the better part of a week before we got it calibrated. Ultimately we wound up changing the design where it was easier to do, and today it's a reliable device, but it wasn't for a long time.\\n\\n So that's my background and how I got to the Apollo Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a good background, good review. While you were working with, during the Apollo Program, and in this area, what were some of the biggest challenges, I guess, on each specific system? You said you worked a lot with the LM and the ascent and descent engines. Were there some primary areas that were problematical?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the altitude simulation system controls was probably my biggest challenge during Apollo. However, we made a number of changes. I can think of a zener [phonetic] diode that we had to change in the LM control systems, it was on board the spacecraft, because it kept shorting out on us. We had to change the design of the circuitry that controlled that valve to prevent that.\\n\\n So I would say the research and development involved in refining those engine system control. It wasn't just the engine, but it was the entire engine system, the pressurization system, the propellant, both fuel and oxidizer systems, the super critical helium systems, and a number of different systems that make an engine work. So it was the research and development and perfecting the controls for the lunar module engines, principally ascent and descent engines.\\n\\n On the facility side, we had some great challenges there, too, because this million-horsepower steam generator, chemical steam generator, is a very complex beast. So it probably provided personally the biggest challenge was on the facility side of that system.\\n\\n Now, I can remember what we called the fire-in-the-hole test that we did. Fire-in-the-hole test was when we built a simulator for the descent stage that from an engine pressurization system it looked like a descent stage, and we put the ascent stage on top of that. Then what we were trying to determine is if we went through an abort, if we ever had to abort while the descent stage was attached to the ascent stage, the way you abort is fire explosive bolts and fire the ascent engine and push the ascent stage, which had the two astronauts in it, away from the descent stage. When that engine first fired, it would be firing right against the descent stage, so the exit pressure at the nozzle would be higher than normal.\\n\\n We were worried about a rough combustion cutoff, that the engine would cut off because of rough combustion. So we built a mylar diaphragm over the diffuser in Test Stand 403, and put the ascent stage on top of that where the nozzle was probably two inches from that mylar diaphragm. Then we evacuated the chamber mechanically with the pumps. This mylar diaphragm then was the vacuum seal between the chamber and the ejectors. Then we fired up the steam generator and brought it up to pressure and temperature and then we had a vacuum on both sides of that mylar diaphragm. We opened the gate valve and evacuated all of that ejector. We're pulling against this mylar diaphragm and then we fired the lunar module.\\n\\n I was responsible for the design and operating the console. We fired the shape charge that ruptured that mylar diaphragm. Because what we had to do is simulate that as the ascent engine fired and the chamber exit nozzle pressure was high, which made the chamber pressure high, and then in a few milliseconds later I had to rupture the mylar diaphragm. We had an X cut in it, we had a shape charge and an X-shape on top of it, and we fired them with squibs and ruptured that diaphragm, because as soon as you start a fire in that ascent engine, we wanted to simulate that it was moving away from the descent engine.\\n\\n The other problem we had was that the pressure inside the chamber was going up rapidly because of the exhaust products from the ascent engine. So we had to get the chemical steam generator to start pumping the chamber. So we did that test about probably four or five times, and it was a pretty exciting test to get all that to come together in a few milliseconds and make it happen right without doing any damage to the engine. What we proved is that the engine is that the engine would continue to run and be able to get the astronauts away from the descent stage.\\n\\n Another highlight, which I didn't know was going to be a highlight, none of us did, but in about 1968 we ran a lunar module descent engine firing profile which simulated the LM having to act as the service module because something's wrong with the service module. What if we get out in translunar injection and we have a problem with the service module engine, SPS engine? SPS engine is a 22,000-pound engine that did mid-course corrections between the Earth and the Moon, also put the astronauts into orbit around the Moon, and then it fired again to get them out of orbit, headed back to Earth, and did mid-course corrections coming back. If you didn't have it, you wouldn't go into orbit around the Moon. If you were in orbit around the Moon, you couldn't fire it, you couldn't get home, and you needed it for mid-course correction.\\n\\n So about 1968 we decided we really ought to figure out what would do if we couldn't fire the SPS engine. Well, we'd have to use the LM as a lifeboat. So we ran a firing profile of how would we get around the Moon and get home and make the mid-course correction with the lunar module engine. If you watched the movie\\n\\n Apollo 13\\n\\n , [Eugene F.] Gene Kranz calls the Grumman [Aircraft Engineering Corporation] engine representative in, and the Grumman engine representative says, \"We've never done this before.\" That's not true. We did it about 1968.\\n\\n So we had proved that would work, not necessarily that the astronauts—and they did fire it manually—not that they could do it manually, but that the engine system would work. So that Apollo 13 catastrophe which turned out to be one of the high points of NASA, getting them home safely, everybody was working awful hard to make that happen. Some of the people you ought to talk to that I can tell you who were actively involved in Houston in Apollo 13, you really ought to interview, if you haven't. But we had done that engine firing profile out here about two years before that event occurred. I had no idea that it would ever be a high point in my career, but it turned out to be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it's interesting that you did that in 1968, because at the end of the year Apollo 8 went to the Moon with just the command module, just the service propulsion system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. If they'd had a problem, they wouldn't have got back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At the time did you think about that in conjunction with this test that you had completed, or did it even cross your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, because they didn't have a lunar module with them, so they would not have been able to use it as a lifeboat. It was just the command service module. I do remember thinking during Apollo 8—and Frank Borman lives here in town, by the way—I do remember during Apollo 8 thinking that this is the first time man's ever been outside of the gravitational pull of the Earth, and he does not have a free ride home. Now, they were in a slingshot orbit, so they would have come back toward Earth, but once they went in orbit around the Moon, which they did, they had to be able to fire the SPS engine to get out. I do remember thinking that if it doesn't fire, they're lost in lunar orbit.\\n\\n I do remember that night when they fired that engine behind the Moon and we couldn't talk to them, and we didn't know for sure if it was successful until they—we knew what time we'd be able to talk to them if it was and what time we'd be able to talk to them if it wasn't. We could talk to them first if it was successful because of where they were behind the Moon. So they put in a call to them just about the time they should show up around the edge of the Moon and they responded. So it was a good feeling." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure it was, understandably. Where were you typically during the missions? How did you follow them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, out here we followed them on commercial television mostly. Today we have NASA Select out here that we could see, but in those days it was mostly commercial television and radio. We had some audio links with Houston that we could hear, one way. We could just hear, we couldn't respond.\\n\\n What we principally at White Sands did during the missions, early missions, we would load the vehicles and leave them at pad pressure. We wouldn't put pressure on the tank. We'd load the fuel oxidizer in both ascent and descent engines. We would make sure we had a load of LOX and a load of alcohol for altitude simulation system and we would be in standby. And we would just be standing by in case they had a problem with an engine and they wanted us to see if we could simulate the problem and maybe tell them what was wrong with it. White Sands still does that for Shuttle. Now, they don't tank the engines every time, but they used to. In the very early days we did, but now we don't.\\n\\n But when an Orbiter is up and they have a problem with—on the last flight they had a problem with the RCS engine. I would not be surprised if after they got back, White Sands tried to duplicate that failure. I'm not involved anymore, but I suspect they did. That's generally what happens. When they have an engine problem on the Orbiter, once they get back, if they aren't sure what happened to it, White Sands tries to duplicate it. The engines are in standby here for those kinds of problems. During Apollo we were really in standby. We were tanked and loaded then.\\n\\n A little sidelight to Apollo [13]. I moved to Houston in May of 1970, from here. I had been in Houston probably two weeks, when I went to Eckard's Drugstore one afternoon in Nassau Bay, right across from the center, and just as I came down a parking lot there, Jim [James A.] Lovell [Jr.] came zipping around the corner in his Corvette and went into the parking place that I was headed for. And I thought, you know, just a few weeks ago he was in a crippled spacecraft coming back from the Moon and he successfully got home, and I almost hit him in the parking lot of Eckerd's Drug. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess sometimes being on Earth is a little bit more hazardous. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, luckily you both avoided any incident there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We're both still alive, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you tell him to watch out next time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn't say anything to him. I just went on to another parking place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You worked at White Sands here initially for a few years, as you mentioned, on these various projects. How then did the opportunity arise for you to go to the Johnson Space Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I suppose it was an opportunity to serve the nation and the space program in another capacity. At the time I did not look at it as an opportunity at all. You have to understand that the White Sands Test Facility was built for one specific purpose, and that was to do the research and development of the SPS engine, the lunar module ascent/descent engine, and the RCS engines on both the lunar module and the command service module.\\n\\n Once that job was done, White Sands was expendable. We knew all along that NASA's intention was, once Apollo was over, they would no longer need White Sands Test Facility, and that White Sands Test Facility would be offered to the United States Army, because they're over at White Sands Missile Range. If they took it, then the Army would own it. If they didn't, NASA would likely abandon it.\\n\\n So in 1970, [Philip] Whitbeck, who was the director of administration at JSC at the time, came out here and told all of us, got all of us together, all of us civil service people—we had already started sending Grumman and North American [Aviation] home. They were essentially gone by then. There was a few of them left, but not very many. So the population of the site went from about 1,600 down to, the middle of 1970 it was probably down to 600 or so. So when he came out here he told us that, \"NASA's intention is to close it, and close it during the summer of 1970. Don't worry, you're all going to be offered jobs in Houston.\" Most of us weren't very excited about moving to Houston.\\n\\n People come to this part of the country, there's only two kinds of people that come: they love it or they hate it. Those that hate it don't stay long, and those that love it don't ever want to leave. The vast majority of people are those that don't want to leave. At that time, Las Cruces was a town of about 28,000. It was a nice, comfortable place to live, raise your kids. The job out here was hands-on hardware. It was exciting. We'd been in the mainstream of Apollo, and none of us really wanted to leave, but 1970 was no time to be on the street. The aerospace industry was in really bad shape by 1970. It was in its heyday from '65 to '69 or so, and once we landed on the Moon with Apollo 11, it started downhill rapidly.\\n\\n So I had one child at the time, and I looked at the situation and said, \"Man, I don't want to be on the street, because there are no engineering jobs out there. So I'd better take the job in Houston,\" even though I didn't want to go to Houston. I'm from a small town in northeast Texas of 2,800 people, and I never wanted to live in a big town, but the situation was that if you wanted a job, you probably should take it, so I did. I took an appointment in Houston.\\n\\n Let me continue on with White Sands just for a second. What happened at that time is about half of the NASA staff moved to Houston. Probably more than half. There were also a bunch of quality people that we had borrowed from the U.S. Army for the Apollo Program and we gave them back to the Army, back at White Sands. So another twenty-five or so people went back to White Sands Missile Range. The principal, the primary engine contractors and spacecraft contractors, Grumman, Aerojet [General Corporation], Rocketdyne [Division of], North American, all went home. The only thing we had left was the facilities contractor and a labs contractor, LTV [Ling Temco Vought/ Aerospace Corporation] and Zia [phonetic]. The NASA people got down to about twenty-five people.\\n\\n Shortly after I left, White Sands dribbled on down to a total of 200 people, NASA and contractors, what we call today our core base. The core base at White Sands has been identified in 1970 as being 200 people. About twenty-five of them were NASA people and 175 or so were contractors. They consolidated the LTV and the Zia contract and Zia won that competition and Zia became the only contractor at White Sands.\\n\\n Let me take that back. That's not true. When they consolidated those two contracts, Dyna Corp won that contract. So there was Dyna Corp 175 or so people and then 25 or so NASA people. That's still known as the WSTF core base.\\n\\n So I accepted the appointment to Houston and went down there in 1970. The other twenty-five or so were scheduled to come later, and a couple of groups did after I left. I left in the first group, because the better jobs at Houston are probably now than they will be in three months. I took a job in Environmental Test Division in Houston. A couple of groups came after I did. Then by that time, four or five months later, they had decided, well, let's keep that core base of 200 out there for a little while and see what happens to Shuttle. The Shuttle was in the thought process at that time. Let's see what happens to Shuttle. So it never went below the 200. So a few of those NASA people never went to Houston, but most of us did, went to Houston or found another job. A few of them found another job.\\n\\n So I went to Houston in May of 1970 and stayed down there for about three and a half years. I got the opportunity to come back here in 1973 and did. So when I went to Houston working in Space Environmental Test Division, it was working in the largest vacuum chamber in the free world, over in Building 32 in Houston. That's chamber A. There's also chamber B. Then at that time Building 33, next door, had some small, real small, seven-foot chambers and stuff in them. I worked in those two buildings for the next three and a half years.\\n\\n For the first six months I was down there, I was assigned to an operations branch which was kind of Facility Operations Branch, and I stayed in there about six months. Then I transferred up to the Data Systems Branch, I believe it was called, and I worked for Dave [David G.] Billingsley, who was a branch chief. What we did there, we were responsible for data acquisition off of the test articles and the facility systems in chamber A and chamber B, and did a little work over at 33 in the small chambers.\\n\\n I guess probably in late '71, early '72, maybe, I was assigned the task of moving an ACE [Apollo Checkout Equipment] control system from Bethpage, New York, to Houston. Bethpage, New York, is where the Grumman Corporation was and they had a NASA-owned system. There were several ace systems. There was two in Building 32 already, and then there was in California and there was one in Bethpage and probably some others.\\n\\n But we were phasing out of Bethpage, so the government property up there we wanted to move to Houston, so I got the task of moving that system from Bethpage, New York, to Houston. I was representing the government. GE was doing a lot of the work. General Electric [Corporation] was the contractor that was going to move it, but I was doing the interface for the government.\\n\\n ACE stands for Apollo Checkout Equipment, and so we used that. It was a 160G, control data system 160G, which was the first—I believe it was the first solid-state computer. It was the first—yes, I'm sure it was. It was the first solid-state discrete components, solid-state computer. And NASA owned most of them that they ever built, I think.\\n\\n But anyway, I spent probably eighteen months moving that system from Bethpage, New York, installing it in Building 32A, which was an annex to Building 32 on the second floor. After we moved it down here, Apollo released it, so we brought it into Houston to do facility controls with. So we did facility controls and data acquisition through that former ace station that we called Data Acquisition and Control System DACS for the Space Environment Test Division. So I worked on that eighteen months or so, and we got it up and running and it was running pretty well by the spring of 1973.\\n\\n You're going to ask me how I got back to White Sands, probably. There were several factors in that. My daughter was five years old at the time, my oldest daughter. By then I had a second one, second daughter, and she was six months old. I wanted my children to be raised in a smaller town, if possible. I was living in Friendswood. I was raised in an environment in Texas similar to the Houston environment, a small town, but similar to that environment. But I had discovered there was another way of life in the desert, and I just fell in love with the desert when I came out here. The work at White Sands was closer to an engineer's dream, because you had your hands on it, you were really responsible for it, and you were a Jack-of-all-trades, not an expert in anything. In Houston you tend to get pigeon-holed and be an expert in one subject, and I preferred the other life like you had at White Sands.\\n\\n I enjoyed my job at the Space Environment Test Division. Bringing that DACS down from Bethpage was a great experience. Doing the vacuum testing on the Apollo telescope mount for the Skylab was very exciting. When we put Skylab up and the two solar panels did not unfold and we had to figure out a way to go up and put an umbrella over it to keep the sun off, that was done in the high bay. Figured out how to deploy that thing in the high bay of Building 32. That was fun to watch. I wasn't really involved in it, but I was around there when they were doing it. So those were some fun things to do.\\n\\n Chamber A and chamber B are man-rated chambers, so I was involved in several manned tests in those chambers, where you actually have a person in there in a spacesuit. Anytime you've got a manned system, you've got to have a way to get them out of there in a hurry. So the emergency repress system, I was involved in some redesign on that and some testing of that. If you emergency repress, that big chamber is a very, very volatile activity to repressurize it as fast as you can, because you got a guy dying in there. We actually had one—I believe in chamber B we actually had to go in and get a guy while I was there. Those were exciting things to be involved in, but my heart was still at White Sands, and I wanted, if possible, to have my children out of there by the time they started public school.\\n\\n So all that to tell you that in March of 1973, the Chief of the Engineering Office [Gene Lundgren] at White Sands Test Facility called me and said, \"Hey, Grady, would you like to come back to White Sands?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Yes, sir.\"\\n\\n He said, \"When do you think you could be here?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Tomorrow morning.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Okay. I'll see if I can make it happen.\"\\n\\n It took me till September of '73 to get released from JSC, but I did get back out in September of '73. Although I really enjoyed my job in Houston, I was influenced by my children's age and getting them out here. They went to school out here all their public school life.\\n\\n So I came back out here and accepted a position of being responsible for the data reduction system at White Sands for the build-up of the Shuttle hardware when we were doing Shuttle engine testing.\\n\\n In those days we acquired the data with a Beckman 210 system at the test stands and put it on tape, put the data on tape. Then we took the tape, the magnetic tape, down to the 200 Area where a Control Data [Corporation, CDC] system 3200 computer was, and we played those tapes back through a Beckman 210 system and reduced the data using that [CDC] computer. So when I came back to White Sands, I was responsible for the data reduction of the engine and facility data off the 400 and 300 Area where we were testing the Shuttle engines.\\n\\n I also was responsible, when I came back in '73, for the electronic calibration labs and for electrical fabrication, a small shop where we put together prototype electrical control circuits, designed and put them together. One of the biggest challenges I had during that period of time was that computer system, although it will surprise you youngsters, that computer system took up a room nearly as large as this house, and it took 50 tons of air-conditioning to keep it cool. And it had 32,000 words of memory.\\n\\n In about 1974, we acquired a second CDC [Control Data Corporation] 3200 from another government agency in California, and I went out and looked at that computer. They were ready to excess it, so we picked that up off of excess, brought it to White Sands, so then we had a backup computer. That's what we were really after, so we'd have two computers to be able to reduce this data in case we lost one. At the same time we added magnetic disk to the computer, three of them, I believe, and we doubled the memory. I said 30, didn't I? It was 32, 32,000 words of memory. We doubled that to 64,000 words of memory and installed that second computer we got from another agency, put a magnetic disk on it, and did some other things to enhance it, to get ready for the research and development on the Shuttle engines, because we were going to be acquiring high-speed data, more of it.\\n\\n By that time CDC 3200s were obsolete, and so we could never find the money to upgrade to a new computer system, so we started picking up excess hardware from other government agencies to keep this one running. We also put into place an agreement with Point Magu, naval installation at Point Magu, who also had a Beckman 210 so if we lost our Beckman 210 we could take those tapes to Point Magu, have them play them back and demodulate them for us.\\n\\n Then we went to Arden Hills, Minnesota, where Control Data Corporation had a 3200 still working. We cut an agreement with them that if we ever lost these systems catastrophically, we would demodulate the tapes at Point Magu, we'd take them to Arden Hills, Minnesota, and take our software up there and run it on that computer.\\n\\n So that was one of the early things that we did, is to put into place some backup if Houston no longer had any. The agency didn't have any, the only ones left, CDC had one in Point Magu, the Navy had a Beckman 210. So we tested those and we went to Point Magu, made sure that worked, went and took that tape to Arden Hills, Minnesota, to CDC Corporation, and spent one long night up there making sure we could reduce that data. We took a programmer and an analyst up there with me and we spent all night running on their computer and proved it would work.\\n\\n We never had to use the Arden Hills backup. We did use Point Magu. We used it a couple of times because we had little hiccups in our Beckman 210, but we principally used it because they were taking data so fast on the test stand, we couldn't reduce it twenty-four hours a day, so we were getting some of it demodulated at Point Magu and bring it back here and do the rest of the work on it. So those were two of the highlights, I guess, of that period of time.\\n\\n Before I left that job in 1979, we were also beginning to upgrade the cal lab to automated calibration hardware. We made the first step toward automation about 1979, '78, maybe, late '78. The Shuttle engine R&D [research and development] was much like Apollo, but it was not quite as hectic as Apollo, because we didn't have the national mandate we did on Apollo of getting a man on the Moon and safely returned by the end of the decade. So it was little less demanding, maybe, than Apollo, but it was still a fun program.\\n\\n While I was doing these, I did several other things, such as I installed some large junction boxes for the data systems up in [test stand] 301. So that was just kind of a side job that I did getting ready for the Shuttle engine testing up there.\\n\\n So I was relatively happy doing that. I spent six years doing that, from '73 to '79, and in January of '79 I became the Chief of Electrical Data Systems Branch at White Sands. That was my first official supervisor job, although I'd been project engineer and systems engineer on various tasks prior, which is kind of like a supervisor, except you don't have to sign a time card and you don't have to do disciplinary things.\\n\\n I first became a supervisor in January of '79, and once I became supervisor of that Electrical and Data Systems Branch, I was responsible for all the data acquisition in all of the 300 Area and all of the 400 Area, all the calibration, not just electrical, mechanical calibration as well, electrical fabrication, the data reduction facility, all the power distribution systems, all the facility control systems, all the engine control systems. So I spent only two years doing that. I spent about two years, roughly two years, doing that.\\n\\n Then was selected for Chief of the Technical Support Office, which was essentially the Chief of Engineering at White Sands. At that time I was responsible for everything I just mentioned, plus all the mechanical systems, altitude simulation system, roads, grounds, utilities, and all of the engineering design work on the test stands and on the facility itself. Essentially I was responsible on a much smaller scale, but essentially responsible for everything that plant engineering is responsible for in Houston and Facility Design Division is responsible for, and most of what engineering directorate was responsible for in Houston, but on a much smaller scale. I did that until I went to Houston in 1984.\\n\\n At that time, some of the highlights of that was building up Northrup Strip, which is now called White Sands Space Harbor. When we first started going over there to train astronauts, there was nothing over there but two graded runways. I don't remember how long they were, but they were very short. We went over there and put—I remember a big job of putting electrical distribution system into the tower area. We ran on generators for a long time, and we finally put electrical power into the tower area. We put a communications, portable building over there with a communications rack in it, so we could talk to the airplanes and we could interface with the ground radio systems, intercom systems and whatnot.\\n\\n We put a medical trailer over there so that in case of an emergency we'd have some medical attention, because when the astronauts were training over there with the STAs [Shuttle Training Aircraft] and T-38s, we had to have paramedics over there in case of an accident. They came from Holloman [Air Force Base, New Mexico]. We contracted with the Air Force to provide them from Holloman.\\n\\n Then we continued to expand the runways until we had two Shuttle-certified runways, which we load-tested them to certify them for Shuttle, make sure they could take the impact of the nose gears. The nose gears were the smallest footprint and the highest density load is on the Shuttle on the ground. So we certified them to be able to take the nose gear loads, and they were 35,000 feet long, which is seven miles. There's two of them in an X over there, two runways 35,000 feet long, 300 feet wide, and they still exist today. Since that time they have added a 15,000-foot runway off to one side, which can reconfigure to simulate various TAL landing sites. So a transatlantic abort landing sites, they'll configure it to look like Dakar, Senegal, or Rota, Spain, or whatever they want it to look like, so the astronauts can practice landing on a runway that's got the same markings on it as they'd see if they had to go into TAL abort. But this was a big effort over a large number of years. We started that actually when I was Chief of the Electrical Branch, but we got it finished while I was Chief of Tech Support Office.\\n\\n Then in 1982, March of 1982, I believe that's something you can talk to about with Rob [R. Tillett], but I think it was on March 17th, Rob and I and one other guy went out early, early one morning and listened to a telecon between General Abramson, who was the AA [Associate Administrator] for Office of Space Flight, and his minions, and Dr. [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] and the JSC people and some people at the Cape, because they were ready to launch STS-3. A Shuttle had never landed on concrete. They'd always landed at Edwards [Air Force Base, Edwards, California] on a lakebed, [STS] 1 and 2 had.\\n\\n They wanted to land on a lakebed, because the first three flights were research flights and they didn't want to land on concrete. This is a gypsum lakebed out here. It's hardpacked gypsum like the sheetrock's made out of, except it's in granular form, but when you compact it, it's almost as hard as concrete. So the lakebed at Edwards was wet. They had standing water on it, so they couldn't land out there. So the decision had to be made, \"We go ahead and launch and land at White Sands or we wait until the lakebed's dry and land at Edwards.\" Most people did not want to wait. They wanted to get on with the flight program, the development program, and they did not want to go to the Cape because they had not at that time landed on concrete. They'd never tested the brakes. They just let it roll to a stop. So they did not feel comfortable doing that.\\n\\n So the decision was made that morning to land at White Sands, launch and land at White Sands. I remember Rob Tillett looking at me when Kraft recommended to go ahead and launch and Abramson agreed, somewhat reluctantly he agreed. Dr. Kraft asked Tillett, who was the manager at the time, said, \"Are you ready, Rob?\"\\n\\n And Rob looked at me and I said, \"Well, yes, we've got a few days. We'll be ready.\"\\n\\n So Rob responded, \"Yes, we're ready, Dr. Kraft.\"\\n\\n And He said, \"Okay, we're going to launch.\"\\n\\n As soon as that telecon was over, Mr. Tillett told me, he said, \"You go to Holloman and get\"—we had ready looked at this equipment. There are some air bases in boxes at Holloman, landing mat and tent hangars and latrines and kitchens and barracks, just anything you need. They can deploy those air bases anywhere in the world and in a few days they can have an operational air base.\\n\\n So we had gone over and looked at that stuff. There's generators and there's water bladders and fuel bladders and everything. We had made arrangements with Holloman that if we ever had to take an Orbiter, we needed some help, because all we had, as I said, is a tower and a little probably 20-by-20 foot communications building, portable, and a trailer, medical trailer. That's all we had out there. It's about 68 miles from where we sit, and there was nothing between here and there in those days. There was nothing there.\\n\\n So I went to Holloman and met with Colonel Chuck [Charles A.] Horner, who was a brigadier general-elect, but didn't have the star yet, but he acted like he did. Anyway, I went over to General Horner and I had to convince him to let me borrow those air bases, and then we had to get approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to use them because they're strategic equipment.\\n\\n So I went over there and met with General-elect Colonel Horner and he gave me a hard time, but he eventually said okay. Then he and NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC] went to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and got permission to use one of them, or part of one of them. We didn't need all, but part of it. So I detailed what I thought we needed and I told him we'd get back to him later with what else we might need, and left Holloman and came back this way.\\n\\n At the same time, Mr. Tillett was at White Sands Missile Range talking to the general of the Army over there, because we needed a lot of Army help, too. He told me when I got back from Holloman to call Houston and get some money. I said, \"Okay.\"\\n\\n Just an aside about Colonel Horner. When I last saw him in 1982, he was a colonel general-elect at Holloman Air Force Base, tactical wing commander. The next time I heard of General Horner, he was a three-star general running the air operations in the [Persian] Gulf War. And the next time I heard from him I was in his office at Peterson Air Force Base where he was the Chief of Space Command, four-star general by then. Now he's retired like me. Anyway, Horner went up fast from that point.\\n\\n Anyway, when I got back from Holloman, probably noonish or so that day, I called Houston and called [Henry E.] Pete Clements, who was the associate director of the center. When he answered the phone, when he got on the phone, he said, \"Well, I've been expecting you guys to call me. What can I do for you, Dr. McCright?\" He like to call us—he'd call you that when he was joking.\\n\\n I said, \"Pete, we need some money.\"\\n\\n He said, \"How much?\"\\n\\n I said, \"God only knows how much. I do not know.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do, I'll have the comptroller put 3 million dollars in your till and I'll check it every few days until this is over and I'll keep the balance at three million.\" He says, \"You don't worry about it. You just go do what you got to do and I'll keep the money flowing.\"\\n\\n To this day I can't tell you how much millions of dollars we spent in the next few days, and I doubt if anybody else can. I'm sure they have an official number, but I doubt if it's right, because in the next few days, two dedicated trains, large trains, came from Dryden [Flight Research Center, Edwards, California] to Holloman Air Force Base, where we offloaded trucks and blowers and air-conditioning units and materials and just many, many, many—whatever you'd need to recover an Orbiter all came from Dryden. And about 2,000 people came from the Cape and Dryden.\\n\\n So in just a few days, here I was in the middle of the desert and we had something like 1,200 or so people on that piece of gypsum lakebed out there. The Air Force was putting up—we had them put up some hangars and we had them put up some barracks buildings we used as offices, and we had them put up a lot of latrines scattered around the place.\\n\\n The media was coming in here by the droves. They had earth stations they were bringing in so they could record the landing and get it out. We were building an area for PAO [Public Affairs Office] so that we could have visitors out there, VIP visitors, to watch the landing. And it was hectic.\\n\\n We had about two weeks before the launch, and in that two weeks we built a city out of tents and trailers and trucks. It was an amazing time from the standpoint of the public support we had. These things really happened. We had truck drivers show up at our gate at White Sands Test Facility and say, \"I've got a truck and I'll go wherever you want me to and get whatever you want. I'll haul whatever you need.\"\\n\\n Now, you say, sure they would for money, but they were just volunteering hoping that we'd get around to paying them, that we could keep it all straight. I don't know that anybody ever said \"for so much money.\" They just said, \"We'll do it.\"\\n\\n We were working around the clock for these two weeks. I had some people that stayed out there for days on end. I left here every morning about 4:30 or 5:00 and went out there and got home at 10:00 at night, most nights. But it was an exciting time.\\n\\n I got called here one night at my house, not this house, but another house I had, from an engineer out there and he said, \"One of our trucks is broken.\" It was a 1965 International or something like that, I don't remember, but it was a pretty old truck. He said, \"We need a fuel pump and we don't have one.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, I don't know what I'm going to do about this, but I'll see if I can find one.\"\\n\\n I called the Las Cruces Police Department and told them who I was and that I was involved in the Northrup Strip, we called it in those days, and I worked for NASA and I needed an International fuel pump. I said, \"I know you can't tell me who you've got to call this list of to who you call an emergency with an International dealer. Would you call them? I need it now.\"\\n\\n They said, \"Well, no, we can't tell you who it is, but we'll call them and see if they'll do anything for you.\"\\n\\n They called, called me back and said, \"He'll meet you down there.\"\\n\\n So in the middle of the night, we went down and opened up the International Harvester place and got a fuel pump for that truck and got it out there to get it fixed. Those were the kinds of things that were happening around here. We had to get a High Ranger, which is a man-lift out of Minnesota. It's the only one we could find that was tall enough to reach the tail of the Orbiter when it was stacked on the 747. So it was an exciting time. I mean, it really was. It was as close as I've ever come to the logistics that would be necessary to fight a war in the middle of nowhere, and it was demanding, not just for me, more so for the people that worked for me, probably, because they were out there around the clock.\\n\\n On the day of landing, the scheduled day of landing, this was in March, you're at my house in March and you can see how the wind's blowing. This is a calm day. It blows badly here in March and April, and we really had very nice weather for those two weeks. It had been unusually good, but on the day of landing, they were going to land about mid-morning, and John [W.] Young was in the STA making approaches to Northrup when the wind started getting up. I mean, it got up. It got so bad, you could not see from here to that fence. John said, \"We're not going to be able to land today.\" So we postponed it a day.\\n\\n By the time that wind blew that afternoon, all afternoon, it blew some of our tents down. We had drifts blow sand in the PAO area and some areas up against some buildings and stuff, it was probably eighteen inches deep. The runway got eroded, wind erosion. So we had people, Army people, NASA people, even one of my engineers was driving a road grader most of the night that night. We had to grade it, compact it and get ready for the landing the next morning. The wind didn't quit blowing until probably dark that night, I don't remember, but very late. Usually around dark it lays down.\\n\\n We were ready the next day. We landed. Some of the guys were shoveling drift sand out of the PAO areas as the buses bringing the visitors that were coming in for a landing. So I guess the highlight of my tenure as the Chief of the Technical Support Office was recovery of STS-3. It just put the area on the map. It put Las Cruces on the map, and that's the only Orbiter that's never landed either at Edwards or KSC. It was\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n that landed here. It took us about ten days to get it out of here, de-service it. We had a de-service pad we'd already built, because in case it ever came in, we had to pour yards and yards, hundreds of yards of concrete for that, and you couldn't do that after it landed. You had to do it before that. So we had already built a de-service pad.\\n\\n The Orbiter made a great landing the next day, and we towed it that afternoon to the de-service pad. The wind got up again after it landed, and we didn't get the engine plugs in fast enough. Gypsum can get anywhere. I had in that communications building, I mentioned that was probably a 20-by-20 building, in the middle of that building I had a communications rack there that we had double-wrapped in plastic. We weren't using it, so while we were not using it, we had it double-wrapped in plastic. When we got ready for the STS-3 they went over and unwrapped it, I happened to be there when they unwrapped it, and there was gypsum in it. It just gets everywhere.\\n\\n So we could have never kept it out of the Orbiter if the wind blew. We're a lot smarter now and they've since built a de-service pad on the west side of the lakebed, so that the wind blows away from it, not to it. So if you had to de-service another one, you could do it without that problem, but we weren't that smart in 1982. But it was a great effort by lots of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly took a lot to pull all that together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One other thing I want to mention to you is, the 747 had never landed on that lakebed. Of course, neither had an Orbiter. But a few days after it landed, A.J. Roy flew the 747 up to El Paso, and he came up in a car. He said, \"I want to go out on that lakebed, on the runway. Before we bring the 747 up here, I want to drive it.\" I said, \"Okay.\" So I got permission to go out on the runway in a car, and I took A.J. and his co-pilot. I don't remember his co-pilot's name. But A.J. was sitting in the front seat with me and we started down the runway and he said, \"I want you to go fast. I want you to get up 90 miles an hour or so to see how rough this is.\"\\n\\n So in a government car I did, I got up around 85 or 90 miles an hour. A.J. said, \"Oh, this will be okay. We can get in on this.\"\\n\\n While we were doing that, his co-pilot said, \"Hey, A.J., our flights rules say if we take off with the Orbiter and have an engine failure, lose one of the four engines on the 747, at takeoff after they rotate and lose an engine, we have to go around.\" They go on up around and come back and land immediately. He said, \"What are we going to do here? They've got seven miles of runway.\"\\n\\n A.J. said, \"If we lose an engine on takeoff here, we're just going to set it back down, because we've got seven miles of runway. We're not going around.\"\\n\\n So the morning they took off, I went out there and stood about—I don't remember where I stood, probably less than 5,000 feet from where they started rolling, and they were airborne by the time they got to me. So they still had [30,000] foot of runway.\\n\\n So it really was a great time. It really was. It's one of those experiences that I wouldn't take anything for and I don't want to do it again. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of those unique experiences everybody should have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a unique experience. I might mention, one of the questions you had asked me earlier is about what we did about the cost reductions that the agency's been involved in for close to twenty years now. One of the things I might mention to you that White Sands did, is prior to the recovery of STS-3, about 1981, it was right after I became chief of the office, we contracted with the U.S. Army, White Sands Missile Range Army, to build the fluid systems for them at the high-energy laser test facility, which is about 50 miles east of where we sit right now. So we spent about a year and a half building that, year and a half, maybe two years, building that fluid system for them. They contracted for the design of it. We were not satisfied with the design and went in to their design contractor and made them do a much more detailed design of it.\\n\\n This was a real hazardous fluid system, because fluorine was one of the constituents that we had to handle over there. Fluorine is bad, bad news. The reason the Army contracted with NASA to do it is because we do a lot of stainless steel work out here. We've got toxic propellants out here N2O4 and hydrazine, aerozine 50 and that type of propellants. So we had experience doing that. White Sands Missile Range did not. So they contracted with us to do that. So my office was responsible for reviewing the design and constructing and proof-testing and so forth that facility. So we spent fourteen and a half million dollars of the Army money in about two years, less than two years, to construct and perfect and turn over to them that fluid system.\\n\\n What that bought for us is we were able to hang onto those skills that we needed but had no job for right now. So we hung onto probably 200 people that we would have had to lay off about 1980 because the testing for Shuttle by then was on the downturn, because we're getting ready to launch in '81. So it bought us a year and a half or probably two years of time to keep those critical skills.\\n\\n What we did with the Army is they had to pay actual costs plus a burden. That burden helped us maintain the facility over here, to keep the machine shop up to support that effort and all those kinds of things. We had started doing that at White Sands back in the mid seventies, probably '76 or so. We had started doing a little work for a lot of different agencies and charging them actuals plus a burden. The burden was for those many facility support items, welding rods, toilet paper, chem wipes, and alcohol and stuff that you could not charge them actuals for, because you bought it in bulk and you used a pint for them and you used a gallon for NASA.\\n\\n So what we did is made an estimate as to what facility support services and photographic services and some other things that you couldn't charge. At that time, at least, you could not charge the actuals. You still can't. I mean, how do you charge for part of a bottle of WD-40 to different projects? So we charged them a burden. We got JSC to agree to that, that we could do that. And today that's about 50 percent of White Sands' business, so it's grown and grown and grown over the years and it's allowed White Sands to stay competitive with other agencies. It's allowed us to keep critical skills that NASA needs part time and use them, divert them to other agency jobs. Now we're even doing some private industry jobs. We are allowed to do that if there is no private industry anywhere in the United States that can do that.\\n\\n Some of the unique things we can do because of 94 square miles of property that we have out here, large deployment areas. We've got a buffer zone so people can't live very close to us. Where Houston is encroached on real badly, we're not out here. So that allows us to do many, many things that Houston couldn't do, that Marshall couldn't do, that other facilities couldn't do. So they allow us to do commercial work if we're not competing with private industry. In many things we're not, because private industry doesn't do those things.\\n\\n So White Sands' forte is hazardous experimental work, and virtually everything we've done for thirty-plus years has been hazardous work and remotely controlled work and hazardous toxic propellants and high explosives. We can actually detonate high explosives out there and we have. We did some tests just a year before I retired for Japan, for the government of Japan.\\n\\n We are exploding hydrogen and oxygen tanks, which make a big boom, and we can do that because we've got more buffer zone around that facility than they do their launch facility. That's the reason they wanted to see, how big's the bang going to be if we lose a vehicle on the launch pad? We proved they're going to be in trouble if they did. There would be some private property that would probably be damaged, that they were that close.\\n\\n White Sands got into that reimbursable business long before we did the HELSTF [High Energy Laser Test Facility] job, but that's probably the biggest single job we've ever done is that fourteen and a half million dollars.\\n\\n We consider a reimbursable job anything that is not in JSC's White Sands' budget. Not the JSC budget, but the budget we get from JSC. So if we took a job for Marshall—and we do some work for Marshall—if we take a job for Marshall that's not in JSC's White Sands' test facility budget, it's reimbursable work to us, because it wasn't budgeted for us. It's offline budgeting. I don't know exactly today what they're doing, but when I left, it was the reimbursable work, offline non-JSC budgeted items was probably 50 percent.\\n\\n Now, you need to understand when I said JSC White Sands' budget, if we do something at White Sands for Leonard [S.] Nicholson that was not budgeted for White Sands, Leonard has to give us the money, because it wasn't in our budget, it's in his budget. So if he gives us that, that's reimbursable, because it wasn't in our forecasted budget." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly seems like while the initial goals for the test facility have remained the same, it has evolved over time to many different areas that hadn't been anticipated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. One area I didn't mention that I really should. The basic goals for White Sands, as far as Johnson Space Center is concerned, are much the same as they were originally: engine testing, engine development, off-nominal testing. However, in 1967, on January 28, 1967, the Apollo 1 fire. Once the dust settled after that fire, the agency realized that we were putting materials into the inhabited area, the cockpit area, that had not been tested in an oxygen environment. We were putting payloads on the vehicles that had not been tested in a vacuum, and many, many materials and flammability-related issues.\\n\\n White Sands immediately got in that business in about '67, in mid '67 or so. We started testing materials. That has grown into a huge business, a huge part of the business. It's accepted that JSC funds a lot of it, but we also get funded by Marshall and many others. We do it for a lot of agencies now, not just NASA. We do it a lot for the Navy submarine people, because it's very much like a spacecraft; you can't get out of it just real quick if you have a fire. So we do a lot of naval testing.\\n\\n That evolved because of that fire in 1967 and it has grown to probably—it's probably, at certain times in White Sands' history it's been much larger than the propulsion testing. During the buildup of Shuttle, it probably wasn't near as big as Shuttle testing. Today it's probably larger than propulsion testing, because we're just kind of in a maintenance mode out there.\\n\\n Another big, big job that came along just before I came back here as manager, and we really, really went after that business while I was the manager, was the engine repair business. So all of the RCS engines, all of the orbital maneuvering engines that are repaired for the fleet are done at White Sands now. When I came back, we'd done a few RCS engines. We were recovering a lot of engines, too, that the vendor would say, \"Scrap engine. We need to build you a new one.\" We're recovering a lot of those engines and putting them back in the fleet. So that has grown to be a big business now, and that's, I'm sure, larger than—well, it's probably as large as the propulsion testing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly those are some pretty vital areas there for the agency and long term and maintaining. Like materials testing, I'm sure is pretty vital with the Space Station work going on there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And as long as Space Station flies, it will be an ongoing business, because new materials show up on the Space Station, testing for outgassing, testing for flammability, testing for point of ignition in various environments and that sort of thing.\\n\\n I chronologically kind of out of sequence, because I jumped from when I came back here in 1973 through my tenure in '84 and jumped to when I was a manager in '94 about White Sands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do have some things to talk about at Houston, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In 1984, [Kenneth B.] Ken Gilbreath, who was the Director of Center Operations, called me and said, \"I've got a division down here that I need to make some changes in.\" He said, \"I would like for you to consider coming back to Houston and taking a division.\" Mr. Gilbreath was my first supervisor when I came to NASA. He was Chief of the Electrical Branch when I came here in 1966. He, about two years later, was the manager of a site. Then in '74, I believe, he transferred to Houston as Deputy Director of Center Operations. By 1984 he was the Director of Center Operations.\\n\\n So when he called me in the fall of '83, actually, in the fall of '83, I was very, very reluctant to go back to Houston, but by then my children were not out on their own, but they were out of public school. So I considered it for a few days, and thought, \"Well, I'm probably as high as I will ever go at White Sands,\" because the equivalent of a division chief in Houston, and there's only one job higher than that and that's the manager. So the likelihood of JSC ever appointing me to manager of White Sands is probably pretty remote.\\n\\n So I thought about it for a month or so, and talked to Mr. Gilbreath several times in the interim, talked to him, and finally I called him and said, \"Okay, I'll take the job. If you've really got a division that you think I can help, that whatever I bring to the table will be of benefit to that division, I'll take the job.\"\\n\\n So in February 1984, I moved to Houston and became the Chief of Plant Engineering [Division]. Plant engineering was responsible for all of the construction monitoring, being any modifications made to the facilities at JSC, whether it be new construction or modifying facilities, all of it, the construction activity was monitored and the oversight was from Plant Engineering Division, responsible for roads and grounds, janitorial services, plant operations, meaning the central plant, the chillers and the boilers, the emergency backup power, and chillers for the Mission Control Center, electrical power distribution, all the utilities.\\n\\n I equivalently, when I went from White Sands to Chief of Plant of Engineering Division, had a budget larger than White Sands' budget and had about twice as many contractor and NASA employees as the whole of White Sands did at the time. So although I was equivalent of division chief here, it's a much smaller in comparison to that division chief job in Houston.\\n\\n So I went to Houston in the Plant Engineering Division. I guess I was successful in doing what they wanted me to do with that division, because in 1986 they asked me to apply for a NASA fellowship program. And I resisted. They said, \"No, you really need to do this.\"\\n\\n I said, \"I don't want to do this. I don't want to be gone for three months,\" and this and that.\\n\\n They said, \"No, you really need to.\"\\n\\n So they kind of put a little pressure on me. So the agency only chose one person for this fellowship from the agency. I went home and told my wife, I said, \"Hey, they're putting pressure on me to apply for this fellowship and I don't want to, but the chances of me being selected are between slim and none, so I'm going to satisfy them, I'm going to go ahead and apply for this program.\"\\n\\n She said, \"Yes, you're going to get selected.\"\\n\\n I said, \"No, I'm not.\" I said, \"I won't even get out of JSC. I won't be the candidate for JSC because there will be ten or fifteen candidates and then they'll chose one.\"\\n\\n So when the selection process at JSC decided who they were going to send forward to Headquarters, sure enough, I was the name. So I told my wife at that time, I said, \"Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. All the centers are going to send a name in. They're only going to pick one and it's not going to be me.\"\\n\\n And she again said, \"Yes, it's going to be you.\"\\n\\n \"Nah, don't worry about it.\"\\n\\n Well, it was, and so I wound up at Harvard [University] for three months, and I went there in February of '86 and came back to Houston on the 5th of May '86. I truly was concerned that—I was a division chief at the time, and I was truly concerned that by the time I got back, after the division had run well for three months, they would forget about me and it'd be the end of my career. I really was concerned about that.\\n\\n Harvard was another one of those experiences, after I'd been out of school twenty-five years or so, went off to Harvard, went to school five and a half days a week, and long, long hours trying to read all the case studies and stuff and get ready for the next day, it was a real, real physical and emotional burden to go there and be away from home and be away from the job and all for three months. But anyway, I survived Harvard and came back to Houston on the 5th of May, I believe, of 1986. I think it was on the 6th of June, Mr. Gilbreath called me over to his office.\\n\\n While I was gone to Harvard, the Deputy Director of Center Operations retired. He called me up at Harvard. His name was [William A.] Bill Stransky. Great guy. Bill called me at Harvard and said, \"Hey, I'm going to retire.\"\\n\\n I said, \"You're going to what?\"\\n\\n He said, \"I'm going to retire.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Oh, man, Bill, I hate to see you do that.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, don't worry about it. They won't fill this position until you get back.\"\\n\\n And I thought, \"You don't think so?\"\\n\\n I said, \"No, I don't think so.\"\\n\\n He said, \"It'll take them a long time to fill it. Don't worry about it.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, I sure hate to see you go anyway.\"\\n\\n Anyway, he left and he retired. I got back on the 5th of May, the thing was on the 6th of June, Mr. Gilbreath called me over to his office and said, \"I want you to be my new deputy.\"\\n\\n So I said, \"Well, I haven't really finished all the things you wanted me to do in plant engineering.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Yes, I know, but we'll just leave you acting over there.\"\\n\\n So I became the Deputy Director of Center Operations and was Acting Plant Engineering Division Chief for about six months. After six months we finally selected a new division chief and I then became the deputy director. Of course, at that time, Center Operations had seven divisions: Plant Engineering Division, Facility Design Division, Tech Services Division, Management Services, Logistics, and Security. Is that six or seven? There was seven of them total. Photo and TV was the seventh one. So we had a large organization there, seven divisions, including the history office at that time.\\n\\n So I was Mr. Gilbreath's deputy for seven years, and then he retired in April of '93. He announced his retirement on a Wednesday and he was going to retire on Friday. I knew it before that, but the center didn't. He announced it on a Wednesday and retired on a Friday, and Thursday about one o'clock the director called me up to his office and said, \"Come Friday when Mr. Gilbreath leaves, you're the Director of Center Operations.\" So I knew before he left that I was going to be the Director of Center Operations.\\n\\n The seven years that I was deputy director were certainly the most management challenge seven years that I had. The center budget was getting reduced, we were struggling every year about how can we maintain the services that the center expects from us with less budget. There were heated, heated budget arguments between all of us. I mean, everybody was going through the same kind of thing, and the institution was just getting whittled down every year.\\n\\n We reorganized a few times. We reorganized the Facility Design Division and I acted as division chief over there twice for about six months during that seven years. We took all the economies that we could find. One of the things we did is when the budget got so bad that we could not maintain the services that the center had expected of us, we went to those using organizations, engineering directorate, mission operations, those two in particular, and ISD [Information Services Division] as a smaller one, but we just told them, \"Look. We can't do it anymore. If you want some of these services, you're going to have to pay for them, because we do not have the money to buy the material and just issue it to you.\"\\n\\n ISD had to do a similar thing when PCs became a big thing and we were buying so many every year, they had to do the same thing. COD [Center Operations Directorate] had to start paying for theirs and other people had to pay for theirs, because ISD's budget just wouldn't support it. In the early days with NASA, you just called on those services from the provider and the provider fought for his own budget and provided those things to you, but in the mid to late eighties and early nineties, even, it got so bad you couldn't do that.\\n\\n So that was one of the ways we fought the budget problems in COD. COD was in a little bit of a unique situation in that if somebody wanted services from us, like Technical Services Division, which was the manufacturing arm of COD at the time, and I now work for engineering directorate, if engineering wanted us to build them a widget, it might cost $100,000 to build it. We didn't have in our budget the $100,000, and it was a piece of flight test hardware, so it engineering or MOD [Mission Operations Directorate] or somebody's going to have to pay for it, because we don't have the budget to do it. That's the way we survived in COD. A tough way to live. Tough way to live, you're the bad guy on the block most of the time. Those directors understood it, because they were under budget crunches, too. They didn't like it, but they understood it. So it was a miserable time from a budget standpoint.\\n\\n That's still going on. When I retired two years ago, it was still going on. I'm sure it is today. There has been some short periods of time where we get a little relief from the budget, but it was pretty tough. There was a time when I was deputy director of COD when we had over 100 million dollars' worth of budget, and one year had a 90-million-dollar construction budget. So I mean, we had a lot of money when I first became [Deputy] Director of Center Operations, but it went downhill from there on. And the whole agency's gone through that process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If we could take a quick break here, and we need to change out our tape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about some of the difficulties in dealing with the budget challenges and keeping things running, and that the other people at the center would understand, they wouldn't necessarily like it, but they'd understand. Were there ever times where it just, I mean, as it kept becoming more and more of a problem, or that you would just question whether it was possible to keep it all going?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were many, many times I questioned whether it was possible to keep it going or not. One of the things that we never did, we all recognized we couldn't sacrifice was mission support. Whatever you have to do for mission support, you've got to do. But things like PAO handed out lithographs like they were going out of style. A school kid would write in and say, \"Can I have a picture of Shuttle?\" and they'd send them fifteen. I do not deny that that was good for the space program. I don't deny it was good for kids, and one of the obligations we have is to keep this thing going in future generations, not just NASA, but the scientific technological advances in many aspects of life.\\n\\n I think it was a good thing to do, but it got to the point where we just could no longer afford it. I was having to provide the lithographs, get them made, and they're not very expensive apiece, but we started having to cut down on them. We finally cut a deal with PAO, said, \"Look, if they ask for a picture of the Orbiter, send them one, and maybe send them a picture of a crew, but don't send them a whole selection of things,\" because we just could no longer afford it.\\n\\n So those are the kind of things you hate to do, but you have to. Taxis. You probably don't even remember when we had taxis running all over the center, but we had probably a staff of about twelve to, depending on the time frame, twelve to twenty drivers of taxis. You could call, anybody could call logistics, or transportation, and say I need a taxi at Building 1 to go to Building 45. And they would pick you up at the front door of Building 1 and take you to 45. You and two or three other people, maybe, but they would, you know, take them on.\\n\\n Then we got to the point where the first economy move we made is we said, \"We're no longer taking you in the mall area. If it's anywhere in the mall area, you walk. If you need to go out to the 400 Area or out to the 200 Area, we'll take you, but we're not taking you in the central mall area.\" That was not met with great popularity. But we just no longer could afford it, so we had to. We cut the number of drivers down to five or six, maybe eight, I don't remember exactly. Because we'd run taxis up to Ellington [Air Force Base, Houston, Texas] and places like that.\\n\\n Then for a while we were picking VIPs up at the airport if they requested a taxi in the middle of the night, and we'd get a government taxi up there and pick them up and bring them back. Finally, I said, \"No, no more of that. If you want to do that, if you want a taxi, you ride a taxi and let your travel pay for it. We're not going to send a government taxi.\"\\n\\n Then we got to the point where—and I was a party to this—we're going to have to go to buses. We're going to have to run some bus routes. If people want to ride them, it will give people on the mall an opportunity to ride a bus, which they didn't have at that point in time. We'll run over to the contractor facilities and we'll do all this. It turned out we could lay off about three drivers and then we could run the buses.\\n\\n Now the buses were never totally, and aren't today, I'm sure, totally satisfactory to everybody, but it was one of those economy measures that we had to do. It is not impossible for you to get from Building 1 to the Rockwell [Corporation] buildings over on Gemini. It's not pleasant, but you can do it. Used to we ran taxis, and we just could not afford to do that any longer. So now we run buses, whether we need them or not.\\n\\n If you have to go over to the Rockwell building and the government doesn't provide a way to do it, and you can't get a government car, then you can theoretically charge mileage on your car. Not if there's a bus running, because you could have ridden a bus. So that's the reason we had to do those things and nobody liked it. I didn't either, but it was a survival technique. So there's just thousands of those examples of things we did.\\n\\n You asked if I ever thought it was impossible to keep it together. I once made a budget presentation to the deputy director of the center and the associate director of the center, and it's the worst one I ever had to make. I went in and made a budget presentation. I said, \"These are the services COD is no longer going to provide.\" And they were some severe cuts. The response I got from those two gentlemen—and they're both very good friends of mine, I like them very much—they were caught with, \"What are we going to do?\" too, and they said, \"But we can't do that. The center cannot survive if you make those cuts.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Okay.\" I put another chart up, and I said, \"All right, how about these?\" I had developed these slides, and I went in there, \"All right, how about these cuts?\"\\n\\n They said, \"No, those are just unacceptable cuts.\"\\n\\n I put another slide up and I said, \"All right, how about these?\"\\n\\n They said, \"No, they're not acceptable reductions in the services that you provide us.\"\\n\\n \"Okay, what do you want me to do? You tell me what you want to do,\" and I got no response. It was that bad. They didn't know what to do either.\\n\\n So that's when we increased the demands on other organizations, that if they wanted services from us they're going to have to pay for them. You cannot get blood out of a turnip. I mean, there are many economies you can make, there really are. I believe that in good faith we made most of those between '88 and '91 or '92. I think we made many of those. I'm sure they've made some since. But I know that after I left JSC, they took a lot of reductions in grounds maintenance. The reason that did not occur on my watch was the powers-to-be at the center were not willing to do it at that time. It was proposed, but they weren't willing to do it. The leadership at the center changed and now they are. So be it.\\n\\n But that's the kind of problems we went through. As the budget got worse and worse, I probably was spending 50 percent of my time on budget matters at its peak, maybe. Before I left, I think it had tapered off to some extent. I truly believe nobody holds that against me personally. They all knew. It was just a fact of life. They were all facing that.\\n\\n But on the upside, it was probably the biggest management challenge I ever had, but it was some of the most fun I had, too. I really had a good time as Deputy Director of Center Operations. Most of it was a lot of fun, even the heated budget arguments. I mean, some of those budget arguments I would not even want to relate to you is how bad they got, the emotional confrontations that happened between deputy directors and directors, and deputy directors and me and the comptroller. It was just a bad time. But I don't think any of those people feel badly about it. They knew why it was happening. They weren't blind to that.\\n\\n But on the upside, some of the highlights I had, let's see, I was still plant engineer and division chief when we had the President [Ronald] Reagan memorial service for the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident. Now, that was another challenge because I was the division chief at the time, in charge of all the facilities and most of the preparations and stuff for the President coming.\\n\\n The accident occurred on a Tuesday, and on Wednesday afternoon I got a call to be in the director's conference room at ten o'clock that night, on Wednesday night, because Reagan was going to come down. We knew during the day Wednesday that that was going to happen. So we had started thinking about what, gee, what are we going to do? How are we going to pull this off? Thinking about where would we do it. We decided to do it in front of Building 16 on the mall and outdoors.\\n\\n So I went to this meeting at ten o'clock on Wednesday night in the director's conference room, and the White House staff was there and the Secret Service was there, and two or three of my people and PAO people and the associate director, I think, was there. So we started talking about what we thought of how we might do this and so, of course, the Secret Service had many, many concerns. White House staff had concerns. So I finally went home on that Wednesday night about 2:00 or 2:30 or so in the morning. I don't remember exactly what time.\\n\\n But I went home, and got up and went back to work at 7:30 or so the next morning, and worked all through that day. We had another meeting Thursday night at ten o'clock with all those White—we'd been working with them all day, during the days. I went home on Friday morning shortly before sun-up and took a shower and changed suits, and went back to work at eight something, I guess, I went back to work. As I recall, that memorial service happened about eleven o'clock in the morning.\\n\\n So I got back out there just shortly after sun-up, early, before six o'clock or so, and by then we'd roped off the big area and we had metal detectors that the White House had brought down. There was a planeload of White House uniformed security that came. There were sheriffs and constables and Secret Service everywhere. I was given a Secret Service pin to wear on my lapel so I could cross the barrier wherever I needed to. I would not have been successful without that, because the Secret Service will run you through a metal detector, and if you're of a person involved in their support, they'll give you this little pin you can wear. It allowed me to cross the barriers and whatnot and move around.\\n\\n I remember telling a contractor project manager up in the middle of the night on Thursday night, or I guess it was early night on Thursday night, to go get some more plywood. He said, \"I don't have any more plywood.\" It was after ten o'clock, because the Home Depot and stuff was closed.\\n\\n I said, \"Look, go get—\" how many sheets of plywood, I don't remember how many it was.\\n\\n He looked at me and he said, \"All right, I'm going to get the plywood, but don't you ever ask me where I got it.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Done.\"\\n\\n At his retirement party about seven or eight years later, I told that story. I said, \"And to this day I have not asked him where he got the plywood.\" [Laughter] I'm sure he stole it from another project somewhere, but anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He didn't tell you after the party, either, did he?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he didn't tell me after the party. What we were using it for is building a podium he was going to speak from. We didn't have enough plywood, so get some more, and he did. But those are the kind of things in a crisis. STS-3 recovery was a crisis. Reagan's memorial service in 1986 was a crisis. People will do way above and beyond the call of duty to make those things happen. I have been firmly convinced over my career, you can ask people to provide services and time that's well outside the realm of reason for a short period of time, if you've got a good reason to do it. You can't continue it very long, but you can get people to do amazing things on a short term.\\n\\n That was a highlight of my years in Houston, one of them. When Reagan came back in '88 or '89, when we launched STS-26 he came back again. I was deputy director at the time, but I was involved a little bit more remotely than I was the first time, but in that visit, too. That was another highlight. I mean, it took a lot of work on a short period of time dealing with it.\\n\\n I remember on that second visit I got in an argument at one of those meetings with Secret Service and the White House staff. The Secret Service was insisting that we put handrails around the platform that Reagan was going to speak from. Both the White House staff and Secret Service were deathly afraid he was going to fall. They were absolutely petrified that he would fall. So we had to make everything as smooth as possible and all. I said, \"Okay, we'll put the rails up.\"\\n\\n The White House staff said, \"No, we don't want any rails up there, because it blocks part of the view of the public and the TV cameras and all.\" So, okay, we won't put the rails up there.\\n\\n The Secret Service said, \"No, we demand that you put the rails up there to protect him.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Wait a minute.\" I said, \"I can't satisfy both of you. You (this was a lady from the White House staff) and you, Mr. Secret Service man, you go out of the room and y'all sort it out, and when you come back here and tell me, I'll do what y'all decide, but I can't satisfy both of you. So y'all sort it out.\" They did and we didn't put the handrails up. [Laughter]\\n\\n Then JSC safety got in the issue, and they decided we were going to have the handrails up about two hours before Reagan showed up. I told the director of safety, I said, \"There's not going to be any handrails.\"\\n\\n And he said, \"You're violating OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration].\"\\n\\n I said, \"That's right, and that's Mr. OSHA that's going to stand right up there and talk to us.\" [Laughter] I said, \"They're not going up there, and if you don't like it, go talk to the White House staff. Don't talk to me.\" He didn't, and we didn't put any handrails up.\\n\\n But it was a fun time. It really was. I have fond memories of those two visits of President Reagan. I have another memory of [President] George [H. W.] Bush visiting when he was the President one time, and we painted a stairwell, because he was going to go down it, and couldn't get the paint to dry. It was still tacky when he went down the stairway, and this is embarrassing, but we had to hang \"Wet Paint\" signs on the stairway. I believe the President of the United States thinks everything in the world smells like fresh paint, because we painted everything when they showed up. But it was a fun time.\\n\\n Certainly the biggest job that I ever had in NASA was Director of Center Operations. White Sands manager is an equivalent grade and it's a hazardous testing, and it's more technical than the Director of Center Operations, but Center Operations was certainly probably the highlight of my career. Anybody looking at my career would say it was. Probably self-satisfying maybe was White Sands manager, because I started out here as a GS-7 and wound up as the manager, so that was kind of a pleasant experience.\\n\\n But when I was Deputy Director of Center Operations, in August of 1986, I was appointed charter board member for Space Center Houston, and it was added to my job description to give me the protection of the government from lawsuits and whatnot, and allow me to use special time to do that. So I served as a charter member for ten years along with John [W.] O'Neill, Harvey [L.] Hartman, Carolyn [L.] Huntoon, Charlie [Charles F.] Bolden [Jr.] part of the time, P. J. Weitz part of the time, Sue [Susan] Garman part of the time.\\n\\n That was a thoroughly enjoyable time. It was a stressful time, certainly in the early days of that, because nothing had ever been financed in the government that way before, and the government does not own that facility. The Manned Space Flight Educational Foundation, Incorporated, owns it, of which I was a board member. We publicly financed 64 million dollars. So 64,400,0000 we acquired from NASA Headquarters; actually, Congress. Congress edicted that NASA Headquarters provide us 10 million dollars for infrastructure support, being able to get back on JSC and tie onto the water lines and the sewer lines and all of that. So the Congress actually paid for that. It just flowed through Headquarters to the Manned Space Flight Foundation.\\n\\n I wrote the technical specifications for the design competition over the Christmas holidays of 1987, probably. I can remember, on leaves at the kitchen table, writing specifications for the design competition and also specifications, the first brush at the specifications for the building, this building and structure and whatnot.\\n\\n We contracted with Walt Disney to do the preliminary design, Walt Disney Imagineering. That was an experience that I'll be forever grateful for. We were out there in Glendale, California, at their facility. Bill [William R.] Kelly was chairman of the board. I forgot. Hal Stall was the president at that time, too. Chuck [Charles A.] Biggs was the vice-president. Norma Kersman was the assistant secretary, I believe, and Wayne [L.] Draper became the treasurer. I guess Hal and Bill Kelly and Chuck Biggs and I, I guess, were out at Glendale, California, talking to Disney about the preliminary design. Those folks are absolutely amazing. They know their business. They know it very well.\\n\\n We had a working lunch out there the first time we visited. A guy named George, who was on the original design team with Walt Disney when they conceived Disneyland in 1955, was in this meeting. He was chief architect there at the time. I remember we got to talking about what the facility might look like and what we might do, and he took his salad bowl and turned it up in the middle of the table, and took some salt and pepper shakers and spoons and forks and stuff like that, and almost did the preliminary design for what the structure might look like right there at the table. And it almost turned out that way. It had a dome all the way across the top then. It's now flat across the top. That was a wind loading and a cost issue, but it looks very much like he had in mind at that time.\\n\\n Then I was in a conference room out there that we met in a number of times. I was sitting at the end of this long conference table, and it had high walls and little windows around the top, maybe twelve-inches tall windows, all the way around the top. There were drawings pasted all over the walls of Disneyland and Disney World and Epcot Center and the one in Paris. They were just opening the one in Paris at that time. So there were just drawings all over the place. Somebody made the comment, I don't remember, maybe Hall Stall made the comment, because they would refer to Walt Disney quite often. They would say, \"Well, Walt felt like this was necessary to handle the public,\" and Walt this and Walt that. Somebody made the comment to them, said, \"How long has Walt Disney been dead?\"\\n\\n They said at that time he'd been dead twenty years. This guy said, \"Well, it is very, very evident that Walt Disney's influence, his ideas still have a great influence on where this company's going.\"\\n\\n They said, \"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.\" Said, \"He was very powerful in what he believed, and he was right in most cases.\" Not all. As kind of an aside, they said, \"We're in the room, we're sitting in the conference room where they originally conceived Disneyland.\"\\n\\n We said, \"Really?\"\\n\\n They said, \"Yes.\" They pointed at me at the end of the table, and they said, \"And that's where Walt always sat.\" And this just gives you a little warm and fuzzy feeling to be in an environment like that. But it was a pleasure to work with them. They had thousands of concepts and ideas. And if we didn't like this one, here's another one, you know.\\n\\n During the early design phases of this, we traveled quite a bit. Went to Huntsville, we went to the Cape, went to Disney World. The Land Pavilion at Epcot, if you walked into it and stopped and looked around and thought about Space Center Houston, that's almost the same design of the structure. Very similar design. That was where they took us to say, \"This is what we've got in mind.\"\\n\\n So that was a very pleasant experience. It was exciting, trying to get it open and doing the design and doing the construction. I was responsible for monitoring the construction from the board's viewpoint. I was chairman of the operations oversight committee while it was being built, after it got opened and operating. It was a very rewarding experience, because it was the most fun—I've been involved in a lot of construction in my day, and it was the most fun construction I've ever been involved in, because I was doing it like the private sector, not like the government and I didn't have to worry with the competitive requirements of the government, and we could go to who we wanted to.\\n\\n It was a cost savings-type contract, cost-incentive contract, where they can make money by saving us money. So they just had a jillion ideas about how to improve the construction and the design while we were building it. Many, many of them were approved by us, because they saved us money and we shared that savings with the contractor. The government's now doing a little of that, but they weren't in those days. So it was a lot of fun for me. I think if you talk to any of the board members, I think they would all tell you that it was unique.\\n\\n I was one of the principals that helped get through Headquarters a fifty-year lease on that property. I mean, boy, I don't know how many times I went to Washington before we got that signed. Sue Garman helped me a lot in some of that. General Billie [J.] McGarvey was the chief of NASA facilities at the time in Headquarters and he helped a lot with that. We had to get Congressional approval. Normally the government signs contracts for five years or ten, and this is fifty. So it was a great challenge for me, but a great deal of fun, too.\\n\\n I will be forever thankful that I was on the board, and it only became not so much fun when we started having problems paying off the bonds that we [sold]. We had to restructure our debt. That was a painful process. I went through the first debt restructuring. I don't know if they've done it again or not, but the first one we went through was a very painful process. But other than that, it was a pleasant experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly must have been nice to see it all come together and see the public response to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. As a matter of fact, I was in Houston three weeks ago and took two of my granddaughters through Space Center Houston for the first time since they were old enough to remember it, at least, and they were just absolutely enthralled with the whole thing, so it made me feel really good that they were.\\n\\n I believe that Space Center Houston now, although I haven't been a board member now for about three years—yes, about three years—it appears to me from what I've heard that they're on better financial footing than they were when I left. I was in there twice while I was in Houston, and there was a big crowd there both times. So I hope they're doing well, and it seems that they are." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They always seem to have a crowd when we go by." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was glad to see that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It did come up that you ended up going back to White Sands as manager, as we talked about a little bit before. But you had also mentioned that when you came back to JSC that you were thinking, \"Well, there's not really any further up I can go at White Sands,\" that you hadn't even thought about really getting the manager's job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I would have been eligible for it if it had been vacant, but I always felt before I went to JSC and spent the last ten years down there, which, by the way, the last ten years in Houston I really thoroughly enjoyed it. I really did. But I had a different attitude. I wasn't worried about children then, and it was much easier to go live in the big city.\\n\\n But while I would have been eligible for the manager of White Sands, I did not believe that the director of the Johnson Space Center would appoint someone at White Sands as the manager because he didn't know us well enough to feel comfortable doing that. I felt even stronger about that after I got to Houston, looking back at White Sands, and got at the senior staff level in Houston, I said, man, I guess I can understand that. I wouldn't either. If I was a director, I would feel very reluctant to appoint somebody that's an office chief at White Sands to be the manager, because we just don't get enough exposure to them to know them that well and feel comfortable, because the manager out here is 850 miles from his boss. The director of the center has to feel confident with whoever he puts out here that he can leave him alone and let him do it, because he's too far away to influence him very much, certainly not on a daily basis. When I was the manager, I talked to the director of the center almost every other week regularly, and occasionally in between, but you don't even talk to him very much. You just go on and do your business.\\n\\n So I think that I probably would not have been appointed the manager had I stayed out here. Maybe I would have. Maybe they would have by then known me well enough to feel comfortable doing it, but I wouldn't be too sure.\\n\\n But the ten years I spent in Houston as a division chief, as a deputy director, and as Director of Center Operations, in all the committees that I was on in Washington, and all the time I spent in Washington, and one year I went to Washington twenty-six times from JSC, so I got a lot of exposure at Headquarters level, too, the knowledge that I had of the agency was many times as broad when I came back in 1994 than it was when I left in '84, because when I was here in '84, I did very little work with Washington. When I went to headquarters, I went to Houston. And when I was in Houston when I went to Headquarters, I went to Washington. So I got a much, much broader understanding of the agency and certainly was known much more widely than I would have if I'd stayed at White Sands, within the agency. So I think that that's one of the reasons that they sent me back out here.\\n\\n The other reason that they sent me out here is, I had no intentions of ever being able to come back to White Sands after I became deputy director, really. I never had any thought that I would get back to White Sands, and certainly not after I became Director of Center Operations.\\n\\n But in December of 19[93], the manager of White Sands died suddenly of a heart attack, so for about six months there was no permanent manager of White Sands. The deputy manager here was acting for those six months. He certainly was a capable guy. He is now the manager of White Sands, because they are now comfortable—when I retired, they were comfortable enough to send him back here, because he had transferred to Houston in the interim and gotten on in Houston. But he was my deputy, and he's a great guy, and I think he's doing a good job for White Sands today.\\n\\n But at the time that the manager died, I suspect there was not that confidence in Houston of making the deputy manager the manager, because deputies in Houston work with center senior staff and the director and the deputy director all the time, but the deputy out here does not. So when they had to find somebody to put back out here, I think they looked around and knew I had hypergolic propellant experience and rocket engine testing experience, and knew me well enough to feel comfortable sending me back out here. So I came back out here in July of '94, and I continued to be the manager for four years.\\n\\n In '97, my deputy transferred down to Houston and became the Deputy Director of Center Operations. He stayed down there for about a year, and when I announced my retirement, they sent him back out here as the director of the facility. I think that was a good thing for everybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like Center Operations at JSC might be the training ground maybe for the White Sands managers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Has been for the last two times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly there's a lot that applies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, all the managers at White Sands, after the first one, first manager at White Sands came from the Army when we just built place. The second one came from White Sands, that was Ken Gilbreath. But he only stayed manager for about two years and transferred to Houston as Deputy Director of Center Operations. The third one came from TTA [Thermochemical Test Area] in Houston to be the manager out here. The fourth one, Rob Tillett, was an incumbent here, but had worked in Houston earlier, many years earlier, but he had worked in Houston, knew a lot of people there. Then Dick [Richard A.] Colonna came out here as the fifth manager from Shuttle Program Office. After he had left it and been the NASA liaison in Australia for a year, then he came to White Sands as the manager, and I was the next one. So three of the Deputy Directors of Center Operations have been the manager at White Sands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were manager at White Sands, what was your biggest challenge at that point in time, and what were some of the projects that you were involved with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were certainly faced with—at that time we were still in the budget reduction process. It was ongoing. White Sands had done many, many things to offset some of those budget reductions, such as going out after a lot of reimbursable work. They had just started, and weren't even certified yet, to rebuild RCS engines. When I got back out here and took a look at that I said, \"Gee, I agreed, that is a service we can offer to this agency much cheaper than getting it done with the original equipment manufacturer.\" The original equipment manufacturer was reducing that staff all the time and just about to lose most of the expertise to actually do it, because the engines are so old.\\n\\n So we really went after that engine rebuild work. About a year or so after I came out here, we became certified to do the OMS [Orbital Maneuvering System] engine repair work. So now White Sands is the depot for engine repair—repair, refurb, and recertifying, and put them back in the fleet. We do that work for the NSLD at Florida. We do that for the logistics people in Florida. So that has increased our reimbursable work by a pretty large percentage, just doing that engine rebuild work. There are always RCS engines going through there, and occasionally an OMS engine goes through to be refurbished and recertify. We have to fire them and recertify them.\\n\\n So my goals when I came back, the director of the center at JSC told me the week I left the center, I went up to see him and said, \"Well, I'm headed to White Sands now. Have you got any last-minute instructions for me?\"\\n\\n He said, \"No.\" He said, \"I'm comfortable with you going out there or I wouldn't have sent you out there.\" He said, \"I would just tell you to go after all the reimbursable work you can handle because it's good for JSC. It offsets the cost of White Sands.\"\\n\\n So I did, and I think over my four years we increased the reimbursable work over 20 percent. We even got into the flight hardware building with ORCA. We just got started in the ORCA business. That was the first flight hardware White Sands ever designed and built, tested and delivered. It was not even built when I retired, but we had been involved in the project for several months at that time, so we were beginning to get into that business. I think White Sands is in a unique position to offer design, build, test, qualify and deliver flight hardware that's hazardous fluids-associated: liquid oxygen, gaseous oxygen, hydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide, that sort of thing. So increasing reimbursable work was one of my big goals, and fighting the budget reductions and finding more efficient ways to do the business.\\n\\n Another big thing that we did that turned out to be, I think, a good decision. When I came out here in '94, they had recompeted the contract in '93. It was not awarded until June of '94, and I got back in July. I came back the 11th of July '94. In that contract it stated that the contractor would become certified to ISO 9001 [International Standards Organization] within eighteen months. The deputy manager at White Sands elected to not do anything, because he knew I was coming, and he elected not to do anything till I got here. It was only a month, but when I got here in a month, he said, \"I haven't let them get started on that, because I feel very strongly that if you don't sign up to it and if you don't support it, we should not do it.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, what's ISO 9000?\" because I did not know.\\n\\n So over the next few weeks they educated me on what it was, and I went over to Fluid Systems Division of Allied Signal in Tempe, Arizona, who had just become certified in ISO. I spent two and a half days, grueling days, over there going through what they had done, why they did it, what their lessons learned were, how expensive is it and all of that. I convinced myself in those two and a half days that for White Sands Test Facility, being in the hazardous testing business, it was the right thing to do, because ISO 9000 does not ensure that you will have a high-quality product. In and of itself it doesn't. What it ensures is that if you follow the rules that you lay down, you will have a consistent product. Not necessarily a good one, but it will be consistent. It'll either be consistently good or consistently bad, but you'll do it the same way every time. In a hazardous-test business you have to have testing and engineering discipline rigor into the system or somebody's going to get hurt, or you're going to blow up an engine, or somebody's going to killed.\\n\\n So I came back, and in consultation with my deputy, the deputy program manager, and the program manager for the contractor, and a few other people, we decided that, yes, it's the right thing to do, and, yes, we ought to go for it, and, yes, we ought to go for it in twelve months instead of eighteen. Because we'd already lost by that time about three months. I was convinced that if I give you eighteen months, you'll take nineteen. If I give you twenty-four months, you'll take twenty-five, and if I give you thirty-six months, you'll take thirty-six or thirty-seven months, but you'll do most of the work in the last twelve months. And I said, \"We can't afford to drag this thing out. If we're going to do it, we have to do it now.\"\\n\\n So everybody signed up to that twelve months, some very reluctantly, but they signed up for it. To make a long story short, after a lot of management intervention and a lot of gnashing of the teeth, and a lot of long hours, I couldn't give them a lot of budget relief. I told them, \"You're going to have to do this and meet the commitments that you've made to your customers. We could go back and if I could negotiate with the customer and he could slip it, fine. But if he can't, you're going to have to meet the date you committed to.\"\\n\\n So it was a very rigorous, tough twelve months. We exposed everybody at the facility to what is ISO 9000, even the machinists and the carpenters and the janitors. Everybody went to a four-hour class about what it is. Then there were a smaller number of people that were actually involved in implementing it.\\n\\n But to give you an example of why I thought it was a good thing to do—this is 1994 I'm talking about—during the process, where we had to go review all of the procedures and the processes that we used to do the work out there, and many of them hazardous, during that process, one of the guys brought a procedure into a meeting and laid it down in front of me and said, \"Hey, look at that procedure that we're reviewing.\" I thumbed through it and I had signed it in 1976.\\n\\n And I said, \"You haven't revised this since 1976?\"\\n\\n And he said, \"No,\" and he kind of laughed.\\n\\n And I said, \"Are you still doing it this way?\"\\n\\n \"Well, not exactly like that.\"\\n\\n And I said, \"That's the reason we need to do ISO 9000.\" It forced us to go review all those things and revise them. We didn't have to revise them, but what you have to do to qualify for ISO 9000 is say, \"This is what I'm going to do. This is what I did, and I can prove that I did it that way. I have some substantial evidence that says that's the way I did it.\" And the certifying people don't really care what you do, as long as you do it like you said you're going to do it, you write it down, and you do like you said you're going to do it, and you can prove it. It's not up to them to ensure you have a quality product. It's up to them to ensure you did it like you said you're going to do it.\\n\\n But that whole process cost—I hope it didn't cause any divorces, but it cost an awful lot of long hours and tough time, and the final result was that we got certified on the first certification inspection. We were the first NASA facility to be certified. We were the first government facility to be certified, because we certified all of it.\\n\\n There were some isolated organizations that had been certified within the government and within NASA, but nobody had done an entire facility, an entire installation. We were recognized by the agency for doing that. We were submitted for and awarded a Hammer Award from Vice President [Albert] Gore [Jr.] for being the first government installation to be certified ISO 9000.\\n\\n I went to almost every center and Headquarters, after we became certified, over the last year that I worked, by invitation, because I went to Headquarters and made a presentation to Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, and he said that day, \"This agency's going to be certified to ISO 9000.\" So I got the opportunity to go to almost every center invited me to come and said, \"What'd you do and how'd you do it? Because Goldin says we're going to have to do it.\" So I did that. And each and every time I did that, I said, \"I want the record to reflect that the day I was in Headquarters and made this presentation to Goldin, he said before my presentation, 'The agency's going to do this,' not after.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n But, anyway, White Sands got a very—I believe it was the right thing to do. They're still certified.\\n\\n The other unique thing about this is we did not—normally what you certify is a company. We didn't certify the contractor and we didn't certify NASA. We made an agreement with the ISO Certification Board that in our particular case we can't certify NASA and we can't certify the contractor, we should certify the facility, so that whoever the contractor is, we take these same procedures and say, \"Now you execute them.\" And no matter what the changes are in the facility management staff or the employee staff, it's still the facility that's certified, not the companies. And this is the first time that was ever done.\\n\\n So it was a good experience. I'm glad we did it. It cost us a lot of money, but I firmly believe that probably by now it has paid for itself. As a matter of fact, it was not but about a year after we got certified that a customer came to us and said, \"Could you do this job for us?\" and we looked at it, a commercial customer. And we said, \"Yes, we believe we're unique enough in our facilities and capabilities that we can do this job for you and not compete with industry.\"\\n\\n Normally when a new customer shows up, they want to come in, they want to look at some of your processes and your procedures and all this kind of stuff. They had given us the specification of what testing requirements they had, and we said, \"Yes, we can meet those.\" And we said, \"What else do you want to look at?\"\\n\\n Somewhere along the way they said, \"Aren't you ISO 9000-certified?\"\\n\\n We said, \"Yes, 9001-certified.\" We said, \"Yes, we are.\"\\n\\n They said, \"We don't need to look at anything else.\" So it's been a good thing for White Sands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly sounds like it's paid off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I might close by saying for the record that I had a fantastic career. I wouldn't take a minute for any of it. I wouldn't take $1,000 for a minute of it. I worked for the agency for over thirty-two years and I am thankful to NASA and the federal government and the space program that I got the opportunity to be involved in many of the things that I was. I will be forever grateful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly have had some very exciting times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I sure have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I could ask you jut a couple final questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back over this unique career, what would you say over all of that would have been your greatest challenge? You've certainly had a lot that you've talked about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, STS-3 recovery will always be in my mind as one of the biggest engineering challenges, to get the facilities and the capabilities and the support mechanisms in place in just the few days we had before the Orbiter landed. That was a big challenge. It was a big challenge for the agency, for me personally, for the people that worked for me. I'm very proud of that. So that certainly was one highlight of my career.\\n\\n Apollo 11, Apollo 8, Apollo 13, they're all highlights of my career. One of the things, when you talk to people of my vintage is, that we have to say that probably one of the biggest highlights of our career was Apollo 11, successfully getting Apollo 11 home. I was twenty-six years old. If I really say that was the highlight of my career, it's been downhill for the rest of the time.\\n\\n It was a very exciting and self-satisfying thing for me. Apollo in total was a lot of hard work, a lot of long hours, but greatly rewarding. It will never happen again, certainly not in my lifetime. Probably not in the space program. We've missed too many opportunities for that to happen again, because the nation's not seen fit to sign up to go to Mars. If they sign up and say, \"Yes, let's go to Mars,\" but they don't say by a certain year, it will not be the same.\\n\\n The one thing that happened in Apollo is when President [John F.] Kennedy challenged us to do it by the end of the decade. He made the money available to do it, and it took a lot of money. I don't believe that's going to happen again.\\n\\n So everything, including Space Station and Shuttle, has been drawn out and drawn out and drawn out and drawn out, and I believe that that will continue to happen, and I'm sorry for that. Anybody that worked with Apollo would probably tell you the same thing, that they're sorry that happened.\\n\\n But there's been so many other delightful things that have happened in my career I am proud of. The\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n will be a low point in my career forever. Apollo 1 fire a low point in my career and everyone else's. But because the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n happened, I'm sorry, but since it did, one of the highlights of my career was the memorial service, getting ready for it and supporting it in Houston in January of 19[86].\\n\\n Certainly, ISO 9000 at White Sands is, I believe, one of the things I did right. It was the right thing at the right time. I think it's made White Sands more efficient, safer, more consistent, and so I think it will pay off in years to come.\\n\\n Space Center Houston will always be—it was in my job description, so it was a NASA job, but it was privately funded. We did it like the private sector does. I got to work with Disney Imagineering. I got to work with some of the best talent in NASA on the board of Space Center Houston: John O'Neill, Bill Kelly, Hall Stall, Chuck Biggs, just all retired now. But they were just great people and were a pleasure to work with.\\n\\n So if I look at what single thing, I guess I'd have to say Apollo 11, probably, but was Apollo 8 thrilled me. Apollo 8 was a gutsy mission, very, very gutsy, one that they decided to do in less than eight months, I think, and executed it in less than eight months. Apollo 13, nobody who was involved with Apollo 13 can't say it was not a grand and glorious day when they successfully landed. So because I was involved in Apollo, that will probably, as time goes on, be more and more important to me. But not to say that the recovery of STS-3 wasn't a personal challenge, and Space Center Houston, and the memorial service, and many, many other events that were.\\n\\n I've always said, and this is certainly a true statement, I'm very fortunate that not only do I get to read history, I helped write it. Being in this business, you're in the news virtually every day, not me, but the activity of the space program's in the news, and it's part of history, and I was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly were, and certainly gutsy, a lot of exciting things going on. You'd mentioned that early on that you were interested in becoming involved with the space program if it was at all possible. Would you ever have imagined where it would take you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If I'd done what now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you have imagined back when you were first wishing to become involved with the space program, would you have imagined where you would end up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. As a matter of fact, to give you a little story about that, the romance of the space program and the technical challenge of Apollo was probably what drew me to it. But I was working part time for the post office during the last summer that I went to college, and I was sorting mail and stuff like that in the post office. While we were sorting mail one night, somebody said, \"What are you going to do when you get out of school?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, I've already accepted a job with NASA.\"\\n\\n There was a young lady working there part time that said to me, \"You're going to go to work for NASA?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Yes.\"\\n\\n She said, \"Do you think you'll ever be sitting at a console and controlling a space flight?\"\\n\\n I said, \"No, I doubt if I ever will.\"\\n\\n She said, \"I just can't imagine you ever getting involved in that program for many, many years. It's so technically oriented and you must have to have so much experience.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Yes.\" I felt like, yes, that's probably right, because I didn't know.\\n\\n Two or three months later, I was at White Sands, I was working for Ken Gilbreath. I had been here two or three weeks, and he sent me a copy of a memo he had written, adding my name to the signature authority on test preparation sheets, which is the way you change a facility and you conduct tests. He had given me the authority within three weeks of when I went to work, to sign those documents. And I was absolutely amazed that a green engineer would be given that kind of authority in that short a period of time. Now, certainly there were checks and balances there. I mean, more than one person signed them, but he had given me the authority to sign for his office.\\n\\n Throughout my career, I believe NASA has given me all the responsibility and all the authority that I chose to accept. I'm not known for turning much down. I think that that's just absolutely amazing that you could do that. But if you look back on Apollo, there were a few gray heads working on Apollo, but most of the people were very young. Most of the people who were intimately involved with flight hardware and controlling flights and making technical decisions about the flight were in their late twenties. So it was really an amazing time. There are some people my age that we'll talk about in a minute, that if you have not talked to you should, because they were in their twenties when they made some very critical decisions that proved to be right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Throughout your career were there any people that made a big influence on you or what you were doing at the time, that you'd like to mention on the tape?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Ken Gilbreath made a big influence on me, because he's my first supervisor. When he retired, I replaced him as Director of Center Operations. I worked for him off and on for over thirty years. I didn't work for him for fifteen of those years, but I did for the last ten I worked for him. He was a big influence on me.\\n\\n John O'Neill, who's just a great guy, was a big influence on me. Bill Kelly was a big influence on me. Aaron Cohen. Rob Tillett was a big influence on me, because I was detailed to him on the Pearl Program in 1968, probably '68, for about three months over on the other side of the hill where we were conducting landing and rendezvous radar tests for the lunar module and command service module.\\n\\n Gene [Lawrence Eugene] Lundgren, who was a former Chief of Technical Support Office at White Sands, was a big influence on me. And an engineer that retired, just as an engineer when I was very young and green, named Chuck [Charles H.] Provine, who was a World War II vet. From a technical standpoint, he helped me an awful lot. He was the kind of guy that was very knowledgeable, but if you went to sit down and talked to him, you had to pull it out of him to get much out of him. I remember going to him one time and showing him some electrical power distribution service I was working on and telling him what I was going to do. He said, \"Now, are you sure you want to do that?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Yes, why not?\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, just think about it.\"\\n\\n The more I thought about it, the more he led me to the conclusion that if I didn't distribute the different phases through these conduits, I'd have eddy currents between the conduits and they'd get hot. This never occurred to me to do that. So Chuck Provine had a big technical influence on me, too.\\n\\n Once I got to JSC and got up into the deputy director position, Gene Kranz had an influence on me. Henry [O.] Pohl, Chief of Engineering, had a lot of influence on me. So there are many, many people that I owe thanks to that I got to where I got the opportunity to do the things I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly took a lot of good and talented people to help the whole program come together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. NASA is a very unique organization, as far as talent's concerned. There continues to be, and there certainly was in the early days, some extremely talented people.\\n\\n Something you asked me in a letter about the interview process when I came to work here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's an interesting story. I was at college, applied to JSC, received an offer in the mail—no, I take that back. A personnel person from Houston called me and asked me if I would accept a job at White Sands Test Facility, and I said, \"Yes, I will.\" We talked about what is it and all. He didn't know much about it, but what he told me was enough to say, \"Yes, I'll take the job.\" I received a written offer in the mail. I never talked to anybody at White Sands. I never talked to anybody technically at JSC.\\n\\n When I got to White Sands, after I'd been there a while, Mr. Gilbreath showed me a letter he wrote to personnel when they'd notified him I was coming. He protested and said, \"I don't know this person, I've never talked to him, I have no idea if he's technically competent.\" He objected to the way they hired me. I guess when he made me deputy director of his organization, he had finally decided I was going to be okay, I guess. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think probably so. Well, it certainly sounds like over the years enough people thought that you were okay. It certainly panned out well for everyone, it sounds like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I've had a great career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'd like at this point to ask Kevin if he has any questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'll save mine for tomorrow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. I want to thank you so much for sharing all this with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly had some interesting times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I give you the opportunity when you're transcribing this or thinking about it, if you've got any other questions, call me or whatever, and I'll be glad to give you my views on them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When you talk to other people some things may come up that you want to talk to me about, I'll certainly be happy to talk to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wonderful. You'll have a chance to review the transcript, too, so if you think of anything at that time we can always add that in as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Grady E. McCright", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00060", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BowenME/bowenm.htm", + "original_file_name": "BowenM_6-21-07.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BowenME/BowenM_6-21-07.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Maureen Bowen", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 21 June 2007" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Maureen E. Bowen" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 21st, 2007. This oral history interview is being conducted with Maureen Bowen in Houston, Texas, for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson.\\n\\n Thank you for coming in this morning and spending some time with us to talk about your career with NASA. We’d like to start with you sharing with us how you first began working at the Manned Spacecraft Center [Houston, Texas]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in that area. I worked for the University of Maryland [College Park] as a secretary in the horticulture department. Then I worked as a secretary for what is now HUD [Housing and Urban Development] in Washington, D.C., and was perfectly happy there. I remember one of the secretaries there who was not happy saying that, “You know, they’re building a space center in Houston. I’m thinking about applying there.”\\n\\n I thought, “Why in the world would anybody want to leave here and go do that?” Well, as time would tell, she never did, yet I did.\\n\\n I ended up here because when I became pregnant, my husband said, “My baby’s not being born anywhere but Texas,” so off we came. Having worked for the government, I opened the phone book to see where the government offices were, but had in my mind this space agency.\\n\\n I interviewed with Stan [Stanley H.] Goldstein, and I was asking for a temporary job, because I was going to be a housewife and mother. I wasn’t going to work after the baby was born. He told me, “Well, if you were going to work [permanently], we could probably place you somewhere, but we really don’t have temporary jobs.”\\n\\n So I said, “Thank you very much,” and went away, and I took a temporary job through a regular temp [temporary] agency.\\n\\n I ended up working for Couch Mortgage Company on Westheimer [Road, Houston, Texas]. They liked me and said, “Hey, come to work for us afterward.” I said, “Oh, no, I’m not going to work afterward.” Well, as it turned out, I was going to work afterward.\\n\\n At the Center, I interviewed with Les [Leslie] Sullivan, who put me with Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz’ branch, the Flight Control Operations Branch. We were located in the Stahl-Meyers Building on the Gulf Freeway [IH 45] at Wayside [Drive, Houston, Texas]. It’s been through several iterations since, and I believe now it’s an Oshman’s warehouse. We were in that building until June of 1964, when we moved on-site. I believe we were one of the first organizations to move on-site and we moved into Building 30, which was very exciting.\\n\\n It was a whole new world for me. One of the first assignments I had was typing the sim [simulation] scripts for MA-9, Mercury-Atlas 9. Gordon [M.] Ferguson and I worked overtime for two weeks to do those sim scripts, because our guys were incorrigible. They would always try to get copies of the scripts so they’d know what problems were going to be thrown at them. So we worked overtime. I typed those sim scripts on a Ditto machine [duplication device]. Most of the clericals you’ll talk to now don’t even know what a Ditto machine is; I’ve seen the evolution of the technology from Ditto machine forward.\\n\\n Every job I had was in the organizations that were just an evolution of what is now Mission Operations Directorate. I started out as a secretary, and in 1979 I moved into an administrative assistant position through an Upward Mobility [Program] door that opened for a nanosecond. I was very, very fortunate, because I was now doing the work that I liked to do the most. Even as a branch secretary, I was doing the move coordination and the training records, all the things that most of the AOs [Administrative Officers] do now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you know about the space program? It was new, and the Center was new. What did you know about it other than the parade that you got to witness in D.C.?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Well, it was a big news item in those days, because we were in a race with the Russians. You pretty much knew what the U.S. was doing, that we wanted to get a man in space.\\n\\n Mercury was our very first program. Working for HUD, I was only a couple of blocks from the White House, and I remember walking down to Pennsylvania Avenue to watch the parade after a Mercury flight. Then, I came to work here and worked through all those programs—Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project], Skylab—all of them with their own challenges.\\n\\n Then in those days in those sections most of the guys who came to work had been contractors working on remote radar stations, so they were a pretty crusty bunch. You learned quickly if you can’t beat them, you join them. I was treated so well and as one of the guys for so long, and I always felt a part of the office, a part of the team, and I appreciated that so much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share with us how your operation was set up in the building on the Gulf Freeway and then how that changed when you moved to Building 30?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> In the Stahl-Meyers Building we only had a few offices. The section head and two or three other guys and I all shared one office, and then Gene Kranz was upstairs in the Branch Office. There were a couple of other sections, another one on the first floor with us and then one or two upstairs in that building. It was a very small office space, and Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft’s division was next door in the HPC [Houston Petroleum Center] Building. Dr. [Robert R.] Gilruth’s office was in the Farnsworth-Chambers Building, and the Center was all over Houston, as you know, so we were all working very closely and we were a team from the very beginning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The guys that you worked with had already been part of the operations from the Mercury Program. Is that right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I came in toward the end of the Mercury Program. We were getting ready for MA-9, and that was the last Mercury flight. Some of the guys had worked with the program. The civil servants had come from [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], and the contractors had come from remote sites. We were such a young organization then, there were people coming in all along the way, and mostly contractors in that building. By the time we got to the site, we were really hiring the fresh-outs, the young guys out of college.\\n\\n It was really interesting to see the differences between those guys and the older guys, because they were having to learn computers, and the old guys didn’t want to turn loose of their slide rules. We had a terrible time getting those slide rules away from them. They’d send the young guys to the computer classes, and they’d come back and I’d type their white papers. I laughed when 30 years later I finally understood Boolean logic. [Laughter] I typed it so many times in the old days.\\n\\n I saw so many of those guys coming in fresh out of school. Steve [Stephen G.] Bales. Gerry [Gerald D.] Griffin came in right out of the Air Force. Many of the legends of Ops [Mission Operations] came through our organization in those days. We were not only co-workers, it was almost like family. It was a new program. We were learning new things. We were doing new things. It was so exciting, with history being made all throughout." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the only secretary handling this group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Well, my group. Once I got to be a Branch Secretary, we usually had two sections underneath us, and we had a secretary for each section. Those things changed over time to where you have only one Branch Secretary now. There were three branches in the early days, and each one had a secretary, plus some younger secretaries. With the evolution of the organization to the division level and more branches, and then the directorate level and more divisions, the organization grew from practically a handful of people to one of the largest organizations on-site, probably the second largest to Engineering." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about moving to Building 30. How did that affect you as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> It was probably about equidistance for me, because I lived in Pasadena [Texas], and so going to the Gulf Freeway or coming out here was about the same. But coming out here was like going to no man’s land, because there wasn’t anything here except the Center. For a long time it had been a cow pasture. NASA Road 1 [renamed NASA Parkway] was a two-lane road, and there might have been one building on it. Down at NASA 1 and [State] Highway 3 was a truck stop before it was Vernon’s Pizza and The Hop that it is now.\\n\\n Ellington [Air Force Base] had been there through the war, and from Ellington south there was almost nothing, so that was an adventure for me to come out this way. At first I came down Highway 3. Later I came down Red Bluff [Road], which at that time was a two-lane, pothole-riddled—it was paved, but it probably had as much dirt as it did pavement, and you were in the woods, but it was a quicker way and a much easier ride. It’s been very interesting to watch not only the growth of the Center, but the growth of the whole area. Look at it now. There’s hardly an open space anywhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then when you moved into [Building] 30, it was a brand-new facility, state-of-the-art." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Oh yes, brand-new building, more like a college campus. We had other organizations on-site, also. You didn’t have to drive somewhere to get to HR [Human Resources] or where the teletypes were or Payroll. It was quite different. You would think that once you moved into Building 30 you would have stayed there, but there was one point in which we moved from Building 30 to Building 45, and we stayed there a couple years. We ended up going back to 30 into the same room I had been in before, and was there a few years. We went back to Building 45 into the same room I had been in. It was almost freaky, you know.\\n\\n Between then and when I ended up in 30, we had been in several other buildings, 13, 29, 4, 17, several buildings, because the office I was in ended up to be a CHIP [College Hire Indoctrination Program]. We were small, so you would fit in small spaces, where they wanted to make organizations contiguous, so they’d have a space here. We were all over the place. It really didn’t matter, because the directorate ended up so large that even some of our divisions were split among buildings. There was no way you could avoid travel between buildings, so it really didn’t matter which building you were in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like those days were so busy and diverse. Can we talk about some the tasks? Would you tell us a little bit more about typing up the sims for the MA-9 mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> In those days we typed everything, and we typed them on typewriters with 10 carbon copies that you had to erase when you made a mistake, so your typing skills would tend to become very good, because you didn’t want to make those corrections." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have electric typewriters at the time, or did you start with a standard?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> We started with standards and got electrics pretty quickly. Some years later, probably in the mid-70s, Jo [Josephine C.] Corey and I—we were in the same branch—we volunteered for word processors. Many of the other secretaries didn’t want it, but Jo and I thought, “Anything to make typing easier.” We got the first word processors in the directorate, and I don’t know, maybe on the Center. They were Daktronics then, which was a Xerox product. It was your very basic word processing, but you could correct and add things, and that was wonderful. Once the other secretaries saw what we could do, then everybody wanted them, and of course, now you see what’s happened in that world.\\n\\n When they started controlling the Gemini flights from Building 30, then we would work over in the [Mission] Control Center. There were the main positions in the MOCR [Mission Operations Control Room], which is now a FCR [Flight Control Room], and in the main Control Room, and then each position had a back room. We were mostly in the back room, doing typing, running errands, making coffee, even operating the P-tubes [pneumatic tubes]. That was an interesting exercise.\\n\\n In order to support the management during the flights, the Sim Control Room was a room right off the main Control Room, and when they weren’t running sims, when they were actually doing the flying, they had typewriters set up back in there. We would be back there, and somebody would wave us in. We’d come in and they’d ask us to do something, because that’s the only way you had of communicating in those days. Now, of course, everybody’s got their PCs [personal computers] and everybody does his own thing. I wonder sometimes what we are losing because we aren’t really documenting. It was there if somebody wanted to gather it. I’m not sure how much gathering is going on now.\\n\\n In those old days any building you’d walk into, the hallway walls were just lined with systems drawings. That was the first thing new people had to do. They’d give them a handbook and those systems drawings, and the new people coming in would be almost overwhelmed, but they knew every wire, every place all that went, and the handbooks that they read.\\n\\n Now, they do have handbooks, but they are online. They have the drawings, but they’re online, also. I kind of missed that [drawings on the walls], because you could see everything and it was all right there. Everybody, all the guys were out in the hallway tracking this or that, especially around sim time and around flight time when something wouldn’t do what they thought it was going to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about these sims and your part in typing up all those scripts. Did you help come up with some of the ideas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> No, generally our guys came up with the ideas, and they were used to it from their experience at the ranges, when they were in the military or when they were contractors supporting the military. Some of those guys came from places like Tule, Greenland, and they had been to some really remote places.\\n\\n They would come up with all kinds of things. One of the most interesting was when they had one of the guys simulate a heart attack. That was totally new; that wasn’t in the MA-9 sims that I was typing on the Ditto machine. But we always had other sim scripts that we did, and they would run those sims. I think most of the Controllers today will tell you that they pretty much had simulated almost anything that they were up against. They were really good at it. They were really good at what they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some of the other tasks that you mentioned when you were giving us a little bit of history, or the places you had to go, HR, Payroll—was all that part of your duties as well, when new people came in, to get them processed and up to where they needed to be for their paperwork?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Yes. They would come in through HR, but you still had their time cards and you had to teach them how to give you the time. We filled in the time cards in those days; now they do their own time sheets.\\n\\n Kranz, “the data monger,” had some of his people come up with the first really automated time system. We called it “Marvin Manpower;” that was a nickname for it. It really ended up being time charge management that the Info [Information] Resources people came up with. We had these legal-sized—we called them “green sheets” in those days, because they were printed in green. We had charge numbers, and you had a list of all the things you could charge against, and so the guys would fill in their charge numbers and the hours they spent on it. I did it in the branch for our people, keeping up with it and getting new items put in and taken out. Then when I moved into the division level, and also the directorate level, that was one of the things I kept up with.\\n\\n I never will forget when we transitioned from the green sheets, we went to a page-sized what we called a “gray sheet.” We wouldn’t call it a “black sheet,” because it wasn’t black. But it was regular Xerox copies. We had kept those old records because Gene would call and he’d say, “Can you tell me how many hours we charged to whatever in year whatever?”\\n\\n One year the Info Resources people came to me, and they said, “You know, it’s really a lot of effort to keep these like this. Can we archive them for you?”\\n\\n I said, “Uh—”.\\n\\n They said, “You don’t have to worry. The longest it will take you to retrieve is overnight. You ask us for the information; we’ll have it for you in 24 hours.”\\n\\n I said, “Are you sure? Because when Kranz asks for the data, we need to give him the data.”\\n\\n “Oh yeah, we’re sure.”\\n\\n Well, a year or two later Gene asked for something, and I called over and I said, “I need this.” Not only could they not get it to me in 24 hours, they never could find it. I don’t know where they put those reels that they archived them to. So for me, archive became kind of a dirty word, because the whole reason Gene did that system was to be able to retrieve the data.\\n\\n We had not only what we were doing for our organization, but then getting that moved over to Payroll. As you know, everybody does something similar to that now so the Center can retrieve data. When we had those two RIFs [reduction in force], we were able to protect our people, because we could go back and show just what they were doing.\\n\\n A RIF will bounce back to where your newest people are going to get hit, and we could show that our newest people were in an official training program, the Technical Intern Program, but also the kind of work that they were doing and how many hours were being spent on each task that we needed to do in order to fly. That, I think, also inspired some other organizations to say, “Hey, it worked for them; it could work for us.”\\n\\n About 10 years ago one of the guys in the office came to me, and he says, “I’ve got it on good authority we’re going to have a RIF.”\\n\\n I said, “John, we’re not going to have a RIF.”\\n\\n He says, “Oh yeah.”\\n\\n I said, “John, we’re not going to have a RIF.” I said, “I went through those two RIFs the Center had, and they were so heart-wrenching that I know the Center will not have a RIF unless there is no other way out.”\\n\\n So it became a bet, and I’m not a betting person. He said, “What do you want to bet?”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t know. What do you want to bet?”\\n\\n He says, “How about a lunch?”\\n\\n I thought, “Okay, I can—,” and I said, “Okay, I’ll bet you lunch.”\\n\\n A couple weeks later he said, “Well, what kind of time limit you want to put on this bet?”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t care. Pick a time.”\\n\\n He said, “Okay, two years.”\\n\\n “Okay.” I wrote it in my calendar.\\n\\n Well, two years later we hadn’t had the RIF, and he says, “Okay, I need to pay up.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, John, I told you I knew the Center was not going to have a RIF.” So we did have our lunch. This is such a funny story. The day that we were going to go to lunch, John said, “Well, hey, bring Georgia, too,” [Georgia S.] Piwonka.\\n\\n As we were walking out of the building, it must have been a paper clip or something; I slipped and went down on my knees. “Okay,” you know, “just give me a minute,” and I get up and we get all the way to the end of the parking lot and his car, and there’s somebody tapping on my shoulder.\\n\\n It was Yolanda Guillen-Burris, the Facility Manager. She says, “Okay, come on. We’re going to clinic.”\\n\\n I said, “No, no. No, we’re not going to clinic.” I said, “This man’s going to buy my lunch, and we’re going to lunch.”\\n\\n So we go to lunch, and he says, “Where do you want to go?”\\n\\n I said, “You’re buying. You pick.” He chose the Oriental Gourmet.\\n\\n We go over there, and he says, “Okay, I’m going to drop you and Georgia off at the door, and you get in line, and then I’ll come in.” Well, he comes in, and we have this lovely lunch, and we go out and his car is gone. He had parked it across the street where they have this sign kind of hidden in the bushes that says, “If you park here, we’re going to tow you.”\\n\\n There was a wrecker over there towing off cars like this, and we said, “Where are you going?”\\n\\n He said, “Elgin [Street].”\\n\\n So Georgia went back to the restaurant, and Bob [Robert] Musgrove was leaving. He said, “I’ve only got a two-seater car, but I can take one of you back to the site.” Georgia went with him, got her car, came back and picked up John and me, and we’re heading down the freeway.\\n\\n We get to Edgebrook [Drive], and John says, “Why don’t we pull off here?”\\n\\n I said, “John, Elgin is almost downtown. It’s by the University of Houston.”\\n\\n He says, “Well, you know, why don’t we just get off here?”\\n\\n I said, “This is way too soon to get off the freeway.”\\n\\n So we go down to Elgin and we’re looking at the number that they had said, and we drove for miles down Elgin, and it was going nowhere. I said, “I don’t see anything that even looks like a parking lot.”\\n\\n We stopped, and Georgia calls the insurance place that was there [from where he was towed], and he wasn’t even parked—they had plenty of spaces outside their office. They just had this thing going with this company. And they said, “Elton Street,” which was between Edgebrook and College, all the way back. He had to pay $100 to get his car.\\n\\n What started this story? Oh, about the RIF. The RIFs being painful. They were. They were terribly painful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved in procurement for supplies and materials and whatever was needed for your area as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Actually, not the procurement part but we ordered supplies. The guys would tell us what they needed, and we’d do whatever the paperwork was at the time to get the supplies. Sometimes it was a phone call; sometimes it was sending somebody out there [to the supply area]. Sometimes there were forms to fill out to get the supplies.\\n\\n For a long time, Mary Lou Fosbrink took care of supplies for Kranz’ whole division. Mary Lou was Betty Grissom’s sister [wife of Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Apollo 1]. Betty and Gus had moved here from Indiana; Mary Lou and her husband Albert lived in Indiana, but the Center moved them here, so Betty would have some family here, and employed both of them. Mary Lou came into our organization, and she ran the supply room, and boy, she ran that thing like a first sergeant. She did a very good job, and we became the best of friends." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had such a community of friends and family that it must have been rewarding to come to work and visit with these people every day, because it was more than just a job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Yes, it was, absolutely. Whatever it was that brought me here, fate, whatever, I can’t imagine having been happier anywhere else. I treasure my time here. One of my biggest pleasures these days is I keep up with the Apollo Flight Ops people. I’m on the Board of Directors of our nonprofit association, and I have the e-mail list; good news or bad news, it goes out to almost 600 people.\\n\\n Many of them lately have said, “You know, we almost hate to see an e-mail from you, because we know it may not be good news, but we appreciate the information.” The people have scattered. They’re all over the country, and they always express an appreciation for that information.\\n\\n I really wish that there were someone doing something similar for the Shuttle people. I would like to do it, but keeping up with this bunch is really a big job. I would like to do it, and I enjoy even now, every once in a while Milt [J. Milton Heflin] will call me for something, or I’ll do something for somebody else. It’s not like the job or the connection ended when I retired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The social element of the early days was quite strong at the Center. Is that a correct assessment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> [Laughs] That is a very correct assessment. From where I was, those guys, they worked hard and they played hard. I’ve said several times, “Boy, it’s probably a good thing that I was young and married to a policeman and had young children, because I wasn’t able to participate in all those parties,” the splashdown parties, you know. I heard all about it the next day and I might have ended up in some kind of trouble. I always enjoyed the stories. Some of them were almost unbelievable.\\n\\n I see a difference nowadays. It’s not that the people are any less friendly or whatever, but in the intervening years, there weren’t as many dual-parent workers. Many of the women stayed home and were housewives and brought up the children. Now, you almost have to have both of them working. With the jobs and the families, they don’t have the ability to really jump into that playground that they had in those days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s an interesting thought. I’m glad you shared that with us. When did you see a change in how many women were coming to the Center? Were you one of the few when the Center opened up and your branch moved here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I wouldn’t say I was one of the few, because the only women in those days, practically, were the secretaries and then a few in HR, some in Payroll, and some in Procurement. The change for the women started, I believe, probably in the 70s. It was about then when we got our first female engineer, Anne [L.] Accola. She was the first and the only one for a long time.\\n\\n Also the times were different, and in the early days many of the women who went to college became teachers or nurses. You didn’t have that many women in the engineering fields, because many of them were staying home. In the 70s—it was probably a generation after me—more of the women were attending college, were becoming engineers, attorneys, doctors, all of the professions now. It was slow in the engineering world, and slow, slow in—I don’t know why in Ops it was slow. Like I say, Anne was our only female engineer for a long time.\\n\\n Then once it started, it really moved up, and I’d say we’re probably 30 or 40 percent women now. It was really nice to see the women coming in, the professional women. It was nice to see when they first became Section Heads, when you got the first women Division Chiefs, and in MOD [Mission Operations Directorate]—we haven’t had a female [MOD] Director yet, but it will happen someday. The women are there. I’ve even had a Branch Chief or two tell me they’d rather have women. They work harder and they’re easier to deal with. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a woman boss?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Not until the last 10 years or so, and that was only because I was the only directorate AO who wasn’t located with her Director, ever. Because of that they want to put you where there’s a supervisor who can see what you’re doing, so I was in Mary [Allen] Wylie’s organization. I was fairly autonomous all that time, and Mary and I got along fine; still do. Some women have a hard time working for another woman.\\n\\n One thing I learned early on is, and I tried especially to tell the secretaries, because I find that a lot of times secretaries want to treat everybody the same. I tell them, “You’re going to run into some problems there, because you really need to learn each person and how they are, and work with them the best way that you can work together with people. Once you make that realization, you will get along much better. Everybody isn’t the same.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s true. You were here since the last part of the Mercury Program. The astronauts that you encountered [originally] were all male until the 1978 class. Tell us your thoughts when you heard that the Shuttle astronauts were going to be more diverse in nature than you had worked with previously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> My first thought was, “How in the world are they going to go to the bathroom?” [Laughs] Because even though we had been flying astronauts for a long time, those were kind of personal things. I know there were guys, and especially the sim guys and whatever, who knew just how all that took place.\\n\\n So my thought was, “Golly, in that small space how are they going to do the thing?” Because guys, guys don’t pay any attention to any other guy. Now, you put a woman in the mix, and how is all that going to work? I never had any concern about their technical ability or anything like that. It was just the logistics of how it was going to work. Of course, the space program had to deal with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned this just briefly earlier, you talked about the Upward Mobility Program that was to assist clerical staff into more professional positions. Tell us about that and when you first heard of it and how that impacted you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Well, up until that time the only way to go from secretary into administrative was the federal service entrance examination. That’s another funny story. I had always heard that test was horrible, just a horrible test; nobody could pass it. They gave the test on-site one time, and I took it, and it didn’t seem too bad, but you wondered afterward. I remember seeing Ted [Fredrick T.] Boyes at some point afterward, and I said, “Well, Ted, how did I do?”\\n\\n He says, “Oh, you didn’t make it.” He was joking. I didn’t know for months later that I had passed that test.\\n\\n By then they had developed this Upward Mobility Program, so that test wasn’t even needed. You could apply, and you may or may not be selected. I was, as I say, very fortunate. I was doing work that I loved, and Cecil [E.] Dorsey was the Office Chief, and then Jennie Hughes replaced him. Then Jenny moved over to be the Federal Women’s Program Coordinator, and Cheryl [H.] Bouillion came in and was the Admin [Administrative] Officer. I used to do all these charts and all these things for what I thought people needed administratively, and I remember she told me one time that she had told Jack [R.] Lister, “If you ever see Maureen Bowen’s name on a promotion [Standard Form] 52, sign it.”\\n\\n I thought, “Man, that doesn’t hurt,” you know.\\n\\n Cheryl and her husband had been trying to have a child for like 10 years, and they finally said, “Okay, we’re going to adopt.” A month after they adopted that baby, she found out she was pregnant. So she had two babies under a year old. She resigned at that time, and I was lucky enough to move into that position. I was in the office, and I applied. I got the job and under Cecil Dorsey, and was an administrative assistant. When you get to the [GS-]11 [General Schedule, pay scale] level, you become an Administrative Officer.\\n\\n I remember Joe [Joseph H.] Gallagher telling me one time, “Oh, you’ll have your [GS] 12, no problem.”\\n\\n I thought, “Oh, man, 12s are awful hard to get for non-degreed people.”\\n\\n Cecil ended up taking a position out in Center Ops, out in Logistics, and I was lucky enough to move into his position. We had always been away from the directorate, and I think because I had grown up in the organization, knew the organization, it wasn’t an ideal situation, but I could operate away and autonomously. But I always told them, I said, “You know, my successor really needs to be over here, really needs to be over here so they can learn the office and the directorate.”\\n\\n When I retired, Georgia Piwonka had been my right-hand woman for so many years, and when I went through all those surgeries, she was thrown more or less into the position. I told them, “You’re crazy if you don’t select her.” They did select her, and they did move her over there to the directorate, which is really going to be helpful.\\n\\n Because no matter how much you tried to anticipate their needs for a meeting, you never would have all the right documents. I used to carry this huge book around with me and try to have any data I thought they might want. The register and some training info, this, that; and even though you knew the topic of the meeting, it could stray off into another direction. It was difficult to always have what you needed right then. You say, “Well, I’ll get it to you as soon as I get back.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many more duties did you take on when you moved up? Tell us more about what an Administrative Officer is responsible for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Other duties as assigned. [Laughs] I’ve said this for years and it’s almost true. You do everything nobody else wants to do. Engineers don’t want to do anything administrative, so you get all the floor space, the supplies, the job requirements, promotions, training; anything that isn’t engineering becomes yours.\\n\\n Managers get used to, when they say, “I want this,” it’s there. They have no idea sometimes what it takes to make “this” get right “there.” So to me that position has more duties, different duties, than almost any other; that you never get to finish one thing before you’re doing three others. You go in and look at any AO’s desk, and they’re going to have several folders that they’re working at the same time. You have to get pretty good at multitasking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had so much corporate knowledge when you came in there, because, like you said, you came in in 1962. Tell us about the great memories that you look back on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> All of them. Doing those simulations. Working at the agency for just a couple of months, and then I’m doing simulations that they’re going to use when the guys simulate the flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get to witness those? Were you in the sims when they did those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Not in the Stahl-Meyers Building, because they went somewhere else to do their simming. Once we moved on-site and once the Control Center was operational, yes. Oh yes, I was over there a lot. Moving from one program to another, each one—the Gemini Program, the first time we had two of them up there at the same time; the first rendezvous in space, Gemini 7/6. Just every single thing we did was another treasured memory. Apollo, you know, the tragedy of the fire and then how determined it made everybody to never have anything like that again. The triumph of Apollo 8 that finally went around the Moon, and Apollo 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your thoughts when you heard that they were going to send [Apollo] 8 around the Moon? Because that was a big moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> For somebody who’s not an engineer, who doesn’t understand flight dynamics and physics and all of that, you think, “Wow.” When we were first—even the Mercury flights; I remember when I was a kid and Captain Video was on TV. They’d have the spacecraft out there, and I thought, “You know, this is so farfetched. They’re never going to be able to do anything like that. Everybody knows there’s no air up there.” Not only did I live to see it happen, I was right in the middle of it. So I always think back on Captain Video and Maureen saying, “Ah.”\\n\\n They’re all such treasured memories, every achievement we made. Then the tragedies, they stand out also, and seeing what it did to the guys. When you think for all the flights we’ve had, the statistics tell you you’re going to have more than we did. In that regard you can feel good, but it’s never good to lose a crew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to ask you about Apollo 11 because when you went to work there, that was the greatest goal that everyone was trying to achieve. Were you on the Center at Apollo 11?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I was in the Control Center for every lunar landing. You don’t hear about this particular task. My branch at that time was the Experiment Systems Branch, which included the lunar surface experiments. The principal investigators were from USGS, the [United States] Geological Survey out of Flagstaff, Arizona. During those Apollo flights their whole focus for any lunar landing was the topography, the geography of the Moon.\\n\\n In order not to miss a word—now, we didn’t have voice recording in those days like we do now—they hired two court reporters. We put them in our Experiments SSR [Staff Support Room]. We gave one a Selectric typewriter, and one had his stenotype machine, and they would trade off. One would be taking down every word the astronauts said on the Moon, and the other one would be typing. Well, knowing how this would be going, we loaded the machine with a roll of paper so they wouldn’t have to be doing sheets of paper.\\n\\n The one guy is doing this, and the other guy is typing at 130 words a minute with this roll coming off, and I was standing there with a pair of scissors, and as this came off, I’m cutting it into page-size sheets. When I’d get about 10, we had a runner that I would hand it to who would go to the nearest Xerox machine. We did have Xerox machines by then. He ran—the initial run was 10 copies that were delivered to the 10 critical positions in the MOCR and the geologists. Then after that—oh, the first one, Apollo 11. After that they wanted a million copies. I stood at a Xerox machine for eight hours running that Apollo 11 transcript.\\n\\n I said, “Okay, we’re not doing this anymore,” and I contacted Laverne Brazil, who at the time ran the copy center. You used to have to take your things out to another building to get multiple copies run. I said, “Okay, let’s work something out.” So she worked it out that they set up a Xerox machine in Building 1, and so after we did the 10 copies and we got a few more sheets, then we had a runner taking them over to Building 1, running however many copies it was, multiple, and who would bring them back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn’t take too long to learn, did it? [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Oh, one flight. I could hardly move after that. But in those days everybody did whatever it took for the job. Some of those guys, they just had like a dorm over in the Control Center for a while, because they were there night and day. Nobody worked an eight-hour day. Everybody did whatever it took, whatever it took. You did learn quickly some of the things that could be made easier and better.\\n\\n That was so thrilling to be right there. Well, I said every one of them, and you know, every one of them was in the middle of the night. Every one of them was at nighttime." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, then [Apollo] 13, that caused a little more turmoil. Were you in the midst of that as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Well, yes. See, we were there, and we were ready. That was something else. Everybody knows about 13, watching those guys, and talk about people staying, because they had Tiger Teams, and everybody was doing everything. It’s just incredible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you provide the same support that you had before, just whatever they needed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Correct, yes. Some of everything; you were getting sandwiches, whatever. Well, all throughout that time, I cut a deal with Shipley’s Donuts to give us doughnuts at five cents apiece, and every morning—I don’t know how I did it, because I couldn’t do it today. Every morning I got up and got my kids breakfast and ready and to daycare in time to get to Shipley’s at six o’clock in the morning.\\n\\n I dropped the kids off at six; that’s when daycare opened. Went right to Shipley’s; picked up 12 dozen doughnuts and brought them out to the office, set them up, and we had two 45-cup coffeepots that we started each morning. They would go through that in no time. Pat Garza rode with me for a long time, and we got the doughnuts and got the coffee made, and the guys had their coffee and everybody’s off and running.\\n\\n This is another funny story. One day Jim [James E.] Saultz, who was the Branch Chief, told me, “Hiram Baxter is going to come down and work with us for a while. Be sure you have a desk and all that stuff for him.” Well, I didn’t know Hiram, but I got the desk ready and some supplies, all the stuff the guys generally need.\\n\\n That afternoon a guy comes in, and he’s at the coffeepot. I thought, “Oh, this must be Hiram.” I said, “Hi.” I said, “Are you a Baxter?”\\n\\n He wheeled around, and he said, “What did you say?”\\n\\n I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this Baxter guy is something else.”\\n\\n It was Johnny [John E.] Cools [Jr.], and he thought I had said, “Are you a bastard?” So to this day I call him, “Mr. Baxter.” [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a way to start." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is a funny story. You’ve worked at so many different branches. How were they all different? You mentioned the Lunar-Earth Experiments Branch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Just evolution through reorganizations. It was pretty fast-paced through program after program after program and the different assignments within the program. I worked for Mel [F.] Brooks when he was the Section Head, and then became the Branch Chief. I was his Branch Secretary until he left and went over to Building 1, and Jim Saultz got his position. I worked for Jim for 12 years before I moved to Cecil’s office as a secretary.\\n\\n The way I got into that was back in the 70s—it was 1976, I believe—the Center wanted to try a—they called it an Administrative Center concept. Well, what it was was a typing pool by another name. Alma [S.] Martin, who worked for Les Sullivan, was put in charge of this project. Our directorate volunteered to take over this project, and they decided that Charlie [Charles S.] Harlan’s division, which is where we were at the time, would do this.\\n\\n Alma interviewed all the secretaries in the division and all the managers, and we told Alma, “This is not going to work. Here is why.” This was a total new experience for Alma, because nowhere on-site do I believe there were secretaries who were as outspoken as we were, but we had learned from the guys.\\n\\n They decided they would do it, and there were some interesting things during that process. It really gave me an opportunity, because I was the one who designed the whole suite, and we got the walls painted and just everybody colocated, etc. Nobody tried to sabotage the project. We were all doing what we were supposed to do, but everybody was miserable.\\n\\n At one point they decided, “You know, they’re not busy enough. We’re going to have them support the Flight Director Office, also.” Flight Directors are pretty independent, and I remember Neil [B.] Hutchinson would come to me. Neil Hutchinson has a very unique style of writing that was totally against all the Center correspondence rules. So he’d bring in something to be typed, and I would change it to fit the Center’s rules, and he’d come back and say, “No, I want it this way.”\\n\\n I said, “Neil, you can’t do it that way. The Center has rules. It’s not going to get out of here if you do it this way.”\\n\\n He said to me, “You know, you could never be my secretary.”\\n\\n I thought to myself, “I’d never want to be your secretary.” [Laughs] So we’re in this mode.\\n\\n Jo Corey was the first one to leave. Jo was probably the quietest person in the whole group, but she took a branch job in one of the branches that wasn’t a part of this, the first time she ever considered going anywhere. I had encouraged her for years to apply for a branch job. She wouldn’t do it. Then one day Cecil came walking through, and he says, “How’s it going?”\\n\\n I said, “I hate my job.”\\n\\n It was two weeks later he called me, and he said, “Can you come down for a minute?”\\n\\n I said, “Sure.”\\n\\n He says, “Would you be willing to come down and work for me?”\\n\\n I said, “Doing what?”\\n\\n He said, “As my secretary.”\\n\\n I said, “Yes, I will.” And that’s how I ended up in his office.\\n\\n One of the first things I did was this huge training matrix that he showed Kranz, and Kranz liked it. It wasn’t long after that the whole [administrative] center was disbanded. We told him that you can’t take people who have grown up one way and throw them into something that says, “You’re in a typing pool now,” because they’re people who have moved through the system, have become branch secretaries, and they’re not going to want to do this. As I say, nobody sabotaged it, but it didn’t last. They abandoned the project. In those days it cost us $225,000 to do the changes to the suite, etc. I thought, “Man, that’s $225 K we could have put on something else.” In government terms $225 K is nothing, but to me it was a whole lot.\\n\\n In Apollo—I know you’ve read Gene’s book, so you’ve read how I thought I was going to a federal prison for a while, when we did our [commemorative] mugs and patches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about that. I don’t remember all the details. It’s been a while since I read it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> It was in Apollo 11, and Gene decided we needed to have some mugs made with the emblem and our names and our position, and get some embroidered patches. So [the task] was given to our branch. Mel was the Branch Chief; Bruce [H.] Walton was the Deputy, and Mel told Bruce and me to take care of this. We said, “Okay.” We called Balfour; we knew they did mugs. A guy came out. We even went out to their place one time, and we picked out the mug. They had a committee that went through the design, and we placed the order.\\n\\n I looked in the Yellow Pages under “Embroidery,” and found a company that did embroidery in downtown Houston. I called them, and the guy says, “Well, you’re in luck. We happen to do the official ones, and we’ll just tack your order on the end.”\\n\\n I thought, “Oh, great.”\\n\\n So the patches had come in, and we’d given those out. We weren’t making any money; we just charged what it cost us. I had been out at the copy machine or somewhere, and I came into the office and Bruce came out, and he said, “Hey, Maureen, can you come in here for a minute?”\\n\\n I said, “Sure.”\\n\\n I go in his office, and he said, “This is Glenn [L.] McAvoy, the NASA Regional Inspector.”\\n\\n I said, “Hello.”\\n\\n He said, “I understand you’ve been doing mugs and patches.”\\n\\n I said, “Yes, sir.”\\n\\n He said, “How have you been handling the money?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, we collected from people and put it in the coffee fund, and when they came in, we paid for them.”\\n\\n He started quoting from Title 18 of the U.S. code that it was illegal to use government insignia, and it was so many years in prison, and so many dollars in fines. All I could think was, “Oh, my god, I’m going to be so old and so poor by the time I get out of prison.” All I could say to him was, “I wish you’d talk to our Division Chief.”\\n\\n He says, “Oh, I intend to.” He said, “Do you think we can talk to him now?”\\n\\n I said, “You’ve got to be kidding. You can’t just go—.” So I called up to Lois Ransdell, and I said, “Lois,” I said, “the Regional Inspector’s here, and he’s upset over our mugs and patches.” I said, “Do you think we can get to Gene?”\\n\\n She said, “Well, he’s in a meeting, but I’ll pull him out.” So we went up, and as soon as—the inspector thought Bruce and I were doing this, making money on our own. As soon as Kranz said, “Oh yes, it’s a division project. I asked them to do it,” that guy did a total 180 [degrees].\\n\\n “Oh yeah, well, you know, I play golf with Gerry Griffin every week.” He says, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll help y’all get this approved.”\\n\\n I thought, “You jerk.” So everybody went away.\\n\\n Well, Gene didn’t even wait for him to do anything. Mike [Michael] Collins, the [Apollo 11] crewman, took it to [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, D.C.] and got it approved for us.\\n\\n Oh, and the [Inspector] guy says, “I’ll even order one of those mugs.”\\n\\n When the mugs came in, I called him, and he came over to get the mug. Well, Bruce wasn’t there. When Bruce came back from wherever he was, he said, “Did McAvoy come get his mug?”\\n\\n I said, “Yeah.”\\n\\n He says, “Well, did he say anything?”\\n\\n I said, “No. He just kind of looked a little funny.” Bruce had put a swastika on the bottom of it. [Laughs] If he had told me, I never could have given it to him, but since he didn’t and it happened, I got a big kick out of it.\\n\\n Now, Kranz wouldn’t have had us do that, either, so it’s a good thing Bruce just didn’t tell anybody. But, here I am, this lowly person, and I’m thinking about going to prison." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Married to a police officer, too. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Oh, boy, that was another thing. When they opened the brand-new Pasadena police department, they had the families come in for an open house. I went downstairs where the cells are, and they’re not the ones with the bars. They’re with the heavy vault doors. One of the guys is there, and he says, “Hey, go ahead in.”\\n\\n I said, “No, I don’t think I want to.”\\n\\n He said, “Oh, we’ll let you right back out.”\\n\\n I went in there. That door slammed, and at that moment I knew I would never do anything that was going to put me in a jail. Over the years when some of those guys asked for—I said, “Look, I will bend the rules as far as they’ll bend. I will not break them.”\\n\\n Oh, and this is back at the Stahl-Meyers Building; this was in Gene’s book. The day before President [John F.] Kennedy died, he was in Houston and he was downtown. We knew that the motorcade was going to come down the freeway to take him to Ellington to fly to Dallas, and we all went outside and watched the motorcade go by. Then the next day I was working, and Connie [R.] Turner at the time—she’s Dunaway now—she called me and she said, “Maureen, President Kennedy’s been shot.”\\n\\n I said, “No.”\\n\\n She said, “Yes, it’s on the news now.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, go break into that meeting and tell them.”\\n\\n She said, “No, you do it.”\\n\\n I said, “No, Connie, you heard it. You go do it.”\\n\\n She said, “No, you do it.”\\n\\n I went into the meeting that they were having upstairs in Gene’s area, and I told them that the President had been shot. Of course, everybody went to radios. That was—it was just a day after you’d seen him ride down the road, and all of sudden he’s gone. And he was the one who had directed us to do what we would do, and Kranz refers to that. Every chance he gets he refers to that, to Kennedy’s mandate that we do this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You must have had a number of dignitaries and people that you met along the way during those early Apollo missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> For a long time our office was right where we looked out over that sidewalk from the rear of Building 30 into the building where all those dignitaries would be dropped off. Some of the ones I remember were Connie Stevens, Hugh O’Brien. I even got Hugh O’Brien’s autograph in the Control Center; I got Robert Culp’s also, although he didn’t want to give it to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You convinced him, did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> And, oh, man, what’s the guys’ name? He was on the Dobie Gillis show; he played Chatsworth [Osborne, Jr., played by Steven Franken]. I got his autograph. He was very nice. He was fun to talk to. And one you couldn’t ask for autographs that I thought was really interesting was Prince Philip [Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II].\\n\\n We got to be in the VIP Room when a couple of Presidents, [Lyndon B.] Johnson, [Richard M.] Nixon came through. Of course, once people found out that that was a good way to do it—they didn’t really control the VIP Room too much in those early days—it would get right crowded in there.\\n\\n Then, during that first awful Apollo 13 movie, Houston, We Have a Problem, some of us were in that room milling around. You couldn’t tell it in the movie, and I was just as happy that you couldn’t, because that was an awful, awful, awful movie. That movie made people on-site very reluctant to agree to participate or even give some interviews. PAO [Public Affairs Office] will tell you today you don’t have to talk to anybody.\\n\\n Actually, in those early days when we first moved on-site they didn’t restrict reporters. Now they are held back to Building 2. In those days, we’d come in, and you’d have to work your way through them to get into Building 30. I actually have had some say, “Hey, lend me your badge,” which could get you fired in a hurry. I think it was that kind of almost harassment that ended up keeping them to certain areas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Center was full of activity during the Apollo missions, but then the announcement came that they were going to stop. Can you tell us about the impact on you and your fellow co-workers when you learned that there was going to be an ending sooner than later to the Apollo Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> You always hated to see a program come to an end. While you looked forward to the next one, there was always some worry about where your job was going to be; if you were going to have a job between programs. For the civil service people it became less of a worry, because you did phase from one program to another.\\n\\n Over the years I used to watch the contractors and I really felt for some of them. They went not only [going] from program to program but from contract to contract, because in order to underbid, most of the time what happened, the guys who had worked themselves into a lower-level supervisory position, they were the ones who weren’t brought over because it was their money that was going to help the other person underbid. So I used to hate to see the contracts move from one to another, because most of the people would be picked up; it would be a badge change. But there were always some losses that were sad. Sometimes it happened just as a person would be vested, just before they would have their time to count toward retirement. The USA [United Space Alliance] helped a lot of that, because USA had so many different jobs, also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before Apollo closed completely, you assisted with ASTP and Skylab. How were those programs different from what you had been used to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> ASTP wasn’t too different. Skylab, we had lots more recording technical capability. We didn’t go over to the Control Center quite as much. In fact, in our experiments area, we were able to put in a system, like a phone mail; it was before we had phone mails on the office phones. A recorder had the phone hooked up for when people called in—you know, the PIs [Principal Investigators] would call in from different places wondering about the status of a particular experiment. I would just go over and retrieve the tapes. So we didn’t spend quite as much time in the Control Center, but you had more telecommunications, more computer capability that you were able to do things from your office location. Still did as much, just in a different way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Plus you had people now working 24 hours around the clock for supporting missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> For the missions, yes, a few days before and a couple of days afterward, usually. Of course, once we started [Space] Shuttle and [International Space] Station, then you did have more and more of it. And of course, with the Shuttle Program, it was expected to have a launch every couple of weeks, and that didn’t happen. Not even once a month, usually. Shuttle was slower than you expected, and it never did get up to what they had thought it would be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When we were doing research, there was a question about a teleprinter machine during Skylab. Did you work with those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> I didn’t do teleprinter. In fact, I was thinking about that. I’m not even sure exactly where it was and who was doing it, but it was another organization, probably an info [information] systems kind of—the network controllers or somebody who provided that service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about the technology changes. You mentioned the Ditto machine and just the evolution of the typewriter itself. What were some of the other areas of technology that you watched while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> The change from the very first word processors to better word processors to PCs [personal computers] to better PCs, smaller; the disk space, the computers got smaller. When you think back to the early days when you had a real-time computer complex with mainframe after mainframe after mainframe, and you have a small machine now doing what one of those huge machines does. I remember the first guy to have a handheld calculator, they were $400 or something, I think, at the time, the scientific [calculators]. Now you can buy calculators for a dollar. I mean, all of that [technology] brought about primarily by the space program and the needs of the space program. The computers in the Control Center are so small now.\\n\\n One funny thing, in the old days you had all those handbooks, and they would be all over the place. One of the justifications for the new Control Center was that with all this modern technology, you wouldn’t need all that paper that you saw. That’s always a transition for the guys, especially, because they had their handbooks. One day Jim [James J.] Shannon came by my office, and he said, “Come on, let’s go.”\\n\\n I said, “Where are we going?”\\n\\n He said, “To the Control Center.”\\n\\n I said, “What are we going to do.”\\n\\n He said, “Headquarters just called down, and they said that the TV’s showing all kinds of books on top of the consoles, and they want them taken out.”\\n\\n So we went over and we told the guys, “You’ve got to move this stuff. Put it down.” We ended up getting these bookcases to place at the ends, because Headquarters doesn’t want to see stuff laying on top of the console. It’s very crisp, you know, the TV of the FCR. They have gotten more and more used to looking at info on the monitors. They don’t refer as much to the paper copy.\\n\\n But I don’t care how good your system is. Every once in a while a computer is not going to be doing what you want it to, and you’ve got to go back to paper for some reason or other. One of the big justifications for computers was going to a paperless environment. Well, I haven’t seen it, and I don’t expect to see it anytime soon. For all this stuff that you have, you can’t get enough memory to take care of it without costing an arm and a leg, so you’re still going to have your paper somethings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked earlier about spending most of your adult life at the Center. Why did you choose to stay and not go look for another job at another place?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Oh, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. I was doing what I liked. I was successful. Just watching history in the making, the people I worked with; I just couldn’t imagine having that same satisfaction anywhere else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did much change when the Center started shifting towards supporting the Shuttle activities? Did much change for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> The biggest change for me was doing mostly administrative kind of things and not being in the middle of the technical stuff. In the old days, doing all that typing of all that technical stuff, you were aware of what was going on technically and what was even handier, you knew the acronyms. You ask any new people to the site, and they say, “Good Lord, it’s like a new language.” Losing some of that was a change for me. I had to start looking up what is this, what is this, what is that. Especially in more recent years, because people at Headquarters didn’t know what all that was, you had to be sure that you spelled out every acronym, even though they wouldn’t even know what that was in a lot of cases. That was the biggest change for me.\\n\\n I was working more with management by then, the supervisors and managers, not with the guys. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was just a different level of work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Through your life you were a female working in a male-oriented environment. Did you ever feel like there was a difference of how they treated you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like the respect level was equal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Oh yes, always equal. You know, I found that the guys always looked out for me. They really looked out for me. Even when it was a coarser environment than it is now, I never felt disrespected, never. As I say, it was like family. They were all my big brothers or dads or whatever. To this day when I see like Gerry Griffin, Gene, all the guys—when Phil [Philip C.] Shaffer died, one of the first notes I got back was from Neil Hutchinson.\\n\\n I didn’t feel that I finished the Neil Hutchinson story. A few years after that, Hutchinson was named Manager of the Space Station Freedom Program. He needed an Admin [Administrative] Officer, and HR asked me, “Would you be interested?”\\n\\n I said, “I’m really happy where I am. I don’t see any need to change.”\\n\\n They said, “Well, could we just put your name in just as a possible?”\\n\\n I said, “Okay.”\\n\\n Well, the next thing I know, Hutchinson went to HR, who were the middlemen between [Clifford E.] Charlesworth and Kranz, and asked for me to be his AO. So my telling him in those days—guys don’t want yes people. They want people to tell them how it is. He asked for me to be his AO, and both Charlesworth and Kranz said not only no, but, “Hell, no.” [Laughter] And that didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I was glad later, because that program was very short-lived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Station does have a history of its own, doesn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Boy, doesn’t it. To this day Neil is one of the first to respond to any request." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think has been the most challenging aspect of what you had to deal with when you were out at the Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Mostly, I guess, giving people the correct information, because there’s a lot of stuff out there, and sorting through and really finding out what the correct information is in an admin world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you feel to be the most significant accomplishment? If you have to look back, what are some of the things that you’re most proud of that you were able to do while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Actually, the thing I’m proudest of, and it was part of my job—it was different in that, oh, I guess it was probably 20 years ago, and the Center was trying to automate things. Rich [Richard H.] Campbell, who was the computer person for HR, put out a note saying, “We’re building this administrative program. We’re trying to automate some of the processes.” He sent it to the Directorate AOs and said, “If you would like to participate, let me know now.”\\n\\n [Laughs] “I’m in.” I became a part of a team. Rich was the HR data owner. Lloyd [R.] Erickson [Jr.] in Information Resources was the data building person. They had a very small contract. It was just three or four people at any time, and so you had Rich, the data owner; Lloyd, the data builder; and the contractors trying to program this, who had no idea how the government works. So I’m the data user in most parts.\\n\\n The program, JSC MIS, the JSC Management Information System, was programmed in NOMAD, and was hosted on one of those mainframes that was here. You know, NOMAD is pretty much a dinosaur language now, but that was, and I’ll tell you, today still the best data program I’ve ever seen, and we were a killer team.\\n\\n At some point, maybe 10 years ago, they moved that mainframe to [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. They wanted to get rid of mainframes, because they were expensive to maintain. I told anybody I could get to listen over the years, “Hey, look, I don’t have a problem with that, as long as you can give us something that will do the same thing.” I know computers, and I know if you get the right one and you get the right people doing it, they can do anything. Well, they kept that mainframe going, and it’s still there, but they cut off our access to it about—I’ve been retired a year, and it was at least a year before that, so it’s two to three years ago. It was January of 2005, I believe. See, they had to renew our security access to it every January, and they didn’t renew it.\\n\\n They decided—“they” being the Info Resources, and I imagine that included the CIO [Chief Information Officer] Office; and you know all that is back into IRD [Information Resources Directorate] now—that they were not going to continue the mainframe. By then there was only one of the programmers left. Rich had left JSC several years earlier, retired. Lloyd was close to retirement. I could retire anytime. There was one of the original programmers, and they had her on a temporary basis; she just logged her hours.\\n\\n Well, even at that time HR had hired their own contractor, who was running stuff for them, and I don’t know what kind of thing he was using, but it was so much more difficult. I said, “You can do this in JSC MIS. It’s bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.” The programmer, she even gave them a lot more time than she charged, trying to help them through it. When they found out that this system was out there, they leaned toward it. But her company was squeezing her time down, and I kept saying, “We’ve got to keep it. We’ve got to keep it.”\\n\\n The IRD eventually hired a woman—who has a heart of gold—who really wants to give the user what the user needs, but she built reports. She called me one day and she says, “Do you know what a TIG Report is?”\\n\\n I said, “I sure do. I created it.” I said, “Here, let me see,” and I pulled out a sheet.\\n\\n She says, “Oh, thank goodness.” She says, “Everybody’s asking me for this TIG Report, and I didn’t know what it was.”\\n\\n I said, “It’s ‘Time in Grade,’” you know.\\n\\n She built her report, because they were building it in a more modern language, Sequel, and I don’t know whether Sequel can’t do it that way or whether they just didn’t want to put that much effort into it. She built reports. In JSC MIS we went in and we said, “We want this, this, and this in this format,” and bing, it came out just the way we wanted it.\\n\\n Her report was just a report that we had to download into [Microsoft] Excel or something else in order to manipulate it. It created more work for the user. Once we would tell her, “Well, we like this report, but we also would like to see it like this,” she built a hundred reports for us with the same data, whereas in the old one, you just chose the data and the format, and you were in.\\n\\n Then they came out with the new Brio System that is administered by the Department of the Interior, as is the Labor Program. Brio, if I had been 15 years younger, I would have gotten into it. It is a massive database, but you’re going to have to learn it and learn how to use it, etc. I already had a system that worked, and I found out before I retired and afterward they were finding some errors in Brio.\\n\\n I understand today that many of the reports that I built in JSC MIS are still being used throughout the Center, and they’re trying to come up with ways to give the people what they want. That’s what I feel the best about. I treasure all those other things, but I felt that was a very, very long-term, productive effort, good not only for me, but everybody on-site. I had women from all over, and what was beautiful about that was if I built a report the way I used it, and then one of my guys would transfer to another directorate—you know, they’re moving all around—and they’d say, “Hey, I want this kind of data,” and their secretaries would say, “I don’t know. What is this?”\\n\\n They’d say, “Well, call Maureen.” I could ship that format to them, and then when they ran it, it would put their data in it. I don’t know whether they’ll either keep building on what they have, or whether they’ll try and get the Brio thing working. As I say, that’s what I feel the best about. I felt it was most useful to the widest majority of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like it is. Well, I think, if it’s all right with you, we’ll stop here for today, and give us a chance to come back and visit again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Maureen E. Bowen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "> Okay." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00262", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HessWN/hesswn.htm", + "original_file_name": "HessWN_4-22-02.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/HessWN/HessWN_4-22-02.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "location_date": "Berkeley, California – 22 April 2002" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Carol Butler", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Wilmot N. Hess", + "Wester Hess" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 22, 2002. This oral history with Dr. Wilmot Hess is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project at his home in Berkeley, California. Carol Butler is the interviewer and is assisted by Rebecca Wright.\\n\\n Thank you very much for talking with us today and inviting us to your home. We appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Happy to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you. To begin with, if you could tell us a little bit about your background, and how you became interested in science in general, and physics in particular." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My father was a biologist in a college in upstate New York, and so I grew up with science around me. It was maybe more biology than physics, but I sort of became aware of the fact that biology was a very imperfect science, and I didn’t like it because it wasn’t structured enough, I guess.\\n\\n So I knew the physics professor at Hamilton College [Clinton, New York] where I grew up, and he showed me some of the things they used in their laboratories and demonstrations, and I thought they were pretty fun. So I leaned toward that. Then when I got in college, well, I started doing physics right away. That seemed to be the thing which was most fun for me. And then after a period in the navy, in V-12 program, I got back into physics. I had studied engineering under V-12. Then in graduate school, here in Cal [California], I did physics, because that was, at that point, what I was focusing in on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some of your early experiences, —one of your first jobs was at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory here in California. What type of research were you involved with while you were working there? What sort of projects did you work with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First, I started as an assistant working with other students, and you’d have two or three people, a senior guy who was doing his thesis project, or maybe had finished his degree and was working on staff as the head of this team of people, and you would work together doing an experiment. I was the last generation of people who were able to work on sort of individual experiments. That means that the research team would think up the experiment and decide it was meritorious, worth doing, then develop the instruments to do it, carry out the experimental runs to collect the data from the machines here in Berkeley, analyze the data, publish the results, all of that with a group of two or three people.\\n\\n Now in the big labs, and Berkeley is no longer a big lab because it doesn’t have a big machine, but at the big labs, there are teams of fifty people or so that work on an individual experiment, so you’ve lost, in some sense, the sense of self. You’re doing the whole thing, instead of just a little piece of a big project. I liked it that you could do the whole thing.\\n\\n The kinds of projects I worked on when I first came here, I saw the 184-inch Cyclotron, which was, at that point, the largest high-energy physics machine in the world, and pretty impressive for that period of time. Now, of course, machines are a lot bigger. But I was very impressed by that, I remember. When I first walked into the building where the machine was, I literally sort of trembled and felt awestruck, I guess, I don’t know.\\n\\n So then I did experiments on the 184-inch, where you would build your counters, Geiger counters, scintillation counters, what have you, to make some measurement on particles. One of the things I did was to, with a couple of other guys, hit a proton beam on a nucleus, a target of carbon or aluminum or various other things, and then look for the particles coming out from the explosion, and looking to see what their characteristics were.\\n\\n Now, if you go to a billiard table and hit a billiard ball, you shoot one ball, hit another ball, the two balls bounce off and the angle between the two balls bouncing off is 90 degrees, always 90 degrees. It couldn’t be one ball straight ahead and one ball sidewise or two balls at 45 degrees, but it’s always 90 degrees.\\n\\n Now, if you hit a moving ball, that is to say the ball that you strike was moving, they would go off at different angles. That’s what happens inside a nucleus, because you hit a particle in the nucleus, which is moving. So proton comes in, hits a proton, two protons go out, but instead of being at 90 degrees, maybe they’re at 50 degrees. You measure that and you can measure the characteristics of the particle which was struck. So by doing this experiment, you can measure the momentum, the velocity of the particles moving inside the nucleus. That was the first time people had done that, and that was sort of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That certainly sounds like it would be. Very interesting. Were there other projects that you were involved as well at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. When I was working the staff at the Radiation Lab, I worked on ten or fifteen different experiments like that. If you want some more examples, I can give you. Maybe that’s enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Sure. That’s fine. We can always come back if we need to. At any point during this time, did you begin working on researching the upper atmosphere or space? Was that during this time, while you were—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. That was much later, after I left Manned Spacecraft Center, Houston." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, you were here. For a while you also were working in the Plowshare Division." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s after I went to Livermore [Livermore Radiation Laboratory, Livermore, California]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. At Livermore. What sorts of projects were you involved with there? How did the projects you were working on at Livermore vary from what you had been working on when you were here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were a lot different. At Livermore, I was working on weapons." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s not clear that there’s two different times you were working at Livermore and two different times here in Berkeley." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But when I got my Ph.D., which was 1957—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "’54." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, ’54, that’s right. Then I got a job, aside from being a graduate student, went to Livermore. Had more money than I knew what to do with, and started working in weapons. Now, my particular part of the game was to run a high-explosive test bunker in the desert near where the bombs were set off, at the atomic test site north of Las Vegas [Nevada]. The thing that we did in our explosive test bunker, we would—you’re inside the bunker. The bunker’s armored. Outside the bunker, you set off explosions. Now, the explosions were taking a part of a design of a weapon and exploding it, and watching the parts move. And the way we watched the parts move, was to have a very intense X-ray beam which came out from the bunker, and the explosion was carried out outside the thing. On the far side of the explosion, you put some detectors, and you looked at the detectors as the explosion was going on, and you would see that the X-ray beam got weaker, in some sequence of different detectors, and how that implied—when it got weaker, that meant that some of the metal inside the exploding gadget was getting in the beam, getting in the way, so you could measure when the exploding parts moved past you and what the density was. That told you something about what the nature of the explosion was and how the metal inside the gadget was working, and that was useful to the designers.\\n\\n I did that for a couple of years. I guess it was a couple of years, yes, traveling every week from here in Berkeley to Las Vegas. —At that time in Las Vegas, you could still get a hotel room for five dollars a night, and five o’clock in the afternoon you go to Happy Hour, and there was all the food you could eat for the cost of one drink. So that was fun.\\n\\n But I did that for two years, and then at the end of that stint, I came back and worked part-time here at Berkeley and then got this job at Livermore, a new job of being head of the Plowshare group. And the plowshare, from the Bible, “Beat your swords into plowshares,” and the idea was to try to find peaceful uses, industrial uses, for nuclear weapons.\\n\\n There were three or four kinds of things. One was trying to do excavation, and so you would dig a canal or build a harbor with some underground explosions, and the underground explosions moved the dirt, and you’re left with the hole, which is what you want. We got set up to build a test harbor on the coast of Alaska, and this was to be three medium-sized bombs under ground, several hundred feet under ground, to connect to the ocean on one hand, and then to connect to the basin on the other, and the basin was to be made with one or maybe two bigger, deeper buried bombs, to dig a bigger hole. So you had sort of a canal leading into a basin. We did all the design work on that, and test work, and went up and studied the coast of Alaska.\\n\\n Then enough people got annoyed at us enough so that we canceled the project, and it was very interesting to see who got annoyed. There were a bunch of environmentalists who thought it was a bad thing to spread radiation around northern Alaska, and were worried about the caribou eating the lichen, which would be radioactive and causing trouble with the caribou. We said, “Well, we’ll build a fence around the whole thing.” And all that wasn’t good enough.\\n\\n The other thing that was interesting was that polar bear hunters didn’t like us. A polar bear hunter, a guy who had a light airplane, would find a rich Texan who wanted a polar bear skin rug, and get a few thousand dollars out of him, and then take him out on the ice floes in the ocean near where our harbor was going to be, and find a polar bear, and then run the polar bear until he was so tired he could hardly walk, then land the plane on the ice, and the Texan would get out and go “bang!” and then you’ve got your polar bear rug. Well, that was not especially a sport, but the end product was what the guy wanted.\\n\\n The local people were making money off this, and they didn’t want anybody coming up and messing up their scheme of things and causing undue newspaper notoriety and all that. So they were against us, and after a while, the noise became enough that we decided, “Well, we’d better not do this thing.” So we quit that. But there were a variety of other projects also in Plowshare." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember about the Russian testing and the amount of radiation that came into Alaska." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "True. After we had abandoned our test, the Russians shot a very big—fifty-megaton—explosion on their north coast, and the fallout from that test was more [radiation] over all of the Brooks Range than it would have been right alongside our test harbor, and nobody said a word. And that annoyed me, that there was this kind of a double standard. But that’s the way life goes.\\n\\n So you want to hear about more Plowshares things? Probably not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Well, one or two other examples might be interesting. Then we can move on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, one of the things that we thought about doing, and eventually abandoned it also, was to see if you could have an underground explosion which would make a great big hot zone in the earth, and then mine heat. But we thought of doing this in a salt dome where you’d melt the salt and have a great big puddle of molten salt, and then stick pipes down into it and circulate water and bring out hot water and use that hot water to drive turbines or whatever.\\n\\n Well, we carried that out, down to the place where we were sort of ready to do an experiment, but we decided, “Well, let’s go and see one,” what happens naturally when something like this occurs. So we went out to Hawaii and studied the lava lake that had been made in Kilauea Iki, [when] the crater Kilauea erupted. This goes back into the fifties, whatever. It erupted into a little subsidiary basin away from the main basin, and then that froze over, and here you had underground this molten lava. We thought, “Well, okay, we’ll go and see if we can put a pipe down into this, circulate water into it and get hot water out and how all that goes.”\\n\\n So we set up, had a great big husky Hawaiian carry down the equipment to do this, which was fairly primitive equipment. It was a drill about two inches in diameter, I guess, did the drill with a little electric motor, drilled down twenty-three feet, and the drill started sinking all by itself. “Ooo, oops, it’s hot down there.” [Laughs] Well, all right, we find the heat. A little bit bothersome to be standing on the top of this. You’re out in the middle of a lake, and there’s only twenty feet of ground underneath you.\\n\\n So then we tried to circulate water into this thing, and the water circulated, but we found out that the lava near the pipe froze, and that was good insulator so you couldn’t transfer much heat to the pipe and couldn’t get very much hot water out. Ooo, not good. So that, among other things, made that experiment not work.\\n\\n Then we thought about digging a Panama Canal with a bunch of underground explosions. You say, why do you want a Panama Canal? The present Panama Canal can only accept ships of a certain size, because it has locks. You go from ocean, through locks, up to Gatun Lake, locks down the other side to ocean. The locks limit what you can do very severely, and they worried about in wartime having to go through the locks, and big ships couldn’t make it because they were wider than when the canal was built.\\n\\n So, let’s do a sea-level canal. So we went down and made a survey of the area, and it turned out that where the people made the present canal was the best place by far for a route for a canal, because it had the lowest middle of the isthmus. It was only about 300 feet, if I remember right, and most of the rest of the isthmus was the better part of a thousand feet. And that was very difficult, and so after a while, we decided we weren’t going to do that either.\\n\\n So what did Plowshare accomplish? Very little. Did a bunch of plans, but never did anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, learned some things about different properties, and things that wouldn’t work, and things that might work if you were able to do them. Sometimes it’s not always coming out with a physical product, it’s some of the knowledge you get just by doing it.\\n\\n Well, at what point did you learn about the opportunity at Goddard Space Flight Center [Greenbelt, Maryland]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in Livermore, and I’d been trying to get the Livermore bosses to push for our involvement in space experiments, military space experiments. There was a thing called Project Vela, which was putting up detectors in space, looking for Soviet explosions. Doing the work on those things, building the detectors, putting them on satellites, getting the data back, that was fun, but also with the same detectors you could do some interesting astrophysics.\\n\\n Well, so I tried to sell our lab on taking responsibility for that project, and we had a fairly good inroad onto it. I had done experiments in space by that time, and one of the other guys out there, Steve White, had also done some, so we had more knowledge of how to do space experiments than our competitor, namely, Los Alamos [National Laboratory, New Mexico]. But our management didn’t want to get involved in this kind of thing, so they said no, and Los Alamos got the experiment. So that sort of annoyed me.\\n\\n I had, by that time, been involved in a couple of experiments in space. We would mount some neutron detectors onto a rocket fired from Cape Canaveral [Missile Test Annex, Florida]. —This was a test rocket, which was just being fired to see if the rocket would work right. We would hang a little gadget on the outside of it, a pod, and this pod would have some detectors in it. The thing we were trying to measure was neutrons in the atmosphere of the Earth, how high up did they go, how many leaked out the upper end of the atmosphere, and was this a useful, important source for the Van Allen Radiation Belt, which you may or may not know anything about, the particles in space, which are [a] naturally occurring band of particles around the Earth.\\n\\n So the idea was, can these neutrons coming out of the atmosphere of the Earth play a role in the radiation belt? Now, a neutron by itself is radioactive. It decays with a half-life of a thousand seconds. It will turn into a proton and an electron. If it’s inside a nucleus, it’s stable. It doesn’t decay. So if you have these neutrons coming out of the atmosphere of the Earth in space decaying, then you have particles coming into the area where the Van Allen radiation belt is. Is that an important source of those Van Allen particles or not?\\n\\n So we made measurements on how many neutrons are coming out, and we did calculations on—I did the calculations on what their energies should be, the distribution of energies. And this was really the first quantitative idea on how you make the radiation belt. Well, we’d done enough of that, both the experimental work on the neutrons and the theoretical study of how the neutrons are formed, what their energies are.\\n\\n So that after Goddard was formed, that must have been 1957 or ’58 or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think about ’58." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "’58? The first guy who went to Goddard to be the head of the Theoretical Division there, a physicist named Bob [Robert] Jastrow, who is an old friend of mine, and Jastrow put together the Theoretical Division, a bunch of guys, theorists from various kinds of backgrounds, to study the processes in space.\\n\\n Well, then after he’d been doing that two or three or four years, he decided he wanted to move to New York City, and he set up a new laboratory attached to Columbia University, which was to do many of the same things, and he could attract senior professors from several of the eastern universities to work at Columbia easier than he had found it to be to attract these guys to work at Goddard.\\n\\n So he went to New York City, set up this new institute, and his job was available. And he recommended [me] to the bosses of Goddard and talked to me about did I want to go and do this, take this job over. And because I’d been doing things in space already, and because the laboratory had said, no, they didn’t want to get more involved in space things—that’s the Lawrence Livermore Lab—I said, “Well, maybe I’ll do it. I’ll go to Goddard and see how life is on that side of the street.”\\n\\n So I took the job as head of the Theoretical Division at Goddard, and stayed there three years, however long it was. I don’t remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Six." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Six? All right. But that was fun. I really enjoyed that, because we had a bunch of interesting people. I brought in several more people from the areas that I knew about to work there, including two or three people from the lab here. And we started doing studies mainly of the radiation belt. I ended up writing a book on the radiation belt out of this, and trying to understand quantitatively how the radiation belts are formed, where the particles come from, how they become as energetic as they are, and things like that. And that was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it.\\n\\n We set up a series of lectures every Friday afternoon, and we’d have invited speakers come in from other labs, or universities, to tell us about their research, new things going on. Almost every week we would hear somebody talking about something going on in space research which was new, very new. —The rate of discovery of new things at that period of time was very large. It was much larger than it had been in the nuclear physics that I did here, because it was a completely new subject, a new area, and there were all kinds of different things that people were finding out about particles in space and other things in space that just hadn’t been known. And that was exciting. I thoroughly enjoyed it.\\n\\n I was the head of the Theoretical Division for, Wester says six years, and I was a little bit mislabeled. I’m not really a theorist. I’m a guy who does experiments, experimental physicist as opposed to a theoretical physicist, and in most cases, those two things are fairly separate. A guy does either experiments or theory. There are few people, I fear me [not] being one of them, who combine both very well. I didn’t. I was an experimentalist, and after a few years of being head of the Theoretical Division, that’s sort of a fraudulent title. I decided, well, I probably ought to go do something else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, before we move on to anything else, I wanted to ask you about a couple of the projects you were involved with while you were in the Theoretical Division, at least I think it was during the same timeframe. One of the projects was the Explorer 15 satellite that was to study an artificial radiation created by nuclear explosion in space. Can you tell us a little bit about that project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, this explosion in space, —the U.S. did this and it was at least partly to find out if you could make a radiation belt in space, which could be a device for shooting down incoming rockets, the radiation from the collision of these particles with the incoming rocket enough to knock it down. So let’s do an experiment to find out if you can make an artificial radiation belt, and how strong it would be. So they shot —a bomb—I can’t remember the numbers anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember how high it was or what its energy was, but anyway, high enough up, and they did it in the Pacific, so that it should make a radiation belt. I worked on the theoretical analysis of this before the bomb was shot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This is Starfish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Starfish. Project Starfish, the name of the explosion. We tried to make an estimate of how intense the radiation would be afterwards, how much of a radiation belt would be made by the bomb, and we missed it a good deal. There was a process that occurred that we hadn’t thought of, that created the effect of the end product differently than the planning group had imagined." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But weren’t you closer than anyone else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, but we were really the only ones doing the study. You don’t want me to get into the details of this. Had to do with instabilities in the magnetosphere, which is a subject beyond the conversation here.\\n\\n So anyway, they shot the bomb, made the artificial radiation belt, and it turned out to be more intense than they had expected it would be. But a lot of it died fairly rapidly, as the particles are low enough so that when they interact with the atmosphere, the atmosphere absorbs them essentially.\\n\\n Where was I going? So, anyway, the radiation belt that was left was strong enough, people wanted to find out what its characteristics were because it was unusually intense. Okay.\\n\\n Now, there were some things that would tell us right away what was going on, but after we had used that information as much as we could, we decided we wanted to put up something ourselves to find out more about what the artificial radiation belt was like. Therefore, Explorer 15.\\n\\n But before I come to that, there were two or three satellites already up: Injun, which had been Van Allen’s baby; and Telstar, which was a satellite put up by Bell Labs, as a communication thing, not specifically to look at particles in space. But Telstar had on it—one, it had thick cover plates, thicker than normal, over the solar cells, and that turned out to be very useful because these cover plates were thick enough so that the electrons that were in space from the artificial radiation belt wouldn’t damage the solar cells rapidly.\\n\\n In the Injun satellite, it knocked the satellite out. The satellite couldn’t take the radiation from the electrons striking the solar cells and, in a period of weeks or months, the satellite died.\\n\\n So the Telstar detectors, they had particle detectors on it, as well as having thick solar cells, that turned out to be very useful because it was the right area and the detectors were the right kind, and we got a reasonable look at what was going on with especially the electrons in the radiation belt from that. But not enough so that we still wanted to get a lot more information, so we, Goddard, took the responsibility of making Explorer 15, which was a collection of instruments made by different groups in the country, people from Applied Physics Lab at Johns Hopkins [University, Baltimore, Maryland], from Iowa, Van Allen’s University, from, I guess, San Diego.\\n\\n There were three or four different groups that put instruments that were fairly easily obtainable together and we made this satellite in a record time. We put the thing up in just a few months. I’ve forgotten how long it was, but a few months, and started getting a good set of measurements about the radiation belt, what its characteristics were, how fast it was decaying, how much of a problem it would be for other satellites and this sort of thing.\\n\\n I was the project scientist for this Explorer 15, and that meant I had to go around and get the groups to agree to put the instruments together and get them on the satellite, and, of course, everybody wanted to so it wasn’t any problem getting them, it was just getting the right instruments, and we got them pretty well, and seeing that they got put together correctly, and got the Cape together okay and launched okay. And so I saw the whole process of making a satellite, and getting it into orbit through, the whole system, and that was fun. I enjoyed that.\\n\\n That’s enough, I guess. Well, you ask me. Do you want more?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long did that radiation belt last?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the lower edges of it were washed away by the atmosphere fairly rapidly, but if you go up a couple of Earth radii in altitude near the Equator, you could see the residual radiation belt for several years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly sounds like it was an interesting project to work on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much were you aware, as you were doing these projects, particularly at Goddard, although you had also mentioned, while you were still in California, how much were you aware of the Soviet programs, what sorts of things they were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I got to know some of the Soviet experimenters. We would have international meetings where there would be papers given and research done by different countries, and a couple three times a year we’d get together with Soviet counterparts to hear what their work was. So I knew some of the people in the business, and I got to know some of the experiments they were doing, and they were, by our standards, reasonably crude.\\n\\n It’s interesting that the Soviets might have discovered the radiation belt before Van Allen did if they had put what detectors they had on satellites where they would allow people from other countries to receive the data from the satellite and understand what it meant. People in Australia who could listen to the satellite, heard some of the date from it, but didn’t understand it. And so it was not the Russian radiation belt; it was the Van Allen radiation belt, because they were secretive about it. But we knew some of their people, not terribly well socially—that was fairly different—but they didn’t very much impress me.\\n\\n I had another interesting—this is a sideline, so shut me up if you want. But back when I was working at Livermore, one of the sidelights that I got involved in, which was sort of fun, I went to Geneva, Switzerland, for three months to be an advisor to the Nuclear Test Ban Conference which was going on. It had been going on for quite a period of time, and it was getting a little stale and all that. But it was fun for me to see the kinds of things that went on. I wrote some of the speeches for our delegation to present at the meetings and stuff like that.\\n\\n There were Soviet scientists at one side of the table, the U.S. and British scientists had the other side—not scientists, delegations—had the other side of the table, and the scientists were back-benchers. But we got to know Soviet scientists and politicians at this meeting rather well, because we were there a long time and we were seeing them every day.\\n\\n One of the interesting things, we’d like to see them socially, outside of the formal work at the Palais Nationale, so there was some entertainment money available, and we’d go up after a meeting, three or four of our scientists would go up and approach their people and say, “We would like to invite you,” indicating the group, “to come to dinner with us one day.” That was the way you got to do it.\\n\\n And they would look up and be happy. They liked the idea of doing it. “Very well. We will let you know.”\\n\\n And then it would take about two or three weeks, and they’d get an answer back from Moscow that said, “Okay. You can go to dinner with them.”\\n\\n Then their people would come to our side of the table and stand up there and say, “By the way, about your very nice invitation to come to dinner. We will do it next Tuesday.” [Laughs] Their instructions were very specific. But it was a lot of fun. We got to know them really well that way. And they were good guys. They were friendly guys.\\n\\n Enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s certainly another interesting project there that you had an opportunity to participate in. How much did your work on the nuclear test ban affect your work at either Livermore or even at Goddard when you working on Project Starfish, in particular?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My work on the test ban?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you said you were an advisor to the Nuclear Test Ban Conference that was going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We were advising—the ambassador was the head of the U.S. delegation, about the technical side of what a test ban should be like. How much did that influence my work? Not at all, I think. Just a different subject." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. As you were working at Goddard and you were working on the various satellite programs, particularly in the Theoretical Division, did you have any work at all in the Mercury or Gemini Programs, any of the experiments that they did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any other, particularly satellite programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It would have been rather different if I’d been involved in the science in those things. I’ll tell you a story. I’ll tell it now. At a meeting later on, this now jumps down to Houston. I’m in a meeting with the Houston management about some part of the science business, and Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft, the head of [Flight] Operations down there, asked me something about the science program that was done on Gemini, and I said it was lousy. It was really bad. He looked very upset and said, “What do you mean, it was lousy?”\\n\\n I said, “It was a fiasco.”\\n\\n And he stomped out of the room. And he came back a minute later with a piece of paper written on it, “Fiasco: a ridiculous and utter failure.” He had gone to a dictionary and looked up the definition of “fiasco.” And he said, “Is that what you mean?”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, maybe it wasn’t quite ‘utter.’” And that didn’t seem to help very much. But it’s true. Science that they put together to do on Gemini was worthless, not useful at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly very limited." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As an example, they put a magnetometer onto the spacecraft to try to measure the Earth’s magnetic field. Fair enough. That’s fine. People have done that some. And it turned out they had not done a good job putting the magnetometer far away from the steel body of the spacecraft in order to cut out the local affect of the satellite, so what they were seeing was at least partly due to the satellite, and the data that came back from it, some of our people looked at it and it was very poor quality.\\n\\n So I told Chris Kraft, I guess, “If you had given me the location of the satellite, I would tell you what the magnetic field was better than you measured it.” And he didn’t think that was a very nice statement, either. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the other projects that you participated in while at Goddard was a Lunar Exploration Conference. This was in July of ’65. You were in charge of the Particles and Fields Working Group at that particular conference. If you can tell us a little bit about what the goals of the conference were and what the results were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The goals were to try to develop a science program for Apollo, for the missions going to the lunar surface. And they gave us rules, I guess you’d call it rules—a limitation. We were told we could take, I think it was 250 pounds, down onto the Moon, which was in the science budget, and could bring back a hundred pounds, which was in the science budget, and we weren’t to exceed those limits. Now, there were also—well, no, were there any other limits? Well, —space, but that was the important limit, was how much weight we were allowed. I don’t think we argued much about that, and we said, “Okay. We’ll see what we can do with that.”\\n\\n So a bunch of people talked about what kinds of experiments to do. Bringing the stuff back from the lunar surface, that was completely the lunar samples, rocks and dust and what have you, and so we could bring back a big aluminum box like this, which itself weighed maybe ten pounds, filled with rocks and stuff, clamp it together, put it in the upper portion of the landing vehicle and bring that home. That was easy coming back.\\n\\n Coming down onto the Moon, there were more thoughtful process at that conference, and it ended up designing a set of instruments which were to go down on the Moon and be left there, and make measurements and come back home, and that was called ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package]. I think that’s right.\\n\\n There was a discussion about what kinds of instruments and what capabilities and all that. So there was a seismograph, there was a lunar corner reflector. Take a piece of glass that has sloping sides like this, and they come in at forty-five degrees and their flat plate up here. You shine light down onto it. It will come down, bounce off one of the pieces of glass, sides of the glass thing inside, bounce to another one and then come back, directly back at you. So you have a retro reflector; it comes back.\\n\\n If you then have this on the surface of the Moon and have a laser at McDonald Observatory in [Fort Davis,] Texas, was one of the places, shine the laser at this gadget on the surface of the Moon and measure how long the time is for the pulse to go to the Moon and come back, measure that accurately, you can tell how far it is to the Moon.\\n\\n Well, that by itself isn’t very interesting, but the changes in that distance are fun, because it can tell you about the libration of the Moon. The Moon keeps one face pointed at you, but it isn’t absolutely one face; it wobbles a little bit. Well, studying that wobble is fun for astronomers. Okay, that was one thing that could be done.\\n\\n Another thing that could be done is if you put one of these laser reflectors on one side of the San Andreas Fault, and one on the other side of the San Andreas Fault, you could measure if one of these was moving with respect to the other, and you could do that to a couple of centimeters. Well, that’s a pretty nice measurement for a gadget that’s 250,000 miles away. But that was okay to do that.\\n\\n So there were several things about motion of the Earth and of the Moon which could be measured with this corner reflector. So we adopted that as one of the instruments. Seismograph, corner reflector, magnotometer. Well, there was a question about whether that was useful or not. Some particle detectors looking for the solar winds which are low-energy particles coming from the Sun and some higher-energy particle detectors also. Have I left out something?\\n\\n But anyway, we put together this package of instruments which was to go down and be left on the Moon with a power source, and the power source was a radioactive thermoelectric generator, RTG. So we keep the heat from this which you could use to generate electricity would keep this gadget running forever and ever daytime, nighttime. You couldn’t use solar cells because it wouldn’t work at night, lunar night.\\n\\n So the conference put together that plan of the instruments and eventually the people who would do the instruments, and that was the most important single planning thing for the science project attached to Apollo, because it laid out with fairly reasonably strong restrictions what the experimenters could do. And that’s a good thing to do. You don’t let an experimenter have everything he asks for. You buy more than you want.\\n\\n So that was a good conference, and it produced a very useful result. In fact, it wasn’t necessary to do anything more on the general planning level of science for Apollo after that conference. That was a good piece of work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this was all primarily done by scientists from the community?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By scientists. It was pulling together a variety of scientists from the community who had the proper skills to try to think through what should these experiments be and how much does a lunar seismograph have to weigh. Can you do one for ten pounds that has enough sensitivity that you can measure moonquakes okay? That kind of questions. You have to get the right kind of people to do this, but we had a good set there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was it determined who would be invited to participate in this conference?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Who would be—I don’t know. I wasn’t. I guess I suggested a couple of people to come, but I’m sure it was the Houston management and plus maybe Washington management, but I don’t know. I wasn’t involved in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Before we move on to more details about Apollo, were there any other major projects that you were involved in while you were at Goddard that you’d like to comment on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Pauses] No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, while you were involved in planning now for the Apollo Program, or at least participated in this conference, were you involved in any other Apollo activities while at Goddard, before you moved on to the Manned Spacecraft Center [Houston, Texas]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That would make sense, saying there wasn’t a lot of need for more planning since the conference went so well.\\n\\n How did the opportunity arise for you to accept the position as the Director of Science and Applications at the Manned Spacecraft Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, George Low, who I’ve known for some time, asked me if I would like to come down as Director of Science to work with him. And he, at that time, was the head of the Apollo Project. That was before the fire that killed the three astronauts, after which time, he—I’ll get this backwards. Joe [Joseph F.] Shea was the guy who was in charge of Apollo, but after the fire, he stepped down, because he was broken up. He was really upset by the fire. And George [M.] Low went to become Director of Apollo. Before that time, he had been Associate Director, number-two man, at Manned Spacecraft Center. It was in that capacity that he asked me if I would come down and be Director of Science.\\n\\n They really hadn’t had any science program before that down there, and they needed an in-house program. It didn’t have to be a strong program, because most of their work was going to be done at laboratories and universities away from Houston. The analysis of the lunar rocks, for example, would mostly not be done at Houston, some, but mostly at other places where the specialists were.\\n\\n So anyway, George asked me would I come down and be Director of Science, and that was after I’d been doing the research at Goddard for six years, and I don’t know, it was a new challenge and it sounded fun, different, and I wanted to see the Apollo Project do good science. It had the capability of doing interesting things, and there wasn’t very much apparatus in place to help it to do science. Okay, so make a new science director at Houston, and bring in some good people there to be the nucleus for the process of getting the science done. And so he convinced me. I was, at that point, going to give up doing research. I had been doing my own research program at Goddard, and that was a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed it.\\n\\n But I knew that as soon as I went to Houston, I would be caught up in administrative, engineering, political, all kinds of other kind of things, to the point where I wouldn’t do any research, and that was completely true.\\n\\n So anyway, George asked, and I said yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you’d been doing your own research program at Goddard. So you had left the Theoretical Division then, and moved on to do some of your own research?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was doing the research as part of the Theoretical Division, so I was a mixture of theorist and experimental." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, with your new position at the Manned Spacecraft Center, as you mentioned, this was a new branch that was being formed. They hadn’t really had that before. What was the reaction from everyone on site to this new directorate and to this new focus for Apollo for gearing up on the science side?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "“Stay out of my way and don’t bother me.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that persist throughout?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Science had the lowest priority of any of the mission’s projects at the [Manned] Spacecraft Center. And that’s not necessarily wrong. Of course, it caused me some personal annoyance, but you look at the job they had to do, [President John F.] Kennedy said it, he said, “Put a man on the Moon and bring him home safely.” [Robert R.] Gilruth or Chris Kraft or one of the bosses down there, and the first thing you think about is safety. And that’s okay.\\n\\n That’s okay. Safety should be at the top of the list. But it meant that you had to compromise or do other things differently than you would do. For example, any experiment that was going on a manned spacecraft, the LM [lunar module] going down to the surface of the Moon, for example, had to be man-rated, the seismometer. What do you mean man-rated? It had to be built out of parts that were traceable, that you could tell where they came from so that they’re not going to get in trouble and burn up, or it had to go through a series of very severe tests to make sure that it was going to function okay.\\n\\n This was half…for safety purposes and [half] for PR [public relations] purposes. They wanted to make sure that the experiments would work, that you wouldn’t have failures. And that was the PR. But the safety did come first. I shouldn’t say half and half. Three-quarters safety. But they were very PR-conscious, the management down there. They didn’t want failures to come back and haunt them through the newspapers.\\n\\n In the unmanned spacecraft program, failures were okay. You could have one out five experiments on a spacecraft going up fail and people, “Oh, damn it. That’s annoying to have that fail.” But that was all it was.\\n\\n Now, in the manned spacecraft, if it failed in a way that was going to hurt the guys, that was a no-no. But if it just failed and didn’t produce any useful data, that turned out to be a no-no also, but it was a PR no-no. So as a result of this man-rating of experiments, a magnetometer which flew on Gemini, cost about 10 million bucks, and a magnetometer which flew on Explorer 8 or one of the unmanned satellites, was about a half million, a factor of ten, twenty, fifty difference in cost. Well, so you just accepted that and went on. It was what happened.\\n\\n Where was I going? What are we talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we were talking about —a couple of different things there, but we’ll just move on to the next topic, I think. Obviously this was some of your responsibilities in your new position as working these safety and operations standpoints into the actual science, actually integrating the science into the operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That wasn’t my responsibility; it was the responsibility of a bunch of the engineering guys who worked with us on seeing that the experiments were put together properly and doing the testing for man-rating and that sort of stuff. It was done, but it wasn’t my personal responsibility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were these individuals that worked under you, or were they in the Engineering Directorate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes and no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Some of both." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of both, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, if you could describe to us a little bit about how your directorate was structured, what some of the branches were, and—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Structured. Well, there were two main groups which were related to the two main pieces. The two main science objects: one, the rocks; and two, the ALSEP, the instruments going to the surface. There was one group that had the responsibility for building ALSEP, building, testing, making sure it worked, fit in the space, the astronauts could handle it okay, and deploy it on the surface of the Moon okay. And that was a group of mainly engineering guys, because the instruments were being supplied by scientists from different universities, laboratories, but built to specifications that our people laid down so they met the safety concerns and all that sort of stuff. And then our guys were responsible for seeing that these experiments were what they were advertised as being and they fit together, worked and were deployable, and all that sort of stuff.\\n\\n The other group was connected with the rocks. We built a structure down at Houston called the Lunar Receiving Laboratory [LRL], which was built more or less according to a Fort Dietrich [Maryland] specifications.\\n\\n The primary reason for doing all this was the National Academy of Science, a couple years earlier than this, had decided that there was a small but finite chance that you might bring back something from the Moon that was bad stuff, either toxic biologically or toxic chemically, or some bad material. And therefore, you wanted to study this for a while, make sure that it wasn’t bad stuff before you let it go out into the open populace.\\n\\n So it was decided arbitrarily that it would be kept in quarantine at Houston for two weeks. Why two weeks? I don’t know. Why not a month? Why not six months? Because the public wouldn’t stand for it. So in some reasonable period of time, you wanted to do a series of tests on this material to find out it wasn’t very toxic and to get it out to the people that are going to do the work on it.\\n\\n We had gotten proposals from scientists, sent in from all over, and the proposals were reviewed and those that were meritorious were accepted, and we had like a hundred people or research groups signed up to get samples of the lunar material to do different kinds of geochemistry, mineralogy, all kinds of things.\\n\\n So we had the Lunar Receiving Laboratory built, working with some engineers from Fort Dietrich, and it was built as a barrier so that if you had bad stuff inside, you didn’t want it to get out into the community. How did you do that? You have a double barrier.\\n\\n The inner barrier is a great big vacuum chamber with arms going into it, which are like astronaut suit arms. So a guy could stand up alongside this, look through a sheet of glass, put his hands into these arms, open the box of lunar materials, take them out, weigh the rocks, do a little bit of close-up look at the rocks after a very cursory examination and see if they’re not going to catch fire if you expose them to air. There was for a period of time a bunch of people that thought that lunar surface material would be pyrophoric. Pyrophoric means that it will catch fire if you put oxygen on it. So okay, let’s not do that.\\n\\n So there were tests to see that it was all right to use [the lunar rocks] inside this—this was a vacuum chamber where these arms were. They would work on [the lunar rocks] for a period of time…and after they had decided [they weren’t] pyrophoric and was okay to move to a less confined area, they would send [them] down to a ordinary glove box. Now, this doesn’t have a vacuum inside. This has dry nitrogen inside it, and it has ordinary gloves through the sides of it so mineralogists can work on the sample to look at it and study it and see what it looks like, the objective being to get these rocks so that you understood them well enough that you would say, “Send rock six to Professor so-and-so at UCLA [University of California—Los Angeles].” They weren’t supposed to do the fundamental science there inside this facility, just to get the material understood, to get it so that they could distribute it sensibly.\\n\\n All right, now, but the building was, as I said, a double barrier. You had, first, this vacuum chamber inside that you kept the materials inside and then passed them to dry air, dry nitrogen, and [second] you had the building wall itself. Now, the building was built tight, and the idea of a tight building to a guy who builds buildings, a carpenter, was, “What the hell are you talking about? All buildings leak. This building leaks. Your home leaks.”\\n\\n “No, no, no. We don’t want this building to leak. Plug up all the holes.” And you pump down inside of the buildings so it’s about one foot of water lower pressure inside than out. What’s the purpose of making it lower pressure? So if you did get some bugs out into the air, inside the lab, then they wouldn’t be able to get outside the building, because all of the leaks would be going inward, and that would hold the bugs inside. So we built a building that was tight and we could pump down, and the building was pumped down, lower pressure inside.\\n\\n I don’t know where I was going with this conversation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you were talking about—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, you asked what the structure of our group was, what they did. Well, there was a whole lot of people who were responsible for getting this big vacuum chamber to work, so that you could have some guy stand there with his hands in these gloves. The gloves themselves were terrible. We had an awful lot of trouble making them work. Astronauts’ gloves on the suit when the guy is on the surface of the Moon, those work at 6 psi [pounds per square inch] differential pressure. That is to say, when the guys out on the Moon, there’s a vacuum outside, but inside the suit, he’s only 6 psi, not 15, which is what you are here. So the differential pressure across the glove things was 6.\\n\\n Now, the glove has places where they have to flex. They’re sort of metal and rubber joints and they have to be able to move on the skin with respect to each other, and at 15 psi differential pressure, which is from the ordinary part of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory into the vacuum, they didn’t work worth a damn, and we had a lot of trouble with the astronauts’ gloves. Eventually we got them so that they would last fifty hours or something, but we had to replace gloves every few days.\\n\\n So, guys building this big glove box and the ordinary viewing assembly for working with gloves inside it, guys being responsible for getting the box built, and the clamps work well, and all that kind of stuff, and make it so that the rubber O-rings would work even if it got all dusty, all that kind of stuff.\\n\\n The directorate wasn’t a very big directorate. My memory is it was less than 200 people, but I may be wrong. Don’t quote that number, because I don’t remember that very well.\\n\\n There was another whole function of the Lunar Receiving Laboratory which was partly my responsibility and partly the medical group’s responsibility, Chuck—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Berry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Berry. That’s it, Chuck [Charles A.] Berry. And we were responsible for the quarantine. Now, quarantine was in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, and there were two pieces of it. There was part of it that was people quarantine, and that was the astronauts coming back from the Moon, and they had to stay there for two weeks before they could go out, because if you’re obeying what the National Academy of Science tells you you’ve got to do, you’ve got to have all stuff that had contact with the Moon, the lunar material, stay in quarantine. Okay.\\n\\n So the astronauts were in there drinking bourbon and playing poker and whatnot, and having a good time, and aside from that, there was a whole area which was biological materials for testing lunar samples. —We had an aquarium where we had little fish swimming around; —actually, three aquariums. We had little terrariums where there were Japanese quail running around. And what were these guys doing? We would have three terrariums. One, you’d sprinkle some lunar dust on the floor and leave it there for two weeks, see if the Japanese quail having their ordinary life and living in this lunar soil would get sick.\\n\\n Then we had a second terrarium, which was of sterilized lunar soil. You take the lunar soil and expose it to X-rays and to ultraviolet and make it so that you’d think you’d kill all the bugs, and see if there was any difference between A and B.\\n\\n Then terrarium three was of Texas soil, and see if A and B were different from C, Texas soil. And we did this with Japanese quail, with minnows, with pine seedlings, with—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cockroaches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cockroaches, that was another one. We had a dozen of these different experimental animals or fauna that we tested this way, and we did this for two weeks to see if anything showed up that indicated suspicious behavior of the lunar material.\\n\\n The only thing we found in all of those tests that was a difference between A and B and C, was that pine seedlings preferred to grow in A. They liked lunar soil better than they liked Texas soil, and Texas soil was pretty poor. So that was the only difference we ever found.\\n\\n At the end of the two-week period of time, we hadn’t found anything that was indicative of trouble, including we’d had some—there was a guy here at the university, A.L. Burlingame, who worked with Mel [Melvin] Calvin a Nobel Laureate, and he had provided a very nice GCMS, gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, very fancy chemical gadget for biological molecules in the lunar soil, not at the cockroach, pine seedling level, but at the molecular level.\\n\\n He could never find any organic material in the lunar soil. The only thing organic he found was the pump oil from our vacuum pumps, and he was continually raising hell, “You guys are dirty as hell. All your oil leaking, and I can’t see anything.”— He was right. They leaked.\\n\\n But the end of this period of time, we didn’t find anything that was troublesome about the material, so in two weeks it was okay to let the guys out of the quarantine and let the rocks go out to the professors at universities.\\n\\n I’m not sure if I answered what your first question was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, absolutely. You did. You did. While we’re talking about the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and sending out the samples, there were two teams set up early on, before any of the Apollo missions came back, the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team [LSAPT] and the Lunar Sample—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "LSAPT." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "LSAPT. And the [Lunar Sample] Preliminary Examination Team [PET]. How were those teams set up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did that. Okay. What were their individual responsibilities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "LSAPT, Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team. Well, I can’t remember which group played which particular role, but together they were supposed to develop the most sensible way of handling the material and getting the material out to the professors that wanted to do the detailed analysis. So we had guys like Cliff Frondel, who was the Chairman of the Geology Department of Harvard University [Cambridge, Massachusetts], and [M.] Gene Simmons, very well-known geophysicist from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts], and Paul [W.] Gast, geochemist from Columbia [Univ.], and a bunch of really well-known people who would come in and work with us and help get this thing set up. They, of course, were doing it for their own good, because they were all going to be experimenters eventually, but they also know that they wanted to do the best job they could have, having the material handled sensibly and right material go to the right professor so that he would have the best chance of doing something useful with it. Gerry [Gerald] Wasserburg from Caltech [California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California], he was a pain in the butt, but fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was the one who was downright ugly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, that was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. There was one of the guys. It wasn’t Gerry Wasserburg. One of the other guys was all the time heckling my secretary, and she was from East Texas, and she had a southern drawl you wouldn’t believe. One time, this guy really got on her nerves, and she turned to him and said, “You’re just downright ugly.” [Laughs] And he was brought up absolutely aback and started laughing, and he couldn’t ever do anything that got under her skin again. He wouldn’t dare. Completely demobilized.\\n\\n Gerry Wasserburg. I was just thinking who the people were on LSAPT, and right now I can’t remember what the separate functions were of LSAPT analysis team. Well, I guess the analysis team were the guys who worked on the glove boxes. I guess that’s right. Yes, I think so.\\n\\n So anyway, one of the things that we tried very much to do was to involve the scientists, the working scientists in the universities, in the process of getting the samples out of quarantine and having the first look at them and characterize them enough so that they could be sent out for detailed analysis to the labs. And that was new.\\n\\n The people at Houston hadn’t thought anything about doing this kind of thing. They were just going to package Rock A to Professor B, and all that kind of stuff. But that wouldn’t have been very useful.\\n\\n So anyway, we got it set up so that the scientists were going to be working, especially on the lunar samples, were closely involved with us and were happy with what we were doing. They though we were doing a good job. They had not been happy with the lab for a while before I got down there. So anyway, that all worked out very well. I never heard any real squawks about the way we passed out the lunar materials or who got what rock, and “He shouldn’t have gotten that,” and that sort of stuff.\\n\\n We were worried for a while that there was going to be thievery of rocks and a black market, so we took some pains to tell the recipients of the samples, “Keep these things locked up. Keep them so that they’re not going to get stolen.” I think most people behaved rather well on that. And there never was anything resembling black market. I never heard of any thievery.\\n\\n I heard of one thing. There was a professor at UCLA who got one sample for his own analysis, as he was supposed to, worked on it, kept it locked up in the vault at the department over the weekends, came back one Monday morning, the rock wasn’t there. Oops! What’s happened? It turned out, one of the other professors had taken it out of the vault and taken it to a cocktail party over the weekend, and forgotten to bring it back. Oh, no, naughty, naughty, naughty. —Did we write him a severe letter? I forget what we did. We let him know we were displeased. So anyway, that all worked pretty well.\\n\\n What are we talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, talking still about the LRL, this was one of your duties very soon after you came over to the Manned Spacecraft Center. At what stage of development was the laboratory in when you came to work there? Was it already planned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Lunar Receiving Laboratory was being built, and its specifications had been decided on because the National Academy [of Sciences] put out this report on what we were supposed to do, so they had these engineers from Fort Dietrich working with them on how to build the lab, how to make it work right.\\n\\n The vacuum chamber, which was a centerpiece inside the lab, was being built at Oak Ridge, and there was a very nice guy named P. R. Bell, who was responsible for that project at Oak Ridge. He lived just down the street from Wester and me when we were in Timber Cove [development in Clear Lake, Texas], and that was under way. It got moved to Houston some months after I got there, and then they set up a bunch of tests to see that it was working correctly and didn’t leak and all that stuff.\\n\\n But the building we were to be occupying, it was all up and intact. That was okay, but making the building into the final product, the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, was in pieces, partly done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much of the procedures for how the lab would operate had been worked out beforehand, or was that what these teams and you were involved in developing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the details were put together by the teams and our people. The general idea, having the vacuum chamber and people working arms inside the vacuum chamber, that had been decided sometime before. Having the quarantine had been decided sometime before. We set up the Japanese quail and pine seedlings and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How challenging was it in working in the laboratory, trying to meet NASA’s standards on safety, on how the samples would be processed and then also trying to meet the scientific community’s desires, needs for wanting to get the samples?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It wasn’t too bad. You knew pretty well what you had to do, and as soon as you explained to scientists what general things had to be gone through before you could pass the material out to them. We had one big meeting where we got a lot of scientists together, I guess maybe all the people that sent in proposals for analysis, that probably was who we had pulled together. We pulled them all together and had a fairly detailed discussion of what the process was for working the materials and getting them to the point where they were ready to pass out and how we did that.\\n\\n There were some questions about—it was at that meeting that Gerry Wasserburg came to the fore. He was representing a bunch of people who were mad about something. What were they mad about? They were made about money. Oh, hell, I’ve forgotten. That’s too long ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But anyway, so we talked to them in enough detail so that they didn’t get mad at us, and we had NASA engineers working with us on the project, so the safety part of it was going along as part of the ordinary business of the lab. So I guess the answer is, there weren’t very many big blow-ups." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that’s good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "…The blow-ups—well, I was a troublemaker in general, because I wanted to get more science done. Now, the first thing that we had to accept, when we accepted the 250 pounds down to the lunar surface, 100 pounds back—and we weren’t supposed to argue about that, that was just what we were given—that sort of designed the whole project for us, but then I wanted to get more science done than that, and one of the things that bothered me, from shortly after I got there, was to find out that in the command module, there was one whole sector of the command module which was empty.\\n\\n Now, the command module’s the thing that stays in orbit around the Moon, doesn’t go down to the surface. Mike [Michael] Collins was command module pilot the first mission. So here’s this big empty hunk of space, going round and round and round the Moon, and there’s enough power and there’s lots of space, and the weight was also not a constraint at that place. Well, I shouldn’t say it like that. You had to be limited on how much you could do, but it wasn’t a serious limit.\\n\\n So I said, well, let’s get a bunch of instruments to do remote sensing of the lunar surface and try to do X-ray, gamma ray, ultraviolet, spectroscopy of the surface, and see what chemistry we could do, and how much you could understand of the lunar surface by remote sensing. And I argued that at meetings for two years with George [E.] Mueller, and at the end of it, I won, but I won so late that it was very difficult to do anything useful.\\n\\n The first several missions, [Apollos] 12, 13, 14, there wasn’t any such stuff. After that, I guess I got instruments into that empty bay in the service module—command module—and did some lunar surface chemistry, but I’m not sure how useful it was. Part of the problem was that you have to take some time to design and build an instrument that has the capabilities you want for doing chemistry. It isn’t something you just have sitting on the back shelf.\\n\\n So maybe you take a year or something to build such an instrument. Well, I’m not sure that the timeframe was such that there was a year available for design and construction. Anyway, as far as I was concerned, that didn’t work well, and the reason it didn’t work well was that the engineers didn’t—well, they weren’t very interested in science. We were just some more guys that were getting in their way. “Another task to do? We don’t need any more tasks. We’ve got lots of work to do. Go away.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if we could take a moment here and pause, take a break, change out our tape. [Tape change.]\\n\\n We’ve talked about some of your responsibilities as Director of Science and Applications down at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Early on, one of the projects you were involved with was another lunar conference, lunar study conference, out here at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Do you recall that conference and what—actually, I think out of that came a group, the Lunar Exploration Planning Group. So if maybe you could tell us a little bit about the conference and how—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gulp. —I remember we had one. I don’t really remember much about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was where the Roy Rogers—not Roy Rogers—Buck Rogers guy flew. It sure impressed the kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, you mean with the backpack? Yes. I must say, I’m coming up blank." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s all right. You’re allowed to say that. You’re allowed to say that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was early, early on. I think we had gone down to Houston in May, and this was that summer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We don’t expect you to remember every little detail. It was a while back. So it’s quite all right to say, “I just don’t remember.”\\n\\n Do you recall the Lunar Exploration Planning Group that came out of that, or is that—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nope." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s fine. Looking at lunar site selection, did you as Director of Science and Applications have or participate in the site selection for where they would make the landings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I personally didn’t have anything to do with it. The guy who was in charge of that, essentially, was Gene [Eugene M.] Shoemaker, and Gene had a bunch of guys, some of them were from Geological Survey and some other types. Gene Simmons, I think, worked with him, trying to select sites. Now, they were under fairly severe constraints. They had to select land[ing] places, where the LM could land most safely, and so that restricted the kinds of places where they could go and things they could do, a fair amount. But having said that, then I think they did a pretty good job of selecting them. I’m not a geologist, so I can’t argue. They did get highland sites. They did have mare sites. They never had the guts to land in a rill, did they? There was talk at one point about landing in Hadley’s Rill, but they didn’t ever do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They landed within a few miles of it, I think, but—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Is that right? Well, but they never got down into it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know if that would have been useful or not, but one of the questions that geologists had, I think they still do have, is what were the conditions which allowed you to make a river on the Moon, and what evidence is there from what’s there now, i.e., the rill, that says what it was like. But that was too ambitious for the landings.\\n\\n One of the whole problems with Apollo was that because safety was so important, you were forbidden from doing a lot of things you’d like to do. Like, wouldn’t it be fun to land near the polar caps and make a survey for water, which they could have done? But that’s not right in the easily available low-latitude region on the Moon, so stay away from it. Wouldn’t it have been fun to land on the backside? No, no, that’s forbidden.\\n\\n There was a project that JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] had put together at about the same time as Apollo, called Surveyor Block Three, which was to do more science than Apollo would do, for a lot less money. But it got canceled because it was in competition with Apollo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was unmanned, however, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was unmanned, yes, very much unmanned. But it would have landed on the backside of the Moon. It would have landed—probably landed in the polar regions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this one of the projects that included ideas of unmanned rovers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it had a rover, yes. And it had sample collection and it had sample return. But that wasn’t the purpose [of Apollo]. The purpose was, get a man there and get him back and then do a little bit of science on the side if you can." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much did the scientific community accept that purpose for Apollo?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there were some vocal people who thought that the whole thing was useless, but they didn’t understand the political reason for doing it. Kennedy sent the—ground rules said, “Get them there this decade, and get them back safely.” And if you buy that, then the game’s over.\\n\\n Now, if you say, “No, no, no. Use the same amount of money and do science,” that’s a very different thing. And some people, of course, would much prefer to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Politically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If Kennedy hadn’t set the goal of going to the Moon with a man, they wouldn’t have gotten the money, and the unmanned projects wouldn’t have prospered as much. You can ask the question now, “What’s the purpose of man in space now?” and the answer is “Nothing.” Anything that you can do with man in space, you can do better without man in space, with remote sensing instruments, telescopes, what have you, which are controlled by man on Earth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But they fixed the telescope, the Hubble Telescope." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was useful. It was because some people screwed up. But it was a very useful thing to do, there’s no question about it. But is there any point in sending man to Mars? No. It’s ridiculous. Absolute bunk. A well-known geochemist from England named Lovelock, who did a very nice study of the Martian atmosphere to show that there can’t have been any advanced forms of life on Mars ever, because the atmosphere would have to be different if there was any. And I don’t think anybody has shot that idea down at all. They just avoid talking about it.\\n\\n And so the idea of sending man to Mars is sort of like the statement of “Why do you climb Everest?” The answer is, “Because it’s there.” Well, I don’t buy that. I think if you want to do something useful with Mars, you send a lot of unmanned satellites to do more science than you can with a man, because I don’t think there’s much point to having any further man in space just because it’s there, just to send a guy to the Moon. All right, we’ve done that. Send a guy to Mars because it’s there? No. Nonsense.\\n\\n Anyway, what are we talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking at some of your duties as Director of Science and Applications, were you involved in planning the specific surface activities that the crews would be involved in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Well, in some general sense, telling the people to pick up interesting-looking rocks and all that. But one of the problems with surface activities, they didn’t have very much time on the surface and they had a bunch of things they were supposed to do, like unfurl the flag. And the amount of time that they could spend studying rocks and doing things soberly and thoughtfully was almost… [none]. Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt, a good field geologist, went to the surface of the Moon, and I’m convinced he did not, in any way, utilize his geologic training. —The timeline didn’t allow it.\\n\\n A field geologist on the Earth goes out into an area and he wants to study it and figure out how it was made, geologically speaking, and he sits and looks at things for a while, and tries to figure out how that’s related to that. Then he wants to go and get a piece of rock here, and something down there, and see if he can explain how they’re related. There wasn’t any of that sitting and thinking on the Moon possible.\\n\\n Jack Schmitt, just like all the other astronauts, I think, just picked up whatever rocks he saw. Now, it may be that the surface of the Moon, there’s no purpose in having a skilled geologist go up there because all the rocks are related to all the other rocks because everything has been impacted and made into a stew. Everything was the same. Maybe, maybe not. But anyway, I don’t think Jack Schmitt had any possibility to use his science, and that’s too bad." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s unfortunate that there were strict time limitations on what the crews were able to do on the surface." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much training would the crews participate in before the mission, to be able to get them to at least try and pick up some of the rocks that were more interesting or that might generate science, or were you involved much in that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t involved in that. Shoemaker and his group, took the astronauts on various geological field trips, and they went up to—well, they went to Meteor Crater, Arizona. They went up into Oregon where there’s a big lava flow area. I can’t think what it’s called anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Craters of the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Craters of the Moon. That sounds right. And spent time with them. These were places which were selected to —look like the Moon. I’m not sure that’s fair, but vaguely. And spent time talking with them, and, “Well, how do you sample this? What do you look for?” And all that. That was the kind of training they got, was from Gene’s group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Gene Shoemaker’s group was working primarily through the USGS [United States Geological Society]. They weren’t employed by NASA, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "True." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that structured between the NASA science side, the USGS side, but yet all coming together to accomplish the same mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, —Gene’s group was given the responsibility for all of the planning-related landing sites and all of the training of the astronauts and taking them to interesting places looking for things that might be similar to the Moon in some sense. How was that related? It was just done. I don’t think there was a contract or anything like that. I’m not aware of any. And we watched it going on. I talked to Gene a lot and worked with him some. Toured Meteor Crater, Arizona, with him one day, but we never gave him directions what to do. He was one of the team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the relationship there was pretty good then between—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, it was very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he did a good job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked earlier about ALSEP and that conference that it had actually spun off of and a lot of the planning was done there, and not as much was needed to be done afterwards, other than fine-tuning, actually building the instruments. But on Apollo 11, they actually flew an abbreviated version of the ALSEP. It only had a couple of the instruments, rather than the full package. Do you recall the reasoning behind that, and how that came about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I don’t even know that it was true. But go ahead. I’ll believe you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. I believe they flew just an EASEP [Early Apollo Surface Experiment Package] that had, I think, three instruments, including the seismometer and a couple of others, whereas the larger package was with all of the instruments which flew on later flights. I was just curious about your input on that, but we can move on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Don’t remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s fine. Were you involved at all with the Apollo Program Control Board that would make decisions about what aspects of the missions, if there would be changes, especially on the science side of things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I sat in on some of the meetings, but I wasn’t a member of the board, and I only sat in when there was something involving science programs and that sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any major incidents—or not incidents, —but events around the science aspect on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. My memory is that that was set up after the fire to be a control of materials and a control of what went inside the vehicle to make it harder to make changes so that they would have a more carefully controlled vehicle. And we didn’t interact very much. Inside our constraints, the weight constraints, the space constraints, we were left pretty well alone, do what we wanted to do, and then we were going to try to do something to change the things that science was allowed to do. We didn’t interact with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Going back to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, you talked a little bit about the development, about the construction, that that was still in process as you came, and the development of the procedures, the ways to decide how the samples would be studied and allocated. Do you recall running actually simulation of walking samples through to test out some of those procedures?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were some simulations before the landing, and at one point, they wanted to test—oh lordy, what was this? ——Dave Sensor, the group that had the responsibility for worrying about back-contamination with us, wanted to make a test where they would put some bug inside the vacuum chamber and we would do certain simulations, run rocks through it, and stuff like that, and see if anything leaked out. And the first question I asked, “Tell me about this bug.” And I can’t remember what it was. It was a fairly simple organism.\\n\\n He says, “Well, it’s not very often lethal.”\\n\\n Oooh! Oooh! That was enough. “Sorry Dave, we’re not going to do that one.” If the material got out into the room, something like that, most of the people exposed to it develop flu symptoms, had flu for a week or so, and got over it. But there was one in 10,000 or something that got something much worse. So anyway, this was a few months before the landing, and I said, “No thanks, Dave, we’re not going to do that.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I thought that you were unable to keep the cockroach alive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That’s completely separate. We had trouble keeping cockroaches alive. I think they eventually worked it out. But the Lunar Receiving Laboratory was too clean, so our cockroach colony died once or twice, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And if you’ve lived in Houston, you know that there are cockroaches all over the place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, I guess that’s a good example that things were at least clean enough in the environment for the samples to come in and not get contaminated by something here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You see, thinking one past Dave Sensor’s putting bacteria in the vacuum chamber, we put in some little sensing device, microparticles that were fluorescent and we put some of them inside, and then went through simulation exercises and looked to see if any of the particles got out, and I don’t think they ever found any. But that was not lethal. These were just looking for microparticles, the kind of things that you put on roadside signs that are back-reflecting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any particular challenges in finalizing everything for the LRL, either procedurally or equipment-wise, like a problem piece of equipment or a procedure that was hard to work out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I told you about the gloves not working well, and they never did work well. We had to keep replacing them. But we stayed ahead of that.\\n\\n Procedures working on the samples? I think that all went fairly smoothly. We did some simulation things, and the people that had to handle the samples and work with them were fine. They didn’t have troubles.\\n\\n I remember one thing. When you send the particles down into the ordinary glove boxes, where there’s dry nitrogen inside with ordinary rubber gloves going into it, and ordinary mortals can handle the things. Cliff Frondel, head of geology from Harvard, was handling one of these. I saw him, I guess, the first time he got his hands on a lunar sample, and he was looking at things, hand was shaking, and if he wasn’t crying, it was the next best thing to it. He was emotionally involved. And he, at some later point, accidentally cut the end off one of the rubber glove fingers somehow by working on the materials inside, and that was a violation of quarantine, so he, Cliff Frondel, head of geology at Harvard, had to go into the quarantine section with the astronauts and stay till the end of the two-week period. It was fairly well along. He only had three or four days or something to stay. But so he went in there and lived with these guys, because that was what the rules said had to happen.\\n\\n And when he got out and talked to us, he says, “That was fun. I want to do that again. I don’t want to work on the damn samples. I want to drink bourbon and tell stories with those guys.” [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, they certainly would have an interesting prospective on the whole thing. That’s interesting.\\n\\n Well, a lot of the people that did work in the lab were scientists from outside; they weren’t NASA employees. What were their time constraints? Like how were they able to work their schedules around all of the various meetings that would need to be participated in, or even tests and simulations, and then when the samples came back, how did they—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know. They had to set up their constraints themselves. Like when the samples came back, the LSAPT team and the sample analysis guys, they were all down there for a week or so, I don’t know how long, and their classes just had to wait. This was project number one for them to work on. Working with lunar samples was something pretty special. So they figured out how to do it, and I’m sure we had to accommodate some peculiarities of schedules and stuff, guys go home and stuff, but for simulations and especially when the samples were there, you were there and you did your piece of work. I don’t remember that there was ever anybody on the LSAPT. I think I chaired LSAPT or at least I was with them a lot, and we never had any question about absenteeism or anything like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. What were your daily responsibilities? Would you be able to describe an average day for you, or was there such a thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, assuming that this average day isn’t when the samples had just come back to the labs, an ordinary day during the year, I’d go to the office and do the things that you do in an office. You take care of the problems that have come up about people and space and money. I don’t know, being the director of a lab is a whole bunch of little jobs that you just have to keep on top of. People keep coming and giving you problems. They come to you with their problems; they’re never solutions to problems. Not very exciting. Just the ordinary hum of business." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Could I speak?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It impressed me that, once or twice, I went to the office and there was Bill in his office, and there was a line of about eight people waiting outside the door, so as part of the day, each one had a little problem, and Bill was able to switch his mind, which I can’t do, to answer all of these different people with different problems, just, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I was amazed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s what an administrator has to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, but I thought it was pretty impressive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s certainly an important ability to be able to have, to work in so many different areas within the science field and had to tie in the engineering as well, and the NASA needs, science community needs. Those take a unique individual to be able to do that, which is why we’re here talking to you today.\\n\\n Another responsibility that might have fallen under your area is working with the mission control room." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mission control, yes. There’s a whole other facet of our work that you haven’t gotten into. We ran a room just off mission control. You’ve been in the old mission control room? It’s a whole bunch of consoles that are looking up at the big screens up in the front, and different people take responsibility for different parts of the mission in this. —Not inside the mission control, but one of the peripheral rooms just outside the mission control was our responsibility, and what we had to do there was monitor the Sun, and what that meant was, watch out for solar flares.\\n\\n The reason was that there had been, especially near the previous solar maximum, two or three big solar flares that produced high-energy protons. That’s a special kind of flare. Not all of them do that. And if you had a flare that produced enough high-energy protons—and high energy means 100 MEV, the type of thing you get out of the Cyclotron. If the astronaut was out on the surface of the Moon and spent a day in front of one of these things, he’d probably die. There was enough chance of enough radiation from the big flares that it was important to watch these things and see that they didn’t occur when we were going there.\\n\\n Fortunately, none of them occurred during the missions, but we had a way of watching the Sun continuously. We would have solar telescopes, one at Kitt Peak [National Observatory, Arizona], one somewhere in the East, Blue Hill, maybe, run by MIT, Harvard, one in Australia, one somewhere in Europe. And these things, so that you have some telescope around the Earth, always watching the Sun, so that it would tell you if a solar flare has occurred, a big one. And you can watch the Sun in enough detail so that you see these things getting ready to go and you can tell, well, that area looks suspicious. And also the Sun rotates so that it comes up around like this, and you can see active regions, a sunspot group or something, coming up as the Sun rotates and these things appear on the edge of the Sun.\\n\\n Now, you want to have enough warning so that you can get the guys out of trouble if a big flare occurs. And as I said, we didn’t have any, so we didn’t have problems with that. But we would have good watches on the Sun all the time and could watch active regions that we knew had gone around out of sight two weeks before, so they’re ready to come up again over here now, and watch and see if they’re ready to cause trouble.\\n\\n If we’d ever had had trouble, we wanted to know about it enough ahead of time so that we get the astronauts off the surface of the Moon, back in the command module, turn the nose cone of the command module toward the Sun so that you would have a fair amount of shielding between him and the particles coming in, so that you would be in good shape, hopefully.\\n\\n So we had a team of guys, including people in Boulder, Colorado, where I worked later, which were the solar observers, and we had a dozen observatories that worked with us on this all the time, and it was completely successful. No problems at all. But mission control, when we were getting ready for mission, they wanted a statement from us about what the condition of the Sun was and what was likely to happen over the next several days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much warning would you have been able to get?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we could warn them that an active sunspot region was coming around the side of the Sun, getting to the area where if particles were emitted, they come toward the Earth. They don’t fly directly toward the Earth. They come along making field lines projected from the Sun, but we can tell them where the field lines are connected to the Earth, what direction the particles will come from, and we could give them several days’ warning of an active region that looked like it might produce a flare. And then if a big flare did occur, we could tell them right away, and after some minutes, I don’t know how long, maybe an hour, we could say whether that flare had produced high-energy particles or not. That was the important thing to know. So we’d give them a couple of days’ warning.\\n\\n I don’t know if they ever did a simulation of this or not. If they had had warning of a solar event, what would they have done? I don’t know if they simulated that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly something that we could ask the simulations people when we talk to them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how much time would it take for—and I’m sure we could look this up as well, if we needed to, but how much time would it take for those particles to reach the Earth?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From the Sun to the Earth? The high-energy protons, a couple of hours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It definitely would have to be moving fast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I’m right on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s about right, I think. Well, another connection with mission control and a monitoring room was, there was a science room for the missions where a lot of the scientists would gather to watch what the crews were doing on the lunar surface. Were you involved in monitoring that and setting that up, as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in and out of it. It was just an observatory, if you will, to watch what’s going on. There wasn’t any feedback from that into the Mission Control Center, any action items, but the seismologists were always involved in that, wanting to know what was going on. I was in the solar monitoring area more than I was in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a critical area for you to be monitoring, watching for the flares, and it’s good that it turned out there weren’t any." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Throughout your career at the Johnson Space Center, you worked with a variety of different people in many different areas, from engineering to management, to the scientists. Were there any of those individuals who had a significant impact on you personally or that you felt were key to the Apollo Program, to the science part in particular?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, George Low, the guy who got me to come down there, was a very good man, and he was the guy who, as I said, got me there. But he moved on to Washington [D.C.] later on, so I didn’t see him that much. People in the Center, not so much. I was pretty much on my own. Low man on the totem pole." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You eventually decided to move on from your position at the Manned Spacecraft Center. What brought you to that decision?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My old boss, Jack [John W.] Townsend, —he was my boss when I was at the Goddard Space Flight Center, he had moved on to become the number-two man in NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And after Apollo 11, he called me and said, “Would you like to come work with us?”\\n\\n And I hadn’t been thinking about leaving at all, so I was, “Well, I don’t know. What do you do and why would you want me?”\\n\\n And so we talked for a while about what he did. And he said, “The head of our research labs has recently left, and the job of running the labs (of which there were eleven, spread all over the United States), is now open.”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, where is it located.”\\n\\n And he said, “Boulder, Colorado, but we’d sort of like to bring the guy in to work in Washington.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, if you talk to me about Boulder, I’m interested. If you talk to me about Washington, I’m not.” And that message got through. And I said, “Well, what’s the job and what would I do?”\\n\\n “You’d be responsible for these laboratories, which do meteorology, atmospheric science, oceanography.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, I don’t know anything about any of those.”\\n\\n He says, “Fine. You won’t be prejudiced.” So after thinking about it for a while, and I guess, talking it over with Wester—I did, didn’t I?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With the kids, too, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes, they did remember driving through Boulder." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that question about whether we should go to Boulder or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They’d like to live in Boulder." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d been to Boulder and I liked it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The kids—we had driven through, the kids and I." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so I thought about it. And I said, “Well, Apollo 12, Apollo 13 are going to be a redo of Apollo 11, pretty much the same business. I’ve done that. Here’s something new. Let’s go do it.” —I knew Jack very well. He was a very good guy, and I’d worked with him before, and we got along fine. And the head of NOAA, whose name was Bob [Robert M.] White, was also a guy I’d known. I didn’t know him well, but he was a very good scientist, and one of the most senior scientists in Washington, head of a major agency. And I knew him, and knew he was very good. So I said, “Fine. Let’s go to Boulder. Something new.” I like new challenges, and the idea of having to learn about meteorology and oceanography was appealing to me. I liked the idea. So after [Apollo] 11, I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Jumping back for a moment, I skipped one of my questions. Were you involved in any other projects at the Manned Spacecraft Center, other than the main focus on Apollo?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you moved on to new challenges at NOAA, working in Boulder. If you could tell us some about what you were involved with there, what some of the projects were that you worked on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Eleven laboratories which did broad spectrum of work in oceanography and atmospheric sciences. Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma, which was National Severe Storm Laboratory, which worked on tornadoes, and that was one that I spent a reasonable amount of time on and came to enjoy a lot. We, at that point, were taking radar the next step forward, developing meteorological radar which had been used up to that time simply in monitoring rainfall, and now, using Doppler radar where, instead of just getting—you shine a—beam particles at a cloud and you get reflection back from the cloud, in ordinary radar you just get the reflection back, and depending on how strong it is, you can say it’s raining, and it’s raining an inch an hour or something like that. Now you shine the beam at the cloud, and it comes back and you measure very small change in the frequency of the radiation coming back at you. If the radiation strikes a particle which is moving, it’ll come back at a different frequency—Doppler effect, which you know all about, of course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, you could say, “Ah, the particles are moving.” Well, you look inside the cloud now, and you get a map of the motion, and it’s only the motion in the line of sight, not the other motion, and you can tell what the winds are inside the cloud. Now, if you take two radars, one looking at the cloud from here and one looking at the cloud from here, and combine the information from these two different directions, you can develop a two-dimensional picture of the winds in the cloud, and you can look for rotation.\\n\\n And so the lab in Norman, Oklahoma, had two such radars and they studied clouds and looked for a rotation, and found that they could find tornadoes as they were developing. And you see not just the funnel itself, but you see the rotation in the mother cloud overhead, and you could see this getting intense half an hour before the funnel formed.\\n\\n So you had lead time for the process, and therefore, you could warn people. Okay. And we did enough work on this to find that half an hour lead time and see that you could see this for almost all big tornadoes. You could see it for all big tornadoes, almost all medium-size tornadoes, and some fraction of small tornadoes. Well, that was the right kind of thing, because big tornadoes are the more damaging ones.\\n\\n So we had enough information to—and we’d been working closely with the head of the Weather Service, who was another meteorologist, a good friend of mine, to develop this technique, and as soon as we got it to the place where it was this far along, you knew that it would give you useful signals about tornadoes and, “Okay. Let’s go and start putting these things in place.”\\n\\n So the radars, which are now in place, which are called NEXRAD, next radars, are all radars which were developed after we had done the research showing that you could find such tornadoes. And, now, most of the radars, at least in the eastern half of the U.S., are Doppler radars. I don’t know if it’s complete across the country or not. I suspect it is, but I don’t know.\\n\\n And so you now have this lead time available warning people, to tell people to take cover. A half an hour warning is useful. It’s enough so that people can take cover, and it’s enough so that some people can get into mischief like driving their car in the wrong directions toward the funnel or away from the funnel. But the fundamental information is there to enable people to use it beneficially for warning. Now, that was maybe the most fun thing we did in our labs, but as I said, we have several labs in the country. There’s an oceanographic lab in Miami, oceanographic lab in—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seattle somewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seattle, Pacific Marine Environmental Lab, a smaller one in Hawaii, and combination of these labs have been deeply involved in watching ocean current structures all over the world, and the business about El Niño has been partly our discovery and partly discovery of oceanographers at Scripps Institute in San Diego, but mapping of ocean surface currents in the tropical Pacific and what their temperatures are in showing this puddle of very warm water coming into the Peruvian coast area and all that, and all the things that happen as a result of it.\\n\\n And getting information about the relationship of this big puddle of warm water, the El Niño, and northern latitude currents, dry down here in California, lots of wet up in Alaska, wet, cold in the East U.S., the El Niño process, which is really a worldwide process, not just a local thing. Collecting the data, analyzing the data, showing the relationships was one of the more fun things that we did. There was a lot more of that, but I don’t know how much you want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, were any of these projects that you worked on, did any of them ever go back and overlap with NASA at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "NASA was involved in the El Niño things. We put out a lot of buoys in the tropical Pacific. They flew airplanes overhead and measured ocean surface temperature distribution and satellite work, ocean surface temperature distributions.\\n\\n The data was combined in various ways. Individual scientists would get together and combine it in their conferences, present the data, and make a unified picture of what’s going on. So the answer was, the agencies would collaborate together, but there weren’t any structural changes. There weren’t any contracts or anything like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was your opportunity to get back into some personal research, as well as some administrative—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was still an administrator. I didn’t do any research personally, but I could get closer to the research and feel more what the research was and how important it was. That was fun. I enjoyed doing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You edited a book or two." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did a book on weather modification. That was another big area we worked on—what can you do to modify weather and can you change the characteristics of hurricanes. The answer is, maybe yes. We still don’t really know, but the first project we did, which we thought we knew how to change the highest winds to decrease them, turned out not to work. How can you increase rainfall in different areas? How much of a science is that and how much is black magic, and how much doesn’t work at all? There were a lot of charlatans in that in the old days, but there’s some truth to it. That was fun.\\n\\n I did a book on the radiation belt, and it goes back to Goddard days, and that was fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A book about space science, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was in Goddard, we did a book, Introduction to Space Science, which is one chapter on different subjects written by different people, most of them from Goddard, which was bringing people aware of what was going on in space science in 1959 or something, and that was fun and useful. It was used as a text in a lot of places." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly have been in quite involved, then, in some of your own writing, as well as research, as well as—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I wrote a lot of papers. I published—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seventy-nine, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s over a hundred research papers. Remember the National Academy of Engineering. Fun.\\n\\n What else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you worked at NCAR for a while, the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Was that part of your work through NOAA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no. NCAR is run by the National Science Foundation. NOAA is part of the Department of Commerce. It’s separate, but the two labs did a bunch of things together, scientifically did things together, like— My mind is turning to mashed potatoes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay. We’ve been wringing it out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Downbursts, strong downward flow of air from a thunderstorm or incipient thunderstorm that comes down with big vertical velocities, comes down on the ground and spreads out. Now, if you have one of these things called a downburst—am I correct, Wester?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If you have one of these things and a landing airplane goes through one of these things and gets in trouble, and we did—NCAR, when I was at NCAR, we were doing this, and also people at NOAA were working on it, too, did the fundamental measurements to show how these things occur and how you can detect them and then what you ought to do to avoid them. There have been a number of crashes of airplanes that encountered these things without knowing about them, and were trying to land. If you’re trying to land, it’s an interesting thing.\\n\\n Here’s the down-flowing air. It spreads out near the surface of the ground. Now, you’re on an airplane that’s trying to land on a runway, right into one of these things. When you first encounter it, there’s air flowing toward you, which gives you more lift, and so you tend to throttle back to get down onto the runway. Then you go through the neutral point and you’re over here, and the air is going away from you, so there is less lift and now you’re in trouble because you’ve throttled back, your nose is somewhat down, you come into less lift, and you crash. Well, if you know about this, and know that one is occurring, you can avoid it. But if you don’t know about it, you can get in trouble." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly something very valuable, then, to study." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So when I went to NCAR, that was one of the projects that was being worked on there, and that was very useful project. —Another thing NCAR did, which is still going on and will for another decade or so, is climate models, mathematical models of climate. And these keep getting more and more complicated and better, but bigger computer machines all the time.\\n\\n Climate model has to be a combination of an atmospheric model and an ocean model, because the two of them are both important in climate. In climate, on even an annual scale, but certainly a decadal scale or a century-type scale, you have to put both of them in, and worrying about what’s going to happen with climate and can you predict it, and how well can you understand it, you have to have very complicated models for cloudiness, how much cloudiness, what different kinds of clouds, how much moisture is entrained in the clouds, what altitude are the clouds at, and that’s the big bugaboo in climate models now, is doing clouds right.\\n\\n But the whole business is very complicated, and NCAR was probably leading the world in the development of advanced climate models, and still is, and doing a very good job of it. But it’s not a completely settled business. There’s lots of work to do on it yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s still something to strive for, to learn about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Was PROFS the Doppler business?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "PROFS. Good lord, what’s PROFS?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What had led to you moving to NCAR from NOAA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bob White, who is my ex-boss at NOAA, asked me if I would—the head of NCAR had left. Who was he, Wester, the guy before me?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Walter. Walter something. He was a skier and he quit skiing, and he wasn’t known for that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You don’t mean Walter Monk?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not Walter Monk. They had musical evenings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Walter Orr Roberts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wester Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That’s right. He retired, and so the job was open, and Bob White suggested me for the job, and he was senior enough guy in Washington, so I could get it. And the question was, did I want it? Why did I go to NCAR? I’m not sure I know. Because Bob White asked me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, that’s a good reason. You had worked closely with him, and knew that he—." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a new challenge, and I’d been at NOAA for some years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, eventually you moved on to work for the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Research. What sorts of projects were you involved in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was the director of high energy [and] nuclear physics…. I had a budget of a [$] billion-plus. I was responsible for the programs at the major U.S. laboratories doing high-energy physics, and this means Fermilab [Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory] outside Chicago [Illinois], and Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island [New York], and Stanford [University, Palo Alto, California] down here, the two-mile linear accelerator, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, except they, in recent years, haven’t had a big machine here. Machines are getting so big, they can’t fit anywhere near this area anymore.\\n\\n So I had the job of the care and feeding of these laboratories, and developing the programs, seeing that the program did develop. I didn’t do it personally, but seeing that the labs are doing good work in pushing forward. So the question about what new machines to develop, what new projects to undertake in connection with these machines. I had the responsibility for the research on the superconducting supercollider. When it became a sort of mature project, they put together another team who had the responsibility for the construction of the machine. I didn’t ever have that, but I had the research side of it. And that went forward until it got to be so expensive that Congress killed it. —When it reached $8 billion, they thought that’s enough. So that went away. Probably never will be another standalone U.S. major machine like that. They’re just too much money. But this was getting me back to my own fundamental early research. I’m a nuclear physicist by training, and so I went back to high-energy nuclear physics for my final venture.\\n\\n The reason for going back into government, when I was in NCAR, I was out of government, and when you retire from government, your salary at retirement is based on high three, the three years of highest salary in government. So I’d been out for six, eight years, I’ve forgotten how much, and salaries had gone up, and so I was getting ready to retire in a few years, and so I said, “Okay, I’d better get back in,” and the job as the head of the high-energy work in the Department of Energy became available, so I applied for it as a natural my-own-field-type work, and getting high three for retirement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your career certainly did take an interesting path, starting in physics, and branching out into space science, and then meteorology, and then back to physics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I wandered all over. Couldn’t hold a job. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, but you had several very interesting experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. I had an interesting life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you at all follow any of the Apollo program after you had left NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. Tell me about them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, there were a few, and they did bring back—they were able to get, as you said, more science on some of the later missions with carrying some in the command module bays." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were able to stay on the surface longer. They were able to achieve a few interesting things with it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I, at one point, said the only thing we ought to do with man in space, after the Apollo game was over, was to go back to the Moon and set up a permanent observatory. There are a lots of good things. —It doesn’t really have to be manned. Manned would probably help; I don’t know. There are lots of good things you can use the Moon as a platform. No atmosphere, so you don’t have all the problems we have here, and build big telescopes and big infrared systems and things like that, and open up astronomy in a way that you can’t do it on the Earth. It would be nice to do it, but I don’t think it will ever get done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly would be very interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, looking back over your career, particularly at NASA, both at Goddard and at Manned Spacecraft Center, what would you consider your biggest challenge, but also your most significant accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Significant accomplishments. —I think two things. One, working on the research related to the radiation belt. We developed a quantitative understanding of several processes, things that go on to make the radiation belts, and this took that business into a firm, quantitative mode, so that that became a well-based science. And work that we did with Dungey from Imperial College in London, and Beard from Kansas, very good stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Very good research, and I liked doing it, and it was important.\\n\\n Then the other accomplishment, I guess, would be just getting the science done on Apollo. A number of people could have done that, but somebody had to step in and do it, and the Manned Spacecraft Center, by itself, had the capability of screwing it up pretty well, and we kept it so that it was a science-based program, and the scientists were involved in it and it worked well, and I think that was an accomplishment.\\n\\n Challenges? The challenge of trying to get things done at the Manned Spacecraft Center, because, as I say, I was low man on the totem pole, so anything I wanted to do that was in anyway different, we had to fight the organization on it, and that was a challenge, but we got it done.\\n\\n Enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall where you were, and what you were thinking when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and you were able to accomplish some of what you had been working on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When it landed, I was in the room off the Mission Control Center, the Sun Room. I was hearing the conversation between mission control and the astronaut. And remember, the spacecraft was silent. And the mission control guys said, “It’s going sideways. It’s going sideways. What’s it doing that for? Where’s it going? It’s only got forty seconds of fuel left.” And they were very nervous. They were really out of their mind, because instead of just coming down and landing like this, like the plan had it, he comes down and he starts going like this.\\n\\n Then he puts it down when he’s got about twenty seconds of fuel left, and everybody just, “Oh. Oh boy!”\\n\\n But what he was doing was overflying a crater, but he didn’t say that. He didn’t talk at all during this period of time—Neil [A.] Armstrong. And so people were really, really upset.\\n\\n It was fun. I was on the edge of that. I knew what was going on well enough to know that something funny was happening. I hadn’t been involved in the simulations well enough before that to understand how funny it was, but it was funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly quite a moment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I’d like to, at this point, ask Rebecca if she had any questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just have one, because you mentioned it a couple of times. While you were at the Manned Spacecraft Center, you had the opportunity to interact with so many scientists and investigators that wanted to be involved with the Apollo Program. Could you share with us, for a few minutes, their reactions and maybe some of their questions? Was there anybody who ever hesitated at becoming involved with the program, or were they all very enthusiastic and energetic about wanting to be part of what was going on in the country at this time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember anybody being hesitant about getting involved. Essentially, all of the people we were working with, having access to lunar samples, something like this, was a next step in whatever their scientific program had been. A geologist or geochemist who’s working on terrestrial samples, meteorite samples, meteorites from Antarctica, there were a bunch of guys who went down to collect meteorites in an interesting situation in Antarctica where there’s one particular area where the meteorites will collect on the surface or near surface of the ice, and then they would gradually flow into one particular region and then sort of stop, and it’s a natural place for going and collecting a bunch of them. Maybe you know more about this than I do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know a little bit about it, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And there were several of those guys who worked with us, and they were all very keen on getting lunar materials. I can’t think of anybody who was unhappy or hesitant or didn’t like what was going on with the samples. They just wanted to get a hold of them and go to work on them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have to turn some down that wanted to be involved in the program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yes. We got proposals from some people who weren’t technically competent, and so we turned them down. And that’s the normal way that science is done, that you have to develop the capability, the competence to do a certain class of work, and then you compete for new steps in this, new projects, new capabilities. If you weren’t competent, if you haven’t demonstrated ability, you’re not going to get the material." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you receive unsolicited proposals of what other scientists thought you should be doing in space for science?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there any of those that come to your mind that you maybe wish you could have suggested but knew—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of them were nuts. Things that we would have liked to have done? Mostly I think we had a crank file, stuff that came in that was junk.\\n\\n I can’t think of anything that people said we ought to have done that we wanted to do. Nothing comes to mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any ideas of your own that you would have liked to have included in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, a different project now. At one point I personally worked on small accelerators to fly into space to generate artificial aurora. You take a not very big accelerator, a thing that puts out an amp of particles of 20 kilovolts. Now, you don’t know these numbers very well, but that’s not a terribly big deal. You shine that down—you’re out in space out here—you shine it down on the top of the atmosphere, it’ll make artificial aurora, and if you’re underneath it, looking up, “Hey, there’s an auroral spot up there. Hey, what’s going on? That’s Bill Hess up there, shooting his accelerator.” Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah.\\n\\n And I did that a couple of times. We did it from a rocket fired from the East Coast. Shoot the beam down, make an artificial aurora. Fine, it works, we can see it, we can photograph it with some special low-light-level cameras and stuff like that. “Hey, that’s great.”\\n\\n Now let’s do one more complicated. We’ll go out to Hawaii, fly a rocket up here, shoot the beam of particles along a magnetic field line, have them come down into the southern hemisphere, make an aurora in the southern hemisphere, photograph it from an airplane down there. So we went and put the rocket up and shone beams on particles, and photographed it from the other end. “Hey, it works. We can see them.”\\n\\n So we demonstrated the ability to make these artificial auroras in simple experiments like this. Now, we want to get more complicated? Fine. Let’s do this on a space vehicle where you shoot the beam upward from Alaska, and the beam now, all these particles are going to go along a magnetic field line and come down somewhere in the southern hemisphere somewhere, and make an aurora.\\n\\n Well, if you happen to have an optical gear at the right place looking for it, fine, you can see it. But now let’s do an experiment where we do this on a polar orbiting vehicle and it’s going further north all the time and you “pung, pung, pung, pung,” and the southern hemisphere of these things keep showing up further south until all of a sudden they stop. Why does it stop? Because above the auroral zone, the magnetic field doesn’t couple back onto itself on the Earth like an ordinary bar magnet does. It’s coupled somewhere way far out into space to the Moon, or to Jupiter, or to somewhere else.\\n\\n The idea was to try to understand the magnetic field of the Earth, to map it by sending particle beams along magnetic field lines, and to see all the peculiar things that will happen, especially at high latitudes. Never did it. It would have been fun, but never had the opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I certainly want to thank you for sharing your experiences with us. You’ve had quite a few interesting avenues that you’ve had a chance to explore in your career, and it’s certainly been very interesting for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilmot N. Hess", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good. Good luck with your collection of materials." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00495", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/RoachJW/roachjw.htm", + "original_file_name": "RoachJW_1-24-00.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/RoachJW/RoachJW_1-24-00.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Jones W. Roach", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 24 January 2000" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Carol Butler", + "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "Sandra Harvey" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jones W. Roach" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 24, 2000. This oral history is being conducted with Joe Roach, as part of the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, in the offices of the Signal Corporation. Carol Butler is the interviewer and is assisted by Kevin Rusnak and Sandra Harvey.\\n\\n Thank you so much for joining us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To begin with, if maybe you could give us a brief introduction of your early career, what you did before you came to NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I graduated in 1955 from Virginia Military Institute, and went to work for Union Carbide, or a division of Union Carbide, Linde Air Products. I worked there about eight months and then went to flight school. I was called into active duty in the Air Force and went to flight school, went to navigator training, finished navigator training in 1956…and then was there for a year. Then went to Biloxi, Mississippi, where I went to electronic warfare school.\\n\\n I met my wife to be there, and we were marred in November, and in January we went to Alaska, Elmendorf Air Force Base, where I replaced a crew that was killed in an air crash. We stayed there for three years, and then got out of the Air Force and went back to Virginia, which was my home. My dad had passed away at a young age, so I felt like I needed to go back.\\n\\n I wasn't really happy being in Virginia, and a year later I got called back into the Air Force due to the Berlin crisis… I heard about that while we were out shopping one day. At that time we had a daughter and a young son. And served almost a year.\\n\\n The base, we were real close. Richmond, Virginia is real close to Langley [Reseach Center], where the Space Task Group was, and I had occasion to go down there frequently to deal with some of the problems we were having with the airplanes. I just stopped in and they said, \"Hey, this is great. You're just who we need. Come to work for us.\" Well, then I couldn't get out of the Air Force until the situation in Europe settled. We were the only wing in the Air Force that flew three hundred planes to France and Germany without a mishap. We had never trained to fly over water; we trained over the U.S. It was pretty exciting. It kind of interrupted my life and family, but we did a good thing, and I think because of that, we stopped encroachment by the Russians. But that was kind of a good deal.\\n\\n As soon as I got out, we came to Houston, which was in 1962. That's when I came. I guess it was the middle of September, 1962, and we've lived here ever since. So that's how I came. I went down, got the job, and then couldn't take it for several months. It was kind of frustrating. Came to work in the Mercury Program, worked for Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz and John [D.] Hodge right from the very beginning. [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] hadn't been here but a short period of time and went to Mercury 8. We had a training site at Corpus Christi [Texas], went down there as a capcom [capsule communicator]. In those days, most of the capcoms were folks like me [rather than astronauts as they were later].\\n\\n On Mercury [9], I was a primary capcom at Hawaii. That was [L.] Gordon Cooper's flight, where we flew for twenty-four hours. We had one crew and we carried along astronaut [M.] Scott Carpenter and a doctor who was stationed there in Hawaii and a couple of systems guys. I was on the [air to ground] when he called and said he got the 0.05G light. So we asked him if he could see any clouds. He couldn't see any clouds, so we knew that it was a bad light, but he had to fly the thing back. It was exciting time.\\n\\n But I was gone, and in those days when you left you never knew when you'd come back. We'd just built a home and moved in it, no carpet on the floor, and the wife had to deal with two little kids and the overflowed toilets, you know. [Laughter] You stayed. I was gone for six weeks, and it was kind of hard for her to understand why we could go and have a great time in Hawaii. But we worked hard. Things paid off, because when we came back, things worked out really well. We started the transition at that time reviewing the specs for the new Mission Control Center.\\n\\n But people don't realize we worked—if you've driven up Gulf Freeway [I-45], right there at Wayside is where we were. We were in the Houston Petroleum Center, but we worked in the old Oshman's warehouse. The E&D [engineering and development] guys, were in…a building on Telephone Road. The Farnsworth Chambers Building, the place was where all the heavyweights were, except for Kraft and [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg and those guys.\\n\\n We had a good time. The thing that was really exciting about Mercury is that we had a lot of, I would call them mavericks. There were no rules. We wrote our own rules, we wrote our own systems book. I should have brought you a copy of the Mercury Systems Handbook, which was like a little address book. You may have seen it. I still have one of those. We worked really hard to get things done. We had a lot of creative people, and since we didn't have any rules, we could be creative and we didn't have a lot of problems.\\n\\n We had a lot of folks that moved from England, because England had a real problem, they moved to Canada and worked for A.V. Roe, [a] big-name airplane company, but their airplane that they had built that was so great, wasn't sold, so they lost that company. And a large number of Canadians came [to the U.S.].\\n\\n A funny story, we had Morris [V.] Jenkins. I don't know whether you've ever met Morris. Morris always had a headache and we could never figure out why. The problem was, he wore his shoes too tight, because he got the Canadian and the English size, so he always had tight shoes and a headache. Finally he realized that, got rid of the headaches overnight. There were a lot of funny things like that that happened. People were really comrades in arms. It was a really good time, a good time to work. You don't have that experience anymore, I don't think.\\n\\n Mercury was exciting, but we went right on into the Gemini Program. We went to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] for the control center. That time I went down after Gemini I and Gemini II, and took the family, was going to take them another time, but…our son Joe, ended up with chicken pox, so he couldn't go, so the family stayed here.\\n\\n On Gemini II, which was unmanned, we lost the plug and the thing didn't go. In the Mercury days, the flights just didn't work. The Mercury Atlas finally was a big deal between, and they used to call the Atlas, \"At Last.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n The Cape was a different place then, not as built up as it is now, but a lot of good people at the Cape, we came and started here. Gemini III—was it Gemini II or Gemini IV—we backed up the Control Center at the Cape, and then for Gemini V we worked here. My biggest job during the Gemini Program was to lay out the design for the Mission Control Center. We did all the requirements for the Mission Control Center and worked with Philco, who won the contract. It was Philco Ford, I guess, at that time.\\n\\n We had problems with people leaning over the consoles and touching buttons and switches, and so we wanted a cover on the command switches. We had a good idea, but people didn't know how to do it, so guys would take the plastic home and cook them in the oven, and that's how we made the first ones. There was a lot of creativity by people like that…\\n\\n Gemini IV, we had fuel cells on that—Gemini IV was when we had the first spacewalk. That was an exciting time, because there were ten of us that worked every day our regular shift and then we worked at night preparing for a spacewalk. You can't imagine, we had no computers, we had only the old way—I can't even remember what it was called— paper had about sixteen copies in it. You'd type a deal, and then if you made a mistake, you had to pull them all apart, change them. We had one secretary and about ten of us worked on the ops side, worked with the flight crew every night, Jim [James A.] McDivitt and Ed [Edward H.] White [II], who lived a couple of doors from me and my family. We worked on IV doing that… We had another set of young people building the pack, they took a bail-out bottle and [made the life support] flight-rated that where he could go in and be outside. We worked on that probably four to six weeks, got everything ready, and were prepared to go, and a week before the Russians did a similar thing. But we pressed on and did that and it was exciting in the Control Center.\\n\\n Gemini III, I guess, we backed up what went to the Cape. I was here with John Hodge and Glynn [S.] Lunney to make sure everything was right. We had fuel cells on III, and fuel cells had a problem. We were kind of excited, because our guy caught the problem with the fuel cells. Rod Loe caught that problem. We kind of one-upped them and were really excited about that.\\n\\n But we got through that. IV, we did it here, we had the big spectacular of the space walk. The President [Lyndon B. Johnson] came after that and promoted them, you know, and it was an exciting time. Huge crowd where the duck ponds are. I don't know whether they even have the duck ponds anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They sure do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But it was an exciting time. He came and was very gracious to the crew. That's when we started getting the patches for the people who worked in the control center. We knew we couldn't pay them for the long hours that they worked. Spent a lot of nights in the control center, sleeping in the horrible dormitory that we had there and eating the bad food.\\n\\n I remember taking my daughter's Girl Scout troop through the control center. One of the kids' dads worked in the control center, too, and she was so excited and said, \"They've got the greatest machines.\" Of course, he thought it'd be the computers. He said, \"What kind?\" She said, \"Well, there's a Coke machine and a candy machine.\" [Laughter] So you can see where the kids were from.\\n\\n We worked hard on the Gemini. We worked a lot working on the operations for Gemini 76 [Gemini VI and VII rendezvous mission]. There was a big change in the philosophy. Mercury, you would go and you'd wait and you'd work and you'd wait and you'd work and you'd wait, and it'd finally go. Bill [William C.] Schneider became one of the leaders up in Washington, and he made a decree one time that we're going to launch ever six weeks, and we did. From that first EVA deal we had, we went on and we flew Gemini 76, where we had the first rendezvous.\\n\\n We'd had a problem with one. One flight was up, so we sent the other up pretty quickly, but in a sense, we had two missions and we worked around how to figure that out so we could keep track of both. Had people sleep over and that ran for a couple of weeks. One was quick, the rendezvous was quick. I believe Wally [Walter M.] Schirra [Jr.] did the rendezvous, and Frank Borman was the commander on the other. He and Tom [Thomas P.] Stafford, I think, flew.\\n\\n But we started working real close with the flight crews in the early days, probably from Gemini IV on. I credit Chris [Kraft] and Deke [Donald K.] Slayton for it. We were responsible to make sure that the checklists were all right, but we never saw them. I went and complained to Kraft one day, and said, \"You know, we can do it, but we never see them until after the flight starts, and you can't do that.\"\\n\\n The next day Deke called and said, \"Hey, what do you need?\" Told him what we needed, and we never had a problem from that time. That's what I'm saying; you didn't have to write a letter or have a briefing. It was more one-on-one and people responded.\\n\\n The other thing that flight ops people did and we were instrumental and we developed some trainers that were cheap. We had a couple of training guys and we got old hardware and stuff put together, made some single-systems trainers that went on and worked for Gemini and for the [Skylab] space station. It really helped the people on the ground, and it was pretty exciting.\\n\\n You talked about—I think you asked the question, when did the back-room support start. That started in the Mercury Program. It started with just a small group of people because we only had one spacecraft. That was McDonnell Douglas. McDonnell [Aircraft Corporation] made the Mercury and the Gemini. And a lot of sad faces when Apollo came along, because McDonnell wasn't involved, because everybody thought they were the only ones that could make it, but [North American] Rockwell [Corporation] made the command and service module.\\n\\n Then we had Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], who build the booster. The early boosters were just kind of leftovers, the Mercury—the Redstone, and the one from the Atlas, they were things that were used in the early days for the military. Then, of course, the Saturn I and the Saturn V were developed and tested and done by Marshall. That created another interface. There was a lot of duplication at that time.\\n\\n But we got through Gemini and we did everything in preparation in going to the Moon. We had a lot of clever people that were in the front rooms, a lot of good folks who were in the back rooms. We had some real problems during Gemini, and thinking of one, when Neil Armstrong was flying [with the Agena] and the rocket didn't do very well and so they came down early. We had some other problems, but they were mostly personal, personality problems.\\n\\n Went into Apollo, and we flew Apollo 1—Apollo 501 and 502, and they were fairly close together. 501 went well, 502 went into orbit backwards. We had a problem because the engine people put wires incorrectly and one cut off one engine and the other one cut off, so we went in backwards. So the next flight, of course, was 503, where we wanted to go up around the Moon, a tremendous, bold step. You think of gutsball. I would think Chris Kraft probably had the most influence in getting that to happen, but you need to remember that we had done the rendezvous, we had really looked at the orbital mechanics, and that was a new science for us.\\n\\n [Howard W.] Bill Tindall [Jr.] was a real heavyweight in that, and he started these mission techniques meetings, where he was the king and he listened to everybody, then he wrote the minutes and really controlled the procedural process. And then we put them in the change control, and that's the way it was, and then we froze the programs and it worked well. We got that done.\\n\\n I remember going to—it was a weekend, I remember going to the 503 final review for the engines at Marshall. I was the Johnson [Space Center] rep, and I got there, I had to fly to Atlanta and then catch a gooney bird to Huntsville, you know. It was horrible weather. Got there Saturday night, there's like one place in town, so I stayed there.\\n\\n But it was so interesting, [most of] the people were all German. I was the only one practically without the dueling scar, but I thought this must have been the way it was in Germany during World War II, all the blonde ladies and their dueling scar husbands, and there I was eating dinner alone, which was fine. And then went to the review and then came home that day, and we made a \"go\" to fly 503. Another exciting time where we worked really hard together to make sure that things would turn out right, and everything did.\\n\\n That was after we had had the 502 thing and got that done. The next one, of course, we were ready for the—and that was, of course, after the fire. The fire was a devastating time, but several good things came out of it. Number one, we got rid of the environment. Number two, the hatch was redesigned. The biggest thing that happened was the discipline that had to happen that wasn't there when we had the fire, and we never changed from that time. We used to do a lot of things where people really didn't watch the systems as close as they did. People at the Cape had watched them, but from a different point of view than the ones in flight.\\n\\n But we had lots of good people that rededicated themselves to do it by the numbers, and that came from the crew side, from the people at the Cape, and from the people here, both in the engineering and the operations sides. The safety folks really got on the horse, too, and worked really hard. If you've ever been to the beaches in France and you've seen how the Normandy invasion was done, it was the same kind of effort by all the people that worked on Apollo.\\n\\n Apollo was an exciting time. We flew 503, and then a month later we flew Apollo [9], and [9] was when we had the lunar module. We were really concerned because the lunar module didn't have a heat shield, and so what we did then was we built some procedures called lifeboat procedures. We were so proud of them, we took them to Kraft and he said, \"You guys are crazy. You're nuts. I don't ever want to see them again.\"\\n\\n Well, we completed them, kept them, didn't have to use them to rendezvous on, 7 was good, and then we flew—I guess, 503 was really Apollo 8. I can't keep the numbers straight. Apollo 7 was the guys flew around the [world] three days, I guess. Then we had the lunar module flight and then we flew the lunar module with the command and service module. I think that was Apollo [9]. Jim McDivitt flew, was the commander on that one. He and Rusty [Russell L.] Schweickart separated and we had the lifeboat procedure.\\n\\n We flew Apollo 8, which was 503 launch vehicle, which went around the Moon, and then we had 9. I can't remember the numbers. Nine, I guess, was the flight with the two vehicles together, and then 10 we flew around the Moon with Tom Stafford and Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan and came real low [over the lunar surface].\\n\\n There again it paid off, because when we flew the guys on board, put the wrong switch and then swore they didn't and we knew they did, but we told them what to do, you know. But it's got to be nerve-wracking when you're 250,000 miles away and you think everything's going, and the wrong planet's coming at you, and then you know that everything's going to be okay, and they came back.\\n\\n [Apollo] 11 was another big deal. We had some young folks in the control center. We had four situations during the lunar landing when we could have called an abort. We had a young guy who had done a slosh model, and, of course, as you move the lunar module, the fuel uncovered a lot of the sensors, and when you did that, you'd get a bad warning. But we had had a guy who had watched the slosh work, had developed his own little model, and he was the expert and he kept saying, \"Keep going. Keep going. Keep going,\" when we had the alarm problem, and everything worked out.\\n\\n So then we got them back and everybody was a hero. Big parties, all that good stuff, and we were really confident and cocky, Apollo 12's going to be a piece of cake. During the launch phase, we were struck by lightning. At that time a couple of us were in the back with the Spacecraft Analysis Group, and one of the things that we wanted to do was to marshal all of the engineering talent, but do it in a way that it was controlled. So we were the focal point to all the contractors to the mission evaluation room and to Marshall.\\n\\n MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology], we had a guy named Steve Copps who was with us. I don't know whether Steve was there that day or that shift, but the platform was ruined on the spacecraft, so we did the same thing. We had a backup at MIT and we dumped the platform. The whole plan was to bring it back, get it straight and fire at the end of the first revolution. Well, the Marshall people were dragging their feet, dragging. They needed not three nines, but ten nines to make sure, because they didn't know how bad things were. But we had the guys at MIT who did that, and we worked that through and got the data to Kraft, and we pressed on.\\n\\n So then we were really cocky because had had two successes. Of course, Apollo 13, probably the only time in my life that I've ever seen people put away their own motives and work together. In fact, my wife and I were so confident, our daughter was in the hospital to have her tonsils removed. [Laughter] I called and told her that we'd had a really bad problem and I didn't know when I'd be home.\\n\\n It happened right at a critical time, we had two choices, we could either press on and go around the Moon, or we could fire the command and service module. We probably had enough to bring them in the Indian Ocean, a long wait. We didn't know what the damage was to the command and service module.\\n\\n Kraft had just gone home and was taking a shower, and he got the call and, of course, he came right in. First question that he asked, \"I guess you've got your lifeboat procedures.\" [Laughter] \"Roger.\" We did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's great that he remembered that you had them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we were just thankful. He was a guy that challenged a lot of people, but he did it in a kind way, and he allowed people to grow and really be exceptional.\\n\\n The thing at that time, it was really critical because we had run—you know, the lunar module is supposed to live for three days, and we had to make it live for six. There were lots of problems that if you've seen the movie Apollo 13, which was probably as realistic as it could be, but there were a lot of things that went on, like Ken [Thomas K.] Mattingly [II], it showed in the movie, where he went and did a reswitch to make sure that everything was good, made sure nothing happened. But we had got the first thing to press on, that was the first big deal.\\n\\n The next thing was, how do we conserve the power and the water in the lunar module so the guys could live and how we keep them warm. Then we had the CO2 problem, and the guys from the environmental systems came through. There again, I guess we had a couple of hundred problems that we dealt with from the analysis to the different controllers and the different evaluation teams.\\n\\n I remember we had gotten to the—we ran a simulation. I got a call from one of the directors. I was in the SPAN room at that time, and that stands for Spacecraft Analysis, you know. It was from Bob [Robert A.] Gardiner, and he said, \"You're going to kill the guys.\"\\n\\n I said, \"What are you talking about?\"\\n\\n He says, \"We've just run a simulation and the docking ring is going to break, and they'll die, and we won't hear from them after we made the maneuver to come home.\"\\n\\n See, we were ready to fire and as soon as we fired, we were thirty minutes in no communications and then they would either come back or we'd never hear from them again. So I said, \"What weights did you use?\"\\n\\n He said, \"I don't know.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, we've just run a simulation with the weights that are on board,\" and in the background you can hear ten, nine, eight, you know. I'm about to die, but one thing we learned in this space thing was if you don't know what happened, don't do anything. We had done the best we could. They were ready. They were all ready to go, and they did.\\n\\n Well, I sweated bullets for thirty minutes and then the first thing it was, \"Apollo 13, this is Houston,\" and they said, \"We're coming home.\" Well, I was a happy dude, to be very honest with you.\\n\\n Then as we came closer, we went through another series of problems. An exciting time, got them home, and really was a neat experience.\\n\\n Then we started, we flew Big Al [Alan B. Shepard, Jr.] the next time. That was an interesting flight, no problems.\\n\\n Then we had our first experience with the Marshall folks, not only with the rockets, but with the lunar rover. We had had one our guys go to every training session that the flight crew did with the lunar rover. He was a contractor, Harry Smith, Jr.—no middle initial—from Poplarville, Mississippi. Harry was one of the smartest people I've ever known without a formal education. Poplarville's claim to fame was where they had Inspector Number Eight that did the underwear. [Laughter] That's all I can remember of Poplarville. But Harry would say, \"You're wrong,\" like that.\\n\\n They could not get the lunar rover right and they had these big tethers, or tabs, that you had to pull—if you didn't pull—and we were running out of time, running out of time, and the Marshall people kind of gone duck dead in the water. We were working with them. They were now in the Spacecraft Analysis Room, but they couldn't get a response from the Boeing people at Marshall. Harry finally said, \"Pull this tab,\" and the people at Marshall wouldn't come through, and finally he said, \"Do it,\" and they did and the rover popped out and we were back on the time line.\\n\\n Well, the people at Marshall went bananas. [For each mission,] we had given patches and little deals to the guys [as] a little memento. They didn't even want Harry to have one of those. That's kind of the problem. But in the meantime, to give you the different ways—the Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center was there, and he was just kind of watching over things. People were so busy, and we have, of course, the pneumatic tube system and you sent stuff, and somebody said, \"Here, take this and send it to station number nine.\" The old director, good old German guy, took it, stuffed it in the thing, dialed it up, and sent it. And that shows you that nobody was wearing their stripes, except a few people, but that started the differences, I think, between the Marshall people and the Johnson people. But that was not a big deal, it was just kind of a healthy competition.\\n\\n But we got that flight done, and then on [Apollo] 16 we had a real problem again. Ken Mattingly flew the command module and John [W.] Young and Charlie [Charles M.] Duke [Jr.] [were] the lunar module pilot[s]. There again we worked with a problem. We made a maneuver when we separated and the command and service module engine didn't work right. So we were really concerned. Of course, the guys had separated, and we needed to argue it a bunch of times and we needed to bring it back together so they could all come home.\\n\\n In that same period of time we went through all the records at Rockwell. We had all the Rockwell engineers, we had all of our systems people from E&D, and we found out that the engine was good, so they separated again and then landed, and that was a really successful flight. Of course, Apollo 17 was.\\n\\n In the meantime, we started working on—in that same period of time, flight operations and flight crew operations were joined together, and Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht, who was one of the best, Kenny had been the Mercury project manager and the Gemini project manager, and a really wonderful guy. He became the head of flight operations and that had both the flight crew and the mission operations folks. Gene Kranz was his deputy and I was underneath Gene. I worked for Gene as his assistant for about sixteen or seventeen years, I guess. As he went up, I don't know whether that was good or bad, I went up. Then Kenny moved over to the Shuttle Program Office, and then George [W. S.] Abbey was brought in to…head [our] that group.\\n\\n One of the really neat guys in the Apollo Program was George [M.] Low, and not George Low, Jr., who's the astronaut, or used to be an astronaut, whatever it is, but George Low was one of the most brilliant managers I've ever known. He had—I can't think of Judy's last name, Judy was his secretary, and he would dictate his letters and never read them. That's how confident he was with his dictation and she was with recording it, and then he would sign them the next morning.\\n\\n George put the discipline in the Apollo Program, and we had some real problems early days getting the discipline in the Apollo Program, because it was a gigantic program. The Cape had to be redone, the Mission Control Center had to be redone. A lot of different things happened. George and Chris must have had a blood oath, but they worked so closely together and they brought things together. We had a really good working relationship with those two guys and they really supported us in what we did. In the Apollo situation, very little second-guessing went on with what happened in the Mission Control Center during the flights.\\n\\n At that same time, Gene and I started a thing that we called Marvin Manpower. We started figuring out how we could track how much energy it took from our people to get ready for a flight. Flight mission rules were really important. They grew from just a few pages to a document that big, and that's what we used to train our people with. The operations handbooks that we had, of drawings of all where people took the logic drawings and recreated them, they'd cover the wall, and they were all hand-drawn at that time. Had to be checked, because that was what you saw.\\n\\n I remember taking, when we got ready for the Shuttle, I remember taking John Young and Charlie Duke, and we showed them what we watched. We had problems with the pilots to get and use electronic stuff rather than the meters and the dials. We showed them we had two screens with all the lunar module data, not the trajectory, but all the systems. Even though we played the tape, the descent tape to the Moon, listened to the voice, watched the systems burn, they didn't believe it. Here are the guys who landed on the Moon, they wouldn't believe it. But we were trying to convert them for the Shuttle system to get rid of dials, because they only show one thing. The cathode ray tube can show you any system. And they finally submitted to that years later. I think they still have the eight-ball in the Shuttle, in the Orbiter.\\n\\n George Low allowed flight operations people to have a voice in how the systems were developed and how they ended up on the spacecraft, and that was a huge step. Of course, then we were working so close with the flight crews that it really made the flights a lot easier.\\n\\n But on 13, I'm convinced that those people depended so much on our guys on the ground that if somebody said, \"Open the hatch and jump out,\" they would have done it without question. They did their job and we did ours, and there were a ton of folks working together. Like I said, never in my lifetime before or since have I ever seen that kind of cooperation.\\n\\n I think how much better our country and our world would be if we could get people just to say, \"This is really what needs to be.\" I've thought that the people we had at that time, if we wanted to feed the world that are hungry, we could do that, provided we don't have all the hurdles we have now, we would have done it the way we did it in those days. People went across their interface and asked enough questions and played what-ifs.\\n\\n Our training people were another brilliant set of folks who didn't get the glory that the folks were inside, in the Mission Control Center, because their pictures were taken all the time, but they were just as important. We had simulations. One thing we did, we debriefed each other. We'd say, \"I'm the procedures guy. This didn't happen right, this didn't happen, I made this mistake.\" And we found through that kind of debriefing that people remembered their mistakes and they didn't make them again, because they were doing it in front of their peers. That was encouraged. Our simulation people figured out ways. They'd start a little leak and then it would manifest and then something that was guaranteed never to break would break. Let me tell you, that happened on the flights. You know, people said it's not realistic, but it happened, and it saved a lot of lives.\\n\\n We went on into—go back to Marvin Manpower. We figured out if we flew this kind of flight, then we ought to be able to do it with less people, so we took some of those people after the flight and started working on Skylab. So we were ready for Skylab when it did [happen]. We took a few other people and put them on the Shuttle. It's probably automated now, but at that time we tracked it, we wrote it all down and we knew more where the people were than when we briefed. At budget time, we never lost a budget battle. We always got what we asked for, because we had the data and nobody could question it, and it was pretty realistic.\\n\\n Skylab, we ended up with Marshall building a big chunk of the hardware, so they wanted a place in the Spacecraft Analysis Room. It's the old SPAN room, or the Spacecraft Analysis just expanded. That was a problem, and we also had to fly for nine months.\\n\\n There was an interesting thing happened. Dr. [Robert R.] Gilruth, who was another really pioneer here, you had to know that guy. He was very quiet, but a brilliant guy. His wife was a balloonist in the thirties and flew with [Jacque] Piccard. But he wrote my wife a note, thanking her for what she did [during Apollo]. Really neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's really special. It's great that he recognized her contribution." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because there were a lot of families that just exploded and disappeared. Our family had a special problem. Our son was born a dwarf, which caused a lot of trips to Johns Hopkins, a lot of different kind of things. But Joe's done great. He's an accomplished, high-paid lawyer. He just retired from—he's in the [Houston] City Council. But he's had some of the similar problems that we had. He and his wife lost two kids. Well, they lost [two] kids, full term…and one [early on]. Now they have three kids, and it's really unique, they're the same [ages] had they [not lost] their natural family. But it's amazing how well they're doing.\\n\\n So a lot of the things that happened during that time my wife had to take care of. Our daughter is older and she helped a lot, too. But a lot of…[families] just disintegrated, just too much stress. And that happened also with the flight crew.\\n\\n But we got into Skylab and we had some interesting experiences there. We had really grown tight after Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. We had two dilemmas in Skylab. The [ground] software packages weren't working. IBM was the contractor and they worked really hard. I can't remember whether it was CDC or who it was— [Brief interruption]\\n\\n We told Kraft—we had a huge meeting up in [his] conference room, and this is one of the times where he pulled his [Nikita] Khrushchev trick, which he was prone to do. There were two things you had to remember about him. He had a coin purse, and if you had one of your troops briefing him—and we always believed we would have the smartest and the best person brief him if we had a problem, and we would watch what he was doing and kind of try to orchestrate, or control, what was said. If he took his coin purse out and started counting his coins, you knew time was up, no matter what you were doing or who you had there. You know, cut it off, Charlie.\\n\\n The other time was when he would hear something that he thought you were wrong on, but he would really kind of take his shoe off and let you know you were wrong.\\n\\n But this time we had gone—Flight Support Division, which was part of flight ops—terrible time getting the [ground] software system together, because what we had was in Skylab you had a long recording period and we were out of touch, so you used all that recorded data to play back and then evaluate. And it wasn't working. The front-end computer that brought it all in was on its knees, and they had beat the poor guy to death, so we thought [it] had [to be] evaluated.\\n\\n So we went around the room and IBM said, \"No go.\" Somebody else in flight ops said, \"No go.\" The guy who had the huge problem said, \"We are ready to go.\" Everybody about had a heart attack. Kraft said, \"That's the kind of spirit I want.\" He says, \"I'm going to give you guys forty-eight hours,\" bang with the shoe, \"or I'll replace everybody.\" So a miracle happened, you know, and the [ground system] worked.\\n\\n We flew…the first launch, remember the…[solar panel was stuck]. The guys who were from Marshall were literally crying in the control center, and rightly so. You know, they'd spent ten years trying to get that rascal up. We had the optimists in the Mission Evaluation Room and over in tech services figuring out a way to make it work. Guy had a fish pole, stuck it through [a hatch] and put the heat shield out to protect it.\\n\\n The crew came back and, of course, at that time they had been in isolation. So here's a hundred people, maybe fifty people, were all sitting in the room with the mask on, reading this. You can't hear anything that anybody says. Then pretty soon Joe [Joseph P.] Kerwin, who smoked a pipe, had cut a hole in, you know, and he had the pipe sticking out. Well, after about four days, you know, and that seems kind of silly, but that kind of togetherness kind of broke all the stuff down.\\n\\n Well, long story short, we figured out a way to launch the other one. We put the crew in there. We figured out a way they could cut the band that was holding it, the thing snapped, but we still had the toxicity problem of what happened inside because of the heat. The Marshall folks, in their good old German way, had figured out a way to build a [fix], but it was so heavy, we could hardly carry it. We were afraid the guys couldn't manhandle it and do it. They ended up drilling holes in it and making it lighter, and it worked. Got the thing stabilized and went in, got it all set and we flew a thirty-day flight, a sixty-day flight, and a ninety-day flight, but there was a period of time between that, so it ran out in nine months.\\n\\n This was in the days before PCs [personal computers]. You think about the power of the computing system in the control center, the system we used to go to the Moon now fits in a PC, that's how much power. And that was the top of the line.\\n\\n But when our guys worked—and we lost a lot of other people, but we had a team of North American, or Rockwell, McDonnell Douglas, who built a big chunk of it, one of the universities that built the ATM [Apollo Telescope Mount] computer. We learned how to load computers really good from the ground. That worked like a top.\\n\\n But I remember[ed] something that Dr. Gilruth did [during Apollo], and that was write a letter to my wife. So I personally wrote a letter to every wife in the flight ops. It was four hundred letters, I guess, maybe five hundred, that I wrote, to thank them for what they did. And that was not on a PC; that was all handwritten. [Laughter] People didn't know what a PC was in those days. They would have been nice to have.\\n\\n But we had some difficulties with Marshall, but they all worked out and it strengthened our team. We learned how to do EVA in the early days. We trained guys over here. We had the recovery group in flight operation. We had a barge and enough rope to wrap this building three million times. Everything. You can't imagine. I remember one time we said, \"Well, how do you get a guy to the command module once they land and they're hurt?\" So the tech services folks built a huge, I call it a shoehorn, but it was a fiberglass deal that they could put behind the crewmen's back with handles, because if you've had trouble, if you've known someone that's been real ill, it's hard to pick them up when they're dead weight.\\n\\n So we were in a place, a little cylinder full of water, and we'd dump them in the phase two position, which is top in the water, which means if you don't turn it up, you're going to drown. But we said, \"Put on a helmet.\" And fortunately they did. They put on their helmet, and they ripped the guy out, is the way I looked at it, and sent him sailing over to the metal pool top, and his helmet, you've seen a kid who's run into a wall riding a little motorbike. But we learned that way. We learned how to do it, you know, and it worked out.\\n\\n Skylab was a really a huge success, and it's a shame that the U.S. didn't have enough money to keep that up, because we would have beat Mir and we would have learned, but we learned so much from the medical standpoint that people really, really in our country have had the advantage of.\\n\\n The thing that I used to always stress when I talked around the country are the real benefits, the computers, medical. You know the square fat ambulances that we have are all direct from there. The telemetry can tell you what the problem is. The miniaturization. I have my own pancreas right here that keeps me alive. It's an insulin pump that takes care of diabetes.\\n\\n But it was a group effort, and probably one of the huge strengths was a lot of people together from different backgrounds and different mores and values, that came together because there was a goal. There were some really special people, guys like Bob Gilruth, Chris Kraft, Gene Kranz, who I worked with really closely for a long time, George Low, Kenny Kleinknecht.\\n\\n George Low got cancer and died, I think with melanoma, but the kind of guy he was, he went to M.D. Anderson [Hospital], and while he was sitting in the waiting room he wrote down the problems the patients have, segregate the patient so if you're going and don't know what you have, you don't have to see the patient that's eaten alive, or has no ear or no arm or whatever. Chuck [Charles A.] Berry, who was one of the early doctors, was at that time, I believe, in charge of the health center down there. He wrote probably fifteen, twenty pages of problems and solutions. It was unbelievable.\\n\\n I felt like when we walked from our building over to his, we needed to be working and thinking about what we were going to talk to the chief about.\\n\\n But they were gracious people. I can remember going to see Chris. Before every flight we had to take the mission rules and tell him what the problems, what the changes were. So you really got everything squared away, every I, every T, everything was understood. You understood everything. Sometimes he would ask you a question, sometimes he would just sign it. [Laughter] You'd say, \"Boy, I wasted five good days,\" but you knew that if you didn't, he would ask the one question. But he had a knack for sensing. But he was also a good guy.\\n\\n I remember the Senior Promotion Board, we'd put a guy in, and then we heard he wasn't even talked about, and we were really upset, because the guy had done a magnificent job. I saw [Kraft] that night going on, and he said, \"What in the world [is wrong with you]?\"\\n\\n I said, \"I am really disappointed,\" and told him.\\n\\n He said, \"I make mistakes. Come see me Monday.\" We went to see him Monday, and he signed it. [Laughter]\\n\\n Then the other directorates were mad because we had one-upped them, but, you know, they could have done the same thing. But he was a neat guy. He still is a neat guy, a special person.\\n\\n It's interesting, I talked to him one day, I was disappointed in an assignment, and he told me when he worked at Langley, he'd been a GS-13, I think, for fifteen years, and he said, \"My boss was so bad, I got ulcers and I almost died.\" So I'm sure it was true, what he said, but I got to thinking, it's not too bad what I've just been through, because it really wasn't. But he is a special guy. Gene Kranz was, too. Gene has been a special friend for a long time, he and his family. But there were so many.\\n\\n I remember one of the things that we learned from the lunar module after [Apollo] 13 was to take—in the old days, computer programs, if you had an error, it would manifest itself. So we ran the programs twice as long as they needed to be. If it was a three-day flight, you'd run it for six days and then check your errors.\\n\\n Fortunately, we did that on the lunar module and rationed the water and that kind of stuff and it worked. When we went to review the Viking, Bill Tindall who was the head of the data directorate, and Jim [James C.] Stokes [Jr.], who was Flight Support Division, we had an Air Force guy with us and Steve Copps from MIT, who did the on-board software, and myself. The director of Langley, who built the thing that went to the Mars surface, asked us to come, and one of the things we asked them was, \"How long have you run your descent program? Just the descent period of time.\" Well, we said, \"Run it twice as long.\" Well, they really got angry, but in the end, the director from Langley, a guy by the name of Ed [Edgar M.] Cortright, said, \"You know, these are our guests and they're not getting a hero medal or anything else. They want you to learn from their mistakes.\" And I think we them did a good job.\\n\\n The neatest return from that for me, I have a picture…that was taken by Viking that landed on Mars. Not the lunar surface, but the Martian surface. It really is red, unless they put a color film in there. But we went to one of their operations and watched them work, watched them simulate, and they went through a lot of the same problems that we did, and we just helped them [solve] the problems. That was a neat experience.\\n\\n I also did a lot of the stuff for pulling flight ops and flight crew ops together. That took about a year of discussions with the different managers, because everybody thought they were getting cheated, but they accepted that. That was an interesting experience, because we had to bring some other folks into our Marvin Manpower system, and if you are sensitive to the way people are, the more they have, the stronger they are, but what we were trying to do was to make it a lean organization, because we knew cuts would come. It's going to happen, so [you had to] get your organization [in shape].\\n\\n Then we also had an idea of training your deputy to take over so you can move. And that's kind of why I left. I had done of it all I could do in the space program, and I was also a little nervous about what Ronald [W.] Reagan going to do with the retirement.\\n\\n A guy met me in the parking lot one day and he says, \"Would you like a job?\"\\n\\n I said, \"I hadn't even thought about it.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Well, you know, they're having an opening and you can retire and keep everything.\" So I thought about it over the weekend, and decided to do that, and I went to work for McDonnell Douglas for about five years, and then I went to work for Computer Sciences Corporation for about five years, and then retired and did some consulting.\\n\\n But the people that I came in contact with were really something. I grew up with Glynn Lunney and Cliff [Clifford E.] Charlesworth, and I worked for Glynn on the Shuttle program on the first four flights. I did the same thing for them. Of course, the Shuttle had had more things than Skylab, and the first four flights were pretty spectacular. We had a few nervous moments during the approach and landing tests.\\n\\n But there again, Kenny Kleinknecht was a guy who worked with us really close, and he was the chair of the change boards where all things were controlled and invariably the crew would come in, we need to change the light from green to purple, or polka dot to chartreuse. That costs a lot of money. I'm being facetious when I say it was those colors, but they were trying to make it easier for them[selves].\\n\\n When we flew the Shuttle training airplane, that came under us and we were spending tons of money. I mean, it was like a three-million-dollar deal up to twelve or fifteen million and Kenny Kleinknecht came in. They had no schedule, so the first thing we did was we had a schedule and we briefed every morning, where are you, where are you going?\\n\\n We were flying the plane up there in Long Island, and we had several of the training pilots from Joe [Joseph S.] Algranti's shop. The flight is, I don't know what you know about flying, but the Grumman 2, it's not the Gulf Stream, it's the jet version, it's like a strafing dive to land, and then it pulls out and lands. That's just how the Shuttle does. If you've watched enough Shuttle landings, you don't realize, but if those landing gear don't come out, you're dead. I mean, you're dead.\\n\\n So we had a problem. The crewmen that flew, of course, the stick was the same way as the Orbiter. The guy said, \"I need a thing to rest my arm on.\" So we asked Grumman, \"How much is it going to cost?\" It was exorbitant. So we said, \"Tell you what, go down to the hardware store and buy a piece of PVC that's got an angle and you could put it on the arm [rest] and gray-tape it and then you just have your arm lean on that.\" Worked, and it cost ten dollars and ninety-five cents.\\n\\n Then the guys in the flight crew said, \"We need the real hand controller.\" So Kenny devised a Cinderella deal. We had ten crewmen come in, we had the real [hand controller] and a mock-up one, and he blindfolded them, and eight out of ten picked the mock-up. So that's what we used. The price there was like three million dollars versus twenty thousand dollars.\\n\\n So Kenny, he was another neat guy who went to the Cape. We had the tile problem. I don't know whether you know, but those tiles on the spacecraft—and it reminds me of a fish. It would be like catching a fish and taking all the scales off of it, and then trying to put them back on. Every tile has a part number. I remember being down there, they were going to open the [landing] gear to see if everything cleared, and everybody was clear, and they popped the gear down and it shredded those things off like scales on a fish. So Kenny [defined] some real procedures. He went to the Cape. He would take on any job that needed to be done. He was a real workhorse in the space program. Neat guy. He got the Cape squared away, which was another dilemma, and got the Rockwell people squared away and got the Orbiters started through the pipeline and we started flying.\\n\\n But we had to learn a lot different, and the problem still goes on. If you know now, the cockpit has all of the things on the cockpit—I can't think of the word—that you can look. You don't have to look at your things, it's got the airspeed, the wind velocity, all of that stuff. I can't think of the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The head's-up display?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Head's-up display. We had just been through—and the change boards are there all the time. You meet in the morning, you find out what's going on at the Cape. In the Shuttle Program I spent a lot of time in 602 watching all that foolishness, and then go to the noon change board, and then, of course, there was the PRCB [Program Requirements Control Board] and the CCB [Change Control Board] in the level three, and all that junk. So you spent most of your time in the meeting, listening and then passing the data back and forth to people. Now you could go and type it and send it on the Net to whoever needed to be there with all the data. I would imagine that's what they do now. I don't know.\\n\\n But I can remember being there one day and a guy said, \"We will never\"—this was one of the flight crew saying, \"We will never be back for any more changes.\" We wrote that in his log, \"Never be back.\" A week later, the guy comes in with the head's up. \"If we don't have the head's up, this plane will die, you know.\" I thought Glynn Lunney—if you know Glynn, Glynn's face gets red every now and then when he gets—and he looks a lot older than he really is, and he'd say, \"In the log I have written, 'Will never ask for another change.'\" But they'd made that and that's a good thing to do, but it was just so untimely, so untimely to make it. They've done a good job. There again, they've got a lot of good young people that I worked with that are still there, that are not young people anymore, but they really do a good job.\\n\\n I would think that things that are really neat about the space program that I've witnessed is the people who stood out. George Abbey was another guy who worked for George Low, and he was a big help in providing access to Low when he was Apollo Program manager and George worked for Chris to provide access, because we never went unless we had a problem that we needed to get a blessing. Then sometimes he'd say, \"You're right, but you don't understand all the facts.\" And we could understand that. He said, \"I've got to do this.\" We understood that he at least had listened to us. He wasn't somebody who just punched your card and didn't listen.\\n\\n Another guy who probably a lot of people don't even know was Sig Sjoberg. Sig was Chris Kraft's, I call him—I would never say it to either of them's face, but his alter ego. He was very reserved, but very, very smart. Sig, I don't think has been well for the last few years. But he always asked the most probing questions and got people to think that maybe there was another way or maybe it wasn't the right time to do something. He was a special guy and still is. We'll remember him, because he was as solid as Kraft and Gilruth, but just was more quiet.\\n\\n Dr. Gilruth was very reserved and very quiet, but he was one brilliant guy, and had chances to get a lot of things done. He was wise, I think, because he picked people and let them do it, and then kind of held the reins kind of loosely, but didn't worry so much that it wasn't going to be done. And it takes a big person to do that. You don't need a control freak doing that.\\n\\n I look at the people that are in flight ops there or mission ops, I guess they call it. Randy Stone. I knew Randy and his wife before they were married. They've been married thirty years. He's matured and grown to be just the right kind of person to keep the tradition going.\\n\\n One of the guys that we met was a famous painter, and I can't think of the guy's name, but you've seen his murals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "McCall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bob [Robert T.] McCall. We talked to him, got interested in him, and he initiated the first patch for flight operations. It was an exciting time. Probably won't be as exciting, it probably isn't as exciting now as it was, but I think that people that are there probably think it is. They probably think we did things, and a lot of the things we did were Dark Ages approaches, but we got it done with what we had and the money that we had and the people that we had. But the people were just, it was a special group of folks.\\n\\n It's interesting now to see that the barriers have been broken and to see the women having a lot of good jobs. It's timely. They were just starting when we came, when we were there, and it's interesting to see that that's improved and gotten larger and larger, because there's probably no one smarter than my wife. [Laughter] Our problem in our family, we needed some Indians; we had all chiefs. Our daughter was a chief, our son was a chief, my wife was a chief, and I was a chief. It's interesting that our grandchildren are the same way, the three adopted ones, you would have thought they were the natural ones. Our daughter has two girls, and one is going to be seventeen in a couple of months, and she's really a great athlete, great student, and a great kid and will do well in life. It's so happy for my wife and I to have two kids that are both really good citizens. Just, boy, really lucky.\\n\\n In fact, my wife and I were shopping last Friday and ran into Carmen Kranz, Gene's oldest daughter, and we didn't know she'd had a little baby, beautiful child. It was good to see her. In fact, she recognized us…it was just a neat time.\\n\\n I don't know whether that's enough for you, or whether you want to talk again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We're right at about the time that our tape is running out, so we do need to stop for that. Then it's up to you. There's probably a few things that, if you have a chance, that I'd like to go back and go on a little more details with. We can either do that now or at another time, whatever works better for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Why don't we do it now. Then you'll be through with me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then you can do whatever you want to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well, we'll go ahead and take a quick break here then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. [Tape change.]\n\n...and if you've seen some of the old pictures, we all had short hair, we had skinny ties, and we wore short-sleeved shirts. And we all had hair. [Laughter]\\n\\n Huge briefing. I guess it lasted three, four days, out at Berkeley, University of California at Berkeley. Well, we had never seen people with rope belts and barefooted in a college [classroom]. The guy that was running the machine that day, the viewgraph, he would just sleep between. They just drove some of the conservative folks right over the wall, because here they were in the hotbed of all the people from California. But there were things like that, like that same way with the thing with the face masks on to keep everybody from getting contaminated.\\n\\n So what else can I do to help you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if we could, you've given us a great overview of your career with NASA, and I thought maybe to go back and touch on a couple of things in a little bit of detail." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Starting back with when you came on with Mercury. Now, you said you were in Hawaii on Cooper's flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that the only one that you had worked on then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I worked on Wally Schirra's flight earlier, which was 7. That was at Corpus Christi. Then they shut that place down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were working at Corpus Christi during that mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. If I remember, that was just like a month after I got here, but we would have our briefing, and a lot of the things that they were doing I had done in the Air Force, so it was not a big change. It was just changing the names. It wasn't an airplane; it was a spacecraft.\\n\\n Of course, we had a training session where I had to learn all the sessions. Now, the Mercury systems were a piece of cake compared to the Apollo systems and the Gemini systems, but we really needed help into getting everybody to work together. I was involved in a lot of the work for Gene, Gene Kranz, and did a lot of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking at that and bringing everybody together and the transition from Mercury to Gemini, were there big pieces that you remember, like some of the biggest challenges of making the new program possible and building the control center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the big thing in the control center was to get people to put the right things in the pneumatic tube. You couldn't put hot dogs, coffee cups, and Cokes. And that was a real problem. We had another problem, since it's a mechanical system, they for some reason put the spring on the wrong way. So that rascal flies through the tube about twenty-five, thirty miles an hour, and the thing comes open and it just would scarf that tube and, of course, that was really expensive. But once they did a few tiny things and got people chewed out enough to not put dumb things in there—let me tell you, there were a lot of dumb things sent through there—it saved us an enormous amount of money. I think at that time that thing cost about a million dollars, and everybody said, \"Oh, golly, that's a lot of money.\" But we didn't have to have twenty-five or thirty people, if you take twenty-five or thirty people do salaries, benefits, etc., it pays for itself pretty quick. Once they got the bugs out of it, it was pretty neat.\\n\\n We had a lot of the same problems. To talk to you about the flight crew, some of our people on the Mercury deal, Mercury remote sites and at the Mercury control center, we had meters just like a meter would up and down if they'd see a pressure. When we did our first cathode ray tube, first computer-generated, guess what we had? We had the meters on the cathode ray tube.\\n\\n Then we got people saying, \"Let's draw the entire propulsion system and make a schematic.\" Put your sensors, put your pressures, what's it supposed to be, and then, of course, we had to get the people to go from the left-hand side to the right-hand side. But we learned how to do that. We did that in the propulsion system, in the environmental systems, and we didn't have anyplace to learn from except our experience in Mercury. We had a lot of people from the Air Force. We had a lot people that had been technicians. [And most did well.]\\n\\n In fact, it was funny, when I was in Alaska, we were flying an airplane up and down the Pacific Coast, we'd fly from Elmendorf Air Force Base to Moffett Field in San Francisco. One day this plane showed up and they said, \"We need you guys to fly these missions. Here's all the stuff.\" So we had to fit it [by] hand, and what we were doing is taking the pieces of equipment and making it look like a satellite. If you remember, years ago, you probably don't, but one satellite was lost and the Russians recovered it and everything. We did that, and it's funny, some of the people that I had talked to on the air-to-ground came to work from up in Alaska. So we knew what needed to be done. Nothing had ever been written down. Very few people knew about orbital mechanics.\\n\\n We had one time over here, we had one of the spacecraft land very long, and we went back, we tried to blame it on the pilot, and it wasn't the pilot's fault; it was the ground people's fault, because they had not changed the [computer] constant correctly. So we learned from that mistake. So we created a group of two or three folks and they were the only ones who could change the constants, and part of our checklist before launch was we'd call Shirley [Hunt] Hinson and say, \"Shirley, have the constants been changed?\" Never had another problem with landing long.\\n\\n So we kept asking, we played what-if until we were blue in the face, and by doing, that we eliminated, we started with this many problems and we came down and then we trained, and then the sim folks would read the procedures that we had and reviewed the checklist, reviewed the systems, and they would open that crack back up and ask those questions. They did everything. They would fail the intercom in between the people. You know, we used \"Are you go or no go?\" It was a negative report. But if you had a problem sometimes you'd have to come from the back room and say, \"Hey, here's the problem. Show the people.\"\\n\\n We had a way to make a copy, a hard copy of the cathode ray tube. People thought we were crazy, but that saved our lives, because you had a history of what was going on. So we just kept doing it and doing it and asking ourselves the question, and sometimes we would be like the sim people and ask the same kind of questions so people would think. People learned to think on their feet. They learned how to listen to a lot of intercom [channels]. They learned how to tune out stuff that wasn't necessary. Then they also learned that if they only needed to listen to the guys talking to the crew, they'd punch everything off and take the wrath of the flight director or whoever was screaming and hollering at them.\\n\\n You also had to learn to deal with the top row and tell them what they needed to know and not tell them too much, because then the press guys—I don't know whether you ever remember Paul, we used to call him Cadet Paul, was the PAO guy for years. He was always daydreaming or asleep. We'd brief him. Gosh, what was his name? But he was here for a long time. Not [John A.] Shorty Powers, but he was—I'm not going to say anything about him. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A lot of that creativeness that you had talked about earlier came into play." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But we had a group of people, and those folks kind of grew and were really the people who managed the different things. The personalities of those people sparkled enough that they commanded the respect of the others. Primarily they worked harder and just did a better job than some of the other folks. We had some other folks that who were just solid in the systems and that's all they wanted to do. But we had some fun times, some good times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like there was a pretty good rapport between everyone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We played hard and we worked hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good combination." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The move to Houston. You had mentioned earlier that you had gone back to Virginia after the Air Force, because that was your home. What did you and your family think about the move to Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were delighted. We were just delighted. Even though I'd gone back to help my mom, it just wasn't right for what I wanted to do with my life and my family, and this was a wonderful opportunity. It was new. I had listened to Al Shepard. In fact, I was driving to Langley on Air Force business when he flew. I thought, hey, this is pretty cool. \"Cool\" wasn't a good word then. Cool was when you were almost cold. [Laughter] But I really thought it was neat and I looked forward to it. Then when I met some of the people that were really working on it, I thought I would fit in okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you, as a kid, had you had an interest?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, there wasn't anything. You know, airplanes. I grew up in Virginia, went to school there, and Langley Field, you know, Sam [Samuel P.] Langley was a big person, and if he had gotten a little help, he would have been the guy who—in fact, Smithsonian held his airplane in higher regard for years, and the Wright flyer was in England in a museum. Then finally they got the history right. Kill Devil Hills [North Carolina] is close to where I grew up. It's hard to believe. Everybody thinks those guys were bicycle people. They were brilliant engineers, because they saw the lateral control by reviewing what [Octave] Chanute had tried to get across, but Chanute never put an engine on it until after the other guys did, I think. But I figured if they could do it, you know, I could do it. I was fortunate enough to be part of it. It's pretty neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's pretty neat. You've had some very interesting times.\\n\\n Looking at, again, with Gemini, you had talked about a little bit about what was going on with a few of the missions in there, for all of the missions were you in the control room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Yes, I was in the control center for every Gemini flight. Gemini I was an unmanned flight, I was there. Gemini II, this was at the Cape. Gemini III, I was here and we had a group at Kennedy [Space Center, Florida]. At that time it was Cape Canaveral, I think. I still have a hard time calling it Kennedy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You're not the only one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kennedy was a funny place to visit, because it was an Air Force base, so you had to have an Air Force clearance, and many times they would goof it up and you'd go—and you know, if you've gone from Cocoa Beach, in those days there was only one road. You drove up the beach. It seemed like a hundred miles to the middle of nowhere. If you didn't get in, the rest of the troops, they were okay, they'd leave you at the gate house. Lots of times, people, you know, I thought a wonderful place for Candid Camera. But they finally realized, and since they were Air Force people, they didn't care if they hadn't gotten word from you, you didn't get in, so there you were. But we finally got that squared away, but it's still funny, now there's gates all over the place. It's a nice, nice facility.\\n\\n If you've ever had a chance to go in the vertical assembly building and seen how they stack the Shuttle, it's truly amazing. We used to laugh about when Kurt [H.] Debus was the boss down there, and he was another one of the German guys. I can see him in Congress then. We'd got this thing and it weighed seven and a half million pounds, and a tiny little tractor that drags it out, you know, at two miles an hour. The stones that they use on the roadway as lubricant are amazing. It's all television from every [point]—it's an enormous thing to see. But if you're afraid of heights, don't go to the top of it.\\n\\n We asked our crew to get on the top and hook up to the wire, then come sailing down. That's probably the spookiest part of the whole flight for them, although sitting on top of all that fuel takes a lot of courage. But I think they're probably safer than driving their Corvette up and down the highway. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very definitely, I'd think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ed White was a neighbor of ours, and so sad, and Neil [A.] Armstrong was. Neil Armstrong's wife taught our daughter the synchronized swimming." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was a good guy. Reminded me from what I've read about Charles [A.] Lindbergh, he was about the same kind of person. Nice guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he does seem to be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking at, again, some of the intricacies of the mission control room, and you had talked about the Gemini VI and VII mission, how they did the dual and the rendezvous, and that wasn't something that had originally been planned for Gemini." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was another thing that was done very quickly. We had an opportunity, see, I believe the—I can't remember which, VI was scheduled to go and a plug fell out of the bottom and it had a false start. [Gemini] VII was coming down the pipeline, so we got it and tried to compress the schedule and then fixed VI, so VII went first, and then VI went and rendezvoused. I believe that's the way it was.\\n\\n But that was a big, a huge leap, and it took a lot of courage for the decision to be made, because there again it pressed everybody to have the procedures ready, have the flight rules ready, what are you going to do, and so you worked and worked and worked and got it done.\\n\\n Then we had to have two sets of teams to work. [Gemini] VII, I think, went for two weeks. I believe it flew for two weeks. That was a big mission for the medics. They wanted—can you live for two weeks? I think they did survive for two weeks. The other one was kind of up, rendezvous, and come down. But it was a huge step for Apollo, because it proved that we could rendezvous, it kind of set the stage for the flight where we flew McDivitt and Schweickart, and rendezvoused around the Earth. That proved that the lunar module computer worked and the CSM [command and service module] worked.\\n\\n That was a big milestone and it caused a lot of work, a lot of extra work or unscheduled work for people. They were going to do it, they just were going to do it in a little bit more leisurely fashion.\\n\\n But that was another thing, the work ethic of a lot of people was really unique. It was substantial. It really was, what they did. We were blessed. I think that was the leadership of Kraft and some of the program office people and some of the people that we had in our own organization. The folks over in the engineering directorate were yeomen also. Guys like Don [Donald D.] Arabian, who you'll visit with, uncanny guy to figure out ways to skin a cat. He never gave up. He really had a lot of neat ideas and could work with people and get them to produce. He did a lot of problem-solving and problem-understanding.\\n\\n That was the other thing. If you had a problem, we tried to understand what the problem was, and then, of course, you not only wanted to fix this flight or control it, you wanted to get it into the next cycle, so if it was a major problem, it wasn't going to impact your launch date. You think about when the design was finally fixed on the Orbiter, even years later you'd go to a change board and the guy would open, when you'd talk about the maneuvering system, he'd first say, \"Now, if we had the maneuvering system that I wanted, we could have just opened these hatches and we could fix these little things.\"\\n\\n God bless Aaron Cohen. He'd say to the guy, \"Guy, we don't have that system. This is the system we have now. What is your change? Quit talking about history. We don't have that. We couldn't afford it.\"\\n\\n Those kind of folks really kept things going, and the country and the agency were really blessed. They had those same folks at Marshall, same folks at Kennedy, and that's what kept things going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good combination of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I don't know whether you've ever interviewed Rocco [A.] Petrone at the Cape. I don't know whether he's alive anymore. But he was the guy, I think, I can't remember whether he was the boss down there when we had the fire, or one of the problems, and he said, \"I don't want you to tell me that so-and-so told you. If that's your system, you go look at the connections and you write it down. There are no mistakes. We can't afford them.\"\\n\\n On the Apollo fire, there were a lot of people who really were heros, burned themselves trying to open that hatch. Just such a sad thing, because—good people.\\n\\n Of course, the [Challenger] thing, I was gone when that happened, thank goodness. I was at the Princess Hotel with my wife in Acapulco [Mexico], and couldn't believe it. Couldn't believe it. Wonderful set of folks on that flight. I knew Judy [Judith A. Resnik] well and I knew the commander and the pilot [Francis R. Scobee and Michael J. Smith], and Elli [Ellison S. Onizuka] were just cream of the crop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Unfortunate that that had to happen, but at least people were able to pull back together and bring the program back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was another time when people really dug down, and it's fortunate that it became better because of it. It really is.\\n\\n You question. I'm talking and I shouldn't talk." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, yes, you should, this is your oral history. You're doing great.\\n\\n Looking at the transition from Gemini to Apollo, you talked about how with having two-manned spacecraft and how Gemini did a lot of the EVA and learned on that. Were there again major changes to the control room between Gemini and Apollo?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. See, that's when we designed it, what we wanted to do was to change the basic software and keep the hardware. Now, we might have added a couple more positions. See, we had more systems, we had larger systems, but the control center did not change. We had on the front row, we had the guidance ops, we worried about the guidance, and they worried about the guidance on both the command and service module as well as the lunar module. We had to enlarge that section of guys. The flight dynamics people was the guy who took the maneuver and moved whatever needed to go. They also worried about the rendezvous maneuvers. Then the retrofire guy worried about bringing them home. So that just was an addition of one person.\\n\\n The booster systems were more complex, because we not only had the Saturn I and the Saturn IV, we had the Saturn II and the Saturn IV, and the other one we just had one guy that worried about the booster. So we expanded that a little bit. We had the doctor.\\n\\n At that time, we had so many crewmen, they were the capcoms. They were the spacecraft communicators, like I did in the old days. In the Mercury days, we had some folks that thought they were better than the crew, and in lots of cases they were. But if you remember in Gemini, we only had seven astronauts and one was flying and one couldn't fly, that was Deke Slayton, and he had to be here to make sure nobody goofed up, and one who was flying the next flight. So you only had four, and most of the time they were training or doing different things, so they didn't really want to do it. So they were the people.\\n\\n Then when we got the second group and we flew Gemini, and then during the Gemini Program then we got the third set and we had enough that we could send them around and we used them in the control center. It turned out to be better. My humble opinion. We would have probably used them earlier, but we didn't have anybody. We just didn't have many folks. But that was one of the things.\\n\\n Then on the next row we had two command and service module engineers, one who worried about the electrical and environmental and one who worried about the propulsion systems. We called them GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control]. Then we had two for the lunar module, the electrical communications and, of course, the propulsion system. Because the propulsion has to work going down, and if it doesn't work coming up, you're in deep serious trouble.\\n\\n Then we had the procedures guys, assistant flight director and then the people who worried about the system within the control center and the system around the world. Then he worried about the folks, we had the folks in the basement, in the IBM group, that worried about the software. We tied all those people together on the intercom, and we worked very hard with that, trying to make sure that people said the right things and did the right things and there were big books of procedures to make sure that people were trained and that kind of stuff.\\n\\n Another big thing that happened in Skylab was how do we train this many people? We started off with just lectures, and we found out that too many people slept. So we made the instructors do videotapes. You could come to work, they ran about an hour, you could come to work at seven and watch the tape, and they were so much better. You could do it on your lunchtime, you could do it in the evening. That really paid off, that and the systems trainers that we built where we put the people and did taped exercises, you're going through lunch phase, this is liftoff, and then you got to chance to visually see and do a lot of the functions that the crew was doing. Same way with entry, same way with being on orbit.\\n\\n They were very inexpensive ways to train our folks and make them more comfortable in dealing with the flight crew. I think those two things really paid off, because we had so many more, they were a lot of new people that we'd brought into the system. That paid off, it really paid off. In fact, some of the training was so good that some of the newer astronauts would come over and train on that, because they were so far down in the pecking order, they didn't get any simulation time, which is a huge expense, a huge expense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking about the training and the simulations and you're mentioning for Skylab, for Apollo how did you, especially for the individual missions since they were so close together and—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had two floors. When we were flying Apollo 11, we were training Apollo 12 crew on the second floor or the third floor, whichever was—and that paid off, because we didn't miss a beat. It's hard not to be on Apollo 11, be on Apollo 12, but somebody had to do it. Our crew liked that and our training people liked it. But that's the way we did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The mission rules, we've talked about those a couple times and procedures, of course, continued to evolve the whole time as each—would you sit down after each mission and evaluate them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There was a formal debriefing with the flight crew, and that's more for show-and-tell and hero worship, but it's necessary. We did our debriefing at the section level and the branch level and then brought it up to the division and the directorate and started the changes. In fact, in some cases during the missions they were redlined if something went wrong. We did that during our training exercises. They tested like when you were ready to go, no-go, to launch toward the lunar surface, translunar injection. They would test, they would break something just to see if you'd violate the rules. If you had a backup or something, things would work out and you pressed on. But we set them up where we were level and we needed these things to press on.\\n\\n I can't think—the only time we had a problem was on Apollo 16, when we were nervous about the landing because of the engine maneuver, and we wanted to make sure the command and service module could, number one, make its maneuver to rendezvous and then make the burn to come home. We had a little set-to with the flight director. He was nervous, he didn't want to do it, and then we finally got him convinced by having the head guy from Rockwell come out and said, \"It's okay.\"\\n\\n It was nerve-wracking, because the crew hadn't slept for a long time, they needed some rest, so they landed on the Moon. Of course, we had to change the time line, we had to change the time line for Ken Mattingly, who was going around. We did those things in simulations. Most instances the simulations were more realistic than the flight, because—not more realistic, because it couldn't have been, but what I'm trying to say is that the training really stressed the system, the people, the procedures, the communications, everything that we needed to make it all in sync. So it worked out pretty well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you were going through the control room and the different positions and talking about training and all. You served for several missions as assistant flight director. During the break, you were telling us a little bit about that, but if you could expand on that and tell us what that all—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you were kind of the keeper of the flight rules, and Kraft trained, then he went off, and we had Kraft and John Hodge. Then John got ill and then he left and went to Washington. Kraft stayed. Then we created a new position called the director of mission operations, director of flight operations, gave him a console at the back and let him deal with all the heros. Then we had Kranz and Lunney and Charlesworth and we had the team colors. We had red team, white team, blue team, and then as we down—I guess they're to chartreuse by now. Then we retired the colors. If you've been in the control center you'll see—I don't know whether they retired all of them or not, I have no idea, but the first few guys, Kraft and Hodge and Kranz and Lunney and Charlesworth were the primary guys to get us started in Apollo. Kraft, of course, was in Mercury, the only Mercury flight director. Hodge was in Bermuda.\\n\\n See, in those days we had to use teletype. There were no such things as data lines. Everybody had to type \"I love you,\" cut a paper tape, and then you ran over and put the paper tape in and you looked at a teletype machine. It made a horrible amount of noise. When we first built the control center, we were still on teletype. We heard through the grapevine that the nuclear subs had a silent teletype machine. We couldn't get one, so we got a regular one and built a soundproof box around it with stuff. It worked like a top. Later on we got rid of that silly tape, because a paper tape doesn't look like there's anything on it but a bunch of holes in it. But we lived that way. That's all they had.\\n\\n Then as communications got better, we made the move here, because this is where everyone was. By working hard to design it and put all the square pegs in the round hole, we got four here and it worked.\\n\\n But you were the keeper of the rules and you were trying, and you had been involved in practically every discussion between the flight director and the flight crew and the systems people, and you knew what the logic was, why we did it, because even in the flights sometimes we'd say, \"Well, what about that?\" So we started writing a little logic book and a history book of who created a rule, so there was some history. This, of course, was before procedures, all hand-typed by some poor little contractor. But it was all proofed. There was no thing, you were the spellcheck. It grew. Your value was noted by were you on the distribution list.\\n\\n Finally, it got so expensive we just had to cut it to who really needed them, because you don't need a big expensive hand-done thing just as a bookend. You really don't. But you were trying to help. You tried to help the flight director. I worked with Kraft a lot, and we had a good working relationship. You could talk to him if you thought something needed to be done or, \"Hey, I'm going to go and talk to those people in the analysis room and see where they are, when we can have a meeting.\"\\n\\n Then we got the headquarters people involved, where we met every morning and told the world what was going on, because there was a lot of interest here during those programs, a huge amount of press interest. Then we put the press guys in the viewing room. We worked on those kind of things.\\n\\n I remember on Apollo ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project], we were working on the gift exchange between our astronauts and theirs. It was the ugliest-looking thing I've ever seen in my life, and the guy says, \"It's going to work like a top.\" One would take one half and one would take the—couldn't get it apart without using a hammer. So they said, \"Guys, I think the briefing is over. You've got to come back next time with a better device.\"\\n\\n When we flew that, too, we were really concerned were the Russians going to do their job, so we did a lot of work with the engineering directorate folks to make sure, and then, of course, we built the docking ramp, so that we knew that our crew would be safe. Not that they're not, they just have a different view of how to do things, and we're seeing that now. They want to go back to Mir, which is probably a good idea, but that's going to sacrifice the International [Space] Station.\\n\\n We just tried to make sure all the holes in the dike had a finger in them. That's probably the easiest way to say it. We worked with a lot of people to integrate and get rid of the mysteries and make people be up front." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly provided for some interesting times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it did. Thinking about them is kind of fun, too. This is more interesting to me than it is to you guys." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I don't know, it's very interesting to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was amazed. I said, well, what am I going to do? I wrote my oldest granddaughter all the funny things that I could remember, and the good times, and my second granddaughter. Now, we've got three more, and I don't know whether I'm going to do that again. I've been looking for the diskette, because I have some time, and I'm going to keep looking for it and see if I can't find it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or you'll be able to share this with them, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I may do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure they would get a kick out of listening to it.\\n\\n You mentioned the Apollo 8 mission earlier and Apollo 11, both of which were very big steps. Actually, out of all of the Apollo missions, did one of them make a bigger impression on you than any of the others?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think thinking back, probably 8 was the biggest jump, because we had just had the problem on the 502 flight with just the deal. It would have gotten us into orbit, but I don't think we would have gotten to the Moon. Going on Apollo 8, we were able to check out the computing system, we checked out the guidance system, we checked out the propulsion system of everything, as well as the communications around the world. Our navigation system worked, the orbital dynamics worked. Even though we had trained to reenter, this was a real entry and, of course, you know that when you came back in, if it wasn't right, you'd go up into the hinterland. So that was probably the biggest step in Apollo.\\n\\n Then, of course, 11 was a big one because you really had to bite the bullet and go down. I'm glad that Neil Armstrong was flying the thing, because he'd had a really close call out at Ellington [Field] on the lunar landing and survived that. So we knew that he had had that experience, and he was a really cool pilot. He had a lot of training and he was probably the best selection for that.\\n\\n It's interesting, a couple of flights after that, we had another group of astros come in, and I remember in the control center, he said, \"Boy, I'm glad I'm about out of here, because these people are so smart.\" He said, \"They will destroy guys like me.\" [Laughter] He was a neat guy, low key, and was the right selection. I credit Dr. Gilruth with that. He just had a sense about him, was a tremendous manager and understood what needed to be done. He didn't have that same feeling about all of them, I'll have to say that, but when it was crunch time, he knew who to select so there would not be a big crunch against the agency. That's a real skill. It just worked out great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It did. It all came together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "With the end of the Apollo Program, were there disappointments or were you ready to move on to the next?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, we were already working on Skylab. Do you remember me telling you, we knew this was coming, so we started plotting our Marvin Manpower curves, and we knew what our organization was going to be. We were already working. We had systems guys on that. There again, they'd done super jobs and we moved them off to other things and they were just as enthusiastic, just as energetic and worked on those things. We had to figure out how we were going to do the flight rules there. We had different procedures, because we had more people, we had more hardware to monitor. We had a different set of folks at Marshall to work with, we had different folks here at Johnson to work with.\\n\\n We were trying to have a better ground system. So we worked as hard we could to—I don't think—we lost a few folks, but some got promoted and went on to different things, but there was no hard feelings. I don't think people—the disappointment in Skylab was the first day, but by the end of the day everybody was pumped back up and then the Marshall folks got included, they came back from their disaster, and things worked out.\\n\\n We learned how to train. We had a full-sized mock-up. It used to be here in the facility. Skylab was about the size of a three-room home. Lots of ingenious things, you know. They wore like sneakers with triangle deals where you could stick your foot and you wouldn't float around. Lots of hand-holds. But it's a lot like swimming underwater on zero gravity, and that's the big thing we learned to train with. There just were a lot of good folks that worked really hard.\\n\\n I think probably the Shuttle caused more problems, because the engine development was done so differently than the engine. There's probably not any wildlife left down at Michoud [Assembly Facility, New Orleans, Louisiana], where they tested those engines. They blew up every alligator and fish or every bird around the area. But I'll say this, that those folks tested the Saturn I and the Saturn II until that really worked. It worked out okay. The engine development, the main engine development and the booster, there were some real difficulties, and it took a lot of agonizing over whether or not they were really ready to go. But if you look back, we were really gun-shy on the length of the first orbital flights.\\n\\n I remember when the first orbiter was delivered, they said, \"How are we going to get it here?\" Thought we were going to have to power it up, and the payload bay doors wouldn't close. They had put stuff in backwards, so that didn't close. So I suggested that they—I said, \"Let me just draw you a little sketch. You've got the bulkhead in the back that's got the power, and we can run the power from the Shuttle carrier craft up and the stuff in the Shuttle carrier, the 747, can run the power in the Orbiter. We can turn the fans and stuff on and you can check the deal.\"\\n\\n So I drew this little thing. Well, it came back as a changeover. Rockwell took credit for it. I went ballistic over that. Finally, I said, \"Well, it won't get here if they don't do that.\"\\n\\n It worked. It told us what the temperature in the cabin was, it gave us a good checkout, and we wrote flight rules for the guys who flew Shuttle aircraft, the carrier aircraft, of what they should do, what altitude they should be, because I was more worried about the thing falling off and then there we were with a lot of mud on our face. But it worked great. In fact, when it flew by here, it was an exciting thing to see. They made a little [low] pass [over BC]. Pretty neat. Of course, the systems guys and the crew were nervous wrecks, you know.\\n\\n Then, of course, we went through the big tile problem, getting that first one. But anytime you have something that big—and you know the Shuttle is as big as a DC-9. That's a big spacecraft. They also got the payload bay doors to close. But, see, a payload bay, you're dealing with another country, Canada was building it [the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), robotic arm], so we had to integrate Canada. Then they wanted a seat, you know. We trained one of our folks to do the stuff. Mechanical systems became a big deal. EVA became a big deal.\\n\\n We trained the guys over there on the RMS, remote manipulator system. They used an air-bearing table. We had a training facility that was two-dimensional, and we had the balloon over there, the balloon for the payload. Guy was almost ready to be captured and somebody would open the hangar door and the balloon would go sailing up. [Laughter] So they put a little thing, \"Do not open this door.\"\\n\\n It's those kinds of things, you think you've got it all made and everything is straight, but it worked. That sucker worked, because the people, they took all the what-ifs and they kept knocking them down one at a time. Then we can handle three or four more that we didn't think about. But people got to thinking like that, and it really paid off. It really and truly did. It really did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly did. Talking about Shuttle, it was such a different vehicle from what you had worked with before and so many different procedures and rules and engineering to bring it all together, but yet its first missions were manned, whereas the others had been unmanned. Was there any discussion on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. We went, we had a big to-do, manned, unmanned. A whole group of us went to Boeing. Boeing has the ugliest paint job on their test airplanes. It's kind of like purple and yellow. Of course, the Shuttle—the 727 is about the same configuration, same kind of wings, and they had done more dead-stick landings than anybody in the world. No problems. So we went out there and checked that out.\\n\\n We also went out to make sure we understood what the 747 could do, and went through their flight test program of how they ran the test program for the 747. We took a number of pilots and crewmen and let them train and watch what the crews did on the 727, watched their procedures. They took that information and modified a plane up at Langley and gave them additional training.\\n\\n That's how the Shuttle training airplane came about. Grumman [Aerospace Corporation] made a bid on building that. I want to call it the Gulf Stream, but it's the G-2, I guess, is what it is. Then that started where you've got a safety pilot with the real controls of the airplane and the Shuttle training pilot, Shuttle training aircraft pilot, with the Orbiter controls. It responds just like the Orbiter does when you are making your final approach. And it's a pretty scary approach.\\n\\n You know the Shuttle training airplane's got engines. The other guy doesn't have any engines. We would go through all that stuff. The computer, we felt, the two sets of computers that we had on the Orbiter, we felt like were better to land. We had a huge controversy of the flight crew, because \"I'm the only one that can do it,\" you know. They did some silly things, like one time they were getting ready to land and they're switching pilots, so they can have just as much time in each seat. But all that was done.\\n\\n All the orbital mechanics came out, and you're doing the heading alignment circle and you line up, and once you start in, you come on down. I mean, you've committed yourself. So the wind's got to be good, you've got a chase plane, and you've got photographers. The first times we did it, we did it out at Edwards, and we had some real problems at Edwards. Fred [W.] Haise was landing, and one of our things was to land within so many feet from the threshold of the runway, and he got head-up and locked on landing there rather than landing the airplane, and we thought he was going to die.\\n\\n It was a different system from what we had in the simulator, the way the rate command system that the Orbiter had, the more input you put in, the more reaction it does. The other one doesn't make changes if you use a computer, it don't make changes unless you make changes. That's why we felt like hands off, hands up, but the airplane landed itself. Study after study showed it would do it, came back and ran through it and showed where it could happen.\\n\\n We trained people in flying the 707, because we now have a crew, you got two pilots. It's not like the fighter jockeys that all these guys were. You got two pilots, so you got to be careful how you land and how you work together.\\n\\n [Charles] Gordon Fullerton was one of the crewmen that had a lot of multi-engine time. He was a good guy and he helped a lot of people understand that thing is a lot bigger, it's not like coming home in a blunt-nosed job that you land in the ocean. And we had trouble with tires. They're like 25-ply. God knows how much those things cost. Then the next question was, how do we know that there's air in the tires after they've flown a period of time. The landing gear, how much—you know, all of those things were asked by people, and they'd go and short it out to make sure that it's understood. Then you wring your hands for three days or six days or ever how many days until you see those babies pop out and you see the smoke on the runway and then you know that it's okay.\\n\\n We had lots of problems with when we land, what do we do? We spent weeks and months doing that, building all the stuff to take out the APU [Auxiliary Power Unit] fuel. How did we get all the other stuff out? How do we get the crew out if they're incapacitated? So once those guys land, we had a real deal. We worked on all the requirements to make sure that the things—then the problems that we had in the flight are put in the next flight or the one after that, and everything was managed by schedule and by people with responsibility.\\n\\n Another thing I did was we were having real problems with the simulator requirements. The requirements were written like, \"Build something that flies like the Orbiter.\" They were spending a ton of money, so we said, \"No, what we're going to do is we're going to develop a set of a requirements with all the phase, all the stuff that we need, and then we'll get a price for that.\" So we did that and put it under change control. Nobody could change it unless you go to the board. Because if you don't, then you'll end up it'll look like an Orbiter, but it won't fly like the Orbiter. That's the real discipline that flight operations tried to maintain in the program office, that you must keep track of the stuff.\\n\\n Just like the tiles. There's God knows how many tiles. Every one has a part number, every one has a drawing. Then there's a tool to put them all and the stuff to put on and there's a tool to take them off, because they're expensive. At that time, that I can remember, they were all hand-made. See, in the selection, there was Rockwell or North American Rockwell, there was Lockheed [Aircraft Corporation] at that time, and there was Grumman. I think Grumman built the wings that had to fit into the Orbiter and the tiles, I think, at one time or one of those, something like that, were all done by Lockheed. So how do you make sure those dudes are talking and getting them delivered on time, and then you've got a million subcontractors.\\n\\n You need to go and see what an Orbiter inside looks like. I don't know whether the SAIL [Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory] still has all that stuff, but the SAIL was a replica of all the wiring, and they ran those computers until they thought they would kill themselves, and they worked. We always worried about the software, but the hardware and the software of the computers had really been magnificent in the Shuttle. That was just because there were a lot of folks dedicated with hard work, \"I ain't going to go to sleep tonight until that sucker works right.\" And that was the real key. There were enough of the folks who looked for the snakes under the rocks, and then told people what they saw under the rocks or that there was no problem. \"We don't need to worry about that snake anymore, because it's not there.\" Or, \"Hey, we've got a huge problem.\"\\n\\n The thing about the upper management, they listened and they responded or they told you, \"We don't want to worry,\" but at least they listened. Most of the time the folks underneath discovered it. We used to have our buddies at the Cape or at Marshall that we called practically every day, so we knew when something went—we'd tell Kraft before he knew about it. It drove him crazy. But he was good about that. He was a neat guy. Neat man." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very much so. You mentioned briefly the Viking Project and that you had consulted on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just worked that in with your other duties?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With everything else, yes. We went for a couple of days and that worked out fine. They would send the stuff, we'd review it at night, and then we'd listen to their briefings and ask questions, and then they kept records and told us what they had done. Like I said, the neatest thing is to have a picture of Mars. Not many people have those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, not many at all. As the mission was landing, were you able to follow it all in real time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we knew what they were going to do. It was exciting. But, you see, it takes twenty minutes, I think, or longer than that for a signal to come, so when you see it, it's too late to fix it, unless it's something that you can work around. We had similar problems with the Skylab, because if you didn't get the data in, something could have happened twenty minutes ago because of the way the orbits went around the Earth. So it worked out well, finally after their boss told them they ought to listen.\\n\\n Tom [Thomas E.] Young left that project and went and was the director of Goddard for a while. I think he lives on the ocean and sails a lot now. But it's good to have good memories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's very good. It's very good to be able to look back and say you were able to enjoy the times and the people you worked with. Very fortunate. Looking back like that, over all your time with NASA what would you consider to have been your biggest challenge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the first one was getting ready for Gordon Cooper's flight, because I was supposedly in charge of the systems guys and trying to keep track of Scott Carpenter. That was a chore. And making sure that we did the right things, because we were at a [remote] site, probably the—well, we were the site before the States picked him up.\\n\\n Then after that, it was getting the requirements for the control center and making sure that we had a good set of requirements that could fit within the budget. Then working with the folks in the directorate to make sure that we listened to them and we responded to what they needed.\\n\\n I guess the next one would be in Skylab to make sure we had everything ready to fly Skylab, because that was a huge investment, and making sure that the interface with Marshall would work. Then make sure that we selected the right people to take over as their organization. When I came to work, we had, I don't know whether it was a section or a branch, and we had horrible quarters. When we moved down here, we went into our own branch and then we went to a division and then we went to a directorate. Then we took two directorates and put them together, had to manage the airplane operations and turn down crewmen who wanted to go on the one-shot buffalo hunt and take a T-38, when that didn't make a lot of sense, in my humble opinion. I said, \"You're going to fly into some crazy airport? Why don't we fly you first-class.\" You could call Kraft and say, \"Chris, I've got a problem with Teddy. What I did, you'll probably get a phone call.\" He said, \"You did the right thing.\"\\n\\n When we took over the earth resources things, we had a C-130 and a B-57 and all that stuff. Of course, they spent a lot of time in Colorado. That was when Coors beer was the biggest thing in the world. Lo and behold, our guys brought back tons of it in the belly of the airplane. It just so happened that as they were unloading it, the guy driving the tractor dumped it over, and there they were, and everybody's [nervous]. So you had to deal with that. We had a guy stuff the deer that they had killed into the baggage thing in a T-38, and it comes back with the blood running all out of it. But those were the funny things that happens everywhere. We had a lot of fun times just thinking about those things, but at that time in our life it was pretty crucial because they knew better.\\n\\n We had one time an airplane, C-130, coming in for a landing and it just passed its big maintenance check. I don't know whether you know the doors for the gear probably is as long as that wall. I think it has thirty-two Zeus fasteners that you push in and turn it and it keeps it on. Well, when they did it, it was all signed off, they had put three, and when the doors popped open, the thing went right back and hit the horizontal stabilizer, hit the pilot in the stomach, the yoke snapped back. We thought we were going to get cow debris and kill some exotic animal. Fortunately, well, they fired the guy. That's what we had to do, because he was the supervisor, and the guy who did it, so we got through that. We got through a lot of those silly things.\\n\\n That's just an aside, but we were able to work through those things and keep things going and gluing things together. We had enough good folks that it kept the glue strong enough to keep everybody going. That was the neat part. It was tough to go to the directorate, because we spent a lot of time with the divisions, because that's where the work was. We were fortunate to have enough good people to keep going. As far as I know, it's still going on. So that's our legacy, I think. It's been a good time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Some very good times. Would you say there's a time that was the most significant point for you in your career at NASA, or that you feel you made the greatest contribution, or would you say that's it, the legacy of teamwork and good people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's probably right. It was good times in every program. The earlier days were better, I thought. You didn't have as much responsibility. There were some crewmen—Jim McDivitt's another guy who stood out, he was Apollo program manager after George Low. We never thought anybody could replace him, but Jim did and he did a superb job. He was a really good crewman. Ed White was, too. There have been so many good ones. Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt, we called him \"Dr. Rock.\" Jack was an excellent guy to work with. The people that did the lunar surface thing, [Dr. Eugene M.] Gene Shoemaker, who was a world-renowned geologist, and a guy from the University of Texas [Dr. William R. Muehlberger], we got really close to those guys and worked with them so that they would be successful.\\n\\n We had a good bunch of doctors that were good. It was interesting, when we were doing the training for Mercury 8 there was a guy named Bob Moser who was a colonel at the Tripler Army Hospital. The tracking station was on Kauai. You had to drive, at that time, probably an hour from the hotel and you can't think of Kauai being that large, but you had to go up a mountain like that. Right at the top you go by a big deal that's…like the Grand Canyon. You can see the mountain goats and everything. It's a beautiful place. We were up there and he treated all the staff there, all the natives and everybody. There were a lot of Hawaiians. Of course, it was funny for us to see Hawaiians, real Hawaiians.\\n\\n So Bob had his wife over and they were real good friends of so many people. He treated, looked after them, and they would bring us rice cakes wrapped in seaweed and stuff like that. We met the guy who owned—one of the neat places is the Waimea Canyon, and you go up there on a boat and they sing the Hawaiian wedding song, in this gorgeous grotto. Then we had a real luau with this Hawaiian family. Of course, they had the raw fish and the poi, and the kids, the little kids, like my grandkids, were trading us. We didn't want the raw—I think one piece of raw fish was enough for my lifetime. We'd trade that for anything else that we could.\\n\\n But they were such loving and wonderful people. Their name was—the husband's name was Walter Smith. He looked like King Kamehameha, and his wife was just as handsome. Beautiful. I tell you what they really looked like were Apache Indians from this country. You kind of think maybe they got in the canoes and went one way or the other. But they were lovely. In fact, one of the family members ran a monkey pod tourist deal. Have you ever seen monkey pod tree?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a gorgeous…tree, and they make salad bowls. So a couple of us went down to the place and bought a monkey pod salad bowl. It's still good. This has been, gosh, forty years ago. Just wonderful people. I've often wanted to go back there and just see if people are still there.\\n\\n But probably I've covered what was really important to me was the association with a lot of people. It also gave me a chance to do things that I would have never been able to do in my lifetime had I not taken a chance. I thought when I got called back in the Air Force, that was the end of my life. Then I didn't know what to do, and then this happened. I was there on business and I went and visited these people. They were enamored with me and I was enamored with them. It was just a question of time when I could get it. It was really good.\\n\\n There were so many good people. There were great secretaries that we worked on a deal where they would not be secretaries, but be administrative assistants, and they had upward mobility, and they were genuinely worthy of that. They didn't have a lot of formal education, and that was one of the big problems that you had, you had to have a piece of paper.\\n\\n I remember another time we were looking for people and I had a tableful of things, and I found a kid from Texas that had all As, and the only reason he didn't have a job was because he was the wrong color. We called him and we hired him. He went on and did extremely well. There were a number of them that we hired because they were good. Joe Fuller's his name. Joe Fuller owns his own company now. He probably doesn't even remember it, but he went to headquarters and worked, had a good job at headquarters. Was an excellent systems guy here. He now owns his own company. I can't think of the name of the program, but he's done extremely well being the president of his own company.\\n\\n It wasn't that I did it. He should have had a job, but he was just at the wrong time. I remember it was right after Martin Luther King [Jr.] died, and he came and told us, he said, \"I would be here, but I'm worried about my family, so I won't be here for a couple of days.\" No problem with that. We understood. A real sharpshooter. You need more of those than you do the other. You need the other people, too. But it was just a wonderful time. Wonderful time to be there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like a great time and a great group of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They weren't all that great. [Laughter] It's probably just the same percentage that you have in the Girl Scout troop or the Boy Scout troop or at your church. There's the good, the bad, and the ugly. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Unfortunately, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's true in your own family. You know, sometimes our friends are closer to us than our family, because you can pick your friends, you got dealt your family. [Laughter] It's really true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At least with this program, like you said, the good people really did shine out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there were a lot of people that were excellent, like the guy I told you that did the slosh model [on Apollo 11]. He took it upon himself, he said, \"I can figure that out,\" and he did it. It was amazing, he was a big boat enthusiast and he started his own business down here in El Lago. He was the biggest Mercury boat guy in the world, then went on, resigned and quit, and had a half a dozen of them. That's what he wanted to do. He'd kind of done his thing and he moved on.\\n\\n At that time, we had another dilemma with our people that were really good. We had our first RIF [reduction in force]. Unfortunately, it took all of our good young people, brand new, that had really made a mark for themselves. We had been guaranteed on everything that was holy that that would not happen. When they got the letter, boy, you talk about some sad troopers on a Friday. That's when they always do it, on Friday, and it's like the stock market, they close and then they tell you what the deal is and then it's too late to do anything, so you've got to commiserate all weekend.\\n\\n But there again, we went to bat for them. Our boss, Kraft, got the right people in the room and got it changed on Monday morning. So that was as big a highlight as some of the other things, because we would have lost a real strong cadre of young people. Those young people now, they've gone on and done great things, really did.\\n\\n But the guy who was the boat guy was a guy named Bob [Robert] Nance. God knows where Bob Nance is. He's probably back in Atlanta someplace having a wonderful time. A real neat guy, just a young guy, and he took that on himself and developed it. Just like Harry Smith, \"I'm going to know better than the crew what happens with the lunar rover,\" and he did. He knew it in spades.\\n\\n We had enough of those kind of people who got very little glory, other than their own self-reward that they knew they had an assignment, and they did it by the numbers and in spades, and interfaced with the crew and brought the procedures that we needed, and when it was crisis time they responded, and did it quickly, and then took the heat because of the situation between centers. He was more glad to have said the right thing rather than going through all protocol, because we were really in a bind. It takes a different kind of person to stand up and do that kind of remarkable thing. A lot of tiny things make a big thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hopefully with our project we'll be able to at least recognize some of these people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I hope you do. I really do. It's a special group. Some got rewarded and some didn't. I think we tried to reward everybody in some way. We spent a lot of time giving them extra money, giving them good assignments and giving them a lot of responsibility. I think it paid off, because we're still flying." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And safely. Every time we have a launch, I watch it, but, boy, it makes me nervous, because that rascal's getting old. [Laughter] It's getting older." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, hopefully it and the people will be able to hang in there a while longer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hope so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to thank you so much for joining us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's been quite a pleasure. Is there anything that you think we didn't touch on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. If you think you want to talk again, I'll be glad to come. I'm sure there's some other things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you guys have anything that we didn't—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just have one question, actually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Do you want to switch the tape out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have about three minutes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't you go ahead and switch then. [Tape change.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The question I had concerns Mercury 8. I know that you were one of the remote site communicators on the Mercury 8, but Wally Schirra flew at a time when the United States was about to enter the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tensions had already been really high between Cuba and the United States. Did you all take any special precautions? Were there any special concerns?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't remember that. We did later on. One of our mission rules was don't fly through the South Atlantic anomaly where all the residual radiation is. We had to go to the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] and work that out. That was a funny experience. CIA building is really strange. There's no sign. At that time there was no sign, and you drive down the highway and we couldn't find it, so we stopped at a gas station, the guy said, \"You're looking for something?\" I said, \"Yes. We've driven all around here for the CIA building.\" He says, \"It's one block this way, take a right, there you are.\" So it was not a secret to anybody but us.\\n\\n We went in there, a thousand rooms, just like going through a maze, and the guy that we dealt with was a guy named Floyd Sweet. \"Sweet Floyd\" was what we called him. His big deal was, he monitored the world for nuclear events. If it happened and he had to go to the President and the President had to go to the administrator and the administrator had to call us to tell us that there had been an event. The biggest problem we had with our allies, the French. But we never had to scrub a flight, but we had the rule. Those are the kind of things you never would have thought of. We had to go around the world and make sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What problems did you have with the French?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "French were the guys that [set off nuclear weapons]…and never [told] anybody. Remember off of Tahiti, they had a missile range down there, they woke up and they said, \"Oh, let's fire the bomb off.\" But we didn't have a problem with that. Maybe somebody did. I didn't know anything about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have another one since we changed the tape. Actually, during the summer we had a tour by Sy [Seymour] Liebergot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sy Libergot told me a story and I wanted to ask you a question in relation to it. He told the story of how you helped him get his promotion, how Kraft didn't want him to have a promotion, but you fought for him. So it made an interesting point, which is, how did you work as a liaison between the flight controllers and the flight directors or the flight operations crew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was the division—I can't remember where I was at the time. I think I was the deputy division chief, and Sy worked, and I had been responsible to finally put him in. We tried to pick a person that we thought could manage the rules, and we were trying to get them to the next level. Sy didn't have—he needed to go to charm school. He drove Kraft crazy.\\n\\n I got a call. They were having a promotion board and they said, \"We need you in the office right away,\" in Kraft's office. So I put my coat on and ran across the playground there to get there. I knew there were probably having promotion board, but I didn't know. They said, \"Hey, this guy came up and Kraft had some strong words for that.\" I had worked with Chris for a long time and I knew when to shut up, Sy didn't. And I just made the point that Sy had really worked hard and everybody in the room knew that Chris was a tough boss. They were all the division chiefs, or all the people that were on the promotion board there for him.\\n\\n It was a nice promotion for Sy, and I thought he deserved it. I said, \"He was our top guy.\" I said, \"But the only thing I can think of that wouldn't, is he has a different personality than you. His is strong and yours is strong,\" and that won. But I went to bat for the guy because I thought he deserved to be promoted, not because the chief thought that he had driven him crazy. You know, Chris drove us crazy sometimes.\\n\\n I was telling you this story about the one guy who Kraft wanted everybody to say we were a go, and the one guy who didn't know what \"go\" meant, his system was down, was the only guy in the room that said, \"We're okay,\" and he was lying. I'm sure Kraft said, so he gave us another forty-eight hours to get our minds right, because he did not want the Johnson Space Center to say we couldn't fly, because the hardware was ready to go. So we figured out how we could do it, and we figured out how we could do it if it didn't work in those next hours, because we'd been working on that. It's kind of like the lifeboat procedures, the same guy told us to throw them away. [Laughter] And if we'd thrown them away, I'd probably be dead now.\\n\\n That was a set of folks that said, \"We're going to do this,\" and by God, they did it. We monitored them and worked with them and helped them and expanded it and put it on the shelf in case we ever needed it. Boy, it paid off. Paid off. Everything we needed to do had been done. That's why we played the what-if game all the time, because when you're in a crisis, you can't think. You've got somebody terminal at your hospital, your family member, you can't even think about praying, that's why you have a prayer chain. You need somebody else to do it for you. That's the league.\\n\\n I'll tell you another story about Sy. Sy got divorced. The crew during Skylab would always—I think it was Skylab—would always—Sy was the first person I knew that got an answering machine. He was single now. So the guys would call it and say, \"Hi, my name is Sy, please leave—\" So they taped that for the full time of the recorder, and then played it back and that's all it said. It drove him crazy.\\n\\n Another thing we would do is—and that would break the monotony, because let me tell you, some of the nights you were just dying, and all of us were—I ate so many eggs during that Skylab thing, I thought I was a chicken. The crew would say, \"Today is so and so day.\" So that night we decided to create Sy Libergot Day. Sy Libergot is controller of the day, which was not true. Well, they had written it in his log, and the logs just stayed there with all the things that happened. So you could come on shift thirty minutes early and read through, summarize, and then the person would leave. They had in there, \"Crew called down today, Sy Libergot Day.\" Well, he went and listened to days of the aerogram transmission to get that. He was going to record that. Finally, he realized he had been duped. [Laughter]\\n\\n Have you ever heard of a guy named John [S.] Llewellyn?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Have you talked to John?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not yet, but we're hoping to soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They used to do that to John, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We were talking about Skylab. Did you work Skylab 4?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When all the guys had the problems and [Gerald P.] Carr called down and they said, \"We've got to have this meeting.\" How was flight operations during that time that the problems were occurring between Skylab 4 and flight operations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What problem are you talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, Carr and [William R.] Pogue and [Edward G.] Gibson talked about the fact that their mission was just too full." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, they had signed up for that. That's what the flight plan was, and the first thing they would do is to call and get the next day's flight plan. They never complained about it until they got behind, and all they had to do was call and say, \"Hey, could I have a discussion?\" Once it was changed, they just narrowed it down. It wasn't a big deal. They probably thought it was more of a big deal than the rest of them.\\n\\n John [Llewellyn] did not care for Scott Carpenter, because John was a retro officer, and he said when he landed in Mercury, his only flight, \"I didn't know where I was and neither did they.\" That's not true. John went ballistic. So a number of years later, Scott Carpenter became an aquanaut and he was in a submarine off the West Coast. You have to know John, and don't tell John this story, please, because he'll go ballistic, probably kill the three of you, and then come and search me down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we don't want that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They wrote in the log that night that John was not going to count down to retrofire, that Scott Carpenter was going to do it from the submarine. John went bananas, stomped around, then everybody was just like this, hysterical. Then he finally realized that he had been thrown a hook and had bit totally.\\n\\n But John would do things. One time he came late and he was supposed to be there for reentry. And he was really good. He was really good, but he would get things loose sometimes and he didn't have a parking spot. So he just pulled up and parked on the sidewalk. The next person that came in was Dr. Gilruth. So John couldn't drive on the center for a long time. Then he started riding a horse, you know. But John was one of the characters that worked with us. He's a real case. You might need to wear your ear defenders when you listen to John." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We'll be well prepared." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "John was a smart guy and did a lot of good. John was a veteran of the Korean War and was bayonetted in the trench. He was a Marine and bayonetted and left for dead by the North Koreans and survived. We had guys like that all the time. I could tell you a really funny story about John, but I'm not going to tell you. No, I don't think I should tell it. I will tell you, but turn the tape off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think Kevin had some questions first." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Excuse me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, actually, you were answering my question. I was going to ask about the flight controllers since you talked about the flight directors, so I was curious to hear these kinds of stories about any of the other flight controllers like Sy or John Llewellyn or maybe John [W.] Aaron or Steve [Stephen G.] Bales, some of these guys. So if there are any other stories you want to share." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "John Aaron was a neat guy, still is a neat guy. John was a guy during Apollo 12, when we had the launch, John had been on the console when we had one of the pad tests where we interfaced with the Cape with that and had watched the fuel cell go down. When it happened during the launch, he knew exactly what to do. So there's a lot of providence, but John was so smart, he would have probably figured it out anyway. He was real laid back. You knew when John spoke, he was worthwhile to listen to. John was an excellent systems guy and real bright, just a neat person, went on and did a lot of work for the Orbiter software, really put his arms around that. I don't know whether John still works over there or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually, he's getting ready to retire." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Is he really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He's a neat guy.\\n\\n Gary [E.] Cohen was another systems guy. We called Gary \"Gross\" all the time. Jim [James E.] Hannigan was a sharp guy, he ran the lunar module group. Don [Donald R.] Puddy worked for him and went on to become a flight director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you think about the trench?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The trench was where John Llewellyn was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Harvey", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had from stories that they used to have matches made up that said, \"The Trench.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. In fact, I just finished one, throwing it away. I had kept it for years, and I'm trying to just throw junk away. Jerry [C.] Bostick was a good guy. Carl [R.] Huss was the first guy in the trench. Carl is dead now. He was from Mission Planning and Analysis Division. Floyd [V.] Bennett was the guy who did so much of the guidance work and picking the landing sites. [R.] Scott Hamner was the booster guy. He committed suicide. Frank [L.] van Rensselaer was the booster guy. I don't know where Frank is now. A lot of people like that. Dick [Richard A.] Thorson just passed away. He was one of the LM systems specialists. Dick was a really bright guy, just head and shoulders over many of them.\\n\\n Sy was on the console on the flight, \"I've got a problem,\" and he did have a problem and no one had ever seen one like that. If you ever get a chance, you need to look at the photograph that the crew took of what the explosion really was. You wonder how they survived, and all it was was a loud bump. It was a bump in the night.\\n\\n But we were, I think, blessed with good folks in the mission control team or the flight control team, because we really spent a lot of time interviewing and we felt, I think, that our guys and girls had the right stuff, too.\\n\\n Steve McClendon [phonetic] was a sharp young guy. I'm thinking a young guy. I remember when I went to Lamar to interview people, and the head of the electrical engineering department said, \"How many do you want?\" I said, \"Well, just let me talk to them.\" He said, \"The whole class is good.\" I said, \"Tell me about some.\" Steve McClendon was just a student, but graded most of the papers for the professor. So I thought, this is a good guy, and he worked out really well. There were a lot of people like that.\\n\\n The group over there, Wayne Hale [phonetic] is a sharp guy. They just got so many good, bright folks. They've had a number of ladies that were flight directors that were very good. Ed [Edward L.] Pavelka was another guy in the trench and Ed was a squared-away guy. He really knew what he was doing. Gosh, I can't remember. I'm having a senior moment. But there were just some really good folks, and, like I said, we still have a yearly get-together and that's a good thing to go to. I think that some of them are probably still trying to have chili cook-offs.\\n\\n Rod Loe is another guy who was really steady. Rod was the guy in Apollo 4 that picked up the fuel cell problem. The spacecraft kept maneuvering, and this was our first flight with fuel cells and the fuel cell vents, and just enough of that vent threw it off. There was good competition when Glynn [Lunney] and John [D.] Hodge were here and so he was, John or Glynn, I can't remember, \"We think that the reason for the attitude changes are the venting of the fuel cell,\" and the light went on. People realized that was true, but Rod was the guy who picked that up, or one of the troops in the back room who watched that thing and watched that thing and watched that thing.\\n\\n When we had the [Challenger] disaster, I don't know whether that was it where—no, it was another thing, where we had a telemetry parameter. It was Apollo 13 where the heater cycled on and off and the heater cycled on and off, and they think, I believe, that the heater was what caused the problem, so they went back and looked and there was the problem, and nobody picked it up because they had never seen it ever before.\\n\\n Paperwork was another important thing. Boy, it's amazing what you can find in the records. It is truly amazing. With computers now, you can find it in a microsecond. We just had to dig through it.\\n\\n Really, the more you think about the exciting things, working on Gemini IV in secret was remarkable, because we couldn't believe our young people in the E&D, in the engineering directorate, could develop a pack that a crewman could survive outside. In fact, Kraft had to tell Ed White to get back in. That was such a dilemma. Ed was one of the most gifted athletes, and when they did the surgery on him, the autopsy, they found that he was just full of heart disease, and he would have probably died anyway, if it hadn't been [for the fire]. But when we prepared for a flight, everything is ready. Something happens, we were ready. Very few people know that. We were ready no matter what. We almost lost the ASTP [Apollo Soyuz Test Project] crew because they didn't follow their checklist.\\n\\n I'll tell you another funny story about Ken Mattingly and Hank [Henry W.] Hartsfield [Jr.]. I can't remember which flight they were on, I think it was the third Shuttle flight, maybe the second. Third. I can't remember. [STS-4.] Ken needs his glasses, didn't take his glasses. Hank begged him to take his glasses. When he got there, he could not see the control panel. But guess what? Good old Hank had his glasses. He said, \"If you ever do this to me again, I will kill you.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n Now, Deke needed his glasses, and there was not a better guy than Deke Slayton. He was a genuine article. He was a tough guy to get to know, but once you knew him, he was sensational. When he finally got to fly, he was a hero of a lot of people because he beat the medical system. On ASTP during their training, you'd be talking, no response from Deke. So we had a word to get him to find his glasses and get him to get squared away. But he was one special guy. I'll tell you, you could trust him with your life. He was solid as they come. It's unfortunate because a lot of people didn't know him and he didn't walk around saying, \"Hey, I'm Deke Slayton,\" he just did this thing and was a neat, special person.\\n\\n That's really the message, as far as I'm concerned. There were some folks who were capable of doing far beyond what people thought they could do, and I wonder sometimes if Nike didn't, not just do it, they did it. You think of Kraft who'd been stymied for thirteen years. Dr. Gilruth saw how great he was, tapped him. Walt [Walter C.] Williams was another guy. Jeepers. Walt Williams is carrying his oxygen tank around for years. You'd be in a meeting with him you'd think he was going to die. Once they got hooked, you couldn't get rid of them. You just couldn't get rid of them. That's why it was time for me to do something different, because there were a lot of other people that needed a chance. You can't wait for everybody to die.\\n\\n Any other questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, that was fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. There's a lot more. If I got a—gosh, I can't think of the young—he was a young kid when I left over there, that wears the big suspenders with a little moustache and striped shirts. But there's just still a lot of good folks over there, and ladies, too. I hate to not say that, because they are just as good. You think of what goes on in Israel can go on here in any avenue of life. I see what my daughter does with her life and my son, and there's nothing you can't do.\\n\\n Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's great. Well, thank you so much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jones W. Roach", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it's my pleasure." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00807", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project 1998 - 1999", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/RyuminVV/ryuminvv.htm", + "original_file_name": "RyuminVV_4-27-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/RyuminVV/RyuminVV_4-27-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Valery V. Ryumin", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 27 April 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Paul Rollins", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mr. [Oleg S.] Tsygankov was just fulfilling his responsibilities. He is not a key person. But I would like to suggest, and I believe there are several very important people as Mr. Solovyev, he is flight director of Mir station, and Victor Blagov, his deputy.\\n\\n Mr. [Pavel Mikhailovich] Vorobiev, he is the manager of planning and design, and I'll just try to give you a suggestion of how we can organize and arrange all this.\\n\\n Also, it would be nice to include Mr. [Boris I.] Sotnikov. He is responsible for safety. He is leader of the safety team.\\n\\n Also it would be nice to have an interview with General [Yuri Nikolayevich] Glaskov. He is deputy director of the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center of Star City.\\n\\n Also another person is [Valeri Vasilevich] Bogomolov, and he is deputy of IMBP [Institute of Biomedical Problems]. He is deputy of the lead of the Biomedical Institute, biomedical problems, and he was at the beginning of this project and he's still working on it.\\n\\n Well, I can tell you what would be the easiest way to arrange for you all these interviews prior to the launch of STS 91. Usually our management group comes and visits in Florida. This management group will be in Florida on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of May. It would be nice if you can find them and ask them during this period of time.\\n\\n Among all these people I name, I would like to add to this list Alexander [Pavlovich] Aleksandrov, but you told me that he has done this already.\\n\\n Mr. Tsygankov is a very important person as well, but he is not as important as other people. He's a very good person who holds responsibility, and he leads a very important group, but still it's not the key.\\n\\n I would like to add Mr. [Oleg] Lebedev, and he is the leader of a scientific team. Mr. Lebedev will also travel to Florida and he will be in Florida. All these people will be in Florida, except for Mr. Solovyev. In order to make this story and project better, not unilateral or not very subjective, I would like to suggest for you to talk with all these people. It would be nice if you could take this into consideration and arrange plans for the 24th, 25th, and 26th, provided we have a launch as scheduled on May 29th. On my side, I'll ask them to participate and understand your problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That would be very good. That's your launch, on the 29th?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I will not be among these people because I will be on the quarantine already, but Mr. Sotnikov will be instead of me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have a suggestion on how we need to contact these people? Is there a main person that we need to go through, to be able to do this at their convenience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Please remind me before those dates, and I'll ask them to participate in your project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We will, definitely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But please don't forget to remind me. I need to tell them; otherwise, they might reject it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We will remind him very soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And of the Americans, who will participate in this project? I understand Frank [L.] Culbertson [Jr.] and who else? Nygren?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, Rick Nygren and Tom Cremins. Jim Nise. Richard Fullerton. Charlie Brown. Jeff Cardenas. Mike Barratt, Dr. Barratt. As well as our crew members, our astronauts that were in residence on Mir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Charlie [Charles J.] Precourt? [Those] Who stayed on Mir, yes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I believe we also can include [James D.] Wetherbee and Charles Precourt. Bill Readdy, Wetherbee, and Charles Precourt." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And we would also like to interview the cosmonauts who interacted with the Mir during the Mir Shuttle program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's more difficult, but to try to meet with them during their stay in the U.S." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. And we may not be able to do all, but we would like to do as many as our time and our budget allows us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "How long shall we have this [interview] session?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell him that's his pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are you going to broadcast outside, educational programs, through NASA channels or do you plan to do it in a wider way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The project as a whole?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's for all the world to know about the Mir Shuttle project, and so once we gather this data, there are plans to do a book that anybody can buy. We'd like to be able to do things on the Internet and that sort of thing. So, it's something that NASA is doing, but will share with the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would like to say why I am asking this. I'm wondering if it's possible to show a piece of this project, with this recording in Russian, for Russian people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to ask if there are any plans in Russia to do the same sort of thing, because I think that would be a good exchange of information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Frankly speaking, I don't have time for it, but I agree this will be very useful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I didn't mean for you to do it, but some organization similar to NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't study such a possibility yet, but maybe I need to talk to the representatives of Star City, and maybe they will be interested in this project. This issue with other people, I don't know what will be their reaction. I believe this will be very useful for Russia, as well, to show such a movie about the space project.\\n\\n Several years ago, we had a special program on Russian TV. It lasted about thirty minutes, one hour, and the person who was in charge of it, his name is [Vitaly Ivanovich] Sevastyanov, and he was a cosmonaut. It was a very good program. Unfortunately, this program disappeared, and Russian TV doesn't have any program dedicated to space issues. It was like an introduction.\\n\\n Now one hour left [referring to the interview session]; it's better than two hours.\\n\\n Unfortunately, we don't have too much time. I hear you have a lot of questions, and if I start giving answers to every question in detail, then we will run out of time, and I would like to suggest you select several questions and I'll respond to them. If I explain all things in detail, then it will take all day, and then we'll be able to drink a lot of" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, and we look forward to that time. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me do it spontaneously. I'll start with some issues from the bottom of the list and then I'll go back to the beginning.\\n\\n Wright [to the interpreter]: Tell him we'd like for him to be very comfortable and to speak about what he would like. Frank Culbertson wants us to be able to collect a history of how the participants feel about their participation in the programs, so it's his choice. But please add that we would like to come back, at his convenience, after the mission, to do a follow up.\n\nWe'll meet after the flight. There's no escape from it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My approach to it is people telling stories, so we make up a list of questions to just show people our interest, but if you have many space stories to tell us, I can sit here for hours and listen to all your stories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I understand, but unfortunately" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You don't have time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This first question. For more than thirty years, you have been involved with the space program. Tell us how you began your career. I can tell you that my career started in a common way, as many other Russian people started their lives and careers.\\n\\n In 1966, I graduated from the Department of Electronics and Computing Technology of the Moscow Forestry and Engineering Institute, as strange as it might sound, and my specialty was spacecraft control systems. After that, I was accepted at RSCE, Bureau of Experimental Machine Building. This is Rocket Space Corporation Energia, how we call today, but before we call this Central Design Bureau of Test Machinery, and the leader of that bureau was Mr. Korolev.\\n\\n I had to work my way from the low position to the top. I started working at the department which was responsible for ground electrical test engineering. I was responsible for the spacecraft which was destined to fly around the moon, manned flight. We had such a program, and the name of this program was L1. We were planning and it was supposed that two crew members would fly around the moon. It was just a test program which we were preparing to perform, to deliver men up to the moon.\\n\\n That project wasn't very successful, for two reasons. First, we didn't have enough experience. First of all, I would like to say that we were planning to deliver this spacecraft on orbit and to our target utilizing Proton booster. And now it's one of the most safe boosters, but at the time, it was under still being developed. That's why every three launches had to fail, because we had problems with our Proton booster. The third launch failed because we had some spacecraft problems. From three or four launches, only one was more or less acceptable. But we had a condition prior to our flight, a manned flight, we've had to perform two successful unmanned flights. We failed to have two in a row. That's why we couldn't fulfill this condition.\\n\\n At this time, in '68, Americans had their first landing on the moon. Then there was no reason to continue with this program. This program was closed by the end of '69. But by that moment, we got an idea of creating a long term station. This idea was outlined, more or less, with clarity by the end of '69. One of the key people at the time designing the Mir, Yuri P. Semyonov, now is general designer of the RSC Energia, and he's still working at this position. He was assigned as the lead designer for the first station. He asked me to be this deputy, and since then, since December '69, January '70, I have been working on orbital stations. I was in charge of almost all of the stations except for one, but that station was a military project, and the lead designer of that station was Cellamia, and this was the only one station built for military purposes. All the rest of the stations were just for civil purposes. Mr. Glaskov can tell you a lot about this station. The name of the station was also Salyut, but it has a different purpose and it had different hardware on it.\\n\\n As far as other projects, I have participated in all of them, first as deputy of Mr. Semyonov, then as cosmonaut. I spent time on Salyut 6 station, then as flight director and deputy of general design for testing. I also started working on the Mir project from the beginning. In '86 I was working as flight director. Then I passed this position to Mr. Solovyev, and since that time, since 1990, he is flight director of Mir station. During all of this time, we had a lot of stories to tell and a lot of situations from which we learned a lot. I'm sure we can talk a lot about that.\\n\\n I believe that Phase 1 program is very useful and will be very useful for future international space station. During these joint operations during Phase 1 program, we learned a lot. We learned how to understand each other. We got acquainted with the philosophies of each country, and we met a lot of people. I believe it's a very important step for our next second step, which will be ISS [International Space Station].\\n\\n I believe I am done with the first question.\\n\\n What about this question at the bottom. Tell us why you wanted to be a shuttle astronaut. Many of the cosmonauts think that, \"Okay, I'll do my mission and I'll fly. Once I'm back on the land, I will never fly again.\" Most of them think like this. But after landing, some time passes and they start thinking, \"What about the next flight?\" I think the majority thinks like this. Some cosmonauts manage to fly a second time. Some, for some reasons, cannot do it.\\n\\n As far as for me, after my three flights in the eighties, I was thinking it would be nice to fly for the fourth time. My situation was like this: people told me just to work for a while and then we'd see. Then I was so busy, life was so hectic, that I stopped thinking about flights. But now we have got a lot of new possibilities and opportunities, and I believe every person who flew, cosmonaut, astronaut, was thinking, \"Should I stay here? Why shouldn't I try and fly once again?\" And I had the same question. First I had to respond to myself, if I would be able to do it, because since my last flight, seventeen years passed, and I was not in training or in preparation during all these seventeen years. Then the second side of it, the other side of it, did I have a moral right to do this.\\n\\n As far as the last question, I said to myself, \"Yes, I have this right, because I spent all my life, I dedicated all my life to space stations, to the development of space stations, and I have more advantages than cosmonauts who wish to fly to Mir or wish to fly on the shuttle.\" Also I thought it would be very useful for a person who has very good flight and life experience, to visit the station, the station who was on orbit for more than twelve years. I believe that I will be able to see more details and more things compared to young cosmonauts or crew members. I know that they're very good, they have a lot of knowledge and are well trained, but, still, it was not an easy question for me. But I thought I had a moral right to do it.\\n\\n But I couldn't answer the other question, because for seventeen years I haven't been trained and prepared for any flights, and I didn't know if I would be able to pass through all this once again, but I decided to try. It was very interesting for myself to prove. First of all, I had to lose 25 kilos [kilograms], pass through all the medical boards, and the requirements on the boards in Russia are more serious and more rigid requirements. Besides, I had to receive approval from my director of management and from RSA [Russian Space Agency]. I managed to do all this, and now one month is left until my flight. If things are going normal, then I believe soon I will fly the shuttle and I will be able, with my own eyes, to see Mir station and inspect what is there. I believe it will be a very, very interesting, good meeting.\\n\\n I received a lot of requests from my specialist (in respect to space station assembly in order to understand) what is the real status of the space station up (after) twelve years of flight. Training is going pretty well. I enjoy my crew members. Charlie Precourt will be the commander, and this will be his third trip to Mir, and I believe the organization is wonderful. There are three crew members for this flight. Four of them have been on orbit already, and two of them will be new crew members, and I believe this is a very good combination, proportion of new members and people with experience. Let's hope that we will have very successful work in orbit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have a long list of things to do when you're there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I asked my specialist, \"What would you like me to do there?\" Every day I receive a list of questions, requests, and they try to state what they would like me to inspect and do there for them.\\n\\n I believe I responded to the first and to the last questions, and I believe that the rest, we can just meet for today. You have some other questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. I was in sixth grade when I first learned about Sputnik. Do you remember what you were doing when you first heard about Sputnik?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was working at this company which was manufacturing the first Sputnik, the company I mentioned to you at the beginning, that Mr. Korolev was the leader of this company at the time.\\n\\n I remember Sputnik was launched on the fourth of October of 1957, and at that time I graduated from technical—middle, like secondary college for us, and I graduated from it. I was passing through training at this company. At the time I was just a trainee, a simple person. Besides, all those preparations for the Sputnik launch were done confidentially, and everybody knew that we were dealing with boosters, working on boosters and spacecrafts, but nobody heard about Sputnik. It was just a new notion. First when I learned about Sputnik, that it was launched, I was surprised. Second thought was that this was the company I was working at. No contribution on my side for this Sputnik project, because I was just training at the time, but I was very proud. I was very proud that the company I was working at manufactured the first Sputnik.\\n\\n Political government, when they learned about this event, they used this Sputnik project for their political purposes, and at that time [Nikita] Khrushchev was our President, and he came and visited with us at the Energia Company and everybody knew what our company was dealing with. Since then, we have received a lot of allowances and a lot of people were rewarded, and the company has always been in privileged position.\\n\\n When, in 1961, the first man flew into space, at that time I was in the Army. I learned about this news by radio. I was very enthusiastic about it. I never thought that I would be able to find myself and see by myself what all the things about space are." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was going to be my question. While this was going on, did you ever think that you would end up spinning around the world like Sputnik?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In those times it was like a big fantasy, and I never could imagine that I would have to do this, what I did. I never could dream about it. Now children can dream and they can say, since an early age, \"I'm going to be an astronaut\" or cosmonaut, but at that time there was not such a profession. People of my generation couldn't dream about it, because they did not know what to dream about at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were a tank commander. Do you have this great love of small, confined places, being a tank commander and then being a cosmonaut?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Laughter] It just happened. I never planned to spend time in small volumes like a tank or on orbiting, but it just happened. Except for this time when I was in the tank and on orbit, I used to spend a lot of time with people, surrounded by a lot of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've certainly enjoyed talking to you today and having you share stories with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, thank you very much. I believe this will be just the beginning for your story. You can add it and provide more details if you arrange interviews with the people I mentioned to you at the beginning. These people, on the Russian side, they were working in parallel and they were partners of people we were talking about on the American side. I am director of this program, but I always base myself on the experience and knowledge of the people. They are a key role, people in the program, and they play the main role in all this. I would like them to participate in this project, and I would like you to interview them if possible. I'm ready to help you to organize these interviews." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's one thing that Frank Culbertson has said, is what a team effort this whole project has been, and he stresses that a lot. So we appreciate how you couldn't have done it without your team either. And we want to speak to the entire team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One person that is very important, maybe this person can be very important, but it needs determining. Anybody can be replaced, but the team, the nucleus, determines the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your career, is there one person that has meant the most to you, either as a hero or as a co worker?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Tape interruption] People always try to solve. They should not postpone the decision, but they try to resolve the issue. I'm very grateful to all the people who participated in this program, and I consider all the people were very responsible and worked very well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you help choose them, the team members, or was it because of the jobs that they held already that they were part of the team?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the time we didn't have any teams, any divisions, any leads of the divisions. For sure we had to select people. I tried to find people who had very good business abilities and qualities, and I wanted to find people with who I would be working very comfortably. With most of them I had been working for more than twenty years, and that's why I didn't have any difficulty in assigning these people. This are not just casual people who just showed up and I assigned them. Those people demonstrated that they can work and they can work very successfully. That's why they were assigned as managers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do these people go on to the International Space Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For sure. They're working right now for it. We are trying to maintain continuity of all the people who were working successfully on the first phase, will continue working on the second phase, those who will be capable of dong this, taking into consideration their age and their health conditions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Will the Mir be abandoned eventually, and what will then happen? Will it crash to the Earth?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We are not planning to abandon it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Maybe that was a poor term. Go ahead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We are trying to orbit it according to our plan. We need to decide when. It is not clear when we'll do it. It will depend on when we'll have FGB [Functional Group Block] and service module on orbit. These are two key modules of International Space Station. Once FGB and service module are on orbit, then we can start working on Mir deorbiting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it will stay manned until you have your modules on station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I believe we'll not abandon it, because taking into consideration the age of the station, it would be very difficult for it to fly alone, and we'll try to maintain people there as long as possible. The age of the station requires permanent attendance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thanks again, for sharing your stories with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what's your favorite beer? I always ask this question. What's your favorite beer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't like beer very much. Not very often." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you please tell him that we look forward to speaking with him after he returns, and once again we offer our sincere apologies. Thank you for your advice on how to do it better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I believe if you have questions, not very big questions which will not require a lot of time, we will be able to find time and arrange another interview. I believe we'll be able to see once you're done with your work, and I would like to hear what I have told you. I believe Mr. Culbertson knows where I can find you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Tell him we look forward to talking with him soon, for him to schedule the interviews." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If the launch is according to schedule, then we will be there. We will have Team Zero meeting, as we used to call it, on the 24th, and I will be there this same day. The rest of the team, except for Mr. Solovyev, will be in Florida on the 22nd or 23rd of May. I believe there will be a Building 2 at KSC [Kennedy Space Center], and it's the next building to ISS building. Just please ask Frank Culbertson for help, and make reservations for one of those rooms, and after that he will just schedule the interviews for thirty minutes for each manager, and you'll have a chance to have your interviews with them. Just for thirty minutes, each of them. Very easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Valeriy Viktorovich Ryumin", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00962", + "metadata": { + "category": "NACA OHP National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 2005 - 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/curleyhn.htm", + "original_file_name": "CurleyHN_2-17-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NACA/CurleyHN_2-17-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters NACA Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Harry Curley, Nona Curley", + "location_date": "Palmdale, California – 17 February 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Harry Curley", + "Nona Curley" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is February 17, 2015. This oral history session is being conducted with Harry and Nona Curley in Palmdale, California, as part of the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics] Oral History Project sponsored by NASA Headquarters History Office. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Rebecca Wright.\\n\\n I want to thank you again for coming in today and coming to meet with us. Because you both started out at the NACA High Speed Flight Station early on in the ’50s, I just want to talk about how you started, what your background was, and what brought you to the Center [later named Dryden Flight Research Center, now Armstrong Flight Research Center]. So if you want to go first, Mr. Curley?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Actually, I lived almost at the Center. I lived on the Base. I lived on the Muroc Air Force Base [now Edwards Air Force Base, California] there. When NACA established work here from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], when they came out, I was going to school at Muroc. I graduated from high school, and my birthday is on August 16th. I was set to go to UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], to go to school. Of course a military family, my family didn’t have much money. I was trying to earn some money so I could go to UCLA. My dad was a military man, that’s how I got to the Base.\\n\\n My dad was with the Inspector General’s office, and he would go around and inspect facilities. I think what he did was he went to the NACA facility and knew the personnel director and asked him if he had a place for me. They said they would hire me. I had to wait until my 18th birthday, so three days after my 18th birthday I started, I think on August 18th." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In 1951. So I started, and I worked there for a year. Then I went to UCLA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were you doing during that year when you first started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I actually did the same thing I did almost the whole time, for NACA and NASA, I worked in the Calibration Lab. I was an instrument calibrator. Of course then I was just a high school kid. I was just learning from people what the job was. I worked with other calibrators, and they would show me what to do and let me do things, and I began to learn the trade. I worked there for a year. Then I went to UCLA from ’52 to ’54, and I didn’t finish. I stopped school, I have some paperwork here I think when I went back to NACA. Well, money was an issue. Money had become an issue because I had gone two years. But actually I wasn’t doing very well anyway. I stopped then and NACA hired me back.\\n\\n Then again they put me in the Calibration Lab, only to start with I think they called me an engineering aide. In fact, I have some paperwork here I could show you. I was an engineering aide. Then after school in ’54 they hired me again as an instrument calibrator. I had a year’s experience. I worked there for two years. Then I got drafted into the Korean War.\\n\\n So you see my time with NACA was really broke up. I didn’t get drafted till the end of the war. I think the rule was they had to hold my position for me, I think civil service held positions for you. I was only in 13 months, and my father died. Then I went to get an allotment for my mother, and they said, “Well, you can’t get an allotment, but you can get out,” so I got out. I had to have letters from my mother and a chaplain.\\n\\n Then I got out and I went back to the NACA. I got out of the military after 13 months, and then I went back and hired back in to NACA—I may say NASA all the time because most of my years were with NASA.\\n\\n Then when I went back to work there Nona was there. That’s where we met. Then that’s only about a year before NASA started. That was summer of ’57, and then I think late ’58 is when NASA started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mrs. Curley, talk about how you started there, and how did you, being a woman—and did you grow up in this area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I finished high school here. I moved here and did my sophomore year on. When I graduated, my dad said, “Well, now it’s time to get a job.” I hadn’t even thought about that, I thought I was going on to school. They were hiring on the Base, so I took the civil service exam and I was placed at NACA. I was a clerk-typist in the Instrument Service Branch. I worked there for almost six years, and then stopped before my first child was born. During that time we met and worked together in the same office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you living? You were living in the Lancaster area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I was carpooling." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who were you carpooling with, other women? Or were there other people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started out with my dad, because he was working on the Base also. Then I ended up with just different fellows. I was always in the carpool with all men, because that’s who lived near where I was. We carpooled. I guess the interesting thing about that was we used to just go down Division Street and drive directly across the Rosamond Dry Lake to pick up the road onto the base. Just everybody was out there, it would be 20 cars wide, and we all had an entry place and an exit place. That was the short cut, made the ride 15, 20 minutes shorter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just take off right across the lake." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t have to commute because I lived on the Base. My dad was a military man, so I came to the Base when I was 12 years old. We had lived in a whole bunch of different places—in fact we were in Panama when the war [World War II] broke out. They made the families come back and ultimately we ended up out here. I’ve never left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is interesting, growing up in a military environment, and then continuing that with your career. It probably felt very comfortable to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, well, I was acquainted with the aeronautical work, just because it was a military base. I didn’t realize it at the time, but NACA guys were there from Langley, and they were working on breaking the sound barrier. I really wasn’t too much aware of that in high school, until I got my job. I knew it was going on, but I was just a kid." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You weren’t really paying attention to the historical aspects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I actually got to sit in the seat of the [Bell] X-1 that broke the sound barrier. My dad worked in the hangar. He took me to work one day. The X-1 was in the hangar, and they let a 12-year-old go over and sit in it, or 13-year-old. It had the old Flying Wings [Northrop YB-49]. Have you ever seen the old Flying Wings that were before? They were in there. This was before I even got in there, and I was just a kid." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that piqued your interest though, being around it all the time? Did you ever think about doing anything other than aeronautics or working in this field?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, I hadn’t thought about it, I had not really zeroed in on it. I was going to be an engineer, that’s why I went to UCLA. I was interested in scientific things. I guess when my dad got that first job for me at NACA, I hadn’t decided this is where I’m going to be. It was just natural to go back there after school, because I was living on the Base again. My dad was still a military man, so I could still live on the Base. It wasn’t till my dad died that we had to move off the Base because my mother was a civilian." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you move to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We moved to North Edwards, which is on the other side of the Base. My mother wanted to stay close there, so she just moved to Kern County on the north side of the Base, North Edwards over there, a little small community. She bought a house. Then later I lived there with her, and that was a short commute in to the Base, until I met Nona, and we married and moved to Lancaster." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mrs. Curley, you mentioned that your father worked on the Base. What did he do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was in construction. He did a lot of the building, and he was involved in a big hangar project. Just down the taxiway from NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about when you both started working, you came back to that area, that’s where you were working. During that time period there weren’t as many women as there are now working at NASA Centers. What was the social aspect of that time period? Were there organized things for you to take part in, picnics, dances, those sort of things? How did you spend your time during the day? Did you go to lunch together? Was there a cafeteria?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they had a place, a cafeteria to eat, they had a place to eat. They had activities. They would have summer picnics that people would go to. Actually they had a bowling league at one time. But it’s hard for me to remember whether it was NACA or NASA. But there were periods of time. Well, it was about the time we got married I was bowling. There were bowling leagues. I actually played on the facility basketball team. They had a basketball team that played in town in the town league. All my good friends, the fellows, were all guys I played basketball with. Neil [A.] Armstrong was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did he play basketball?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. He wasn’t very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you carpooled mainly with men, but did you have a group of women friends that you met or that you did things with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. I knew the women in the building. We would have to go to each other with questions with secretarial duties from time to time. I didn’t socialize with them. There just really wasn’t time for it I guess. The men I rode with, most of them were men from World War II, they were middle-aged men. They were always very respectful. We had some really interesting conversations. They wouldn’t really talk about war experiences, but they would give you background on how they did and that type of thing. I really wasn’t involved in the social activities. Even after we were married he would have lunch with the fellows, and I don’t even remember what I did, or where I went. Probably at my desk. But we were careful not to socialize in the office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any awareness of what NACA was doing before you started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had never heard of it. When I went in there, it was completely new to me, learning the aeronautical language. I took business courses in high school, so I had no background in this. It was very interesting though. My particular job was just the regular filing and typing, that type of thing, but the work of the Center was very interesting. I always enjoyed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As far as learning that aeronautical language, was there any type of training when you were here, when you first started, or information that they gave you so that you could come up to speed on things that you needed to know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. I think it was learn as you go. These new words were popping up. You just picked them up as you went on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work in a pool of other women, or did you work individually?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I was in the Calibration Office, and it was all fellows. Then later on there was a woman who came to work in calibration, so there was another lady in the office. My desk was in the office with all of the calibrators. Then I had business to do with the Repair Shop and the Instrument Construction Shop, so I had associations with those men. I did their typing and their filing also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, there were three shops together in the same branch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this Instrumentation and Calibration? Was that the branch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There was a group of us that did calibration, and then there were people, construction, they built things, like a machine shop. Then there were instrument repair guys, so they would repair the instruments, and we would calibrate them. You actually worked on the data stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little bit. That was a short time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. See, we had to prepare the calibrations that they would use to develop the test data. The instruments we calibrated went into the vehicles that were being tested. We had to have calibrations like big curves so when they took the data they could determine how fast they went and how high they were and all those things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you were learning those skills starting when you were pretty young, and then when you came back was that still just an informal learning from people that had been there before? Did you have any type of formal training on site to help you learn those skills?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were experienced calibration people there. They would show you what to do, and they would let me do the more simple stuff to begin with, then you just work up. The leadership were almost all Langley people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any names that you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, my boss was Ralph [M.] Pernula, and his boss was Russ [L. Russell] Mills, who was her boss as well. Ralph was over my calibration group, and then there were two other guys over the other groups. Russ Mills was over us. I never got an engineering degree, but Russ Mills, my boss—well, above my boss, my leader was Ralph—he encouraged me to take the civil service test, and they gave me an engineer’s rating. So I ended up, I had to take a cut in pay, but I think I was a GS-6 [Government Schedule pay scale] calibrator, but when I took the test they would only approve me for a GS-5 engineer. Russ Mills said, and I realized, it was the best thing to do, because I would have been more limited as a technician than I would be as an engineer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You could move on from there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s wonderful that they gave you that opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. In fact years later one of the personnel directors came to me and I guess he raised the issue I didn’t have a college degree, and somebody, one of my bosses, had to go and talk to him about it doesn’t make any difference. This is the way it worked. I guess he thought I shouldn’t be where I was or something. It might have been a place where I was getting a promotion maybe. When you get to GS-11, 12, it gets a little bit harder in your job description to move up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you started everything was still out on the South Base?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "South Base. That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you don’t mind, just talk about that for a minute, and the working environment out there and what that was like, and then when everything got built and moved to the Main Base in 1954. If you want to just talk about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, well, actually I lived on South Base." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you live in the area for the single employees?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The South Gate used to come in by an old hospital area, and then it would go down by the runway and where the South Base was. They made that hospital part of it into housing for military people, because they didn’t have any housing on Base. When my dad first came here, we had to live in Lancaster for a year. So I went to grammar school in Lancaster. And then he moved us to this hospital area, and it was right inside the South Gate that went down to the Base.\\n\\n I was well acquainted with it, that’s where the theater was and the gym and the social club. I knew all that, I had been living there for six years. The first year I was there, our lab was actually in the hangar. NACA had a hangar on the old runway. On the side of the hangar, you know how they have offices and shops along the side? We were in there. I worked in there. If you went out the door, you were in where the airplanes were.\\n\\n Then they moved the Cal Lab across the road and down a ways into a building that had the old garage in it. The mechanic that took care of their cars was in part of the building with a garage and then the rest of the building was broke up into three offices for the Cal Lab and the repair and the construction shop and an office in the little building. It was just across the road from the runway. We could go out the door and look over and see planes landing on the runway. Then we moved to the new building when they built the new runway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you still living on the South Base when they built the new one and everybody moved to the main building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[No. At the time of the move, I was living in the new base housing.] In fact I think that’s the first overtime I ever got, to move. They got all the young guys to help move, so I think that’s first time I ever worked overtime. We had to spend a day or so to haul stuff from where the old runway is over to the new one, over to the new Base." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think having grown up in this area you were pretty used to the environment, as far as the physical comfort of working in hangars, out in the middle of a desert. So that was pretty normal for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it didn’t bother me. Yes. I was used to that. In fact we used to play softball. We’d wait until later in the day when it cools off, but I probably played when it was hot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We can do all kinds of things when we’re young, right? Talk about some of the things in the Calibration Lab, what you were working on as far as the research that was being done at that time, what you recall, if there’s any big projects or programs that were going on as far as the aeronautical research that you were working on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The X-1 was earlier. That was earlier on. They just continued to make experimental aircraft like that. They actually went through an X-1 series, the X-1B. They changed it a little bit and put a different motor in it, and then they’d go to X-2. They’ve got the whole series of X aircraft. They just went from one to another. The instrumentation people now wouldn’t believe what it was like, I guess. All the instrumentation I think came from Langley. It was stuff Langley had developed. We calibrated those things.\\n\\n They were all recorded on film. The instruments had film drums and they would measure something like pressure or altitude, angular velocity, angular acceleration, they were measuring everything. When the plane did this or this and how fast they went. We would calibrate those, and then we’d have to put in a known pressure, record it on the recorder, and then we’d have to measure those films and put them on big plots.\\n\\n Then those plots would go upstairs. Most of the ladies they were hiring were reducing data. Then they would read the flight films, go to the charts, and then find the pressure or the altitude or whatever. That’s the way they did their data. No computers or anything. It’s interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since they were doing research as you said on a lot of different things day to day, did things change daily for you as far as what you were working on? Was it long periods of time you would maybe work on one project and then it would switch to another? Or it was more of an ad hoc—you would just go for whatever was happening that day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we just did the instruments. We knew new planes were coming along, but the instrument that went in one of the X-1 series, they put that instrument in the next plane. We would get to go out and work on airplanes. Sometimes they would want us to do one of the pilot’s indicators or something. They didn’t want to take it out of the airplane, so there was a way you could go and put the pressure in through the Pitot tube and read the gauge, the altimeter, airspeed indicator. Then sometimes they’d want us to do pressure transducers on the aircraft, because they didn’t want to always take them out to get them calibrated again. We’d have to go out and hook pressure to some place on the airplane and record it. It was evolving too, new things were coming all the time. People started inventing different kinds of instruments, and they eventually got away from the film drums." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were doing all that, how closely did you work with the engineers that were actually doing the research? As you said, sometimes they’d have you to go out to the airplane. Were you working closely with them to achieve what they were trying to do the research on? It was a close relationship?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Because they had engineers that were assigned to each airplane. They were in charge of what was done on the airplane. Then the data would go to other engineers who evaluate it and write reports. We were in contact, yes. The engineers particularly assigned to the airplanes would come and see all—they’d have an engineer especially assigned that worked with the instrumentation. He would come to you all the time. We would work closely with the repair guys.\\n\\n A good friend of mine that I had gone to grammar school and high school with actually worked in the Repair Shop. He would repair things. Sometimes if they had a big flight and they had an instrument they had to have, we’d work overtime. A guy in the Repair Shop would work on it. Then the calibration guy would calibrate it, and if it didn’t come out quite right, you’d go back to the repair guy. Then the flight engineer, he’d want to know, well, when is it going to be here? He’d want it. They’d come to ask questions about the data. Yes, there’s quite a bit of coordination.\\n\\n The engineer is doing a lot of research reports. We knew most of those, and in fact some of them were my good friends, played basketball with me, but we didn’t deal with them too much on a regular basis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From what I’ve read, some people said that coming from a Langley environment and then coming out here, there was a different feel, that sometimes Langley was more concerned with—if you were working in, say, instrumentation, and then there was a research engineer that you would defer to them. There was more of a hierarchy of the way people interacted with each other. Out here it was more relaxed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was wondering since you worked with Langley people, and then you had people like you that were here already, working here, how that worked, and how that interaction was between—if you noticed those differences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I don’t know what it was like at Langley, but I don’t think there was that structure you talked about. The fellows that were above me to start with were Langley guys. They seemed comfortable with it too. These people, we were good friends, a small community we lived in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During that time Walt [Walter C.] Williams was the Director. You both I’m sure have experience with different things that he did and his style of being a Director. We’ve heard him described a lot of different ways, and always in glowing terms. Do you have any stories or any anecdotes or any thoughts about his directorship?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I didn’t know him that well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel that as the Directors changed over time, even after NASA, did things change at the Center depending on who was the Director? Was there a different feeling as time went on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess there were some Directors that did something a little different. Later on, they began to get into people that were more from the space program. Early on they were more aeronautical people, and I know Walt Williams went from that to space. Paul [F.] Bikle was a glider guy. He held the records. Then later on you had guys like Dave [David R.] Scott. You started getting astronauts. Yes, there was some change. The organization gets bigger. Even though I didn’t know Walt Williams very well, I think he knew who I was. Then later I got more into management, so I did have to deal more with the fellows that were up higher." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned reports, like some of the engineers would write reports. Did you ever help them on any of the reports, or have any dealings with any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not very often. I knew the fellows doing that, in fact once we were married I carpooled with Bob [Robert W.] Kempel, and he did a lot of the reporting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever have to do any work as far as people doing reports in that area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember I typed a lot of papers, but they wouldn’t have been on that level. They were probably coming from just our Service Branch. That’s where I ran into the terminology, strange words popping up you’re trying to type and you’re not familiar with. It always slows you down.\\n\\n Oh, one thing I do remember is shortly after I went to work there I was given an electric typewriter. Up until then it was manual. That was the first time I had ever worked with an electric typewriter. It was special." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is really early on for electric typewriters." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. That was pretty nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned too, the technology changed, even in the time you were there, technology was changing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the language changed again, when all the space terms started coming in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year did you get married?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "1961." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were married in ’61. You were actually married then after it became NASA. Let’s talk about that time in 1957 when the Sputnik [Russian satellite] launched. How aware were you in your day-to-day activities of that event, and was that something that you remember talking about at work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was talked about by everyone at the Center at the time. It was big news." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any idea of how that was going to affect your lives, as far as the work environment at that time? Were people already talking about moving?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It took a year for the U.S. to respond. I don’t know whether we thought very much about what’s the U.S.’s response going to be, and the space organization. I don’t know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Once the NACA did switch over in 1958, when that happened, how did that affect what was going on? Was it just one day you had a NACA badge, the next day you had a NASA badge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right. I think you’re going to interview Don [Donald L.] Hallberg on Friday. I saw Don yesterday at a funeral." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He also worked in the office with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Don worked with us. He was my best friend then. We did everything together until we got married, and go off with your families. I was talking to him, and we were both of the opinion, well, one day we worked for NACA and the next day we worked for NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It wasn’t any big difference as far as you were concerned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. It took a while, I think, for things to grow and get bigger." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In those first days after NASA formed and then that focus was more towards spaceflight, a lot of the other Centers—of course then Johnson [Space Center, Houston, Texas, originally named Manned Spacecraft Center] came along and different Centers, that was their main focus, and that was pretty much it. But out here, there was still so much aeronautical research going on. I think there was also a lot of things happening I guess under the radar, like the Lifting Bodies and Paresev [Paraglider Research Vehicle] and the different things that they were looking at for returning from space that the public wasn’t as aware of what was going on out here. If you want to talk about that time period, and maybe some of the things that were going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One effect it did have, a lot of people left. A lot of people went to the space program. It wasn’t just Walt Williams. In fact I think my boss Ralph Pernula told me he was offered. A lot of the engineers I knew left and went and became significant parts of the space program down in Houston, so it was an effect on people. I think that’s when they started bringing in a lot of new engineers, because people left, and they had to replace them.\\n\\n It’s like Don said yesterday, he said they had more money too. All of a sudden they had more money, and I think along with the aeronautical, like you said, they began thinking about other things. Some of the engineers that were good friends of us that we knew, a fellow named [R.] Dale Reed was in all that Lifting Body stuff. My boss for a while was John [G.] McTigue, and he was instrumental in that. He was one of the engineers—I think he was the flight ops [operations] guy on the first Lifting Bodies. They built some really crude things and started experimenting I think with some guys from Ames [Research Center, Moffett Field, California]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Didn’t they call those the flying bathtubs at first, they were nicknamed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think the—was it the M2-F1? One of them was the first vehicle that they actually built here, instead of doing research from having aircraft coming from other places, they actually built it here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. They had enough money I think to put together something and fly. You could always watch it. All you had to do was go outside and watch it on the lake. They did most of that stuff on the dry lake." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There were a lot of the test pilots that were here, and the things that they were doing. Did you have any interaction with any of them? You mentioned Neil Armstrong not being very good at basketball. Some of the other test pilots, especially since it was such a dangerous thing, the research and what the pilots were doing, and there were accidents that happened, and you lost people. If you want to just talk about some of that, and how that affected the Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There were a lot of accidents. In fact I was somewhat associated with them, because I lived on the Base before then. A good friend of my father’s was killed in I think it was a [Boeing] B-47 [Stratojet] that crashed. It happened fairly regular. You go to the Base, all the streets are named for pilots that died in accidents. Yes, I can remember the day the [North American X]B-70 [Valkyrie] crashed. I’m trying to think of names now. I can’t think of his name." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Joe [Joseph A.] Walker?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Joe Walker was the one that was killed. But I’m thinking one of the other pilots got in a [Lockheed F-]104 [Starfighter] and went out to look at the site." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Don [Donald L.] Mallick, I think in his book was talking about going out and looking at the site. It was him and somebody else he was with [James “Doc” Roman]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I remember being out in back of the Calibration Lab, I guess nobody had heard that they were all dead. I guess they assumed they were. The one pilot came back and landed, and he walked back up to the building. There was a group of us standing there, and he said, “He’s gone.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine that was very difficult, especially if you knew them socially and worked with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there was an [North American] X-15 accident with an Air Force pilot [Michael J. Adams]. I did not know him. I did not know him. I didn’t know some of the Air Force pilots that flew in the X-15 Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about the X-1, when it first flew it was very hush-hush because the U.S. was trying to do something and they didn’t necessarily want anyone to know that they had broken the sound barrier at the beginning. With X-15, there were a lot of—in working so close with the Air Force—there were a lot of projects, programs that were classified or highly classified. Did you have to have any kind of special clearance?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. I did. I don’t think you did, did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had a secret clearance because of documents that I handled. Because I had to go sit up in the branch office from time to time to fill in, and I had to put documents in and out of the safe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it like getting that clearance? Do you remember what that process was like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember my neighbors wondered why they were being questioned about me. They would do some kind of investigation. I don’t know any details of it, really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had the same thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, in fact, I looked at it last night. I went and looked at some things, so I could refresh times and memories. I’ll show them to you. I even found my three job applications for ’54, ’56. I was only with NACA for four years, but it was over a period of six. Well, it was more than that, because I kept having breaks, one year, then a break, then two years and another break, then another year, and then we were into NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the earlier years at NACA do you remember or recall any visits from famous people, or people that would have been memorable visits to the Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The famous people who came of course was all with space. [President Lyndon B.] Johnson and [President Ronald] Reagan. I do remember at NACA a bunch of the leaders flew out, and it might have been for the new building, I’m trying to think what it was. They got us young guys in the Cal Lab, they sent us over to the Main Base, and the people that I guess were coming from Langley or someplace, they landed in an airplane, and we went to get their baggage. They sent us, we were the young guys at the bottom. They sent us to get the baggage and put it in a van and bring it from the runway. I don’t remember what the occasion was. I don’t remember who the people were, it must have been [Hugh L.] Dryden and some of those people I guess. These are important guys, everything has to be done just right. That’s the only thing I recall. I don’t remember them doing too much more, I don’t know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your job description you were moving man, baggage handler, calibration, you did a little bit of everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Whatever was needed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s right. That seemed to be a spirit, from what I’ve read. Out here especially in this area, at this Center, that it was pretty much whatever was needed, you did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The people I worked with were my best friends, we were together all the time when we were apart from work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was small too. There weren’t as many people here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We used to do things on weekends, a lot of the single people would get together and go to the mountains or someplace, we were always doing things. I used to go backpacking with some of the engineers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You got married in ’61 you said? Did you continue working for a while afterwards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did for almost a year, well, most of that year; I stopped before our first baby was born." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you live when you got married?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We lived in Lancaster." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We’ve always lived here. We’ve moved a couple of times, we rented at first, and rented several times before we bought a house. We’re in the same house we bought. We’ve been in there a long time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just drove to work together after that I assume." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually we carpooled. His brother and his wife lived just down the street form us, so we carpooled together for a while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They worked also at the Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. They both were at the Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, my next brother worked there for a while. He didn’t make a career of it, but he worked there when he was young. He eventually went into law enforcement, ATF [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms] agent, Treasury [Department]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As far as the NACA, is there anything that comes to mind that you think would be the most significant thing that you did while it was still NACA, or any other anecdotes about that time period that you can think of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I looked at that list of things. My NACA time was mostly me just learning the trade and progressing. I went from an engineering aide to calibrator. They were always changing titles, and then you go through calibrator. Then they gave me an engineer’s rating, like I told you, through the civil service exam. Then I had a more responsible position in the Cal Lab. They would let me do the more important things. Then Don Hallberg was my boss for a while. The organization would change character every once in a while. People would move up. Don didn’t like it, so then I became a branch head." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t remember. That would have been in NASA. It would have been after NACA. NACA, I was still just an instrument calibrator. I think I was GS-6 and then went back to 5 as an engineer. Then I worked my way up through the engineers. Then they did—well, this was NASA—NASA did a big reorganization, they changed the whole organization. They formed a facility manager group, and they asked me to be a facility manager for calibration and test. That’s when I worked for John McTigue. The Director then was the pilot [John A. Manke], and he became the Director. Well, of course there’s the time we were under Ames too. There was a while there, Ames was the big Center, and we weren’t, so they put us under Ames.\\n\\n You used to have to fly to Ames to coordinate with people, and then, well, now Ames has gone away, and Armstrong is the bigger Center. Things change. Yes, I tried to think, but I don’t know that I did anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Other than learn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I don’t know what I would call something significant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything that strikes you that you worked on during that time that you remember as being interesting or something that jumps out in your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of the aircraft projects were interesting to me. The fellows would take me out back and show me what was going on and explain things to me, and I saw a lot of special landings of different crafts. Usually we couldn’t see the takeoffs, they were too far away. They were down the other end. It just was all very interesting. I think the X-15, I don’t remember if that came while it was still NACA or if that was after NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was ’60, I think, 1959 or 1960." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was, yes. I think it was a little bit later, we’d go out and watch all those landings. I was thinking about it the other day. The fellows acted more like fathers to me and showing me around and teaching me all the information and showing me how things worked. It just was very interesting to me, because it was something that was all entirely new." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Something that you weren’t necessarily expecting to do when you were still in school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had no idea I was going to do something like that. But I always enjoyed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you came here when you were a sophomore in high school to the area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did your family come from?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was born in Indiana, but my dad followed construction jobs on the Bases, so we traveled all over the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is quite a difference as far as the environment, from Indiana to here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that an adjustment as far as working? As Rebecca mentioned before we talked, women had a dress code that they had to follow, and you were expected to dress certain ways. Of course sometimes this environment was a little harsh for that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was just the normal way to dress, because even in high school here you did not wear pants. It was not the accepted thing. Every once in a while when we had snow days, we would have an exception and be allowed to. So it was just what I was used to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wasn’t anything unusual about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course there wasn’t any air conditioning at that time either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, there was at the NACA Center. It was quite comfortable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It wasn’t an uncomfortable work environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was comfortable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the old base, we didn’t have air conditioning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was the new modern buildings, it was quite nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Better than being at home probably sometimes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We didn’t have AC at home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It changed over to NASA while you were still working too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You stayed for a little while with NASA. Did you notice any changes in the work that you did or the organization? I know you were in the same organization." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not at that point in time, there really wasn’t much change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not a lot that you did differently or anything that came through?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I keep saying the thing that I remember the most about the change is that shortly after the change we had all these stacks of NACA stationery that we had to just dispose of. It took a few weeks probably until they sent in the new NASA things. We had all these things, what do we do with these? That was one of the things that was a joke among all the secretarial type women." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you moved up as a branch chief first? Then you moved on into more management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My first leadership was being over the Calibration Lab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there anyone in particular that you had worked for that you modeled some of your management style after? Was there anyone that you admired that you tried to follow the same type of management techniques or anything as you went through?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I don’t think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you just develop your own style? How many people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a very small group. Ralph Pernula was the leader over us most of the time until he turned things over to Don Hallberg. Russ Mills was over Ralph, and he was one of the original guys that came out. Well, I guess he came a little bit after Gerry [Gerald M.] Truszynski]. Gerry Truszynski was probably the big instrumentation guy that came out with the first group. Then guys like Russ Mills and Ralph Pernula came. Russ Mills was I thought a good example of a leader. I admired him. He was very helpful to me, and I think I probably tried to do things quite a bit like he did. Actually, well, the training, you know how the longer time went, they got to positions where they would do more training with people. It eventually got to where—well, I’m sure it’s that way, all NASA Centers, they’re always having training sessions. They would send you away to different places for these little conferences where you would get instruction.\\n\\n I remember they sent me over to near Santa Barbara one time to a management training, and I can’t think of the name of the guy. He’s the guy that wrote all the training and management books that were written at that time. He was really famous. I remember I couldn’t afford on the government [per diem] to stay at the hotel where they did it. I think I was the only NASA guy there. There were a bunch of other people from big organizations. Our secretary called over there and was able to get them to let me in under the government allotment to stay at a hotel. I thought that was funny." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you had to go back and forth to Ames, when the Center was still a part of Ames. Did you go to any other Centers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Maybe I ought to tell you about it. This of course is NASA. NASA got some complaints from the government about their calibration labs, their NASA standards. Apparently it had to do with money. They thought that NASA wasn’t using their calibration standards, because the Centers weren’t sharing with one another, and they had duplication. Some guy from Washington was assigned to form a NASA calibration group with representatives from each Center. We would meet twice a year. We would meet at the National Bureau of Standards, either in Colorado or Maryland, and we would meet at different Centers. It was to try to work together with standards. To do calibrations you have to have standards. Ultimately they have to be traced—well, I don’t think they were to start with, but ultimately they wanted them traceable to the National Bureau of Standards, which has changed names now, it’s not what it used to be.\\n\\n So yes, I’ve been to Langley, I’ve been to Johnson, I went to JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California]. They put JPL in with us too. I’ve been to Ames quite a bit. What made me think about that is I got to know the calibration manager at Ames pretty well. We had to coordinate things with them. I would go up to Ames periodically. NASA ran an airplane for a while. In fact the airplane might have come from JPL. It used to come up here and pick people up and then go to Ames, and in the afternoon fly people back. Yes, I got to know Ames pretty well. The other Centers I just got tours and had meetings over a period of several days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Neil Armstrong and some of the other early astronauts were out here at some time when it was NASA. We started with the early programs and then Apollo. Just talk about some of that time period, what was going on with NASA and what was going on at the Center during the Moon landing. And if there were any celebrations, or if there was anything going on that you can recall during that time period when NASA was accomplishing those goals that the President [John F. Kennedy] had set for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Antelope Valley is a big aerospace place. There have been periods where almost all the jobs were in aerospace, and you could see the housing go up and down with budgets. In fact for a while her parents, when I was dating her, lived in a place, the housing area was all empty almost. Empty homes. People here, they’re big on aerospace. Of course there’s a lot of new people coming in. Yes, they like those kind of things. People come over here to Palmdale to watch planes take off from here. They get on Sierra Highway, they park and watch new airplanes take off or something, and go to the Base. The Space Shuttle landings on the [dry] lake [bed] were big deals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s what I was going to mention, because so much of that focus during Apollo was not here, because that’s not necessarily what people realized, that the work here was actually going towards reentry, but nobody was aware of that until the Shuttle. Then all of a sudden the Shuttle changed the public perception of what was going on here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Once I got into the facility management group, my boss was put in charge of this thing about greeting all these people who were coming to—I guess it was the one with Reagan, it must have been." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The July 4th [landing of STS-4]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. July 4th." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "People went to a visitor center in Lancaster at the Antelope Valley Inn, and people were picked up on buses. Me and another engineer, I don’t remember who was with me, we were in charge of one of the buses. We had to talk to the people on the bus about going out, and we were involved in helping the guys with security. Yes, it was a big impact. Of course technically we instrumented the [Shuttle] Carrier Aircraft [SCA, modified Boeing 747]. That was a big deal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, and that was quite different, the whole idea of the Shuttle and the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had instruments on it, we had to put instruments on it. They were concerned about the structure that held the Space Shuttle, and they had strain gauges and all kinds of things. They wanted to know what it did to the fuselage. Even leading up to that first launch was an exciting thing. They didn’t know what was going to happen when they flew. They flew it a lot of times with it up there, but then there was one point where they had to separate it. Even though aerospace people get excited about all things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you remember the Approach and Landing Tests [ALT] and the first release? Did you get to see it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. Our family was involved in a lot of those things. We would go out and watch them, and even during this particular Shuttle landing on the 4th that you were talking about, my girls were teenagers. They worked at the Shuttle center in town, the visitor center. A little aside to this, my neighbor was a carpet installer person, and he carpeted the wing of the plane that Reagan stood on to make his speech. Our family and a lot of surrounding families were involved in all those things, besides going out to the Center. So we went out to the Center and saw all of the early landings, and all that you were allowed to go to. Yes. We were always involved in it one way or another, and he always had to go out early and work on some part of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We have all these buttons they gave for every landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine that was an exciting time, because all of a sudden the public realized, “Oh, there’s a Center out here in the middle of nowhere doing this work, and the Shuttle is going to land there.” I think I read that the release—the first approach and landing where they had the release and they landed the Shuttle—they said over 1,000 reporters were here at that time, and that was just unheard of out here, that much attention." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were very exciting times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine the whole community like you said, everybody being involved, and everyone was excited. Did they allow people, if you were family members? Or did they allow the general public to come on site to see those things? Or were there special areas set up so you could see the landings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had special viewing areas for the general public. The families and all went right to the NASA Center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they let the families come here, but then up on the hill from Armstrong they had an area where people could come. Then they used to allow people to go in on the other side of the lake. They could drive around toward the rocket site and actually drive out on the lake where it landed and see it from the other side." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, viewing areas out there, they were restricted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was always a big deal. The people used to come from all over the place. I remember some guy I went to college with calling me up one time, he was from Turlock. He was coming down to watch the Space Shuttle land over on the Kern County side over near Boron and North Edwards, over on the other side. Yes, they were big deals.\\n\\n Even in the aeronautical programs, people always liked to celebrate a significant thing on the flight. If something was done, then they’d decide they were going to stop at a place on the way home and celebrate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they had a party after every X-15 landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I was just going to ask you if those were significant, because they had a lot of flights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think that was general public so much, but the people involved. They were exciting times too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the X-15, when that was ending, there was actually talk of closing the Center at that time, before the Shuttle started. There was that time period that things were a little uncertain, until they decided. I think they moved into the Supersonic Transport work, and that kept things going until the Shuttle. Do you remember that time period? Was there a lot of concern?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think when they put us under Ames I think was one of those times they were wondering about closing the facility. The fellow that was our leader at that time was actually a [Lockheed] U-2 pilot. The spy aircraft. He was the Operations Chief at Ames, and they put him in charge of us [Martin A. Knutson]. They put us under them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that Manke, maybe? John Manke?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Manke is the pilot that was a Center Director, and he was a good friend of John McTigue. That’s when they did the reorganization. They just broke up each group to where somebody was in charge of engineers, somebody was in charge of technicians, and somebody was in charge of money and planning. I was in the Facility Management Office handling the money and the oversight of the facility, but the engineers assigned to us were in one group, and the technicians were in another group. I don’t know if they still have that out there that way now or not. It was quite different than the way it was before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At any point during those times where you weren’t sure about funding or what was going on, were there any times you ever considered not working for NASA, or maybe changing careers, to go somewhere else or do something else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No, I don’t think so. Actually I took an early out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In what year did you leave?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "1985. It was probably one of those times. They offered a lot of the managers early outs. I don’t know if it was during the Ames time or not. It might have been. Because to get you out early they make an offer to you, and you reject it, so they offered me a slot at Ames, and then if I rejected it, they would let you go out. A number of managers went out, and I did. I had 32 years. I think you had to have 25. I went out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you go do anything else afterward?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I went to the rocket site [Air Force Rocket Research Laboratory] on the other side of the lake and worked 15 years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had your second career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know why I did it. She didn’t want me to do it. She was a little bit upset about it. I don’t know, it might not have been—it worked out though. It worked out well for me, because I enjoyed my job at the rocket site. There I actually got to work on rockets. I got to work on more—calibration for NASA, I was working in an area that supported the project—up there is right on the rocket, so I enjoyed that. Worked up there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever get to fly on anything while you were here? Were you ever interested in that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Actually people would go up with the pilots. I don’t know if they were supposed to do that or not. I could have got a ride I think, I don’t know. I’m not too hot about it. I know another guy in the Cal Lab got a ride. It’s wild. The pilot likes to turn you over if he can. Some people come back sick. So no.\\n\\n I’ve been up in airplanes a number of times. We flew to Ames quite a bit in that small airplane. A lot of the guys at Dryden, a lot of people had their own airplanes. There was a spell there where guys were building their own airplanes. The aeronautical people, they like to build their own airplane, and Don Hallberg had a plane of his own. He didn’t build his, but there were a lot of little airports around the valley, and the guys would have their own airplanes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I know gliders are a big thing out in this area because of the environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Oh, yes. Gliders. A lot of guys worked with Paul Bikle. In fact we calibrated some of his stuff. He had an altimeter to measure his flights, altitude. He was trying to break altitude records. They would bring it in the Cal Lab and have one of our guys calibrate it periodically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must have been interesting. I know that the personalities of pilots and people that are interested in that are—it’s pretty interesting working with those types of people, I would imagine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It was interesting. It just had a chart like, and it just had a needle that went up like this and came down. He carried it in his glider, but we’d have to calibrate it so they’d know when he got to 20,000 or 25,000 or wherever he went. I don’t think I did it. One of the technicians did it. I think that’s when I was the branch head." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned too those early things with calibration, everything was on film, and then of course technology changed, and things became computerized. During your time, things were already changing pretty rapidly. Can you talk about some of those technology changes? When the female computers, they were mostly female, were doing those numbers, it would take them days or weeks to arrive at a certain place. Then once computers came along, of course that was happening so fast. Any of those changes in your area, or how did it affect the workload or the ability for your area to do the job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The biggest change in calibration, well, now they use the word metrology more. They like the word metrology. I go to church with another guy that’s a calibrator, and he likes to talk about how we’re calibrators, not metrologists. That’s the more technical.\\n\\n What happened was the instrument that goes up in the airplane, you have to have something more accurate to check it to. As they began to improve the instruments that went on the aircraft, they began to get more accurate. Then pretty soon, in some areas, they were getting almost as accurate as the standards. You used to check something with the standard that was a significant amount more accurate. You want it to be much more accurate than the thing you were testing. That gap began to close, and so it makes things difficult because the standards you have, and you have to do a lot of special things to keep your standards.\\n\\n You go to the National Bureau of Standards, and the way they take care of their weights is extravagant, temperature control. That made things a little more difficult because, well, when you bought new instruments from a supplier, you always had to check them to make sure they met the specifications. You buy something from somebody and they said this is what it’ll do. We used to have to check in the Cal Lab to make sure it did do those things, like you’re measuring pressure but the instrument you’re measuring pressure with is going to go to altitude in an airplane, and it’s going to get cold. What’s it like when it’s cold? It’s going to measure different than when it’s warm or hot. Those things started getting more difficult. You’re going to colder temperatures, and it’s harder to find the standard to check it. There’s some impact just from the advancement of technology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As far as setting those standards, since like you said it was different because of the altitude, for example temperature, was NASA setting some of those standards? Nobody else was doing that, right, as far as the calibrating?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The standards pretty much comes from the National Bureau of Standards. They’re the organization that’s responsible for that. Things are supposed to be traceable to them somehow. As time went on things got more—well, I was part of that committee. More emphasis then was put on your standards, like here’s a thing that goes in the airplane, here’s the thing you check it to. This thing is checked to this thing, and ultimately it’s supposed to end up at the National Bureau of Standards somehow. The Centers would send things, and I don’t know, maybe they’ve gotten away from that, but the Centers used to send things to the National Bureau of Standards, and they would tell you this is how good it is. Then you bring that to your Center, and you use that to make sure these other things are good. But that’s changing almost all the time. In the old days we didn’t do stuff like that too much. Then it gets stricter and stricter. I don’t know what they’re doing now.\\n\\n The instruments people use to measure things are supposed to be checked periodically, like people use a voltmeter, you don’t need it in your home that way, but if you’re doing something like we were doing, you have to know that voltmeter is accurate when you measure something. The only way to do that is to check it to something else. But then how good is that thing you checked it to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine that was a large paper trail too just trying to keep track of everything and when things were checked against those standards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know how that thing with the NASA committee worked out. I don’t even know if they still have it anymore. I know somebody replaced me when I retired. I don’t know, sometimes those things have a way of going away over a period of time. But I did think it was helpful in knowing guys at other Centers. I got to know the guy at Ames pretty well, and JPL. I got to know those guys pretty well. The guys at other Centers, I would only see them once or twice a year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned before that some of his hours sometimes would be longer. Were your hours generally 8:00 to 5:00 all the way through since the beginning? Or were there periods of time where you were working extended hours if something was going on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were some periods of time when he worked overtime, worked late for weeks on end." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I guess specific to a project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It must have been. I don’t really remember what it was about. I remember several times when he worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was more overtime under NASA. Like I said, I don’t remember too many times with NACA. Of course I wasn’t the guy they probably would have stay over to do it. I was at the bottom. But later yes, there would be times. They have an X-15 flight scheduled, they don’t want to cancel it. If they had an instrumentation issue, guys would have to work and get that instrument in the aircraft in time for the flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, as I recall, most of the times I’m thinking of were during X-15 flight time periods." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like I told you earlier, a friend of mine who worked in the next room was a fellow in a wheelchair, and he was a repairman. We knew each other well. We would work a lot together. He’d be in the repair shop and me because we were trying to get some either altimeter or airspeed indicator to work right, and he’d tweak it, then I’d calibrate it, and if it wasn’t right he’d tweak it again and I’d calibrate it. Then there’d be a guy, technician, from the airplane that then comes and takes that and puts it in the airplane, so all those people are working overtime.\\n\\n We were working overtime to get the instrument ready, and then some guy has got to work to get it in the airplane before they can fly. Yes, probably X-15 was the most overtime thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to ask Rebecca and see if she has any questions that she can think of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve got a couple. You said you were working with the SCA, the instrumentation for that. Could you share your thoughts about when you first heard that the 747 going to be used to be the transporter first for the ALT, for the Approaching and Landing Test, and then it was going to be doing it for that? As a person who had to do the instrumentation calibration for that type of a test, it’s a very strange structure to fly in space." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually it didn’t make much difference to the instrumentation guy. We just calibrate the instrument, and the guys putting it in the airplane have to worry about it. With the Carrier Aircraft, you’ve got all kinds of room. Like the X-15, everything’s crammed into little places. They take a cover off, and they got all these pressure transducers down there, hooked into pressure lines, and things are hard to get in and out. The Carrier Aircraft, you just walk up the stairs and you go in a great big room, and the instruments, well, they have to have instruments in places still. But they’re easier to get to and easier to do.\\n\\n I think they probably only had one technician assigned to that vehicle, and it wasn’t instrumented as significantly, I don’t think, as something like the X-15. Something like the X-15 had hundreds of pressure transducers on it. They had stuff all over, measuring everything. I do remember when the X-15 that crashed, I think it was Number 2, they actually brought an instrument to the Cal Lab to calibrate. They formed an investigation committee. They put some pretty important people on those things. They had people come from other Centers to participate in that because they wanted to find out what caused this accident.\\n\\n I guess they had some concern for some indicator. They brought it to the Cal Lab and asked us to calibrate it. They had me do it. I had to test it. I’m trying to think what it was. We had to test it in a chamber. They wanted to see if the temperature had affected it. I felt like that was important, because I knew there was a group of guys that were important that were depending on this for their committee. As I recall, it worked all right as far as we could tell.\\n\\n They thought it might be a contributor to the flight. I think they think the pilot lost his attitude somehow, he got confused with something. I don’t remember what the final report was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They’d have to rule out, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, the instrumentation. They had to rule out that that was the cause." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that’s right. They wanted to know if that contributed to it. I think they knew some of the things that had happened, but they wondered why they happened. It could be the guy read a meter wrong, but it could be that the meter was doing wrong things too. Well, they had some trouble with the attitude of the vehicle when it came back in. It was in space, so when it came in it had all that stuff that the Space Shuttle gets, and it got some violent effects on it and heat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you take what you had learned and what you had done at NACA and NASA and apply it to your last job on the rocket site?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did basically the same thing. They hired me as a quality control guy, not as a technician. I wasn’t even an instrument engineer. They wanted a quality guy. It was after the Shuttle when the rocket blew up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Shuttle explosion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Challenger [STS-51L]? Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess the same thing might have happened to the Air Force. They were trying to recover those Titan rockets. They decided to fire one at the rocket site, a full-size rocket, vertical. It was right after I retired. I think I had been retired about a year or part of a year. I went over and got interviewed, and they hired me right away. They wanted me to do quality. They wanted me to check instrumentation. They had technicians and guys who were putting everything on—it was just like what we did at NASA and NACA. They had technicians and engineers that were putting them on, but they wanted everything checked. I oversaw the quality control of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He sat on top of a fully loaded rocket one day. Checking it out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you know he was going to do that, or did you find out afterwards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t know until later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a little scary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually when you work with those guys around rockets, it’s surprising but it’s not—well, what happened is it leaked between the segments. They have segments, each segment is 10 feet but they got to hook together about four or five of them. And when they put them together, they have to put an O-ring in there. You know what an O-ring is?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s what caused the accident, the O-ring leaked. They were trying to improve that. But the way they put those things together, they lay one segment on top of another, and they pound these big pegs in all the way around that thing, bam bam. You look at the segment, it’s all full of solid rocket fuel, and they’re pounding these things in. You’d think they’d be worried about sparks or something. I guess it’s a lot harder to light on fire than people think it is.\\n\\n Just before the firing, they have a crew that handles the rocket when it’s ready to fire, until they fire. They wanted to go up on the upper dome and check the pressure transducer that measures the pressure inside the rocket. That was part of their procedure just before firing, so I would go up with a technician all the way up to the fifth floor, and then crawl up on top of the rocket and hook up to measure the pressure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was already armed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had a good view." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t think I’d look down though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, but they have safety things. They have things taken out so that nobody can—and those are the very things that are put in last. It has everything in it to make it work, but it’s really not armed yet until something lights the upper end and starts it.\\n\\n So I used what I had at NACA and NASA when I went up there. Eventually my job changed a little bit. Once we got through the rocket, I stayed with the contractor, and then it went from quality control to safety. They made me a safety officer. That’s something I should have had training on. But it worked out real well. Worked out real well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just wanted to ask one other question, and it really goes back to those early days, even when you were both younger. We have so many forms of communication now, but back then you would hear these sounds, like the sonic booms, or you would hear explosions. How did the community react to that, knowing that all of this was taking place in their backyard? Was there any communication of what people would know? Or was it just by neighbors telling other neighbors when they found out from people working on site that that was a sound that the airplane makes when it breaks the sound barrier?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, we would get hit with sonic booms numerous times a day, and depending on where you were in relation to it, the dust would fly up off the ground. You would actually have windows shatter in some houses if the boom hit you. People in the valley just knew that that was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most people knew in those days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If you came here new, it took you by surprise until you found out what was going on. Then it was just accepted. That was the work going on out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When the area was small, almost everybody here knew, well, that’s sonic booms at the Base. Of course they didn’t know the more secret stuff was going on. They did a lot of really secret things at North Base. When I was still living with my mother at North Base before we got married, they had U-2s there, the secret aircraft, and I didn’t know. I think I was dating her, I would come into town and date her and then drive all the way through the Base to North Edwards to go home. I always used to see something landing at North Base. You could see the lights on the wingtips, quiet, come down, land or take off. We didn’t know until they shot the one down in Russia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Then they brought one over to Dryden. They wanted to show it to the news people. Interestingly enough, that was probably the first time a lot of the NASA people had seen it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I imagine the level of secrecy in things that were going on, because everything was so isolated out here, it was a good place for that type of work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When they brought that U-2 in, they wanted the public to think that this was a normal thing. We were told not to go out back and watch it or anything. We were told if we went out there we’d be shot, was the rumor going around, but we still all poked our heads out and watched, and never saw anything fly quite like that. We were all really very interested in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine you did get to see a lot of very interesting things fly that most people would never even imagine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did. Yes. Then back to the early times and the sonic booms, other than the engineering people that were here the valley was mostly farming. Our population was very small compared to what it is now. Everyone knew. They didn’t know what the projects were, but they knew what all the sonic booms were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now there would be a lot of people in Antelope Valley that really wouldn’t have any idea what’s going on at Edwards, I don’t think. Big influx of new people, younger people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you and your friends were doing the basketball league and the bowling and hiking, did you all talk about work? Or were you not allowed to talk much about work off the Base?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, we talked about work. You just had to be particularly—I think the secret stuff came more with the X-15. I think it was the X-15 that a lot of people just didn’t want to talk about what they were testing for. People on their outings, I don’t think they talked much about work. A lot of these people ended up being married to each other. I remember people we went around with who were single, and two of them would marry from the group, that’s how they met." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I would imagine that your relationship, you weren’t unusual. I imagine there were other couples that met on site, and that was maybe the only place to meet people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was one of the places, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, the size of the communities weren’t that big." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You didn’t want to go back to work after you had your children?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I’ve never gone back. I’ve been a stay-at-home mom." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Full-time job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Nona Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I always enjoyed my work. You hear people complain about what they do, and they can’t stand to go to work. I’m sure there were times I didn’t really want to go to work, but I liked what I did. I liked the people I worked with. Even at the rocket site, I enjoyed it. I didn’t stop until I was 70. I worked up there. They had limitations on what you could earn back then. If you were getting a civil service retirement, a government retirement, you could only earn so much. There were periods I couldn’t work full-time. Even then I cut my hours back when they had that law in effect. Yes, I worked till I was 70, I think. Finally, they were starting to cut people. I said, “Well, don’t start cutting me, just tell me not to come in sometime.” Then one January, the supervisor told me, “Harry, don’t come in anymore.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything we haven’t talked about, or any other anecdotes that you can remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Harry Curley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don’t think so. Did we cover pretty much everything on the list?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I think so, the topics that I had down, I think we’ve covered them. But if there’s anything that you think of later, you can add it, once you get the transcript. If something comes to mind, any anecdotes or anything you’d like to add. But we appreciate you coming in." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00619", + "metadata": { + "category": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/HollandAW/hollandaw.htm", + "original_file_name": "HarrisCJ_8-2-11.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/CMR/HarrisCJ/HarrisCJ_8-2-11.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Chilean Miners Rescue Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Christopher J. Harris", + "location_date": "Washington, D.C. – 2 August 2011" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Christopher J. Harris" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 2, 2011. This oral history is being conducted with Christopher Harris in Washington, D.C., for the NASA Headquarters History Office. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, with Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. The interview is part of a series to capture knowledge about NASA’s participation in the 2010 rescue of thirty-three Chilean miners. Mr. Harris is a member of the U.S. Department of State who served as the Chile Desk Officer during the time of this historic event.\\n\\n We’d like for you, if you would, please, to begin today by sharing with us how you got involved and how the State Department got involved and, as well, NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you for inviting me. I guess I’ll start with a little bit of context. I’ve been with the Foreign Service mostly serving abroad as a U.S. diplomat for about twelve years now, a bunch of different places, including Guatemala, was out in Russia, Armenia, Afghanistan, Serbia, then in the NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] Operations Office, and then in Chile working on the Chile desk.\\n\\n The State Department’s primary role when it’s back in D.C. is to work with the embassies of the countries that we cover, to work as a focal point for any policy discussion or any communication, by and large, that’s policy communication with foreign governments. As a desk officer in the State Department, in the case of Chile, because it’s a medium-sized to smaller country, there’s just me, and then if someone else in the U.S. Government [USG] has a question about most aspects of Chile, I would be the first point of contact.\\n\\n I’m also usually the first point of contact for the Chilean Government if they are looking for advice or assistance or information from the U.S. Government. That’s how this all started. We have a very close relationship with the Chilean Government. It’s a highly functional country with excellent governance. It actually has in the past—and I think will continue this year—to rate higher on the Transparency International scores than the U.S. The reason why I’m saying that is the nature of our relationship with Chile is much more of a cooperative partnership than a purveyor of aid or something along those lines.\\n\\n That being said, in early 2010 in February, Chile suffered one of the largest earthquakes on record. We already had a multifaceted relationship in the sense that we had many, many different avenues in which we were cooperating with both the Chilean Government itself and with NGOs [non-governmental organizations] and with civil society. Then the earthquake happened, and a lot of those avenues which were already in place, the cooperation was deepened, contacts were deepened, and the level of trust between both our governments and between especially those who were working on emergency preparation and response were all that much more improved and deepened. That’s the context for August of 2010 when the Chile mine accident occurred.\\n\\n It was particularly interesting for me, because the day that the mine collapse was reported was my first day in the office. I was coming from the European Office for Regional Political-Military Affairs, so I was working NATO operations. I actually had just been working on the Pakistan flood relief, so in some senses I was already geared up. I was coming directly from a bunch of meetings on Pakistan flood relief to my first day in the office. I didn’t have email; I didn’t know my Chilean contacts yet; I barely had any phone numbers to call, and the news flashes across the screen that this collapse has happened and that the Chilean Government is very personally engaged.\\n\\n I don’t remember if it was exactly the first day, but it was in the first day or two that I received a call from the Chilean Embassy, from their Ambassador, and also talked to their DCM [Deputy Chief of Mission], saying, “We already have a lot of these connections in place from the earthquake. Thank you so much for your assistance during that time. We’re looking at this situation. Let’s think about ways in which we could cooperate and use some of your skills to help.”\\n\\n I think the idea of NASA came about because there had been—and I’m sure you’ve heard this more from [NASA] Headquarters folks, but it came about because we already had a relationship working with Easter Island as an alternate landing site for our [Space] Shuttles. We had some interaction with the Chilean Space Agency, which is quite a small operation—we’re talking about a handful of people, pretty much—on a day-to-day basis, but there still was some communication there.\\n\\n The Ambassador was talking about areas in which we could cooperate and mentioned that they had this guy from the Chilean Space Agency who within the last year had been at a conference with someone from NASA and mentioned the concept of NASA as one of the areas for cooperation. I jumped at that, and said, “Of course.” I’m actually a bit proud of being able to make those connections pretty quickly; to say, “Of course,” for remote medical care, engineering expertise, that type of stuff.\\n\\n At that point there was a parallel or even a three-lane approach in getting NASA starting to spin up a bit as far as how it could cooperate. I had sent over a note, I think to a general contact phone number or email, saying, “Hey, can I talk to somebody at NASA?” The Chilean Space Agency had had a couple of emails and had sent some emails. I believe also the Chilean Embassy had reached out to NASA directly.\\n\\n The first interaction was with Al [Albert] Condes, which I’m not sure in response to which of those emails or phone calls. One of the fun parts about the job as a desk officer is even as a mid-level officer, you’re the only game in town. Al’s a great guy, and we established a quick rapport, but for me to get a call from a deputy administrator from another agency is a usual part of our day, but I was conscious of rank, and I think that one of the testaments to both NASA and to how this all worked out is how quickly we developed a team. “Let’s get the job done. Let’s work through the problems,” without a lot of the formalities that can take place in interagency cooperation. There was any number of papers and memos and agreements that we had to push through to get it going, but it was all done within a very collegial atmosphere, and I credit NASA in a big way for that, because that can slow our cooperation with other agencies.\\n\\n Just to give a little background, before we started running with NASA—and I know that’s a primary interest for this interview session—we were working with a lot of other agencies. Almost immediately in some type of natural disaster, or in this case it wasn’t quite a natural disaster, but this type of disaster, we’re talking to USAID [U.S. Agency for International Development], which is really our partner agency or almost one body with two heads in the sense that the State Department and USAID work very, very closely together and are in many ways the same department or agency. They have the overseas office, OFDA, Overseas Foreign Disaster Assistance Office. So I was in contact with them right away.\\n\\n I had been reaching out to Department of Defense [DoD] almost immediately because of their heavy-lift capabilities. We work with them a lot if we need to move something large. I don’t know what it might be, but almost immediately if we think we might be sending, we’re talking to the Department of Defense about possibly using some of their planes. That came into play further on.\\n\\n We ended up talking to the Department of the Interior and Department of Labor, because of mining expertise, pretty quickly, and as things developed, we talked to the National Institutes of Health. We also got calls from state mining agencies, from public-private entities like the lobbying groups for the mining industry. There were a lot of phone calls and a lot of other conversations going on which NASA started to plug into. I think, for the most part, we were working pretty much directly with them, with a little bit of DoD involvement when we were talking about possibly moving equipment.\\n\\n Again, another piece of context. The Chileans are mining experts. They’re engineering experts. Actually, if there’s an area where their higher education tends to send specialists abroad, it’s in engineering. So when they came to us, they weren’t saying, “How do we deal with mines? How do we deal with mine disasters or collapses?” They were saying, “This is a unique circumstance. We have thirty-three people trapped way far underground. None of our normal procedures are working. We don’t know how long they’re going to be down there. We need help in a very specific technical area.” That’s where NASA comes in, remote medical care, remote nutrition, things that a space program, of course, would develop expertise in that other industries and other areas would not. I think that’s a key point.\\n\\n Are you talking to Chileans as well, or is this primarily from the U.S. side?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "From the U.S. side." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. I would put in a plug. President [Miguel Juan Sebastián] Piñera [Echenique] can be a difficult personality in that he’s very much a billionaire CEO [Chief Executive Officer] and he likes to make executive decisions. In this case that came very much to be a benefit in that he saw a situation where his advisors were telling him that he shouldn’t get involved, that the chance for the survival was minimal, that it would be politically risky, because if he put his face on this rescue and it didn’t go through, he would take a political hit. He pushed that advice aside, became very quickly personally involved in the rescue, mobilized all of Chile’s substantial expertise in mining and rescue work, got a team up there immediately, found the money beyond this relatively small company that was involved in the mine and the mining operation itself—it became very quickly apparent that they didn’t have the resources—and got his Ministry of Mining.\\n\\n It sets the stage for the rescue effort in the sense that the Chilean Government deserves a lot of credit for very quickly responding to a crisis and doing so at some political risk. Even by the time we’re talking about how NASA can help, they have an operation starting, they have people on the ground, they have medical professionals on site; their engineers are working out ways to come up with a way to rescue.\\n\\n Again, how the State Department works, I’m a State Department Chile Desk Officer. We have a whole team of diplomats and experts sitting in Santiago [Chile]. I don’t like to call myself a node because I think of the Noid from Domino’s Pizza, but I’m the node for that embassy. You have the Chilean Embassy here in Washington and then you have the U.S. Embassy in Santiago, and I’m their primary information source. As soon as all this stuff is happening, I’m talking to them ninety times a day about what’s going on on the ground and how we could potentially help the Chilean Government, and they started talking to their counterparts in the Ministry of Health, in the Ministry of Mining about how we could help.\\n\\n What came out of this, while we’re also having conversations here in Washington with NASA, is what they’re looking for is this particular medical expertise and engineering expertise just because they figure they don’t know exactly how the engineering would plug in, but they know they need as much as they can get on the ground.\\n\\n In a conversation with Al, I don’t know from which side it initiated, he said it made the most sense to get a team down there as quickly as we could, not to lead an effort, but to plug in as an important new resource for the Chilean team that was already up and running and had people on the ground and going.\\n\\n Again to NASA’s credit, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of previous precedence for NASA being used as the instrument for, in this case, international “aid” is the wrong word, but along those lines. We work with the Department of Justice, who do police training; we work with USAID, of course, who runs the gamut of disaster and food relief and long-term democracy-building. NASA usually isn’t someone that we’re going to turn to as a primary international aid organization or agency.\\n\\n That was a little bit of the cobwebs. We said, “Okay, we want to send a team. Okay. How do we do that?” We send people down for our own—this is NASA—for their own needs, their own cooperation, but usually not as a purely aid mission. Immediately you start having things pop up, like the lawyers all start moving and there’s talk about liability, and we have to run down visas for everybody. There was a lot of work done in making sure that NASA was comfortable with the idea of sending down a group. Again, to NASA’s credit, it happened much quicker than I was anticipating. I was hoping that we could turn it around in a couple of days. I don’t know if Al gave you the time. It’s been about a year now. It seemed like two or three days, but I’m sure it was probably something like ten before we were able to get the team actually on a plane and down.\\n\\n In preparation for the team landing, we have a political officer on the ground in the embassy in Santiago who works on environmental science, technology, and health. That’s her portfolio. We were lucky enough to have someone who had just gone through all the coordination for the earthquake response, so she was geared in. Basically what we do is maintain contacts for things like this. We’re talking to our Chilean counterparts all the time. I was able to talk to her, and said, “Hey, we have this team coming down.” She immediately had all the people in the Chilean Government lined up to talk about how they would be received, what type of program they would have, who they would meet with, and how they would plug into the rescue effort.\\n\\n We started going back and forth between her and the leadership of the embassy and the Chilean ministries with dates, all the logistics, dates, times, how they would get up to the mine site, where they would stay, who would provide translation. These things that you don’t necessarily think of can really—the translation issue, for example, took a lot of time to figure out if the Chilean Government was going to pay for a translator or provide a translator; if they were going to fly him from Santiago and have someone meet up there. If they were going to meet up there, you have to have a professional translator in this case because you’re talking technical terms and medical terms and that type of stuff.\\n\\n I remember many conversations about who’s going to interpret, where are we going to find someone with this level of interpretation. There are a lot of people in Santiago that we use. Again, it’s a highly educated, highly functional country, but we’re talking about several hundred miles away, if not a thousand miles or whatever—Chile’s super long—up in the middle of this little desert mining town. There’s money for mining around, but it’s a lot more blue-collar than a white-collar super professional translator. I remember that being a sticking point that we worked through.\\n\\n Also where they were going to stay, because all the hotels and everything up in Copiapó, again, not a big place. Everything was slammed. So, making sure that the Chilean Government could figure out where they would be housed. The guys were great. They said, “A tent’s fine,” but you need to know before you put them on a plane that they’re not going to show up and there’s going to be everybody running around trying to figure out what to do with them. That’s the worst-case scenario. Then we also had to get a special flight set up. Who was going to go with them?\\n\\n We had them come down to Santiago. They’re received at the embassy. The embassy, for any type of direct government visit, really works as the logistics space. There’s a U.S. diplomat, usually a political officer, someone else from the embassy who sets up their meeting schedule. This goes for any official trip. We do it all the time for congressmen and other people, but it’s fun to do it for a more practical, I guess, event. Even when the team got to Santiago, they had someone who was assigned to them. We also had a press officer who was working with them closely because of the extreme press interests, both with the Santiago press and the world press, as you know.\\n\\n They came into town, had a chance to brief a bit with the embassy folks, and then there was a series of meetings at the ministries. They talked to the Minister of Health and some people in the Ministry of Mining to get an idea of what the current status was with the miners, what the current status was of the rescue effort, and how they might be able to help. It’s also a really long flight, so you’re coming in without any sleep, so it’s good to have a little bit of time in Santiago before going right into the event.\\n\\n They flew up to Copiapó, again with—I believe it was with two embassy officers who went along basically to make sure that everything was taken care of, like what I do here, as the main interface with the Chilean Government. Our officers are fluent in Spanish, of course, so that helps. And also a press officer to help with press contacts. I forget exactly how long they were up in Copiapó. I think it was about two days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. It wasn’t long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then when they came back, they did an outbrief again with the ministries.\\n\\n The other great part about this is even before they went down and continuing after they returned to the U.S., the beauty of modern technology is there were regular conference calls. There may have even been digital video conferencing, though I don’t remember exactly. Constant emails back and forth with the contacts that they had established in Chile. I think that’s really what I see as a great example for moving forward. The reason why we really wanted to get a team on the ground, even if they weren’t doing all that much with their hands per se, was establishing those personal connections, again, which in some ways with the USG had already been established during the earthquake, but it’s fun getting scientists with scientists and doctors with doctors, and they can have a whole conversation that, if it has to run through a lot of intermediaries, is not necessarily as productive. Getting face time with their counterparts and then being able to continue that via electronic communication later was great to see. I imagine a lot of those friendships and those connections are still going, and if something else happens, it’ll be a great way to plug back in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s go back to the part where you mentioned about these parallels, they’re all going together. NASA’s identifying their team, and these are based on requirements or requests that are coming in from the Chilean Government. Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. It’s part of that conversation. When we started talking to the Chileans here and then our embassy was talking directly to the ministries and the Minister of Health, we started saying these are the areas where they’re looking for expertise.\\n\\n I think I forgot to mention psychological impact of the events was a big one, along with the engineering and remote medical and nutrition. That’s how the team was formed, was based off those requests." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned, there had been a meeting in Europe where the Chilean officials and the NASA officials had talked during this nations meeting. I’m curious if the State Department had received a request for help from Chile about this, would you have thought about going to NASA for these things if NASA hadn’t already been contacted as well by the Chilean Government?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that we try to think as broadly as possible. It’s hard to say. I would like to say yes because it seems so obvious as the idea was developing. We do try to think as broadly, maybe not on day one, but by day three or four, as we’re responding to events, who can plug in, which is why we were trying to talk to the Department of Interior. So, yes. There’s this whole move, this whole almost clichéd saying about whole of government, but it really is hammered into our heads on the lower and mid level and even some of the guys who have been around for a long time in the State Department. Look, we’re the central part. We don’t have the resources and we don’t have specific expertise, so you start talking. A lot of what we do in our relationships with other governments is what happened here. What do you need? You’re a close partner. This is somewhere where we want to help. You have a lot of your own capabilities. What do you need?\\n\\n For example, if something like this happened with the U.K. [United Kingdom] or some of our close European allies, yes, I think we’d be thinking NASA pretty quickly. Most often we’re reacting to Haiti or less developed countries. Are we really going to get around to the level of expertise that NASA has, the very specific, very highly technical? Most times we’re trying to make sure people have food and water and are out of danger. I think some of it is the specifics of this event, but I think, if anything, this event means that it’s on people’s minds to think more creatively about how we bring in other parts of the government to help in situations like this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In this event there was such an urgency because of a concern for the health of the miners that had been recently discovered that were still alive. Were there certain instructions that the State Department shared with NASA and/or the team going down, such as, “This is what you will do. This is what you won’t do”?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know about instructions. Before I forget, because I will forget if I don’t get back to it, we were also talking about medical and psychological expertise. We were talking to [U.S. Army] Special Forces psychological teams who were actually on call and ready to come at a moment’s notice, but NASA actually moved a little bit faster and I think was a better fit. But I also want to mention DoD’s willingness and the capabilities that they could have brought to bear. It ended up that they were a lot of overlap, so it didn’t seem like it was necessary, but they were also talking on conversations and were there to provide some background.\\n\\n As far as instructions, no, I don’t think instructions. I think that working with Al and working with the team, they were very conscious of the fact that this is not a normal interaction for NASA. They were very open in asking us about context of our relationship with Chile and areas to look out for. We didn’t give any specific instructions partially because our relationship with Chile is incredibly open and it’s a very positive partnership, so there were very few things that they could have done that would have impacted negatively on our larger policy, especially since we’re talking about guys with technical expertise who are responding to a direct request.\\n\\n We were asking, in talking with media, that they don’t go too broadly into subjects beyond the mine rescue, but I think they were asking to minimize media to a certain extent for that reason as well. It’s not their main focus and in some ways can get in the way. So we just gave them context about what the relationship was like and encouraged them to go with their instincts as far as not taking on questions about Chile’s relationship with Argentina or Chinese investment in mining in Chile or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apparently the NASA team was greeted with great admiration and adulation when they got there. The guys were giving them a hard time about being rock stars because of the NASA branding and logo and its reputation. What were the reports that you were getting back from your counterparts in Santiago about how things were going with the team once they started moving through their mission there on the ground, because they started there in Santiago and then, as you mentioned, they went to the site and then came back through?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say first there is something to the NASA brand per se, which is it’s seen as obviously above profit or in that sense, so you have people at the utmost levels of our scientific capabilities and medical capabilities doing it for something other than profit. I don’t mean to hit that point too hard, but it’s recognized. These guys are top-class. In Chile, too, around the world, it’s a specialized group, and not all countries are able to invest in that way in science. So I think that reflects part of it.\\n\\n The U.S. is very popular in Chile too. We got a lot of credit for a very robust but understated response to the earthquake where we really supported the Chilean Government’s efforts to help its own people, which they did very capably with huge investment, but it was just such a large and devastating event that they needed help just because it was huge. And I think that’s also how NASA was seen coming in as a very visible example of the U.S. responding as a friend when asked.\\n\\n I bring that up because I think it’s also a very good segue into a credit to the team. I think it’s Dr. [J. Michael] Duncan who was the lead. They did a great job of recognizing both publicly and privately how on top of their game the Chilean doctors were and engineers were, how they were there to tweak approaches, but really didn’t have to make drastic changes. Even though they were recognized publicly as rock stars, they worked very much as colleagues, and that’s hugely appreciated from my angle, because there is this tendency, if you’re not working a lot internationally, to lump whole regions or whole groups of countries together. In this case, Chile is a very capable place, so I think they were very appreciative of being treated like the professionals that they are and with the skills that they are, and having these very experienced and technically proficient colleagues and partners coming in to help.\\n\\n It really underlies our basic foundation of our relationship with Chile is that they are our partners and not a recipient of aid as if they were a developing country. I think the team coming in, being understated but very confident, very forward with their advice, but recognizing that it was plugging into the context of a lot of existing expertise went over great. All we heard back from our Chilean counterparts from the Minister of Health and the Minister of Mining, to the team up on the ground in Copiapó was, “Thanks for coming. These guys were really easy to work with, not afraid to get their hands dirty and get down in the mine site, and, if anything, wanted to keep out of a lot of the distractions that would come with the attention of the trip and get more to trying to save these guys’ lives.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When they got back, they didn’t stop working. In fact, they were in teams coming up with a list of recommendations that they filtered their way up. Tell us how that information got from NASA to Chile. Did it have to go through the State Department, or did it go directly to their counterparts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There’s no requirement on that level. I think a lot of what we try to do is establish that connection and then monitor how that’s going to make sure there’s not sticking points or problems. They established a very effective direct connection with their Chilean counterparts.\\n\\n That being said, I appreciated, especially with Al’s office, they made sure that I knew what was going on when people were talking the basic stuff that they were working through. It was really fun to get a [Microsoft] PowerPoint slide with a picture of the concept for the rescue vehicle, for the Phoenix, so I have that somewhere on my computer, the first idea. Again, the NASA team was great at saying, “We didn’t design this, we didn’t build it, but we gave some ideas of what needed to be incorporated.”\\n\\n I think the U.S. press started running off with, “NASA came up with the whole rescue thing,” and the Chileans grated at that a little bit, but not with anybody who was actually involved, because the NASA team and Dr. Duncan continued to be very gracious in talking about the cooperative nature of the interaction.\\n\\n But, yes, we heard excellent things. I’m sure they would be welcomed back anytime they want to go down. There was a trip on schedule recently that I think may have been delayed now. I’ve been out of the office for a little while, but I think they might be going down there this fall for a follow-on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that based on what you’ve told us earlier and the information you sent me that you work with international issues all the time. How was this one different, yet how was it similar to other things that you have done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve primarily been working on Afghanistan, say, or Armenia or Pakistan floods, so I think there’s two things that are different. One is it’s nice to be working on such a positive story with such capable people on both sides. I don’t mean to be sounding like I’m waving the Chilean flags, but to have a country that was responding to the needs of its people or took that on first and is very capable, and then to have such capable people in another agency in our own government that we can then just plug together and then watch it work beautifully, in our work that’s a rare thing and a very positive thing.\\n\\n I think how it differentiates, we often feel like we’re banging our head against the wall on any number of issues if you’re thinking Nagorno-Karabakh [War] between Armenia and Azerbaijan or Cyprus or Middle East or other current major problems, trying to establish good governance in Afghanistan or Pakistan. These are grinding, incredibly difficult projects or initiatives that are going to go long after I’m working in a certain area. For me to come in and say, “Here’s a problem and people who have a very human need, and here’s some tools that we have that we can help,” and here’s people actually using those tools and those relationships very effectively, and then the end result is better than anybody could imagine, and it’s all within a contained period of my time working on Chile. I’ll have that with me forever." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was a good-ending month, and then a lot of progress there in those last couple of months. You had mentioned some of the federal agencies that you reached out to. Were there other corporations or agencies, individuals that offered their help? And how did you manage to filter through those and not pass those on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of the frustration, as something like this is developing and you only have one phone, is that you’re not able to always recognize everybody’s great intent to help, and you do triage requests for which you know the needs out there or as you’re trying to figure out what the needs are. Sometimes it meant getting back to people two to three days later that I would have loved to talk to immediately. This goes from Boy Scout troops that were sending [Apple] iPods, to a company that was sending glowing earplugs that helped with the circadian rhythm for miners. We had local mining companies and state mining agencies that were offering their expertise. You look at how much time you have, what’s going to actually do the most good most quickly for helping the miners that were there. You grab that immediately and get it online, and then you go back later, usually pretty late at night, and call the other people back and say, “Thank you very much.”\\n\\n What we ended up doing as it developed after a couple days is the Chilean Embassy set up a couple of people there who could take all the more peripheral—I don’t mean to say that in a bad way, but the stuff that wasn’t directly focused on getting these guys out. I could funnel the requests to a couple of their officers at the Chilean Embassy, who would then talk to the Boy Scout troop or talk to individual companies. There were some companies who wanted to send sanitary kits and some nutrition stuff. They could take it and work directly with their ministry and say, is this something we need? Is it going to get there in time? The first couple of days I was handling it all. After that, I would grab the things I thought needed to immediately get incorporated, and the other stuff I was able to hand over to my Chilean colleagues who would then work with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about the funding and how it worked from the State Department. You mentioned, for instance, finding a very professional translator to be able to work with this team when they got there to be able to handle everything they needed. That was one cost. Other costs that you might have incurred, is that part of what you have on standby, or was that special funding?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s the funny part; we actually have almost no funding. As you’ll see in the coming days, it’s an ongoing frustration because people don’t really know what we do, and we’re a pretty low-cost agency because we’re people. That’s all we have. There’s seven thousand Foreign Service officers in the world.\\n\\n I think actually NASA picked up a lot of the costs, which, unfortunately, is often what we have to do. We have funds, direct funds, for humanitarian assistance, but we ran across a couple of triggers with this because of its unique circumstance. That’s usually warehouses of food and water and inflatable boats that we can send to a flood, and they’re already pre-purchased and there’s mechanisms to release emergency money. When you’re talking about an event where the Chilean Government itself is already investing seven or eight million dollars and NASA’s sending a team of four or five people, but not bringing in major equipment, we found that you’re really just talking airline tickets, hotel costs, and a translator. That still ends up being thousands of dollars, which in the scheme of things is very small, but if you’re trying to scrape up a couple thousand dollars.\\n\\n NASA was actually great in finding the travel money for those guys. The Chilean Government also picked up a good chunk. I don’t remember exactly which, but it may have been hotels and the translator or something along those lines. The State Department itself in this instance didn’t really have a mechanism to—but we do maintain an embassy down there, and we had a couple dozen people who could work on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have inquiries from Capitol Hill on what was going on and what agencies were being utilized to help with this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was some. Particularly Senator Harry Reid’s office, I’ve talked to one of his main staffers a couple times. That particularly came up when we were trying to figure out how to move the drill bits that the Chileans were contracting from Center Rock [Inc.]. He said, “If you can’t figure that out, let me know.”\\n\\n A lot of that, we work very closely with the National Security staff, and they end up being a center point for—that’s the interagency hub, so we were making sure they were updated. They may have been calling above my level in the sense that I’m an action officer, so my bosses, part of their job is to take phone calls from congressional staff if I’m crashing on actually trying to get something done. They may have been talking to our assistant secretary.\\n\\n There was a buzz of interest and there were lots of people who were checking in. Again, that was one of those things where this isn’t directly applicable to what I’m trying to accomplish. I remember Senator Reid’s call because he was offering something that would help the immediate response. There was regular congressional response, but I don’t remember a specific inquiry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was such a small part of your time on the Chilean desk. It all happened very quickly. Were you recognized for those efforts of helping to have a positive outcome with the involvement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, but in a kind of typical State Department way, in that my State Department colleagues did recognize me. At the end of my tenure on the Chile desk, I got an award which in part was because of the mine rescue. Also we had a Presidential visit and a couple other things that were big, so it was stuck in there, but it was mentioned.\\n\\n NASA was great. They gave me a plaque which has a picture of Chile from the Shuttle and a couple flags that flew in space, so that’s actually worth a lot to me because that’s a rare thing to get. I didn’t get to go to the [White House] Oval Office and get a medal, but that’s not really what we do. What we do is find the people or set up the mechanisms so that people can use their skills to really step up as they did and be really hands-on to make things happen. We coordinate and we smooth the road, and I’m happy to have been a part of it in that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What has to be the greatest challenge that you faced during that time period?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Lack of hours in the day, and funding. One of the biggest frustrations was the Chilean Government coming to us and asking us for this drill bit that, in the end, was the technology that broke through, and they were having a hard time moving it. I would love to have just said, “All right, we got it. We’ll put it on a plane tomorrow.” Huge back-and-forth with DoD about how much they were going to charge the State Department to send it down there, and then we’re talking to different companies about how much it would cost, and then talking about chartering companies, but it was all restricted within this concept that we have very limited and specific pots that we can use for disaster relief or for this type of cooperation.\\n\\n I felt like there were a lot of hours spent working around something where, in the scheme of things, it would have been nice to have been able to have emergency money that we could just allocate. But it worked out. UPS [United Parcel Service] came through with donating the plane and the carrier capacity to bring it down. But it took a lot of phone calls and a lot of other mechanisms in the meantime that led to dead-ends before that could get accomplished, and I think it probably delayed getting the rescue equipment down there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your thoughts when you learned that the miners were making it to the surface?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was pretty confident at this point, once the NASA team was down there, once we had a holding pattern going where we knew that they were getting water, we knew that they had enough air, nutrition was good. There’s always a concern that there will be another rockslide or something like that, but we got to a point where we knew geologically that they were pretty stable, we knew medically they were pretty stable, and then we started hearing all this great success with the drill bit. At that point it took away some of the tension because we were pretty sure that these guys were going to get out alive. It was just how long would they have to endure their situation. And especially once they were able to start communicating with their families, it was less concern that they would lose hope.\\n\\n The fun part, though, was I was over at the Chilean Embassy and they put up a big screen outside. I got to be particularly close with one of the political officers over there, the Deputy Political Counselor who was kind of their point man. Being there and being with him, and we had a pisco sour, which is the national drink of Chile, and everybody’s jumping up and down, and, “Chi, chi chi, le, le, le! Los mineros de Chile!” That was great.\\n\\n Then I went back, and we actually had some friends in town and just stayed up watching every miner pop out. Even our friends, they’d been following it and they knew I was involved, so maybe that brought more of a tie-in, but I just thought it was great that people who had no concept of where Chile was, didn’t really even know much about the country, recognized this as such a positive event. In a world that often focuses on the negative, to have something that was just without complication a good thing, I think really brought people together.\\n\\n A miner would pop up, and it would be like the twenty-second miner, and you could still hear out your window that people were cheering in D.C., who have no connection with Chile. So that was fun. I had my little sticker. At the Chilean Embassy they have a sticker that says “We’re all good in the refuge, los treinta-tres.” I have that right up on my refrigerator, and I remember taking a picture in front of the TV with that. So it was neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a good time, good memory." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Great memory. And now it continues, you know. We have the Smithsonian [Institution] exhibit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s what we learned today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We have the opening event tomorrow. It opens on Friday, which is the anniversary. That’s fun. For once in limited humility—I don’t know, you’ll have to talk to my wife about whether or not I pull that off. It’s one of the rare times when that was an idea I had the day after the event. I went and had a celebratory lunch with Rodrigo Arcos, who’s the Deputy Political Counselor at Chilean Embassy, and he was my main guy. We were talking and I said, “We should do an exhibit. We should celebrate this. We should commemorate this cooperation.” It wasn’t just the U.S. and Chile; there were big international mining companies that gave millions of dollars’ worth of equipment and many other countries that were providing expertise.\\n\\n It was just a neat thing, and the U.S. had a big role in it with NASA advising, but then just the fact that we have a company that just develops drill bits for rescue missions. That speaks to something about how our country is put together and how our economy works. Our relationship with Chile was feeling we never thought it could get all that much better and it continued to get better, so this was this big moment, and we said we should find a way to continue celebrating this.\\n\\n I think two days later, I called up the Smithsonian and pitched it to them, and they weren’t sure because they didn’t know if they had enough time to put it on. Then working with Rodrigo, we started trying to convince the Chileans to do it, and ended up going into a meeting with their Deputy Chief of Mission and saying, “Look. I have Smithsonian now on board if you guys send this stuff,” and helping them raise money.\\n\\n I’m really excited, because tomorrow the Foreign Minister of Chile [Alfredo Moreno Charme] is coming up and he’s meeting with Secretary [of State Hillary Rodham] Clinton, who’s going to make a couple comments about how positive—again, commemorating the event, but also this exhibit. Then the Foreign Minister will actually open it. It came around, the celebratory beer the next day and said, “We should do this,” and being able again in a short period of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And perfect timing for you that it happened before you’re on the other side of the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. Again, it’s very rare for us to see something that you’re working on come to fruition. So that’s fun. You should see it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I hope to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bring family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’d like to do that. Well, I don’t want to keep you too much longer. Do you have any questions? Is there anything else you can think of that we might not have touched on, some other significant contribution or challenge that you might have had to deal with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I think, overall, it was a very positive event. I think the funny part was often when my colleagues, especially from offices I’ve worked at before, they were like, “Ah, Chile desk. You’re going to go take it easy for a while.” Then they’d see me walking out of the Department at 11 p.m. “What are you doing?” In this case we were doing something that I think was unique and very positive, so I’m glad to have been a part of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you, and thanks for being a part of our project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Christopher J. Harris", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00927", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Experts OHP Cross-section of NASA employees June 2008", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Experts/MautnerEM/mautnerem.htm", + "original_file_name": "MautnerEM_3-22-12.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Experts/MautnerEM/MautnerEM_3-22-12.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Edward M. Mautner", + "location_date": "Chantilly, Virginia – 22 March 2012" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Edward M. Mautner" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 22, 2012. This interview with Ed Mautner is being conducted at the [Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum] Steven Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, for the JSC Oral History Project. Interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for taking time out of your schedule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re welcome, it’s my pleasure to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you would, tell us about the state of [OV (orbiter vehicle)-101] Enterprise in 2003 before she was restored." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My familiarity with Enterprise was quite limited before I began work on it. When we received it, it had been stored both outdoors and in a non-climate-controlled hangar since the mid-80s, and a lot of deterioration of the surface coatings—the paint, the markings—had taken place. Woodpeckers had gotten up onto the vertical stabilizer and pecked a lot of holes into the polyurethane foam that they used as a mockup for tiles. I don’t recall the number of holes, but there were quite a few of them.\\n\\n And then just about every form of creature had made the Enterprise their habitat and playground. Birds had gotten into it; bugs had gotten into it. Hornets or wasps had made their little mud nests in the landing gear wells. They made it out of this beautiful red Virginia clay dirt that surrounds the area. In fact, when we started to clean them it almost seemed as if the aircraft was bleeding, the soil they made those nests out of was so red.\\n\\n It had basically suffered a lot of inattention. It hadn’t been cleaned or worked on to any great degree. I believe it was outside for about two years prior to them building the hangar for it, and it had been rained on. There were many ports of entries for water, and so water had pooled inside the bottom of the fuselage and it had left a lot of staining from dirt, waterlines, etc. and also had caused some minor pitting and corrosion. Nothing that would weaken the structure of the aircraft but certainly had caused some deterioration." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about that move, when you decided to move her from that hangar into this facility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Until I walked in March 1st of 2004, I had never touched Enterprise and I had really nothing to do with it. I recall being in the hangar the day they moved it in, and just about all the employees who were out here took a break to watch them tug it down the tow way from the airport and into the building.\\n\\n What was noteworthy at the time was that they had cut a notch in the back wall of the space hangar in order to permit the vertical [stabilizer] to come through. It was the only way to get Enterprise into that building without taking the vertical off, which would have been a prohibitively difficult task. I came back the next day and the blanking plate had been restored as if the building had never changed at all, so that was pretty neat. It was a well-prepared move.\\n\\n That took place in the early fall of 2003, and while I was aware that it was in the building, it was sometime after January 2004 that I was notified that I would be working on it in preparation for the opening of the space hall [James S. McDonnell Space Hangar]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your expertise prior to working on Enterprise? Were you working on aircraft restoration?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My background is—the British would describe it as checkered. I did a whole lot of things before I got directly involved in airplanes. I started out as a kid building model airplanes, and I never gave that up. I always built model airplanes, and I continue to do so. And I was always a museum rat, an airplane museum rat. Whenever we traveled, wherever we went, there was always a stop at an airplane museum somewhere.\\n\\n Somewhere around the late 80s, my wife and I had moved our children to southern California, and I began to volunteer in some aircraft museums out there. Planes of Fame in [Air Museum] Chino, and later at the Command Museum at U.S. Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which was right in the town I lived in so it was convenient to work there. I started doing structures work.\\n\\n In January of 1989 I left a former career and made a great midlife career change whereby I wanted to work in an aircraft museum. I had enjoyed volunteering on Saturdays so much, I went to Cal [California] State University, San Bernardino, for a Museum Studies certificate program. My background was in auto mechanics, and I needed to create a resume to get into working on aircraft, especially in museums. I enjoyed it immensely but had a problem with the hours of class.\\n\\n By great good fortune, McDonnell Douglas [Corporation] was hiring mechanics in the summer of 1989. Actually they’d been hiring prior to that, but that’s when I found out. I went and I applied, and they hired me immediately because of my automotive experience. I became a structures mechanic on the C-17 [aircraft] program in Long Beach, California. That was my first real hands-on experience with real aircraft manufacturing.\\n\\n I worked at McDonnell Douglas from August of 1989 until June of 1994, when there were massive layoffs. They were losing their contracts for MD-80s [airliners], and the MD-11 [airliner] never took off. The C-17 was in a state of flux because Congress and the Air Force were at loggerheads, so I and tens of thousands of others were laid off during that year.\\n\\n Meanwhile I had gone from my certificate program at Cal State, San Bernardino, to a Master’s program at Cal State, Dominguez Hills in Historic Preservation. Because John [F.] McDonnell of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation was interested in an educated workforce, they paid for almost all of my Master’s program, everything but my research courses and my thesis.\\n\\n I had early on decided that my thesis was going to be in aircraft preservation at the National Air and Space Museum. I thought that they were the best. They were the ones that were writing about aircraft preservation, and I really wanted to write about how they did it, because that seemed to be the benchmark.\\n\\n In June of 1994 I was laid off, and I immediately contacted the museum to do an internship back here so that I could do further research for my thesis. In August and September of ’94 I did a 60-day volunteer internship. I was outside of their regular program, so there was no stipend; I just came in and volunteered. I worked in the restoration shop during the day until about 3:30 [p.m.]. I’d then go across the river, downtown to the main museum and I would work in the archives.\\n\\n The people in the archives—I don’t know why, I was a total stranger to them—they let me stay after hours. In fact, at five o’clock when they left, they issued me instructions on what lights to turn off and how to shut down the computers. I would stay there till 8:30 so I’d get all my research. I had one other paper and I had my thesis to do, so I spent almost every weekday night at the museum doing that.\\n\\n They said, “Stay in touch; we’re going to be hiring.” The hiring was going to ramp up for this facility, this new Udvar-Hazy Center, so I stayed in touch. Every month I contacted somebody associated with the restoration facility, and finally in 1997 they said, “Something’s going to happen. Get back here; be nearby.” So I stayed with relatives and I hung out and I volunteered, and finally in February of 1998 they hired me. They did it because I had the academic background, but I also had, from McDonnell Douglas and my volunteer efforts, the mechanical background as well. I was very fortunate that the timing worked out.\\n\\n My background is chiefly in aircraft structures, which would be the main metal pieces that form the basis of the aircraft upon which everything else is hung. After I get through with my work, then the hydraulics people and the fuel people and the electrical people and the power plant people take over." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of planes have you worked on since you began working here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first one that I started working on was a Japanese single-engine floatplane bomber, [the Aichi M6A1 Seiran]. It looks more like a fighter with floats, but it was in fact a strategic bomber that the Japanese designed to fold up into an 11-foot diameter circle and fit into the tube on a submarine. This submarine was an aircraft carrier, literally, and it carried three of these. Very significant aircraft, because it was designed to bomb the Panama Canal locks.\\n\\n The submarine was probably more technologically advanced than the aircraft. It was designed to go 27,000 miles without refueling, and they actually did have plans to use these small bombers to bomb New York [City, New York] and possibly even Boston [Massachusetts]. It was a metal airplane, and my sheet metal experience came to good use there.\\n\\n After that, they put me on a World War I bomber, a twin-engine fabric-and-wood bomber. That airplane was a Caudron G.4, a French bomber that the United States tested but never purchased. Because we had no combat aircraft in World War I, we had to go to the French and the British and the Italians. That was an excellent experience because that broadened out my sheet metal and structures experience to wood and fabric. That airplane is also currently on display here.\\n\\n The next aircraft is one I’m still working on. We have a limited number of people here, so we get shifted off of whatever project we’re on to take care of other things in the museum, such as creating a display or working on the Enterprise for nine months in 2004. From about 2000 until this year, I’m still working on a World War II German night fighter, the Heinkel 219, a huge metal twin-engine aircraft, where again my airframe and sheet metal experience has come into use." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us what lessons you learned from working on those aircraft that you applied to the Enterprise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In my case, precious few. It was a great departure from what we call restoration, where you actually have to fabricate or replicate or repair structural pieces of an aircraft. This was largely a massive clean-up and painting effort, so it falls under the role of preservation. That’s really our role here, preservation. Everybody talks about restoration, but restoration is the court of last resort when everything has pretty much gone to pot and needs to be drastically repaired or replaced.\\n\\n What we did on Enterprise fell under the heading of preservation, but we called it a refurbishment because we didn’t do anything to repair it. It was still considered to be NASA’s aircraft, and it came to us in such good structural condition that there really was nothing to repair on it except for the paint work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us about working with NASA and USA [United Space Alliance] on this project? I understand they were involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were. When we first began on March 1, 2004, we were pretty much on our own. There were just three of us: myself, Anne [C.] McCombs, and Steve Kautner. We walked into this big empty hangar. The only thing that was in it at the time was Enterprise, and it didn’t even have a barrier around it because the public wasn’t allowed in that building yet. We just kind of stood there and wondered, “Where the heck are we going to start on this thing?”\\n\\n We had no high-lift equipment—all we had access to were ladders—so we decided to start working on the landing gear. We had no contact with NASA outside of certain parameters that they gave us in cleaning and painting it, that we were given by the curator, Valerie Neal. Without anything else but ourselves, we began the cleaning process at the lowest part of the Space Shuttle, areas that were accessible initially to us.\\n\\n Our experience with NASA and USA came a little bit later, and [their] big project was the removal of all of the cockpit windscreens, the front ones. I believe that there were three panels in them, and there were some engineering discussions as to whether they could get away with just two panels. The challenge for us was to provide them with the platforms to get up there and work off of.\\n\\n Anne and I were involved, and at that point we had a lot of mechanics from United Airlines [Inc.] come in to assist us. Their bosses permitted them to give us some high-lift platforms that were attached to trucks. We could maneuver a truck in and then raise a platform and extend it out over the nose of Enterprise in order for the USA guys to remove those windshields. The other problem was these windscreens were very, very heavy. They required quite a bit of effort to crane off of the Shuttle.\\n\\n At that point, I began to get to meet some of the guys, most specifically from USA. One of them was a fellow named Tom [Thomas W.] Roberts, and Tom’s my friend now. He was back here for the last visit. There were several other mechanics that came up from KSC [NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida] who I would count as really good acquaintances, friends, who we worked with. Got to meet Kevin [C.] Templin. He was always there, very personable fellow, and always a go-to guy for information and leadership.\\n\\n Whenever they came back, we dropped what we were doing and became assistants to them, to the point where in this last visit we were almost considered more one of their group than as a separate entity, which was kind of neat. The things I saw from everybody in NASA and USA was enthusiasm, expertise, positive attitude, and great great teamwork. The first thing we noticed is how well they worked as a team.\\n\\n Many times we didn’t know that these guys had never worked together before, and yet it was a seamless effort. You got to talking to them, you got to know them, and you realized, this guy never worked on the back end of the aircraft. He always worked on the front and didn’t even know the guys that they were working with. That was inspiring to us to see that kind of effort that they used to put in.\\n\\n Some of my recollection of my efforts with NASA and USA get a little bit confused, because some of their efforts were during that nine-month period when we worked on preparing Enterprise for the opening of the space hangar, but several of them came later. They would ask Anne or myself or others from the previous team to come back and assist them. I believe that the windshield effort was made during that nine months we were there, but our other efforts with them came later, so they’d be outside the parameters of my work on the Enterprise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I also read that you had to replace the OMS [orbital maneuvering system] pods because they had rotted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did. One of the first things we did was to remove those. Tony [Anthony W.] Carp was the team lead for the lifting of the OMS pods. They were a large aluminum plate that mated up to the surface of the Shuttle, but everything above that aluminum plate was basically wood. Plywood flooring, then 2 x 4 and 4 x 4 framework, and then they put a fiberglass cover over the top of that.\\n\\n We discovered how weak the structure was when we started to tighten up the fittings for the lifting rings. We’d gotten a guy inside to tighten the nuts up inside because they seemed loose, and he kept tightening and tightening and tightening. We suddenly realized that wood was so soft from moisture that he was just tightening the nut and the washer right into the wood. We had to be very, very careful lifting those OMS pods off.\\n\\n The OMS pods were never planned to be on the Shuttle when the space hall opened. That was something that we were going to install later, so our job now was to focus just on the Shuttle, and guys back in the shop worked on the OMS pods." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are they on there now, have they been replaced?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were put on I think in 2005, 2006 time range, and before the last visit to get Enterprise ready we removed them. They’re out in the shop, on the floor. The guys from USA put the ALTA [Approach and Landing Test Article] pods on. Those are the travel pods. They look like OMS pods, but they’re real metal. They’re real structural, flightworthy, and the tail cone fits up to those components." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about cleaning and painting the vehicle. That sounded like a very large chore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it really was. I started on March 1st to clean the right main landing gear bay and ultimately the landing gear and tires. Steve Kautner took the left bay and did the same, and Anne McCombs worked on the nose gear and the nose gear bay. It wasn’t until March 22nd that Tony [Carp] came on the team, and his job was to clean the entire vertical surface with the ultimate purpose of coring or filling the holes that the woodpeckers had made.\\n\\n Somebody might at this point ask, why would woodpeckers go after polyurethane foam? The explanation we got—I’m not an ornithologist—is that woodpeckers make the noise they do as a mating call, not just to get to bugs inside of the tree. Once they got through that polyurethane foam, they were banging on an aluminum surface. It made quite a noise, and it was far-reaching. There were about 75 holes ranging from very small, smaller than your pinky, to much bigger than your thumb.\\n\\n We were using, on NASA’s recommendation, Amway LOC [liquid organic cleaner] cut, one part LOC to ten parts water, to wash everything. It’s a mild organic detergent, and it’s biodegradable. This was what USA used, so this was what we used. And this is where, in the wheel wells, I found most of the hornet nests. Once you got the water into them they just started running down the beautiful epoxy white paint panels inside.\\n\\n At that point, once Steve had finished his wheel well, he started working on the bottom. He started up at the nose where he could reach, because you couldn’t get a ladder under there. He’s all scrunched up, just scrubbing away—and he was a bear of a guy. He had a lot of strength, and he just kept working down the bottom of the aircraft, all of the black-painted area of the aircraft.\\n\\n At that point we started using some lift equipment, JLG [Industries, Inc.] lifts and scissor lifts, to get up on the wing. We began cleaning the wing while Tony is cleaning the vertical, and we did this day after day after day. Then sometime in the summer, I believe in July, we began prepping the center fuselage for paint. The center fuselage does not have polyurethane foam on it, and that center fuselage extends from just behind the cockpit to back underneath the OMS pods. We also had to clean the payload bay doors. At this point we finally were able to get scaffolding in. We had a local company contracted to put scaffolding all up the sides and then bridge the top of the Shuttle.\\n\\n This is where things kind of got interesting. Initially it was doing just a lot of sanding on the side. Apparently the aircraft had been painted with aerospace quality polyurethane or epoxy paint and primer, but when it went on tour in 1984 it had started to look a little bit secondhand. They used a latex house paint to give it a quick repaint to make it appear better at the [New Orleans, Louisiana] World’s Fair here in the United States, and then they went to the Paris Air Show with it. This was all prior to delivering it to us.\\n\\n This paint over the years had become very brittle and very hard and would be quite a challenge to remove. Taking it off the sides was pretty easy. We were able to use electric sanders or pneumatic sanding devices, hand-held devices, and literally sand all of that down to the original paint. The sanding gave the surface a real good surface for paint to adhere to once we finished it and cleaned it up, but the real challenge came with the payload bay doors. We were instructed by NASA to not use any metal tools, any caustic chemicals, or any abrasives to remove the paint.\\n\\n We got up there, and they thought it would be really easy because a lot of the paint on the payload bay doors had flaked off, and some of it was literally sitting up. They said, “Just use duct tape and press it down real hard and pull it off, and that paint will pull up.” Well, that didn’t work at all.\\n\\n All of our communications with them were through Valerie Neal, the curator. The other thing we weren’t supposed to use was heat, so we went to Valerie and said, “The duct tape just isn’t cutting it.” They said, “Use plexiglas scrapers.” Plexiglas is a real hard plastic. We would cut up sections of it, rectangles of it, and then make a sharp edge at one end with a grinding wheel. That wasn’t cutting it either.\\n\\n One day I’m sitting on the scaffolding, trying to get this stuff off, and I see to my left this movement from about chest height over the curvature of the door. I look over, and it’s Steve Kautner with a metal scraper and a heat gun. I’m going, “Steve, what are you doing?” He goes, “This is the only way it’s coming off.” I said, “Okay, stop. Let’s talk about this.”\\n\\n We went back to our conservator, and I asked him, “Do you have a surface temperature gauge?” We went back and attached this temperature surface gauge to the area that we were putting the heat on, and we got some heat parameters. We were getting heat in the range of about 175 degrees [Fahrenheit] if we kept the heat gun moving, so we went back to NASA and they said, “Okay, you can do that, but no temperatures over 200,” or 250.\\n\\n All of a sudden this became easy, but we now found out very quickly why they didn’t want heat up there. The doors are made of carbon graphite, or carbon–carbon. It’s skinned with an almost aluminum-foil thickness coating of aluminum. It’s not like sheet metal, it’s more like a foil, and if you left the heat on there too much it would blister. We got a couple of thumb-sized blisters; we damaged the door. This concerned us, and we kept talking to each other. We’d just make sure we’d keep that heat gun moving and don’t overheat one spot.\\n\\n It became very evident very quickly why they didn’t want heat up there. They had done the same thing at some time in the past, only their blisters were much bigger than ours. That told us a) it’s been done this way before, and b) there’s a repair for it. We did make a few more blisters, an inevitable result of what we were doing, but we knew that if they needed those doors, they could be made flightworthy.\\n\\n Then, because there was still a lot of paint residue clinging to the surface, we got down and used acetone. We were all garbed up with double-canister air masks. There’s terrific pictures of us all down on our hands and knees on the door, all tied off because we’re high up on the top of the Shuttle, scrubbing with Scotch-Brite scrubbers and acetone to get the surface completely clean and ready for paint.\\n\\n That was another thing they told us, “You can’t stand on the doors.” So we had these four bridges across, and we’re all leaning off these bridges and working off of them. Again, Steve Kautner’s the first one to step off right on the doors. There’s no other way to get out there, there was no way. I said, “Okay, stop. Let’s talk this over.” We went down inside the Shuttle, and we looked up at the doors and we could see the latching system.\\n\\n We knew that those doors in zero gravity could open without any support, but we knew that they had big supports on them when they opened them in the hangar down in KSC. We looked at those supports, and we looked at how the doors fit together. It’s built like a bridge as long as they’re closed and locked, so four, five, six of us all were out on our hands and knees on the doors, scrubbing away to get the last residue and make a really good surface for paint.\\n\\n That brings up another aspect for me. I couldn’t wait every single day to come in. I’m not a space guy, I’m an airplane guy. In truth, the Shuttle is probably more like an aircraft than a spacecraft, and that one [Enterprise] never did go into space so it really was just an aircraft. I never followed space, I never got excited about it, but I got excited by this project. I couldn’t wait to get in every single day. Every day was interesting and exciting, and we were making progress—slow—but we were making progress.\\n\\n When they put the scaffolding up in July, we now had to climb this scaffolding. We had our harnesses on and we had our tethers, but we couldn’t tether off anywhere on the way up. We’re climbing 30, 35, almost 40 feet in the air every morning, every break time, every time you had to leave, and then when we got up there we would tie off and secure ourselves. But that little element of danger made it exciting, and we talked about that a lot too.\\n\\n We had two injuries, but only one on Enterprise. One of our guys did abrade his hand, but working on something else while we were out there, nothing to do with the Shuttle. One injury, very minor, on the Shuttle. One of our members fell off the payload bay doors, but he was tethered and it stopped him, and all he did was bang up his knee. I think we lost him one day, but that was it. The fact that we talked almost every day about the safety issue, that he was tethered off—we didn’t have more issues.\\n\\n The other thing that made it interesting and fun is that we were on this huge, very obvious artifact in the middle of this totally empty hall, and the public could come in to the front of the hall—there’s an overlook up above—and watch us. I think the element of being on stage made it exciting and interesting, too.\\n\\n There were some stresses. We always seemed short of personnel. At one point I realized there were a whole bunch of guys working on the OMS pods, and I had to convince my management that the OMS pods aren’t needed by October 19th, but the Shuttle is, so can I have more guys? And I got more guys.\\n\\n Once we had sanded down the sides and had removed the paint from the doors, it was time for a final prep and primer and paint. We had four guys do that, and we had a couple of issues that we had to deal with. One, it had to be an aerospace quality paint. PPG, Pittsburgh Paint and Glass, has always supplied us with our paint system that we’ve used exclusively for 20 years back at the [Paul E.] Garber [Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility, Suitland, Maryland], our restoration shop. Dave Wilson got in touch with them, and they turned him over to their aerospace division. They donated what amounted to about $15,000 worth of white polyurethane aerospace paint and primer.\\n\\n Our next challenge was we could not spray in the building because the building had an open port, and some of the ventilation systems functioned with the aircraft hangar. Also, the filters in the ventilation system would get clogged up with any paint residue and dust, so we had to either brush or roll it. Dave talked with the people from PPG, and they had an additive that allowed the paint to flow so that it would not appear to be rolled-out paint. It wouldn’t be textured, it would be nice and smooth.\\n\\n We got the paint on September 17th—keeping in mind that this hall is supposed to open on October 19th of 2004. They had to rest assured that all the fumes would have dissipated by 10 o’clock opening the next day, so we painted at night. It was Tony, Dave, myself, and a fellow by the name of Bob Weihrauch who did it. We would come in, and that hall was completely black except for the Klieg lights that we worked under. We rolled out the primer, and then we rolled out the white. [We rolled out two coats of primer and two coats of white.]\\n\\n I love working here at night because there’s no people here, the lighting is all dim, and it’s like going into a great cathedral at night when nobody’s around. It’s just beautiful. It’s quiet. You’ve got all these objects that you love, many of which you’ve worked on, and there’s just a neat thing about working here at night. We had a really good time. We had a really good crew. I don’t recollect ever having any arguments or disagreements or problems, we just really had a good time.\\n\\n One outstanding recollection is this facility is used by organizations—police organizations, FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation], the MWAA, Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority. They have their own SWAT [special weapons and tactics] team and security forces. They do a lot of work in here at night, but we didn’t know that. One night three of us are up on this scaffolding, and Dave Wilson is on a scissor lift bringing paint up to us, and all the sudden there’s movement in the hangar.\\n\\n Keep in mind that outside of this cone of light that we’re in, everything’s dark out there, but there’s movement. We look down, and there’s 20 or 30 guys in black helmets, black outfits carrying guns, and they’re swarming like ants through our hangar. Well, I immediately was not concerned because none of them are looking at us or pointing the gun at us. We’re in white bunny suits, paper coveralls, and the Klieg lights are on us. We’re out there, very obvious.\\n\\n One guy kind of moved up to Dave, and he goes, “Have you seen her?” And Dave goes, “Seen who?” He goes, “Have you seen her?” and then he had to move, because you’re not supposed to look for hints. Apparently they were on an exercise, and one of their supervisors came in two hours ahead of time and hid herself somewhere in the museum, and they had to find her. Nobody told us; our security had not advised us that this was going to happen.\\n\\n Another time, during the day, I was working on the Shuttle and nobody else was around. Security came up to me and said, “We have a congressman or a senator here with his daughter back from college, and he’s got his office manager and his security detail. Would you come down and talk to them?” So I walk inside of this circle of Secret Service people, and they’ve got their radios and they all look very, very official, and I started to talk to them. I said, “What state do you represent, sir?” He goes, “Oh, one of your neighbors.” Meanwhile, his handler, his office guy, did all the talking.\\n\\n I went back that night and I looked all over the Internet for our neighboring senators and congressmen, and I did not find him—because you can get the photos of all of them. I went back to security the next day and I said, “What was that all about?” He says, “Oh, it’s just a test.” It was Secret Service in a practice run, and these guys were just members of the Secret Service that were playing a role to make it seem realistic. There are a lot of activities that go on here that are very interesting. But again, I was not forewarned of that.\\n\\n The other two events that were really interesting—Joe [H.] Engle, one of the test pilots for Enterprise, came back and spent a day with us. He is just a prince of a guy, just a super guy. We got to tour him around and show him what we were doing, and he was just the friendliest guy and was very very grateful to us restoring “his” bird back to its original condition. A couple weeks later, we all got an 8 x 10 of him standing by Enterprise out at Palmdale [California] back in’77, ’78, with a beautiful handwritten note and one of the original patches from his missions. It was just neat, a neat thing.\\n\\n The other very very interesting visitor to us was Colonel Pamela Ann Melroy. She’s a two mission pilot and one mission command pilot [commander]. She was also on the Columbia [STS-107 accident] investigation team, and she led the cockpit reconstruction area. My recollection, she was about five-foot-five, five-foot-six. I immediately made a connection, because she was a test pilot on the C-17 program. As I had worked on it, we had some things to talk about.\\n\\n I got to tour her around, and the thing I recollect so well is that she made a comment when we were in the cockpit. The cockpit of Enterprise is for the most part empty. The dashboard is there, but there’s only about three instruments, and they’re all old analog instruments. The seats are not there. She looked at that dashboard and marveled at the fact that it was the first time she’d seen one in a long time that wasn’t bits and pieces, because she had been looking and reviewing and trying to reassemble pieces of Columbia’s instrument panel.\\n\\n This diminutive colonel in the Air Force—always at the end the photographer comes in and takes a picture of us with the VIP [very important person]. Anne and I were there at that time, and we’re all standing off to the side, a foot away or something. She says, “Hey, we’ve been together all day. Come here!” She pulled us in right next to her to take the picture. We also got an 8x10 from her, signed, with a thank you and mission patches. Those are two of my favorite treasures from that whole time there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nice recollections of that time period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it really was. We got it done. Everything seemed late—getting personnel, the scaffolding came late, the paint came late—but we got it done. We got it done on October 18th, and October 19th was the day the media and the museum VIPs and everybody showed up to see it. It was a moment of pride because it really looked good.\\n\\n Tony and I stayed after October 19th. Tony had some more work up on the vertical to do, and the one area that we hadn’t really addressed was the propulsion bay. I would work in the propulsion bay; he’d work up top. We did this at night because the gallery was open to the public, so we did a lot of night work from October until we went away on Christmas vacation.\\n\\n Most of cleanup in the propulsion bay—there was some FOD [Foreign Object Debris], there was old hardware. It went back to when it was delivered to us. There were some sections of insulating aluminum, nuts, bolts, washers, things like that. A lot of water had been back there, and the floor panel structure was a huge, thick piece of aluminum that they had milled out to look almost like a waffle. The floor looked like a large waffle pattern, so there’s all these thousands of little pockets that had held water, and I had to clean them.\\n\\n We had some nights where we had events, and the events usually allowed people to roam into the space hangar, so I would take my knapsack and my coffee and my lunch, my snacks, up into the propulsion bay. Something you don’t normally do around artifacts, but I didn’t think I could come out because of the events they had going on. I’d stay up there for eight hours. Well, there’d be a potty break.\\n\\n We finished before our Christmas break, and then both of us reported back to the Garber Facility the first week in January 2005. It was rewarding every day, but they also rewarded our team with the Museum’s Peer Award. The [museum] gives two Peer Awards every year, and the Enterprise Preservation Team was awarded [one of them] for 2004. It was a great experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are you working on now that Enterprise is getting ready to take a new journey in its history to go to the Intrepid [Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York City]? Are you working on that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did work on it. I don’t know what my role will be in April when they come back, but the whole month of February I was assigned out here, along with Anne and one or two other folks, to escort NASA, USA, and some folks from [the] Boeing [Company]. “Escort” has a kind of static sound to it. We were essentially here to open doors that they couldn’t get into, including getting to the restrooms, and we were able to get them discounts in our shop and at McDonalds.\\n\\n And then pretty soon it was, “Oh my gosh. We don’t have this; do you have this tool?” So we’re running for tools. Later, as our professional relationship evolved, we were forklifting equipment for them. They had forklifts, but we were able to help them with that. We had a JLG man lift that we were able to take them and some of their equipment up to different places on the Shuttle, and also on the tail cone, which they assembled right out here in this shop. As to my role when they come back on the 19th, I have not been told what that is yet. I hope [I] do, I have some friends I’d like to hang out with again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are you preparing in any way to accept [OV-103] Discovery, or are you primarily working with the Enterprise?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not. My responsibility is to work on this German night fighter. We still have a wing to complete. The airframe fuselage is out in the museum right here now, but the wing has to be done and a lot of other details. Between escort duties and whatnot, I’m working on that. We’re told that with everything else that’s going on, we’re going to be moving our shop from Maryland out here. I don’t know how that’s going to work out with the Discovery–Enterprise exchange, that’s yet to be determined." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must have been rewarding to receive that from your peers, that’s wonderful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very, yes. I think Valerie Neal, former NASA and our curator, was probably instrumental in getting that for us. It was pretty neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Rebecca, did you have any questions for Ed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just one, and I think you might have already answered it. Did you ever come back and do anything else with Enterprise?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have once or twice, but it was generally just escort duty. Those were times where it was just sit around and wait for whatever the folks, predominately USA, needed. I did come back, and we did reinstall the OMS pods. That was pretty much the original team again that did that, and we brought a couple of other people in to assist because you need spotters and tag line holders." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you would escort for whatever they needed. What were the types of things that they would be coming back for?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Every time USA came here, they had a lot of supplies. Rather than transport them back, they would leave them out and we would store them in our barn, which is out in the back corner of the property. So the first thing we’d have to do is get their supplies, and that ran anywhere from tape to paints to epoxy glues.\\n\\n Recently, within the past year, they came back and we took them up on a JLG man lift. They did the work, and I would just maneuver it around to a position that helped them. Like I said, “escort” sounds very static, and sometimes it is, but a lot of times there’s a dynamic component, which is the most fun of all. That’s how you get to know these guys and get to see what they do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they doing types of restoration themselves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, about last April they came back to begin the process of making Enterprise airworthy. That involved making an assessment of all systems, and they also did the [landing gear] retracts. The main job was to get the hydraulic system working so they could retract the landing gear. Part of our position as escort was to shut down areas of that hall to keep the public away, because the machine, what they call the mule, fires up the hydraulics system, makes a lot of noise. Also there’s part of the retract that there’s noise involved as well.\\n\\n We did a lot of work stanchioning off. Moving stanchions back, and then when it was all done, moving the stanchions closer. We were trying to do this juggle between making sure people were safe and USA had enough room to work in, and also still keeping the hall open to the public. Our whole purpose is to let them get as close to this stuff as we can.\\n\\n There were a couple of times where, yes, it was pretty static, but other times we were pretty involved in helping them. And everything back here is secured. You can’t get into the restrooms without our badge, so we were escorting to the restrooms. Eventually, and especially in this last trip in February where they did the final preparation for flight, the security office provided them with badges that allowed them to open all the things they had to get into. They had the same access employees had.\\n\\n I think that speaks of the type of relationship that we’ve always felt we had with NASA, that they weren’t an alien organization that comes in and invades our space but rather cohorts, colleagues that we feel—not exactly one with, our roles are different—but certainly very good friends with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this a very unique exhibit here compared to all the rest? Do you have any other kind of associations with other groups that come in and work on their planes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, there’s no other organization that has the relationship that NASA has with us. I think that’s historically because we’ve been the repository of first choice for NASA, but also because Valerie Neal, who came from NASA, has maintained a very, very good relationship with all the leadership there. It’s been a very collegial relationship from the very beginning. Because of that, your relationship personally to these people is much more relaxed, so it’s much much easier to make friends. I have a couple buddies that I email once in a while back at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]. It’s a good relationship." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any other last thoughts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I’ve covered the important aspects of my relationship with the Shuttle Enterprise and with the folks from NASA and USA. We had a good team. I think it was kind of neat because management left us alone; they left us to make a lot of our own decisions. Everybody worked with the goal in mind, and we reached the goal. We finished Enterprise, it really looks beautiful. It took us nine months to get it in the shape that it’s in right now, and I have to say I am quite proud of how it came out.\\n\\n I do recollect one of the stories that I’ll tell you. When we began to strip all the paint off, we traced all of the markings—the NASA worm, the “United States” on the side, the “Enterprise” itself—so that after we painted it we could restore those. We noted and photographed the fact that these had been hand-brushed. Somebody had done a stencil, and then they hand-brushed in the black color. As we began to strip the aircraft, we realized that there were other markings, other NASA worms and another “Enterprise” and another “United States” underneath that exterior coat of latex house paint.\\n\\n We traced those as well, and at that point the curator had to make a decision. Are we going to restore it to when it was originally painted and lettered, or are we going to paint it as it was presented to us in 1985? The decision was made to paint it as it was delivered to us. Those letters were all in black, and the letters we found underneath were in lighter shades of dark gray.\\n\\n At the time that we traced them back on the aircraft, the question was asked, “Well, who feels comfortable painting them back on?” I mean, none of us are professional sign painters. Out of the five of us there, four chose to do it. So what you’ll see out there is our hand-lettered letters, and they are letter perfect. They came out really, really well. Three employees and one volunteer painted them all in. That too raised our level of pride and involvement and attachment to the Enterprise.\\n\\n I have mixed feelings about it going. On the one hand, it’s very important for us to have an orbiter, and Discovery is a much more significant vehicle to have in our collection, so I’m happy about that. On the other hand, all of our handwork is being sent off to somebody else. I’m not going to lose sleep over it, but I will think, how are they taking care of it? Is that beautiful paint job still squeaky clean and nice, and are all those tiles in good condition? So yes, I am concerned to some degree at it going off to other hands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any plans to go to New York and see her once she’s in her permanent location?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No plans at this time, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And will you be working on Discovery when it comes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’re not going to touch Discovery. This is another aspect that’s pretty neat about getting Discovery. The ideal airplane or spacecraft to get into our collection is the one that just went on its last mission. If we could get a Boeing B-17 [aircraft] that flew a mission from England in August or September of 1944, and then was transferred right back into our hall out front, that’s the idea. You don’t want to touch it. You want to mount it in such fashion that you preserve the tires and take any other stresses out of it, but it would be great if it had the gunpowder stains and the engine stains and the oil stains and the rough-hewn patches that the mechanics put on the planes back in those days.\\n\\n And that’s how Discovery is coming to us. They haven’t cleaned it, outside of taking out the toxic materials in all the tanks and systems, so it’s not going to look like Enterprise at all. In fact, one of the people from NASA commented that Enterprise looked like a toy. I think what she meant was it looked like a model, and Discovery looks like a real orbiter. So we’re happy about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for spending some time with us this morning. We appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Edward M. Mautner", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re very welcome. It’s my pleasure to do it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00046", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BrandenburgJR/brandenburgjr.htm", + "original_file_name": "BrandenburgJR_5-7-09.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BrandenburgJR/BrandenburgJR_5-7-09.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "James R. Brandenburg", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 7 May 2009" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "James R. Brandenburg" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is May 7, 2009. This telephone oral history interview with James Brandenburg is being conducted in Houston for the Johnson Space Center Facilities Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for joining us this morning. I’d like to begin by asking you to briefly tell us about your career with NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I came to work down at Johnson in June of 1967, and I was there for just over forty years. I retired in August of 2007. Let’s see. Anything else you need to know about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work in the Mission Control Center [MCC] that entire time, or were you assigned to different directorates?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. When I came to work there, I worked for the old Landing and Recovery Division, which was a part of the Flight Operations Directorate. Part of our job then was, of course, recovering the spacecraft, but another part of the job was we had a recovery operations control room in the Mission Control Center, and that’s where we managed the recovery forces, out of that room. Occasionally, I was assigned to that particular room. So yes, I’ve been associated with the control center since day one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, wow. Okay, so you’ve got a lot of good information for us about the facility itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I’ve got a lot of information, (laughter) but I don’t know if I have much time to tell you, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do have a couple documents that you might want to get a hold of. I’ll tell you about those when we get to that question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That would be great. Anything that you have to share with us would be fantastic. Why don’t you give us a short history about the Mission Control Center, telling us when it was constructed, what its purpose was, and how the building has changed since you came on board in 1967 until you left in 2007." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, the building, when it was initially built, they called it Building 30[M] MOW, Mission Operations Wing, and that’s as opposed to the administrative side [30A] where the offices are, on the other side of the building. Like I said, it was built in the early sixties. It was built by the [United States Army] Corps of Engineers and another general contractor called Ets-Hokin & Galvan. Now, this information I’m providing to you is obviously before I was there, but I’ve got documents that have this information in it, and those are the two documents I mentioned to you. Obviously, the reason it was built was to provide a command control capability for human spaceflight, and specifically, it was built with the knowledge that the Gemini Program and the Apollo Program were gearing up to start. That was the reason it was built.\\n\\n Now, it was first occupied in July of 1964 by the operators in the control center, and it actually came online and monitored the first manned Gemini flight, which was in 1965, I believe. It was on monitor mode only at that time, because all the testing of all the equipment hadn’t been completed. So it monitored the Gemini III flight, and then in June of 1965, the Gemini IV flight. Because it did so well in monitoring the Gemini III flight, the people felt it was ready to go in full-up control mode. It did that for Gemini IV in June of 1965. So that’s kind of how it all started.\\n\\n Then, of course, it has supported every manned spaceflight since then, including all of the Geminis, all the Apollos, Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, and then, of course, ALT [Approach and Landing Tests], which was some of the early Shuttle drop flights, where it was atop a [Boeing]-747, and then the 747 would release it, and it would land on the lake bed out at Edwards Air Force Base [California]. Then, of course, after that, it was the Shuttle Program, and then, of course, after that, the International Space Station Program, which it’s supporting now. So that’s kind of the history of when it was built and what it’s done since then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you give us a sense of how the agency changed or updated the Mission Control Center to support the Space Shuttle Program? Can you give some examples?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, all the equipment was replaced to support the Shuttle Program. Let me see. I wrote a note down here. Let me find out where it is. It was supporting the ALT Program at the time, and the equipment used to support the ALT Program was equipment that we already had. It was just reprogrammed for that particular set of ALT flights. In parallel with that, our development contractor was doing development for the actual Shuttle flights, beginning with the OFT, Orbital Flight Test Program [STS-1 through STS-4], and then subsequently, what they called at the time the ops part of the Shuttle Program. So that’s kind of how we got to there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us what type of equipment you were using for the ALT Program? You mentioned it was stuff that you had. Was that from the Apollo Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. I don’t recall exactly what it was. Let’s see. Like I said, it was equipment that we already had. I’m trying to look into this information that I have here to see if it says exactly what it was. I don’t recall exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was the building changed to support the Space Shuttle Program? You mentioned that equipment was changed out. Were there any major changes done to the building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Are you talking about the physical building or the systems within the building?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I guess, both." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Both. I do not recall any major physical changes to the building; it’s just that we brought in new equipment that was built and/or just bought specifically for the Shuttle Program. But it was basically all new stuff, and like I said, it was brought in the building, installed, programmed, and tested in support of the STS-1 flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This equipment, would it primarily consist of computers, or are there other pieces of equipment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s computers and computer-related equipment. Some of it was hardware—you would term it hardware, versus a computer—but the whole system, from the front end of the building until the displays on the consoles, it was basically all new." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall when JSC began transitioning the Mission Control Center from the Apollo Program into the Space Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, let’s see. In July of 1976, there was a contract awarded for the design, development, implementation, test, and maintenance operations, so I would say that’s when it started, at the initiation of that contract. That was July of ’76." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was that awarded to, do you recall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me see. It was a byproduct of old Philco-Ford. Philco-Ford, of course, built the original stuff in the control center, and they were actually called Aeronutronic Ford [Corporation] at that point in time. The contract number was NAS 9-15014." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As the Landing and Recovery Division sort of—I’m not sure what happened to it exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was abolished." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you move from there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was in the Landing Recovery Division until it was abolished, which was right around late ’71 or early ’72. So at that point in time, all the people that were in that division were kind of fanned out to other jobs. I happened to go into the division that basically was responsible for the control center, for development of maintenance and operations of the control center. That’s kind of where I got into the meat of actually working with MCC systems that were supporting the flights at the time. That would be Apollo. The Apollo fire was in January of ’67, and I came to work there in June of ’67. Then I supported the Apollo flights as a part of the Landing Recovery Division until it was abolished, which again, that’s late ’71 or early ’72, somewhere in that timeframe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk to us a little bit about the development of the control center for the Shuttle Program and that entire transition from Apollo into Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, like I said, I don’t know that I can tell you any detail. There’s a whole bunch of that detail in these documents that I have, but it’s not in my head. (laughter)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, sure. That was a long time ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like I said, it kicked off with that contract, and they went and did the design, a detailed design, and then acquired the systems, the computers and hardware, and then programmed them to the design specs [specifications] that they needed to support the Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any complications with that transition as you moved from one major program to another?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I said no when I read that question. I said nothing out of the ordinary. There’s always some minor complications you run into, but I don’t recall anything major, any glitches at all that caused any delays in the program milestones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wonder if you could describe the layout of the Mission Control Center, especially as it existed during the Apollo Program and then, in contrast, for the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There really wasn’t a whole lot of difference. That’s pretty good loaded question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is? Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The layout was basically the same. We did have to bring in new systems to support the Shuttle, and then eventually got rid of all the Apollo support equipment. About the only thing that comes to mind major was down on the first floor in the control center, we had an area down there called the RTCC, Real-Time Computing Complex. That was where most of all the computing equipment was. That’s what that was called, the computing complex. A lot of controllers that set up the equipment and managed it were down in that area. That went away, and a lot of the controllers that were down in there actually went to a room up on the third floor in the control center and supported from there. So to me, that’s probably the major difference between the two." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You weren’t relying on huge mainframe computers for the Shuttle Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Yes, we did. We had mainframes in there until—I’ve got a piece of paper on that. Let me see. Yes, 2002. [In] 2002, we decommissioned the last mainframe computer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. That’s amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it hasn’t been that long ago, actually, that we did that. But they were there. Of course, it wasn’t the same ones. Computers have a life [cycle], and you usually try to replace them every—depends on which it is—every four or five years. We replaced the mainframes as the old ones became outdated, and the new ones were what was new technology at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if you can, tell me a little bit about the ALT Program. You were working in the control center at that point. Were there any changes that had to be made to accommodate a flight in California versus a spaceflight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We used some of the existing equipment in the control center to support the ALT Program. Of course, the ALT Program was a very short program, and it didn’t require anything really sophisticated because it was just being dropped off the top of a 747, and we were basically just monitoring what it was doing. So it wasn’t a major program change, like it was going from Apollo to Shuttle. The ALT was fairly simple to support. Actually, I myself didn’t actually support the ALT. I had people in the office that did, but I didn’t. I was working on getting prepared for the Shuttle Program. I was doing what we call planning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell me more about that, about planning for those first few flights?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. At that point in time, my job was one of what we called back then was network controller. We were the people that basically integrated the control center operations with the network operations, the network being all those tracking stations out there and, of course, the TDRS, Tracking [and] Data Relay Satellite, which were in the design and development stage at the time. So what we tried to do was we built all the plans and procedures that were necessary to get ready for STS-1. What we like to say is the job that we do for any particular Shuttle flight is we do our planning, and we do our training, and then we fly. So plan, train, and fly is what it is. That first stage where you do the planning is where you get all your procedures and everything laid out so that you can then go do the training and use all those procedures and verify them and know that you’re ready to support a flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you support any of the Space Shuttle flights as a network controller?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I supported STS-1, 2, and 3 as a network controller. Then I was actually made a manager at that time, so the guys who did what I had done worked for me after that. So I didn’t really sit at the consoles anymore after that, but the people that worked for me did, doing the same thing: planning, training, and flying. From the network controller [name] for [Apollo], we changed the position name to GC, ground controller, for Shuttle. That’s what they are today, ground controllers. But they do the job the same way; it’s just all contractors now. This is the last NASA GC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about those first three orbital test flights and how the Mission Control Center supported them in terms of planning, training, and then flying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, getting ready for each one of the flights was the same process, like [I] said, planning and then training. Of course, there’s a lot of testing that goes on, too. It’s not just training; you test all the systems that have been reconfigured for that particular flight, and you test all that, and then you have to go use it in training. Then you fly. I don’t know if that answers your question or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it sort of actually leads into another question, and then I’ll come back to the other question. For each mission, the control center is reconfigured, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To some extent, yes. It’s not necessarily major stuff. I don’t know that there was that much reconfiguration that went on for the first four, the development flights, but sometimes the Shuttle’s onboard software programs get updated, and that may require that the ground software be updated to accommodate that. So there’s that kind of reconfigurations that go on, flight to flight. They still go on today, too, or at least they had been going on. I can’t tell you what’s happening right now. But that kind of thing is not unusual, from flight to flight, to do some kind of reconfigurations. Even the flight controllers that monitor the onboard Shuttle systems, if a Shuttle system changes, then they’ll probably have to go in and change their monitoring tools, which are displays and little digital driver devices. They have to go in and modify those to support the changes that have been made to the Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long does that process take?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s hard to say. Depending on the extent of the change, it could be anywhere from a month or 2 months up to maybe 10 months, 12 months. So it would depend upon the extent of the change. It’s kind of hard to answer that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long would it take your facility to get ready for a new mission coming up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a hard one, too. Let’s see. Again, it depends on what you’re really asking, but there’s the planning stage, which really doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the facility change, other than the part of it that’s reconfiguration. That’s part of the planning. If there’s something that’s changed externally, and it drives a change internally to the MCC, then you have to figure that into your planning and go and make whatever changes are necessary. The planning stage of a flight probably begins two, three years before the flight, and then there’s the training part, which is generally—well, for instance, for STS-1, we trained for I believe it was over 2,000 hours for that flight, whereas today, you’d probably be looking at maybe 300 or 400 hours, something like that. It’s about three months these days as opposed to the early days, and that’s all a part of a new program and how much time you spend on it in the beginning. Ten, 20 years later, you pretty much know what has to be done, and so it doesn’t take near as long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wonder if you could select a flight—you mentioned STS-1, for instance—but if you could walk us through your recollections of this process and how you prepared the Mission Control Center, how you trained, how you did a simulation, for instance, and then flying. If you could walk us through one of your most memorable missions that you can recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The planning and training for STS-1 was a whole lot different than any of the other ones, because obviously it was the first flight, and new vehicle, new controllers. I do recall that we had several attempts at the launch of STS-1 before we finally got it off because of problems we found during the countdown, et cetera. So that was another thing that drove it to be in such a long process to get ready for launch is finding the problems, working them out, and going, doing it again. But pretty much we do training for the ascent phase of the flight, we do training for entry phase of flight, and we do training for the orbit phase of the flight—different phases where, back in the those old days, we might have had a payload on board, and you’d have to train to make sure the procedures and things were in place to do whatever the payload might need to be done. We deployed some. We went up and fixed a few of them, you know, like they’re coming up on a Hubble [Space Telescope] revisit. They’re going up to make some repairs on it here before too long. So you’ve got to train for all those different phases of the flight that are a little different than the previous flight, for instance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you give us a little bit more detail about those simulations? How long would an integrated sim last?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The simulations or training exercises, generally the ascent and entry exercises are about four hours long, and they’ll consist of doing maybe four or five, maybe even six, runs. Of course, we’ve got the simulation team that develops the scripts for those exercises, and they’ll put in problems, and the purpose is to get the flight controllers to recognize them and manage them, fix them. So ascent and entries were usually about four hours apiece, and then the on-orbit exercises are generally eight to ten hours. There were times and are times when they’d do what we call a long simulation, and those could last anything from a couple days maybe up to three days. That might consist of doing the ascent, and then going on orbit, and going to go over the operations procedures that need to happen over those entire two or three days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people generally worked in the control center when you were working a simulation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "(laughs) That’s a good one, too. I did some estimates. I don’t know. They’re kind of guesses, but I was guessing that maybe about 300 people per shift, a shift being eight hours. Like I said, that’s just a guess. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it’s a guess. But it’s a knowledgeable guess, because I know there’s 22 to 25 people in the flight control room. That’s the main room. Then there’s, back in the back rooms, might be anywhere from, oh, three, four, five people per back room, and that’s one back room per flight control room position. Then there’s people that actually work maintenance and operations in the building. There’s, I was guessing, 50 or so there. Then we got the mission evaluation room. For a launch, there’s usually about 150 people in that room by itself, but that’s just for launch. So it’s difficult to say exactly, but I think around 300 would be an educated guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any specific Shuttle missions that stand out in your memory that Mission Control supported?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, STS-1, obviously. I believe it was STS-3 that had to land at White Sands. [Northrop Strip, now] White Sands, [Space Harbor], New Mexico. That one put a scare into me, because when they landed, they had the nose coming down, and they were on the runway, and all the sudden, the nose went whoop, back up. It was kind of a scary thing, but nothing happened. Of course, [the Space Shuttle] Challenger [accident], [the Space Shuttle] Columbia [accident], and then the STS-26 flight, which was the return to flight, first flight after the Challenger accident. Let’s see, I think STS-9 was the first Spacelab mission. Then we had a TDRS, a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, that was the first one we put up. I think it was STS-4. I’m not certain of that. But anyway, those are kind of the ones that come to mind. A few of the firsts, and, of course, the accidents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us how the Challenger accident impacted operations or the facility at JSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, it impacted the people. I don’t know that it impacted anything else because there was nothing we could do about it. We did some testing following it to try to help figure out what went wrong, but other than that, really the impact on operations was that there wasn’t any for a couple of years, because the Shuttle was grounded, and we had to get it fixed before we could fly again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any modifications made to the building at that point, or equipment, while we were down?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Result of that? No, I don’t recall anything that was done directly as a result of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After the Columbia accident, were there any modifications or changes made to the control center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I’m sure there were. After that, they went in and made all these modifications to the Shuttle to be able to do the on-orbit inspection of the tiles. So I’m sure that we made changes on the ground that coincided with the on-board changes they made. But there weren’t any changes made that were really directly as a result of the accident. Like I said, there were on-board changes to the Shuttle made that drove changes to the ground." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When the different Shuttles came—when Challenger came on board, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour—were there any changes that had to be made to the control center, or are they pretty much the same animal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much the same." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What impact did working with DoD [Department of Defense] have upon the Mission Control Center and the facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which question is that on this paper? Oh, I see. How did DoD-classified flights impact the facility? What measures were taken to protect classified information?\\n\\n Well, of course, it did impact the facility, because we had to make modifications to protect data security. The third floor of the control center was used for the support of the DoD flights, and we had to keep all the information that was classified separate from the regular unclassified STS [Space Transportation System] information. So, for instance, we had cable runs under the floor; the ones that supported the classified flights were separate from the ones that supported the non-classified flights. That was pretty much across the board, everything, even the voice loops on the key sets, the ones that could have classified information on them were separate from the ones that didn’t. So yes, there was a lot of impact to prepare the facility for the DoD flights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you know when that process began, as you began to revitalize the Mission Control Center in support of DoD missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see. I don’t recall that, no. I’m sure it’s in one of these documents that I have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are those wires and all of the other changes that you made to the facility, are they still located in the facility, or have they been taken out since?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, what we did do also is the third-floor control room was deemed a National Historical Monument. Basically, all that equipment that was stored in it was declassified. Actually, it was about the same time as we were putting in new equipment, so it was all decommissioned basically in place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any of the DoD missions that stand out in your mind, or were they just one of many?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "(laughs) No, there’s none that stand out in my mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m curious. As the program matured, we started out with the four flight tests, and then we became operational, and over the years, the flights became much more complex, especially now that we have Space Station. Did that change the operations at all within the facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. The basic operation of how you manage a flight is the same. Matter of fact, it’s basically the same as it’s been since day one, you know. The flight director and the team and all the support personnel—it’s basically all the same now. The only really difference is the interaction between the Station team and the Shuttle team. That’s a little different. But again, the way they do it, and the way they manage it is basically the same since it’s been since day one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people would typically work in the control center when a mission was up? Is that about the same number as the sim?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s the number I gave you, 300." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, it’s 300." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Back to that question. I told you about how many per shift, and that was basically for a flight. Now, there could be some tests were being run or stuff like that, there might be only a handful of people in there running the test. Then, of course, we have the team that’s in there 24/7 that operates the control center: the system, the computers, and all that. They’re in there all the time. That depends. It probably averages 30, 40 people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you describe some of the unique equipment in your building that you used to support the Shuttle Program? Was there anything in particular that stands out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where’s that question?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right above the DoD question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. I found it. Not really. Most of the equipment in the building now is COTS, Commercial Off-The-Shelf. Now, back in the Apollo days, there were some pieces of equipment that were designed and built specifically because there wasn’t anything out there off the shelf that would really support the requirements or the needs. Two pieces of equipment to come to mind regarding that are DVIS—Digital Voice Intercom System. It was a system that was designed and built by Ford—oh, golly—back in the early nineties. It’s still there; it’s still operating. Or else was when I left. I don’t know if it still is or not.\\n\\n The other piece of equipment that was designed and built specifically for the control center was the projection plotter. That’s the big screen, the 10 by 20-foot screen that’s in the flight control room that plots the trajectory of the vehicle. It was actually designed and built specifically for that purpose. Now, it has been since decommissioned and replaced with other projectors—they’re as good a quality a projector as what we had back then. Back then, you couldn’t get anything that was the quality we needed. So those are two pieces of equipment that we had, or, like I said, we still do have the Digital Voice System, DVIS, but the plotters are now—I remember the last plotter that we actually had designed and built for the control room cost us about a million and a half bucks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Projectors that we buy that are replacements today cost us about $10,000 or $15,000. So that’s what technology advancement has done for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Shuttle Program was pretty cost-conscious, so there wasn’t any unique equipment that you can think of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Other than what I’ve just told you, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I’m sorry, I misunderstood. I’m sorry, I thought that these two items were built for the Apollo Program, but continued to be used in Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no, like I said, the DVIS system was actually built in the early nineties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay, I misunderstood." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was well into the Shuttle Program. It was built to support the Shuttle Program. It was built to support the building, okay?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, yes. (laughs)" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then the other thing is the plotters. They did support Apollo, but they also supported Shuttle up until the time that technology built something that was an adequate replacement part. I don’t recall exactly when that was, but I think it was sometime in the mid-nineties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During your time that you worked at the control center, the original control center was closed out, and there was a new flight control room established for the Shuttle Program. Can you tell us a little about that and why that decision was made?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The new building that was built, and it’s kind of attached to the old building, the new building was built to support the ISS, International Space Station. Matter of fact, initially, they called it SSCC, Space Station Control Center. That’s what it was built for. Due to budget crunches and stuff like that, we shut down the third floor control stuff because of budget problems, and then we flew the Shuttle flights out of the second-floor control room from then until when the new building got built.\\n\\n What they ended up doing in the new building was they put the International Space Station control room in a room that wasn’t really designed and built for that purpose—but again, this was all due to budget concerns and problems—and they took the Shuttle control room from the old building over to the new building, into the flight control room that was actually supposed to support Space Station. So that’s kind of how the sequence of events occurred there between how they got from the old building to the new building. Recently, they moved the International Space Station control room back over to the old building, into that second-floor flight control room. So that was the sequence of events, what happened there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There was a new Shuttle Mission Evaluation Room added in 2004." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I sure can. Matter of fact, I was the project manager for that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let’s see, where did I write that down? Well, I can’t find it. Where is that on your list?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s not one of the questions. I just had some notes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wrote something down about that here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You might have written it with the sections of questions about how the building had changed over time or any modifications of the building." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Let me just tell you what I wrote down. I know your question was specifically about the MER [Mission Evaluation Room], but basically what I said is the facility is really in constant change, because as the systems get old, they have to be replaced. So the systems and the facility is in constant change. For instance, back in I think it was ’98 or ’99, we built a new Customer Support Room [CSR] that was designed to support both programs, the Shuttle Program and the International Space Station Program. So that was built I think it was in ’98 or ’99, somewhere in there. Then the new MER was built, and that was a result of the Columbia accident. The MER folks decided they needed more room, and they came up with the money, and we built it.\\n\\n Then, most recently, the old FCR 1 [Flight Control Room] that was used for Apollo and Shuttle, it was converted and built into a Flight Control Room for the International Space Station ops, and the reason that was done is because the International Space Station control room over in the new building was pretty small, and people were not happy with being in confined spaces. So the Flight Control Room 1, was there, wasn’t being used for anything. Well, it was being used for something, but what it was being used for was payload and that kind of support, and that got moved into some other building, so it was available to convert and do the flight control room for the International Space Station controllers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like the building changes quite a bit, as you pointed out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you know who the contractors were who made changes to the building in terms of these facility changes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it’s different ones, but the initial contractors in the building getting ready for Gemini and Apollo were Philco-Ford and IBM [International Business Machines]. The contracts to do the ops and development work in the building are redone about every—it could be as little as three years or as much as ten years, but they’re recompeted. For instance, in ’86, the ops contract was competed, and Rockwell Space Operations got that. That would be USA [United Space Alliance], primarily. Then Lockheed Martin did development work for the ISS [International Space Station] and Shuttle. Then, of course, I mentioned the Aeroneutronic Ford. So the contractors support that business change from time to time. Matter of fact, one of these documents that I have here says, “Contractual History of Major Implementation and Operations Milestones.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s a document that picks up in April of 1962, and it is dated 1985, so it covers at least through ’85. The other one is a document called, “MCC Development History,” and it was compiled in 1990." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These two documents that you mentioned, you’d be willing to share those with our office so we can get them scanned and share them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’d be great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Matter of fact, what I wrote down here is—I don’t know if you guys did an oral with Dennis [R.] Hehir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, his name doesn’t sound familiar at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He took over as facility manager for the control center when I retired. He has copies of these." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you think I should just contact him directly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I would. He has the copies. Let me give you the names of them again. “MCC Development History,” August 1990. The information in that document—well, you’ll see; his name’s on it—Ray Loree is the guy that compiled it. The information came from different places. The other one was “The Contractual History of Major Implementation and Ops Milestones.” The document has a date of 1986 on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One other thing. There’s a letter. It’s a bunch of information, and it was compiled by Bob Legler, Robert [D.] Legler, in ’97. There were some questions that one of the reporters, John Getter—I don’t know if you remember him or not. I think he was a CBS reporter. A bunch of questions, historically MCC questions. This Getter got a bunch of good information. Dennis has that also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, great. I’ll send him an e-mail.\n\nJust a couple more questions. Do you think that there’s anyone else that we should talk to to get as much history as we can about the facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I don’t know if you remember Jack Knight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, actually, I think we’ve talked with Jack." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, you have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, for our oral history project, not for this project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was actually a flight controller. He was a division chief. He knows a whole lot about the history of the flight control part of the operation. Now, he was never—well, I won’t say never—he came over and became our division chief for a while, but he was mostly in the flight control operation, and he’s got a whole lot of history in his head about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, anybody else that you suggest?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James R. Brandenburg", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nobody that I can think of right now. The guy that wrote two of the documents, his name is Ray Loree, but he’s got all his information out there in black and white, so I don’t think you’d need to talk to him." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00470", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/PohlHO/pohlho.htm", + "original_file_name": "PohlHO_3-26-99.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/PohlHO/PohlHO_3-26-99.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Henry O. Pohl", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 26 March 1999" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Summer Chick Bergen", + "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "Tim Farrell" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Henry O. Pohl" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 26, 1999. This oral history interview with Henry Pohl is being conducted at the offices of the Signal Corporation in Houston, Texas, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Summer Chick Bergen, assisted by Tim Farrell and Kevin Rusnak.\\n\\n We're glad to have you with us again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. Good to be here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Last time we talked about your early career up basically through Apollo, and you brought us a film that you had made when you were working on rockets." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't you tell us a little bit about that film." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. That was back in the early sixties or late fifties, I guess, [19]'59 or '60, when I made that, and that's when we started getting into clustering rockets. Matter of fact, we had just gotten authority from DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency], I believe it was, to cluster eight Jupiters together. That was our original intent, was to take eight Jupiters and tie them all together and launch them eight at a time for the first stage. Later on, we kind of changed that up a little bit and made it a more of a unitized construction.\\n\\n But we didn't know back then much about base heating. We had Polaris, had four nozzles on it, solid rocket motor, and we lost several of those because the exhaust would impinge and go back up on the back of the rocket and overheat the base of the rocket, and basically it would explode. So I got the job of developing some model rockets, small ones, 600 pounds of thrust at 600-pound chamber pressure, and clustering eight of those little rockets in a thirteen-inch circle, diameter. That was one-twentieth-scale model of the Saturn IB. And then we took those and put them in the wind tunnels up at Tullahoma [Tennessee].\\n\\n At different mach numbers and different altitude, different pressures in the accel, we could duplicate the conditions that you would see in flight. We put calorimeters all in the base and thermocouples in the base, and in that way we could develop the criteria that we needed for base heating. We later used that same model to design the flame deflectors at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and in Huntsville [Alabama], where we did the static testing of the Saturn IB.\\n\\n That was kind of a fun project. You know, I'd never designed a rocket engine, didn't know very much about them, and hadn't been out of school but maybe four years at that time when Mr. Haukohl came in and asked me to design an engine that's one-twentieth the size of the H1 engine. And I checked out all of the books that I could find. Sutton was about the best one, and I'd go home, and I'd stay up till two o'clock in the morning studying those things and playing with them, and I finally designed one, but I was not a very good draftsman. So I kind of sketched it out and took it down to a draftsman there to put it in the proper format for the shop to build, and he almost laughed me out of the room. He said, \"You've got to think rotary. You've got to think rotary.\"\\n\\n I said, \"What's rotary?\"\\n\\n He says, \"It goes around and around.\" He says, \"We can't make anything unless it's round.\" Well, that was because we had those engine lathes, and, you know, they did rotary work, and I had all kinds of octagon-shaped surfaces on the thing because I wanted it all to fit together where it would fit in the cluster nice and neat.\\n\\n The very first one we built—well, I took the prints over to the shop, and pretty late that afternoon I got a call from the shop telling me that they couldn't make it, that they only had fifty-three twenty-eight-thousandths-diameter drills to drill the little holes in the injector, they had already broken forty of them, and they only had three holes in there. So I went and told Mr. Haukohl, \"They can't make my injector over at the shop.\"\\n\\n Well, he called the German that was in charge of the shop, a guy by the name of Fritz Vandersee [phonetic], and he came down there and he looked at those prints. He said, \"Oh, that's a piece of cake. Who says they can't do it?\"\\n\\n I says, \"Hamby.\"\\n\\n He says, \"Oh, Hamby don't know what he's doing.\" So we got in his old O.D. Chevrolet, pulled out to the shop, walked in there, and he started telling them, \"Get this and get that and get something else,\" and he went to a great big old drill press he had there and chucked a little motor in that thing that was air-driven, and ran it at about 40,000 rpm or something like that, really, really fast, and then he chucked those little drills in there and put a bunch of lead on this thing so he could balance it. He'd stick one of those eyepieces and catch it up there, a magnifying thing, and look at that thing, and he'd take his finger. He punched three or four holes in that thing just like he's punching holes in butter.\\n\\n When he got through, he told Hamby, he says, \"You stay here tonight until you learn how to do that, and then in the morning, you teach the machinist how to do it.\" That was a neat experience. Now, that man had been down that road once before and he knew how to do those kind of things. But we made it.\\n\\n The very first one that I designed, it ran for about twenty seconds, several tests about twenty seconds long, before I finally burned it out. It kept running hotter and hotter and hotter, and it finally burned out. You know, we built about four or five more going back and using those same prints, and they would burn out within one and a half or two or four seconds. Almost instantly, fire would shoot out through the sides of them. So I had to give up on fuel cooling, I just didn't have enough fuel to cool it with fuel, and water-cooled them.\\n\\n Now, when you water-cool them, that meant I had two more lines going into each chamber. I had water in and water out, and along with the ignition lines, the chamber correction lines, the water lines, the fuel lines, the LOX [Liquid Oxygen] lines, it got pretty busy back in there. You could see that most of that design was kind of cut and try, you know. If we were packaging all that stuff, we would put a line in the middle, and then we'd run a line on outside of that, and just kept building it up from the inside out until we got all the plumbing and all the instrumentation and everything in there. And it worked out real good. Matter of fact, we run over 200 tests up at Tullahoma in the wind tunnel on it in a very short period of time, never had any real problems with it at all.\\n\\n Anyway, [Wernher] von Braun wanted a movie to take to Congress to show Congress. So I took the mostly test film—we had cameras on every test we were in, there in Huntsville then, sometimes two or three cameras taking pictures, and then we'd go back and study the film and try to figure out what was going on. So I took mostly test film, and I'd go home at night and I'd sit there, took one of these little editing things home, and I'd spool it back and forth and cut and—back then you'd cut it and glued it together, glued the film together with a cutter.\\n\\n And then I got the camera crew one day, and we went around the test lab there taking pictures of people, just kind of at random, you know, find somebody and take a picture of them at a desk working on some drawing or something. Like I got Fritz Pauly [phonetic] in there. He was another one of the Germans that worked on tiger tanks in Germany. But we put together that film, and when I got it the way I wanted it, then I took a tape recorder and I described what was going on as I was viewing the film and sometimes had to put a little filler in there, and sometimes I had to cut a little out to get it to fit. But then they took that, and they got somebody else then, they typed all of that out and got somebody else down to read the script. Of course, they didn't like my voice, the way I talked.\\n\\n Von Braun then took that up to Congress and showed it to members of Congress, and it went over so big, they liked it so much, that they came back and made a copy of it, the movie, and gave it to me. I've still got the movie. It's a 16-millimeter movie, and I've still got the little government sheet that went with it giving me permanent—it still belongs to the government, but I've got permanent retention of it. You know, I can keep it. And I've been saving that because I didn't want somebody to say I took some government property sometime.\\n\\n But that was a fun project. Of course, I worked day and night on the thing, and we did that. From the time I got the instructions to do that until we had made that movie, it was less than a year, nine or ten months, that period of time. So I'd run a test during the day and then look at the data, just a quick look at the data, make some changes, just sketch them out on a tablet, stop by the shop with the changes that I wanted to make, leave the drawings there that night, and next morning when I came to work, I'd stop by the shop and pick up the part. They'd make it overnight, and I'd take it down there, and the technicians would put it in the test stand, we'd run another test, I'd make some changes on it, take it back to the shop, and they would make that part that night. The next day we'd put it back in there, run another test.\\n\\n So things moved very fast then. We didn't have a lot of supervision, we didn't have a lot of people telling us we couldn't do this, we couldn't do that, or you've got to do it this way, you've got to do it that way. Everything needed to be done yesterday, and they wanted it yesterday. So we made a lot of progress, and I was proud of it because the dad-gummed thing worked.\\n\\n That was a really good training for when I came down here, then, when I moved down to the Manned Spacecraft Center [later Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas] and they put me in charge of overseeing the development of the reaction control rockets for Apollo and for Gemini. I probably had more experience with designing and building those small rockets than anybody else in the country at that time because I had done it all myself. I didn't farm this out to somebody else and that out to somebody else. There was nobody else to farm it out to. I did all the analysis, I did all the drawing, everything on it. So that's kind of the history of that project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did so much work on the development of those early rockets that eventually led to the development of the Saturn V, and then you came and worked on Apollo spacecraft. Did you ever get to watch a Saturn V launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We went down. I took the kids and my wife down to the Cape for, I believe it was Apollo 14. That was the flight after Apollo 13, and it was kind of an iffy thing to make sure that it went off on time, but we went down there and got to watch it lift off. And it's kind of agonizing to sit there and watch that thing take off, because it just barely would get off the ground, and it moved ever so slow for a long time. It was not until it got way up in the sky that it started moving fast. So you was just sitting there just hearing that rumble and that bouncing in your chest from the acoustics from it, and you just think it was just never, never going to get out of sight. But that was good experience. I enjoyed seeing that one.\\n\\n And I saw quite a few of the Jupiters early on and some of the Redstones launched from down there for the military. As a matter of fact, I've got a 35-millimeter slide someplace around there of a Jupiter. It looks like it was taken from the top right straight down, but it wasn't. It turned over and turned over right straight toward us. My buddy and I was down there on a beach down there about five miles from that thing or four miles from it, I guess, to watch the launch, and he had a 35-millimeter camera on a tripod, and I had a movie camera, but my movie camera, I couldn't see anything on it. It didn't have enough focal length on it. But he took one picture when it lit off, and the next one, it was coming right straight at us, and the third one is a big ball of fire. It just did a ground loop. When it took off, the engine went hard over because of a failure in a circuit board. A solder joint in the circuit board caused it to go hard over, and it blew up, and I guess blew up about halfway between us and where it was launched. There were just two of us out there on the beach at night." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must have been exciting watching those early rockets launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, in that day—people can't visualize that now. Most of that was classified then, but if they got out of sight, it was a success. The criteria for the launch to be successful was that it got out of sight before it blew up. It didn't have to get to its target. If it got out of sight—and a lot of them didn't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've come a long way since then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, the progress that we made in rocket engine development and missile development between about '58 and '62 was phenomenal. In the late fifties, I believe one year we had fifteen Thors to blow up. Not many people remember Titan I, but they must have built about sixteen Titan Is, and I am not sure that any of those ever got away from the pad. Maybe one. They lost all their test facilities in Denver [Colorado], and they shipped two of them down to the Cape to be launched that had never been static-fired, and both of those blew up, so they lost all of their launch facilities down there, so now they didn't have any more launch facilities, and it was going to take a while to rebuild those. So they made a proposal to change from LOX/kerosene to storables, Aerozene program 50 and N2O4, which was self-igniting propellants.\\n\\n Titan I was one of the most complex, complicated rocket engines I have ever seen in my life. You know, it had nine valves in it, control valves. Any place where you wanted to control a function, they did it with nine control valves, three in series and then three strings of that so that they could get the timing right and the reliability out of them time after time. So it was triple redundant on those things, and they still had all kinds of problems with them.\\n\\n They went to Titan II, and Aerojet [General Engineering Corporation] went from one of the most complex rocket engines that was ever developed to the simplest. Titan II, that [unclear]-storable engine, was very, very simple, very straightforward, and turned out to be a very, very reliable engine, and they still use that engine today in the Titans." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the sixties, while you were working on Apollo, actually the Shuttle development began. When did you begin in your branch—you were in the Dynamic Systems Branch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did you begin work on the Space Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I sent some guys over to work with Jim [James A.] Chamberlin in the very beginning, when Max [Maxime A.] Faget formed that little team to start looking at a winged vehicle to replace the Saturn class of vehicles. They formed a little team, it was kind of in secret, went over to one of those buildings out there and started working on that. That was a good experience, too, because I sent one guy by the name of Darrell Kendrick [phonetic] over there, and he was over there about three days, and Mr. Chamberlin called me one day and says, \"I've got a problem with your Mr. Kendrick.\"\\n\\n I said, \"What's the problem?\"\\n\\n \"He balked.\"\\n\\n I said, \"What do you mean he balked?\"\\n\\n He said, \"You know what happens to a mule when they balk. They won't go.\" [Laughter]\\n\\n So I called Kendrick, got him on the phone, and I didn't let him know that Mr. Chamberlin had called me, I just was asking him how things were going over there and what he was doing. He says, \"Oh, they don't know what they want.\" He says, \"I designed them an RCS [Reaction Control System] system, and then they decided that wasn't what they wanted, they wanted something else. So I designed them another RCS system, and they decided that's not what they wanted, they wanted something else. I just decided I'm going to wait until they make up their mind what they want and then I'll design them a system.\"\\n\\n Well, what he didn't understand was that you have to put the whole rocket together and see where it punches out. You know, it's going to get too heavy, or it's not going to fit, something's not going to fit, you're not going to have enough volume, and when that happens, you look at the overall plan, and then you change your criteria a little bit, and then you redesign to this new set of criteria, and you see where it punches out again, and then you change the criteria again, and you just keep changing until you get things to fit in the envelope and volume and the weight. And that's what Kendrick didn't understand. He thought they didn't know what they wanted, and so he was going to wait until they figured out what they wanted before he designed them another RCS system. I got to explaining that to Darrell, that, you know, you've got to keep on doing that, it's an iterative process, and you keep on iterating until you get it to fit.\\n\\n But they did. They came up with a neat vehicle that was a straight-wing vehicle, and it would have been probably a lighter design than the one we came up with, with the delta-wing vehicle, but the problem with Max's straight-winged vehicle is it didn't fit the Air Force's criteria. The Air Force wanted, I believe it was 900 miles cross range, you know, so that they could land it, they could put it over here and then land it over there someplace, and they wanted to be able to launch anytime and land anytime, and it had to have a lot of cross range.\\n\\n Well, I think Max's straight-winged vehicle was limited to about 500, 400 or 500 miles cross range, which the way that we turned out using it would have been adequate for what we wanted it for, but it didn't meet the Air Force criteria, and so it went through a lot of iterations getting to that. Then Max came up with swing engines, which is a—Max and Caldwell [C. Johnson] were innovators. You know, they were always innovating, inventing something, and what they wanted to do to get the CG [center of gravity] right on the airplane was, after you launched it and it was in orbit and got the payload out of the payload bay, they wanted to take the engines and unhook them and take the engines and swing them back over and put them in the payload bay and close the payload bay doors, and that way they'd have all of the weight, the CG, up forward and not have to worry about the intratemperatures on the engine. But he was never able to sell that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of new challenges did this development in the Space Shuttle bring to your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, in the propulsion area, you know, we pushed those main engines very, very hard. That's a very high-performance engine, very high chamber pressure for that day and time, very, very light weight for the thrust that they were producing. I would say that we came out with that program in the only time in the history of this country when it would have been successful. If we would have waited another two years or another three years before we started development on Shuttle, we probably would not have been able to do it, and the reason I say that is that the people that designed the main engine on Shuttle were the same ones that designed the Redstone engine, the Jupiter engine, the Thor engines, the Atlas engines, the H1, the F1, and the J2. So they had gone through seven—that same group of people, in their working lifetime, had designed and built seven different engines before they started the Shuttle development.\\n\\n Now, a lot of those people retired, and a lot of them didn't finish the Shuttle Program, but at least they were the ones that got it started. They knew what was important, they knew what you had to worry about. They had developed the stress calculations and thermal calculations and everything, so they knew what was important, what you had to worry about. If we'd waited another two or three years, those people would have all been gone, and we would have had to learn all over again on the engine development.\\n\\n That's been one of the problems in this country. You know, we spend a lot of money on a lot of things, but on rocket engines we overbuilt the propulsion community in the late fifties and early sixties, and then we just let it die. It's always been in spurts, and all of the engines, all of the hardware we use now—I guess the Shuttle engine was the last engine that was developed in this country, and that was started in about [19]'72, somewheres in that time frame." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved with the auxiliary power units?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "APUs? Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Will you tell us about those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, on Shuttle, we started out with four systems. We had dual tandem actuators, and we had four APUs in there, but the vehicle was like 170,000 pounds, and they wanted to get it down to about 150,000 pounds, so we went with three, and single actuaries with switching valves on the actuaries. That was a tough one to sell, because the reliability people didn't like it, the safety people didn't like it, because it had too many single-point failures in it. Well, when you get right down to it, all the structures are single-point failures. You know, a structure breaks and you've lost the vehicle. So that didn't bother me too much.\\n\\n The thing that was a little bit disconcerting is that we had not a great deal of experience with hydrozene-running turbines, and we didn't have a great deal of experience with operating these things in zero G. You know, in an automobile, the oil goes down in the sump in the bottom. You can put a pump in the bottom and you keep pumping the oil out because as it goes through the system, it runs back in that sump. Well, in zero G there is no bottom, and that oil just goes where it's slung out to. So we had to design it so that the gears would keep taking the oil and keep pushing it back into a container where the oil pump could pick it up and send it back through the system. That created a few problems, but we got that under control pretty quick.\\n\\n The gas generator, we had a few problems with getting the catalyst to last, to get some duration out of the catalyst, and we went through some very innovative ways of making the cat [catalyst] beds so that they would expand and contract. When the catalyst got hot it would expand, so to keep from crushing it, you had to let that whole thing expand and come back together.\\n\\n I guess the one thing that I will never, never forget, though, is when we landed with two APUs burning, and, you know, if somebody would have told me that we would have two failures on the same flight exactly identical to each other, I would have said, \"You're crazy. It can't happen in a thousand years,\" but it did. We had those very, very thin tubes from the valve bracket to the cat bed to keep the heat soak back from getting up and heating the hydrozene too much in the valves on that thing, and they were very thin-walled tubes, and two of them broke on one flight. We had gone through all of that testing and hundreds and hundreds of hours of testing on those things. We had them down here in our vacuum chamber and everything, and never had a problem with them.\\n\\n Well, it turned out what happened is we were landing the vehicle in California and then piggy-backing it down to the Cape, and what happens when he'd get up at that altitude, he'd kind of pull a vacuum on that whole area because the pressure would go down, and then when you'd land at Florida, you'd come back in, and that humid, moist air and that humidity, the moisture was getting back up in there and reacting with the residual hydrozene in there and causing a hydrate that was very, very corrosive. You had stress corrosion in those tubes that caused the tubes to break.\\n\\n We had one other problem that we found fairly late. We brought one of those units down here and put it in our vacuum chamber down here, and that was kind of hard to justify. It cost some money, and Sun Strand [phonetic], the builder of that unit, didn't have altitude facilities, so what they would do is pull a vacuum on the exhaust duct on that thing so that would give you the same conditions you had in space as far as performance was concerned.\\n\\n But we got one, we put it in our vacuum chamber down here in the test area at JSC [Johnson Space Center], and the first time we shut it down, it blew up. Now, we're getting pretty close to flying that thing, and that's a major, major, major catastrophe, and, of course, the program office just absolutely knew that we screwed up the test, we did something wrong in the test.\\n\\n So we got another unit, brought it down, put it in the test lab. This time we had all the Sun Strand engineers down here and all the Rockwell [International] engineers and our engineers down here, and everybody's looking over everybody's shoulder to make sure that we didn't screw up the test, and it blew up again. It turned out there was one thing that we hadn't thought about, and that is, when we had this whole APU insulated because it ran pretty hot, and we had these shelves that we had built wired on around that thing to keep it from radiating too much heat out.\\n\\n Well, when you tested it on the ground, that insulation would act like a chimney. The heat would go out the top and cold air would come in the bottom of it, and it would cool it off real quick so it didn't get overheated. Well, when we shut it down in a vacuum, there was no air to cool it, and the heat just had to soak out, and the heat would soak out and soak out into the valves and get the hydrozene that was in the valve hot enough to where the valve would detonate, the hydrozene would detonate in the valve and blow up the valve.\\n\\n So we had to go through a big fix on that and verify that fix on it. We wound up spraying a little water on the back of it when we shut down to—that was the quick fix—to keep it from getting too hot when it got up to a certain temperature. We'd pulse a little water back there, and in a vacuum that water would instantly vaporize and give you a lot of cooling for just very little water. That's the way we fixed that one.\\n\\n Those were some of the fun kinds of things that you ought to think about, but it's just not natural for people to think about the absence of gravity, and it's not natural for you to think about the different thermal conditions that you get in a vacuum from what you have in one atmosphere. We live in a gravity all the time, and all of our experiences are based on what you see and feel and hear, and if you can't experience that environment, then you don't watch for the right kinds of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seems like at times testing of the things that had been developed was as much of an engineering challenge as the development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A lot of times the facilities required to duplicate the conditions of space is more difficult to construct and operate than the hardware that you're putting on the vehicle, because you've got to think about so many things in the development of those facilities. You know, to try to get a vacuum is not easy. You know, you can get a vacuum up to 100,000 feet or 150,000 feet altitude real easy, but getting from there on down to almost a perfect vacuum is very, very difficult. You've got to resort to Crowell [phonetic] pumping and things like that to get the pressure all the way down, and those facilities are very expensive.\\n\\n Now, you take somebody that's under contract to build something unique like the APU was, they didn't have those facilities, and for the government to finance building those facilities at that time would have been prohibitive, and we were fortunate here. You know, most people don't realize it, but the people that laid out the Manned Spacecraft Center, they were good. They came from Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], and every one of them had been used to doing something themselves. You know, they all had kind of the same kind of experience that I had, you know, you design things, you tested things, you broke things, you fixed things. And they put these facilities in down here not because we had lots of money and we could afford it, but Dr. [Robert R.] Gilruth and Dr. Faget and Bob [Robert F.] Thompson and those people knew that we had to train a large number of people, and you can't get that out of a book. You've got to train them by doing it.\\n\\n So we built those facilities, and we put those facilities in which were the best, very best, that we could build at that time with the technologies that we had, not because we could afford it, but because we had to have it. You had to test your theories, you had to test your thoughts, your ideas, and we found so many things with those facilities that would have just gone undetected.\\n\\n Take the lunar module [LM], for example. We put the lunar module in that big old vacuum chamber over there. We got cold walls on one side to duplicate deep space. We got these lamps on the other side to duplicate the sun. And most people don't realize it, when you're in space, the side that's facing deep space is minus 250 degrees, the side that's facing the sun is plus 250 degrees. When you see an astronaut running around out there, you've got to realize that one side of him is seeing a temperature of 250 degrees, the other side of him is seeing a minus 250 degrees, that's a 500-degree differential, and humans live around 70 degrees. So that's the reason we've got all these water tubes in there, to run the water around and around and around. It takes the cold from the back and pulls it out to the hot side and the heat from the hot side back to the cold side so they stay at a fairly normal temperature.\\n\\n But we put the lunar module in that vacuum chamber, and it was literally tearing itself up. The side that was getting cold was coming down. The side that was hot was going up. So the stresses was getting so high in the thing that it was actually breaking it. That's when we came up with this aluminized or goldized mylar that you see all on the bottom stage of that thing. We didn't have that on there and had no intentions of covering it until we ran into the stress problem, because one side was getting too hot, the other side was getting too cold, and nobody thought about that thermal problem.\\n\\n That reminds me of another deal where I got the job one time to design the valve for the gas generator on the H1 engine. We had separate valves in that thing, and they were sticking, and the timing wasn't right. We were burning out turbine blades. Mr. Haukohl came in there one day and said, \"Henry, why don't you design us a valve that's mechanically [unclear],\" and I did, and took the design over and presented it to a whole bunch of these people. This one old German, when I finished, says, \"I want to thank you for a lot of hard work and a very innovative design.\" He says, \"There is but one problem with it: it won't work.\"\\n\\n Well, I was well enough to know, when he said it won't work—he says, \"You're going to run kerosene through this side that's made out of aluminum that's so many centimeters thick and you're going to run kerosene through this side over here, and that's going to keep it at roughly 70 degrees, and you're going to run liquid oxygen in on this side over here, and that's going to take it down to minus 298 degrees.\" And he says, \"This side's going to shrink so much, and this side's going to stay up. You've got to have such and such clearance on those shafts, and it's going to warp it enough where the pockets are going to bind in there, and it's not going to work.\" He said, \"You know, maybe not all is lost.\" He got up and went up there and says, \"I think you can take a saw and run a saw right down through here, down so close to the face of it down here, and that might just let this side come down flat and let this side stay up and,\" he says, \"it might work.\"\\n\\n Well, Rocketdyne took that design and built it, made a few changes to it and built it, and we never had the first problem with that thing. Every one of them worked, and I can guarantee you, if that German wouldn't have been in there at that time, it wouldn't have worked. We would put it on a test stand, you know, and run a hundred tests on the thing, probably using water to simulate the oxidize and maybe kerosene on the fuel side, and it would have worked like a charm. Then you put it on an engine and you test it on an engine with LOX in there, and it would start all right because it would have been kind of warm when you first started it, but then when you'd try to shut it down, the valves wouldn't close, the valves would have stuck open on the thing. And we would have gave up on it. But the fact that he spotted that right off the bat and thought about that, he'd been down that road before. That wasn't the first time he ran into that problem. And that's something people frequently forget, that the way that you learn is by doing it and by making mistakes.\\n\\n You know, we've gotten into a situation now where—and it started with Gene's [Eugene F. Kranz] famous comment that failure is not an option. We're not allowed to fail anymore. Well, if you're not allowed to fail, then, by definition, you cannot succeed. I tell everybody I remember the answers to all of the problems I got wrong in college, and I don't even remember the questions on the ones I got right. That's something that young engineers have to have, the flexibility to do some experimentation, to test their theories, to test their ideas and their thoughts, and give them confidence in their ability to do something. We've lost that. We don't allow that anymore, for fear of failure, for fear that they're going to do something that's going to break or something.\\n\\n If we would have followed that philosophy when we worked on Apollo and when we worked on the Shuttle, those programs would not have been successful. They couldn't have been successful. But just because of the little things that you find out, like I was talking about the thermal problem on the lunar module, and there's also kind of an innovative spirit that we had back in those days.\\n\\n I remember, you know, they were flying the Shuttle piggyback on top of a [Boeing] 747. Most people don't understand how that got started. When we first started developing the Shuttle, we had just let a contract with GE [General Electric Company], I believe, for a huge jet engine. We strapped two big jet engines on that thing and put enough fuel in the payload bay to get it to take off, and then we were going to fly a DC-10 along with it refueling it on the way to the Cape because it would drink so much fuel that you couldn't carry enough fuel to go very far in it.\\n\\n John [W.] Kiker kept saying, \"Put it on top of a C-5A or put it on a 747,\" and everybody kind of scoffed at that idea. They thought that was the stupidest thing they'd ever heard of. Well, old John Kiker, his wife had cancer at that time, and so he was kind of limited and having a lot of responsibilities at home, yet he sat there at home at night and made him a scale model of the Shuttle and a scale model of a 747, and put engines on the 747.\\n\\n He and some of his buddies would get out here on these farm-to-market roads on weekends and drag them behind a pickup truck with somebody in the pickup truck playing out cable with a bridle on those things to trim them to where they'd fly. Well, it turned out he couldn't get the Shuttle to fly using the drawings that was available at that time. He had to move the wings back another foot and a half from where the drawings said they ought to be to get it to fly. So we learned something from that right quick, that we had to change the design and move the wings back on it.\\n\\n But one day he brought his models out to work and went out on that radar range and invited Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] and Dr. Faget and Bob Thompson, all of the management, invited them to come out and see his demo [demonstration]. He took off, had two controller systems there, and he started the propellers on his 747, those little model airplane engines on that thing, started them, he taxied off down the runway and took off with that thing, and circled it around up there until he got it up pretty high, and then he put that on autopilot and punched the button on there, and the Shuttle just popped off of that thing just as neat. Then he flew the Shuttle back down, landed it, and then brought his 747 back down and landed it.\\n\\n Once they did that, it was everybody's idea. Everybody wanted credit for coming up with that brilliant idea, but it was the persistence of John Kiker in believing something that caused us to cancel that big contract we had on the jet engines and buy a 747 and fly that thing piggyback on a 747. It also gave us an opportunity to make some landing tests where we'd fly it up, pop it off the 747, and fly it back down to a landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In 1979, you were promoted to the position of deputy chief of the Propulsion and Power Division. A year later, you were promoted to chief of that division. What were your responsibilities in those roles?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, when I picked up the Propulsion Power Division, I basically picked up all of the other systems. We had a responsibility for all of the plumbing in the Orbiter for the main engines. You know, Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] had the tanks and Marshall had the engines, and everything in between there Johnson Space Center had.\n\nSo we picked that up, picked up the fuel cells, the supercritical cryogenics that powered the fuel cells, the OMS [Orbital Maneuvering Subsystem]. I already had the pyrotechnics and the RCS system, so I picked up the rest of those systems and supervised—no, you didn't have to supervise those people. They knew what they were doing. All you had to do was kind of keep them coordinated a little bit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don't you tell us about your memories of the first Shuttle launch and mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first Shuttle launch, that was kind of a departure from anything that we had done before. You know, always before, we would fly unmanned flights and make sure that you worked out all these bugs without too much risk of human beings. The Shuttle, the decision was made to man the very first unit, which I personally thought was a mistake." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I didn't see any need in risking humans on the first flight, and, number two, I didn't think humans would be as proficient as automated equipment. By that time we had the know-how, and we could build these robots or the automated equipment that can detect things long before a human can detect it, and I thought the vehicle was going to be so difficult to land that we really ought to land it with automated equipment.\\n\\n I think the primary reason that we didn't do that is, the astronauts were afraid that if we ever landed the Shuttle in an auto mode, they no longer would have a job. And every astronaut, it's their desire to be able to fly that thing at least once and land it exactly on the center line, exactly at the spot that they had picked out prior to launch to touchdown, and they practice, see how close they can hit that spot.\\n\\n You know, if we landed at one time auto-land, then we'd probably land it again auto-land, and again, and finally that would be the way of—and we finally did put auto-land capability in that vehicle. I had several of the astronauts tell me that if I wanted to test it, they would love to test it, but they couldn't take that position officially, because there was too many of them in there that was afraid that if we did it one time, then they would be out of a job of practicing landing with those G-3s, I guess, that we got, that we converted to trainers.\\n\\n So we've never used auto-land on the vehicle, but that's one of the things I felt very strong about, that we ought to do that. Never did trust the ejection system that we had on Shuttle. On the first one, we'd blow the top out of it and shoot the crew out through the holes in there. We only had two people in there the first two flights, but I must say that John [W.] Young and [Robert L.] Crippen were gutsy people to crawl in that thing on the very first flight and take off and fly around the world a few times and then come back and land it.\\n\\n I think the most frightened we ever got was when they crawled out of that thing, and John Young went over—you know, he was so excited, he was doing his arms this way, and he went up and kicked the tires. Now, I was really worried about that, because those tires have got about 375 psi pressure in them, and I knew the brakes got very, very hot on it, and I knew the tires got very hot, and I was afraid the tires were going to explode on that thing when he went up there and kicked the tires. I tried to get word to him out there to tell him, \"Get away from it. Get away from it.\" But nothing happened. It would have been a shame, you know, to do all that flying and that terrific landing and then have a tire blow up on you because you went over and kicked the tires on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So all your systems ran successfully on that first mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We didn't have any major problems on the first flight. We did have problem off and on with the valves on the RCS leaking a little bit and creating a little bit of a problem. We had to change out a lot of engines for a while until we got a little better valves in there.\\n\\n In one of the early, early Shuttle landing flights, we got a bunch of hydrozene in there because we had a seal to blow out on a pump, and we had to redesign the seals on it. But as I recall—fuel cells. You know, in Gemini, we didn't fly a single Gemini mission that we had much power when we came on. We would lose just about all of our fuel cells and our power was degraded so bad that we had to be very careful about the use of power on it.\\n\\n On Apollo, the fuel cells, it took seven Ph.D.s to start them and fourteen to shut it down, they were so complex and temperamental, but on Shuttle those things were like a battery. You could think of the fuel cell as a battery with external reactants in it. They'd make a beautiful welder. I mean, you could have it sitting out there idle, not pulling any power, and hit them with 200 amps, and you'd barely see a wiggle in the voltage. So you could turn high power levels on and off just with the flick of a switch, and we had very, very few problems with the fuel cells. Tremendous progress was made in a few years in that area.\\n\\n Hydrogen leaks plagued us all the way down through the early days of the program. You know, we had valves and seals and things that would leak, even some porosity in the metal and cracks in the main engine. I remember we had a major leak down there on one of the flights where we would—it didn't leak with all of the checks that we could run, but when you start the engine, you got a real high concentration of hydrogen in the bowtail on that thing.\\n\\n I remember my son and I calculating the leak rate one day going into his grandparents' in Illinois. We sat in the back seat of the car and ran out the calculations on that. And I got them to run a bunch of Tygon [phonetic] tubing all around in the bowtail back there, units here, here, just everywheres in there, and my intent was to see where the hydrogen was coming from by detecting which sensor would increase first. Got the data. It came in. It was all tabular form. I can't make anything out of tabular data. So I started plotting it. Well, I decided—I was division chief then and I decided, shoot, I got all these young kids out here, I'll give it to them. I walked in there, and the first one I came to, I give him this data, and I said, \"I want you to plot it,\" and then I went back in the office, you know, and I twisted my hands. I didn't have anything to do, fidgeting around.\\n\\n I went back in there to see what kind of progress he was making, and he wasn't doing anything, and I got really upset with him, and I said, \"I need it. I need it bad.\"\\n\\n He says, \"Well, I can't get on a Vax [phonetic] right now.\" You know, that's when we had these big computers, and we just had terminals in the office, and when too many people get on, you couldn't log on, and it would run very, very slow.\\n\\n I says, \"You don't need to do that. Plot it by hand.\"\\n\\n He says, \"I don't know how to do that.\" [Laughter] He says, \"It's almost quitting time, and at 4:30 I'll be able to get on. You're not going to do anything with it tonight anyway. I'll have it for you in the morning when you come in.\"\\n\\n Well, the next morning when I came in, he had it all plotted out nice and neat, and the computer really makes it look pretty, but there wasn't a single chart in there that had the same scale. You know, the computer auto-arranged all of the scales on it. Well, they didn't do me any good that way.\\n\\n So I went back in there and says, \"Hey, I've got to have it all on the same scale.\"\\n\\n He says, \"Well, I don't know how to do that because the computer automatically arranges it.\" But he did. He figured out how to do that, and we got it all.\\n\\n Then I called down there to the Cape after I looked at the data and told them where to look for the leak. When the technicians was crawling back in that area, one of them heard it hissing, heard the helium hissing, and put his hand around there, and that's when we found a crack about an inch and a half long in the high-pressure manifold on the main engine. It turned out it was a stress corrosion crack because they had done some rework on it, and that copper plating that they had put on the inside had burned away where they did the rework, and so we had a stress corrosion crack in there we had to—and if we wouldn't have found that, you know, that could have been a catastrophe. But we've been very, very lucky and very fortunate that most of those kinds of things have been detected before they created major problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the responsibilities of your division change after you had a functioning, operational Space Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that division, you know, up until\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n [STS-51L], the responsibility shifted more from an R&D, research and development, activity to a production activity. We still had people watching everything that was done on all of those subsystems. We had subsystem managers, or what we called subsystem managers, and we had improvement programs going on in a lot of the areas where we were having problems with APUs and the valves, and the water boiler, I guess, on the RCS valves on the main engine plumbing looking for better seals and different seals to cut out on the problems we had with the hydrogen leakage in the vehicle. So up until\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , then, it remained pretty much the same.\\n\\n After\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , then I moved up to director of engineering, and then I picked up responsibility for all of the engineering and all of the disciplines out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In 1986, the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n accident occurred. Looking back at that time, especially having experienced Apollo 1, what impact did\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n have on NASA and JSC specifically, from your perspective?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It had a real big impact on the way that people thought at the Center. The night before\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n blew up, if you would have walked out there and asked any of the 7,000 people or so that we had on site there at that time, contractors and civil service people, 98 percent of those people would have told you that nothing could happen to that vehicle, we had so much redundancy in it, that nothing would happen to it.\\n\\n Now, there was a lot of us that lived in areas like the propulsion area that was well aware of the risk involved and the stresses imposed on all of that stuff. You just look at one of those main engines when they start up and you watch those bells all fold up like a piece of paper blowing in the wind, you wonder how they withstand that stress time after time after time.\\n\\n I really thought if we had a problem we would have a problem with the main engines and not the solid rocket motors, and we really should not have had that problem with the solid rocket motors. That was one of those cases where people didn't understand the mechanism of that joint and how the joint reacted, and they were working on the wrong problem. You know, we blamed that off on cold weather, yet I am convinced, and I will always be convinced, that it could have been a hot day and that would have happened and it would have most likely happened on that flight because they had a lot of difficulty getting that joint together. They most likely shaved off one of those seals or maybe both of them when they put it together.\\n\\n When they ran a leak test on it, the leak test was not a valid test because they put enough grease in that joint that when they put it together, they filled that grove up in between the seals with grease and then you had a major flaw in the seal. Two feet from that test port and you would have never detected it because it would not have pushed the grease out in the ten minutes that they run the test on it.\\n\\n If they would have ran the right stress model on that joint, they would have discovered that that joint actually opened up instead of closing up when you put pressure in the motor. You know, within a day after the thing blew up, here at the Johnson Space Center the test people had already modeled that and discovered that that joint was opening up, and we came up with a quick fix. We could have put a belly band, a carbon carbon belly band, about six inches up from those joints and blow those joints, they would have actually made the joints close up when you started the motor instead of opening up, and we could have kept on flying. We didn't have to go back and redesign that joint when we did and delay all of the flights for that period of time. And Max wanted to do that, but he was never able to sell that early on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why do you think that was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was such a shock to everybody that people got in the mode of not wanting to take any more risk at all. We even looked at flying that Shuttle, a few flights with automatic controls and flying it unmanned, but we ran into a lot of resistance with the Astronaut Office on that, and that wasn't successful, and I think that people that developed that motor, that was managing the development of that motor, didn't want an easy fix, a quick fix, because it would look like we ought to have fixed it a long time ago because it was too easy to fix.\\n\\n I had some people from the oil patch come down here and talk to me right after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , and it was five of them, and the PAO [Public Affairs Office] called and told me they were there and wanted to talk to somebody in propulsion, and I told him, \"Send them over. I'll talk to them.\"\\n\\n And the guy told me, says, \"I haven't been able to sleep for several nights now.\" He says, \"NASA developed NASTRAND, and that's one of the finest stress programs that was ever invented, and we use it everywheres, all up and down that ship channel down there, and we have bad, bad things down there in the ship channel.\" He says, \"If they get loose, some of those gimbals get loose,\" he says, \"more than five or six people are going to get hurt, and hurt bad.\" And he says, \"PAO gave me the drawings to your solid rocket motor, and we'd modified NASTRAND, and we'd made it what we think is better for our applications, and I put it on my computer. According to my analysis, when you do your pressure test on the case, it yields, and it ought to be bigger in diameter after you run the pressure test than it was before.\"\\n\\n And I said, \"It does.\"\\n\\n He popped his fingers, turned to the other guy, and said, \"I told you. I told you.\" And he reaches down in his briefcase and pulls out these beautiful, colored charts and just a slice through that motor, and they got most of it green and blue, but right down in this one area here it starts turning orange and then yellow, or orange and then red. And he says, \"Right there it's yielding. Right there. That's the stress concentration rate there.\"\\n\\n I looked at that, and I said, \"What in the world did you do that on?\"\\n\\n He says, \"On my Cray [computer].\"\\n\\n I said, \"You got a Cray?\"\\n\\n He said, \"We've got seven of them.\"\\n\\n And JSC didn't even have one of those machines then to do that kind of work on, but when I moved up as director of engineering, I made sure we got one. I thought if those people could have seven of them, we could have at least one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When Aaron Cohen asked you to be director of engineering to get the Shuttle back to flight status, how did you feel about taking on that responsibility at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Aaron called me over there right after the accident, or pretty soon after the accident, and asked me to take over the engineering directorate, and I told Aaron I couldn't do it. My wife had cancer at that time, and she wasn't doing good, and I just didn't think I could do justice to it. I didn't think I had the time or the energy to do all the things that I needed to do. Matter of fact, I even went back over to the office and wrote down names of three people that I thought would do a good job, and took them back over to Dr. Cohen to suggest that he select one of these people, that they were all people I had a great deal of confidence in.\\n\\n Well, he didn't do it, and he didn't fill that job. Max Engert [phonetic] was the deputy in there, and poor old Max was run ragged in there trying to do that work, and I really, really felt bad about not doing it and he just leaving it vacant, and it stayed vacant for months. Finally he called me back over there and asked me to reconsider, and I told him—I didn't have the heart to tell him that time that I wouldn't do it. I told him I'd do the best I could on it, and so I did, I took it over.\\n\\n It was not nearly as much fun as being division chief, and being division chief was not nearly as much fun as being a branch chief, and being a branch chief was not nearly as much fun as being an engineer, but, you know, the higher up you got in the organization, you had to worry about different kinds of things. I love to build things, design things, test things, I love that kind of life, and when you're up there, you don't get to test your theories. You can let somebody else test theirs, but you can't test yours." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of game plan did you have when you took over that position to accomplish that goal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To operate one day at a time. [Laughter] I guess the first thing I did was I put in a system, an inventory system, so that I could understand how much equipment each division had, when it was purchased, the class life of that equipment, so that I could budget for replacement of that stuff. You know, some of them, they're always trying to snooker you into something, division chiefs would, and they always had to have these new machines, these new computers, and I didn't know what they had. So that's the first thing I put in, was a system where I could take the NIMS database and by adding a few things and changing that around, we could plan five years down the road on what equipment we needed to replace.\\n\\n I guess the second thing I did was I took some of the monies that engineering had and gave them over to the tech services, to the shop, so that the shop could buy some modern equipment. All of the equipment in the shop at that time was basically World War II equipment, you know, that came out of the ships and things after the Second World War, and we bought it real cheap and put it in there. And with good machinists, you know, they can do first-class work with that kind of equipment, but there was new things on the market. You know, we got an EDM [Electric Discharge Machine] machine, and then we got a water knife, and I gave them a little money because the feeling I had was that an engineer is worthless if they can't design something, and if you design it, then you have to build it, and if you're going to build it, you need to use the kind of equipment that industry will be using if you go out and make it for some project like that. So we did. We put in a pretty good machine shop over there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome in your new position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Budgets. That was always the biggest problem, was working the budgets and trying to keep the budget balanced and trying to get the money to flow in those areas where you kind of kept things on an even keel. You know, lots of money would go into computers and software and those kind of things, and mechanical systems like structures, mechanics, propulsion and power, those people generally come out on the short end of the budget cycle, and you've got to plan the budget two years, three years down the road. Really three years. I learned that pretty quick, because nobody pays any attention to what you put in a budget two years down the road. They're only worried about this year. So if you want to get something in, you don't put it in here, you put it in two years down the road.\\n\\n Well, the two years come by pretty quick, and then when they want to take it out, you say, \"Well, you let it go the last two years. Now what has changed?\" And they feel guilty then because they didn't look that far down the road and didn't see it coming into being. So we were able to get a few things going in engineering that other people hadn't paid a great deal of attention to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When STS-26, the return-to-to flight mission, came up, were you confident about its success at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Absolutely. Like I said, I would have been confident to launch it within two months after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , because I thought we had that problem under control, and I, really, to tell you the truth, was more worried, more concerned about the long delay between the flights than anything, and primarily the technicians and the people that put those things together check them out. You know, if you're doing something every day and it's kind of routine, you kind of remember what to do, but now, if I don't do it for nine months or a year and then you try to start up, and you try to think of everything, even though it's all written down on paper, you know, you don't exactly remember how you went about doing those things. I was most concerned about the first launch, that they would miss something.\\n\\n I think probably one of the major, major contributions that I made to the Shuttle Program happened after [STS-]27. On both 26 and 27, we had major problems at the Cape because our winds were out, and at that time we used four seasons, four winds. We had a summer wind, a fall wind, a winter wind, and a spring wind, and that was a standard wind. They had sent balloons up for ten years down at the Cape, and they had measured the velocity and the direction of the winds, and they'd put all this data in these computers, and this computer came out with a mean wind, an average wind for those seasons, and that's what we loaded in the computers.\\n\\n Well, there is no such thing as an average wind. On [STS-]26, we couldn't launch because the wind was too low. Now, how do you explain to the media people that you can't launch because the wind's too low, you've got to wait and let it pick up a little bit? On [STS-] 27, our indicators were out 102, 103 percent on several indicators on the winds, and I know I got on the hot phone, on the red phone, and told Truly to launch it, it was going to come in at about 82 percent. And what I had done, between 26 and 27 I made it my business to understand how they calculated the indicators. What they were doing, they'd send up a balloon four hours, eight hours, twelve hours before launch, and they would measure the wind, and then they added 50 percent on to that wind because the wind could change that much from the last balloon until you launched the vehicle. I mean, when they collected all this data for ten years, there was data that indicated that the wind could change this much in four hours. Well, yes, if a jet stream moves in or a northern moves through, when that hits, the wind's going to change, especially if it's a strong northern or the jet stream swings over in that period of time, you know, if it's real close.\\n\\n Well, we had been watching those winds, and they were decreasing a little bit, hadn't increased in the past twenty-four hours just a little bit. There was no jet stream close by. There was no cold front close by. So there was no reason to add that 50 percent on there. I explained all of that to Truly, and within the last seconds he gave the go-ahead to launch it. I was on cloud nine when that thing got in orbit. You know, if it would have blown up for anything and I told them to launch it, which was a departure, but I really didn't feel comfortable with deservicing or unloading all that hydrogen. It's very, very dangerous to service and deservice that thing, and I thought it was more risky to cancel the flight and offload all of the propellants than it was to go ahead and launch it, and I was confident it was going to come in at about 82, 83 percent. Well, it didn't; it came in at 86, I believe. So I missed it just a little bit, but not that much.\\n\\n Well, that set off a major investigation. I know Chris Kraft and Max Faget and somebody else was on that committee to look at it, and that's when I came up with DoLILU [Day of Launch I-Load Update]. I don't know whether you've heard of DoLILU or not, but I explained to them how we could program those computers to the actual winds that we had measured four hours before liftoff and not have to go with this mean average wind each time. And it was not easy to sell that. People worried about it. They were worried about getting the wrong code in or making an error, and they wanted everything tested, so we kept our sail up out here and kept it a long time.\\n\\n But we went to DoLILU and then DoLILU 2, and right now there's going to be very, very few times when you ever scrub a launch because the wind is too high or too low or out of limits. You can program that vehicle where it'll fly through almost any wind; 99.9 percent of the winds, you can program it to where it will fly through them. You'll have to worry about lightning and clouds and those kind of things, but you won't have to worry about wind. I really feel good about that now.\\n\\n Chris never did like that. John [F.] Yardley was on that committee. Man, John picked that up right quick. He loved that idea of DoLILU, and Max picked it up real quick, but Chris was very conservative. He was very, very much afraid that we were going to screw up the software someplace and have a problem during a launch, but it's worked out very well, and probably improved the safety of the vehicle more than any single thing that we have done because it doesn't stress the vehicle as high now as it used to, because every time you launched it before, you were running close to the limits, structural limits, of the vehicle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else from your work on the Shuttle that stands out in your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess the other thing that we made a lot of progress on was the tile and the way we put the tile on and the way we got them to stay on, came up with the densified tile, where we put a very dense layer right at the surface so that when you glued it on, it wouldn't peel off at the glue joint. They lose very few tiles now. On the first launch, that was one of our major worries, was we lost a bunch of tile during launch, and we didn't know whether it would burn up or not when it came back in.\\n\\n That's finding its way into a whole host of other industries. They're using that tile now in a lot of the furnaces, a lot of the powerplants, and things like that. It's cheap, it's reliable. You know, the interesting thing about that tile, you can take a one-inch by one-inch tube of it and you can heat it with an acetylene torch until it's white hot and reach down to pick it up on the corners and it won't burn you. You've got enough moisture in your finger where it'll cool it down enough to where it won't burn you. It has so little thermal content, so little heat content in there, and it's very, very light." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I've held a piece before, and it's amazing how light it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and how good it works. Of course, you can sloppydiddle [phonetic]. It'll melt if you get it too hot, but you've got to get it pretty hot to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were director of engineering, what types of activities did your directorate work on aside from Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we always had an Advanced Programs Office that was working on new concepts, new vehicles, new designs. We designed an awful lot of experiments that we flew in the Shuttle, and those arms that we used to lift the payloads out, some of those were designed in-house and put on Shuttle.\\n\\n We worked on spacesuits a whole lot and trying to get the spacesuits improved. You know, most people don't realize it, but when you pressurize one of those suits and you get in a vacuum, it takes about 80 percent of the astronauts' energy just to move their hand up. You know, they just want to go out straight, and to reach his chest controllers, they really have to strain to get to those, and looking at joints that would not be sensitive to pressure.\\n\\n We got into farming a little bit, growing wheat and things in the chambers over there, looking at long missions in space like on Space Station where you could grow some of your food and use the plants to make oxygen so that you didn't have to carry—to eat up the carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. And that's proven to be fairly successful, I think. Matter of fact, I suspect we're going to have some of that stuff on Space Station.\\n\\n Of course, we're working on Space Station. That was a shame, the way that program went. You know, it looked like every administration that came in wanted to redesign it. That's when I was telling somebody about all of these congressional aides we've got up there. You know, at the time I left up there, they had about 20,000 of those people writing the laws, and they were all bright young lawyers from these prestigious Eastern law schools, and every one of them was absolutely convinced that with the right jury they could change the laws of physics. And they all wanted to do this and wanted to do that, and they each one had their idea as to what they wanted to do, with no real concept as to what it took in terms of dollars and time to make some of those things happen, and sometimes it's just not feasible to make it happen because it's counter to the laws of physics. But that was one of the major things that I found after—I guess really started after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , is that we got a lot more interference from Congress in our daily activities, our design activities.\\n\\n Back in the Apollo Program, when they first put this Center in, you know, all Congress and the White House was concerned about was where the site was going to be. It was no accident that the Manned Space Craft Center was put in Houston, Texas, and the facilities put in New Mexico, and the facilities put in Louisiana. That's where the center of power existed out there. But they didn't worry at all about the engineering, the design, any of that kind of stuff. When Shuttle came along, the facilities were all in place so they couldn't worry about facilities. They worried about where the contracts was going to be let, you know, what districts or states was going to get contracts, and that's kind of the way it was spread around.\\n\\n When Space Station came around, there was no really big contracts. There was a lot of little piecemeal, but they tried to break it up so that each Center would have a certain—you know, Marshall would have a part, JSC would have a part, Lewis [Research Center, Ohio—now Glenn Research Center] would have a part. They were going to take the money and spread it out to as many Centers as they could. That created a huge interface kind of a problem, and then you got multiple contractors involved managed by different Centers. And Congress got in there, and each one was pulling for their state, the Center that was in their state, and trying to shuffle things around, each one vying to try to get a little bigger slice of the pie.\\n\\n There was a difference in the attitude of the people who worked on Space Station, too, across the board in the early days. You know, back on Apollo, I am convinced that one reason that program was so successful was that 80 percent of the people that worked on it wanted to beat the Russians to the Moon. That was their main drive, was to beat the Russians to the Moon. It was kind of a game between the engineers as to who was best and who could be first. We worked a lot of hours, long and hard, with that objective in mind of getting there before the Russians got there.\\n\\n But then, after Apollo, we had that huge turndown in manpower and laid off lots and lots of people. When Shuttle came about, the feeling was that if we didn't build it within the time, within the cost, there would be no NASA, nobody would have a job, Johnson Space Center would be given back to Rice University, and they would move the campus out here and have a beautiful campus. So everybody worked on it with the thought process if we didn't do it quick and we didn't do it cheap, there would be no agency, and that was the drive.\\n\\n Then when Space Station came on, it was kind of a job, and we had promoted people into high-paying management jobs. That's where you take a good engineer and you ruin them by making a manager out of them and giving them an increase in salary, and they made lousy managers because they were good engineers. Well, we got all of these managers in that had a little authority, and they were more interested in throwing their weight around than they were in trying to figure out what was the right thing to do. You know, if it's a Marshall guy, they were going to protect Marshall's interest. If it was a JSC guy, they were going to protect JSC's interest, rather than looking at and trying to figure out what was the best for the program and what was the right thing to do, \"I've got the authority to tell you to do it, and I'm going to tell you to do it, regardless of whether it's right or not,\" and I think that attitude really hurt the Space Station Program in the early years. Still, we wound up with a station that is way too difficult, way too complex, simply because we were trying to satisfy too many different requirements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seems like a big change came after President Clinton called to change the Space Station in 1993. What were your thoughts at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was one of the many changes that we went through. You know, that was probably about the third or fourth one since Space Station had been started, major changes, and it came at a very, very unfortunate time, because we were faced with many complexities, many difficulties, and we had just let things freeze long enough so that things were beginning to go together. We were producing hardware, we were cutting chips, and we were building Space Station when they came in.\\n\\n I guess the major policy shift there was that they wanted to bring the Russians in as an equal partner. The contractors were fighting between each other, Centers were fighting between each other, so they kind of took the rest of the Station Program and lumped it together where Marshall would do the engineering and JSC would do the operations on it, and bringing the Russians in meant that you had to redesign the whole thing because the Russians were going to provide this module and this module, and we were going to provide one here and one here, and somebody else was going to provide another one over there. So we basically scrapped everything again and started over with what looked like the same station, but many, many changes were made, and the configuration that we're making right now is a very, very expensive configuration right now.\\n\\n You know, I handled that Option C for JSC when we came out with those three options, and if they would have went with Option C, we would have a Space Station up there now, we would have had it up there a couple of years ago, it would have been cheap, it would have helped the infrastructure of the Shuttle Program a whole lot because we were using all Shuttle components and Shuttle computers, Shuttle MDMs [multiplexer/demultiplexer], a life-support system that we had in Shuttle. We had solar arrays on it, but we took all of those—switch gear out and hooked it up like you hook up a car battery and alternator, you know, the engine starts the alternator, charges the battery, and then you shut it off and you drain out of the battery. So as it went through the day/night cycles it would just automatically change over, very simple, very cheap, didn't provide everything that everybody wanted because it had kind of a reversing microgravity in it because we were flying it around this way, we had the solar arrays fixed, and they didn't rotate, to make them cheap and simple.\\n\\n We used all of the tooling for the external tank to make that container. We had a huge container, a big volume [unclear]. The problem with it was the Europeans didn't like it because it didn't have anything in there for them. The Japanese didn't like it because they wanted their module up there, and even though I designed places for them to stick those modules, external on there, sticking out, they knew that we didn't need that because we had more than ample volume in there, we didn't need that volume, and there was nothing in it for the Russians to do.\\n\\n This administration was absolutely convinced that we had to bring the Russians in as an equal partner, otherwise they would peddle their technology to some other Third World country or something. This way we could keep them in our fold. And who's to say that's not good logic? I don't know. As far as getting a space station up there, it wasn't good, but from an overall standpoint, I guess it was okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think, if you could point to one thing [that] finally doomed Space Station Freedom?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think the thing that really killed Space Station was when Gene Kranz went to Aaron and told him he had to have this huge increase in money to build the Control Center over there for it, and he did that in front of all of the contractors, who then went home and said, \"We'd better get our acts in the water, too, because Gene's going to get all of our money. There's only so much money, and if you give Gene more money to build his Control Center, then somebody else is going to get a little bit less.\"\\n\\n So McDonnell [McDonnell Douglas Corporation] turned right around and came back within a week and said they had to have a big increase in money. Well, that went right up to Washington [DC] right when the administration changed, and I think that was the impetus that caused them to cancel Freedom and start looking at other options, that and the current administration where they put their Good Housekeeping stamp of approval on the design.\\n\\n But I think had Gene not gone to Aaron and—Aaron was in Washington at that time, but he was coming back down here every other Friday, I believe, and getting a briefing on it, and I think had Gene not gone in for this huge increase, which prompted, then, McDonnell to come back to get their oar in the water to get their fair share of it, I think Freedom would have went on and would have been built, and I think it would have been a good station, probably at half the cost of what we're spending now. But once those cost increases made it up into headquarters and right on into Congress, then everything blew up, and I'm convinced that's what killed Freedom.\\n\\n And truth of the matter is, we didn't need those Control Centers. We didn't need that much money in there for those Control Centers at that time. You know, schedule was slipping a little bit. All of that could have slipped down a year or two downstream, and it would have still been fine. But Gene just came in with an ultimatum, you know, \"If you don't give me this money, I'm not going to have a Control Center. We're not going to launch it.\"" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's been a long struggle for Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it has, and, you know, I feel so sorry for those people that are struggling with that thing and working on it. You know, we've got some very, very good people out there that's spending very, very long hours trying to put it together and to try to make it work under very, very difficult circumstances. You know, just the difference in culture between the Russians and us and between the Japanese and us, you have to kind of understand their culture, you have to kind of understand their background, their experience levels, and they have to kind of understand ours, because we just do things different.\\n\\n The Russians do things more like the French. As a matter of fact, there's a great deal of similarity between the French engineering and the Russian engineering. They think a whole lot alike." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have much interaction with the international partners?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A fair amount. I really didn't have any interaction with the Russians. My interaction was primarily with the Europeans and with the Japanese. I remember very clearly going up to Washington to make a presentation on Option C. Option A went and made a briefing, and then Option B, and then it was my turn, and I got up there. The guy in charge of the Japanese module asked me how I was going to put his module up there. Well, you had the same problem with Option A and Option B, because the module weighed too much, and we didn't have a vehicle in this country that could put it up. And I never hesitated, I just told him we're going to put it up on a Russian booster. And we had looked at it and decided that, yes, we had plenty of capability to do it with this Russian booster, so I just made the comment, \"We're going to put it up with a Russian booster.\" He went bolt upright, stood at attention, and says, \"Not acceptable. We're still at war status with those people,\" and sat back down.\\n\\n Well, that was the first time I realized that they hadn't settled some of their differences on some of the borders over there yet someplace. But that was some of the problems we ran into." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Adds a whole new complexity when you have to work with other countries to accomplish an engineering task." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. And they have different tools, they have different machines, their analysis programs are different, everything is different, and you have to kind of—if you can understand what they're doing, you have to understand their tools and how they go about doing things and how they stress things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After the redesign phase was over, you took a new position, which was of chief engineer of the International Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. What I did was, I agreed to go over and manage Option C, the design. You know, we had those three designs. Langley had one, Marshall had one, and JSC had one, and I think Langley's was Option A and Marshall's was Option B, and I had Option C.\\n\\n Option C basically was taking the external tank and converting it into a container, pressure container, for you to put all of the equipment in. We would launch it in place of the Orbiter. You hang it on the side of the external tank and launch it, one launch, put up their complete space station, and then the next launch is, you'd go up and you'd be servicing it. It was a ninety-day activity, and I headed that up for the Johnson Space Center. When that was over, when that was finished, then I retired. I guess I hung around a little while, because I stayed until Aaron left, and then when Aaron left, I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You seemed to work a great deal with Aaron Cohen. Why don't you tell us a little bit about him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We had a good working relationship. I thought the world of Aaron and tried to help him and tried to do what I thought was right. We had a lot of fights, we had a lot of arguments. I remember Hank Flagg [phonetic] coming down, he was chief legal guy, and told me that I made Aaron mad one day and I'd better be looking for another job; you don't tell the boss those kind of things. And I told Hank, I says, \"Oh, that ain't the first one we've had and it won't be the last one.\"\\n\\n You know, I always felt like it was my responsibility, even though it really pains me and I hate to give somebody bad news, but the biggest problem management has is not getting correct information, and people wanting to look good and telling the boss something that's not necessarily right just because it sounds good or looks good. And I would never do that. I would always tell Aaron what I thought, and I always operated on the philosophy that my first responsibility was to tell somebody what I believed and do my very best to convince them I was right, and then if I couldn't convince them I was right, then I had two choices. Number one, I could quit, or, number two, I could do it their way. That's kind of the way that I operated.\\n\\n Now, Aaron had a—you know, he had a lot of problems. Aaron is the first guy that ever took on a project and managed that project from inception to flight. You know, he was the Orbiter project manager. He's one of the most tenacious guys I ever saw in my life, you know. He never gave up, and he gave it 150 percent every single day. Five, six, seven days a week, he was in there. I helped him a whole lot. Like I say, we had dual tandem actuators and four APUs, and the vehicle was way too heavy, so we cut that down to single actuators and three APUs, and that was kind of a tough sell.\\n\\n We had great big doors on the front of the vehicle for the RCS that would open up in flight and then close up because people didn't think the engines would withstand the reentry temperature. Well, we ran enough thermal models here in-house, and Norm [Norman] Chaffee was really good at that, to convince ourselves that we didn't have to close those nozzles up, that they would withstand the entry heating. So we went and presented that to Aaron and was able to sell it, because it saved about two or three thousand pounds of vehicle weight, and actually would have been more than that because they didn't have enough weight in the design at the head, and when they started detailing out, the weight was going to go up. And we changed from monopropellant to bipropellants, a lot of things like that that was very, very hard sell.\\n\\n They were going to put Centaur in the Shuttle, and it got overweight, primarily because the GSE [Ground Support Equipment] that they put in the vehicle was so complex and so heavy because they wanted to put all of these safety things in there. I went out to GD [General Dynamics Corporation] one time, on a trip out there, I spent a couple of days out there with them, and we totally redesigned that whole system, threw out all the redundant valves, the redundancy in that thing, and made it very simple, very straightforward. And I am absolutely convinced that we enhanced the safety of it rather than degrading the safety of it, but yet that was a tough sell, to come back here and sell it through the system. The liability people, the safety people, people that worked in management that never designed or built anything that looks at schematics and things like that that wasn't convinced that we did the right thing probably was as much upset over the fact that I went out there and made a bunch of decisions and did a bunch of things without their concurrence on it, but, anyhow, we did that.\\n\\n But Aaron and I worked together a long time. I knew Aaron back in the Apollo Program. I didn't work real close with him back then, but I knew him. And then after he took over as Orbiter project manager, we worked very, very close together and spent a lot of nights out there arguing about things where Aaron would be on one side of the fence and I'd be on the other side of the fence and we'd go round and round the mulberry bush, and he'd try to convince me that I was wrong, and I'd try to convince him that he was wrong.\\n\\n I can remember one night staying out there until about 8:30 at night, he and I just going around and around the mulberry bush on something, and next morning at 7:00 o'clock he calls up and wants to know if we're still friends. \"Yeah, why not?\" I mean, just because we don't see eye to eye on something is no sign we can't be friends, and we ought to be able to argue about things a little bit so that we get it all out on the table and each one knows where the other one's coming from.\\n\\n But he was a great guy to work for, I thought. The main reason Aaron was such a great guy to work for is that he never did have a hidden agenda. You know, he called it the way he saw it, and he was always honest with you. And what more can you ask in a guy? You know, the biggest problem you get a lot of times with managers is they've got some kind of hidden agenda, you don't quite understand where they're coming from or what they're doing.\\n\\n Joe [Joseph F.] Shea was another guy that I enjoyed working with, and a lot of people couldn't get along with Joe. Joe had a big ego and had a big chip on his shoulder, and you had to handle Joe in a particular kind of a way, but he was a very, very sharp engineer, and if you presented things in a way that a reasonable engineer would come to this conclusion, you could just—if you went in and told Joe what he had to do, he'd find ten thousand reasons why he didn't have to do that, and it would not get done. But if you go in there and tell Joe, \"Here are the facts. Here's the situation,\" and you put the facts together in a certain way that a reasonable person would draw this conclusion, he would jump to that conclusion every time and say, \"Why don't you do this?\"\\n\\n Then you could say, \"Joe, I think that's a good idea. I think we ought to go do it.\" And he would buy it. But too many people would go in there and try to tell him what he had to do, and it just would backfire with them.\\n\\n Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht was another interesting guy to work for. Now, Kenny, about half the time would make the wrong decision the first time, and if you argued with him about it, you'd just reinforce it. You know, he'd just go hard over. But if you'd just stop and wait until the next day, call him up and say, \"Kenny, you know we made this decision yesterday. I've been thinking about it. I think we made the wrong decision,\" and tell him why, and he'd clip over and make the other one. You know, too many managers, when they make a decision, they didn't want to admit that maybe they made the wrong decision, and they wouldn't change until forced to change someplace. But Kenny had no problem with changing his mind. If he made a decision and made a wrong decision, he'd change it the next day just as quick and just as easy.\\n\\n I remember taking a memo over to Kenny one time to sign, to go out, and I had a whole bunch of carbon copies on it, and that was back during the days when you'd put all these carbons in the typewriter and the secretary had to type it. If you made a mistake, you had to go through and erase out all of them, and being for his signature, it had—well, first thing he did was he flipped over to the back and started scratching out all of the carbons I had on there, the names of all the people it was going to go to. I says, \"Kenny, don't do that.\" I said, \"It won't hurt for them to get copies.\"\\n\\n He says, \"Henry, that's where you're wrong.\" He says, \"These people don't need copies of it.\"\\n\\n I said, \"I'm going to have to go back and retype it.\"\\n\\n He said, \"Yes, you will retype it,\" and he just scratched all those names off.\\n\\n I said, \"It won't hurt them to get a copy of it.\"\\n\\n He said, \"That's where you're wrong.\" He says, \"You send them a copy of it, and they're going to read it, and that's wasting their time to read it.\" He said, \"Then they're going to waste some more time because they're going to think about it and wonder if they ought to do something about it.\" And he said, \"Worse yet, they might do something about it.\" [Laughter] So he did, he took all the carbons off of it.\\n\\n You know, we don't think of those kind of things now when you've got e-mail and you put a copy out to everybody under the sun, and you've got a list of e-mail messages that long. Five percent or 1 percent may be needed, and all the rest of them is just wasting your time.\\n\\n The other problem we got along those lines now is all of the young engineers are very proficient at typing, and things that you could say in three sentences, they'll take three pages to write it all down because most people value their work in the number of pages instead of the content that you put in. Not much thought goes into briefings anymore. I mean, you get on the typewriter and you just start typing, and you make these viewgraphs and take them and put them on the viewgraph machine without really thinking too much about what message you wanted to get across and how you get it across. When you had to use these flip charts, you thought a whole lot about what you were going to put down on that chart, because when you got that Magic Marker and put it on there, you didn't want to write too much, it was going to take a long time to write it down, and you'd think about what you was going to say and how you'd say it to convey the message that you wanted to convey. We don't think a lot about that now.\\n\\n In engineering school, when I went to engineering school, you know, we were taught that engineering reports should be brief, they should be to the point, and they should make sure that you supported—whatever data you put in there was supported by the words that you put in there. Now, you know, I don't think even in engineering schools they think too much about what they're saying. If it's an inch-thick document, it's got to be better than one that's three pages.\\n\\n You know, most people don't even understand work anymore. Work is defined as force times distance, and, you know, you can work very hard and not accomplish anything. When you went home at night, if you haven't accomplished anything, you might as well not work. That's one of the things we did, getting back to my early days and early training back in the ABMA [Army Ballistic Missiles Agency], the one thing I had to do every single day, the last fifteen minutes before I left the office, was write down on a piece of paper what I did that day and turn it in. We had an activity report that we had to write every single day. And I thought that was so absolutely stupid to have to take time to write those activity reports, but one of the things I learned pretty quick was there were some days where there was not much activity, and it made you acutely aware of what you did that day and what you accomplished that day when you had to sit down and put it down on a piece of paper and turn it in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have had such a long career that spanned over so much progress in space. Looking back, what do you feel is your greatest accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I might have to think about that one a while. You know, there's a lot of little things, but I don't know that I did anything that was really major. I made those little models and put those in the wind tunnels. That was really the most fun job I ever had, doing that. I didn't think it was fun at the time, but it was fun. You know, you could see some progress. You could see the fire and smoke, and you knew that you conceived that, you designed that, you made it all happen, and you did it yourself. You didn't have a committee of forty engineers trying to design it. You did it all yourself, did all the testing yourself. So that was the most fun job that I ever had.\\n\\n I think, you know, some of the contributions I've made we've gone over already. Taking all the weight out of the Shuttle was not an easy thing, and I brought that forward on my own initiative and fought it through the system, which was not an easy fight. DoLILU, day-of-launch I-loads, I fought that through the system. That was not easy, although I got the support of John Yardley real quick on that one, and that was a big help. A lot of people had a lot of confidence in John.\\n\\n I think that on Apollo, had I not had the experience that I had with those little rockets and testing them in vacuum chambers and things like that, that we might not have been as successful on the Apollo flights. Those things fired about 140, 150,000 times on the trip to the Moon and back, and we had a lot of problems in the development of those things. I even put a little precup in there to smooth out the ignition a little bit so we didn't break so many chambers on the start-up.\\n\\n But I would have to go back home and think about what I would think would be my major accomplishment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any especially fond memories that stand out in your mind from your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know about fond memories. I have a lot of memories of problems. I remember fighting the battle with the corrosion in the propellant tanks on Apollo. You know, we had three tanks that we put into a qual [qualification] program, and they were supposed to go thirty days in the qual program. Twenty-eight days into the thirty-day program, one of them developed a tiny, tiny little leak. I mean, it was so small you could just barely see that oxidizer coming out through the wall in that hole. It created a little brown spot on the side of the tank.\\n\\n They cut it out and sent it off to one of those famous testing laboratories and found out that it was a stress corrosion. There are reports that it was caused from a fingerprint in the tank before heat treat, and the salt in the finger caused the stress corrosion in titanium. Well, I got that report in here, and I looked at it, and it looked okay to me, and I signed it off, and I sent Jim Ackerman and Darrell Kendrick out to Bell [Aerosystems Corporation] shortly after that. They came back and told me that we could not let them get away with that, it was not a fingerprint. \"Darrell, what makes you think it's not a fingerprint?\"\\n\\n He says, \"It would take a monkey to get their finger in that tank. The hole's only that big around, and the tank's that big around, and you had to get your hand through the hole and touch it over on the side over here. It's got a big weld up through here.\"\\n\\n I says, \"Oh, Darrell,\" I said, \"somebody got ready to put those two halves together, they saw a speck in there, and they reached in there with their finger and wiped it out and then welded it.\"\\n\\n Well, he came back in a little while and showed me that the tank had gone through about seven or eight flush fluids. I'm surprised it didn't dissolve the whole tank, much less any fingerprint there was in it. And he wouldn't let me forget that. Every day, every morning, he and Ackerman would come in my office, \"Henry, what are we going to do about it? Henry, what are we going to do about it? We can't let them get away with that.\"\\n\\n So finally I told them to make me a proposal, tell me what to do, and they came back with the idea of putting ten tanks in test, and if all ten of those tanks went through that test, they would say it was random and write it off as a random failure but not as a fingerprint.\\n\\n Well, I went out and tried to talk to John Gibb, who was in charge of the program at Rockwell, and he wouldn't do anything. It was going to take contractual direction to Bell, and he didn't want to do that, and he didn't think it was a problem.\\n\\n So I came back over and talked to Joe Shea about it, and he immediately directed Rockwell to put those ten tanks in test, in thirty-day test. So we did, and less than 100 hours into that thirty-day test, one of those tanks just exploded. It busted wide open, and before they could get the pressure off of the other nine, two more of them blew up. When you looked at the inside of those tanks under a magnifying glass, it looked like caked ground, p_____ ground where water's been standing, it dries up, and it all cakes up, you've got little cracks, thousands of them all over the place everywheres.\\n\\n We got everybody in the United States involved in that one. We had Langley involved, we had Lewis involved, we had Marshall involved, of course, Rockwell and all the other people around the country involved in that. It turned out that the stress corrosion was caused because we had directed the manufacture of the tetroxide through the Air Force to change the manufacturing process of it, and what they were doing was removing the water out of it so it was absolutely dry, and with it dry, then that left free hydrogen in there, so it caused hydrogen embrittlement in the tank. We had gotten just a little bit of that new propellant on that first three tanks, but the second set we had put in there was all new propellant, and that was the last time we would have exposed those vehicles to that propellant for any length of time prior to the first Apollo flight.\\n\\n You know, I still think about that and how close I came to letting that get by, and had it not been for the persistence of two young engineers out there that just would not let me forget it and just kept on, day after day after day, bugging me about it, we would let it go, we wouldn't have done anything about it, and we probably would not have found it until the first Shuttle flight—I mean Apollo flight, and it would have probably blown up. Being up there, they would not have had any good data to try to figure out what blew up.\\n\\n I've thought more about that than any other single thing that happened, simply because it came so close to getting by. I remember John Gibb telling me when I went out there and tried to convince him to put those tanks in test, if I wanted to tell him how to run his program, that I come home and do it through the contracting officer. When my contracting officer directed his contracting officer to direct him that he would do it, but not before, and then he'd tell me, \"Henry, don't make an issue out of it. You're a well-respected engineer.\" He says, \"You push this, you're going to lose all credibility. People will never believe anything that you tell them after that.\"\\n\\n And, you know, you weigh all those kind of things, but I finally decided we absolutely had to do something on it, only because of the persistence of Kendrick and Ackerman on that. It's little things like that that you come so close to letting go, that you lay in bed at night thinking about what may be other things I've missed or let go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your biggest challenge that you felt you had to overcome during your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Being shy, being an introvert. I still don't like to make speeches. I don't like to get up in front of people. I never did like going to a football game because of the bright lights. It looked like everybody was watching me when I was under those bright lights. I never did like that much. I operated very well by myself. I never had the need to socialize a whole lot or visit a whole lot with the people. Most of the time I was thinking about something or some design or something.\\n\\n Matter of fact, you know, I used to come up with all these brilliant ideas at night, laying there in bed. As a matter of fact, the time between the time that you wake up and get up is the most precious time in the world, because that's when you can think and your mind is clear and you can think of all of these good things to do. And then I'd get up and go to work and I'd forget them. You think about them in the middle of the night.\\n\\n So I bought a recorder and set it by the bed, one of these old reel-to-reel tape recorders, and I'd come up with these brilliant ideas. My intent was to turn this thing on and record it so I could remember it the next day. Well, shit, I come up with this brilliant idea, and I get up there and fiddle with this thing, and, \"Now, what was I supposed to say? I done forgot.\" So it never did work out. I found out it was a whole lot easier to just get a pad and pencil. You know all you've got to do is just jot a few words down on it, and then next day you could recall what you was thinking about, and sometimes they didn't seem to be so brilliant the next day as they did the night when you was thinking about them, but other times they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had a long and wonderful career with NASA. What have you been doing since you left NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I've been doing a little consulting work, not much. Been farming a little bit, or ranching a little bit. I've got a place down in the country north of Victoria [Texas], and I've got a few cows down there. Floods took out all the fences last year, so I've been in the process of trying to put fences back in there. Doing a little consulting work for Kistler Aerospace Corporation, Aerojet. I've done some for Thiokol, and that's been fun. It kind of keeps you thinking about the things that—most people don't realize how difficult it is to make a rocket yet. Ninety percent of the weight of a rocket at liftoff is fuel. That leaves 10 percent for the structure and a payload and electronics and power and everything else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what would you like to see in the future of space exploration?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I guess, you know, one of the main things I think we need to work on is better propulsion systems. We don't put any money in those areas now. You know, the Shuttle engines operate at 97, 98 percent efficient, and they think that's all you can do, and it probably is, but unless you keep working on new techniques and new ways of doing things—I finally saw that they put some money in one of those plug nozzles or aerospike nozzles, which is going in the right direction. At least it's a different concept. There's been theories about that engine for years and years and years, being altitude-compensating, so it runs at optimum performance at sea level and also optimum performance at altitude. So that's going in the right direction. But we've put very, very little money in those kinds of things.\\n\\n We still put lots of money in computers and software and those kinds of things. Back in the beginning—you know, it's hard to remember that we were still in vacuum tubes when we started the Apollo Program, and to go from vacuum tubes to transistors to integrated circuits, you know, this watch has got many times the computing power that we had on Apollo. In the beginning, we had to develop computers, we had to develop software, we had to force the development of all of those things, but now, you know, that's such a huge industry. If you put the total NASA budget into developing software, into developing computers or communications systems, it wouldn't make any difference. I mean, if you took the total NASA budget, it would be such a teeny little increase in the money that's already spent in those areas, but yet if NASA or the government doesn't develop a rocket engine, nobody else has need for one of those things yet. Nobody else can afford to develop one yet. And, you know, people get old and people die, and if you bring some new guys on, if you don't give them a chance to do something, then you've got to learn everything that you learned all over again.\\n\\n You know, thermal stresses. Most people don't think about those kind of things. We've got a lot of good computer programs now that will help them design a lot of that stuff, but they've still got to know what to worry about, what's important, what's not important. So I see that as one of the major problems that the agency's faced with, is the distribution of the resources into those areas where, if the government doesn't do it, it won't be done, and decrease the resources going into those areas where there's a huge industry out there now that's going to do it even if the government doesn't put a penny in it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I found, in doing some research on you, a copy of the engineering directorate patch and a quote from you, actually. I was wondering if you could tell us something about that patch and what that means to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that description of it is pretty much self-explanatory, I guess. What we tried to do in coming up with this patch, as I recall, we tried to come up with something that would cover all of the disciplines of engineering.\\n\\n Engineers operate on kind of a special kind of a code. You realize that if you make a mistake in a design or have a flaw in something, that people are going to get hurt, and so your designs need to be proven, they need to be on a solid, firm foundation. And that's basically what we were trying to say with this patch, was, come up with something that would have the properties that an engineer could be proud of, the moral characteristics of an engineer. You know, a lawyer can twist the facts up so that they can sway a jury most any kind of way. Engineering is not that forgiving. It's either going to work or it's not going to work, and you need to understand very, very clearly, number one, what your objective is, what you're going to do, and then you need to go about doing it in a way that's going to ensure success.\\n\\n The basic difference between an engineer and a physicist or a scientist is that an engineering design has to be cost-effective. It has to be profitable, otherwise it's of no use to anybody. A physicist or a scientist, you know, their theories don't have to be profitable, they don't have to be cost-effective. They're reaching out into new territory and new kinds of things, and if one out of a thousand or one out of two thousand bear fruit, then they've done a good job.\\n\\n I also think a little bit in terms of the difference between an engineer and a pure science major like a chemist or a physicist. Engineers nearly always team-work. It's very, very seldom that an engineer gets a project like Tom Swift or some of those comic books where you've got this one hot-shot engineer who does everything. Engineers are taught to work as a team all the way through school. In every project that they work on, they work as a team, and if you want to get a good grade on a project in school, you have to do 80 percent of the work, because the other people may not care that much about having a good grade. So if you want a good grade, you've got to put forth effort. When you get out in the real world, it's the same kind of thing. You have to go a little bit more than your fair share on a project in order to ensure the success of the project.\\n\\n A chemist or a physicist, they operate in a little bit different environment. They've been taught all the way through school that you can't copyright something, that you can't patent something in those areas. The way that you get well known is you write something down and present it at a conference, and once you present it at a conference, you get credit for it, and your standing in the world depends on how many of these things that you take credit for. You can nearly always tell when somebody's arrived. You just go to these conferences and look at the publications or the index, and when you start referencing more of your work than you do of somebody else's work, you consider that you've arrived. Up until that time, you're riding on the coattails of somebody else.\\n\\n That's probably about all I can tell you about this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, before we close I'd like to see if Tim and Kevin have any questions for you. Tim?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Tim Farrell", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can't think of any others." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Kevin?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I have a few. You mentioned earlier, you were talking about the difference in attitude among engineers here from Apollo to Space Station. How would you say the Space Shuttle fit in that transition?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When the Space Shuttle came about, that's what I tried to get across, about we had just powered down the Center. We had laid off lots and lots of people here, government workers as well as contractors, and then from the Apollo Program we had taken a big decrease, a big hit. The people that was left here when the Shuttle was started had the feeling that if they did not build that Shuttle within the schedule and within the cost, there would be no agency, there would be no NASA. So people really worked on Shuttle out of the feeling that they wanted to preserve the agency, and they wanted the Shuttle to be successful because they felt like there would be no agency if the Shuttle was not successful. So I think that was a big change.\\n\\n In Apollo, it was the competition with the Russians. On Shuttle, it was the protection of the agency, and then on Space Station, it was more thinking about \"my job\" and \"my responsibility\" and \"my authority to direct somebody else to do something.\" Nobody wanted to do anything on Space Station, but everybody wanted to tell somebody else what they had to do on Space Station, and that was a big change that I've seen between those programs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were working on Shuttle development—I'm particularly thinking early on in the early 1970s—how much did budgetary considerations affect or limit your design capability?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had a major, major problem with the budget. Not that we didn't have enough resources; it was that we couldn't use our resources very well. The problem was on Shuttle, was they'd give us so much money this year, and next year they'd promise you that much. So you would plan to gear up and do this. Well, when next year came, they gave you this amount again and the next year you're going to build up and get all this money. Every year you was going to get well next year, but that never happened.\\n\\n Well, we would plan on and gear up for the people and things to do what was proposed in the budget, only to have that cut and slid out. The Shuttle was—you know, there's lots of ways of looking at things, but if you factor out inflation on Shuttle, it came in just about what was proposed. There was very little overrun, what I would call as pure overrun on the Shuttle. It probably came in as close to budget as any program we've ever worked on, at least the Orbiter part of it did.\\n\\n I remember about the same time the contract was let for the Shuttle, the contract was let for the B-70, I believe it was, and they were going to build five B-70s. Minus the avionics on the B-70, the cost of development of the B-70 was about the same as the cost of development of the Orbiter. Now, if you look at the technologies that had to come to bear on the Shuttle versus the technologies that you had to develop for B-70, there was no comparison. The B-70 was just another airplane, a little faster than the previous one, but it was a big, big bomber. The Shuttle had to go into space, it had to come out of space.\\n\\n You know, you think about kicking the Shuttle out of orbit halfway around the world and landing it on this little two-mile strip down here with no engines, you had to know the drag coefficients on that airplane all the way down through all the mach numbers, and that all had to be developed and all had to be confirmed in wind-tunnel testing. You know, hundreds of thousands of hours of wind-tunnel testing was done on that vehicle on different models, every size. I guess we used every wind tunnel in the United States to do some testing, because we didn't trust the data we would get from one. You had to confirm it in another one and another one this size and that size, and you're working with these little old-scale model things, and then you have to scale it up to full scale and try to figure out the scaling factors. Not everything scales linearly.\\n\\n So that was a big problem. We wasted a lot of money in the Shuttle Program simply because of the way the budget process worked and not getting the money on the years that it was promised when it was promised." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would you describe the relationship between your branch and later the division and the Space Shuttle and Orbiter Program offices?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, as long as Aaron Cohen was Shuttle program manager, project manager, we got along very, very good, and I got along with Warren Morrison and Bob Thompson real well. I think the people in the division was highly respected by the program, project management in that time frame." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A specific question on Shuttle. Was there any consideration of using an all-electric fly-by-wire system for the control surfaces instead of hydraulics?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Matter of fact, that's one of the battles we lost, and I thought I had it sold and dropped the ball on it. Yes, we designed an all-electric vehicle. I didn't like hydraulics. I just knew that sooner or later we were going to have a hydraulic leak and sooner or later we were going to have a fire in the back of that vehicle when we come home because we got all that hydraulic fluid back there, and it's going to get hot enough, it's going to catch fire and we're going to have a problem.\\n\\n So we wanted to go with an all-electric system, and we pretty much sold that all the way up through Bob Thompson here, but then we went out to Rockwell and made a presentation out to Rockwell, and I guess George [W.] Jeffs made the comment that he was going to have to lay off 200 hydraulics people, and he was going to have to hired 200 electric people, and Dr. Kraft says, \"Forget it.\" And so he made the decision not to change.\\n\\n They still have work going on out there now, studying and looking at those things, and we've made a lot of progress in those kinds of systems. A lot of fighter aircraft now have all electric airplanes, because you shoot holes in hydraulic lines and it's kind of unforgiving. You can put two wires in there and you shoot a hole in one wire, and it don't affect the other wire too much.\\n\\n But we have the capability now to build fuel cells where we could do away with the APUs, we could do away with the hydraulic systems, and go with an all-electric airplane that would probably be more reliable and safer than what we've got, and maybe one of these years they'll start upgrading and going with some of the technology. It'd save a lot of weight and give you more payload. Now you go into Space Station, you need every bit of payload you can get because that's costing us about 12,000 pounds to go to 57 degrees." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Last time you talked a little bit about Guy [Joseph G.] Thibodaux from propulsion and power. I wanted to ask you about someone else who was in the same division, Chet [Chester A.] Vaughan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Chet Vaughan. Chet Vaughan and I worked together from the day I walked into this Center. If you want something done, you give it to Chet Vaughan. There is no job too big, there is no job too little for Chet to do, and he's just like a little tiger when he gets a hold of it, he won't let go until it's done. Extremely conscientious guy with an enormous amount of energy. If coffee needs to be made, he'll make coffee. If you've got this big management problem, you can give it to him and he'll wrestle with it until he gets it fixed. Give him a design problem, he'll wrestle with it until he comes up with the answer to it. A tremendous guy.\\n\\n You know, we were very, very fortunate there in the division of having very good, extremely conscientious people. We just happened to have picked up a good group of people. I was kind of discouraged when I first came down here and started working with Mr. [Aleck C.] Bond and Mr. [Joseph N.] Kotanchik. Matter of fact, I even almost went back to Huntsville, because I had come from an organization that gave us a lot of responsibility, didn't tell us ho to do anything except they wanted it done yesterday, and then I come down here where we'd go to a staff meeting and spend four hours in a staff meeting worrying about editing reports, who the editor ought to be and what kind of style we ought to use, and if something got in Aleck's briefcase, it just didn't get out.\\n\\n He was used to this research atmosphere at Langley where your product was the report and you design something, you build it, you put it in a wind tunnel. Most people don't realize it, but every airplane in World War II flew with a Langley wing. Langley never built an airplane in their life, but they developed the criteria for a very efficient airfoil for the wings. Same way with Lewis. Lewis never built an engine, but every airplane that flew, flew with the cowling that was developed at Lewis for the air flow to go through and cool the engines. So those people came more from a research side of the house. When they first started out on Apollo Program, they couldn't quite break away from that mold, and I found that very, very difficult to work with. I'd get so aggravated and frustrated with those two guys.\\n\\n Fortunately, Guy Thibodaux came down and took over the division in about a year after I got there, I guess, and Guy was just the flip side of these other two guys. He was extremely bright. I don't know of anybody that knows more about more things than Guy Thibodaux. I never did find a guy really coming up with something that was not right. I do remember him telling Joe Shea something when he first came down here one time that I didn't think was right, and I waited until he got back in his office, walked in there, and said, \"Guy, I need to talk to you.\"\\n\\n \"Come on in.\" He was always very gruff and very intimidating.\\n\\n I told him, I said, \"Well, you told Dr. Shea such and such, and I'm of the opinion that that's not right.\"\\n\\n His eyes got cold. He looked me right in the eye and said, \"You and I need an understanding here and now. If I ever say something, if I ever do something that you think is not right, you tell me then and there that you think it's not right, and you tell me why you think it's not right, and you listen to my comeback, and then you come back on my come back to convince me where my comeback is faulty.\" And he says, \"If you still think I'm wrong, you go back down to your office, and you write down all of the reasons on a piece of paper why you think that decision is wrong, and you bring them in here, and you sit down with me, and you got over them with me one by one. And if in three tries you haven't convinced me that I'm wrong, you've got two choices. You can get down to your office and do it my way, or you can quit.\" And that was some of the best advice I ever got, and Guy practiced that.\\n\\n Then he just went over and picked up the phone and called Joe Shea and says, \"Henry's in here, and Henry just reminded me that I told you something that was incorrect,\" and told him what it was. Most people, when they say something that's not right, they hope it'll go away without telling anybody, without having to admit that they made a mistake, but not Guy. He was just up front with it, and that's the way I found him with everything. Not one time did he ever stray, give me bad advice, or steer me in the wrong direction.\\n\\n I remember I had a problem with this one guy out there. I couldn't supervise him. He did a super good job on the things he wanted to work on, but he wouldn't work on things I wanted him to work on. I went in there one day and told Guy, I says, \"I've got a problem with So-and-so, and this is the problem.\"\\n\\n He says, \"Henry, you've got a problem. It's not him, it's you.\" He says, \"You're trying to change him.\" He says, \"Don't ever try to change somebody.\" He says, \"My professional experience tells me that every human being can do something good, and it's a supervisor's responsibility to find out what that is and use him in that area, and if you can't use them in that area, get rid of them, but don't try to change them.\" Very good advice. I followed that all of my life, followed that philosophy.\\n\\n A lot of the things that I picked up, a lot of the characteristics that I picked up, I picked them up from Guy Thibodaux. Matter of fact, he probably did more for my success and my advancement through the organization than anybody else because he laid down a foundation, he laid down the work ethic of honesty and integrity that was absolutely beyond reproach. He had enough self-confidence in himself that he didn't have to prove something to somebody else. He would let the people have credit for something when credit was due. He was not anxious to get any credit for anything himself.\\n\\n I ought to bring you an article I wrote for his retirement, if I can still find it. I know Guy's still got some copies of it. I sat down and wrote something out the night before his retirement that I read up there about comparing him with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony and those people. That's where he found out that I knew something about Shakespeare. I'll see if I can't find one of those articles and send it to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That would be great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just one final question. You did a chapter on reaction control systems in the manned spacecraft engineering and design." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall the circumstances behind that book and your involvement with it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's the brainchild of Paul [E.] Purser. When we first moved down here, there was no good text anywheres on the design of spacecraft, and we knew we were going to have to start hiring a bunch of young people out of college. What Paul wanted was some kind of a text that could be used for the engineers, and particularly the engineers at Rice University, because we thought we was going to hire a bunch of those students and teach them a little bit about spacecraft design. So the intent of that book was to cover all of the disciplines that was required to design spacecraft, manned spacecraft, and so you've got a chapter in there on each one of those disciplines.\\n\\n Well, I happened to have the RCS at that time, so it was my job to write that chapter. I didn't spend a lot of time on it. That was done mostly at night at home, because days were pretty much taken up with the day-to-day activities, so I'd go home at night and I probably worked on it two or three nights at home, and somebody typed it up and put it in the book, and that's it.\\n\\n When I first came down here, we needed some test facilities, and I made the mistake of telling Dick [Richard B.] Ferguson, \"Well, I can design you a test facility.\"\\n\\n \"Would you?\"\\n\\n So I go home at night and I design one, just sketch it out on a piece of notebook paper, and took it back in and sat down with him and explained it to him, thinking he was going to go give it to an architect and they were going to put it in all the drawings and everything. Shoot, they put it out on bid and built it just from that sketch from the notebook paper. In two weeks' time, we had a test facility out there in Ellington Field. That building might still be standing out there, because I think they made it out of six-inch-thick reinforced concrete, so if something blew up it wouldn't hurt you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kevin M. Rusnak", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. That's all I have. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have anything you'd like to say in conclusion?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I guess not. The one thing I will say is that I was extremely, extremely fortunate in having an opportunity to work in an environment at a time and a place where it was fun to get up and go to work every single morning. I was raised on a farm. I really wanted a farm, but I couldn't make enough money farming to buy a farm. Engineers was getting this huge salary. They were getting $400 a month at that time. So I was going to go four years to college, get a degree in engineering, then I was going to go work for four years, and I was going to make enough money in those four years to buy a farm.\\n\\n Well, when I graduated, I got drafted in the Army, did my basic at Fort Bliss [El Paso, Texas], then I went out to Huntsville and got to see my first rocket engine. I lost all interest in farming then. That's what I wanted to do, and that's what I've done. You know, I am convinced that our contributions that we made in our lifetime has made the quality of life of humans a whole lot better than it would have been had we not had the opportunity to work on the kinds of things that we worked on. It's been fun. You know, a lot of people go out and work and make money to go do the things that they like to do, like playing golf. I never did take up golf because anytime I wasn't working, I was either thinking about it or I was out at the office. I was either home or I was at the office. That's the only things that mattered. There was nothing else.\\n\\n I remember being in Huntsville on test day one Saturday night. I have to tell you this one real quick, and maybe I did. But this technician came up to me—I was in the Army—and says, \"Henry, they can't make you stay out here at night. I'd just tell them I'm not going to do that. You ought to be downtown having a good time, single, young, and in the Army. You ought to be downtown having a good time.\"\\n\\n And you know, I couldn't figure out how I could tell this guy that there was nothing in this world that I wanted to do worse than what I was doing that night out there on that test stand. That was a whole lot more fun than it would have been carousing around town or boozing it up someplace. And that's kind of the way my life has been all the way through. It's been something that I wanted to do more than anything else. So I never did mind putting in the extra hours and extra time. I kind of enjoyed it. That was my interest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's wonderful that you can look back over your career and be glad that you did what you did and you made a contribution." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and I keep telling everybody that I don't want to do it over again because I'd just screw it up worse the next time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we thank you so much for sharing your memories with us. We've really enjoyed hearing about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Henry O. Pohl", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, if I can help you out any other way, let me know, anytime." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00057", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-015.pdf", + "item_link_text": "McMahon, Thomas M. (1961-1963): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-015", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-015", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Thomas Michael McMahon served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) from 1961 to 1963 in education and irrigation projects. He was part of the first group of volunteers in mainland Asia. McMahon trained at the Experiment in International Living site in Putney, Vermont, with 31 recruits and studied the Bengali language and the social life and history of East Pakistan. He faced a medical problem and possible de-selection after training and was greatly relieved to enter the country with his group in November 1961. After homestay in Dacca and training in Comilla, he was assigned to teach electricity and physics in a technical school in Rajshahi where he helped to rewire emergency lights and became known as an electrical troubleshooter. In the second year, McMahon served as engineer advisor on the Ganges-Kobadak irrigation project and later became a volunteer leader. After the Peace Corps, he worked as a nuclear engineer and served 8 years as the mayor of Reading, Pennsylvania. McMahon continues with international projects and has two daughters who also became Peace Corps Volunteers. Interviewed and recorded by Patricia Wand, August 25, 2018. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "25 August 2018", + "extent": "2 digital files (audio; stereo; 76 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "006. Bangladesh (East Pakistan).", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Bangladesh (East Pakistan). McMahon, Thomas M. (1961-1963): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Bangladesh; Pakistan", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-015", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-015-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "November 8, 2023 2:03:25 PM EST", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/661k1p02sxd3s5w3528yu7410il7601y.pdf?odc=20231115174218-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/6c745f99-c80e-4fab-b71d-5b63c8dc6ca4/3a0a5a77-ec5a-4587-a4ac-9ea660fedc79/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzJiYjVfMzQxMzhjYjNlYzBkZDk0OGZhOTViMzYwNjhkZTQ4NzBjZTY5ZjUxNzdlMjllMTk4MjEyY2QzODk4ZDBkZDAzM18vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS82Yzc0NWY5OS1jODBlLTRmYWItYjcxZC01YjYzYzhkYzZjYTQvM2EwYTVhNzctZWM1YS00NTg3LWE0YWMtOWVhNjYwZmVkYzc5L21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania", + "length": "32 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 12, 2018, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Thomas M. McMahon Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Patricia Wand" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Thomas M. McMahon" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:06", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 25th, 2018, and I am Patricia Wand. I am interviewing Thomas Michael McMahon, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in East Pakistan, currently named Bangladesh. He served from July of 1961 until June of 1963, and he was in the East Pakistan I group which had a number of volunteers doing different assignments. So, Tom, let me first tell you how pleased I am to be able to capture your story today and to do this interview with you. I've been looking forward to it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:58", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:01:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So before Peace Corps, think about that year before Peace Corps. What did you what were you doing then in that years 1960-61?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:13", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had grown up in Rochester, New York, and was in the engineering school at Rochester Institute of Technology in my last year, and I was thinking about trying to do something internationally when I graduated. And I had no clear idea. But when I had heard President Kennedy give the speech and asked for those who would be willing to spend two years abroad doing something very low pay, it occurred to me that that would be a very interesting thing to do. That was in January of 1961, when in March of that year there were five children in our family. My sister had gone by that time and was off on her own. But in March of that year, my father passed away unexpectedly and I was left with the decision to make because I was going to graduate in June of that year and after some conference with the family, and they were encouraging me to do what I wanted to do and when I thought I needed to do. And it was a tough decision for me to leave. But what I did and applied for Peace Corps and was accepted and I get a telegram that said, you are accepted for a program in East Pakistan. I didn't know where it was. And I opened up an atlas and coincidentally, I found it would only be about two or three hundred miles away from where my uncle, my favorite uncle, was serving as a as a priest, a Jesuit priest in India. And it kind of clinched it for me and to say I need to do that because be close enough to possibly visit my aunt, who's my both of these were my my brother and sister of my mother.\n\nMy aunt was serving as also a missionary in Bolivia, at the time. So I sent the application in and it was accepted, as I say, and then went to Putney, Vermont, took the train from Rochester to Putney and settled in at the place called the Experiment in International Living. And there were 29 volunteers, I think possibly two more there at the time, because two people, I think, left during the interim period of training. So we had the training in Putney and it was an eye opening experience for me especially. I was motivated not only by the idea of serving abroad, but with the quality of the people that I met who were selected as volunteers along with myself. I felt so lucky to be in that group. And they were in many ways amazing people. And lots of cases kept lifelong contact with the several. And that was that was that was the beginning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:04:44", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, that sounds like an impressive beginning and afforded you an opportunity to break new ground, certainly in in the Peace Corps in those early years. Thinking back a little bit more about your childhood, were there things in your childhood that you think influenced you? You mentioned your uncle and aunt, both of whom were deeply engaged in international activities. Were there other things that your family did that generated that maybe perhaps motivation? And also another related question. Did you go to your elementary and high school in Rochester as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:05:35", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I went I went to elementary school and senior things at and Charles Avenue in Rochester. And the high school was Aquinas Institute and graduated from there in 1956. And I wanted to go to college and I didn't have any money. We didn't have resources. My father was a policeman, walked a beat and maybe only brought home a hundred and fifty dollars every two weeks, something like that. It was a very small not even then, and it was a struggle. And I and I knew that I wanted to go to college, so I had a chance to go to the co-op school where I could work three months and go to school three months, so I got I got an opportunity to work for the utility company Rochester Gas and Electric. And that gave you some qualifications, which I didn't realize that I would be able to use later on, and that I was working as a as a maintenance electrician in a power plant for the three months. And I went to school three months. And at that time I could afford to make enough money to be able to pay my college tuition and end up without any student debt, which is very unusual. And so when 19 of your earlier question growing up, my mother was a very adventurous person kind of person. And so she liked to, she was very well read and encouraged us to read.\n\nAnd we knew about what my uncle and my aunt were doing. And we would sometimes go to travelogs at the museum. And I remember there would be people showing slides of their journeys and their adventures and planes would land and they would have slides showing the mountain in Africa or in South America and seeing places that I thought I'd never be able to see. And until one night when I had that opportunity, I thought I needed to do this because I thought I'll never have a chance to do it again after I graduate. So it started from there. And that was that was my interest. And I, I had I had a kind of it's kind of a life plan at that point. And that was a big check to get it started on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:07:59", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So your life plan included traveling." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes it did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Inspired partly by your mother and her interest?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:08:06", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Her interest and that of my aunts, my aunt and uncle. So then when we got took the train to got the invitation to go and took the train from Rochester in New York City up to Putney, Vermont, and was welcomed there by some people from the Experiment in International Living. And I had no idea what it was. But I found out that they had a long history of people serving in various locations overseas and in a home state type program. And that's the way it was going to be structured, as we were the first group to go to mainland Asia. And so we were excited about that. And we had a chance to interact with the other almost 30 people or 30 people at the time, 31 during that training period of about three months, if I recall, very intense on language like language, which I enjoyed a lot. It was every day the Bengali language was taught along with history and culture, and we had the opportunity to hear from people on both sides of the religious segments, you might say. And it was at that time East Pakistan was 80 percent Muslim and maybe 20 percent of Hindu and in a few percent of Buddhists and Christians as well. So we needed to understand the relationship and the history of the subcontinent, what the Indian, India had gone through with partition. And for many of us, it was the first time we had in-depth discussions of the conflicts and the potential things that we needed to be careful of, that we couldn't we needed to know how to eat and how to eat with our hands and how to welcome each other, welcome one another.\n\nBut also that the understanding between the religious elements was delicate, to say the least. And that had come out in during partition in 1947. And they were still, I think, some residual parts to that. But going back to Putney, it was three months of very intense. I did very, I thought very well in language because I enjoyed the language part. I always have. And I enjoyed working and getting to know the volunteers. We didn't know where we were going to go. I had my first assignment was to a place in northern East Pakistan, which is called Thakurgaon was so remote that it was very hard to reach what I understood and some of the people from the experiment. Had visited there, and I got the impression that they were kind of amazed that this young 22 year old, fresh, young faced engineer was going to go up and see if he could make a difference. And it was probably a lot of skepticism on her part and probably others as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:11:31", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You know, before before we take you to the country, I'd like to to see ask a little bit more about the training. It was good that you've covered the content. And what about physical training? That was an element in the ‘60s, a very important element." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:11:50", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "An important element and myself being what we might call over coordinated. I'm not an athlete. I was out on the soccer field for the first soccer game in which I broke my nose by Peter Von Christersen and a good friend and a very good player. And there were so many good players and among the men that were there. But I wasn't. And so I didn't I didn't jump to had the balls the right time. And I packed my head, my head hit his head and ended up with Dr. John Hoopas, who was trying to put my nose back together again. And he did as well as best he could. And then he said after it was all over, he said, I'm not a surgeon. And I was still a little bit of a kink in it. It may be when you come back with me, you may have to be broken again to make it straight. And I said vanity is not one of my strong points. And therefore I expected that people passing by my last remains might notice that. But who knows?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:13:00", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I will say, Tom, now that you pointed out, I can see that I could see that little curve." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:13:06", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s a little crook there, in the nose." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:13:08", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But I would never have noticed it had it not been part of your story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:13:13", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that's good. That was part of my history in the Peace Corps. Yes, the training included the athletics. That was when I say I went along with it to be part of the group, but when I was not a champion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:13:30", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you played soccer. What other things did you do as part of this physical training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:13:35", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Swimming and those people who couldn't swim? They really were trying to learn how, because we knew that Bangladesh was a country of rivers and we had this impression that we needed to know that. And so there were there were experts who were brought in from the local fire company, I believe, and they and also the local emergency services. So they give us some good ideas about how to take care of yourself in a place where you were on your own. And we had to be aware that there were things that were especially dysentery, which was a very great concern because we knew that there had been at least one incident, I believe, in the Philippines where, you know, a volunteer had been lost. And so we were well aware of that. We needed to we needed to take care of making sure that we eat right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:14:34", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when you say volunteer, in this case, it would have been a volunteer with the Experiment in International Living because the Peace Corps wasn't in the Philippines yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:14:44", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were nobody in the country at that time. I think, you know, I guess that's right. Maybe they came to us later, but it maybe was during the training. I forget exactly when it happened, but it was used to be sure that we understood that you have to boil your water and you have to treat it with tablets, which we did the iodine tablets. And of course, we had to worry about malaria. So we all had malaria. I was diagnosed with a heart murmur and that was, I think, early. And the doctors knew and could understand that I had something they call the heart. And they saw that I had rheumatic fever when I was a child. I didn't have any remembrance of it. My mother didn't either. But when we came to the end of training, I was almost selected out because myself and another young lady who was, um, was she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and she had to stay home for another year before she could come over. But the doctor who had given the approval for both of us to go at the time, it was overridden by Peace Corps people in Washington to see these two individuals can't go. So I was not going to be able to go. I only found that out about three days before the plane was going to leave from New York City." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:16:16", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were on home leave" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was on home leave." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you finished training. And what when did you finish training? Do you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:16:25", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was it was in early October. In mid-October, the plane left. I think it was October 21st. But I only found out that three or four days earlier that I might not be able to go. Well, then I got a call from the Peace Corps group in the experiment who said that they were Dr. John Hoopers, who is a doctor and, you know, in the area. So wonderful guy who is the one who helped try to set my nose. And he was the he personally drove to Washington and one night to argue the case for myself and for the other young lady. And from what I understand it, he got the message that Sargent Shriver was at a reception or a dinner or something, and he went out there and made the case face to face, face fo face, made the case face to face. And. And I think Shriver then understood that that hope was made a good, strong argument that he was going to provide me with a what they call prophylactic dose of penicillin that I would take it with me. And I take a capsule every day while I was there, and that would prevent recurrence. And it was a huge bottle and a very, very large.\n\nAnd so that was the deal was made that I could go. But the other young lady would have to stay for a year at least. So I, I was nervous about that, but I wasn't sure that I had it was going to be able to go and therefore it was getting close to the date of leaving. And I got a call from one of the people, the Peace Corps staff and the Experiments staff, we said the plane is tomorrow at 2:00. And I said, I don't know what to do. I haven't gotten total approval yet from Peace Corps. So she said to me, get on the plane and go to New York, bring your bring your luggage with you, and we should know. And so I did. And I boarded the plane my first time on an airplane in Rochester and flew to an engine. You know, Decota DC three, we call them goony birds, to New York City, and went into the hotel and saw one of the volunteers. And he said to me, Tom, I'm so glad you're coming with us. And I think it was Rachel or Kiki McCarthy. I said I really I said I didn't even know that. They said, no, go upstairs. And I went up and found I could go. And so I was elated and I thought, this is wonderful because I thought if I couldn't go, I thought my life would be ruined, you know? Oh, my God. I'd have to go back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:19:29", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "End of your life. I can figure it out, you know, what to do next. So when you flew from Rochester, were you flying did you fly to Idlewild, which was the former name of the Kennedy airport?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:19:42", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was. Yes, I think it was. I would have remembered that. Um, yeah. And this is the first time on a plane. But, you know, we say at the Henry Hudson hotel and in New York and I the next day we got up and we went and we're standing in line and got on the plane. And I remember distinctly sitting on this plane of the 747, you know, that we thought was a magnificent airplane at the time, long since updated, but it was just wonderful jet and I sat down and I buckled up that seat belt and I thought to myself, nobody was going to get me out of that seat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No matter even if they came on and said, you're out of there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they would have had to drag me out. I wouldn't have I wouldn't have gone up voluntarily. It would have been one of those things would be an incident. He refused to get out of that seat. And fortunately, the plane the door closed and the plane took off and we started flying out of the ocean and I knew that we were Ok. And twenty four hours later, a long, long ride, we landed in the tarmac. Well, first of all, to Calcutta, which was a shock because when you landed Calcutta and I think it must have been very early in the morning, we got there. There were people out sweeping the runways, women that were crouched down with a broom and they would sweep the runways and just sweeping in a few feet at a time and look and you think to yourself, what is going on here? And so our first glimpse of what we were going to find out more detail.\n\nWe then boarded another small plane to Dhaka and stepped off that onto a hot tarmac. And we were all dressed for winter because it was October weather when we left. And of course, we were just drenched in sweat and we were tired. And there was a few people from the embassy that welcomed us in. A couple of, um, their names were Cavanaugh. I think we just coincident, um, that was my mother's maiden name, a Cavanaugh. And we were assigned to their place that we could sleep over for the night, you know, in an air conditioned room. And we had a nice meal and the shower was just wonderful. And then we, that was our first day in Pakistan. It was a Sunday when we woke up in a few of us were at that time practicing Catholics and went to the church and we walked down. I remember the down to the church and listen to the boys and girls were singing and in the Catholic Church and participated. And then the next day or two, we we got together and some of us were sent to homestays in in Dhaka itself. And so I was in that first group to stay with, you know, a family of Bengali family in Dhaka. He was a lawyer and he was he and his wife. And they had a daughter who was a little younger than I, not too much. And, um, they were very kind to us. And I think we stayed there for maybe ten days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:23:28", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Two of you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:23:30", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was just myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:23:30", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, you're by yourself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:23:33", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we were all each individual. Each one of us went to a different location. We had a homestay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:23:38", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so how, what language did they speak English or were you then on your own or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:23:44", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They spoke really good English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:23:45", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Didn't have to rely on your Bengali." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:23:48", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very good English. And he was he was Muslim. And a surprising part of it was his wife was Hindu, most amazing. And he was he was quite a jokester. And he took me he took me to a party one night and we were there with a mixed group of Muslims and Hindus that were in the professional elevation society that he was at. And somebody handed me a drink and I thought it was just soda. And I took a little whiff of it and it was scotch. And I thought to myself, my goodness, I can't be drinking. This is a Muslim country. This will make a bad impression. And his name was, um, Shaukat Ali Khan. His name was Shaukat Ali Khan. He was a lawyer, defense lawyer. And he said when I put it down, he said, Tom, that's very expensive. You can't waste that. And so I had to drink it, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:24:53", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And he wasn't offended. So he did he have any alcohol as a Muslim?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:24:59", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think he did. He gave it, I think, stretching or stretching things a little bit. But what we did during that, I think it was two weeks in the home stay together. Um, after that, we went to, um, Cumilla got on the train and we during during the homestay, we stayed at the home of the Bengali family and we slept there at night. And then during the day we'd ride our bikes to a place where we'd have some more training in local customs and history and the geography of the country, that sort of thing. And it was it was very good. It was really good in that we took the train to Cumilla about I think it was two weeks later. And that was the Academy for Village Development, which was a magnificent operation under the direction of it was Pakistani by the name of Dr Hamid Khan, who became really famous later on and who was was, as I say, was Pakistani, who was assigned to Bangladesh, and he grew a great love for the Bengali people and the Academy for Village Development was a was becoming a resounding success internationally. People knew about it and they knew about is his background. He had been with what we'd call the Indian civil service many years before that, before partition, which was an extremely well respected and efficient organization, the ISI, as it was called. And it was the men and women, I guess primarily men who were mostly men, maybe 99 percent who were members of the ISI. They were given special special treatment. And I respect his his job was to do economic and community development and in various villages around the commercial area. So it became a test area for for health issues, for for for women's issues and very advanced at the time. When you think about this and for experiments in India and rice growing and working with Japanese consultants who helped the Bengalis look at the opportunity to do a third rice crop, a rice crop and management of the resources and as well as health and nutrition. So it was it was way ahead of its time and all of us were excited to be part of that. So that were there were there were many of us that, you know, we loved what was happening. And we just learned about this at Cumilla. And the first couple of weeks, three weeks we were there, but we weren't all assigned there and was just that we learned about all those great things they were doing. So my assignment at that point was to leave and go up to the university town called Rajiv Shah University." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:28:19", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, you spent three weeks in Cumilla?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:28:25", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "About three weeks, if I remember. But there were two were three, maybe maybe three or four people stayed there. One of the was doing engineering and other was doing working with the women's issue. And I was I was working and so with the farmers. And another was Africa was mostly helping with construction, I believe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:28:51", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that the location that you were sent, what is the name?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:28:55", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Cumilla. That that was where we had that, that the academy, the Academy for Village Development was there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:29:04", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. But then you were assigned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:29:06", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I was assigned later on to go as most of us were, to different other locations. So I was I was sent up myself and three others. Three of us. Four of us. Four of us were sent up to Rajshahi and my job originally was to work at a technical school and teach electricity and physics to students who were, you know, like middle school kids, and they weren't very proficient in English. And I wasn't very proficient in Bengali. But I did my best. And I became a I found myself enmeshed in a political situation between the principal of the school and the teacher, and that they felt one felt that I was doing a good job and I felt that I wasn't and that I wasn't communicating as well. And I tried my best in both English and Bengali, and that wasn't trained as a teacher. I was trained as an engineer, but I enjoyed trying to work with the students. I had 20, I think I 20 or 30 in the class and but the supervisors who turned out it wasn't they were too much upset with what I was trying to do. It was that each one of them wanted some control over me and they didn't know who was supposed to be giving me direction. And one guy would give me some direction. So I learned a little bit about Bengali politics that way. I did that for about six months. And and we we lived in a compound outside of the city and we had bicycles and the four of us who lived outside and then the two girls, two of our women were working in the hospital in Russia. And so we go back and forth sometimes to visit them, not enough because they got very angry with us. When we didn't show up once in a while, we would be too busy with our men type work.\n\nAnd then some one of them would ride out after a week or two and say two or three weeks. And we haven't seen you guys and you better come in because we get a little stir crazy. So we go out and then and I discovered that I had some other things that I could help them with. And I had gotten new, um, new lights for the emergency room. And they were getting it all wired up by local electricians. They asked me if I'd look at it. I looked at it. And since I was pretty familiar with this stuff and I, I said, you don't want to connect that up right now. I said, Why? I said, because the emergency lights are twenty four volt and you're going to put two hundred and twenty volts on it. And you were blow the whole thing up and be the last you see of it. So we stopped it and I was able to get Transformer to make the change and have it set up so that it could work and it worked OK. And then I sort of got the reputation of one when things went wrong tactically around the country. Then I got a chance to go and I'd hop on a train and go back down and help somebody with a new truck that had come in from Germany, which was a a portable machine shop. And part of it wasn't working correctly and asked me to help get it going, which I did. And that was fun. So I got a little troubleshooter right then. Well, then we were working with, as I say, with the students for that period of time. And then the new constitution was proposed and the students around the country went on strike almost universally. And so those of us who were teaching had to find secondary projects or other projects. And so the Peace Corps office in Dhaka had determined that I might be able to work out at a place called the Ganges-Kobadak project, which is an irrigation project on the Ganges River that flowed from India." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:33:25", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you spell?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:33:26", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ganges-Kobadak. G-A-N-G-E-S-K-O-B-A-D-A-K. Ganges- Kobadak. And so there was already a power plant and a pumping station that had been donated by the Canadians and it was actually disassembled from, I think in Ontario, Canada, and like an erector set taken apart piece by piece and we put it together back in Bangladesh. It was kind of an amazing assembly, I think. And so that was that was intended to be an irrigation project. And they'd already had begun to dig a series of canals, large canals, to carry the main part of the water to different parts of this this new settlement. It was an area that was pretty large, probably be consider now sort of the size of a good sized county. If you thought about it in American terms and the then the water then was distributed to what they call secondary canals, which would drain smaller canals into the individual like subdivisions, if you would think of housing development and an individual tertiary canals, which would be the third smaller canals, would end up the individual farm plots. So all of these was intended to provide a source of water during a time when there wasn't water in and take it from the river, the Ganges River, and it was under strict guidelines from at least at that time, the cooperative agreements between between East Pakistan and India for the amount of water that would be taken out of the river because it was very, very critical to Calcutta and to have enough water flowing down to be able to flow out and keep the mud from settling in down into Calcutta. Anyway, it was always a super controversial that if you took too much water, then it was going to be, you know, huge fight on both sides or would it be at one another's necks? But we were we knew how much water that we could pump out and that was being pumped in. The main engineers knew that my job was to work with the farmers and to set up a new project. By this time, I lived there about a year. So my project as newly appointed Peace Corps volunteer leader I had that was anointed as a leader." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:36:02", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this was it was your second year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:36:04", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My second year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:36:05", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so we're moving into. So you've spent about six months teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:36:12", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Six months teaching. And then in the next few months, I was a little handyman and then going around and learning and, you know, how things worked and helping troubleshoot troubleshooting projects here that helped in other areas. So I tried to be helpful to the people or our staff and in Dhaka. And I think I was then and then a bit then the next group was on its way into this irrigation project and they were going to need places to stay. So I. There were 16 volunteers coming in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:36:49", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, this is the next group of Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:36:50", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Next group of Peace Corps volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:36:53", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So East Pakistan II, if you will." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:36:55", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, East Pakistan II. And so they came in and I think it was 16 and two of them were women who were stationed at the hospital and in a clinic. And then the other 14 were in when I say six different locations were two each and they were out kind of spread out in the whole area, that that was the reach of the canal system. The network I was like I say, is county like a county wide system. And there were two that stayed in town and it had some function in town. And I was in town as well. And I was assigned a jeep. This is 1962. Too early to maybe. Ah, but so I had a jeep and it was kind of unusual. And first of all I had a small scooter in the jeep and my job was to, to get to make sure I get to each of those other six sites once a week and bring the mail and bring kerosene and bring any supplies that they needed to soap or just to make sure they were still alive and that they were OK because we wanted to be sure they were good. Everybody is healthy. So I did that. It was a little resentment on their part of thinking, who is this guy? Who is the first year? He's only been here a year. And I was I was pretty hot stuff because I could get by pretty well in the language, at least get around and drive and knew how to drive on the wrong side of the road, not getting killed. And so but I got along was mostly pretty well with the second group. And so they were they were sort of my charge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:38:39", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:38:41", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in, there was an in a town called Kushtia. Kushtia was K-H-U-S-T-I-A [sic], I think it is. I may not have my spelling right, but it was Kushtia pronunciation. Kushtia was along the river where the river is dividing that river between India and Pakistan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ganges River?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ganges River. And so, um, during that year, I forgot to mention that, um, it was Christmas in the first year. I go back a little bit and I wanted to visit my uncle in India. And so, ah, our leader, Bob Cherry, he was good enough to help get me permission to go, because it was not easy to go from East Pakistan to India, especially to get a visa, we were new. Nobody knew exactly what we were up to. There was a lot of suspicion that we might have been involved with CIA or that we might have been spying for the Indians. There was all kinds of rumors, but I was able to get a visa and then flew to Calcutta over Christmas and spent a few days with my uncle and flew into his town.\n\nAnd and it was, um. He was in a place called Jamshedpur. Jamshedpur in India, was a steel mining town. It’s still producing town. And it was a very large contingent of people from Goa. And the Indians had not yet invaded and taken Goa, which they did subsequently know, a year or so afterwards. So Goa was an independent Portuguese colony. It was a tiny little colony on the west coast. But in this particular area there was a lot of Goans and they celebrated Christmas and it was a marvelous Christmas. It was one of my best. And I just I had such fun, you know, we just went from house to house and it was singing and eating and caroling and all this fun stuff and spending time with my uncle, who I loved dearly. And so it's been I think I spent about a week we could have there and went back to East Pakistan, but got while I was there and I visited my uncle twice. Um, well, again, for about a week or so, I had a chance to go in with him to the leper villages because he was at that time, um, trying to do something about the leprosy and had organized a project called the Damien Social Welfare Project named after Father Damien, who had been in in Hawaii. And I think I've done this many years ago.\n\nBut in the leprosy project, I spent time which never we never, never forget, um, that my job was to be on the back of a truck and there was large bushels of wheat. It was bulgur wheat, it was called and bulgur wheat was sort of a poor substitute for rice. Once rice got low, people would eat the wheat what they needed, but the rice, the bulgur wheat was given by the United States to the Indians under a program called PL-480, which was a food for work. Remember, you have some knowledge of this? Yes. You're shaking your head so you know some about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:42:22", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was a grand postwar exchange." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I worked in libraries and we received books from countries who received food from the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:42:36", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. We do some kind of a there was an exchange of food for workers who worked on the roads. They would get paid in and wheat and bulgur wheat. And it was also some wheat available for the poorest of the poor. And my uncle at the time was working with Mother Teresa because they were close enough to Calcutta. So he would he would be getting recipients from there. But that that we bulgur wheat program was we did a lot of good, I think, in India and places like that, because a lot of construction was done and people were, you know, I paid in food, but my job in the lepers and the leper colony was the lepers would come up and they would have no hands, no fingers and hands. And all the ligaments in the nose and and the ears and hands would be gone. And a lot of them, no fingers would be. And it would be hard to walk because your feet were so sensitive that they if they stepped on something easily not know it and they die. So they'd have to be took pieces, all the tires, automobile tigers and cut them off, make shoes. But my job when they came was a Maxwell House coffee can you most of them had with a loop of wire across the top in India can there would be a piece of paper with the name of the person and the number of scoops of bulgur wheat they would get. And so my job was to there, hundreds of people would come and I would sit there and, you know, pick them up, find out two scoops, two scoops, and that would be under way.\n\nAnd that was that was what I did. And I, you know, got really sensitive to what was happening with the leprosy, leper colonies, which is still in very small amount. I think it's been reduced, but it's in Bangladesh and in India as well, and I will be back later on today, Bangladesh and visited a leper colony there and spent time with them. But back to the ‘60s, the of the time, um, when I when I was back working with the project, you know, when I first started with the project, we didn't I only had a project of the volunteers on the various areas of the irrigation project. Um, my first assignment was in the power plant. And to and because I had worked in a power plant in this country was to help put together some maintenance packages. And I did I started to do it. I absolutely hated it. They said this is what I wanted to do. And Bob Terry, bless his heart, understood he was our leader and understood. He said that Tom needs to be working with the people, doing things, you know, and I needed to be in the village. I needed to be helping this new group and get away from this other more technically, just me developing packages of procedures. And I didn't I couldn't I couldn't do that. So to I then I began working with the villagers and what was a wonderful extension, agents. And the only way I could be credible is that I sought out the the experts from the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO. And there was an expert there from Costa Rica and he was teaching the Bengalese. And I said to him, I need to take your class. He said, why? I said, I can't go out and work with them. And doing irrigation projects and deciding what's who needs water, who doesn't. And I can't do that because I know as much as they do. So I immerse myself in that. And soon I wish I was near the top of the class and understanding the whole irrigation process. And I could tell him I knew how to judge how much water was already in the land. And I, I knew when to give water when not two and different strains of rice, which would take it. So I was trying to keep up with them and I and I got some good respect from my irrigation workers who were there, who were the Bengalis working in that project. So when our new group came, I was pretty much up to speed on how to how to do some of the legwork in that project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:47:03", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So not only did I deliver water in kerosene, but I also worked with the irrigation workers. Then I found out that some of the villagers really, really were we needed to do something about you, about sanitation. And so I went to the USIS and I got myself a projector and a generator and got them shipped up. So I put it in the back of the jeep. And in the evenings, many evenings, we'd go out, we got dark and I'd go out into the village maybe 10, 15 kilometers out, and we'd set up the generator projector. And I had films in Bengali on sanitation and the latrines and washing your hands on the kinds of pathways of germs. And it was it was wonderful because people would come around and I mean, it's we're sitting in a room right now where there's a screen that's about the size that I had and the energy. And you can imagine if you get 50 people and 50 more and then 50 more and pretty soon 200 more, they're all in the back. And I can't see the film. They want to see it. And you have to come back the next day or another day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:48:20", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, technology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:48:23", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:48:24", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Describe those films you borrowed from USIS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:48:27", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first film was very professional done USIS film, which was when President Ayub Khan visited the United States and flew in in a Pakistani Air or Airways. PIA, Pakistan International Air, PIA. And it was it was in color and it was wonderful. And it was it was the language was Bangla and it was translated wonderfully in Bangla and the Bengalis absolutely loved it. Here was their president flying into the United States and its beautiful jet flying into Washington. And then he was shown traveling around Washington and they said that was you couldn't hear a thing that was so quiet and you watch at night cheering once in a while. But they watched and listened to every word and it was amazing. And so that was my that was my headline act." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:49:24", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. That brought them in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That brought them in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But what kind of film was this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:49:29", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was this was films that were produced." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:49:32", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But I mean the technology, the film itself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:49:33", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, the film itself was eight or sixteen millimeter. That was 16 millimeter, not eight. That was definitely 16. So I had gotten a projector that was available in Dhaka and they let me have it to use for this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:49:52", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was there electricity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:49:54", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I had to bring a generator. OK, I got a generator and I bring it to you know, we'd set it up right off the truck and and crank up the generator and plug it in the projector and set up the screen. We could have the whole thing set up and set up the speakers on both sides. We set up in 20 minutes and we run for an hour and a half or so and it got late. And then we back it all up, put it back in a few days later, go to another place and do that so that we did it at night and during the day I was helping to get other stuff around. So that was, um, it was an incredible experience. And I, you know, had a, um, uh, a couple of young Bengalese my age who helped me with that. And then at night we would sometimes sit and just chat and talk about all kinds of things. And and, um, and I found that that was where I discovered that everybody's the same. And, you know, when I one time my Bengali friend, a young young man who was, um. He came and he had gotten a letter from his mother and he'd asked his mother about his mother, who was going to find him a bride, and he came to me and he said, Tommy, do you some good English. And so between English and Bengali, we communicated really well. Tommy said, mother is finding a bride for me. He says, I'm really worried.\n\nHe said, I don't know what she's going to find for me. So he said, you need to, you know, write a letter back to her and say that you were concerned and you you know, you're looking for this, that or whatever. And so this letter, a letter comes back from his mother and he reads it and his mother says to him, um, how can you possibly think that your mother would not do the best thing she could do for you? This was in Bengali translated English. I know you like no one else in the world knows you. And I know exactly the kind of person who you should marry, therefore don't have any concerns and don't be any anguish about it. I will find the right person came in there, read that and looked at him and I said that would be any mother in the world. I said, that would be my mother to me and your mother to you. You said there's connections. You know, I said it's all the same with that same maternal instinct. I know you so well, then I'm not going to. And so that was the arranged marriage. Yes. And I said, how does it work so well?\n\nYou know, it seems to be arranged marriages work pretty well. You said works because the mothers know what's on both sides and the woman and then the mothers would talk to each other of, you know, and then finally kids get together and say, oh, they're pretty close. Amazing, amazing story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:52:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did his mother find him the right partner?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:53:01", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, he did. And she did. And I would back 30 years later and then forty years later and found them each of those two times and found out the tragedies. His first wife had died. She had even an accident. They had disappeared to Calcutta and get some surgery and she didn't make it and he got married again. He had a couple of children that he introduced to me and we kind of relived old times both times I would back. Um, but that was so we did for two years. And it was I guess the second year was the most fulfilling for me because of the interaction I had with the villagers and the and the agricultural workers who were young Bengalis my age, who we called the. The equipment around it was a little bit of fertilizer, not much, they didn't want to use too much chemical fertilizers, too expensive, and they couldn't do much with it, but it was primarily just getting the crop right. Timing right, irrigation right. And making sure that the farmers knew what they were doing in dealing with the irrigation project. They hadn't done this before. So then, uh, then I as I say, I helped. I found I found another place where the sterilizers that were being used were not working very well in the hospital. So I found out that I if I could fix the sterilizer. So I ended up fixing sterilizers a lot so that otherwise you'd get the hepatitis. And that was pretty rampant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:55:02", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this was repairs on these are little appliances like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:55:11", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were things that looked like crockpots and they were they were made in West Pakistan and they were very cheaply made. And they're not good quality. And so they they were sent over. And the needles that were to be sterilized. So they wouldn't bother sterilizing a lot of times. And sometimes they use the same needle over and over again. You know, dip it in water. And it was it was clear that it was just just hepatitis all over. I see, so that was the you became a very we became very tight knit group of the 20, turned out 29, cause two had left at some point. And so we loved getting together and going occasionally to the main city, Dhaka. And we had our our in our periods where we'd be invited sometimes to people who don't have beer or so if someone would get us get us into the New American club or able to do that. And that was that was once in a while. And so one time we I got one guy brought us up three, two or three cans of beer, one time up to Russia. I announce it and I'd had a beer and a long time. And I like I, I got to know, like beer and so I saved that. I put it we had a refrigerator, we had a little refrigerator that was run on kerosene. Oh yes. And you remember that.\n\nAnd we might have had the same thing. And I found out that we started it initially, couldn't get it to work, took it upside down and let it sit upside down for a day or two and then turned upside down to get to work. It was like resetting computer and at the same time, reboot, reboot the computer, reboot the refrigerator and light the thing up at the bottom. And it would keep our snakebite medicine cold because we had snakes in the area, which were pretty, pretty dangerous." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did anyone get bit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. We had snake bit kits and we kept them. Like I say, I don't remember anybody got bit. But we were we were very careful with that in the Bengalis were even more so because they didn't have access to snakebite kits. But if we'd be out on a jeep driving along or even walking along and we'd be a group of Bengalese and you see snakes slithering along, there would be like a riot. They would pick up every piece of clod of dirt they could and they chase after and try to kill the snake. And it would be like they would descend on it because they were terrified. They knew exactly what would happen if they got bit. But we tried to avoid that. It was small stakes. Snakes and snakes. They were called the crates. It's and it would be up in the straw hat on the top of the buildings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:58:09", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The roof of the house?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Roof of the house, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But did they bite? Were they venomous?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:58:16", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The crates were very venomous. And so we had too many problems with that. Generally we lived in what they call paca housing, which is which was like cement, didn't always have. My two daughters who were in Peace Corps later on, they lived in these kind of houses in Africa where they could hear this stuff up above them. But, um, during that period, we tried to work with each other, help each other, and we had a lot of pressure that nobody would go home. And so nobody at the end of the period of time, he said, the 29 of us, there were two that dropped out during training. So 29 went over and 29 came back. Two years later, we didn't lose anybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s quite usual." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a lot of pressure. And so I put pressure on a couple of the guys and we put undue pressure on. And I said, you can't do this. You're not leaving. No, we're not going to let you go. But nowadays, a lot more volunteers leave." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:59:25", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it has either of those guys that you pressured into staying. Have they ever thanked you for doing that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:59:35", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think I think he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:59:37", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were pleased with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:59:39", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They went through the periods of down, you know, some depression and he got through it. Yeah, they were glad you could look back and say they did it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:59:48", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, well, here we are. It sounds like close to the end of your two years there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:59:54", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. At the end of the two years then I, uh, I had applied for a Ford Foundation fellowship while I was there. And I got accepted to Penn State with a fellowship that allowed me to go to Penn State for two years or I got back and get a master's degree in nuclear engineering. And I took nuclear because I felt that that was going to be the power source for a developing world. And as it turned out, it wasn't so much because even in this country, we had a long problem of adoption. And even though I never came back, I worked. After I got a graduate degree in nuclear engineering, I worked and helped design and build and start up nuclear power plant. So I became pretty good at that and but I, you know, coincidentally ended up in back and forth to Japan doing those kind of things for many, many years and then started my own company after that. That's a different story that we want to concentrate on Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "01:00:56", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Well, but these are irrelevant, aren't they? You know, interrelated. So, uh, any memorable things you want to reflect on or say about the Peace Corps, those two years themselves?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "01:01:14", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was the, um, the two years was a chance. I said when people ask me where I'm from, I said I was born and raised in Rochester, but I grew up in Bangladesh. And they say, how can that be? I said, that's where I grew up. And it was that ability, the opportunity to be with people who are totally different from you, who are different to you, culture, different climate, different, everything different. It was why and to be aware, to be aware of what India and Bangladesh have. I have my brother in law is from South India, married my oldest daughter who served in the Peace Corps in West Africa. And she subsequently, she and I traveled one on one through India and Bangladesh and West Africa, as I did with my other two daughters at various times. So we are a traveling family. We love to do this, but my my son in law, he said, Tom, India and Bangladesh is an assault on all the senses at one time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sights, sounds and smells." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "01:02:26", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, everything. Sights, sounds, heat, smells, discomfort, whatever it is, all comes at you at one time. And yet to be able to handle that and to be able to accept it and to be able to say to yourself, look at where we are. We're sitting in a beautiful air-conditioned place. We got light 24 hours a day. We don't have to worry about electricity going off. We don't have to worry about the water we drink. We don't have to worry about the food we eat in general and the medicines we take and all the things that we take for granted. There's nothing new in most of the places, nothing. So all the experience of a Peace Corps, myself and my two daughters and don't having an experience of it as well. We've learned that no one, you can live very, very modestly with almost nothing, and you don't need all the accouterments that we think we do. And secondly, find our people are exactly the same, exactly the same. And I think deep down inside the emotions, the wanting a good life, wanting the best for your family, your children, and they just want to you want to want you want you want to live and be happy. That's it everywhere. Seems like a real goal and it's certainly made it difficult to do that. And so in the developing world, so when I hear stories of other volunteers, I'm always amazed that I didn't do enough. I just think I didn't do enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "01:03:58", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you came home and did a master's in nuclear engineering and you went into the nuclear engineering field, if you will, the nuclear energy field." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so tell us just a few highlights then from that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "01:04:12", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I became. Well, after I did that and I did that for 15 years and I coincidentally had gotten involved in the design and construction of a of a nuclear power plant in my hometown was very coincidental." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Rochester?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I ended up going back to Rochester after many years and then helping build and start up a nuclear plant. And the people coming to work in that plant were people had worked with years earlier in the old plants. And so this was great fun doing that. So I travel and after that, I traveled to Japan several times. I became the head of the department, Chief Electrical Engineer, it was called. The nuclear engineering company I worked with was called Gilbert Associates in Reading, Pennsylvania. And I did that till I was 40. And that oh, I have to tell you, this other time that happened in ’62. I was in Bangladesh during the Cuban Missile Crisis and we were hearing it on the newspaper or on the radio, these people. And one day in the middle of crisis, a Jeep pulled up in front of my house and said, Are you Mr. McMahon? And I said, yes. He said, the governor would like to see you. And the provincial district engineer, but he was in charge of the whole area as a district engineer, was like the county commissioner, you know, so he said, he'd like to see you. So put me in car, went down, and I walked into his office, big desk. He looked at me, he said, Mr. McMahon, what is your president trying to do, blow up the world? We are not in favor of this. We want, I want you to convey a message immediately to your ambassador and to the consul general and then to the president that we are we do not want this to happen. And he said, why is your president doing this? And being sort of young and brash, I said my president doesn't often consult me on these decisions. And he said, I understand how that could be, but I want you to convey the message, which I did. I sent a message back and said that the district engineer wants the president to know that he's." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "01:06:31", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not in favor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "01:06:32", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not in favor of this crisis going on. So do something about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "01:06:36", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "01:06:37", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was one of the more memorable times. Then I had another occurrence where there was a whole town went on strike and they were protesting something for the government and no one was supposed to drive. And someone in my second group was driving. They learn to drive a jeep and they were driving and they encountered a large group of people and they were making a lot of noise and they stopped the jeep and somehow one of them had a stone or brick. And I don't think it was thrown, but I think it was dropped and it damn near opened the skin. It was bloodied the skin of one guy's leg. So it might have been dropped. I had specific instructions that I had to report anything like this back to Karachi. So I did. And I called and I said, I have to report this. And he's been he's been slightly hurt. It's OK. A doctor looked at his bandage and everything's fine. What wouldn't you know, in Time magazine the next week there was a report of this incident." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Peace Corps volunteer hurt in East Pakistan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think I might have been named or who is the, you know, reported that the Peace Corps volunteer had been hurt on this. I thought, oh my god. Mountain out of a molehill." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "01:07:56", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you stayed with this same company then for fifteen years. And then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "01:08:07", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I started my own company." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "01:08:08", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then you started your own company. And by this time you were living in Reading?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What took you to Reading in the first place?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The engineering company. The large company." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[01:08:17]. I see. So you moved, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "01:08:19", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then when I started the company, I eventually took on two partners and we built it to about 120 people. And then we became pretty successful. And I determined at that time when I was 60, I was going to leave and we trained the next group of people. We hired not just any engineers, but we hired guys who knew how to run a business and we had to learn how to run a business, too. So when I did that and and then I became the marketing the outside guy, and so I became involved in a chamber of commerce and politics and then got. It got to help people on their political campaigns and always was inclined that way anyway, so when I did leave, um, that business and, uh, we, um, there was an opportunity to run for mayor of Reading, which happened in 2003 and I was elected in 2004. Four years later, became very active in the Obama campaign and eventually was able to spend time with candidate Obama, Senator Obama. My most memorable time was a bus ride, which was just he and I and one Secret Service guy and one staffer. And we were about a half an hour together going from one part of Pennsylvania to back to Reading." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "01:09:44", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was that, 2007?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "01:09:47", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in ‘07 for the ‘08 campaign coming up. He was just before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "01:09:50", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He was starting his campaign." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "01:09:51", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so we had a wonderful conversation. And I tell him about some of this. He asked me about the city. We talked about Peace Corps. We talked about the city. He talked about things we needed in the city. And I talked about a literacy program which started a whole bunch of things about that. I was very happy with the literacy program I was filling with some of the inner city kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "01:10:16", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Reading?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "01:10:17", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Reading. It was called Cops and Kids. It was a policeman working reading with kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "01:10:22", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you help set that up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "01:10:23", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did, but I borrowed it from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who borrowed it from Racine, Wisconsin. And I got to know, everybody in that loop. I told the president this is a great thing that we should do all over the country. Later on, one of my major friends and I was that I had become and a certain point president of the Pennsylvania Municipal League. So all the mayors were I was president my last year. And so he came to me and said, what did you talk to the president about? And I said I talked about our literacy program. He's said, literacy program, I want to talk to you about money, get money for our projects! I said, yeah, I had to do this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "01:11:04", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how long were you mayor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Eight years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Eight years. And is it like a term limit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "01:11:09", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. There was a limit on my ability to keep doing 24/7." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I couldn't do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "01:11:15", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that was 2012 that you do finished your mayor position. So we're about to, we're about to bring closure here. And before we do that, is there anything that you would like to reflect on before we close this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "01:11:44", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, only the fact that. Well, I have three daughters, the oldest daughter, when she graduated college, decided to go in Peace Corps and I had never pushed it at all. So she went to West Africa in Guinea-Bissau and was there for twenty three months, less than the total term. And there was it was a revolution. She managed to be evacuated. Thank you to our U.S. government got her out. And then my she came home safely and my middle daughter then joined the Peace Corps and went to Cape Verde Islands for two years and became a teacher. She was interested in theater so she formed theater groups. Eventually, she came back to the U.S. and got her master's and Ph.D. in African theater. And so she's teaching at UC Santa Barbara. And so we became immersed in Peace Corps type things. So that was the strongest. And my love for travel was never diminished." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "01:12:46", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. And have did you visit your Peace Corps daughters when they were?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how many times have you been back to Bangladesh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "01:12:54", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Twice. I went back twice. Once after about thirty years ago and after four years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "01:13:01", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that means it's been a while since you've been back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "01:13:06", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Last I was back is 2002. 16, 17, 18 years ago, and I went back and I want to do some of the visiting and I stopped to see the Peace Corps director and I also asked if there was any travel around the country. Is there anything I can do to help? They told me of a couple of cases where there some volunteers having problems. And what I stop and talk to them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "01:13:31", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this was in Bangladesh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Bangladesh, which I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Is Peace Corps still in Bangladesh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "01:13:36", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, long gone. And they left year after that, shortly after I was there, but not because of me. Yeah, but I did spend some time with a couple of volunteers who were having some issues. So I think that might have helped." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "01:13:50", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Well, Tom, this has been a great opportunity to hear your stories and learn about your Peace Corps experience and how it's impacted your life and how you grew up in Bangladesh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "01:14:03", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You that definitely you know, it was a great experience. I wish I wish it was the way that we could, uh, somehow bottle it, or convey it in a meaningful way so people get a glimpse of what it was like, what the value of it is. And it's hard to it's hard to say that. And it's hard to tell people sometimes in a short amount of time. But, uh, so I coordinate our sister city relationship with Germany right now. I've been doing this for years, so I'll be be over there and next month and I help with students back and forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "01:14:37", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What city?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "01:14:38", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Reutlingen, which is near Stuttgart. R-E-U-T-L-I-N-G-E-N. It's a city about a little bit bigger than Reading and which but I've become great friends with the mayor of Reutlingen. So we have exchange programs with students from our high school and the history museum and musical exchange. And I've been really interested in, I love classical music symphony, so I'm trying to get what I want. My goal is to get Beethoven's Ninth and, you know, combination of Germans and chorus and orchestra and everything all together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "01:15:30", + "speaker": "Patricia Wand", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. What a great dream. So hold that thought about how we can portray the Peace Corps experience most effectively. That is exactly what the Museum of the Peace Corps Experience wants to do. So with that, I'll end this interview and we can talk about the museum." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Thomas M. McMahon", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00840", + "metadata": { + "category": "NASA Headquarters History Office Oral History Projects 1999 - 2021", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/LightfootRM/lightfootrm.htm", + "original_file_name": "LightfootRM_12-18-18.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Administrators/LightfootRM/LightfootRM_12-18-18.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "location_date": "Huntsville, Alabama – 18 December 2018" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert M. Lightfoot" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 18th, 2018. This oral history interview with Robert Lightfoot is being conducted by phone in Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas, for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you again for joining me today for this interview so we can wrap up your NASA career.\\n\\n At the end of the last interview we were talking about the transition after Charlie [Charles F.]Bolden left, and you were there as the [NASA] Acting Administrator before President [Donald J.] Trump named a full-time new Administrator. You actually hold the record for being there longer than any other Acting Administrator. We were talking about the National Space Council. You said that there was a genuine interest from Vice President [Michael R.] Pence and that you had a seat at the table as if you were the actual Administrator.\\n\\n You also said that Congress worked with you as much as they could until—and this is a quote from your interview—they got pretty frustrated near the end. I was just curious. Do you feel that the frustration that they felt was from not having an actual named Administrator? Or was it something else that might have been going on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What I took out of it and actually got on that and where that really came through for me was in my last hearings on the [NASA] budget. The last ones I had to do. Most of the people on the committee made comments at the time, “It’s time to get the actual Administrator in here.” It was mostly on the House [of Representatives] side, by the way, where they stated that the Senate needs to act and confirm the President’s choice. I think it was more frustration associated with the fact that a nominee had been picked, had gone through committee, and hadn’t made it to the floor yet for a vote. That’s my take on it.\\n\\n It definitely wasn’t frustration with me or frustration with NASA. I even said it in my testimony, I didn’t feel like I was slighted at all because I was the Acting Administrator. But clearly the Agency needs an Administrator that was selected by the President of the United States was how I put it. I think that was what they were getting to.\\n\\n The record before me was 222 days, and I was there for 458. Not that I was counting, but that’s a pretty big difference than what they normally had seen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was quite a big difference in length at the time, that’s for sure. You mentioned that was one of your last acts as Administrator, to give a statement to Congress about NASA’s fiscal year 2019 budget request. Would you talk about that experience just for a minute? Asking for a budget for an Agency that you were leaving. I’m assuming you knew you were leaving at some point, but did you have any idea that it was at the end of that month?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t remember if I had announced my retirement or not. I think I had. Everybody knew, but I still had to present the budget. Honestly, Sandra, I’ve always been able to compartmentalize a little bit. As far as I was concerned, whether I was leaving or not I was still the NASA Administrator, and the NASA budget needed to be presented to Congress. I didn’t treat it any differently.\\n\\n I did use the opportunity in my final budget to thank a couple of members of Congress in my opening testimony that I felt had been very supportive. Chairman [Lamar S.] Smith was very supportive, and I knew that he had announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection, so I thanked him, just as an example.\\n\\n I didn’t know Chairman [John A.] Culberson wasn’t going to win, but I thanked him as well just because he’d been such a staunch supporter and had reached out to me numerous times to make sure things were going okay. That’s the part where people don’t see behind the scenes with some of these folks. Some of them are really trying to do the right thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve touched on that a little bit before. Like you said, people don’t understand that behind-the-scenes work that goes on to get things approved for NASA. Since we’re a federal agency, we do have to have things approved by Congress. Those individual members of Congress do the work that help to get those things approved and support NASA all the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think it goes even into their staffs. There’s some just amazing staffers that support these folks. Whether it’s the personal staff for the members or actually the committee staff. Some of the committee staff that I dealt with were as knowledgeable of NASA as me, they’d been doing it for so long, about what we were trying to do. Which makes it very helpful, because those are the people that can really influence the discussions. They’re the ones that would call and ask questions. We have to maintain a relationship with those folks because you wanted them to call you when they had questions as you moved forward." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that once President Trump announced his pick and the Senate had a chance to approve him, maybe you can just talk a little bit about that transition of handing over. Were you there while his staff was there as part of that transition? How close did you work with them? Or did you at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very little actually. Jim [James F.] Bridenstine finally got confirmed I want to say April. It was basically a week and a half before I retired, so we had a very small overlap time. He and I had been talking a lot as part of him being prepped. I checked on him every once in a while, made sure if there was anything he needed from me. Just a very respectful transition.\\n\\n One of the coolest things about our democracy is we transition from one to the other. Frankly everything I saw and every time I talked to him I knew he was going to bring, in my opinion, the type of passion and the type of understanding of what we need to do as an Agency. I was very encouraged actually to get him on board.\\n\\n I wish I’d had a longer transition with him because I think we could have done a lot more things. Depending on how you read it, when I announced my retirement is when one of the senators had been kind of holding up his confirmation actually said, “Well, looks like we need to go ahead and confirm,” in a tweet. I don’t know if that’s what caused it to finally happen or not. By then I’d announced my retirement, so I was done. That’s the way it worked.\\n\\n My conversations and my handoff with Jim, even after I left. I told him, “I’m here. Just reach out if I can help with anything.” Obviously early on we talked more than we do now, but even now I’ll check on him.\\n\\n I think probably one of the most poignant moments was with the Soyuz abort recently. I immediately sent him a text and said, “Hey, if I can help in any way let me know.” That’s the kind of thing no Administrator wants to deal with, or have that on their watch. That kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve had a chance to work under a lot of different Administrators, while you were in those leadership roles at Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi] and at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] and then again at Headquarters. Maybe if you can just take a moment and talk about some of those Administrators. Not only their leadership style, but maybe some of their differences, or the effectiveness of their leadership style. I know a lot of them are formed by things that they have to go through. A lot of them had to go through tragedies and that sort of thing. Maybe talk about that, but also the differences in their background. The new Administrator doesn’t have that typical background of an Administrator for NASA. Mike [Michael D.] Griffin was an engineer. Charlie Bolden was an astronaut. Sean O’Keefe came from OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and the Navy. Their backgrounds are pretty diverse, but they were leading the same Agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first Administrator I really remember I guess I would say having any kind of interface with was O’Keefe. Obviously knew who all of them were before that. I had a little bit of interaction with Dan Goldin, but I was probably a GS-14 [General Schedule pay scale] maybe, or maybe a 15. He was not in my chain, he was too far removed from my chain to pay attention. O’Keefe was probably the first one that I got to know in some shape, form, or fashion.\\n\\n That was a case where you had a gentleman that knew government really well, how to maneuver in government very well, and didn’t have the technical background but clearly had the chops to deal with OMB and the [Capitol] Hill. Honestly as an Agency the biggest thing that happened with him is Columbia [Space Shuttle disaster, STS-107]. Columbia happened when he was the Administrator. As I think I told you guys before, leading during easy times is not that hard. Leading during tough times is very difficult. You exercise muscles you don’t even know you have. That’s what we saw from O’Keefe when he did that. He seemed to have the ear of the White House and the administration at least at some level.\\n\\n Mike came in, Mike Griffin. I’ve known Mike for a long time. Just a brilliant, brilliant engineer. He set us on the pace for going back to the Moon with Constellation [Program] and the other activities that were going on. Obviously we had an administration change and then Charlie came. Charlie was a Marine general, an astronaut, had a different skill set than the other two in there.\\n\\n I think that the story or the message I would tell people is that NASA can survive, and prosper actually, not just survive. NASA can advance what we’re trying to do regardless of who the Administrator is. What the Administrator does is help to be that bridge between administration and Congress to make sure that they help us, because we can’t do anything without all of them supporting. I just saw many different styles.\\n\\n Think about any leadership position. There’s different people that have different styles. They all seem to work for the time that they’re in there. I don’t think there’s a style that works, and I think Jim coming from the Hill brings his own set of strengths. He’s probably a lot more technical than people ever gave him credit for, at least in my conversations with him. What I would say about Jim that impressed me the most is he listened. He listened to things that I talked to him about and took it all in. He didn’t have an “I’m not going to do it that way” attitude. He was very much in the learning mode. I think that’ll bode well for the Agency going forward." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Listening of course is an important part of being a leader. You talked a lot about leadership in the first two interviews. Maybe we can talk about your leadership style and method. You mentioned before that you had always been a bridge builder. You just mentioned again that the Administrator was the person to build that bridge between NASA and Congress. You described yourself as a communicator.\\n\\n Let’s talk about how you developed that leadership style throughout your career with NASA, and if you had any specific mentors along the way. You have mentioned some people before. You talked about Roy [S.] Estess in your first interview and how special he was. If you want, please talk about your style, and where you felt like that came from, and how you feel that you developed it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s interesting, Sandra, I’m not sure that I ever thought I had a style. I believe in servant leadership, and that’s got a pretty specific definition. I’m here to serve my team more than my team is here to serve me. I believe in situational leadership, where not everybody responds the same way, so I as the leader have to change the way that I talk to different people to maximize their potential going forward.\\n\\n I think the best way to say it for me is I never thought I deserved the position I’m in. That keeps you grounded. It keeps you always trying to be better. I think that’s the way I’ve always thought. Where did that come from? That comes from my dad. My dad was a schoolteacher. I witnessed him my whole life growing up. Everybody he talked to, he talked to them exactly the same way. It did not matter. It’s a trite saying: from janitor to CEO, as far as he was concerned there was no difference in the way he treated folks.\\n\\n I watched that and I watched him be successful. I also knew he wouldn’t put up with it if I did anything different. He is my hero for a lot of reasons and still is today. I think he just taught a humbleness that goes with that. That’s what people tell me, I’m approachable and humble. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an ego. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to lead and run. But I also recognize there’s people that are smarter than me in every room I walk into. The key leader is the one that can get that brilliance out on the table in a way that we can actually do something with it.\\n\\n I love leadership. I love talking to people about my scar tissue that I have because I’ve had plenty of unsuccessful leadership moments and I’ve had some pretty successful leadership moments. I tell people I never set out to do any of this. I never set out to be a Center Director or an Acting Administrator or Associate Administrator. It was never on my to-do list. I didn’t really have a to-do list. I just did the job that was given to me.\\n\\n I gave a speech when I was presented with the [Dr. Wernher] von Braun [Space Flight] Trophy here in Huntsville. My speech was about how I said “yes” a few times when I probably should have said “no”. A lot of my mentors said yes a few times when they probably should have said no. That’s how it works. That’s my style. Being approachable and vulnerable lets people let their hair down with you and really tell you what’s going on. In this job as Administrator you need people to tell you what’s going on. If you don’t know, that’s when we get bit. That’s when something bad happens. I don’t know if that answers the question, Sandra, but that’s the way I’ve thought about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I think it does. You’ve talked about leadership, and I’ve gotten a good sense of how you felt about those things all the way through in the different quotes that you follow. The [President] Teddy [Theodore] Roosevelt quote and the one you mentioned already today, it’s easy to lead when things are good, but leadership is when things are hard, that’s true leadership. I feel like we have a good sense of the way you feel about it, so I appreciate that.\\n\\n One of the other things I wanted to talk about while you were at Headquarters, and this is more a cultural question. Earlier in your career in propulsion and the different fields, you were coming up in a time in NASA when there were more women moving into NASA, into those types of positions, but still there weren’t as many as men. Still aren’t. You served under two different Deputy Administrators who were women, Lori [B.] Garver and Dava [J.] Newman. Then Lesa [B.] Roe served as your Deputy Administrator while you were Acting Administrator, and Krista [C.] Paquin.\\n\\n It’s interesting to me that you had these women in highly visible roles at NASA. Talk about them for just a moment and your feelings about maybe women at NASA, especially with the push for STEM education [curriculum based on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] and the work that people are doing to attract more women to the fields that NASA deals with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Part of it for me was early on, I guess 2007ish, when I was Deputy Center Director at Marshall, I asked Dave [David A.] King if I could be the champion for diversity and inclusion. In so doing I started learning more and more about things, enablers, disablers, the kind of things that come into play, mainly on inclusion, and how easy it is to pick somebody that’s like you to help you and do the things that you do.\\n\\n That was my early lesson. I had lessons before that. My father, I told you, he would knock me upside the head if I didn’t respect everyone the same way. What I found, honestly, it’s kind of interesting, I never thought about that I was working with a woman or an African American. I don’t want to say that I was blind to it because that��s not true either, but it wasn’t like the focus of what I was doing. I just had people that wanted to do a good job. If I was working for them I wanted to help them do a good job. If they were working for me I wanted to help them grow and enable them to be the kind of folks they are.\\n\\n If you take Lori Garver and Dava Newman for instance, just like the Administrator conversation we had a minute ago, totally different skill set, but both incredibly passionate about the Agency and where they thought the Agency should go. Whether you agree with either one of them or not, but that’s what they thought.\\n\\n In my job I worked for them. My job was to do that. Lesa Roe, who was my first Deputy and then Krista Paquin, who was my second, I didn’t pick them because they were women. I picked them because they were the most qualified to do the job. I felt that very strongly. Now look at Jody Singer who’s the first female Center Director at Marshall. I could not be more proud of her. Worked with Jody for a long time.\\n\\n I get asked the question, “What do you think about Jody being the first female Center Director?” I said, “I’m really proud of her for that but I’m more proud of her for being the fourteenth Center Director at Marshall because she’s the right person for the job.” Not because she’s a woman, because she’s the right person for the job. I’ve always thought about it that way.\\n\\n I’ve had help along the way, you need to know. I’ve had a couple mentors. One of the first female senior executives at Marshall Space Flight Center was a lady named Ann [R.] McNair. Ann helped me a lot when I was younger in terms of some of the decisions that I might make that were not intentional, but they could be looked at as unintentional biases. It’s just funny to watch the difference as you go forward. I learned some things on my own in particular for women about the way women respond to things versus men. I think you have to take time, and again, it’s that situational thing. You’ve got to realize they’re not going to respond the same way a guy does on some things. That’s not good or bad, it’s just different. Unfortunately sometimes we bucket that as good or bad.\\n\\n I never saw it that way. The only time I remember distinctly pointing something out was I was in a meeting with the head of the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office], Betty [J.] Sapp, at the time the Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, and Charlie Bolden, head of NASA.\\n\\n These three people were running the meeting. I looked at them and I said, “This is pretty cool; two women and an African American running three of the most powerful organizations in this country.” I thought that was pretty cool. That shows we’ve come a long way. That’s always been my take on it. Get the best person and let them do their job, then help them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. That’s definitely important. It is interesting that you asked for that job to be in charge of diversity. You learned your lessons well from your father.\\n\\n Is there anything about that Acting Administrator time or any other time when you were actually with NASA that we’ve maybe talked a little about but not enough? Or anything you wanted to add about that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It’s funny, Sandra. I may have already touched on this, and if I did I apologize. But I’ve done a couple speeches in the last month. When you guys first started talking to me I will admit I was probably still coming out of being burned out. That last year and a half was pretty tough being the Acting Administrator and still having to do the other job too. But I’ll end this whole thing with this.\\n\\n Never underestimate the power of mission. As I get further and further away now—I’m eight months out of the job—I’m missing the mission. I love my job today but when you look at what everybody tries to do and when you look at the mission focus the Agency has, even other organizations have, you can’t underestimate how powerful that is, and how great it is to be part of something bigger than you.\\n\\n I was able to accomplish things that I could have never done by myself, but only because I was part of a greater team. I will tell you I’m growing more and more appreciative of that the further I get away from it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ve heard it described that way from others. But it is important. It’s important that people reading this know that being a part of that mission as you said is something greater than yourself.\\n\\n When you decided to retire, I’d read that there was some speculation on how long you’d actually stay actually retired. You mentioned LSINC [Corporation] before in your other interview. It was ironic that when you were at Marshall you had worked with them. You had asked for help outside of NASA after the cancellation of Constellation when there was that risk of losing that engineering capability at NASA. They helped you work out some of the strategies that led to that National Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems.\\n\\n I was just curious how you chose or how you moved into this new position and what you were bringing to it and maybe what you think you learned from your tenure at NASA that’s helping you in this new adventure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, man. Good question. The reason I chose it is because first of all I knew the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] really well. I consider her a good friend. We had traded mentoring moments for probably the last 10 years. Never thought I’d go work for her, by the way.\\n\\n I’ll just tell you what I had. I could have gone several places I think. I had a logic that I was trying to follow in terms of what I wanted to do next. I was not ready to quit working, but I needed to get out of the pressure of the job I was under. Pressure is probably the wrong word. At least the pace. Maybe that’s a better word. If I wanted to live very long, I needed to get out of that.\\n\\n It became very clear to me as I was going through some of the potential offers I had and potential thoughts I had on where I wanted to go that people were important. I’ve said that as a leader forever, that people are most important. I should have known that, but it’s actually fascinating when you start meeting people you’re going to be working with. If you meet some people that you go, “Oh, man, that didn’t feel right,” it’s probably not right. I was just very lucky to meet the team here at LSINC. There was a good connection, so that was one thing, people.\\n\\n The other thing was when you come off of a job like the Administrator at NASA, whether you’re Acting or not, you’re still doing it. I in essence was serving as the CEO and COO [Chief Operating Officer]. Position became important for me. Not necessarily title as much as position. What I mean by that is at NASA I was able to really influence the direction we were going, and influence our message to the next administration. I wanted to be part of that at the corporate level wherever I went. If I’d gone to a larger company I’d have had to pay some dues for a while before I could ever even think about getting into the corporate structure, and this job offered the opportunity to jump right into the corporate structure.\\n\\n The variety of the product that the company was involved in was important to me. I don’t mean offense to anybody out there that loves this kind of work, but you could have given me the presidency of a large IT company and I would have just died. I don’t know IT, I’m not interested in IT. It’s got to be something I can put some passion around. Here we had a really cool opportunity; we do government work and commercial work. The commercial work has nothing to do with aerospace and defense. It’s just purely commercial work. That gave me a chance to grow. I want to be able to grow as well.\\n\\n What did I bring to that job? I brought probably leadership experience. The company is growing. It’s a very small business. When you’re a small business you might not have the processes and structures in place because you don’t need them. But as you grow you got to start putting those things in place so that you do that. Clearly I’m going to know that from those days.\\n\\n I brought—I think, but you’d have to ask my boss—my goal is to bring a sense of hey, we got this, we’re OK. I think I used the phrase with you guys before about “reality-based optimism”. That’s something that I’ve tried to always do with our teams. Don’t be an Eeyore down in the dumps all the time. But also don’t be sunshine and rainbows that everything’s perfect, we’re going to be fine. You need to bring a reality-based optimism to this space. That kind of balanced approach is what I brought to this team as they’re growing.\\n\\n I can tell you, doesn’t matter whether you’re going from 30 people to 90 people like we’ve done or 3,000 to 9,000, growth is growth. It brings some interesting challenges and you need some people at the top that know how to manage that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s interesting because you worked as a civil servant for the government for a good number of years. Now going into a company that is out there I assume looking for work. As you said, you work some with private industry but also with the government. I’m thinking those are probably government contracts. So, now you’re on the other side of that. Talk about that for a moment, that difference in being on the other side of the civil servant system." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We do some government work, and it is government contract work, but it’s usually we’re a sub. We have recently won a prime job but it’s not really technical, it’s more of a support job for the Missile Defense Agency.\\n\\n What I would tell you and what I’ve learned is we civil servants, they think we’re a lot more strategic than we actually are based on when we put out a proposal. There’s a lot of guessing about what do you think they really meant. Which I find interesting, because sometimes I go, “Wow, I wish we were that good as civil servants.”\\n\\n On the other side what I find is there’s an immense amount of talent out here that we got to figure out a way to get involved in our national missions. The talent is unbelievable. I’m very fortunate to work with some people here that while it’s not aerospace and defense work, I can tell you I’d put them against anybody I know at NASA from a technical perspective, based on the way they think and the innovation they bring to the table for some of the commercial solutions we build for our clients. It’s pretty impressive. I would say it gives me a broader view of the talent pool this nation has.\\n\\n As a nation that has big challenges, we just got to make sure we get that talent pool, get them in the game." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I read an interview with you. In it you made a statement. It was in relation to NASA, and the question I believe was about robotics versus human spaceflight. But I thought the statement itself was interesting, going back to more of a philosophy of work and leadership. It was the power of and versus the tyranny of or. If you don’t mind, talk about that for a minute and how you apply that and what you mean by that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I teach that in my leadership talks that I do. I also talked about it when it came to commercial spaceflight versus government or traditional spaceflight. Everybody wants to drive you to an or, and oftentimes the better answer is and.\\n\\n People will say robots versus humans. Why not robots and humans? Why does it have to be an or? I have three tyrannies I talk about. That’s one of them, and versus or. I used to tell people from a leadership standpoint if you find yourself being given the challenge of an or, just replace it with an and and see if it changes the way you think about the problem.\\n\\n There’s power in and. A lot of power. You can actually get different solutions to something. If we do this and that we’re that much more safe. If we do this or that—why does it have to be an or? That was the reason I talked about it. I’m quoted probably in every speech I did as Acting Administrator that this is an and, not an or. Probably every speech. I’ve said it forever.\\n\\n There is room for all of us in this global endeavor. So quit making it an or and cutting people out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It seems to be a theme going through your career. I thought that was an interesting quote. I’ve also read other articles where other people have been quoted as calling you a visionary and that you can see the future well and plan for it years in advance. They were talking about you as you were Acting Administrator at the time. I think that’s interesting and something that would be nice to be described that way. But do you feel that you can see things maybe sometimes that are down the road that maybe some other people maybe stuck with those ors instead of choosing the and or something else like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know. I think visionary might have been a stretch. If I have a skill, Sandra, and it’s not unique, there’s several people that have it, and by the way the people I surrounded myself with, always I tried to surround people that had this ability. It’s not visionary as much as it is think about a game of chess. Good chess players—I’m not one by the way. I’m going to be really clear, I’m a terrible chess player. But they’re usually three or four moves ahead if not five or six moves ahead. If I had a criticism of me from some of my colleagues it would be I would get hung up on thinking about the fifth and sixth chess move before I’d make the first one.\\n\\n That would drive some people crazy because I would be too slow on making that first decision, because I was already thinking “Okay, do that, then this and this.” I think I told you guys I just look at everything as a systems engineering problem. What are the components of my system? What has to work together? Then how do I influence all those components of the system to work together? Sometimes that takes looking at things completely differently than you would in a normal way.\\n\\n That’s really the way I think, the way I process information. Because I process that way sometimes that lets me pick a different path than maybe is the real obvious black-and-white path right in front of you. If that makes me visionary, okay. But I’m not sure that’s visionary as much as it is just thinking ahead a few steps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s an important quality though to have I think if you’re going to be a leader.\\n\\n As you look back over your career with NASA—and you’ve mentioned a couple things, but I just wanted to see if you had anything else. You talked about that time after Constellation as a very difficult time but also something you were proud of. Is there anything else? Is there anything if you look back over your entire career that you would say you are most proud of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t know if I have anything I’m most proud of. If there was anything really it would be mentoring some of the leaders that are in place today, or hiring people that I see thriving today. Not all of them that I hired did great. Not all the ones I selected are doing great. But those that I did, and I watched them grow. Seeing a person grow and trying to enable them to grow, that’s a pretty cool thing, because somebody did that for me. That’s your giving back.\\n\\n There’s way too many things that happened in my career for me to just pick one that I would say was the biggest thing. There’s so many. Maybe I don’t even want to say that. I’m not going to go there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s okay. It is a hard question. That’s why we always save these till last." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sandra, I want to say. I’m going to say the thing that probably means the most to me. Coming out of Columbia and flying out the Shuttle safely and the colleagues I got to work with during that time and bringing all the crews home safe, that to me if I had to pick. There’s a lot of anxiety and pressure, even though you have done everything you can do, and you feel good about what you’re flying. We were really good near the end, and didn’t drop our guard down. I attribute that to [N.] Wayne Hale and John [P.] Shannon. These are great people to work with and we were very fortunate. To have gone through that to me is probably the—if I had to pick, I can’t imagine having lost another crew. I just can’t even imagine. That was probably the biggest.\\n\\n I would say Shuttle did its job. We got the [International Space] Station built and we got everybody home safe post Columbia. That would be the one, if I had to pick something, if anybody asked me someday, I would say, “Yes, I was part of that team that did that.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sometimes it’s the same thing, but the other question we like to ask is what was your biggest challenge?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think my biggest challenge—I don’t know. That’s a good question. There’s three that pop in my head." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You can talk about all of them if you want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One is the Constellation cancellation. One is the Shuttle fly-out. Making sure we did that, and did that well. I think the last one probably from a challenge perspective, the biggest one, and it’s probably because it’s the most recent, was just the Acting Administrator job. I was so worried that I would hurt this great institution that I believe in so much that I just felt like I had to really jump in with both feet, make sure we didn’t have that happen. Yes, it’s not just me, it’s the whole team that does that, but when you’re at the top you kind of feel like it’s you. I didn’t want to hurt the team. I wanted to make sure the team was left with a good mission and good plans to go forward. Felt like I did that, but boy, it’s constantly on your mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention before we go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. I think you guys have covered the waterfront." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We like to cover as much as we can. I do appreciate you talking to me again, I really do, and just wrapping this up a little bit from our last interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert M. Lightfoot", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I appreciate it, Sandra. Appreciate everything you guys are doing to capture all this. This is important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We feel so. We definitely feel it is, and we enjoy doing it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00341", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LoeTR/loetr.htm", + "original_file_name": "LoeTR_11-30-01.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LoeTR/LoeTR_11-30-01.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "T. Rodney Loe", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 30 November 2001" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Carol Butler", + "Kirk Freeman" + ], + "respondents": [ + "T. Rodney Loe" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is November 30, 2001. This oral history with Rod Loe is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in the offices of the Signal Corporation in Houston, Texas. Carol Butler is the interviewer and is assisted by Sandra Johnson and Kirk Freeman.\\n\\n So you were talking about the development of the Mission Control Center [MCC]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We had been using the—I’ll say the more experienced guys. We had a bunch of contractors that were Philco [Ford Corporation], and they were hired because they had experience tracking satellites for the military. So when NASA got ready to do some flight controlling, they called on their experience.\\n\\n But even the NASA guys that had been around on Mercury, all the display devices back then were meters, hard meters, and the meters had limits, you could set. You can pull a tab down, and then if the needle got above that tab, you’d get a red light. You could do the same thing down at the bottom. So along came the Mission Control Center here in Houston, and here’s going to be this computer driving our displays, and that worried a lot of people, myself included. Here was another piece of equipment that could fail, that would be between us and the spacecraft, and would cause us to lose data.\\n\\n And also the idea that we’d be looking at the data coming down in the digital format. In other words, you’d print cabin pressure and you’d print out cabin temperature and bus voltage and what have you. So we did a couple of things. Number one, we installed meters on our console, hard meters on the console. We picked—and I’m not sure how many we had. We probably had twenty maybe of what we considered our most critical and important parameters that even if the computer went down, we’d still have these.\\n\\n And then—looking back on it now, I can laugh about it, but we also decided that meters was really the way to look at data. So we had the computer draw meters for us on our little TV displays. We’d have like twelve meters on each TV string, and we had it set up to operate just like our hard meters did. If you went out of limits, you’d get the lights and everything.\\n\\n Well, after a few years and a few missions, we finally got away from that and learned to trust the computer, but I’ve thought back on it since then that that was really pretty silly to have a computer drawing meters for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that is a hard adjustment to make, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Computers were still such a new phenomenon, and we see nowadays that new technology doesn’t always work perfectly to start with. So I can understand that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the idea on the meters was that—the guys that had done it a lot would tell you that you could just scan the meters, and you didn’t have to necessarily stop and see that cabin pressure was reading 5.0. You just scanned and you saw that it was in the range where it was supposed to be. So it took some getting used to, going to the actual digital displays.\\n\\n And the lead time on developing displays was quite long back then. We would draw up what we thought we wanted the display to look like. In fact, you’d draw it up on sheets of vellum that were computer-screen-sized. So you draw the display up in the actual size you wanted, and then we’d turn those over to another organization, I think they called a Flight Support Division, and they then would take and program the computers and turn them into the actual displays." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay. So this was early on in the Gemini Program initially." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, yes, when we first started out in Gemini.\\n\\n Another thing I happened to think of that we learned in Gemini, and I can’t tell you if this happened during a sim [simulation] or during an actual mission, I suspect it might have been a sim, but those of us that had command capability to the spacecraft, like the EECOMs [Electrical, Environmental, and Communications officer] back then had commands to send telemetry on, telemetry off, tape recorders on, what have you, all the commands that the INCOs [Instrumentation and Communication officer] now send in the current Shuttle days and even later in Apollo, but all that was EECOM’s responsibility back then, and the guys down on the Agena console, their EECOM equivalent had the same thing.\\n\\n Well, our commands would just be buttons on the console, and when you wanted to send TM [telemetry] On, you’d just reach up and hit the “TM On” button. At some point down on the Agena console—as I say, I think it was during a sim—there were right—I’m here and my console’s right here, and then just the other side of the console there’s probably a foot-wide step before you go down to the next level. And quite often, people that wanted to talk to you would come stand on that step to talk. Well, down on the Agena console, I think it was Mel [Melvin F.] Brooks came to talk to somebody, and he reached over, put his hand over the top of the console to pull himself up on the step, and he happened to be touching some of the command buttons, and blasted out a bunch of commands. I think that happened during a sim. But we learned a lesson real quick, and we put little covers over all the command buttons. So when you meant to send it, you would send it, but you didn’t send one inadvertently, or somebody else didn’t send one inadvertently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting, because they had thought of that type of incident on the spacecraft, because of things floating around, but you wouldn’t think of that right offhand in the control center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, just reached up and said, “Hey, how’s it going?” and pulled himself up. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oops. [Laughs] Well, then that shows the value of simulations again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, you bet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "To find all the little details as well as the bigger ones.\\n\\n Were there any other thoughts that you had on the early programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think we covered them pretty much last time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay.\\n\\n Well, then moving on in your career. We had talked up through Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP], I believe, briefly, and at that time you were in the Electrical Environmental Systems Branch. At what point did you begin to get involved with the Shuttle systems? Do you recall if that was before Apollo-Soyuz or after or even during Skylab?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now, Apollo-Soyuz was after Skylab, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Apollo-Soyuz was in ’75." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My sense is, we started getting involved with Shuttle immediately after Skylab." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We reorganized. Like all through Skylab, I had what was called a Saturn Workshop CSM [Command and Service Module] Systems Branch. So we had all the systems onboard Skylab.\\n\\n Then after Skylab, we split it up, and we took the traditional EECOM stuff, and that became my branch. We made it basically a GNC [Guidance, Navigation, and Control] branch, and that was Neil. Neil [B.] Hutchinson ran that. And then right in there sometime is when we also made the INCOs a separate branch, the INCOs and O&P [Operations and Procedures] officers. But it must not have been right then, because Ed [Edward I.] Fendell was in my branch for a while. Ed was, of course, head of the INCOs.\\n\\n So I guess we just had the systems split into the two branches for a while, and we had Neil’s branch and my branch, basically the GNC branch and the EECOM branch. My recollection is, that happened right after Skylab. So we must have been in that configuration for ASTP." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you were gearing for Shuttle, and here we are—ASTP did come briefly in this time frame, but that was single mission, very focused. So the time between Skylab ASTP and Shuttle was a number of years. Shuttle didn’t actually launch until ’81. What were your responsibilities during that time, and how much training did you do, and how much did changes in the development of Shuttle affect your role?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, now, don’t forget we had the Approach and Landing Tests [ALT] for Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was your group involved with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t recall how many years that was before the actual launch. Maybe a couple of years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think that was in ’77-’78 time frame, so it was a few years. It was kind of right in the middle between the programs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. So, we had, what, a couple of years then from ASTP till we started flying ALT.\\n\\n We were very, very busy developing the systems handbook for Shuttle, and developing systems handbooks was such a great way to learn the systems. The walls out in the halls would be plastered with drawings and guys out there marking up their drawings and stuff, because we didn’t have the big tables and stuff in the folks’ offices where they could lay out drawings, and we didn’t have the nice drafting tables and stuff. We had people that did the drafting for us. Kentron, I think, was the company that did the drafting for us.\\n\\n So our folks would turn in a rough draft over to Kentron, then Kentron would do a nice drawing out of it. It’d come back and, like I say, it’d cover a wall. Then the guys would spend hours out in the hall checking over their drawings and going over drawings.\\n\\n Then we got ready to sign drawings off, they’d bring them in my office, and, here again, we’d go over them very meticulously, and we used that time to really get familiar with the system. The engineers that had produced the drawings, they would go through, and in explaining the drawings, they’d basically be explaining how the system would work.\\n\\n We would play a lot of “what if” games as we were going through the drawings, which later led to mission rules and stuff. So were developing systems handbooks. We were developing mission rules.\\n\\n At some point, we came up with something called system briefs, and those were written descriptions of how systems operated and how they might fail, and all their operating characteristics. The systems briefs were written by, let’s say, the engineer working on one aspect of the thermal system or the cooling system, and it was our way of sort of picking his brain or her brain, and then letting the other controllers benefit from that.\\n\\n Back in the early Gemini days, I guess even in Apollo, you didn’t have that many people, so you had the luxury of, let’s say, all the electrical power system [EPS] folks sitting in the same office. So there was a lot of chitchat and “what if” games played there in the office. As we got into Shuttle and everything started growing, all the EPS people might not be in the same room anymore. It might be one here and somebody else down the hall. So systems briefs was a good way to pick people’s brains and get that knowledge out.\\n\\n But then when the Approach and Landing Tests rolled around, we built a little control room for that. I guess it was the old recovery room that was used back on Apollo. We turned that into a—it was a one-room control center, and approach and landing was—the duration was so short and all the responses had to be so quick, that we didn’t necessarily have a back room that I recall. We just had the one room, the one operator. Jack Knight happened to be the EECOM, although that was one of the things I sort of regret. We didn’t call him EECOM back when we started into Shuttle, because EECOM, as we’d talked last time, Electrical, Environmental, and Communications.\\n\\n Now that Shuttle’s coming along, we’ve got some other systems that the EECOM guys are going to be responsible for—mechanical systems for one, the payload bay doors, the RMS [remote manipulator system] – the arm, the APUs – the auxiliary power units. So we had a mechanical aspect that we hadn’t had before on Apollo or Gemini.\\n\\n That was also back during the CB [citizen band radio] craze, when everybody had CBs in their cars and trucks, but we named what then was the EECOM, we named them SMOKHEEs, S-M-O-K-H-E-E, and that was Shuttle Mechanical, I think Kinomatics, and the EE was electrical and environmental. We should have left the name EECOM. We never should have gone to another name, but we put up with that SMOKHEE thing through approach and landing, then quickly went back to EECOM. So I guess Jack Knight was the only SMOKHEE we ever had. [Donald R.] Puddy was the only flight director that ever got to call somebody SMOKHEE, but looking back on it now, I wish we would never have done that. So that was the years getting ready. So not only were we developing the handbooks for the approach and landing configuration vehicle, we were also developing the handbooks for the orbital Shuttle—handbooks, mission rules, and stuff.\\n\\n We’ve talked a lot about SPAN [Spacecraft Analysis Room]. I don’t recall even having SPAN during approach and landing. It was just a different kind of an operation. It really was a test operation rather than a mission that we’d been used to in the past." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that Jack Knight was the one working that console during the approach and landing test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were you doing as head of the branch? Were you there for some of those tests, or were you just helping him with coordination and such?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I recall, like I say, since we didn’t have SPAN, the managers didn’t really have anyplace to sit. So I think there was a viewing room maybe that we could go watch the operation, and we all had speakers in our offices where you could listen to the thing. You could listen to the flight director’s loop and the air-to-ground loop and stuff. So we were able to keep up with it that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As Shuttle began flying—well, actually, building up to it, as you were developing these systems handbooks, the system briefs, Shuttle was very different then than earlier programs—the Gemini, the Apollo—in its ultimate size and its use, that it was going to be a reusable vehicle. How different were the systems for Shuttle versus from the earlier?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, APUs that I mentioned, they were totally new to us. We’d never had APUs before. We’d never had a hydraulic system before. We’d never had things like payload bay doors that opened and closed before.\\n\\n We had some systems that were similar. We had cryogenics. In fact, we’d had them on Apollo. We’d had fuel cells like we’d had on Apollo and the later Gemini flights.\\n\\n We didn’t separate like we had done on Gemini and Apollo and leave the service module, you know, to burn up, and only enter the command module. We entered the whole thing, of course.\\n\\n We put a great deal of emphasis on the thermal system, the tiles and stuff. That was totally new. But there wasn’t a good way to monitor those, although there were some temperature sensors underneath the tiles, and you could see the PTC, what we called passive thermal control, when we’d barbecue the vehicle. You can see that with those sensors.\\n\\n So some of the systems, obviously, a fuel cell, you know, it wasn’t the same fuel cell, but it was a similar fuel cell. I mean, you know, a fuel cell’s a fuel cell. It uses oxygen and hydrogen. Shuttle fuel cells cool themselves differently, let’s say, than Apollo fuel cells did. The coolant loops, we had radiators on most spacecraft.\\n\\n Yes, there were some differences and some similarities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any of the systems, particularly the new systems on Shuttle, that you were specifically involved with, having any particular challenges to you as you were developing the systems handbooks? I know on a larger scale, some of them did for, like, the thermal protection system that you mentioned, they were having problems with the tiles, but I’m not sure, did that directly affect you as you were developing these procedures and such?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, on the thermal protection system particularly, we struggled with a way to depict that in a handbook. I don’t think we ever did do a very good job of it. It didn’t lend itself to handbook kind of stuff, although we did put some drawings out that were, I would say, useful, and we learned a lot developing them.\\n\\n The APUs, the auxiliary power units, were a whole new kind of system to the EECOMs, in that it spun up to a very high RPM [revolutions per minute]. It’s almost like a jet-powered system, had overspeed protection with it. During the development phase of the systems, they’d had some of these units go overspeed, and they’d actually destruct and throw out shrapnel and everything. So we were very concerned with that.\\n\\n We had the capability, or the crew had the capability, to override the overspeed shutdown in a real emergency. So we had to agonize over what are the cases where we’d use that capability, where we’d try to override the thing. [Unclear], I guess, for the [unclear]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As the Shuttle reached flight status, as STS-1 approached after you’d gone through the approach and landing tests, they were bringing on the vehicle, and, actually, with the Shuttle, it was done a little differently, no unmanned flights were flown first, whereas in the previous missions, they had. What were you doing as the flights began? Did you have a chance to work the console at all, or since you were now in this management role, did you just help facilitate? Were you in a SPAN room or FOMR [Flight Operations Management Room] situation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had SPAN. Yes, that’s right. We’d gone to FOMR—we called it FOMR back in Skylab—but then when Shuttle came along, we went back to SPAN. We had pretty much all the same setups that we’d had on Apollo where we had a Mission Evaluation Room [MER] over in Building 45 staffed by the program office or run by the program office and staffed by the engineering people. We had SPAN on the mission operation side.\\n\\n We added astronauts into SPAN. I’m guessing that started with STS-1. We had astronauts come in. We had people from the scientific side of the house since we were going to be carrying experiments and stuff, payloads. So we had people from the payload side of the house come in.\\n\\n Mission operation took over the logistics and the operation of SPAN. Back in Apollo, the Apollo Program Office had run the room. They provided the secretaries and the runners and stuff. For Shuttle, mission operations took that over, so we provided all the logistics support and everything for SPAN.\\n\\n I think our breakdown back then, we would have a SPAN manager; we would have a SPAN systems person that sat down on the right; we had a SPAN payloads person that sat out on the left; and then the astronaut rep sat between the payload guy and the manager. I think we had four people sitting at the console. And then the program office reps would be back at the table behind us.\\n\\n I can remember being in the control center for STS-1. The thing that really impressed me was how fast that thing got off the ground. Of course, we’d run sims with it, simulations, but you never saw it on TV. I mean, you didn’t have TV up for sims, of course, and nobody had ever taken a picture of this thing going off, because it had never gone off. But that really impressed me, how quick it got off, because the Saturn V was, you know, slow lifting off and getting speed the more it went up, but, boy, that Shuttle just went “Bang!” and it was off and going. As soon as those solids [solid rocket boosters] lit, it was—somebody told me, I think it was—I don’t know which crewman it was. It might have been Cripp [Robert L. Crippen]—said, “When those things light, you know you’re leaving town. You’re going somewheres.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever have a chance to see any of the launches in person from the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] for any of the programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not for Gemini, not for Apollo. In my program office years, after I left mission operations and was in a program office, yes I was able to see about three or four." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Does it still look as speedy in person, or by then were you used to seeing it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Huh?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it still look as fast at that point when you were able to—?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, by then, you were used to how quick it got off. What I never did get used to the times that I saw it was just the feel of the thing, the sound and the feel. It’s amazing when you see and hear that thing. It’s a lot of power being unleashed there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was able to see—I guess 3 or 4 when I’d be down at the Cape maybe for other reasons.\\n\\n Jim [James C.] Adamson, one of the astronauts that used to work in flight control, we were real good friends with he and his wife, and he’d invited us, my wife and I, down for his launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But that one didn’t go, had an engine problem, I think, the day, the night before launch, and that one got called off.\\n\\n But my wife did get to see another one. We went down to see—it was a night launch, too. I guess it was Bill [William F.] Readdy’s flight, we went down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, that’s great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In fact, Readdy carried some—Bill had come to me at some point. Let me digress here a little bit. Back in 1979, George Abbey decided that flight operations should have a chili cookoff, and each organization, each branch, came up with their own chili team. The EECOM branch, we came up with a team called BARF, B-A-R-F, and that stood for the Bay Area Refuse Firm, and our theme was that we were garbage collectors.\\n\\n We had some folks in the branch that had played musical instruments back in high school and college, and they ginned up a little band called the “Trashcan Five”: Milt [J.] Heflin, who I guess you’ve talked to, Milt was in the band, and Al [Granvil A.] Pennington was in the band, Barbara [J.] Newton, Larry [V.] Minter, and I can’t remember who the other one was.\\n\\n Anyway, later on then, after a bunch of reorganizations and everything, the old branch was no more, but the BARF team lived on. So Bill Readdy came to me before his mission—you know they were going up to the Mir—and said, “Would BARF be interested in cooking up some chili for them to take and to serve to the Russians?”\\n\\n And we said, sure, we’d do that.\\n\\n And then, somehow, in the logistics, the chili wasn’t able to make it on board. I think they took some of Pe-Te’s barbecue from a place down across from Ellington [Field, Houston, Texas] instead.\\n\\n So Reedy said, “How about this?” Said, “If we can’t do that, I’ll carry some of your chili spices on board, and then when we get back, we can make up some chili out of these spices that have flown in space.”\\n\\n So Reedy took a package of spices on board with him, and my wife and I got to go down and see that launch, so got to go down as guests, not because of the chili spices, but Jay [F.] Honeycutt, who was [Kennedy Space] Center director in Florida then, invited us down to see that launch. So she got to see a launch also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s good. It’s good that after having lived, in her own way, all these years through your NASA career, that she got a chance to experience that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s neat. Oh, that’s quite a story, the chili. Yes, chili cookoffs certainly have become a very big production here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. Have you ever been to one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, very interesting experience, very unique.\\n\\n Well, with the STS-1, you mentioned that you were in the control center, that you remember the launch, in the SPAN. Do you recall any specifics about the mission, any of the discussions about some of the tiles that had fallen off? I know it was a short mission then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not a lot of specifics. In fact, I was talking to somebody about that the other day—Bob [Robert D.] Legler, I guess it was. I don’t know if you guys ever talked to Legler or heard of Legler, but he’s a—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’re hoping to talk to him soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. But we were talking about STS-1 and the tiles that we lost, and I want to say that we called up some ground-based telescopes and looked at the Shuttle, convinced ourself that everything was going to be all right, but, yes, that had a lot of people scratching our heads. Other than that, my recollection of STS-1 was that most of the systems worked pretty good. It may have been that we were concentrating so much on the tiles that I may have forgotten something else, but my recollection was they all worked pretty good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I think they did. I think everything worked pretty smoothly, especially considering that this was a first flight and completely hadn’t been done at all before, so pretty successful one.\\n\\n As the missions progressed up until you moved—in 1984, you changed positions, but during the ’81 to ’84 time frame, did you continue to work in the SPAN room supporting the various missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, every one of them, yes. Yes, that was always a great break from office work to be able to go over and sit in SPAN during the missions, and you’d even take the midnight shifts just to go do it. So, yes, SPAN was always a lot of fun. Working the missions was a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I could imagine that, and certainly it’s a very active job and you have to be on top of things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any particular memories from any of those flights or any incidents that happened either technically or on an anecdote side that you’d like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, we had two different floors over there. We were flying some DoD [Department of Defense] missions. So we had two different rooms for SPAN, one on the second floor where we flew the majority of the missions, but then when we’d fly a DoD mission, we’d all have to troop up to the third floor and be very secure.\\n\\n We got to be very close with a lot of the astronauts that either had flown or were going to fly, just because you’d sit there right next to them eight hours per shift, and sometimes in the middle of the night, things were very, very slow, so you’d get to swapping stories. I got to be real good friends with Ellison [S.] Onizuka that way. He was with us one or two missions.\\n\\n Then we headed on a—not so much SPAN, but on a social standpoint, I don’t know if it was Crippen or [Richard H.] Truly, we had an organization called the Ace Moving Company, and we would help people move. Truly was president; Crippen was in it; I know Puddy was in it; I think Dan [Daniel M.] Germany, myself, Honeycutt, Onizuka may have been, because he helped a lot. I can remember doing a luau. Onizuka taught us how to do a pig in the ground over at Dan Germany’s house one time. I had a pickup. So Joe [H.] Engle and I were the Sand Committee. We had to haul sand in my pickup to put around the fire pit. But we had some good times like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But as far as any specifics systems-wise, no, I guess I can’t think of anything right off the bat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you mentioned the DoD missions. How did that work differently on the staffing side of things, or did it? Did the individual selected for either working the mission or working in the SPAN room, was that done differently for DoD missions? Did they have to have a different training or security clearance, or was that something standard for everyone?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My sense is that everybody had enough of a security clearance to work those, and I guess it probably took a secret clearance. So, yes, I think all the flight controllers had secret clearances. Probably just about everybody out here at the center had at least secret clearances. So, no, I don’t recall any difference in the staffing. You had to be careful in what you said after you left the control center, because now you’re in an unsecure area.\\n\\n I can remember turning myself in one time for a security violation, because we’d been over in control center working a problem, and probably on a sim. It might have been a mission. But came back to the office and ended up on the telephone saying something to somebody over in Building 1—I can’t remember now who I was talking to, but said something that I knew I shouldn’t have, that theoretically was classified. So in order to abide by the rules, I had to turn myself in, write a letter, and say, “Hey, I probably violated something by saying the wrong thing over a telephone today.”\\n\\n So you had to watch out for doing that. But within the control center, most of the procedures that I recall were probably the same no matter what floor you were on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a DoD representative that would come into either the control center or the SPAN during those missions, do you recall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, DoD had a whole control room—they had another SSR, staff support room, which is what our back rooms were called. There was one staff support room that was totally DoD, and since these were DoD payloads, they, I’m sure, reported to the payload officer out in the front room.\\n\\n So, theoretically—see, there was nothing classified about the Shuttle. We could talk about our systems all day long, and that wasn’t classified. The real classified things about these missions was the payloads. I think they used to classify the time of launch. Probably the orbit that we were in was classified. But most of those things didn’t affect EECOMs, so we didn’t have a lot of stuff in the office that we had to be real careful about safeguarding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they would probably only tell you what you needed to know that affected your systems for those types of missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as you went through and started developing things like mission rules and what have you, yes, you would become exposed to some of the classified aspects like what time a launch was, say, what kind of orbit you were going to, that sort of thing. Yes, you just found that out.\\n\\n If it had been possible, you probably could have done all your EECOM duties and never had to know any of that stuff, but because it would come out in the mission rules review, because when you’d go review mission rules with the flight director, you’d have the entire team—EECOMs, GNCs, Boosters, everybody in there, going over the rules.\\n\\n So when you got around to the payload rules, yes, some of the classified stuff would come out, but EECOMs didn’t really need to know that since our systems just cranked along and did what they were supposed to do to, you know, keep Shuttle running." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a different aspect to things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, eventually, in 1984, you moved into a new role in the Vehicle Systems Integration Office. What were your duties in this position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Looking back on it now, I asked [Eugene F.] Kranz—I think I’d had enough supervisory responsibilities, and, like I say, looking back on it now, I think I was taking it personally, say, when one of my employees didn’t get his promotion that I thought he should have and stuff like that. So I decided I wasn’t sure I wanted to do supervisory stuff anymore.\\n\\n Yes, I got out of running the branch and went down to work with Dick [Richard A.] Thorson in the Vehicle Systems Integration Office. That office was basically representing flight operations to the program office. We’d sit on a number of boards all the way from the Orbiter Configuration Control Board [CCB]. We sat on the Shuttle Program PRCB, Program Requirements Control Board, the software boards—what were they called? OASCBs, I guess, Over Avionics Software [Control] Boards.\\n\\n So we became the focal point of flight operations over to the program office. It did a couple of things; It allowed the program office to have one contact that they could come to within flight operations—mission operations, whatever we were called back then. We went through a number of changes. We were flight ops for a while, and then we were mission ops for a while. But allowed the program office to have one contact, and it allowed us to take some of that sitting-in-meetings work off of the flight controllers. We covered a lot of that. So we became very adept at going to meetings and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was this more of an organizational-type role rather than getting into the technical specifics of the systems, or did it deal with the technical specifics and organization?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, it dealt very much with the technical aspects of the systems, because when you were at these meetings, you had to be prepared to argue the pros or cons of some issue that might be on the table that you might be discussing now, and yet those discussions were almost always technical. So somebody might be wanting to make a change, say, to the APUs or the fuel cells or any system on the Shuttle, the propulsion system and stuff. So, yes, you had to be familiar enough with the systems to be able to intelligently discuss that at the meetings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is all Shuttle systems then, including payloads." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, everything that FOD [Flight Operations Directorate] was responsible for, so, yes, including payloads." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you were taking some of the meeting role for the flight controllers so that they wouldn’t have to spend that time. If a topic came up that you needed input from the flight controllers, that was one of your roles, was to interface with them to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes. We would try to have pre-tagups to make sure that the people within FOD were able to make inputs. In fact, let’s say there was a change coming through the system to change something. One of things we would do, I think we had some evaluation sheets, and we would look at it and see which flight control disciplines might be affected by this change. We’d send them a description of the change and ask them to evaluate it for us. The input would come back to us, and then we’d take and meld the inputs together from the different areas that we had gotten within FOD, and then we’d take that to the program. And many times the flight controllers themselves would come over and participate in the meetings when they were really interested in one of these changes, or when we’d ask them to come over, because we thought that we might need their help or something. So, yes, we were very actively involved with pulling all those inputs together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were these changes something that would come about for specific missions, or were they changes that would come about just as the program grew and as different situations were discovered or new techniques were decided to be employed, or was it kind of some of both?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of both. Yes, you might talk about adding a payload to a mission, to leading a payload for a mission, or you might talk about a hardware change to a fuel cell or an ohms thruster or something. So, yes, it could be both." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "About how frequently would you have these meetings?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The PRCB used to meet once a week, the CCB once a week. Most all of those meetings were once a week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Pretty busy schedule for you then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes. Oh yes, it kept you busy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But it sounds like it was an interesting task, you know, trying to coordinate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was, yes, it was, very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall during those times any specific changes that came up that were either problematical or that produced interesting results or anything that you’d like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, nothing that I can think of right off the top of my head. Nothing stands out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure, that’s okay. Certainly a lot of missions and a lot of things going on. So I can understand that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By the way, let me say that I think—my recollection is that I also even—I’m sure, yes, even with doing that, I took the SPAN duties with me. So, yes, I was still doing the SPAN, sure was, yes, still doing the SPAN stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, that would definitely keep you busy, then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you would work the SPAN, would you just kind of work your schedule around the meetings so that you were able to do both, or would someone fill in for you during the meetings while you were in the SPAN room?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we’d just have someone sit in the meeting for us, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the astronauts and crew participate in these configuration meetings, control meetings, the boards?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When we were together as one organization, they were just another one of the groups we were representing. So they would be one of the groups that we would send evaluation sheets out to.\\n\\n Then at some point we reorganized again. Yes, I guess at the time that I went down and joined Thorson, George Abbey was head of flight operations, and Gene Kranz was his deputy, and then at some point we reorganized again, and the astronauts were in with us. So we were representing them at the PRCBs and the CCBs as well as the flight control folks.\\n\\n Then at some point, we reorganized and George took the flight crew and the folks out at Ellington, the airplane people at Ellington, and they became the Flight Crew Operations Directorate [FCOD], and Gene took the flight controllers, the trainers, payloads people, and then that’s who Thorson and I went with. We were the Mission Operations Directorate [MOD]. So at that point then, we were no longer representing astronauts, and they would represent themselves at the meetings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a bit of changing and reorganization had gone on throughout the time frame." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working in this role, actually, you continued to have a lot of involvement with integrations throughout the rest of your career at NASA, but early on was when the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n incident occurred. What did you, in your role with, at this point, the Vehicle Systems Integration Office, what was your involvement in that recovery process after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n ?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As you recall or may not recall, when we had the fire back on Apollo, that was on January 27th, which happens to be our anniversary. When\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n rolled around, I had decided not to work that mission. My wife and I were down in Galveston, celebrating our anniversary on the day it should have launched, but I guess we came on home on Sunday, and I think we should have launched Sunday, but didn’t.\\n\\n So I went on in to work Monday morning. I told her, “I’m going into work, going into the control center and watch the launch from there.” So I was in the control center sitting in SPAN. I wasn’t actually at the console, but I was sitting back there at one of the tables just watching and listening when\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n happened.\\n\\n As far then as the recovery process, the meetings, the PRCBs and everything, of course, picked up, and all the changes that were being made, went through there. I don’t recall any specifics. After the fire in ’67, I was on the investigating team that went down to Florida, but on\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , no, I didn’t. But my recollection is, just kept up the basic TRCB work and stuff that was trying to redesign, recuperate after that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a very difficult time for everyone to live through, especially having been there in the control room watching it. That must have been hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. At some point, Thorson—I think Thorson had left. He had gone. At some point Dick had left and gone over to the Shuttle Program, but that may have been post-\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . I guess that was post-\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , but before we flew again, was when he went over to do that, he and some of the guys, the Hal [Harold A.] Lodens and those guys." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, in 1988, the Shuttle did come back online very successfully, and, also in ’88, you moved into—and this may have just been one of the reorganization changes—now under the flight director’s office as Assistant for Program Integration. This is what we found in your—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And that was an effort, and that’s where the job still is today, but that was an effort to try and figure out where best to put that function. We had decided it probably wasn’t big enough to be a total office on its own. So we were looking for a place to put it, and, yes, we thought, “Hey, you know, the flight director office, they interface with all the controllers, they’re very interested in all the changes and stuff that are going on. That seems to be a good place to put this thing,” and so we put it there, you say, ’88?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. And that’s where it still is today. In fact, I was talking to a guy the other day, one of the ex-EGILs [Electrical, General Instrumentation and Life support officer] back on Skylab, Steve [J. S.] McLendon, and he said that he’s doing that job now in the flight director office for Space Station. So it’s still going on. So we must have made a semi-good choice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly sounds like it. So this was essentially the same role and same duties, just different—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I moved to a different office to hold us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At this point, this is in 1988, so there was discussion going on about the Space Station. Were you at all involved in any of those, or was that still a level where it didn’t affect the flight controllers as much?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was not involved in any of those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At some point, Kranz’s group, mission operations, actually generated some Space Station offices, but I think that was even after I’d left. So, no, I never had anything to do with Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, eventually, you moved up to NASA Headquarters in the Office of the Deputy Director for Space Shuttle Operations, and there you were in charge of the Space Shuttle Operations Integration Office. How was this different than your role at JSC? Obviously, it’s at the Headquarters level." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a Headquarters badge, but it was still here at JSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "See, I was sitting in the outpost one afternoon and Cripp came in. He asked me what all I had done and everything. He said, “I think I’ve got something for you.”\\n\\n So the next thing I know, he’s asking me to come over to the program office. The way Shuttle was organized back then, you had a chief for programs and you had a chief for operations, and Cripp was the chief for operations, and he had offices here at JSC, he had offices at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], and an office at the Cape. Dick Thorson had been running the office here at JSC for him, and they wanted Dick to go to Space Station. So Dick was going to go over to Space Station, so Cripp asked me to come run the office here for him. It was a lot of the same guys that had worked in Thorson’s old Systems Integrations Office back in ’85 or whenever I joined—Hal Loden and Rip [Ryborn] Kirby and a lot of the same guys.\\n\\n So I said, yes, I’d come do that. So although on paper you were NASA Headquarters employees, the office was still here at JSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were essentially still doing the same type of—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we were now sitting on a lot of those same boards as operations reps, not replacing the mission operations people, because they had a rep on the board also, but we were the program office side of the operation, and our function was sort of to oversee mission operations, flight crew operations and their mission preparedness. We’d go sit in on mission rules reviews. We would go and watch simulations. We sort of acted as Cripp's eyes and ears into the operations aspect of it.\\n\\n Then about that time, Cripp became total program director and Brewster [H.] Shaw [Jr.] became the new operations guy. I think Brewster and I happened about the same time. Cripp had hit me up to come do that, but then by the time I got here, Cripp was on his way to Headquarters. So Brewster and I were doing that, and I had Brewster’s office here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this is a little more of an upper management type of role. You were no longer interfacing directly with the flight controllers. You were more interfacing at the board level." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. You remained in this role for a few years. The Shuttle-Mir Program came into play during this time frame. Were you involved with dealing with that aspect of the operations integrations side of things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not so much from that office. That office was responsible for, among other things, the landing sites worldwide, the Shuttle landing sites, including the abort sites, the TAL [Trans-Atlantic Landing] abort sites. And we were also responsible—I mentioned to you out in the hall last time, one of the funnest jobs I’ve ever had with NASA was, I was in charge of the Shuttle ferry program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was from that office that we did that.\\n\\n But on Shuttle-Mir, I can’t recall, from that office, ever getting really involved in Shuttle-Mir other than just it being another mission.\\n\\n Later on in another reorganization, we got under great pressure to reduce the number of squares on org [organization] charts. Since we had like a six-man office, that was a prime thing, to combine us, put us someplace else. So they put us into an integration office that also handled the payloads. We had the payload integration officers, the PIMs and FIMs, the flight payload integration managers and the flight integration managers. So they put us up there as part of that.\\n\\n In that area, I got involved with Shuttle-Mir, because I was the deputy in that organization, and the FIMs and the PIMs got very involved with the Shuttle-Mir stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the Shuttle ferry program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that was one of the funnest jobs that you’ve ever had. Why was that so fun? What was your involvement with that project?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Should a Shuttle end up someplace you didn’t want it to be, you wanted it to be someplace else, either from a landing in California, or you needed to take it back to California to get mod [modification] work done on it. Way back in early ferry days, they inadvertently flew a Shuttle on the back of a 747 through some virga. Virga’s rain that’s not even hitting the ground. They were in the virga for like ten seconds, did—I think the figure I heard was two and a half million dollars’ worth of damage to that, and I’ve seen photographs of it, and it was like they’d hit those tiles with BBs. They were just totally chewed up.\\n\\n So they then developed some flight rules for what kind of weather you ought to fly in and what kind of weather you ought to avoid, and needed somebody to be in control of that, in charge of that. So that office, Dick Thorson before me, and then Dick immediately following\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , and then me a couple of years later after Dick left, did that.\\n\\n So we would take a team of folks. We had quite a few people supplied from KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida] that were Orbiter-type people. We’d have some tile technicians with us that in case we sustained some damage on the road that we could put them in cherry pickers and they could get up there and repair it.\\n\\n We had some safety people, some SR&QA [Safety, Reliability, and Quality Assurance] people, a security guy. We then had an Air Force outfit called DDMS [DoD Manager for Space Shuttle Support]. DDMS is a joint military outfit that’s here. They’re mainly Air Force, but rather than reporting directly to the Department of Air Force, they go up through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were our interfaces on the military bases that we went to. DDMS also supplies military people on all our TAL sites, and there are interfaces there at those TAL sites. Anything NASA needs from the department of FIMs, we go through DDMS, and they’ll get it for us. So our DDMS guys would go ferrying with us, and they’d be the guys who would interface with the bases that we go to.\\n\\n So our job was pulling all this team together, and then when we actually got ready, we would hold a ferry readiness review. Let’s say we landed in Florida. We would hold a ferry readiness review after the guys got the Orbiter stacked and made it on top of the 747. We would hold a review to determine our readiness to go, and then sign off on the fact that “We’ve accepted the thing and we’re ready.”\\n\\n Then we would charter an Air Force C-141, and we would fly in it, and we acted as the pathfinder for the 747 with the Shuttle on top, and we’d fly out about a hundred miles in front of them looking for weather, turbulence, whatever, anything that could hurt us.\\n\\n On the Air Force 141 would be this team of folks that I talked about, the safety people and stuff from KSC, because, especially if you were flying one that had landed in California, there was no way to unfuel the thing out in California. You had to get it back to Florida to unfuel it. So it still had fuel in the OMS [orbital maneuvering system] pods and the RCS [reaction control system] stuff. So every time we’d land—that fuel is very toxic—the guys would be out with sniffers on long poles, sniffing around the jets to make sure nothing was leaking.\\n\\n So those folks would all fly on the 141 with me, along with the airplane technicians that maintained the 747. We took our own maintenance people with us in case we ever had a breakdown or anything on the road, they could fix it right there. So we probably had a team of, oh, twenty to thirty people in the 141, flying as the pathfinder. We’d do that until we got it back to where we were taking it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So on the 747 itself, it would just be the crew that was flying the plane, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, because of the hazardous nature of the fuel and the possibility of a leak, when we were ferrying an Orbiter that had fuel onboard, we would only have four people on the 747; that would be the two pilots and the two flight engineers. And they had the air packs on board so that in case there was a leak, they could don the air packs and at least get out of the airplane.\\n\\n Now, when we were taking Orbiters to and from California to Palmdale for mod periods, they wouldn’t have fuel onboard, so we can fly more than just those four people onboard, and quite often did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that they would come back from California still with the fuel onboard. Was there discussion about this beforehand about whether there should be some way set up to remove that fuel, or was that reviewed and determined that the risk would be acceptable in the transport? Do you recall any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That happened way before I ever got involved in it, but I know there were environmental concerns. That stuff is so hazardous that you have to have special methods and means to dispose of it, and I know that played into it. I think expense would have just been so much to try and build a facility out in California to get all that fuel off, that I think it was just deemed better to fly it back with the understanding that we’d handle it, or we procedurally were able to make sure it wasn’t leaking. But we did everything we could to keep it from leaking also, with plugs and heaters. We could power up the Orbiter from a 747. So we powered up the heaters and stuff that heated the lines that the fuel might be in so that we didn’t freeze them as we were flying. And then we also protected against that by limiting ourselves to the altitude that we’d fly at when we had the Orbiter on top. So, yes, we did everything we could to protect against something happening." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And nothing has so far." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nothing has, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would that work then with the Shuttle? You said you were also involved in the landing sites and the abort sites, the overseas sites. How would it work with getting the Orbiter back from overseas sites? Were there different considerations that had to come into play with ferrying it back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, in fact, one of the things that we used to have to do was to go down and report to the—before each Shuttle launch since\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , there’s been a flight readiness review where all the various organizations stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready to go.” The Orbiter project, the SRB [solid rocket booster] project, the ET [external tank] project, all of them had to stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready.” The ferry project had to go down and stand up and say, “Yes, we’re ready to support if you need us.”\\n\\n When I first got involved in it, we weren’t landing in Florida. All our landings were out at Edwards [Air Force Base, California]. So we were doing a lot of ferrying back then.\\n\\n So one of the things we would do was before a mission, we would evaluate what our TAL sites were and go over again our route of how we were going to get home. Thank goodness, we never had to bring one back from over there, but you would have had to have done is go down the west coast of Africa and then stop in at Ascension Island down in the mid-Atlantic, and then you’d come into Brazil and then up the coast and up the chain islands, come back to Florida. So that would have been a long, rough trip. And you had to come that way, because you’re limited on the amount of fuel, limited on the total amount of weight you could put on the 747. So you could only put so much fuel on. Didn’t have enough to fly nonstop across the North Atlantic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Orbiter certainly does add quite a bit of its own weight to that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And we would have had to have taken a lot of equipment off, had they ended up over there that we didn’t have to take off out in California." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, equipment off the Orbiter itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s interesting. Would you then be able to transport that back by other means?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Hmm, hadn’t thought about that aspect of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I also had another interesting project we got into. Of course, out at Edwards and in Florida, you’d have a way to lift the Orbiter up, and that’s what you do. You lift Orbiter up and roll the 747 underneath it and then put it back down. If you’re over at a TAL site, what are you going to do?\\n\\n There’s an outfit in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that has cranes that can lift this thing, but then the question is, how are you going to get the crane over there?\\n\\n The Air Force had modified two C-5s, I think. There’s a troop compartment in most C-5s back in the back, and they took those out. Well, these DDMS guys that I talked about earlier, somebody came up with the idea, “We bet we could get those cranes inside a C-5,” one of these modified C-5s.\\n\\n So we brought one of the C-5s into—we did this over in Lafayette, Louisiana—brought it into Lafayette and brought a crane over, and they worked and worked, and sure enough, got it in there. So then we knew. From then on, if we ever had to go do a TAL site, we could get our crane over there by air and not have to put it on a barge and get it over. So that was a big relief." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that would certainly add to the time required in getting it back. And it’s good that you don’t have to have that equipment at every site already there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And luckily the Shuttle hasn’t had to land in any of those sites." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Up to date anyway. So everything seems to be going well.\\n\\n Well, you said those were some of your duties in this role dealing with the landing sites, the ferry program. You were still involved with these boards. Were there any other aspects of your job as you were filling this Headquarters role?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, and then this last reorganization I mentioned where we went up to the payloads area, by then we reorganized to where the job came back to JSC. It didn’t stay as a Headquarters thing anymore. So I was back at JSC then, back with JSC paperwork, anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. And is this when you were under Tommy [W.] Holloway? Was this the Customer Flight Integration Office when you were deputy manager?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, by that time, Tommy, who used to be head of the flight director’s office, Tommy had come over to Shuttle Program, and—oh, what was he doing? He later became head of the thing. Anyway, Tommy had come over to the Shuttle Program, and I was working for Tommy then. Then we reorganized and Richard [M.] Swalin had the payload area, so I was Richard’s deputy, but we still all worked for Tommy, because he was now head of the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Talking about the ferry, one time, probably about the second one I was ever on, really impressed me. We were on the C-141, and I don’t remember what I wanted to do, I wanted to get a cup of coffee or a glass of water or something, and I asked a young airman onboard, I said, “Can I do something?” and I don’t know what it was, but he almost snapped to attention.\\n\\n And he said, “Sir,” said, “you can do anything you want to do.” They have some order, some standing order, and I don’t remember exactly what it’s called, but he said, “In our orders,” said, “there’s the president and there’s vice-president and there’s you.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Laughs] Well!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that whole ferry thing commanded a great deal of respect from the military and from all the bases we went to and everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that’s good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. You know, it had been classified a national resource, and so it was worth—I think\\n\\n Endeavour\\n\\n , I think the price on it was two and a half billion. So it was a valuable piece of equipment we were hauling back and forth across the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it sounds like they were taking their jobs pretty seriously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Crippen told me one time, he said, “I’m more worried during ferry flights than I am during missions.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He said, “I’m convinced we’re going to hurt one during a ferry flight.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, now, that’s interesting. Although I guess since it is going through the atmosphere, there is a lot more that can be happening that’s not as easy to control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and, you know, it’s reachable by kooks, if you want to put it that way. I can remember the one time at Barksdale Air Force Base up in Shreveport [Louisiana], the security guy came to me and said, “There’s been reports of some guy out in the woods here shooting at planes.”\\n\\n So they were advising us to take off—I think it was to the north or south, whichever way, so we didn’t go over his house with the thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that certainly is a very big concern.\\n\\n Well, I’d like to take a brief break here if we could and change out our tape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking still about the ferry flights. You just mentioned the story about landing in Louisiana and having to watch out when taking off, being shot at. Were there ever any other particular security concerns that came up during the ferry flights that you can think of that were—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some misunderstandings that it took us a while to work out. KSC has some very, very strict security procedures, and they’re there for good reasons, I’m sure. For instance, I think it’s fourteen years of age—anybody less than fourteen cannot go out to the launch pad, cannot go—I don’t know about the OPF [Orbiter Processing Facility]. They can’t go out to the launch pad around the vehicles.\\n\\n So the KSC security guys that were tasked with the security on our flights, their thought was that these same security procedures and guidelines that we have at KSC, we’re going to use these on the road with the Orbiter and the 747. My thought was that this is a unique opportunity to show this thing off and let the American people see it and get up close to it. So we did have some misunderstandings along those lines about the age and everything. By the time I had left, I think we had it where schoolkids and everybody else was going onboard the 747 to see the thing. Actually, I think it’s a great opportunity to show the thing off.\\n\\n Now, of course, if you have one that’s fueled, you’re not able to do that, but there, we enforced a very strict—nobody within 1,500 feet of the thing that didn’t have to be there. Of course, the people that were refueling the 747 and stuff, they had to be there, but that’s after we’d already sniffed it out for leaks and stuff, but we wouldn’t go bring in the public out to an Orbiter that was hazardous.\\n\\n But the ones that we were taking back and forth to mod periods, yes, we started showing it off to the public, and I think that was a good thing to do. But we mostly went into military bases for that reason, that security was good, we could control it. A lot of times, we’d leave it up to the base commander, say, “If you feel comfortable letting people come in and look at it, it’s okay with us, but, you know, you’re the one that’s going to get the finger pointed at if something happens to it. So if you think you can control crowds, bring them in.”\\n\\n Some commanders liked using that as a community relations tool by bringing people in, and some didn’t feel comfortable doing it. So it varied from base to base." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there ever any other weather-type incidents? You had mentioned the one where they briefly flew into an in-the-air rainstorm. Were there any other—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we had some pretty harrowing times. One I recall, in fact, the time we were in Barksdale, I’d only been there once, and we got out that morning. We knew we were getting socked in, and there was a front coming through, and we knew that if we didn’t get out the next morning, that we weren’t going to get out for a while.\\n\\n So that night I called the guys together, and we got together up in my hotel room, and I said, “Look, there’s bound to be a speed that we can go through some amount of moisture that’s not going to hurt us.”\\n\\n So we devised a plan where the next morning when even though we were taking off in fog and clouds, that as long as the C-141 didn’t get any drops on the windshield, that we’d say okay for the 7-4 to come off, and we did.\\n\\n But then we got up, and we had to find out a way to get through that front. So we got permission from—I think we were under Fort Worth Center’s—because, see, the 7-4 and the 141 have to abide by air traffic control just like a commercial airliner would, but we got clearance from the center to let us run up and down that front, which we did in the 141 and finally found a hole in the thing, and we were able to get through it. Called the 7-4 and told them where we were, gave them our coordinates, so they came through and found the same hole and went through. So the ol’ pathfinder really earned its money that day.\\n\\n We set a record one time on the amount of time that it took us to get from California to Florida, and I think that was ten days. In fact, another Air Force function I forgot to mention a while ago that we carried with us was weather people. The Air Force provided weather folks, and these are the same Air Force people that do the launch weather predictions down in Florida. They’re stationed at Patrick Air Force, out there at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base. But anyway, they would go with us and do our weather predicting for the ferry flights.\\n\\n They wrote this up in some Air Force weather magazine. They called it the “Ferry Flight from Hell” or something like that. Mike Adams was the officer that was our weather guy on that flight.\\n\\n When I say ten days, we weren’t airborne, obviously, that whole time. What we’d do is start the clock ticking after we had the ferry readiness review and said, “Let’s go.”\\n\\n Then the next day was day one. I think we had the readiness review, and it was raining in California, so we couldn’t fly the next day, and we were on the ground for a few days in California. That may have been when I sent everybody home. I know one flight, it was around Eastertime, and it looked to me like we weren’t going to get out of there for three or four days, and so I said, “Look, anybody that wants to go home for Easter, take off,” and some folks did.\\n\\n But anyway, I know on that flight we got as far as El Paso [Texas], and I think this was\\n\\n Endeavour\\n\\n ’s first flight, first orbit. It landed at Edwards, and we were bringing it back to the Cape, but we got to El Paso and had some thunderstorms moving into El Paso and behind us. And, of course, with thunderstorms, one of the things you worry about is hail, because that would just tear up those tiles, too, just sitting on the ground.\\n\\n But I remember Mike wanting to turn around and go back to Edwards. He didn’t feel comfortable sitting on the ground in El Paso because of the thunderstorms coming in, but we finally convinced ourselves that they weren’t going to be that severe. So we got rained on, but we didn’t get any hail. We didn’t like to get rained on on the ground, but I always tell everybody, all that hurt was our pride. That doesn’t hurt an Orbiter.\\n\\n But I think from that mission, from the time we started until we finally got it to Florida, was like ten days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So there’s no method for protecting the Orbiter then when it’s on the ground on top of the 747 at these various bases that you’ll stop at? There’s no hangars or anything large enough to—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No, the only hangar—somebody told me the other day that they found one at Edwards now that they can get in, but I think it involves taking the air out of the nose tires on the 747, and so you sort of nose it down like that, and you still can’t get the tail in, but you can get everything but the tail inside of it. But, no, there’s nothing on the road that you can get it out of the weather." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly a big stack of vehicles." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you mentioned while we were during our break, you mentioned getting Kennedy’s runway ready so that the Orbiter could land there on a more frequent basis, and that, of course, is quite a concern. The runway has to be built to withstand the weight of the Orbiter coming in. What were some of the processes there and the challenges of getting that ready?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The original Kennedy runway, of course, was there, I’m sure, yes, for the Air Force STS-1. When they drew up the specs on how to build that runway, I think they envisioned the Orbiter being an all-weather kind of vehicle, maybe even landing in the rain, because nobody knew then the effect rain would have on tiles and stuff.\\n\\n But the specs on the runway had things like it had to able to shed two inches of rain in an hour or something like that, an enormous amount of water, and they had to ensure that it didn’t hydroplane and stuff like that. So that runway was very, very rough. It just ate up tires like you wouldn’t believe. And if you got into any kind of crosswind where the Orbiter was coming in a little bit cross, or the tires were hitting the runway a little bit across, it’d just chew the tires up totally.\\n\\n I guess we actually—we blew a tire. Yes, we did. On one of the missions, we landed down there and blew a tire, and so now we’re back to landing at Edwards all the time, because we can’t land—we have convinced ourselves that landing at Florida’s not safe in any kind of crosswind at all. You know, if they had a wind right down the runway, you’re probably good, but any kind of crosswind was not going to be good.\\n\\n There was a NASA plane way back in the—must have been in the sixties. Convair made a run at the commercial airline industry, and they had an airplane very similar to the Boeing 707. It was a Convair 990, and I guess it never really panned out for the commercial, but NASA had one of these 990s, four-engine jet, looked a lot like the 707. Somebody came up with the idea, and I was told it was a guy out of our office, Drum Simpson [phonetic], Drum, along with some others, came up with the idea that we’d put a Shuttle landing gear in the belly of this 990, and we would have a hydraulic system that could deploy the thing and turn the thing, and so then what we would do is land the 990 at Shuttle landing speeds and then deploy this gear out of the belly of the thing, and we could simulate crosswinds by turning it at various angles, and we could simulate the force with the hydraulic system, and by driving the flaps down and putting all the weight of the 990 on this thing, you could simulate Orbiter weights from landing to pitchover. So we were able to take this 990 down to Florida and prove that you ought not be landing Shuttles down there.\\n\\n In the meantime, there were some guys at Langley that were soil and landing-field experts, and somebody ran across an outfit, their name was Skidabrator, S-K-I-D-A-B-R-A-T-O-R. Saw them written up in a magazine where they were taking concrete off of a freeway over in Louisiana, and the Skidabrator worked on a principle as it shot BBs down onto the concrete, to eat away the concrete, but then the back part of the machine swept up the BBs with a big vacuum cleaner kind of a thing. So they could, in essence, smooth out runways.\\n\\n So we took and we developed some test strips. We had the Skidabrator do a strip for us. We had various grinding techniques. There are all sorts of outfits around that can grind concrete. And we had different people that knew all to grind concrete come down and grind test strips, and we went to various smoothnesses. We did this on the Kennedy runway at one end and off to the side a little bit.\\n\\n Then we flew the 990 against these test strips and ran a bunch of tests, a bunch of tires. We had TV cameras in there that could see what was happening to the tires as you flew against these various services. And we finally ended up with the Skidabrator to do the job.\\n\\n One of the things that we found out that really surprised everybody, when we started this project, everybody thought that the smoother we could get it, the better. But it turns out, 990 proved to us that smoother is not better, because with a slightly rough runway, you’re tearing off minuscule amounts of the tire, and those pieces of tire that are leaving are taking temperature away, just keeping the tire cool by shunting them off.\\n\\n So we found the right thing was Skidabrator, and we did the whole runway down there and have been landing back at Kennedy ever since. So that really worked out good to be able to do that. We couldn’t have done it without that 990. That was just a super thing. It was built by the guys at Dryden [Flight Research Center, California], piloted by the guys at Dryden, but our office oversaw it here and oversaw the testing and designed the tests and stuff that we did down in Florida." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that still managed to meet the concerns about water in the runway, hydroplaning, running off the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, of course, also since we learned that we’re not going to be landing the Shuttle down there in the middle of a rainstorm, that we didn’t have to be as concerned with water on the runway. But, no, it’s still very adequate for getting rid of water. I would bet it’s the best runway in the United States for getting rid of water, still.\\n\\n In fact, the Air Force folks down at Edwards, after they saw what we had done in Florida and saw our test results, because we also took the 990 out and did tests on the concrete runway at Edwards and then test on the lake beds also. I know one of the things, right before I retired, the Air Force had come to us and said the Kennedy runway is now so good that they’d like to do the same thing to the Edwards runway. Would we help them out money-wise? And of course we said, “No, the Edwards runway’s just fine as far as we’re concerned. So we don’t have the money to put in to modding your runway.”\\n\\n Yes, it turns out rougher’s a little better than totally smooth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Surprised everybody, even the big, really super smart engineers that we had looking at it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So are the tires replaced after each mission then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Now that you mention it, those tires may be able to be used again, I think, but the main landing-gear tires are replaced after each run, or at least they were when I left. They may have gotten better now, I don’t know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Probably makes sense. While Shuttle tires are probably a bit more complex than normal tires, it’s still a good idea to have a good pair on them. Well, that’s certainly an interesting aspect to the Shuttle Program itself that we haven’t heard a lot about.\\n\\n Are there any other pieces to the ferrying side of things that you’d like to mention that we haven’t touched on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like I say, I love taking it around and showing it off. I love trying to bring it in here to Ellington. I’d love the people at JSC to see it, just because people here don’t ever get to see the hardware very much. People in Florida, I tell them they’re spoiled. They’ve got the hardware right there. They can walk up and look at it.\\n\\n So we’d bring it in here as much as we could. We were so restrictive on weather, though, that our public affairs people, we stood them up so many times that they had gotten to where they didn’t even want to announce that we were coming in, because a number of times, we’d say, “Yes, we’re gonna try to get there,” and then we wouldn’t show up because of weather someplace else.\\n\\n It’d be a beautiful, sunshiny day here, and in Houston everybody’s standing around wondering, “Where are they and why aren’t they here? The weather looks good.” But we’re hung up out in Abilene [Texas] or something like that.\\n\\n But we were able to get it in here a few times, took it to Huntsville, Alabama, once. I let the folks at Huntsville see it.\\n\\n One of the best show-and-tells we ever did was the senator from Utah. He’s a big space guy. Utah has a Space Week every week, and, of course, the solids, solid rocket motors are built at Morton-Thiokol, so the Marshall people get involved with this Utah Space Week because there’s Morton-Thiokol up there.\\n\\n So through Marshall, the senator’s office got in touch with us and said, “How about bringing the Shuttle?” We are taking one to Palmdale for a mod period. They said, “What’s the chance of getting that thing up to Utah?”\\n\\n Because it turns out the NASA administrator, Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin, was going to be up there as part as some Space Week activities. So we said, “Yes, that sounds like a reasonable, doable thing, and we’ll try to do that.”\\n\\n We got delayed in Florida for some reason. I can’t remember why now. It might have been weather. It might have been that the bolts that meld the thing to the Orbiters, sometimes they had a hard time getting those to just the right torque, or other reasons. You’re always running into troubles mating. Anyway, we didn’t get off. So we didn’t get up there in time to get Goldin while he was there, but we did get off with the expectations that we were going to go to Utah.\\n\\n Of course, we were in the Air Force C-141. We took off. The 747 was behind us, but we could hear them on the radio, and we heard them talking to the ground crew at the Shuttle landing facility where we took off from, and they told the guys on the ground, said, “Hey, we think we may have hit a bird on the way out.” It turns out it came out over the cockpit. The guy said they even ducked when they saw it come over.\\n\\n So the guys on the ground went out and called back and said, “Yes, sure enough, there’s a dead osprey out here on the runway.”\\n\\n So our scheduled stop was in Fort Worth [Texas] to refuel. So we landed in Fort Worth and got up and got to looking, and, sure enough, we had hit a bird. The bird hit the Orbiter, and I think it had damaged like fourteen tiles or so, and it may be that the bird didn’t take all of them out, but the fact that now you have an exposed edge exposed to the airstream that’s not supposed to be exposed, that damages them, too. I think we had fourteen tiles to repair, so we had to get the cherry picker from the base and get the tile folks up and get them to repair it. So that took us a while.\\n\\n And in the meantime, the people are gathering in Salt Lake [City, Utah] wondering, “Where are they? Where are they?”\\n\\n So then that afternoon we get ready to go, and we get out and get on our C-141, and it’s got a problem; it won’t start. So I’m on the phone to the Marshall PAO [public affairs office] guy up at Utah, and I said, “Look, we’re not gonna make it there. Our C-141’s broke.”\\n\\n So he said, “Let me get back to you.”\\n\\n Turns out there was a KC-135 that belonged to the Utah International Guard, it was in somewhere in Oklahoma having some maintenance work done, and it was on its way back to Utah, and they caught this airplane over Colorado someplace, and they said, “If we can get that plane to you, can—,” and we’d already checked. DDMS couldn’t get us another 141 right away.\\n\\n So the Utah International Guard offered to send us KC-135 back for us. So we said, “Okay, we’ll do that.”\\n\\n So they got back, and, sure enough, we got everybody on that plane and took off, left our C-141 there in Fort Worth, went on to Utah, but got there just as the sun was going down. We also wouldn’t fly it at night. That was one of our flight rules, we wouldn’t fly through clouds; we wouldn’t fly at night. But we got there just at dark.\\n\\n At Salt Lake where we landed, we landed at the Salt Lake International Airport at the field, but the Utah Guard has half of that airport, so we parked the thing over by the guard base, but we finally got it there and got buttoned up for the night.\\n\\n Hal Loden was with me, and Hal and I were driving, we’d gotten our car and were driving off the base at like ten-thirty, and there were still people coming on the base to see that thing. It was just amazing, the interest that that thing would generate wherever we took it. That’s such a good tool to use for show-and-tell." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, space exploration has always been very exciting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you said, most people don’t ever get a chance to see it up close and personal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s neat.\\n\\n You mentioned in this example that the bird that hit the Orbiter and there was tile damage. When you would do those kind of repairs in-flight like this—well, on the ground, but during transfer—did that require actually replacing those tiles, or was it a patch-type job until it could get to the final destination?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a patch-type job. They had some kind of epoxy that they would put in and basically, you know, fill in the holes that had been made and then smooth off the edges. So it was a patch-type thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. So no more would come off in the airflow as you had mentioned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because you weren’t actually doing any damage to the skin by flying without the tiles. It was just you were trying to protect other tiles from air and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Well, it certainly does sound like it was interesting job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was, it was a fun job and totally different from the control center and everything else I’d ever done. So it was enjoyable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The interface between NASA and the military—as you said, they were a very big support for this—it sounds like it was a pretty good working relationship there. Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, yes, very good, very good. Another thing this office did, our office over in the program office, we were in charge of the budget for all the landing sites, but we also had the budget for the DDMS, the military that I mentioned, and one of the things the military did for us was to put rescue forces in Florida and at the TAL sites in case somebody had to bail out, and we had them at White Sands [Test Facility, New Mexico] and also at Edwards.\\n\\n But, you know, after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , we built the capability into the Orbiter to let the crew bail out of the thing. So then you’ve got to say, “Okay, what are you going to do?” Once they’ve bailed out, now you got to find them and rescue them.\\n\\n So we would station—we had some C-130s that would come down to Florida for launches and had PJs, parachute jumpers, that would go in the water to get to folks, and that’s called a Mode 8 rescue, where crews bailed out over water and you go get them.\\n\\n So we’d have a Mode 8 sim once a year where the various PJ units would fly. I know there’s one unit that’s up on Long Island [New York], one unit stationed at Patrick [Air Force Base, Florida]. Let’s see. There used to be a unit at Homestead [Air Reserve Base, Florida], but I think they moved it up to Patrick now.\\n\\n Anyway, the various units would come down and participate in this Mode 8 where we’d actually dump dummies out in the water, and occasionally we’d put a live guy out there. Some of the astronauts, in fact, would volunteer to be our live subjects, and we’d put him in a suit and a life raft and put him out there and let the PJs come find him and pick him up and put him in the helicopter. So that was another interesting aspect of working with the military and doing all that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It certainly sounds like you were keeping plenty busy with this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, yes.\\n\\n You had asked earlier about the Shuttle launches. The ones I was able to see after I got over into the program office and doing this ferrying stuff, were ones that—one we just went down there as tourists almost, as I mentioned, as Honeycutt’s guests, but the other ones, I just happened to be down there getting ready to take an Orbiter out on the ferry flight and was down there, you know, at the same time we were launching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, it panned out well for you in two cases then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It worked out well. I did it a couple three times. I was down there to pick one up at the same time we were launching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, good. Conveniently overlapped them that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you did move in—I think we began talking, and we’re back a little bit, moving over into when the job transferred back as a JSC function, as Customer Flight Integration Office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It had transferred back as a JSC function even before that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I guess we’ve maintained our same name. So, yes, we were back at JSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so these same duties and all still kept going with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, okay. Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But then they did, yes, somebody did move up into the Customer and Flight Integration Office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. At any point after this, did you begin to get involved with—I believe you’d mentioned earlier that later you became more involved with the Shuttle-Mir Program when it became merged with that payloads?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no. When I got into the cargo and—what’d you say the name of it was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Customer Flight Integration Office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Customer and Flight—yes, when I got there, as I mentioned, I was the deputy there under Richard Swalin, and we had one section that had flight integration managers, one section they had the payload integration managers. So, yes, at that point, acting as deputy of that organization, was very much involved in the payload and stuff, and, yes, we were very involved with the Mir stuff, because a lot of the flights by then were going to Mir. So I was probably around for, oh—I was going to guess how many number of flights to Mir, but I guess I won’t guess, because I might be totally wrong. Anyway, all of them that we were flying then—I just can’t remember what percentage of the flights were going to Mir and which ones were still carrying payloads." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Did that present its own unique challenges in organizing and integrating the flights that were designated for the Mir as compared to the normal operations for a Shuttle? Were there different aspects to it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My sense was, yes, it did. So much of that was already established from the time I up there that, and I say “up” because those offices were on the seventh floor and my offices had been on the fifth. But, yes, by the time I got up there, so much of those procedures and how they were working with the Mir, they were called, what, Phase Two Office, I guess, was what they were called. Phase Two was under [Frank L.] Culbertson [Jr.], right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Phase One." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Phase One. I guess we’re in Phase Two now. Yes, Phase One was under Frank. But so many of those procedures were all established and everything by the time I got up, that I wasn’t involved in setting up those procedures, but I know it presented a big challenge to the folks. I say “big challenge.” They handled it all very well. But having another NASA organization, Phase One, and then you had the Shuttle guys that were carrying the—the Shuttle was carrying the stuff up to the Mir, and it seems to me there was lot of who’s-in-charge kind of questions that weren’t as smooth as things had been in the past." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s understandable with kind of a new way of doing things that hadn’t been done before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, because all this cargo that you were hauling up to the Mir and bringing back, it wasn’t really a payload in the sense that we’d been used to having payloads. We’d have Hubble Space Telescopes, or we’d have, you know, other deployables or Spacelabs or whatever. Now, although it was still a payload, you were hauling it up in the bay. It wasn’t necessarily a payload, and there was some other NASA people in charge of it. So my sense is, that was not the smoothest of times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How closely did you work with the Russians at this time, or did you work during—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn’t work with them at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Did you at all have any involvement in—as you said, when you came into this role, the details had been ironed out to a pretty good extent for the Shuttle and the Mir operations. Were you at all involved in planning for a space station at that time as they were beginning to gear up for Phase Two?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were starting to gear up, but, no, we weren’t really involved with Station. We were learning a lot of lessons off Mir, I think, that were going to be valuable in Station. And our people, our PIMs and FIMs—I guess I mentioned that—our PIMs and FIMs and us two were involved in getting some of the station elements ready to be carried up on the Shuttle. So, yes, in that way, we were involved with the Station folks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Involved in being able to integrate those into the Shuttle system for the transport?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay. Was that much different from any of the other planning that had been going on, or was it kind of similar to some of the Hubble-type sized—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think it was very similar to the Mir stuff, but it wasn’t—here again, because you had another organization that was saying, “What happens to this piece of hardware once you get it on orbit?” And I’m not sure, as we talk here, that we had ever launched even the first piece of hardware for the Station by the time I left. I know we’d done a lot of planning on it, but I’m not sure we’d ever put a piece up there yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. It certainly sounds like there was a lot being learned. You said lessons learned. It sounds like a lot of them were on the organizational and management side of things and making the program work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and especially on Station, and they have worked out the way they do this, but like you’ve launched people on the Shuttle, and you’ve got a flight director and his team of people that are controlling that mission. Now you’ve got a Station up here. Now you’ve got a flight director and a team of people controlling that mission, and when you get the two together, who’s in charge, and when does this team say what to do, and when does that team say what to do? So they had to work all those out, and I wasn’t a party to all of that, but I can imagine there were some hurdles to overcome there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure there were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you did eventually decide that it was time to retire from NASA. Have you just pretty much retired and are taking time to enjoy yourself, or have you been involved with any contracting or any other—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I haven’t yet. Had a few nibbles when I first left, but I wasn’t interested in doing anything right then, and I guess the longer you’re gone, the less the nibbles become. So I haven’t had too many nibbles here lately.\\n\\n A couple of guys had told that me, said, “You ought to draw your line in the sand, say, ‘I’m going at this time,’ then stick with it,” and look forward to it for two or three years, you know, draw your line in the sand two years before you really do it, or three years before you really do it.\\n\\n And that’s what I did. I said, “I’m going to go at sixty,” and I did. I was still having an awful lot of fun. I’m sure I would still be having a lot of fun out there today if I was still out there, but I drew the line in the sand. I said, “Okay, I’m gonna go at sixty.” So that was it. There was nothing dramatic that made me want to retire on such-and-such a date or anything else except a birthday." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that’s a good reason." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By then, you’ve earned a right to just kind of do whatever you want to do for a while, play some golf." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With retirement in mind, I took up golf again. I never had time to play golf after we got to Houston. I think I played once, and I had learned to play again when I was in Seattle [Washington] at Boeing. The great Northwest up there, it stays light so late in the day during the summer that you could get in your eighteen holes after work, and some of the guys in the office played. So I took it up and played some in Seattle, but after I’d been here to Houston, I played one time, and then it just took up too much time, didn’t have time to do that. So I took it up with the idea that I was going to retire and I’d try it and see if I enjoyed it again, and I did, and it’s good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good, okay, everybody should have a hobby like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back over your career at NASA, we’ve talked about several of the people that you worked with, but is there anybody in particular that you’d like to mention that either had a big impact on your career personally or that you think was very instrumental in the space program as a whole?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kranz impressed me when I first met him. I think I mentioned to you that I came into his office at the Stahl-Meyers Building to interview him. I’d interviewed a number of guys that day, I think some of them in Landing and Recovery [Division].\\n\\n But I came into Gene’s office. He had a board behind his desk with names and different remote site locations on it, and he was on the phone saying, “Okay, I’ve got so-and-so and so-and-so hung up in New York. They’re at the airport ready to go, but they need passports. You’ve got to get their passports to them, and I got this and that and that.”\\n\\n And Gene was a young guy. He was older than I was, but he was sure much younger than the supervisors I’d been used to at Boeing. I’ve since accused him of setting up all that, “I’ve got so-and-so and so-and-so” in these different airports and all these remote sites just to impress people. [Butler laughs]\\n\\n That was very impressive. Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] was a super impressive guy. I remember Gemini VII, I bet it was, Chris was my flight director, and we were having problems with fuel cells, and the SPAN back then was run by the contractor, McDonnell Douglas, and these were high-level McDonnell Douglas people, vice presidents and stuff, and they, I’m sure, didn’t respect us, well, not very much. You know, “These snotty-nosed, young NASA guys, trying to control our spacecraft that we built and we tested.”\\n\\n But anyway, I remember being back during Station passes one time, and I happened to be back there talking to him, and Kraft came back, and they started giving Chris some spiel about, “We ought to do this and we ought to do that.”\\n\\n We were standing there at the console, and I remember him putting his arm on his shoulder and said, “What do you think about that, Rod?”\\n\\n And, well, I’ll tell you what, the attitude that the big boys have towards you—and Kraft does that—really changes. It was his way of showing you support, and I guess he knew I was struggling a little bit, and he fixed that right up. Kraft was a great guy.\\n\\n Sig [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg was a super guy to work for. Sig was one of the world’s nicest guys, just super guy. Arnie [Arnold D.] Aldrich, super good guy. Arnie was just as smart as he could be, but very much of a people person. I think I mentioned last time John [W.] Aaron, one of the smartest guys I ever knew. He had a photographic memory.\\n\\n George Abbey—God, who could ever say that Abbey’s not a special person. When I know when we first saw George, I couldn’t figure out who he was. He’d come into these meetings back on Apollo, and you’d see him, he might come in and just stand over in the corner, and he’d write something down every now and then and never say anything, and then leave. And you’d say, “Who’s that guy? I see him all the time.”\\n\\n Then for some reason—then George discovered us at the Singing Wheel up in Webster [Texas] , and by then, Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt was onboard, who was one of the—you know, Jack was the geologist astronaut that flew on Apollo 17, and he and George were big running buddies, and George would bring Jack into the Singing Wheel. John Aaron and I were probably the unofficial shuffleboard champs, and George and Jack used to love to come in and try and shoot their way out of a shuffleboard victory or cheat their way into a shuffleboard victory. So George was a special person.\\n\\n George did things for you that I think you didn’t even realize he was doing, and later on, you’d suspect that maybe George had something to do with that or maybe George really did do it.\\n\\n I remember he offered me one time—one of the plum NASA jobs was the NASA rep to Australia. NASA has two overseas reps: one’s in Australia, and the other one’s in Paris. The Australian position was coming open, and George asked me if I’d be interested or willing to do that. At this time we had kids, and I guess our oldest son was in high school, early high school, and the other ones were coming up behind him, and I just didn’t think I wanted to uproot them and pull them over and do that. You know, you tell them that now, and they said, “Gosh, why didn’t we do that? That would’ve been great to go to Australia.” [Butler laughs]\\n\\n But anyway, George is special, always will be. George was very much this “Get people involved and get people together.” You know we talked about the chili cookoff. He started that. He was big in St. Patrick’s Day stuff. I remember we trained every year to go pull the tug-of-war to St. Patrick’s at the Highland Games, I guess they were called, even talked Bob [Robert K.] Holkan into throwing the caper, that telephone pole-looking thing. Holkan was the biggest guy around, so he threw the caper, and some of us pulled on the tug-of-war. But George was really good at getting people involved in doing that.\\n\\n This Bob Legler that we mentioned earlier, he has sort of become, I guess, the unofficial flight control historian. He’s a pack rat. He’s kept everything that has ever come across his desk, and I think he’s got it in storage someplace, but he says one day he’s going to write a book. I hope he does, because he’s so into that, though, he really sets himself up for things.\\n\\n I remember one time he left flight control and was going offsite maybe to work in the Philco corporate office or maybe a Philco Planning Payloads Office or something. Anyway, he was leaving flight control. So we had a going-away party for him at the Singing Wheel, and traditional in flight control and all over NASA now, I guess, you got a signed picture with everybody’s signatures on it. So we had a picture for Bob, and had astronauts and Kraft and everybody to sign this thing.\\n\\n Somebody took this picture and meticulously copied all the autographs onto another picture, and it wasn’t a real good job of forgery, but it was enough to fool Legler. So at the presentation that night, somebody was up presenting this thing to Legler, and we had another friend, Hershel [R.] Perkins, back in the back, and Hershel starts yelling, “Hey, wait a minute, wait a minute. I was supposed to do that. I was just downstairs. I was supposed to do that.”\\n\\n And he comes up, and the other guy’s saying, “No, no, I’m already into it. Let me have it.”\\n\\n And Hershel said, “No, I’ll do it.”\\n\\n And they argued and they tear the picture. And Legler’s face just fell. It took him a while to figure out that we were really pulling his leg. But he put such importance on all that sort of stuff, that he was the perfect one to pull that on.\\n\\n I mentioned Ellison Onizuka, astronaut office. He was a special guy, became a good friend in SPAN and at the luaus that we would have.\\n\\n In the office that I just left and in the ferry business, I got to know a lot of those pilots real well. Gordon [Charles G.] Fullerton, an ex-astronaut, Gordon is now out at Dryden as a pilot. I guess nobody loves airplanes like Gordo does. You know, being an astronaut, no telling what he could do out in the corporate world, but he’d rather fly airplanes. So he’s a pilot out at Dryden now, and also one of our 747 pilots.\\n\\n There’s been a super number of people here that have been great. I guess I can’t name them all, or we’d be here all day long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it certainly takes a good team of people to make all of it happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. And wives. Another thing, I thought about it the other day that our wives put up with so much with us being gone. Hershel, that I mentioned to you, they lived across a back fence from us when we first moved here, and I was supposed to go, I think, I guess it was Gemini II, I was supposed to go down to Florida, because we had our control center down there, and we monitored it from here in Houston, but I begged off, because my wife, Tina, was pregnant with our second child, our second boy, and she was supposed to have that baby right about the time. So I begged off and stayed here. Hershel, who was a remote-site guy, lived right across the back fence from us. He wasn’t able to beg off, or maybe he didn’t try to beg off, I don’t know. We worked for Philco, but his wife, Ginger, had their third baby just a day behind us. So Hershel missed that. He was down at the remote sites. But the wives, they put up with a lot of traveling and working late and staying out late.\\n\\n And something else—you know, this doesn’t have anything to do with space stuff but just the way we lived back then—nobody had two cars. My wife, Tina, was recalling the other day that Hershel and I would carpool together sometimes to go to work, and that left a car home for the women, and so they’d do their grocery shopping and stuff that way. They’d carpool to do their grocery shopping and stuff. Yes, but we didn’t get our second car. I guess I was thirty years old before I got my own car." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that’s certainly an interesting aspect to things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was different. It’s different than the way things are today anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very different, and, you’re right, it does take that good family support to make it possible to do all of this and know that they’re at home taking care of—the wives are at home taking care of the family and any little details that are coming up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m sure I missed a lot with the kids, and we weren’t totally isolated. I mean, I was involved in the Little League and stuff like that, but there were a lot of nights that we probably didn’t get home until the little ones were in bed already." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your kids understand what you were working on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You asked that the last time, and I think now that, no, they did not, and I get that just from maybe some of the questions that they ask now. So yes, I think, no, they didn’t. They just knew Daddy had a job and Daddy went to work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course, they were immersed in their own community with all their friends and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "True, yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would have fathers doing the same thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, they’ll get a chance to listen to all this and find out details about what you were doing. [Loe laughs]\\n\\n Well, looking back over your career at NASA, what would you consider to be your biggest challenge, and then, alternately, your greatest accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a tough one. The biggest challenge was probably, I guess I would say the total Apollo Program experience. You know, we were definitely doing things that nobody had ever done before. See, I guess I would have to say Apollo.\\n\\n And greatest accomplishment—I don’t know, all of it lumped together—nothing really sticks out in my mind that—getting that runway fixed down at KSC was a good thing, but it’s certainly not anything I did single-handedly or anything, but just to be involved in that was a good thing for the program. It saved a lot of time and money. But I don’t know. I can’t think of any one thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You certainly did have a number of important contributions and things that you accomplished while you were working at NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, sometimes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I’d like to take this chance to ask Sandra and Kirk if they have any questions if that’s all right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sandra? Kirk?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually, yes, I have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Earlier, you mentioned that you were involved in the landing tests. Can you go into some detail about exactly what kind of processes you went through? You know, you didn’t really explain what you were doing to prepare for the flights of the\\n\\n Enterprise\\n\\n ?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, in the Approach and Landing Test." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My recollection from a branch chief’s standpoint was that most of the effort involved in getting the mission rules written and getting the procedures written fell to the flight director, and that was Don Puddy. It was almost like times were changing back then. The branch—our responsibility had sort of become making sure that we gave Puddy a good, qualified flight controller, and then Puddy sort of melded the team together that he needed. So we gave him Jack Knight, and Jack was obviously the most qualified EECOM or SMOKHEE that we had. I say obviously, not obviously. Jack was a super guy.\\n\\n But as far as being involved in the, “Here’s gonna be our go, no-go points, and here’s gonna be—you know, I need to make sure everybody’s a go X number of seconds before we actually release them, and here’s what we’re gonna concentrate on getting down and everything,” that more fell to Don and his team that he put together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The other is—I don’t know if it would be too technical for me to understand, but you were mentioning the difference between Apollo and Shuttle in releasing heat. Can you explain those two differences, how fuel cells were able to release heat between the Apollo and the Shuttle for somebody who doesn’t really comprehend the technicalities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me think. Let me think. You know, it may not have been that big a difference. I guess in both cases, they interfaced with the primary cooling system—the coolant loop. So it may not have been that different now that I think on it. Yes, I may have misspoke there, because now that you ask, I’m not sure I can pinpoint any big differences specifically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d have to think on that for a while. But both of them, as I recall, both of them interchanged heat with the main cooling system, and we dissipated that heat either through radiators or through water boilers or flash evaporators. So, yes, there may not have been that big a difference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Kirk Freeman", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. That’s all I have. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, another accomplishment I’ll mention that I’m pretty proud of—over in the program office, airplanes, you know, I mentioned I was involved with the landing sites—airplanes navigate to sites using a device called a TACAN, T-A-C-A-N—Tactical Air Navigation, and a TACAN gives them range in varying—a TACAN sends out a signal to beacons. It sends out a signal. It gives them a range and a bearing to get to a site. So we have TACANs at all the Shuttle landing sites. I mean there’s TACANs all over the place, but we have them at all the commercial fields, and it’s all across the U.S. and in the world.\\n\\n One of our sites was at Zaragoza in Spain. The Air Force, in closing down a base, gave us a super-duper TACAN probably worth $100,000. They said, “Here, can you use this?”\\n\\n Said, “You bet.”\\n\\n And they did this through the DDMS. So we took the TACAN over and installed it, and when we’d go over and bring that base up to support a tile mission, we would turn on our TACAN. The Spanish Air Force now turn theirs off. They had an old dilapidated one. It didn’t have a lot of power. It still had old vacuum tubes in it. So they would turn theirs off, and their pilots knew to change their frequency settings so they could home in on our TACAN now to get to the base.\\n\\n At some point, we cut a deal with the Spaniards. Anyway, we cut a deal with the Spaniards that said, “Hey, we’ll turn this thing on and leave it on if you will maintain it for us, and we’ll buy the spare parts, because we’ve got a bunch of spare parts already. We’ll send them over there.”\\n\\n And we knew that they had two TACANS like this in country—one at Madrid, and I can’t remember where the other one was—but this thing wasn’t totally foreign to them. In other words, they had schools, and they had ways of knowing how to maintain the thing. So we did that. We cut that agreement and said, “Okay, look, these guys will maintain it for us, and, in turn, we’ll turn it on and leave it on. They can use it.”\\n\\n So that was a win-win for both things, but I ended up having to go to Zaragoza and sign the treaty or the agreement with the Spanish Air Force that said we’d do all that. So that was pretty neat. Because that was going to very, very expensive to have either the DoD, the Department of Defense, maintain that thing for us or to turn it over to our Lockheed contractor at KSC to maintain for us, because they maintained a lot of the equipment at these remote sites. But to turn that over to Lockheed to maintain for us was going to be very expensive. So that was a good deal we worked out with the Spanish. It was a winning thing for them and a good thing for us. And I’ve got the agreement—a copy of it anyway—-at home in Spanish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that’s sort of nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good. Did you have a lot of—in this role working with these remote landing sites, the TAL landing sites, did you have a lot of contact with the people at the different bases, nationals from those countries in situations like this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I did not. Our DDMS people would go over our—actually, the people from Florida, from KSC, were the ones that actually manned up the sites.\\n\\n There were some people from JSC that would go over to them. Usually somebody out of the astronaut office would go to the various sites, and they would fly the weather observation planes on the morning of the tile site, or they would be onboard the observation planes as weather observers. The Air Force would fly the planes. But they’d be onboard, because, well, you know, you’d fly them out to your needed distance from the runway to see if you could check your visibility. They did much the same as the STAs [Shuttle Training Aircraft] would do for us down in Florida, just before launch they’re flying around checking out visibility and stuff. We had some small DoD aircraft that would do that for us at the sites.\\n\\n But, no, so nobody from our office usually had to go out to the TAL sites. KSC pretty much ran those. We funded them, but KSC ran them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is this someone or a team from KSC and the astronaut that would go to these sites shortly before the missions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just in case." + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, in fact, when I went over to Zaragoza, we timed it so that it was right before a mission, so that the NASA guy, Bobby Fleming [phonetic], who was GOM, the ground operations manager, Bobby was going to be the GOM at that site at Zaragoza. So we met him in Madrid and drove over to Zaragoza. And my wife went with me. I paid for her to go over with me. It was a super opportunity for her to see Spain and for me to see Spain.\\n\\n So while we were there, we had gone to Zaragoza to sign the agreement, and then we another site at Moron, which is outside of Sevilla, Spain. So we then drove from Zaragoza to Moron and was there at Moron for launch day to watch their preparation—how they got ready and everything for the launch. It turns out we didn’t launch that one. Something happened—I don’t know what, but we didn’t get it off that day, so we had to come on home.\\n\\n But that was a good experience getting to see those two sites. Now, the two sites in Africa, I never did see—the one at Banjul in the Gambia and the one up in Morocco— Ben Guerur. I never saw either one of those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it certainly sounds like a unique opportunity, though, as you said, to go see Spain." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, and it was good, because it was something I needed to see, and it really helped me a lot to go over and watch these guys get ready to support a TAL site—like the MSBLS [Microwave Scan-Beam Landing System] was another landing aid that we used. It’s a beam that we actually fly down to—you get to watch them set up the MSBLS, watch them—we had another thing that was developed after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n . We had barriers at the end of the runways that would stop the orbiter in time, because not all those sites were as long as you really needed. So we had barriers that those guys would erect, and we got to watch that and see that get all set up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, what did those barriers consist of? Were they concrete, or were they something with more cushion?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, nylon rope." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay. And so the Orbiter wouldn’t sustain too much damage by running into those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it did hurt a little bit. It probably damaged some tiles, but it was better than going off the end." + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, yes, that was developed back sometime after\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n , I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It does operate in conjunction with the parachute as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually, that was before we put the drag chute on. Yes, the drag chute came on later, very much later. But, yes, they were in conjunction with the drag chute." + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh okay. That’s interesting. I hadn’t been aware of those before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they’re only at remote sites. We used to have two sites in the Pacific also, one at Hawaii and one at Guam. And we finally convinced ourselves sometime in the Shuttle Program that we didn’t need those. Of course, it cost money to send people over there, every mission, and then it cost money just to maintain the equipment and stuff. So we finally turned down the Pacific sites, and the reason we did it—we convinced ourselves we would always be able to get back. We couldn’t think of any scenario, a reasonable scenario that would make us not be able to get back to KSC or Edwards or White Sands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Interesting. Well, is there anything that you can think of that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention for any of your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ll probably think of that tomorrow or the next day or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we could always add that in anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I can’t think of anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, we appreciate you very much coming and sharing this with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "T. Rodney Loe", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I’ve enjoyed it. It’s good to relive some of those times again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, it was very interesting times—very interesting. We’ve enjoyed hearing about them." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00104", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/CohenA/cohena.htm", + "original_file_name": "CohenA_9-25-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/CohenA/CohenA_9-25-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Aaron Cohen", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 25 September 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Summer Chick Bergen", + "Glenn Swanson", + "Carol Butler" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Aaron Cohen" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is an interview with Aaron Cohen on September 25, 1998, in Houston, Texas. Interviewer is Summer Chick Bergen, assisted by Carol Butler and Glen Swanson.\\n\\n Thank you for coming and doing your oral history with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's start prior to your employment with NASA, when you worked at General Dynamics [Corporation], because that's when you first got involved in the space race, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked at General Dynamics as an aerospace engineer. We were working primarily on the Atlas vehicle, and then, of course, the Centaur came along. My first real experience with NASA happened while I was at General Dynamics, and it was a very interesting experience. I didn't know what NASA was at the time. I didn't have any idea what NASA was. But we heard that NASA wanted to come talk to us about putting a capsule on top of the Atlas, because they wanted to put a vehicle in space.\\n\\n Of course, if you know what the Atlas looks like, the Atlas was what they called a balloon structure. It had very thin skins and you actually stiffened the structure by putting gas in it. So it was not a very stout structure as you would think. So putting a capsule on it, we couldn't do it just by putting a capsule on it, so we had to put a band around a station. I remember the station; it was called Station 502, on the Atlas.\\n\\n They said NASA was coming to review our design, and I said, \"Who is this NASA?\" So we worked all weekend, into the early mornings, and we had the design, and NASA came in to review our design. Of course, they finally wound up using the Atlas for the first launch vehicle for the first spacecraft. So that was my first experience with NASA, and I was still at General Dynamics.\\n\\n Then I worked on guidance navigation and control and also on aerodynamic heating at General Dynamics, and then the Apollo proposal came out, the request for proposal for the Apollo Program. Of course, that really captured my imagination. I was working in General Dynamics at the time, and I helped work on the proposal for General Dynamics.\\n\\n It turned out, of course, that General Dynamics did not win the proposal. In fact, that was an interesting story, too. People who know my wife know she's very alert and knows a lot of things, and I got a call from my wife. We had a war room set up for waiting for the award of the proposal to be announced, and we had all the big—I wasn't one of these people, but all the big executives were waiting for the announcement. I was down just in the room, my little office. Pretty soon my wife calls. She says, \"I hear where North American Aviation won the contract.\"\\n\\n I said, \"How do you know?\"\\n\\n She said, \"I was listening to the business report from New York, and they announced it.\" Of course, they announced it from the business news. [Laughter]\\n\\n I went up and told the people on the ninth floor that we didn't win the contract, that North American Aviation won it. So I knew about it before they did.\\n\\n So I was interested in working on the Apollo Program, and there were some NASA people that came around during our proposal period and I met them. I contacted them. I heard that they were going to hire some people, and I contacted them. I was fortunate enough to be hired as a very junior engineer at the Johnson Space Center in 1962. So I came as a very junior engineer working in the Apollo Program Office, Project Office at the time, as a junior engineer. But I did have the fortunate experience when I came there to be able to work in the guidance, navigation, and control area, and had the extreme great fortune of working with the MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Instrumentation Laboratory, which is now, of course, the Draper Laboratory.\\n\\n So I worked with MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, and I was, you might say, the liaison between MIT and the Manned Spacecraft Center at the time, and the Apollo Project Office. There I had the very good fortune of working with some people that I still feel today are some of the great leaders in aerospace and really were the great leaders in getting us to the Moon—Dick [Richard] Battin, Norm Sears, Phil Felleman, Dave Hoag, who I still remain very, very good friends with and talk to frequently. Some of them are retired, but Dick Battin still teaches at MIT, he's still a professor at MIT, and Dick and I still talk to each other quite frequently, and both his wife and my wife, we get together and we even work together in various periods of time. He comes and visits my class and I come and visit his class. So that was a very fortunate experience for me.\\n\\n Then time passed and the program was moving forward. We were starting to expand a little bit, and Joe [Joseph F.] Shea came in. Joe Shea and I became very close friends. Joe became one of my very first mentors at the Johnson Space Center. We used to play tennis every Saturday morning. We used to get out there, we didn't say a word to each other, we used to get out and play.\\n\\n Then he took me out of that area and put me more into systems engineering, and gave the software, the Draper Lab, more to Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.] and Bill [Howard W.] Tindall [Jr.] at the time. They were doing that, and I went off to doing more of the work of the total interfaces.\\n\\n I remember a very, very interesting job he gave me, probably one of the biggest jobs I had at that time and I didn't recognize it. It was a job that Joe Shea gave me, was to resolve all of the interfaces on the Apollo Project. Now, that amounts to about 1,200 interfaces. Those were interfaces between the command module and the service module, between the command service module and service module and lunar module, and between all the guidance equipment and also between the booster and the launch complex. Interfaces, as I teach in my class today, are one of the hardest things to define, because you can't define an interface until you have something designed, and you can't design something until you have the interface designed. So it's very, very difficult to define interfaces. You'll find today, even when you build something, that's one of the toughest jobs to do.\\n\\n So Joe Shea gave me that job, and the job was in a very limited time, because it had to be done. We were well along in the design, so I had a number of very large meetings with all the contractors and all the centers, Marshall Space Flight Center, at that time the Kennedy Space Center, and we all got together to resolve these interfaces, … North American Aviation, Grumman, all the contractors, to resolve these interfaces. I had a very good team of people. It wasn't a lot, but I had about twelve people, and we resolved the interfaces. We did get them resolved in that period of time, and I felt that was one of the biggest accomplishments I ever did, was, as a junior engineer, to really resolve all those interfaces.\\n\\n I still have a note that I remember very clearly. Dave Hoag, from MIT, said, \"We need to help Aaron Cohen resolve these interfaces. He's got a monumental task,\" and he sent me a copy of that note. I still have that, and I show it to my students, because here were the things, here were the checklists. So it was a very, very interesting experience.\\n\\n I do remember one little anecdote. When Joe Shea took me around, he took me around to introduce me to all the people and tell them that I was going to resolve the interfaces. In fact, he took me to see Werner von Braun, and so he was telling Werner von Braun that Aaron Cohen was here and he was going to resolve all the interfaces. After this long discussion, Werner von Braun said, \"What's an interface?\" [Laughter] That was a funny story.\\n\\n So I did that, and I was in the systems engineering organization. At that time I worked for Owen [E.] Maynard, who was head of systems engineering. I was Owen's deputy. I remember very distinctly—(this is a little out of sequence) but I remember very distinctly that Owen was leaving, and I remember George [M.] Low, who then became program manager, called me and told me I wasn't going to get the job. My heart just felt so heavy, I felt so sad, but he said he didn't think I was ready for it. I said, \"George, I'll tell you what. I understand what you're saying. It hurts a lot, but I'm going to go out and do the best job I can,\" and I did. And it paid off, because George Low became a very, very—I thought the world of George Low. He became a very close friend of mine, and he really helped me a great deal. So it paid off.\\n\\n But a couple of very significant things happened that I can remember very distinctly when I was deputy systems engineering, very significant things. One, after the Apollo 1 or 204 fire—I call it the 204 fire, but Apollo 1—I was selected by Frank Borman to be on the Borman team, and went out with Frank and several other people, Doug [Douglas R.] Broome and Jerry [W.] Craig and Frank, to be out at North American about four months to make decisions on the spot of the changes we wanted to make, to help understand the changes we wanted to make. So we were out there for about a four-month period, and that was a very, very significant point in my career.\\n\\n I don't know how I really got on the team. I think Frank had something to do with it. I think George Low had something to do with it. Of course, my very, very good friend, and I think the person I really probably respected as much as anybody, and I still respect, is Chris Kraft. I mean, I think the world of Chris Kraft. Of course, I think Chris had something to do with it, too. But I was selected to be on that team. We did our job and were very successful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did that team do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What did the Frank Borman team do? After the fire, we went through a very systematic review of all the changes we wanted to make. Some were very big, like from the inward-opening hatch to an outward-opening hatch; wrap all the plumbing; changed the insulation on the wiring; changed the materials in the vehicle. I don't recall, but there were maybe a couple of hundred changes, specific changes, that were statements, \"This is what we want to do.\"\\n\\n Well, from turning a statement of what you want to do into a drawing so that somebody can build something, from that building something to putting in the vehicle is a big step. It's easy to make a statement. So we took those statements and turned those statements [into hardware], we worked with North American on a day-to-day, hour-to-hour basis to turn those statements into drawings, to interpret what was meant, and then to interpret the drawings into hardware and how you installed it in the vehicle. So that's what the team did. We were more or less the information to help North American implement the changes.\\n\\n If there was interference or if they couldn't do it, we would make on-the-spot decisions to make those changes. In a normal way you would do that, you'd have to go back and forth, [with] phone calls. And we were out there right on the floor with the manufacturing people and the engineers, working with them on a very fast basis so we could do the implementation very quickly. That's what the Frank Borman team did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the atmosphere like at the Downey plant?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was very upbeat. Everybody knew they had a sense of direction. Of course, Frank Borman was a fantastic leader, and being there helped instill confidence in them. There was a very good relationship and very good team spirit, and we got the job done. Of course, that's another highlight of my career, working with Frank Borman. Of course, his whole posture, just his confidence, his \"can do\" attitude, his willingness to work with people, to listen to people, really stimulated the whole thing. So that was just a wonderful experience of working with Frank and the people out there.\\n\\n Also I had the great opportunity at that time to work with another great giant, George [W.] Jeffs [phonetic] from North American. George Jeffs and Ed Smith and George [B.] Merrick [phonetic]. George Jeffs and I still remain very good friends after all this period of time. He's another great person in the space program. So that was a very key milestone in my career.\\n\\n There turned out that I remember while I was out at Downey at the North American plant (I think it was probably a little bit after the Frank Borman team had completed its work) George Low called me and said, \"Aaron, we're having a problem with the atmosphere in the cabin. We have found that at 15 pounds per square inch, 100 percent oxygen, we cannot find materials that self-extinguish, and we've got to come up with some kind of atmosphere that will allow us to do that.\"\\n\\n Max [Maxime A.] Faget's people at the time in engineering had been doing some testing, and found that a 60 percent oxygen atmosphere, 40 percent nitrogen atmosphere, we could find enough materials that were self-extinguishing.\\n\\n So George asked me to pick a team and see if we could come up with an atmosphere starting off with something like a 60-40 percent oxygen-nitrogen, and see if we could implement that in the existing spacecraft. I picked a team, and the team was composed of a former astronaut, Dr. Joe [Joseph P.] Kerwin. In fact, interestingly enough, I was at a meeting with Joe Kerwin this morning and we were talking about 60-40. Every time we see each other, \"Joe, do you remember 60-40?\" Because that was, in my career, another famous implementation.\\n\\n So, Joe Kerwin; there was an engineer from North American named Dave [David S.] Levine; and John Zaccaro. I remember the four of us worked as a team to implement the 60-40. We did it in a fashion that did not require any hardware modifications to the vehicle. Joe Kerwin, being a medical doctor, was convinced that 60-40 was okay from a physiological point of view. And the materials, Max Faget's people proved that it was okay from a materials point of view. Now our job was to see how we could implement it in the vehicle.\\n\\n We found that we could pressurize the cabin with ground equipment at the Cape, so that didn't require any additional equipment. We could pressurize the cabin at 60-40, but we wanted to be at five pounds per square inch, 100 percent oxygen, when we got to orbit. So how did we do that? We found a port in the waste-management system that we could open, that was existing there, we could open it and that would vent the cabin down. We found an oxygen-replenishment system that we could turn on a little handle and calibrate the flow of oxygen into the cabin. By the time we got to orbit, we were down to five pounds per square inch, 100 percent oxygen. So we could implement it without any real significant changes to the existing hardware and solve the problem. Again, that, to me, was one of the very key points in my career in terms of the early days of the Apollo Program.\\n\\n I then was made—I'm not sure I've got the sequence quite right—I was deputy chief of the Systems Engineering Division in the Apollo Project Office, and then the head of the Project Engineering Office left, so I was made chief of the Project Engineering Office. So I had two titles: deputy of Systems and chief of Project Engineering. They were at opposite ends of the hall, so I used to go between the offices of deputy of Systems Engineering and chief of Project Engineering. The job of Project Engineering was to get the vehicles ready to go to the Cape. We actually got the vehicles ready, checked out and everything. We had project engineers that actually worked on the vehicles, the command and service module—I'm talking now about the command and service module, not the lunar module—and get the vehicles ready to go to the Cape.\\n\\n So that transpired, and then I happened to be out at Downey again one time, and I remember getting another call from George Low saying, \"Aaron, we're thinking of a mission that we really would like to talk to you about. We need you to do a review of the hardware (S/C 106). I really want to talk to you in person. It has to do with a change in the mission of Apollo 8.\"\\n\\n So I went back to Houston, and he said, \"I want you to get a group of people,\" and explained what the mission was, what the Apollo 8 mission was. \"I want you to look at spacecraft 106, do a review of spacecraft 106, and see if spacecraft 106 can do a lunar orbital mission, if the command and service module can do a lunar orbital mission.\"\\n\\n So I brought a team in from [North American]. We did it at the Johnson Space Center. I brought a team in from [North American]. Ed Smith was chief engineer. I brought Ed in and several people, and all the documentation, and we worked back with his people at Downey, and we looked at all the documentation, all the discrepancy reports that had been resolved, all the structural analysis reports, all the wiring, [and] anything we could find on the vehicle [that] had the credibility and the integrity to do the type of mission we were talking about.\\n\\n So I remember writing the report, finishing the report, and my wife and I took it over to George Low's house about twelve o'clock at night because he was leaving at six o'clock in the morning on the Gulfstream to go to Washington, and this was a report that I presume he needed, that certified that the vehicle was ready to go fly.\\n\\n I remember the memo. I kept a copy of the memo. I still have a copy of the memo. After the flight, I got Frank Borman to sign it. It's one of my prized possessions. It's a copy of that memo, and Frank says, \"Aaron, you're right, it was a great vehicle.\" So that was another very key milestone.\\n\\n One anecdote came up in that time period. I think I was chief of the Project Engineering Division at the time. The Rockwell people came to me and said, \"Aaron, we've got a problem.\" Rockwell and our subsystem manager on the service propulsion system—you've got to recognize that the service propulsion system was the key system that got the command and service module into lunar orbit and it had to work to get out of lunar orbit, and there's one engine. Like somebody asked Frank Borman, they said, \"What if this engine doesn't work when you want to get out of lunar orbit?\" He says, \"Well, you have a bad day,\" because you don't get out of lunar orbit.\\n\\n We had run some tests, and the test facility had found that we got a very large not explosion, but a very large pressure spike when they fired the engine without the barrel being wetted previously if you fired them both at the same time. There were two of them. Well, the mission rules called for if you were going to make a mid-course correction, called for both banks to be fired at the same time, because you wanted to be sure you truly made that mid-course correction, or they really wanted to be sure that if you didn't have to make a mid-course correction, if you went into lunar orbit, you fired both of them at the same time.\\n\\n Well, they came to me and said, \"Aaron, if we fire both of them at the same time when they're not wetted, you can really blow the engine up.\" So I had to call George Low and tell him that. He was at the Cape with Frank Borman. It was about three or four days before launch. And George Low was one of the nicest people you ever wanted to meet. He was very mild-mannered. He was not very happy with me. I think that's the first time I ever remember, he said, \"Why are you telling me this at this late date?\" That's what managers always say. I said it millions of times. It's the first time when you tell people something.\\n\\n I said, \"George, we have a solution.\" So we worked out a solution that if you fired one bank at a time and wetted it, then you didn't have a problem. So what we could do, without a mid-course correction, you can use one bank, fire a few feet per second out a plane, and a little later you could fire—not destroy the trajectory. That would wet that bank. Then a little later you'd fire the other bank and put you back in plane. So you'd have both banks wetted, so when you went to go into lunar orbit you could fire both banks and not worry about the problems. That's how you solved it.\\n\\n Now, the issue, was you had to change the mission rules. Anyway, that was a solution to the problem. So I got the solution out. It was very heated at the time to get the solution out. So I do remember that very distinctly.\\n\\n Those are some of the highlights. Then I became manager, in [1969], of the command and service module, and my history says after the announcement hadn't come out, I became command and service module right at the time of Apollo 13. So I was the manager. That was my first mission. I'm not even sure the announcement was out yet. It was in '69, I think. Apollo [13] happened in '70.\\n\\n I do remember very distinctly going through all the investigations with James McDivitt, who was the program manager at the time. I remember going to Washington with Jim and going through the reviews.\\n\\n Of course, where we really got very well chewed out by our congressional committees for Apollo 13 is—I don't know if you recall, one of the major problems was that we tried to boil off the liquid oxygen. After the Apollo fire, we changed the pressurization system. We changed the voltage from 28 volts to 65 volts, and that wasn't a problem had we not left the power on for that length of time, but we didn't change the relay that activated the thermostat. What happened is that when we left it on for that long a period of time, the relay essentially welded the contacts closed and the thermostat wouldn't open, so what happened is when you boiled it off, we got to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and damaged the insulation on the heater. Of course, when they tried to turn on the fan and the heater, it blew up, is what happened to Apollo 13.\\n\\n The real issue there, the way we got very well chewed out was that there we didn't document clearly the fact that we changed from 28 volts to 65 volts. Of course, that made us understand that we needed to recognize, we needed to understand our hardware very, very well. Of course, that was a lesson we learned very clearly. That wasn't the only reason why it happened, but that was where we really got chewed out, you might say, by congressional committees." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you reflect any differently on Apollo 8 after the incident that happened in Apollo 13?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. I was worried about Apollo 8, but I guess sometimes when you don't know things, you don't know. You mean did I reflect on it? No, not really, because I was worried about other things on Apollo. I was worried about, first of all, the navigation system, even though I was familiar with it. Here you're 240,000 miles away. Could you aim and point and ignite and thrust and hit a target 240,000 miles away? Of course, now it's obvious you could, but at that time it wasn't quite so obvious. The other thing was the heat shield. Was the heat shield really going to withstand the reentry heat coming in at 36,000 feet per second from the moon?\\n\\n So I was more worried about those things. I know Frank Borman was probably worrying whether the hatch was going to stay tight, because there were reasons why we had an inward-opening hatch. An outward-opening hatch does have a mode that if it failed, wouldn't be too good in space.\\n\\n But, no, I didn't really reflect too much differently on it. I feel Apollo 8 was the greatest mission I ever participated in, even though I was a younger engineer. I participated in Apollo 11 and, of course, the Shuttle STS-1 was really my vehicle, but I really feel that Apollo 8 was really the greatest mission we ever—it was a bold decision and it really is the first time humans left the gravitational field of Earth. To me, emotionally, that was very, very significant. Extremely significant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any special memories from during that time of the mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, everybody reflects on the fact that when you make the burn and go into lunar orbit, you don't know if it's successful because you're behind the moon and had to wait till they come back around and tell you it was a good burn. When you get out of lunar orbit, it's the same thing. So those two moments have to be very, very emotional and a relief. Of course, I was still worried about the parachutes coming out and all that, because that always bothered me a little bit, that the bags were going to come out, we were going to be upright. Were the parachutes going to come out, that always sort of worried me.\\n\\n But each phase of the mission had its own problem: getting rid of the launch escape tower during launch and separation. There were a lot of things that happened. When you look back on it, you say, my gosh, how did everything happen to well? I mean, it was pretty fantastic.\\n\\n So that is a quick trip through my Apollo career. Of course, I was the command and service module project manager for Apollo 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17, and I was manager for that. Of course, each one of those missions had a little few instances here and there. I think on Apollo 14 we had a hard time docking. Each one had its own character. I don't remember them all right now, but I'm sure at the time—of course, as my wife always said, I got the vehicle up and I was worried about the next vehicle. Once it was launched and on its way to the moon, I was worried about how we were going to get the next vehicle ready to get to the Cape. That was really my job and to stay within budget.\\n\\n Then I was called in one day by Chris Kraft, who told me I was going to become manager of the Space Shuttle Orbiter. Of course, that was a very big thrill. I mean, I didn't know what I was getting into but, as my wife said, that day was probably the greatest day I had in the Shuttle Program, that first day. [Laughter] But she was being facetious.\\n\\n The Shuttle Program and the Orbiter Project provided a complete new set of problems in that being manager of Orbiter, the vehicle was much, much more complicated than the Apollo vehicle. I mean, there's no comparison to the complexity of the Shuttle vehicle. The mission probably is not as sophisticated or probably as hard or as difficult, but certainly the vehicle is very complicated. What it is, it's a launch vehicle, it's a spacecraft, and, of course, it's an airplane, so it's three functions. It really was a challenge.\\n\\n Chris Kraft gave me the distinct opportunity of taking a concept that were viewgraphs and paper and turning it into hardware, and turning that hardware into an operational vehicle. I was able to do that. I was able to do that through a lot of hard work, but through a lot of great support from a lot of people, a lot of people at Johnson Space Center, a lot of contractors, a lot of people at headquarters, and, of course, working with the Marshall Space Flight people and the Kennedy people. So I was very fortunate.\\n\\n Some of the very interesting things there, well, if I go through in sequence, some of the interesting things there, first, I guess you'd have to say, is the budget. That was probably one of the biggest differences between the Shuttle Program and the Apollo Program. The Apollo Program, I think I went to Washington maybe one or two times on the budget. On the Shuttle Program, I was in Washington almost every week on the budget.\\n\\n I remember distinctly, we got the authority to proceed in August of 1972. That's when they gave us the ATP, authority to proceed. Rockwell was the lowest bidder. The first year, I remember very clearly, in that year dollars was 140 million dollars. I remember that number. Right out of the bat, they cut it to 70 million and they said you couldn't slip-schedule. So I took a team of people out there. I had had some experience in going through program reviews during the Apollo Program, which I didn't mention. Even though we did have the luxury of a little more leniency in dollars, we still did program reviews in dollars. We did do a lot of reviews in dollars under George Low, Joe Shea, Tom [J. Thomas] Markley. So we did do a lot of dollar reviews.\\n\\n The Shuttle Program was much, much more significant. Here we go from 140 to 70 million dollars, no schedule slip. So we went out there and we did a program review, and the first thing we started to do was take things out of the program or delaying things we could delay. There were certain phases of the program: there was DDT&E, design, development, test & evaluation; there was production; and then there was test and evaluation; and in between that there was increment two and increment three. Increment three was more production vehicles, building the production vehicles. So I kept taking things out of increment one and putting it in increment two. Finally, somebody leaned over to me, \"I pity the poor person who's going to be the project manager on increment two.\" [Laughter] That's the way I was getting the cost down.\\n\\n But we were able to get the cost down actually to a significant value which allowed us to get going. Now, a lot of people say we made some shortchanges there. I don't really think we did. I don't think we really made, from my point of view, any shortcuts in terms of safety, reliability. Little differences, we did have schedule as a variable, so we could slip-schedule it a little bit at a certain point in time. That changed a little later, but earlier we could slip-schedule. So we were able to create a pretty good program and get going with a restrained budget.\\n\\n Of course, then the next big issue that hit, after we got over that budget hurdle, was the weight started to grow. Of course, pretty soon we found that, my gosh, we had the main engines, the SSMEs [Space Shuttle Main Engines] and the boosters, the solid rocket boosters, and the vehicles too heavy.\\n\\n So then we had to go into a very detailed weight-reduction program where we started reducing things. For example, at one time the Shuttle had four hydraulic systems. Well, we reduced from four to three hydraulic systems. It had four auxiliary power units. We went from four to three. Henry [O.] Pohl, in Engineering, was just a fantastic help to me in doing that. Henry was the man I relied on in getting that done. So we were able to reduce the weight of the vehicle significantly, and people like Tom Moser and Bill [William C.] Schneider in the Structures group, and Norm Levine were very, very important in helping get the structure reduced. So I had very, very outstanding people at the Johnson Space Center in the Engineering Directorate that really worked very hard—Ralph [S.] Sawyer, I could go on and on. Ken Cox. Go on and on, of how we reduced the hardware and reduced the cost and the weight of the vehicle. Of course, Rockwell was very prominent during that, George Jeffs, Ed Smith. So we were able to do that, reduce the weight, or at least get it to a point where we operate the vehicle.\\n\\n Then, of course, the next big famous problem was the thermal protection system. The tiles kept coming off. As my wife says, \"Aaron's hair is gray for every tile it took to put on the vehicle.\" When you look back on it, it was such a simple problem, but we were amazed that we didn't solve it. And we didn't solve it until after we had most of the tiles on, on the first vehicle. Of course, I guess at that point in time that was the bleakest day. I really didn't know how we were going to get out of that problem. I really didn't know how we were going to solve the tile problem.\\n\\n And it's such a simple problem, the strength of where you bonded the tile to the room-temperature vulcanizing [RTV] to the strain isolator pad, was weaker than the basic tile. Stress risers were set up. When people started looking at it, like Bill Schneider and Tom Moser, it was such an easy thing to understand, why didn't we understand it before.\\n\\n Of course, then we went to various techniques to get the strength of the tile, like sonic tests and pull tests, and we were able to, you might say, crutch our way through it until several people at the Johnson Space Center and North American came up with the idea—I probably am going to give credit to people that I know deserve it and probably leave out some people that also deserve it, but a person like Bob [Robert L.] Dotts at the Johnson Space Center came up with the idea of densifying the lower quarter-inch of the tile with liquid glass, which essentially then made that like a solid base that you could essentially glue the tile to the vehicle to [eliminate] the stress riser.\\n\\n Of course, that was the solution to it, and that's what we do today. We densify the tile and that's how the problem was solved. That really bailed us out, really solved a major, major problem. It bailed us out of a major, significant problem. At the time, though, I really didn't see how it was going to work, but that's what we do now, we densify the tiles, we put the tiles on, and then we came up with blankets. I think the thermal protection system today is probably one of the better systems. It's still a little fragile, but if you look at the alternatives, the tiles were really a tough system.\\n\\n Of course, I remember distinctly Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht, who's a very good friend of mine, and Bob Overmyer [phonetic], who passed away just recently, an astronaut who was down at the Cape, and they were putting tiles on and taking tiles off. Every morning we would have a status report, \"How many tiles did you take off and how many tiles did you put on?\" And it was just a touch-and-go process, \"Are we going to get all the tiles on?\"\\n\\n My son, who was very humorous at my going-away party, my wife and my three children talked, and my youngest son said, \"I used to hear my dad talk about this. He said they finally realized that you were going to have to put more tiles on than you took off or you're never going to get from here to there.\" [Laughter] \"So they finally realized that. For a while I didn't think they were going to realize that. I think they thought they could take more tiles off than they put on and solve the problem, but they were going to have to put more tiles on than they took off.\" And, of course, we did and it was successful.\\n\\n Of course, then we had a number of successful flights. Each flight had a couple of its own issues, the first liftoff where we had a software problem and we couldn't get the software working—I don't remember all the details, but I'm sure they're documented—to various failures.\\n\\n I then was the program manager of the Orbiter Project for four flights, I believe, and then I became director, for a short time, of Engineering. Then we changed Engineering to Research and Engineering. We combined science and engineering, and I became director of Research and Engineering. Of course, that was a new experience for me, dealing with the scientists and dealing with engineers, both of them, and it was really a pleasure, working with people like Joe Kerwin and Mike Duke and those people at the Johnson Space Center and the engineering people that I had in the organization.\\n\\n Of course, then we still kept up to date with the Shuttle launches, but my job was more concerned about advanced technology, development of the Space Station and getting going on that type of activity. Tom Moser was director of Engineering, and he was more concerned with the day-to-day activity of the Engineering organization.\\n\\n Of course, then the Challenger accident occurred and that was a very trying experience in terms of what we did there. Again, like any accident, any of a number of things could have happened and you wouldn't have had the accident. Of course, we did have the accident. When you look back in history, you wonder why we didn't fix the seal earlier. And I can't answer that question. The seal, if I look at it today as a professor, the seal is a very poor design. I mean, you don't design an O-ring seal that tends to open when you pressurize it. An O-ring seal has to be locked in place. Whether there's cold temperature or hot temperature, that is not a good design. Cold temperature certainly takes away the margin. But even under hot temperature, it was not a good design. So it was an unfortunate situation.\\n\\n After the accident, we did a very similar thing that we did, at least in my feeling, after the 204 fire, Apollo 1, we went through all the systems and looked at all the systems and looked at what changes we had to make. It turns out, I felt that I was very wrong. I felt that it took us about—and I think my numbers are correct—it took us about twenty-one months from the time of Apollo 7 till we flew Apollo 8, and it was something like thirty-two months between the Challenger accident and we flew our return to flight. So it took us longer to get the Shuttle back to flight than it did Apollo.\\n\\n I try to think why, and I guess the reason why is that we knew so much more about the Shuttle, because we had flown so many more times that we knew some issues that bothered us, so we fixed many more things than we did on the Apollo vehicle. Like you were asking me the question before, we knew more. We knew more, and as you know more, you fix more. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I think that was really the issue. We fixed not just the seal, but we fixed a lot of things on the vehicle, on the Orbiter, a lot of things in the tank, a lot of things in the engine, and we fixed a lot of things which essentially cost us a little bit more time, but I think it was the right thing to do. I don't question it at all.\\n\\n I think the date was in October 1986, I believe, I became Center director of the Johnson Space Center, and I guess I had the job of trying to bring the Center back to having confidence in itself. My feeling was things I had learned, the way I did that, the way I approached the problem, and this is where I really used my previous history, I looked at what George Low taught me and I looked at what Chris Kraft taught me, and those were the two people that I looked at. I looked at what they taught me to see how I could best bring it back.\\n\\n Of course, my real issue was, it was going back to the fundamentals. I liken it to when a football team has a losing streak. What they do is they go back to the fundamental. I thought we just needed to go back to the fundamentals. We needed to look at what we had, look at the vehicle, look at the people, and see how we could build confidence.\\n\\n Of course, I had a fantastic deputy director under P. J. [Paul] Weitz. P.J. was just an outstanding person. P.J.'s a lot more stable. I get excited; P.J. was always very calm. I could always go rant and rave to P.J. and he'd calm me down, and we could go on and make decisions. But P.J. was a great guy. I couldn't have done it without P.J.\\n\\n I believe we were able to get the vehicle not only in good shape, but get the people in good shape, and were able to fly. We had great crews, great flight controllers, Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz and his team, and great crew members. We were able to get the people flying. Of course, Dick [Richard H.] Truly was the administrator at that time, and Bob Crippen and Dick Kohrs and Arnie Aldrich were all there as a team. Of course, I've got to say a lot about General Forrest McCartney [phonetic] at the Kennedy Space Center, was a very big help, and so was J.R. Thompson at Marshall. Then, of course, Roy [S.] Estess of Stennis.\\n\\n So that team got us going again, and I think we were very successful in what we did and the vehicle we had and the management team that we brought about. I think if I had to go back, the people I relied on most was the teaching I learned from George Low and Chris Kraft. I know P.J. and I—you know, it's always very interesting, you make things so good that you can't do it. We found a—I don't know if P.J. gave it to me or I gave it to P.J., it was a ship on a very ominous sea and it said, \"Ships in the harbor are safe, but that's not what ships are built for.\" And we kept that in front of us, because we could make this so safe that we could never fly again, but our job was to fly. We wanted to make it safe. We couldn't do everything everybody wanted, but we wanted them to share in what we were doing. So, I think based on that we instilled a confidence in the people to fly again. Of course, we had a number of good flights.\\n\\n Then in between that time, I remember getting a call from Dick Truly. He was the administrator of NASA. I don't recall just the time he called, but he said that George Bush was going to make a speech, the twentieth anniversary of the lunar landing, and we needed to be prepared to do something in order to prepare to send humans to the moon this time, this time to stay, and on to Mars. He said, \"I want you to assemble a team, and it's got to be sort of quiet. I want you to assemble a team and come up with some frameworks of how to do this.\"\\n\\n So we did. I can't recall who was on the team. I know Mike Duke was one of them, and I think Mark Craig was the other. I don't recall who was on the team. I'll have to go back and research that. But we had a team. Somebody got me a room in the back rooms of the Johnson Space Center, and we did some studies. Then we started a ninety-day study. I think it wound up being 120 days. But it was a study that we did. I was in Washington.\\n\\n We did that study, and there were some problems with the study. The costs were too great and I don't think the timing was quite right. I think it was a good start. We did have a lot of good people working on it. We had Johnson Space Center, we had Marshall, we had Kennedy, we had Ames. We had all the centers working on it. We had JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory]. We had everybody working on it, and I think it was a good report. It was a little bit too much money, maybe too grandiose, but I still think it set the stage for some good thought processes, but it wasn't tremendously well accepted, and I accept that, but I still am proud of the study.\\n\\n Then in time I was asked to come to Washington to be Dick Truly's acting deputy administrator. Then Truly left and [Daniel S.] Goldin came, and I stayed with Goldin as acting deputy administrator for a year. We had some very interesting experiences there as deputy administrator. Washington was different for me, being involved in Washington. I really was more of a Center director, I think, than a manager in Washington, but I did learn a lot. I was able to, I think, help both Dick Truly and Dan Goldin through some testimonies and through some budgetary issues and through some technical issues, and I really enjoyed that experience. It was very, very interesting, and I liked it very much.\\n\\n Then I came back to the Johnson Space Center for a year, and then my wife and I decided I really would like to do something different. I really had always wanted to teach. It's something I'd always wanted to do. I decided to retire, and Texas A&M offered me a professorship to teach mechanical engineering design and systems engineering, and that's what I do. So I retired and now I teach at Texas A&M, two courses. I teach senior mechanical engineering design and I teach systems engineering, two things I hope I learned while I was here. I've got to be honest with you, teaching is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I mean, teaching seniors, they don't let you off the hook so easy. So I enjoy it, but I'm working a lot harder than I thought I was going to work.\\n\\n That's a very quick overview of my career. Maybe now you could ask me some questions. I've talked for a while. Maybe you can ask me some questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I would like to take you back to your earlier career. You did a great deal of work in guidance and navigation and control. Tell us about some of the challenges of that, in the early stage of the Space Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The challenge of guidance, navigation, and control, there were a lot of challenges. I think guidance, navigation, and control—and if you look at what we did then, what we did in Apollo, what we did on Shuttle, and what they're doing today on spacecraft, is probably one of the hardest or most difficult systems engineering problems. Why do I say that? Because, first of all, it involves flight mechanics, orbital mechanics; it involves structure; it involves electronics; it involves software; it involves almost every system or subsystem or discipline you can imagine put together in being able to navigate, guide, and control a vehicle.\\n\\n The challenges in the Apollo Program, of course, were ones where you really needed to do inertial guidance. Inertial guidance, in contrast to radio guidance, everything is on board. It's self-contained. During the Apollo Program, did we really have the computer capacity? Today your PC that you use is much, much more powerful than the computer we used on Apollo. I mean, if it wasn't for people at the Draper or MIT Labs, [like] Hal [J. H.] Laning and Dick Battin, that came up with the computer—you know, the computer on Apollo was a wire-rope memory. It was about 36,000 words of hard-core memory and it was wire rope. It was 1,000 words of erasable memory. You had to have the system designed. It was wired in with a rope. The zeroes and ones were wired in, so you had to decide what you wanted six months before you used it. So the computer was really the big question.\\n\\n The next big question were the algorithms, and by algorithms I mean the actual mathematical analysis of what you wanted to do in terms of navigation and guidance. You were going to use a Star Tracker, where astronauts actually measured the angles between stars, just as the old sailors used to do, only we were doing it in three-dimensional form, and were putting that information into an onboard computer and calculating your position.\\n\\n So when you put all that together and look at that technology and look at the software that you needed, the formulation you needed, you needed the computer, you wondered how was that all going to work. I mean, how were we going to be able to put that together and make it work? Then you said, my gosh, now once I do that, I've got to figure out what to do with that information. So now you've got to fire engines to put you on the right course. Well, the reeaction control engine or the service propulsion engine? And put you on the right course.\\n\\n Then some way you had to control the vehicle about a center of gravity for control. So you had all those to put together and do it in a very small computer, and have all the instruments, such as inertial measurement unit, which you [use to] determine your attitude and measure your acceleration on, and all the analog-to-digital converters and digital-to-analog converters. How was that all going to work? Did you have all the right constants? Did you have all the right characteristics of the lunar surface?\\n\\n So it was tough to do. The question is, were we going to be able to make it happen? And, of course, was it all going to be able to fit into the computer? So Apollo had its own set of things.\\n\\n Then when you get to the Shuttle, the Shuttle brought its own set of changes. The computer was still a little bit in question. We used the old 4 pi [phonetic] computer from IBM, which we still use. Again, that's very, very obsolete. But then Shuttle was a much more complicated problem because we needed to have what we call a fail-operational fail-safe system. So you had to have four computers essentially working together in synchronization, talking to each other 550 times a second, and then if it made a mistake, that one was [voted] out and you had another computer take over. So that redundancy management system had never been done before, and we were worried were we going to be able to make this work.\\n\\n It turns out, we made it work on the first approach and landing test. The first approach and landing test I remember very distinctly. I was at Palmdale, sitting in the control room right next to Edwards Air Force Base, and at that time I smoked a pipe. I was famous for my pipe. We separated off the 747. We blew the pyros off the 747, and you got a big X across the screen. The lead computer had failed. I think I bit my pipe in two. I thought, oh, my God. Of course, the next computer came on, just as we planned it. The next computer came in and we landed. What happened is, we had a bad solder joint, so when you blew the pyro, it knocked that computer off. But the point being, we had a fault-tolerance system, fail-operational, fail-safe system. So the question was whether we were going to be able to make that work or not.\\n\\n So those were the big issues in the guidance system. In Apollo, was could we get everything in the computer. In the Orbiter, the Shuttle Program, could we handle the redundancy management system. Those were the two big issues. There were a lot of day-to-day issues, but if you really try to boil it down, is was could we get everything in the computer for Apollo, would it work. And for Shuttle, would the fault-tolerant or redundancy management system work. So those were very trying times, and we weren't sure we were going to be able to make it.\\n\\n We had some awful good people working on the problem during the Apollo Program, people like Bill Tindall and people at MIT. Then during the Shuttle Program, people like John [W.] Aaron and those kind of people that were really key in making this thing work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you. Next I'd like to go to your job [working with] interface control documents. How did you make all those different contractors and all the different centers work together to agree on how these interfaces would work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a really interesting question. I had some very good people. Let's see if I can recall them all. One was Sid Jones, one was Jesse [F.] Goree. I had some really cream-of-the-crop people that were working for me. I did know a lot of people.\\n\\n The way I started, we got a list of all the interface documents, just a list of what we had of all the interface documents between each elements. The elements were, to start with the command module, the interface between the command module and the guidance system, because the guidance system was provided by AC Spark Plug at the time. They actually provided the computer, the Raytheon computer, the Kollsman optics, and their own inertial measurement unit. So we had to get all those interfaces defined, because they went into the command module and also into the lunar module. So this time I was involved with the lunar module.\\n\\n Then we had to figure out the interfaces between the command module and the service module, between the command service module and the lunar module, how that all fit into the interfaces into the Saturn launch vehicle, and how the Saturn launch vehicle actually interfaced with the launch complex. So we defined all those interfaces, and I recall—it's just from memory, but it was over 1,000. I think it was between 1,200 and 1,500 individual interface control documents.\\n\\n We had a big meeting. I don't know if you've ever been to the Cape, but we used the big control room at the Cape, the firing room, and we had people all in there. We had people all in there by disciplines—lunar module, command service module. They were all sitting together. I briefed them on what we wanted to go do. We met at the Cape and we had rooms set aside for them. We said, \"We are not going home until we at least identify all the interfaces and have all the actions assigned what it takes to solve them. If it takes a week or two weeks, we're going to stay here.\"\\n\\n So we put them all in rooms, we had rooms for them, and I think we stayed there about a week. They came up with a list of all those things. That didn't solve it; that just was the identification of what had to be solved. That didn't solve anything, it just was the identification.\\n\\n Then we set out a plan and a schedule of how we were going to solve those problems. We had leaders from each group, and we would send it to them, and then we would make visits to them periodically to see how they were doing, what stumbling blocks they had. Then very much like we did on the Frank Borman team, we would make on-the-spot decisions.\\n\\n Now, I had to go back with those on-the-spot decisions and review that at the Change Control Board, because I was making decisions that affected other people's hardware. But we made on-the-spot decisions. Of course, that solved a lot of the problems. That didn't solve all of them; that solved a lot of them. Then we took that fallout and then we did it again.\\n\\n Over about a six- to eight-month period, we were able to solve them all to a point where they could identify them and turn those definitions into hardware. So that's basically how you do it.\\n\\n As I teach my students, there is no simple mathematical equation that will allow you to solve an interface. I mean, there is no way to do it. You've just got to work with it and do each one bit by bit, and if you look how it's done in industry or government today on a design, that's how it's done. So that's how we did it. It was a mammoth job.\\n\\n But I remember the big firing room. Have you ever been to the firing room? Do you know what I'm talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we just had them all lined up and put in various seats, and that's how we worked. I didn't know if we were going to be able to do it or not, but we pulled it off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You managed to work with all those contractors, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All the contractors and all the other centers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any contractors that stand out in your mind from working with them, as being either exceptionally good at this or not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They all were good. Of course, I think that we relied very heavily on North American Aviation, because they at that time were really our lead contractor. So we relied very heavily on North American, and I have to say they probably were the driving force that helped us. But Grumman was good. They all were good. If I had to single out, the best one would be North American." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us more about your interaction with MIT and the work that they did, because sometimes you don't hear as much about the work that they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I personally feel—and if I'd write a book, I'd say it—I personally feel that MIT, the Instrumentation Lab, really were the ones who led us to the moon. I think if we would not have had Dick Battin's formulation of all the guidance algorithms, had they not been able to put that in the computer, I really feel that we would not have made it. That's my own personal feeling. I feel that that part of it was so germane to what we were doing, it was so much an unknown of how to do it, how to do the guidance that got you from the Earth to the moon, how you did the mid-course corrections, understanding where you were. Now, we did start to rely a little bit on ground information, but still, how you did the navigation.\\n\\n Let me explain. There are three things that you need to do: navigation, guidance, and control. Navigation is finding out where you are, so you need to figure out where you are. That's where you basically use the sextant and the stars, and you did use some ground data. Ground data came up and told you where you were and you used that.\\n\\n Once you find out where you are, you have a reference system and the computer tells you where you want to go. The guidance then takes that and tells you what to do to get to where you want to go. That is another set of algorithms, and that uses what we call effectors. It can be engines on Apollo. On Shuttle it's both engines and the aerosurfaces. What we call effectors.\\n\\n Then control is how you maintain the stability of those systems around its center of gravity while you're doing all this.\\n\\n So to put all those algorithms together, the MIT Instrumentation Lab had to do all that and work out all those algorithms. The leader was Dick Battin, and he had fantastic people like Norm Sears and Phil Fellerman and people like that, that really helped him do that. To me, it was just a phenomenal thing. I think on Apollo, you know, like somebody said, it's easy to get to the moon when it's a bright moon; you just look up there and point. When the moon is shining, when you go when you have a full moon, you're bound to hit it. But it's not quite that simple. You're 240,000 miles away. You want to be able to rendezvous with the moon. You want to break into lunar orbit. You want to then deploy the lunar module, let it come down, and come down in a fashion where it can actually land on the lunar surface at a particular point. You want to be able to lift the lunar module off the surface of the lunar surface, rendezvous with the command module, all that software, and then fire the engine and get out of lunar orbit with the command and service module on the way back to Earth, rendezvous with the Earth, come in, and not come in too steep so you burn up, or too shallow so you skip out. You want to hit that corridor just right from 240,000 miles away. Then you want to be able to maneuver the command module down with guidance algorithms that will allow you not to exceed its heating loads and its G loads, and land in a given place in the ocean, and allow the parachutes to come down and recover.\\n\\n So those are really very complicated things. So I say that that was all done by Draper Lab, or MIT at the time, the Instrumentation Lab. So I give them an awful lot of credit. And that had to all fit within their hardware. The major hardware there was the computer, was the inertial measurement unit, which is a combination of accelerometers which measure your increase and decrease and acceleration. From a very simple math equation, if the computer integrates acceleration, you get velocity. If you integrate velocity, you get position. So by doing that, you're able to determine where you are. We call it a state vector. You're able to determine where you are.\\n\\n Then the gyros maintain your attitude, so you have an attitude. Of course, that inertial measurement unit is aligned with the optics to a given reference system, so you know where your reference measurement system is, so you're measuring everything.\\n\\n So, to make all that work in inertial guidance in that day and time was pretty fantastic. Of course, now inertial guidance, we use it a lot. We have global positioning systems now. Of course, it's a little bit more sophisticated and it's improved a lot. Of course, the computer's improved fantastic.\\n\\n So that was my experience with MIT. Of course, we were starting off from scratch. Once you do something, it's interesting how much easier it is to do it, but when you don't know what to do, when you're starting off—in fact, I used to say—I'll digress a moment. Another anecdote. For a while on the Shuttle Program, I used to say that all that was going to happen was a bunch of viewgraphs. I said, \"I want to see some hardware.\" I used to say, \"Where are the chips?\" So you need to get out of the viewgraph mode and start building something. Of course, to start off from scratch, it is hard to do.\\n\\n To just elaborate on that, I teach a course in mechanical engineering design at Texas A&M, and I give my students something very, very complicated, that they know nothing about, they know absolutely nothing about, and they get very, very frustrated, but I tell them very clearly, I say, \"If you study the program, if you diagnose the problem, you tear it apart, you build it back up, you'll know how to do it. When you get a job, your boss, he or she, is not going to know any more about it than you do, and you're going to have to figure out what to go do.\" And that's what we had to do with the guidance system. I think MIT did that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was an amazing feat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It really was. It really was. Of course, a lot of people at Johnson Space Center helped a lot, people like Chris Kraft and Bill Tindall were a very big help to them during the Apollo Program. I think I was, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then later you were in charge of the command and service module during the latter part of the Apollo Program. How did you feel, as you were approaching Apollo 17 and the Apollo Program was coming to an end?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's an interesting question. You see, I knew that I was going to be manager of the Orbiter, so I was so preoccupied with getting into the Orbiter, I really didn't have, shall I say, any real strong feelings. Of course I would have liked to see Apollo continue, but I was so busy trying to figure out how I was going to do something from 140 millions to 70 million dollars, that I really didn't worry about that. Maybe I was wrong. To be honest with you, when I think back on it, I really did not think about that very, very much. That's just an honest feeling. We did some good missions, I liked the missions, it was great, it was a wonderful experience, and I can't thank people enough, being involved in it. On the other hand, I was so busy trying to figure out how to get the Orbiter built, even at that period of time, that it didn't really bother me a lot. That's an honest feeling." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you get involved in Skylab at all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The only thing I did in Skylab, yes, a little bit. The only thing I did in Skylab, Kenny Kleinknecht was the manager of the Skylab Program, and he gave me the responsibility to build the command modules for it. So I was the interface. I was responsible. He could have taken over the command module and built it, but it was a very good decision on his part because there was only one interface with North American at the time. So I built the command module. I was responsible for the command modules at North American for the Skylab Program. I didn't get involved in the tradeoffs between wet workshop and dry workshop. I didn't get involved in that. I really got involved in the command module. When they had a problem with the solar panels and all that, I really did not get involved in that. I was involved with getting the command module ready and getting the Shuttle built." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking at the Shuttle, if you look at the Russians, they've used the Soyuz spacecraft since the 1960s. Why do you feel the American focus shifted to reusable spacecraft?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I really think that the ultimate answer for reducing the cost of a pound of payload to orbit is by you doing a reusable vehicle. Now, whether the Shuttle really proved that or not, I think that's a little bit in question. You know, some people say, \"Well, it was because you took shortcuts early in the program,\" i.e., the 140 to 70 million dollar type of problem I was talking about. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it's hard to argue. The Shuttle did not prove the economy we thought it could.\\n\\n Now, I've got to also be honest with you, digressing a little bit from your question, also be honest with you. We changed the ground rules on the Shuttle as we went through the phase. I'll tell you what I mean by that, and people don't really recognize it. We said the Shuttle was going to be a very standard vehicle. You were going to put a vehicle in it, you were going to build a vehicle, you were going to have very standard interfaces. You were going to get a payload, you were going to bolt the payload in. All the payloads that came to you were going to be very standard. All the electrical wiring was going to be very standard. All the mission profiles were going to be very standard. It was really going to be a cargo where you took something up, dumped it, and went back.\\n\\n Well, that changed. We changed it. I remember being called up to Washington and I was told by somebody you interviewed—Dale Myers. He said, \"Aaron, this is going to be very simple. We're going to use off-the-shelf hardware. We're going to just take something up. We're going to have very simple interfaces. That's what I want you to do.\"\\n\\n Well, I felt that's what they meant, but as you go through time, you then say, \"Well, this payload doesn't want this. This payload wants this.\" So you start trying to accommodate people. And I'm not saying it's wrong, but as soon as you start accommodating people, the cost grows, the weight grows, the complexity grows. So I feel that, in my mind—people may disagree with me—I feel, in my mind, that's the reason why the Shuttle did not come off as cost-efficient as people thought it should, because we made everything for everybody. Is that wrong? No, it's not wrong, but it does not come out to be as economical a vehicle.\\n\\n I still feel, though, that a reusable launch vehicle is the right thing to do, and I do think that what we did, in doing it, is the right thing, because I think whatever the Shuttle is or the next generation is going to be either—I don't know about a single stage to orbit, but I do think a reusable launch vehicle is still going to be the right thing to do. It may be something a little bit different than the Shuttle, but I feel we're on the right track to reduce the cost of payload to orbit. But I do think we've got to make it more of a standard launch vehicle than one that accommodates everybody, if you really want to make it less expensive. I really think that's the problem.\\n\\n So I think we're on the right track. I think it's the right thing to do. I think basically it's going to be the most economical way to go. Actually, I think it's going to be the most reliable way to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You made the statement that the Shuttle was made to try to accommodate everybody, do something for everybody. Something you haven't mentioned in discussing the Shuttle is the Air Force. Did you interact with the Air Force?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. I did interface with the Air Force a lot. We did do a lot of compromises for the Air Force—the cross range, the volume of the payload bay. So I did interface with the Air Force a lot. Of course, they had a lot of requirements which I think were good requirements, and I'm not sorry we did what we did for them and worked with them, because I think it did help us. I think it did make a more useful vehicle, but it did make a more expensive vehicle.\\n\\n Just to give you an example, too. You talked about the avionics system, or the guidance system. When we started off, we were going to have four systems, fault-tolerant, and we said very clearly at the beginning, if we lost the one on the pad prior to liftoff, we'd go with three. That's what we said at the very beginning. Well, that's not what we do today. In fact, we added another one. We've got a fifth system. We've got a backup system.\\n\\n So we changed the ground rules, which made the thing more expensive. People don't remember, but that's what we said very clearly, we were going to have four systems, and if one failed, we were going to go with three. We'd never do that. It probably was a wrong statement to begin with, but that's what we said. And that's one reason why it's not as cheap as it was. I'm not arguing that that was a right or wrong decision; I'm just saying that's why it's probably more expensive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking about Shuttle, for Shuttle a new management structure was established: the lead center management. How do you feel about that management philosophy, and how did that work for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's a lot of argument with that. I personally think that it worked very well for me. I personally think it worked very well. There are people that will disagree with me, and very good friends of mine that will disagree with me. But I think the lead center was the right thing to do. I think it was the most economical way to go. I think it was the most reliable way to go. And we made it work.\\n\\n Now comes the Challenger accident. Was that the right thing to do? People question whether that was the right thing to do. You know, it's always interesting to second-guess, but I personally feel that the lead center was good. I think it was good for me. I think I didn't have a problem with it while I was working on it. I think the leadership in Washington at the time, under John Yardley—by the way, I didn't mention John Yardley, and he deserves an awful lot of credit for the Shuttle Program. John was a wonderful leader, a wonderful man, and I can't say enough about John.\\n\\n I will say this about John. Let me digress while I'm thinking about it. I used to go to Washington, and John Yardley used to just chew me up. I mean, I used to feel like a piece of Swiss cheese when I got through with him. But one thing about him, once he chewed you up, chewed you up about the problem, it was his problem; it wasn't your problem. I mean, he didn't even know what your face looked like; he was just upset. So I forgot who it was from the Cape, came up, was after me, and he got up and said, \"John, I don't want to win. I just want to go the distance.\" So he just wanted to go the distance with John. John Yardley was a very great leader that we had in the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talking about Challenger, from your perspective, what do you feel the differences from the effect on NASA in the public, between Apollo and the Challenger?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, that's a very good question. I've thought about that a lot, and I'm not sure I have a good answer. I've thought about it a lot. I don't really know. I guess the only thing I can really say—and I'm not sure it's right, but you've asked me the question. I think people during the Apollo Program, when Apollo 1 happened, I don't think they knew enough about the program. It was still a mystique.\\n\\n During the Challenger accident, we had already flown so many times, it was not a mystique anymore. It was expected to be good. So I don't really know if that's right or not. But it's just like the point I made to you, I thought that we were going to be able to solve return to flight on the Shuttle much quicker than we did on Apollo, because the Challenger was really one problem. It was the seal. On Apollo, we never did find the ignition source. We really never did find out what the problem was. So I said, well, here's something we never really understood, here's something we understand, so I made the assessment in my mind that we were going to be able to return to flight very quickly. It took us longer. I really think that's symptomatic of the question you asked, because I think the feeling was much more serious during the Shuttle Program than it was during the Apollo Program.\\n\\n Of course, it may be, too, that the investigation was more open to everybody on the news than it was during the Apollo Program. I remember sitting in my den one night watching the investigation of the Shuttle Program, and having previously, on CNN, watched the fact that a Blackhawk helicopter had crashed and killed ten people or so, and I was moaning and groaning. My wife came in, said, \"What are you moaning and growing about?\"\\n\\n I said, \"Here a Blackhawk helicopter crashed and killed all these people, and they don't have their hearing aired on CNN.\"\\n\\n And she said, \"Well, let me ask you a question. Where did you go for lunch after the first flight on the Shuttle?\"\\n\\n I said, \"I went to the White House for lunch with the President.\"\\n\\n She said, \"Where do you think the Blackhawk helicopter people went after they had their first flight?\"\\n\\n I said, \"They probably didn't go to the White House.\"\\n\\n She said, \"That's the difference!\" [Laughter] So she sort of put me in my place. So that's the difference, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a tough question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is a tough question. I really don't know the answer. I think a lot just depends on the time, because the time and the things people see, it was tough. But I don't know if I'm right or not. That's my own take on it. I thought about it, but I never did come up with a good answer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some of the things that you tried to implement when you [became Center Director of] JSC after the Challenger accident, to try to boost morale?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, what I tried to do is I tried to get back to the basics. I tried to have reviews that would let people air their concerns. I tried to make sure that people could voice their concerns. I tried to do that, but I also made it very clear that we could not do everything for everybody, and that we were going to look at things and then make an open decision of what we're going to do and why we're going to do it, and, whether they liked it or not, at least give them a decision point.\\n\\n For example, there was a big issue about the big 17-inch line that fed the liquid oxygen from the tank to the engine. That was a very sensitive issue. We had had one failure at the test facility where it failed shut. It was held open by the aerodynamic configuration, the hydrodynamic configuration. If that shut while the fluid was flowing, it would essentially blow up an engine, blow up an SSME [Space Shuttle Maine Engine].\\n\\n The crew felt very, very strongly that it should be more of a positive latch that kept that open and then deactivate that latch when you finish flowing, rather than holding it open just by so-called rigging of the hydrodynamic shape. I felt very strongly that better is the enemy of the good, and that we'd make a change, you don't know what you're going to get into, and we really had a problem. The crew felt very, very strongly about it, and so I, in an open forum, changed my mind and said this is what we were going to go do. And it was the right thing to do. I was wrong, and it was the right thing to do. So I do think that getting back and making open decisions, let people voice their opinions.\\n\\n At my going-away party, Dave Leetsma said very clearly, \"I've been trying to get a software change in since the Challenger accident, and Aaron Cohen wouldn't ever let me get in. Now that he leaves, maybe I can get it in.\" So, you know, you don't let everybody do everything, but you tell them why you're not going to do it. And that's what I tried to bring back to them. I made it very clear that we couldn't do everything that everybody wanted us to do if we wanted to fly, like the statement I made before. So that's what I tried to do, and I tried to use the lessons that I learned from George Low and Chris Kraft." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "While you were director of JSC, you worked on public opinion, I guess, by trying to get more positive view of NASA out into the public with the Space Center Houston and things of that nature. How do you feel NASA is doing with that right now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think they're doing good. I think it's very important, and I think they're doing very good. I think some of the things I did were very good. I was very interested in working with the uses of space to solve problems on Earth. I felt that was what had to be done to really make a big mark.\\n\\n I'll go back to a very fundamental thing. Why did we do the Space Program in the first place? We did it because of the Cold War. We did not do it for science. We did not do it for technology. When [John F.] Kennedy said, \"We're going to send men to the Moon and return them safely before the end of the decade,\" he didn't say that for anything but the Cold War.\\n\\n Now the Cold War is gone, so I felt very strongly that NASA had to establish a need. What is the need, so the American public could clearly see the need? The need may be technology benefits of humankind. It could be something that would benefit people. I felt that what we needed to do was see how we could solve human problems on Earth from space. So that was my theme and that's what I tried to do. That's what I tried to do when I worked with the Greater Houston Partnership. That's what I tried do when I tried to do the Visitors Center. That's what I tried to do with the technology we'd work on.\\n\\n We used to have open houses. I do think the things that they're doing now are very, very good. I really think some of the things they're doing, I really encourage and I like them. I think that's what needs to be done, because I do think that NASA needs to establish a need. It needs to establish where it's going. We have a very difficult job. We can't lobby. We can't do this, we can't do that. But we can show people that we're doing something to help them solve their problems. So I think it's extremely important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think that's important, too. What do you think is in store for the future of NASA? You were involved in the Moon and Mars Initiative Study. Where do you see that going?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, it turns out I was asked to be on the Mars Architecture Study Board at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is looking at the future of robotic missions to Mars and the human mission to Mars. Of course, if you ask me, I feel very strongly that we're going to send robotic missions to Mars in terms of a Mars sample return and look for the existence of life, using the theme that if you can find water, you can find the existence of life. I think that's extremely important. I think it's important because I think it would let us understand our planet better, understand what the frailties of our planet are. It will also allow us to understand where our existence may have occurred. So I think it's important.\\n\\n I think we will send robotic missions. In fact, I think we will have drilling on Mars that will go to a subsurface level of anywheres from 100 meters to 2 kilometers, and bring back samples of surface samples to the Earth. Then I feel eventually we will send humans to Mars. I'm sure not all the people agree with me on that, but I feel very strongly that's what's going to happen. I think the plan is there. I think we have the people to do it, we have the resources to do it. I think there are some technologies that need to be developed, like in situ propellant development on the Martian surface, like physiological effects on humans, solving that problem.\\n\\n But I do think it will be done. I think certainly people coming out of school today will have the opportunity to do it. In fact, what I tell my students, I tell them that I was very, very fortunate to work on the programs I just described to you. I say it was just a fantastic feeling. My biggest desire is that I hope they're able to do the same things I did. There are programs that they'll be able to do, that I did. That's how I end my lectures." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's wonderful. How do you feel about the current international cooperation that's going on in the space industry?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, I don't know too much about it, other than what—I don't want to sound like Will Rogers—what I read in the paper. But I do know a little bit about what's happened in Space Station, with the international participation in Space Station, because I read that. In terms of the French, in terms of the Italians, I think it's extremely positive. Even in this exploration program, the little bit I see there, the French are getting involved, the Italians are getting involved along with the Space Station. So I think it's very positive.\\n\\n The Russians are very tough. I think they've having tough times. I think they can contribute. I don't know enough about their economics or where that stands, but there's no question that the Russians have had a very, very solid, good space program in terms of launch vehicles, in terms of their technology for their on-orbit capability. So I think there's some benefits there. What does the economic situation do? I'm really not sure I can answer that.\\n\\n But I do think countries, in general, if they can bring things to the table, like the French can and the Italians can, I think international cooperation is a benefit, because I think space is an international program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It looks like it's going to be that way in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. I don't think there's any question about it. Going to Mars will be an international program, both robotic missions and in the human missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us something about the project you're working on with Kistler." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's a very interesting project. I'll get a chance to talk about my good friend George [E.] Mueller, which I didn't mention. Again I would say that George Mueller—there are a lot of people the Apollo Program couldn't be done without, and George Mueller is certainly one of them. It definitely could not have been done without George Mueller. He has the tenacity, the engineering capability, and the drive to make it happen. Had it not been for George Mueller, we wouldn't have made Apollo on the date we wanted to make it. So I think the world of George.\\n\\n It turns out that I was in Washington at an AIAA Fellows dinner, I guess it was about three years ago, and George said, \"Aaron, I've got something interesting.\" I was teaching at A&M. \"I've got something interesting that I'm working on, and I'd like you to come up and see me in Seattle and talk about seeing if you'd be interested in doing it.\"\\n\\n I said, \"Well, okay,\" and I didn't think any more about it.\\n\\n Then not too long after that, he called me. It turns out that I'm very fortunate at A&M, is they allow us to do fifty-two days a year, … a day a week, consulting. So I can do consulting. So I went up there and talked to George. Dale Myers was there. Of course, the three of us knew each other. I should mention Dale was another one of my very, very good friends in the Apollo Program. Dale used to work for me when he was at [North American]. Then I used to work for him. I've always worked for George.\\n\\n So George had this idea of a two-staged orbit [vehicle] for communication satellites, and said, could we design it. So we started designing. Then I brought Henry Pohl in, because I never wanted to design anything without my good friend and engineer Henry Pohl, so I brought Henry in. We stayed up there for a while over the summer and came up with this design, which I think is very, very good. It's two-stage to orbit and return. The uniqueness about it is that it comes in with parachutes and air bags, and it can deploy [payloads on orbit]. It has a very good market in terms of communications satellites. The other thing that was very beneficial to us, as you pointed out, we could use the Russian NK33 engine, which took a big burden of development off of us in terms of a liquid-oxygen/kerosene engine, which made it very feasible to do.\\n\\n One thing led to another, and pretty soon we've got a design and we've got people building it, and I think we're going to make this thing happen. So it's very, very exciting. We even brought Dick Kohrs into it, so we've got Dick Kohrs working on it, Henry Pohl working on it. Then we brought in Joe Cuzzupoli. He really built the Apollo and the Shuttle vehicles for Rockwell. So we've got Joe building it, and he got some very good contractors. We got Northrup-Grumman in El Segundo. We've got Lockheed-Martin in Michoud [Louisiana] building the [propellant] tanks. We've got Draper Labs doing the guidance system, along with Allied Signal. And we've got Oceaneering doing the thermal protection system, and Irvin [phonetic] Industries doing the parachutes and the air bags. So we've got some top contractors, good people, and we've got a good market. So it's very exciting and it's liable to be a very good success." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Terrific. Is there anything that you would like to mention, that we haven't already included?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't really know. I think I've covered an awful lot. I'm sure I left a lot of things out. When you start talking about people, there's always a danger you're going to leave somebody out, and I probably have left somebody out. One person I know of very distinctly I left out is Bob [Robert F.] Thompson, who was head of the Shuttle Program, who I worked for. Bob was very key in the program, in getting the lead center going. If you want to talk about a person who really made the lead center work, it was really Bob Thompson. Bob, I think, was really a key n making the lead-center concept work. He and Chris Kraft, who was the Center director, Bob was the program manager, really made the lead center work. Lead center depends on a lot of people, and I think Bob was a key man in making that a success and making my job easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you worked on the command module at Skylab. Were you involved with developing the rescue vehicle, the command module vehicle that was modified so if they needed to do a rescue?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was. We implemented the hardware into that, yes. Requirements were established and then I was essentially building it, in that context." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There's not much reference to the rescue vehicle that we've come across. Was there a time during one of the missions, maybe the last one, where they looked at possibly needing to launch that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I recall, there was, but I honestly don't remember the details of it. I do think there was a time when they thought they would have to go into—the other point was, I think, the other question was how much power did they have to keep on it to make it useable and that type of thing. Those were the issues. I think at one point in time there was a thought of using it, but it's very vague. I have to be honest, it's very vague in my mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you first started out, you mentioned that these folks from NASA were coming down and you asked, \"Who's NASA?\" Would you ever have imagined where this would all lead to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not at all. That is a very good question. It turns out, people ask me how did I plan to get to where I was, and the thing is, I never did plan anything. I mean, I never did think today what I was going to do six months from now. No. The answer is no. If you would take what I did then and then tell me that some day I was going to be Center director of the Johnson Space Center, or acting deputy administrator, or even program manager, I would say, \"Gosh, you don't know what you're talking about.\" I never had that thought.\\n\\n In fact, when I came to the Johnson Space Center, I didn't know what to expect, and I certainly didn't expect to be a manager of the command and service module. I never in the world thought that would happen. I mean, it wasn't even on my radar screen. To be Center Director, I never thought I'd be Center Director. I never did really plan for it. I never did say, \"This is my next step. This is what I want to do.\" It came to me, and I guess it came to me because I was lucky. If I look at people like George Low and Chris Kraft and George Jeff and Dick Battin and George Mueller, I guess that's why it came to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Carol Butler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When Apollo 11 landed on the moon, where were you and what were you thinking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was in the control room, and I just thought it was normal. I mean, I just really didn't think it was anything great. I just thought that's what we set out to do and that's what we were going to do.\\n\\n I will say one thing, though, to add on to that question a little bit. One thing I would add, and you led me to that question, if I look at what are the most significant achievements I made in terms of missions, I will say Apollo 8 was probably the biggest significant mission that I was involved in. Then I would say STS-1 was the next. Then I would say Apollo 11. Then I would say STS-2. And I'll tell you why I say it in that order. I think I told you enough about what I think about Apollo 8, because that was the first time humans really left the gravitational field of the Earth.\\n\\n STS-1, to me, meant really my contributions to a reusable launch vehicle, which I think was very, very, very significant, the reusable launch vehicle. Of course, Apollo 11 can't go without being noticed. I mean, it has to be noticed, and it was very, very significant. STS-2 proved that we had a reusable launch vehicle. So that's my logic.\\n\\n I think a lot of people say Apollo 8 was their—I mean, I think if you ask other people, other people will say the same thing. They'll probably say Apollo 11. I have to put STS-1 in before Apollo 11, which is probably just my own feeling on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Glenn Swanson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The recent effort to consolidate the operations of the Shuttle to principally one organization, USA [United Space Alliance], at the time of your work with the Space Shuttle, was there early talk of changing the Shuttle operations and moving it to the private sector, in other words, getting a Boeing to operate the Shuttle?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I tell you, I don't think it was really talked about that much. What we were really talking about is doing the operations of the Cape that way, the Cape contract that way, making it one contract at the Cape. I think they did do that eventually, Lockheed. They never really seriously talked about making the operations a commercial operations of the total system. That happened about a year after I left, I think, so I never really got involved with that. That was a very tough decision to make. I think it seems to be working. As much as they've done, it seems to be working pretty well, but I really am not that familiar with that question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Glenn Swanson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Regarding the Challenger accident, in your opinion, the problems that they had with the joints, if that accident did not occur at that time, do you think eventually it would have been [unclear]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, I've thought about that a lot. I think the possibility is there. If you really look at the design and you look at the finite element analysis or the structural analysis of it, that joint really opens up. If it's like this, when you pressurize it, it opens up and that O-ring is exposed. That first O-ring is completely exposed, even under a very hot day. Now, we did fly several fights that way, but quite a few flights that you never did damage that second O-ring. You had soot on it, but you never did damage it.\\n\\n You know, your question is a very, very hard question to answer. I don't know. I guess I would have to say that it should have been fixed. I think it probably should have been fixed in line, at least. At least that's Monday-morning quarterback. You're much smarter on Monday morning if you go for a first down and you make it rather than kicking a field goal. But I just can't answer that question.\\n\\n I teach my students, I use that as an example for my students, and I say, \"Never design a system this way.\" I say, \"Never design a system this way. When you design an O-ring, make sure it's locked in place. If you want it to be a static joint, be sure you lock it in place, because that's the classic way not to design an O-ring joint.\" So it's a bad design of an O-ring. If you want to get a grade, if you'd come to my class and get a grade on it, you wouldn't get a passing grade on that joint." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Glenn Swanson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The whole idea of using a solid rocket, I know some of the early designs use a reusable cryogenic strap-on since then. What are your feelings about that idea of having a man attached to a solid rocket that basically you cannot shut off once it gets started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, there still is a lot of arguments about which is more reliable, a solid rocket booster and a liquid system that is fed, that has all the intricacies of a liquid propellant, pumps and fluid lines and so forth and so on, so it's really very hard to say in terms of reliability.\\n\\n I guess from my point of view—let me just talk a moment. The disadvantages of solid rockets is you can't shut it off. You can have thrust termination, as we looked at. You essentially have a ring at the top and you essentially cut a hole in the top and you've got a hole in the top and a hole in the bottom, and it neutralizes the thrust. That's basically the way you do thrust termination. You could see where there's a pitfall in doing that, because if that inadvertently cuts, then you really have a problem. Also you can put very high loads into the structure. So that's why we didn't do it. We looked at thrust termination.\\n\\n So that's a disadvantage with a solid rocket, you can't shut it off, whereas in a liquid system, you can shut it off. That's the advantage of a liquid system. But then if you trade off the number of moving parts, the number of parts that have to work on a liquid propellant system vis-a-vis a solid, and you do a reliability number, I'm sure the reliability analysis, from a purely statistical point of view, from a points-count point of view, it's going to come out better for the solid than it is for the liquid.\\n\\n So I guess I have to say that from my knowledge base, I still think we did the right thing, going to solids rather than liquids. There are people that I'm sure would disagree with me violently and say that liquids are the right thing to do, primarily because you could stop the thrust. That's really the issue. You can stop the thrust. So it's a very, very tough, thought-provoking question.\\n\\n If we had to do the decision over, if you started over, then you put your mind in starting over, what would you come up with, it's hard to say what you would do. I'm looking at it from where we are now, which is probably not the question you asked me. Where we are now, could we go to liquids? If we start over, it's another question, and I don't know how I would answer that. I'm not sure I know. It would be a very tough one. It would be a very tough one. I'm sure technology has gotten better for liquids. I'm not sure how much technology has gotten better for solids.\\n\\n On the other hand, when you go back to it, should that solid have failed? And it's so simple, fixing an O-ring, that it shouldn't have failed. So if that's the only failure mode, you should be able to fix that problem.\\n\\n But let me just finish up here with a trite statement that I usually give my students. What is a failure? I say a failure is if you wake up in the morning and it's raining, and you have an argument with your spouse, and your windshield wipers aren't working, you have a higher probability to have an accident. If you wake up in the morning and you don't have an argument with your spouse, and your windshield wipers—you may not have that accident. So an accident is a combination of things that happen, and there's not one single thing that causes an accident, unfortunately. It's a combination of things.\\n\\n So I don't know the answer to your question. I'm still thinking I would go with the solid, but that's just from my mind-set right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that STS-1 was an important mission to you. That was a significant mission not just because it was the Shuttle, but it was the first time you tested a vehicle manned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you explain that to us, the reasoning for that, and how did you feel about it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Why didn't we, with the Shuttle, go unmanned before we went manned? Well, that's a very interesting question, and it was debated very hot and heavy and long and furious. It was very much like the question was asked about solids versus liquids. There's almost no right answer, because history said we always went unmanned prior to manned.\\n\\n The real issue that swayed us is that if you look at doing a robotic mission, it's much easier to do a robotic mission once you've done it manned. Of course, it was very hard to do. We felt the failures modes were very significant, extremely significant, and we could not do a reliable unmanned mission because the man was too much a significant part of the system. Now, interestingly enough, I think today we could easily do a robotic Shuttle mission. Other people may not agree with me. But mainly because we know what the man has to do. So I think it was fought long and hard, but that was the decision, and it was fairly unanimous at the Johnson Space Center that that was the right decision to do, although there were some critics of it. I think, as Chris Kraft said when he got on the microphone at control center after we landed, he said, \"We're infinitely smarter today.\" And that probably summed it up. We were infinitely smarter today that we did land safe and sound after having done a manned mission first. That's a very, very good question. It's a very hard question to answer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've had an amazing career, and we appreciate you sharing the highlights of that with us. We've enjoyed it a lot." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I've enjoyed talking to you. If you want to talk again, if you find something you want to talk about, we can probably get together at the Johnson Space Center or at College Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Summer Chick Bergen", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Aaron Cohen", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00357", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LeeJB/leejb.htm", + "original_file_name": "LeeJB_1-16-08.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/LeeJB/LeeJB_1-16-08.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John B. Lee", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 16 January 2008" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John B. Lee" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 16th, 2008. This oral history with John Lee is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for joining us this morning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you, Doctor and Rebecca. What I’d like to start off with is a continuation of what we did yesterday. At the end of World War II, our groups’ intelligence officer, Major Ed Steiner, came to us and said, “If you will give me $20 each, I will write a book on the group’s history.” About two or three years later, here came this history book named Kings Cliffe. It is a complete history from the time that the group left California until the end of the war. It has the name and pictures of everybody that was in the group during that period and what they did. It has all the data and the intelligence reports from every mission that was flown and shows what position every pilot flew on that flight. It has the photographs of all of the pilots with their ranks, home town, and awards, as well as the ground personnel.\\n\\n We know of no other history book that was written like this after World War II. There are those that have been written about the pilots and the missions that they flew, but nothing as complete as this book. This book is now in the Library of Congress [Washington, DC]. What I have here in my hand is the fifth edition of this book, The Kings Cliffe Memorial Edition. Over the years, we kept publishing more copies of it because it was so popular. We knew that this Memorial Edition was going to be our last printing. In addition to it being in the Library of Congress, I have also donated copies of it to the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and the Kitty Hawk Museum at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. One is in the JSC Library, and one is in the Clear Lake City-County Freeman Library. They have been distributed all over the United States into those kinds of libraries. [The University of Houston-Clear Lake Neumann Library ran a search on it that shows it is now in 60 libraries including some in Germany.]\\n\\n Now the 20th Fighter Wing that I told you about are the jet boys. The 20th Fighter Wing has used this book to plan how they would fly the same missions, as those we flew in combat, in jets today. They used this book as a training manual. Those are some of the reasons for this edition, and that is to get it to people that would want to read and learn from it. That’s what the Memorial Edition is for.\\n\\n On the tape that I gave you, two men from the Library of Congress came and interviewed me. I showed them my [Microsoft] PowerPoint presentation of WWII on my computer screen upstairs. They recorded that, and their interview with that presentation is now in the Library of Congress.\\n\\n Now you asked me about how I got certain medals. I talked to you about one of the strafing missions with Colonel Russell F. “Gus” Gustke. I’d like to read you some excerpts here from King’s Cliffe.\\n\\n MISSION NUMBER 262. 19 February 1945. More than 1,000 Eighth Air Force heavies hit important targets in Western Germany today. Railroad yards at Gelsenkirchen, Osnabruck, Rheine and Wesel, a synthetic plant at Dortmund, an aluminum factory in Meschede and factories at Bochum and Siegen were the assigned targets for the bombers.\\n\\n The 20th Group was assigned to an area in north central Germany near Halle and Magdeburg in which to destroy enemy transportation. Led by Lt. Col. Gustke the Group took off at 1120 and arrived in the area at 1330. The squadrons split up and strafed the areas between Halberstadt and Leipzig until 1415 when they withdrew. 12 locomotives were destroyed or damaged.\\n\\n North of Oschersleben Col. Gustke spotted a Me410 flying north at tree-top level. Gus fired at the plane but missed and lost it in the haze. The 410 opened up with its barbette guns and Gus brought back several holes in his right wing as a result of the exchange of fire.\\n\\n That was the mission I was telling you about when Gustke had gotten upset because he didn’t get that other plane, and when he made this quick turn, had lost his wingman, and yelled at him, “Get your ass back up on my wing or I’m going to shoot you down.” Well, that was the mission. Let me continue.\\n\\n Lieutenant Robert E. Murrell (77th) hit a tree with his wing while strafing a locomotive. His plane crashed into the ground and although some of the others circled the area, he was not seen to get out of his airplane.\\n\\n Capt. Lowell E. Einhaus (77th) completed his tour with this mission.\\n\\n I think that’s enough on that one. I was his element leader that day, with a man flying my wing. That was one of the missions that was used to nominate me for the DFC [Distinguished Flying Cross].\\n\\n Now here’s one that is quite amazing. I talked to you about it from my standpoint at that time.\\n\\n MISSION NUMBER 303. 10 April 1945. Approximately 850 B-17s and B-24s bombed German airfields at Parchin, Rechlin, Larz, Briest, Burg, and Zerbst while 430 forts of 1st Division attacked an aircraft assembly factory and an ordnance depot in Oranienburg.\\n\\n The 20th Group was assigned to a choice spot, the escort of the first two combat groups of the 1st Division to Oranienburg. Led by Col. [Robert P.] Montgomery (A Group) and Capt. Riemensnider (B Group), the boys took off at 1150, crossed in over the Dutch Islands and rendezvoused with our big friends at Osnabruck at 1341. The target was bombed visually at 1438 with excellent results. Escort was continued to Steinhuder Lake where the group withdrew at 1530.\\n\\n Just after our bombers hit the target, about 10 to 15 jets started to come through. Those were the jets that I broke into at 20,000 feet, and they went on up to the bombers like I said they did.\\n\\n Our boys were ready for them and in the mad scramble that followed 5 twin jets were destroyed and 3 damaged. Some of the blow jobs [that is the jets] were caught at altitude and chased to the deck, another was caught trying to land, another was shot down and crashed in the heart of Berlin.\\n\\n After the jets had been disposed of, the group divided its force and while some of the boys escorted the bombers, the rest hit the deck and strafed six airfields in the Berlin area and an airfield at Fossberg, 125 miles west of Berlin [which was us]. When the smoke had cleared away the 20th Group had given itself a new high planes destroyed on one mission.\\n\\n A total of 5 in the air and 3 damaged, and a total of 52 on the ground with 23 damaged.\\n\\n Then it goes through the records of who got what planes and so forth. I thought that was a very interesting anecdote to what I told you yesterday. You get an idea of how important that we think that this particular book is. We are very proud of this book. Actually there are just a few of these books left. I have a few of them, and I know of two other people that may have some left. We have them in certain libraries, but we don’t have it where you can buy it anymore, unless you get it from me or a couple of the other pilots.\\n\\n I have one or two other anecdotes here. I told you about “Cliff” Jurgens; he was hit by flak, completely turned over on his back on the deck, recovered, and brought his film back, which I saw. On that mission he got eight airplanes on the ground. He set a record for the most airplanes ever destroyed by one pilot in a single day. After that we called him “Ace” Jurgens. He was one of the men in my flight and a very good friend. On this particular flight, he was flying the Colonel’s wing. I was leading the second flight that went over the field. When I did, I saw nothing but burning airplanes. The Colonel, Ace Jurgens, and Lieutenant Peterburs had taken pretty good care of them.\\n\\n There was another one. Vince Rudnick, who was one of my best friends, was flying my wing coming back from a mission. We had left the squadron early because he was having engine trouble, and I was trying to take him home. I took him down to the deck, and he had to crash land with his wheels up in a field in Belgium. I circled him to try to see if the Germans were there. If they were, I would try to cover him if he wanted to try to escape. He called me on his radio, which still worked and asked, “John, am I in enemy territory?” I told him, “I don’t know, but as of last night you are.” It appeared that civilians were coming out of the woods. He said, “Well they look friendly, John,” so I left him, and I went on back home. A few days later he showed up at the base. It turned out that they were friendly Belgians. The Germans had moved out of that area the night before. Isn’t that an amazing story? We have a lot of stories like that.\\n\\n On one escort mission it was so cold that my windshield and canopy froze up and I could not see out of it. I had to put my hand with the gloves on the windshield to clear it enough to see. That was very scary because I felt like I was a “sitting duck.” On another mission the sky was so humid that the bomber contrails were causing a cloud bank. The bombers finally reached a natural cloud bank. We kept getting lower and lower in order to see the bombers. Finally the weather was so bad that they scrubbed the mission. We were instructed to return to base. We started making a left turn. I was banked at 90 degrees when I saw this B-17 just a little below my left wing tip. I can still see the pilot and co-pilot looking at me. I know they were as surprised as I was. I still do not know how we got through that bomber stream.\\n\\n I was on one mission where there were 2,000 airplanes from the Eighth Air Force in the air at one time. I cannot remember if that was on Christmas Eve when the weather broke over the Battle of the Bulge and Europe. It could have been when we put General Montgomery across the Rhine [River]. Every day on the front page of the British newspaper they kept talking about how General Montgomery was sitting behind a smoke screen on the Rhine. On about the fourth or fifth page, it was about how Generals [George S.] Patton and [Courtney H.] Hodges were moving through France and capturing towns. Then there was more about General Montgomery moving his troops behind the smoke screen. One morning when we went in for the group’s briefing we were told, “Men, today we are going to put ‘Monty’ across the Rhine if it takes every airplane in the Eighth Air Force to do it.” And we did.\\n\\n On my longest mission of 6 hours and 40 minutes escorting British Mosquitoes over Czechoslovakia, my fuel gauge was on zero when I got close to the base. I called into the base for landing instructions. They said that the traffic was heavy, and I would have to go around. I told them I could not go around; I was out of gas. They cleared me to come on in and land. On landing, we would come in right on the deck, peel off and up to the left, and land. I came straight in and landed. My revetment was right at the end of the runway. When I pulled into the revetment my engine quit on me.\\n\\n Those two mission summaries that I just read to you were the two missions that I got the DFC for. I was also awarded six air medals, which were given based on the number of missions that one flew or for a specific mission. I also received three battle stars: one for the Battle of France, one for the Battle of Ardennes [which is known as the Battle of the Bulge], and one for European Operations. I was in what they called three major battles, and that’s why I received those Battle Stars. That’s all the time that I want to spend on World War II." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s very impressive, all those commendations that you won." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. I’ve got a copy of the DFC hanging on the wall over there. It essentially says in a short form what I just talked to you about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why don’t we pick up where we left off yesterday, which was the NACA [National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics]. We were going to talk about how you found out about that opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was shipped back to the States on the Queen Mary. It took us five days getting home, where it took us six days in a convoy on the French ship going to England. Every day we would have a fire drill with our life vests on. We would stand in the same place every day, so I started carving my initials, JBL, in the ship’s railing. By the time we got to New York I had finished carving my initials in the railing. I finally got home from WWII in October 1945. I enjoyed being home with my family and friends for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, until January.\\n\\n I would have nightmares about the war. One night I woke myself up hollering. I asked my mother the next morning if she had heard me yelling. She said she had, but she did not know what she should do. I told her, “For God’s sakes if you hear me hollering at night, please wake me up!” I didn’t know that they had told the people back home, “Don’t ask the men in the military about their experiences when they come back home.” I didn’t know that.\\n\\n My father never asked me. As I said, I never talked about my World War II experiences for 40 years. My family, my wife, and my children never knew what I had done in World War II. If my father had asked me I would have told him. Maybe if we had talked about it, I wouldn’t have waited another 40 years. I didn’t know that was what had happened.\\n\\n I got home in October, and in January I was back at VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Blacksburg, Virginia]. At that time I had a choice of staying in the Service, which I wanted to, but I knew that I had to get an education so I went back to VPI. By that time, the Air Force was just bringing the F-80 jets on board at Langley Field, in Hampton, Virginia. Later I got checked out in the F-80.\\n\\n In January, VPI had forgiven me and my brother for going AWOL [absent without leave] from school, and we were reinstated. At VPI we applied for funds under the veteran’s program to go to college. That was a big help. The government has gotten the money spent on veteran’s education back many times over on income taxes. Also, I got credit for a lot of things that I’d learned in the Service. I was having a hard time passing when I was there before the war. After the war, when I went back, I guess I had grown up some, and I had a lot more training and experience. I just breezed through VPI [which is now known as VT, Virginia Tech]. I graduated from Virginia Tech in mechanical engineering with options in aeronautical engineering. I stayed on an extra quarter to take some electives in aeronautical engineering. That was a relatively new department at that time. I finally graduated with the class of 1948, three years later than the class of 1945 that I was in before I left to go into the Service. VPI was my launch pad to the future.\\n\\n Why did I choose the NACA? I had applied to North American Aviation for a job in engineering and as a test pilot. I dearly loved the airplanes that they had built that I had flown. I did receive an offer from them as an engineer. In the library I found a NACA technical memorandum on the design of the P-51 inlet [air scoop] written by Paul [R.] Hill at the NACA at Langley Field. I used that to write my thesis on airplane inlets.\\n\\n I took a trip to the NACA at Langley Field. I got to visit their facilities and wind tunnels. They had the Flight Research Division that was flight testing jet aircraft. I was fascinated when I saw models of airplanes in their wind tunnels with supersonic airflow over their wings. That was where I wanted to be, where the future airplanes were being developed! Also, I wanted to be a test pilot. Furthermore, I could be in the Air Force Reserves right there at Langley. It did not pay as well as North American but it was in Virginia, close to my roots. It seemed like the best of all worlds.\\n\\n Money was never one of my big drivers. I wanted to do the things I loved. When I took the job, my father could not understand it. He said, “No one should work for the government under civil service.”\\n\\n When I left VPI, I went to work at the NACA, the forerunner of NASA. My first stop was to see test pilot Bob [Robert] Hoover at Flight Research Division, to try to be a test pilot. I was told that they did not have any job openings at that time, but if they got an opening, they might consider me. I realized that we were now in the jet age and that “time” had passed me by. Personnel then sent me over to the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division (PARD), headed by Robert “Bob” R. Gilruth.\\n\\n Bob Gilruth hired me as an aeronautical engineer, grade P-1, at a salary of $2,974.80 per year. Bob Gilruth had been in the Flight Research Division. He had experimented with putting models on the wings of an airplane, to tests these models at supersonic speeds. Gilruth then started PARD. He had developed and had built a test facility at Wallops Island, Virginia. They would fly rockets and models of airplanes at subsonic, transonic, and supersonic speeds in free flight out over the Atlantic Ocean. Chuck Yeager had just broken the sonic barrier the year before I got there so we were now in the supersonic age. When I arrived, the division was flying models of rocket and jet airplanes at subsonic, transonic, and supersonic speeds of Mach numbers 1 and 2.\\n\\n Gilruth put me in the Propulsion and Flight Dynamics Branch headed by Paul Hill. Paul Hill seemed to be pleased to find out that my thesis in college on inlets had been based on his TM [technical memorandum] so I got off to a good start with him. Can you believe that? Maxime “Max” A. Faget was there. Paul [E.] Purser was head of the Aerodynamics Branch. [Joseph] Guy Thibodeaux was head of the Propulsion Branch, and he was providing the rocket motors to boost these models. He was our rocket motor expert, as you probably know. I did some flight testing of the Navaho Rocket airplane with Aleck [C.] Bond. We went through ten years of testing things like that after I got there.\\n\\n Gilruth had also built a free flight wind tunnel at Wallops Island. It was called the “blow down jet” wind tunnel because the nozzle just blew out into the atmosphere, out over some marshland. The flow was not contained in a building like the wind tunnels were at the Langley Research Center, which were in great big buildings. I was later assigned to working on wind tunnel tests of jet engine inlets and ram jets.\\n\\n Max then gave me the job of developing a method for dropping models of warheads [or stores] from the F-100 series of airplanes: the F-101, F-102, F-103, F-104, F-105, F106, and the F-107, as well as from the B-52 Bomber. Caldwell [C.] Johnson’s division did a lot of work helping me develop and build this test set up. It included the designs of the models of the stores tested so that we could properly simulate the full-scale models. I would have those models built with different types of materials such as iron or molybdenum to give them the weight that was needed to simulate the full-scale model. Caldwell Johnson and his branch would design the models, and then I would have the models built in the NACA shops. That was quite a feat, but I had people that helped me to do that.\\n\\n Max Faget showed how the airplane model would have to be accelerated up when the stores were dropped in order to simulate the proper trajectories from the full-scale airplanes. What we did was to set up a test stand at the exit of the wind tunnel so that we could test the configuration of the airplane dropping their warheads in free flight. Some were dropped from the airplane’s wings and some from the bomb bays. We could change the nozzles on the wind tunnel to get a range of Mach numbers from 0.80 to 2.0. I also dropped models of warheads that were conical or blunt-shaped. The blunt-shaped stores were models of atomic warheads so I had to get an Atomic Energy Clearance [AEC] to run these tests.\\n\\n I first started out using a movie camera to get the trajectories of the stores. This was not a very accurate way of doing it. One night I was reading a trade magazine, and it showed photographs using a strobe light system that showed a sequence of photos on one sheet of film. I went to Wallops Island and asked them if they could develop a strobe system for me. Charles “Tom” Augustus Hulcher had developed a camera at the NACA. The NACA had allowed him to patent that camera. It was known as the Hulcher Camera. It could take very good pictures at very high rates of speeds. The newspapers started using it to take excellent high-speed photos in sports. They developed a system using this camera with a strobe light system. It was excellent at showing the complete trajectory on one piece of film.\\n\\n Some of the stores would drop cleanly from the wings and the blunt-shaped stores from the bomb bays. There were some problems with the conical-shaped stores. When dropping a model from a bomb bay, some conical stores looked like it was flying back up and hitting the airplane so we cut off the tail fins on one of the models. From this we found out that the airflow coming out of the bomb bay was impinging on the fins and that caused the nose to rotate up causing the store to hit the bomb bay. From that we found out that we would have to eject the conical-shaped stores nose down from some of the airplane’s bomb bay.\\n\\n This technique was developed and used for testing some of the early models of the F-100 airplanes used in combat. Airplane companies came to us to test drop their stores from their airplane models, so I got a reputation of being an expert in bomb drops. I wrote a total of twelve research memoranda at the NACA, and I think nine or ten of them were on the bomb-drop test program. The first one established the test technique for running these tests, and the rest of the reports were on the different airplane models that we tested. It was a very interesting program.\\n\\n As part of my oral history rewrite, I have gone back to my personnel files and have added some references of my promotions and some of my other commendations. I think these will cover more in detail some of what my responsibilities and accomplishments were that may be of interest instead of describing them in detail in my interview.\\n\\n At that time the branch was doing a lot of work on the blunt shape. Nine years after I got there, PARD was flying models of nose cones and ballistic missiles at Mach 15 into outer space. They were models of atomic warheads for the Air Force. These tests were to develop the heat shield material so that the models could reenter the Earth’s atmosphere safely without them burning up. During that period of time, Max had found out that we could not get an airplane to go much faster than Mach 6, and we would have to go in a different direction to put a man in space. Then Max Faget came up with the idea that using the blunt reentry vehicle with which we could put a man into outer space and return him safely to Earth.\\n\\n I can remember it very well one day when Max called me into his office and said, “John, I want you to go to work with me on putting a man in space.” I asked, “Max, how are we going to do that?” He said, “I don’t know; that’s what we have got to find out.” Well, what I didn’t know was that he and Gilruth had already gone to see Center Director Floyd [L.] Thompson who then sent them to see NACA Headquarters Director Dr. Hugh [L.] Dryden. He liked the idea.\\n\\n They tried to sell the idea to the Air Force. The Air Force had been working on a winged vehicle named the Dyna-Soar for three years. The Air Force said, “No, we want a winged vehicle so that we will be able to come in and land on land.” Max told them, “You do not have the capability to put up a winged vehicle. It would be too heavy for any of the boosters available in the Air Force arsenal because of the guidance systems and everything you have to have on it. Also, you have not developed the know-how to reenter a winged vehicle. You don’t know how to do that yet. I can use the available Air Force boosters. I can put the blunt shape in orbit, and I can land it anywhere you want it to land it.” The Air Force said, “No, we don’t want to do that,” and they turned them down.\\n\\n The three of them Max, Gilruth, and Dr. Dryden then went to see President Dwight D. Eisenhower. [President Eisenhower was a five-star general, head of the Allies in WWII in England; General Jimmy [James H.] Doolittle was the head of the Eighth Air Force, when I was there. That is General Doolittle’s picture there on the top of my book case and featured below.]\\n\\n President Eisenhower liked the idea, and he sent them over to see Congress. [I got this story from both Max and Gilruth.] When President Eisenhower sent them over to Congress, Sputnik had just been launched. As Max put it, “Congress was in a panic. They had gone ape!” You have probably heard that before. Congress had a small subcommittee on space at that time. I think U.S. Senator Lyndon [B.] Johnson headed up that committee. When Congress heard there were two young engineers that were going to talk about putting a man up in space, they filled the conference room and the hallways waiting to hear what would come out of that meeting.\\n\\n Max Faget showed his hand sketches to the committee members at the table. The committee then passed them around the room, out the door, and down the hallways for all of the congressmen to see. At the end of that review, the committee told them that since the Air Force had their winged vehicle, and you, the NACA, have a different approach, we will continue with both of them. When Max, Gilruth, and Dr. Dryden walked out into the hallway, they looked at each other and asked, “Have they told us to go do it?” They finally decided, yes they had!\\n\\n Max and Gilruth came back to the Langley Research Center, and then Gilruth sat down and wrote the famous one-page memo that started the Space Task Group for Project Mercury. He and Max handpicked 35 people from around the Center, which included Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft. I was fortunate enough to be in that group. That was the first official piece of paper that started the manned spaceflight program. As you probably know, Chris Kraft said at the end of Apollo Program, we had something like 450,000 people on the space program. That is how large that group of 35 people grew. You know the old song that said, “Give me ten, who are stout hearted men, and I will soon give you 10,000 more?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve never heard it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "“Give me ten stout hearted men, and I will soon give you 10,000 more.” But the group of 35 was not just engineers. It contained some of the staff, the secretaries, and people like that. Really it was just a small group of people assigned the Space Task Group to get it started.\\n\\n This is a photograph of a Mercury Space Task Group Planning Session; seated from left is Charles Donlan, Robert Gilruth, Max Faget, Robert Piland. The NACA and thereafter the NASA Centers were also doing a lot of research work for the manned spaceflight program. When NASA went out with the RFP [Request for Proposal], they gave industry four weeks to reply. The industry had already been to NASA and getting all of the information that they could from us. We had essentially designed the spacecraft at that time. We received the proposals and reviewed them. In two weeks’ time we had signed a contract with McDonnell [Aircraft Corporation] to build the Mercury spacecraft. All of this had been done in six weeks. No RFPs, before or since, have been done that fast. That’s how fast we were moving. We were ready for the challenge.\\n\\n Before we let the contract for proposal, Max already had me working on the parachute system. I was responsible for the parachute system on the spacecraft. That was a very interesting project. Radioplane had won the contract for providing the parachutes for us. We had tried dropping the Mercury capsule with the parachute that they had proposed and that failed. They came back with a new parachute design that they called the “ring-sail” parachute that had positive opening characteristics. We liked the idea, and we reviewed it with Bob Gilruth. He liked the idea and that was the parachute that we developed for the Mercury Project. We designed the deployment system so that we had a second parachute if the first one failed. That made it a completely redundant system. If one failed, you had the other one. We never had a failure on this parachute system.\\n\\n At first we weren’t too well organized, but kind of organized. After the Mercury Project started, I started looking around at the things that had to be done. Bill [William M.] Bland from Reliability and Quality Control had come to see me and pointed out that no one seemed to be following the propulsion systems so I picked them up. The next thing I knew I not only had the parachute systems, but I had the responsibility for all of the propulsion systems on the spacecraft, which included: 1) the launch escape rocket motor with its posigrade rocket motor, 2) the retro-rockets package to reenter from space, 3) the hydrogen peroxide jets that controlled the attitude of the spacecraft in orbit, and also 4) the pyrotechnics that cut the Mormon clamps for both the escape rocket motor and for the heat shield.\\n\\n So I went in to see Bob Gilruth. [I’m still calling him Bob Gilruth because at that time he was Bob Gilruth. Everybody called him Bob.] I told him, “I’ve got this responsibility for all of these rocket motors, and I don’t know anything about rockets. What should I do?”\\n\\n Instead of saying, “Well John, we’ll give it to somebody else,” he said, “Why don’t you go over and talk to Guy Thibodaux.” He was a man of few words, but they were very powerful. So I went to see Guy Thibodaux, and he became my teacher and my mentor. He helped me with some of the problems we were having on developing the rocket motors. We ended up having no failures of the propulsion systems on the spacecraft flights.\\n\\n There were certain people who were trying to be power builders and to build bigger organizations. Al [Alan B.] Kehlet, the head of the Aerodynamics Section, had gone in and convinced Max that I needed to be under him because I had the parachutes, which was aerodynamics, and they were the aerodynamics people. I was told that by Bob [Robert O.] Piland. I went home that night, and I laid in bed and I thought, and thought, and thought. The next morning I got up, and I made a list of everything that I was responsible for. I took that sheet of paper to Bob Piland and said, “Look Bob, this is what I’m doing, and they want to put me under aerodynamics?” He jumped up and said, “Come with me, John.” We went in to see Max. Max looked at it, and then he said, “John, we will make you head of Mechanical Systems Section.” Here, all of a sudden, I am the head of the Mechanical Systems Section. After I became head of the Mechanical Systems Section, Bob Piland wrote me up for my promotion from GS-13 to GS-14.\\n\\n So anyway, I picked up these responsibilities, not waiting for somebody to assign them to me. I was just seeing the things that had to be done, and nobody else was doing them.\\n\\n That was the kind of flexibility that we had in those days. That was what was so good about Max and Gilruth; they knew how to pick their leaders and to organize around them. I just loved both of those men. Of course you’ve heard many times that Dr. Gilruth was like a father to so many of us. I was just fortunate enough of being in the right place at the right time with the right people, but I also took advantage of this luck. I didn’t just wait for people to tell me what to do. I had learned that you had to make yourself needed. I guess that’s what they were looking for, people who were needed.\\n\\n I learned early in the game not to take an idea to Max or Bob Piland that you were not prepared to handle. If I went in and described a problem to them they would say, “Well, go fix it.” You had better have an idea of what you could do when you went in and talked to them about a problem. That was how they worked. The people that came out of the NACA that did the work got credit for what they did. They were also held responsible if the work was not done correctly. Some manager or some division chief would not take credit for it. As I have said, at the NACA in many cases we would design, build a model, fly, review the data, and write the final reports. We took these projects from birth to grave.\\n\\n We were people who grew up in the field, and we knew how to do things because of our experience. When we got to working with the contractors, we were able to go and sit down and talk to them. We already knew more about designing the spacecraft than they did. At first, they couldn’t believe it. They’d been used to working with the Air Force. The Air Force would give them a set of specifications that would tell the contractors they wanted them to design and build a plane with the capability that flies so high, so fast, with so much of a load, etc. Then they would go home and later they would go back and get a progress report from the contractor.\\n\\n We didn’t work this way. We sat down with the contactor and helped them design the spacecraft hardware right from the beginning. It turned out to be a real good working relationship with the contractor doing it that way. On the Mercury Program I had my counterparts for the parachute and the propulsion systems at McDonnell. This was in the days before the subsystem managers on Apollo. That’s one reason that we were so successful. I developed some very good friends with the contractors.\\n\\n As an example, one of the things that I did was I took a model of the Mercury spacecraft just like this [shows model] home with me. I put it in my bathtub, and I found out that it had two neutral buoyancy points. That is, it would float with the apex up this way, or it would float with the apex down with the heat shield out of the water this way. [Demonstrates]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not the way you want to be sitting in the capsule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly. The astronauts would not be able to get out of the spacecraft with its apex down so I went back, and I reported this to Max. He sent me over to the full scale water tank that the NACA used to test seaplanes landing in the water. The man put in charge of the tests was Bob [Robert G.] McKann. He became a good friend of mine for many years. I told him what the problem was. He took a full-scale model of the capsule, and sure enough he proved what I had found out in my bath tub with a model this size. My findings were right.\\n\\n Also it had been learned that when the Mercury capsule would land in real rough seas, you could get very high Gs on impact. These impacts could sometimes be higher than the 14 Gs for which the spacecraft was designed. In order to take care of the buoyancy problem and the high G impact on landing, we had to develop a method where the heatshield would be lowered on landing. This also required that a Mormon clamp be developed to hold the heatshield on with pyrotechnics to cut it on landing. The pyrotechnics was also one of my responsibilities. That’s how a lot of things came together.\\n\\n That’s the kind of engineers we were. We didn’t wait for somebody else to tell us what to do or how to do it. You can see how well Gilruth, Faget, and others had trained their people at the NACA. It was the kind of training that you probably could not find anywhere else. We were doing things that had never been done before. In fact, Gilruth developed that Flight Test Facility at Wallops Island before the Air Force ever had a test facility down at Cape Canaveral, Florida. They came to him for help in designing their facility.\\n\\n In reviewing my files there were a number of projects that I worked on that are covered in more detail in my promotions from: 1) GS-12 to GS-13 written by Carl A. Sandahl [see Endnote 5], and 2) GS-13 to GS-14 written by Robert O. Piland [see Endnote 7]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have some questions, if you don’t mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, go ahead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You made an interesting statement just a few minutes ago that Gilruth was like a father to so many of you. Could you explain that in more detail?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, he was such a fine gentleman. Later, I’ll get into the foresight I was able to have in management meetings with him. This man just knew how to work with people, bringing out the best in them. One weekend after Dr. Gilruth and I both had retired, we met at Walter Hall’s Ranch up in mid-Texas on the other side of San Antonio near Johnson City. Walter Hall had a beautiful 2400-acre ranch up there. He would invite a bunch of us from the Johnson Space Center up there ever so often. On one particular trip, there was also Dr. Faget, Caldwell Johnson, and Wes [Wesley L.] Hjornevik, with their wives. [I am now referring to both Bob and Max as doctors, which they were at that time, but I still called them Bob and Max unless I was at work.] I asked Dr. Gilruth, “I don’t know if you remember when I came to work at the NACA.”\\n\\n He stopped me and said, “Yes, I do. I hired you. You were a boy that had grown up on a farm during the Depression, had become a fighter pilot, been in combat, and you had come to the NACA because you wanted to design airplanes. I was impressed.” Evidently I had made a good impression with him, and he still remembered it. That was amazing. God, they were just so nice to you, they were so nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How helpful do you think that your World War II experience was in helping you in your NACA career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a big help because, before the war, I was having a hard time at college because I had graduated from a non-accredited high school, believe it or not. I was getting some Cs and Ds and not many As and Bs. When I came back after the war and went back to VPI, I just breezed through most everything. In the Air Corps, we had a lot of training, and I had grown up a lot so that was a big help.\\n\\n When I went to the NACA, I said, “God, I have lost three years from being in the Service.” There were guys younger than I, who had already been working for the NACA for several years. I said, “Well, I’m behind the eight ball.” But it didn’t turn out that way at all because much of the experience that I had gotten in the service had really helped. There were others in the same boat as I was.\\n\\n Max Faget had been in the Navy in submarines, and they snuck into Tokyo Harbor. I don’t know if Max told you this story or not. There was a Japanese airplane over the top of them. Max knew that they had a fix on them because they could hear the ping, ping, of the Japanese sonar on their submarine. About that time another airplane dropped a bomb somewhere else; their airplane left and went over there, so they were able to escape. That is how close Max Faget was to not being here after the war. He would not talk about his experiences, but he told me that story himself.\\n\\n Doug [Douglas H.] Foland was at Pearl Harbor. He had just walked out of the mess hall when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. There was Gene [Eugene D.] Schult, who I had roomed with at “Club 55.” I didn’t know that he had been a bomber pilot in the war. I don’t think he knew that I had been a fighter pilot. I might have escorted him on missions over Europe in the Eighth Air Force. Then there was Woody [Willard S.] Blanchard who had been a bomber pilot. Jim [James R.] Hall was with the Canadian Air Force, went to England, and had flown bombers in the war. Guy Thibodaux was in the Army Corps of Engineers, and he helped to build the Lido Road in the China Burma Theatre under General “Vinegar” Joe Stillwell, just to name a few. Those were the kind of people that Bob Gilruth had collected around him and who I was working for and with. It didn’t take long to become needed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you tell us what it was like in Hampton after the war? For instance, did you have a car when you first started working for NACA? Where did you live?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I got my first car after I had gotten out of college, and I was going to work for the NACA. It was a nice new red Chevrolet. I lived in a house named the Club 55. It was named Club 55 because that was the house number on that street. Let me see, how many people were there? There were about six or seven of us that roomed in the house together. Gene Schult and I were in the same room until we separated to get married.\\n\\n When we were working for the NACA, the community called us, “Those crazy NACA [pronounced NAKA] nuts.” We were doing things nobody had ever done before. We were flying these models of airplanes and rocket models at supersonic speeds, putting the models into outer space, and reentering them to develop their heat shields for reentry. We were the “crazy NACA nuts.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you got married when you were working at the NACA. Will you tell us about meeting your wife?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we had a Computer Section. Do you know what a Friedan calculator was? To explain it here, it was just like a cash register where you would type in the data or the numbers. You would pull a crank handle, and the data would come out on this piece of paper. Then it would have to be plotted by hand. My ex-wife Dottie [nickname De De] had gone to Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia and had gotten her degree in mathematics. Excuse me. That brings something to mind. Let me back up a minute.\\n\\n When I was at VPI before the war, I was in the same class with Chris Kraft and Bob [Robert F.] Thompson. During the war they had stayed there and had gotten their degrees, and then they went to work at the NACA. Well, it turned out that Bob Thompson’s wife, Dorothy, and De De went to Randolph-Macon Women’s College at the same time. They did some double dating together at college. As I said, Bob Thompson married Dorothy. So when I got to the NACA, there was Chris Kraft, Bob Thompson and his wife Dorothy, and De De. She, Bob, and Dorothy were very good friends.\\n\\n But anyway, to get back on point—the Computer Section was running the calculations on the models for us. We would design a model and fly it, and they would take the telemetry data and run the aerodynamic calculations for it. When it got into the heat transfer for reentering the vehicles, well, heat transfer was mathematics. De De was a mathematician. She did some of the first calculations to show that the Mercury spacecraft with its blunt shape could reenter without burning up using certain kinds of materials. She was very valuable in the beginning of the space program.\\n\\n Max ended up making her an aeronautical engineer and moved her out of the computer section into PARD. Max later made her an aeronautical research scientist. That computer section stayed in PARD. PARD was still flying rocket models after we left so I had met De De there. I went there in August of 1948, and she had arrived there in June of 1948. Soon after that I started dating her. We were married in 1950, and there is another story about that. She transferred from PARD when we moved to Houston. When we moved down here we had two daughters, Laurie and Dottie.\\n\\n So where are we now? We were just about ready to fly the first Mercury spacecraft. Bob Piland came into my office and asked me to be one of his three study managers on how to send a man to the Moon. What a shock. I asked him if we could go in to see Max. I was a section head, and I thought that that was a pretty good job. I did not know what being a study manager would entail. I asked, “Max, how am I going to do that?” Max replied, “I don’t know, that’s what you have to find out.” For some reason that was good enough for me. It had gone from: “That is what we have to find out” to “That is what you have to find out.”\\n\\n Bob Piland was the project manager for the three contractor studies. I ran one of the three feasibility studies to show that man could go to the Moon. I did not realize it then, but I was now on the fast track for advanced designs for the space program. I ran the study for the Martin contract in Baltimore, Maryland; Bill [William A.] Petynia ran the Convair contract in San Diego, California; and Bill Patterson ran the G.E. contract in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The results of these studies started the Apollo Program.\\n\\n Before we moved down here to Houston from Langley Field, we had flown two suborbital flights with the Mercury spacecraft. The pilots were “Al” [Alan B.] Shepard who flew the first flight and “Gus” [Virgil I.] Grissom who flew the second flight. McDonnell was already cutting hardware for the Gemini spacecraft, which was a larger two-man model of the Mercury spacecraft. We had signed the contract with North American for the Command and Service Module on the Apollo Program. I was on the evaluation committee for the parachutes and the propulsion systems from E&D [Engineering and Development Directorate] that picked the McDonnell Aircraft Company for the Mercury spacecraft. I was on the management committee from Engineering for the Apollo Spacecraft Command and Service Module that picked North American Aviation as the contractor.\\n\\n On the Apollo contract, I thought that technically the Martin Company had come in with the best technical report on how to build a spacecraft and fly it. They had also pointed out that reliability and quality control would be a big cost factor, which it was. No other contractor considered that. It turned out that North American got the contract even though they were not one of the three study contractors. They were considered to have had more management experience in building and flying flight hardware than Martin and the other two contractors had. North American did have a lot of experience building the Bell X-1, the first supersonic rocket airplane. That was a joint project between North American and the NACA. That was when I learned that there were other things to consider than just engineering in evaluating a contractor. Anyway, that was my evaluation of it. Other people might tell you differently.\\n\\n When we moved down from Langley Field to Houston, we had been flying the Mercury spacecraft, we were building the Gemini spacecraft, and we had already signed the contract with North American for the Command and Service Module for the Apollo spacecraft. The Space Task Group had grown from 35 people to about 750 people. We had the choice to stay at Langley or to move down here and start a new Center, the Manned Spacecraft Center. About 480 of us were the cadre of people that chose to move down here. After we moved down here President [John F.] Kennedy said, “We’re going to go to the Moon in this decade.” What most people did not know at that time was that he was able to say that because we had already signed a contract with North American on the Command and Service Module. We still had to hire a contractor for the Lunar Excursion Module [renamed the Lunar Module or LM], which was won by the Grumman Aircraft Company on Long Island, New York. During that period of time, we were running three spacecraft programs. It turned out that the Manned Spacecraft Center was built halfway between the three major Apollo contractors, Grumman on the East Coast, North American on the West Coast, and McDonnell in the central U.S.\\n\\n Gilruth and his staff had to hire the staff to run those three space programs, to build the Space Center, to build all of its laboratories, and to organize his directorates with their different divisions required. He made Dr. Faget head of the Engineering and Development Directorate. Max was responsible for the design, development, and testing of the spacecraft and its hardware and to support all of the flight missions. Dr. Chris Kraft was made head of the Flight Operations Directorate [FOD] and therefore responsible for building the Mission Control Center and for flying the spacecraft. Astronaut Deke [Donald K.] Slayton was made the head of the Astronaut’s Office. He had been grounded because of a heart condition.\\n\\n We were working 10 to 12 hours a day, sometimes 6 and 7 days a week, and flying all over the country. I was having a ball. One night when I came home from a trip, my wife said, “Your daughter Laurie said that she wanted to get a new daddy.” When she asked her why, Laurie said, “I want one that stays home sometimes.” That was a real wakeup call. We were really working hard. We had to beat those Russians to the Moon.\\n\\n You can see how much we had to do in a very, very short period of time. For Dr. Gilruth and his staff to build the Space Center, to pull the team together to build the Mission Control Center and its shops and test facilities, including the Environmental Test Chamber was a great, great feat. At that time the chamber was the largest in the world. I don’t think that Dr. Gilruth and Dr. Faget were ever given the credit for what they were able to do in that short period of time and for the success of the manned spaceflight program. And to think that I was there when all of this was being done!\\n\\n Dr. Gilruth’s Deputy Director, Jim [James C.] Elms, came up with the idea of assigning managers to each of the subsystems on the Apollo Spacecraft. I helped Bob Piland set up the E&D subsystem managers to cover every subsystem on the spacecraft such as propulsion, guidance and control, etc. Dr. Faget made me his technical assistant as the head of his project office. It ended up that I was responsible to Dr. Faget for the directorate’s support of 36 subsystem managers. It was later increased to 42 subsystem managers. Those subsystem managers worked directly under their divisions, like Guy Thibodaux who was the head of the Propulsion Division and Ralph [S.] Sawyer who was the head of the Electronics Division. I would be Max’s eyes and ears on their progress, what support the subsystem managers may need, or whether it was working right or not. I was on committees and boards that reviewed, with the subsystem managers, the status of their subsystems to see if their systems were ready to fly. If not, what still had to be done?\\n\\n Joe [Joseph F.] Shea was sent down from NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC] to be the Program Manager for the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. His job was to follow the progress of the spacecraft at the contractors and their flights. He would call on E&D for his subsystem manager’s support. I would go to both Dr. Faget’s and Joe Shea’s staff meetings representing the subsystem managers. In Dr. Faget’s staff meetings, I would listen to our division chiefs discuss their problems with the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. I’d go to the program office meetings, and I’d hear what was wrong with the subsystem managers’ support. I’d go back and put all of that together and report it to Max on actions that needed to be taken. I was his eyes and ears on how we were working with the divisions and the program office.\\n\\n Later on I would also go to Dr. Gilruth’s staff meetings as a secretary and write the minutes of the meeting. There would be Dr. Faget, Dr. Chris Kraft, Deke Slayton, Joe Shea, Wes Hjornevik, Sig [Sigurd A.] Sjoberg, and some other people. I knew that there were a lot of problems, and I would wonder how they would be presented to Dr. Gilruth. This was where I had a chance to observe what a great manager Dr. Gilruth was. There would be some conflicts between the major directorates and organizations, such as Engineering, Flight Operations, the astronauts, and the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office.\\n\\n Dr. Gilruth was an outstanding engineer himself. He would ask the different directors, “Have you looked at this, and have you looked at that?” The next time they came in, they would have looked at these different areas, and the right answers would sift up to the top. Then everyone would be in agreement with what had to be done so they all thought that they had been part of making the right decisions. What great management skills Dr. Gilruth had. One day he told me, “A person should not only know a little bit about a lot of things, but he also needed to know about some things in depth.”\\n\\n One day I got to observe a real good argument. There was a doctor there that was head of the Experiments Office. When we were preparing to go to the Moon, the objectives of the first flight was to land a man safely on the Moon and to return him safely back on Earth. I was sitting on one side of the table with George [M.] Low [the Center’s Deputy Director at that time], Joe Shea, and this doctor. He was fighting to get experiments on the first lunar landing, and he wasn’t getting them. Dr. Max Faget, Dr. Chris Kraft, and Deke Slayton were sitting on the other side of the table. They would not let him put those experiments onboard for the first lunar landing.\\n\\n He jumped up and pointed his finger at them and said, “If you don’t do what I want, I’m going to fight you.” I said to myself, “Dr. Gilruth, why don’t you tell that guy that he’s wrong?” He didn’t say anything. A few months later that guy was no longer here. They brought in another doctor, who I think was Dr. [Anthony J.] Calio, to replace him. That’s how Dr. Gilruth operated. How could anyone have been in a better position to see how so much of the whole organization worked? I would also go to NASA Headquarters to represent E&D. I got a great education, a great education.\\n\\n I got ahead of my story in order to carry through the sequence of events. Being the head of the Subsystem Managers Office, I would sit in on all the review boards and everything when the subsystem managers would give their proposals or when they had problems. I would also go to NASA Headquarters to represent them so I got to see a very broad base of things. I was very lucky, very lucky in my lifetime, very blessed.\\n\\n John H. Glenn flew the first orbital flight after we came down here. By this time, I was working on the Apollo Program. One day I got a call from the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] saying that the light had come on in the spacecraft indicating that the heatshield had come loose. They wanted to know if it’d be all right to reenter with the retro package still strapped onto the heat shield. The retro package had been my responsibility, but I did not know for certain. What I also did not know was that Dr. Faget had already run wind tunnel tests showing that it would be all right. The decision was made to reenter the spacecraft with the retro-rocket package, still strapped on and it was okay. Max always seemed to be ahead of the game, but in running tests on the spacecraft they found out that the heat shield had not come loose. It was a malfunction of the gauge on the panel.\\n\\n Let’s go back in time just a little bit. When Chris Kraft was flying the Mercury flights, he would have to go down to Cape Canaveral to manage the flight of the spacecraft. von Braun and his people were responsible for the launch of the Redstone booster. von Braun and his team had developed it under the Army at White Sands, New Mexico. They were also responsible for the launch of John Glenn on the Air Force’s Atlas booster. von Braun and his team kept interfering with Chris Kraft and trying to tell him what to do, but Chris knew what he had to do. That went on for those three launches.\\n\\n For problems like the John Glenn one, they would have to call back here to the Space Center for the experts who’d worked on these kinds of things. The control was for von Braun to take care of his boosters, and MSC would take care of the flight operations part of it. As best that I know, those were the reasons that made it very obvious that the Mission Control Center needed to be built here in Houston where the flight crew trained and the technical support from the divisions and their subsystem mangers were available. There are still people today that say, “Oh, the Mission Control Center should have been down at the Cape.” I think that was the right decision.\\n\\n Then they had to build the Control Center. They continued to control the flights from the Cape until the Mission Control Center was built here. The first flight that was controlled from the Houston Mission Control Center was the Gemini IV spacecraft with Ed [Edward H.] White. He was the first man that flew with a control system outside of the spacecraft. The Russians had put a man outside of the spacecraft on a tether but not with a control system so this was considered our first victory over the Russians on the race to the Moon. This control system was developed by Dick [Richard S.] Johnston’s Crew Systems Division in complete secrecy and delivered to the Cape in two weeks time. I even did not know about it. Ed White was having such a good time that he had to be ordered back into the spacecraft. He was using up all of his consumables." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you think about the Center moving to Houston? You had lived in Texas for a short time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had lived most of my life in Virginia. That was where my family was originally from. I loved the people in Virginia. The way I put it is that you were accepted by them when you proved yourself worthy of that acceptance. Texas people I also love. God bless them, they are great people. When we came down to Houston, the people welcomed us with open arms. You were accepted unless you proved yourself not worthy of that acceptance. That’s the way I put it. When we came down here, my wife was still working at PARD.\\n\\n One day at the end of December 1961, Max came into my office and said John, “I’m going to move down to Houston on the 1st of January [in 1962]. I want you to come on down there on the 1st of February.” I said, “Max I can’t do that, I still have too much work to do here. I haven’t sold my house; my children are in school.” He said, “John, I want you down there the 1st of February.” So I said, “Yes, sir.” I was here on the 1st day of February. I drove down here by myself. I spent the night at a hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Someone broke into my car and stole all my clothes. I left my wife and children up there, as she was still working for PARD. My oldest was still in school, and we still had to sell our home. When I came down here, they had a shuttle that was flying between here and Langley every weekend. Every other week, I would fly up there, and on the alternate weekends my wife would fly down here.\\n\\n When she first came down, we looked all over for a lot to build a home on. We could not find anything that we liked. That night when we were in our motel room, she was so distressed that she did not want to move down here. There was a knock on the door, and it was Max Faget. He was all excited and exclaimed, “I’ve found it; I’ve found it, a place to build our homes!” The next day he took us down to the Kellner Division on Dickinson Bayou, and showed us these two lots that were available for sale. They were beautiful overlooking the bayou with big oak trees with moss hanging on them. He said, “John, I’ll take this lot, and you take that lot.” Then soon after that he told me, “John, I’ve got to go on travel. I want you to buy that lot for me while I’m gone.” We knew what the asking prices for the lots were. I told him that I would try to negotiate the price for him. He said, “No, you buy it for that price.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He wanted that property." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, he wanted that property. No fooling around. While he was gone, I bought the lot for him. That is, I set it up so it would be his at that particular price. It turned out that the man that owned the lot was somewhere on a boat in the South Pacific so I had to negotiate the sale and get the proper papers signed by wire. When he got back he had a lot. That’s how we were working together.\\n\\n I bought my lot, and then De De and I sat down and designed a U-shaped house that we wanted built on that lot, on the water. When we got through designing it the way we wanted it, we showed it to a good friend of ours, Rene A. Berglund, who was a good architect himself. Instead of a U-shaped house, he designed wings on each end of it, to make it H-shaped. He designed an oriental roof which we dearly loved, and some other things that helped to improve our design. I turned the plans over to Frank Marsters, a contractor that was building a lot of homes in Taylor Lake Village including several which the astronauts were moving into.\\n\\n I had some trouble with his architect from Houston. We had designed the home where both the dining room on the right wing and the master bedroom on the left wing of the house would be overlooking the bayou. The architect had put them overlooking the road because he thought that was the right way to do it. I told him he had not even seen my lot so I had Marsters fire him. He got another architect, and he told him, “Design the home the way John wants it.”\\n\\n We ended up with a very beautiful home on the water. That summer my wife was able to sell our home and boat. When she moved down here, we moved straight into our new home. Just about everybody else who came down had to find a home already built or lease something, and then make the second move. I was traveling all over the country and working 10, 12 hours a day, and we still got all that done. It still blows my mind how we were able to do all of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s impressive. You seemed to be very close friends with Max. What impact do you think that he had on your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, he was the nicest man. He had a great compassion for the people who worked for him. He lifted me to levels that I never thought I could ever achieve. I’d go into his office, and I would sit down, talk to him about some problem, and how I should handle it. I would go back to my office and think, “Well I did pretty good today,” and then I’d think about what had happened. He had very calmly guided me around so that the right decision was obvious; I thought that I had solved the problem, but it was with his help. He was that good. I do not think that I had ever gone in to see Max Faget on something that he had not already thought about. He was amazing.\\n\\n I know you must have talked to people on how he ran the Skunk Works on the Shuttle. He’d go in at nights after they had left. He would make changes or leave notes on their drawings to do it this way or that way. He was an amazing man. I thought that there was no way that I could pick up and run with projects that I didn’t know anything about and get the job done, but he and Dr. Gilruth helped and showed me how to do it.\\n\\n What they were looking for were managers. Even if you didn’t have all of the technical capability, but knew how to manage things and go to the right people to help get the job done, that was what they were looking for. One of the things I learned in college was that you could go to the library and get an awful lot of answers. I knew that I could not keep it all in my head. I would go to talk to people like Max Faget, Guy Thibodaux, and people like that and they were always willing to help. That was a big help because I found out that people were willing to help people who were willing to help themselves. They did not have time for negative people. They didn’t want people that are waiting for somebody to tell them what to do. They didn’t have time for all that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s good advice. I’m wondering if you could tell us about how the Apollo Program changed when the fire broke out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that was certainly a great tragedy. I did not talk about that just like I did not talk about my WWII experiences. My wife and I, along with Sonny and Gloria Hall, had gone to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras. When we got to our rooms that night, we heard on the radio that the fire had happened on the launch pad at the Cape killing the three astronauts. I told Sonny Hall, his wife Gloria, and my wife, “I’ve got to go back.” So the next day I got on the plane and flew back to Houston.\\n\\n Max Faget took Phil [Phillip M.] Deans—who was working with me on the subsystems—to the Cape, and they investigated the fire. I was back here representing E&D. Aaron Cohen from the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office was the head of the board that had to pull together all of the action items that came into the Center from the Cape and to get them to the right people in the Center or out to the contractors. I represented E&D on that board. I think it was “Rod” [Rodney G.] Rose from operations who took care of the flight operations part of it. At that time they sent astronaut Frank Borman out to the CSM [Command and Service Module] contractor, North American, in Los Angeles, California. We were getting reports in from the Cape of the things that had to be done.\\n\\n I would take the action items to the E&D Divisions. Aaron Cohen would send other action items out to Frank Borman. That was how the system worked. Of course I knew E&D inside and out because I had been working with the division and the subsystem managers for a long time for Max. One day Aaron Cohen looked at me and he said, “John, I give you a job, and you get it done.” I was getting him the answers, but it was the divisions that were getting things done.\\n\\n We had one man in the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office that gave me a lot of trouble. We would sit down in meetings with Aaron Cohen and we would agree upon what needed to be done and how we would do it. This person would be with his boss, Bill Bland, in these meetings. One day, I got a phone call from one of the subsystem managers asking me, “John, you said you wanted us to do this. Is that still what you want us to do?” I said. “Yes.” Then I got a second call from Ralph Sawyer, the Division Chief of the Electronics Systems Division. He asked me the same thing. I asked him, “What in the hell is going on?” He replied, “Well so-and-so from the program office has been over here telling us to change things that you have told us to do.”\\n\\n I went in to see Tom [J. Thomas] Markley, who was the chief of ASPO’s Program Control under Joe Shea. Joe Shea of course was at the Cape. Markley was running things from the Program Office. I told him what was happening. We called that person in, and Tom Markley told him, “You stay out of E&D and I don’t want you to leave your office unless you let me know, even when you go to the restroom.” So we stopped that. That was the kind of stuff some people would try to do.\\n\\n I always had trouble with this particular person. I’d send a memorandum out that had been marked “Immediate Action Required.” Bill Bland would give it to him to review. When I did not get a reply, I’d try to find out where the memo was. His office would say, “Oh he’s got it, and he’s up at Grumman in Bethpage, Long Island.” This guy was absolutely useless. Finally we just got him out of the loop altogether. When you have a bad egg, you have to do something about it. We could not have a person in the loop that would not follow instructions and would hold up our work that needed action. After the team came back from the Cape, Max had a staff meeting. For some reason I had missed it. Jack [C.] Heberlig came into my office later and told me that Ralph Sawyer had said that he did not know what he would have done if it had not been for John Lee’s help. That compliment made my day.\\n\\n Now there were some specific things that we didn’t handle. Max assigned Aleck Bond as the head of the Structures and Mechanics Division at that time to test flame-retardant materials in an airplane that was for the spacecraft. These tests not only helped the space program, but it also helped the aircraft industry. That was a very tragic accident. We had to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.\\n\\n Before the fire I had been informing Max about some of the things that I thought were not being done on the spacecraft that I was worried about. I thought that costs and schedules were taking priority over doing what was good, sound engineering. I think that this proved it. I know I was not the only one that was worried about it. I think that certainly helped prove that when costs and schedules take over, you are asking for trouble. When I was in charge of the subsystem managers, and I would take them before the review boards, they would have to prove whether or not their subsystems were ready to go.\\n\\n Later on, I am certain that costs and schedules were part of the problem when the Shuttle was lost because of the O ring failing on the solid fuel rocket motors on the Shuttle. I won’t get into that very much because I didn’t have anything to do with the Shuttle, but I watched it pretty closely. I knew that the subsystem managers were not given money to run tests that they thought they needed because money was not available. I found out that when the subsystem mangers went before the Shuttle review boards, they would have to prove that their subsystems were not ready to go. When they could not say if their subsystem was ready to go because of the lack of test data, the decision would be made to go ahead with that subsystem.\\n\\n You can see the difference in the philosophy that was used on the Apollo versus the Shuttle Program. You can’t let costs and schedules take over. When the Apollo fire happened, we conducted a major review of Apollo spacecraft. We ended up doing a lot of things differently. Of course they got rid of the pure oxygen system on the spacecraft which was one of the big problems. We really had to do a major redesign. We really had to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were able to pull everything back together, create the new Block II spacecraft, and then you actually won a number of awards. Can you tell us about some of those awards and the first Apollo flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well it would probably be best to go upstairs, if you want to. I’ve got them hanging on the wall up there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[We are now looking at the photographs and citations that I have received on the Space Program hanging on the wall in my office.]\\n\\n Max gave me this photograph, the first picture that was taken by Neil [A.] Armstrong of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. Neil’s reflection can be seen in Buzz Aldrin’s visor. The inscription that Max wrote and signed reads, “In recognition for the many contributions to the Apollo Program, particularly as a member of the small team that carried out the initial feasibility studies of manned spaceflight to the Moon.” I’m very proud of this one.\\n\\n This [below] is a Group Achievement Award that was from the NASA Administrator Thomas [O.] Paine for my contributions to the Apollo Program for the successful landing of the Apollo 11 on the Moon.\\n\\n This one [below] is a Certificate of Commendation from Dr. Gilruth for my contributions to the first successful landing on the Moon:\\n\\n Here is a photo signed by the leaders of the Apollo Program that was given to me for my “outstanding contributions to the success of Apollo 11.” It was signed by (left to right) George E. Mueller, Sam C. Phillips, Kurt H. Debus, Robert R. Gilruth, and Wernher von Braun.\\n\\n Now here [below] we have the Presidential Medal of Freedom, from President Richard M. Nixon for the Apollo 13 Mission Operations team:\\n\\n For this mission I also received a Certificate of Commendation from Dr. Gilruth. This to me is more valuable than the one from the president. This is specifically to me because of my responsibilities in the Mission Evaluation Room on Apollo 13. Phil Deans and Bob [Robert P.] Burt also received this same Commendation.\\n\\n The team was headed up by the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. We had about 100 engineers working around the clock. I was the lead engineer for E&D. I had two people, Phil Deans and Bob Burt, who helped to cover the three eight-hour shifts. We were responsible for the E&D 36 subsystem managers and their support team, which included the contractors.\\n\\n The ones from Dr. Gilruth are more valuable to me than some of these others because they were recognition from the men that I dearly loved. I am certain that Max wrote them up. They knew what we were doing.\\n\\n Now what I’d like to say about this flight [Apollo 13] was that within eight hours of the explosion, E&D told Mission Operations what had happened, what they had to do to stabilize the spacecraft, and how they could fly the mission using the Lunar Module as a lifeboat to bring the astronauts home safely. One of our E&D subsystem managers had presented such a proposal to Operations before we had flown Apollo 13. I cannot remember his name. Operations told him that they could not think of a scenario where they would have to use it, and they turned him down. When the accident happened they pulled out this proposal, and that’s what we did to help save the astronauts. I won’t go into that any more, but E&D never got credit for that.\\n\\n Some of these others are Group Achievement Awards that are for projects that I was a part of. One is to the Manned Spacecraft Center for first landing men on the Moon; another one is for E&D Directorate for man’s first lunar landing, and this one [next page] for the Apollo Launch Escape Vehicle Flight Development Test Program Team on the Little Joe:\\n\\n I also received a Group Achievement Award for the Mercury spacecraft. This is an interesting story. They put Ham [the first chimpanzee in space] in the spacecraft to be launched for his second flight. When they ignited the booster, the spacecraft got a signal that there was a malfunction in the booster. The escape system fired and pulled the spacecraft away from the booster. When that happened, it accelerated to higher than the 14 Gs that Ham had tested in the centrifuge or had flown in the spacecraft. That was an unscheduled test of the whole launch escape system, parachute systems, and the pyrotechnics to cut the bolts in the Mormon clamps around the spacecraft, but everything worked. We had not scheduled such a test for that in the program. Everything worked fine.\\n\\n The astronauts were upset. They said that NASA thought that a chimpanzee was smarter than they were because they got to fly first. Alan Shepard said, “The only reason that I got to fly was because Ham refused to get back in the spacecraft,” which was partly true. Ham would not get back into the spacecraft because he had never flown at those high Gs before so then Alan Shepard got to fly. Isn’t that a funny story?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s interesting. I’d never heard that one before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "George Low came up with a very bold idea for Frank Borman’s Apollo flight. Could we take one of the Apollo spacecraft that was supposed to fly another Earth orbit mission and upgrade it so that we could send a man to orbit the Moon? We were in a race to beat the Russians going to the Moon so they set up a committee to see what we had to do to upgrade it, if any, in order to go to the Moon. I represented E&D on that committee. With the E&D subsystem managers, we went through everything on the spacecraft with a fine-tooth comb to see what had to be done to get the spacecraft ready to go to the Moon. The divisions with their subsystem managers found out what had to be done. I’m very proud of that. Of course I’m sure it went through some other people’s hands too, when we got through with it, before the decision was ever made. But I feel that we made a major contribution to it.\\n\\n Last fall in September of 2007, I was inducted into the Virginia Tech Cadet Corps Wall of Fame [WOF] for both aviation and aerospace [next page].\\n\\n I was the first one who received it for aerospace so now I am the first person who has received it for both aviation and aerospace. I was the tenth recipient of the award at VT. I was inducted at the same time with Major General Hank Smyth. I am very proud of that award." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now in your presentation you mentioned that you received a [Silver] Snoopy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I’m not sure if I told you in my review or not, but when I was developing the parachute system for the Mercury Project, we went out and tested the drogue parachute at supersonic speeds at Edwards Air Force Base at Muroc, California. The pilot who flew the airplane for us at Mach number 1.4 was Neil Armstrong. This was before he became an astronaut. When we got ready to fly the Apollo 11 spacecraft to land a man on the Moon with Neil Armstrong, I got the Snoopy award from him.\\n\\n It was one of the first ones that the astronauts had given out. I was also awarded the Space Flight Awareness Award, along with Aleck Bond, from Dr. Faget. For that award we were sent to the Cape to observe the launch. At that launch, I saw grown men crying when that baby took off.\\n\\n I had grown up with the space program when we were flying rocket models at subsonic, transonic, and supersonic Mach numbers, from Mach 1 and 2 and later up to Mach number 15. We had flown the Little Joe out at White Sands Missile Range at White Sands, New Mexico for a canard and parachute test. They worked for Al Kehlet, who had wanted me to work under him because he was the chief of the Aerodynamics Section. He was trying to develop a canard system that was on the front of the launch escape system rocket motor. With the spacecraft tumbling, he would try to open these canards which would stabilize the spacecraft with the blunt shape pointing forward, and the escape rocket would then be able to pull the parachute system out downstream.\\n\\n I went out to observe that test. I told them that it wasn’t going to work. I said, “You are not going to be able to time a tumbling system so that you can be certain that you will be able to deploy the parachutes downstream.” Sure enough, with a tumbling spacecraft, the parachutes came out upstream and wrapped around the capsule. That got rid of the canard system. I was right on that one. That was an interesting one.\\n\\n Then when Max started the Shuttle Program, he called me into his office and said, “John, I’m developing a Space Shuttle. We’re going to need the Shuttle to service a Space Station. We need the Space Station to justify the Shuttle. I want you to help develop a Space Station.” By this time I’d gotten smart, and I didn’t ask him how I was going to do it. I knew that I had to figure it out myself. Rene Berglund was the project manager of the study. I was the lead engineer from E&D. North American was our study contractor. We developed a system where we’d put a spacecraft on top of the Saturn booster.\\n\\n The booster was 30 feet in diameter, so we made the Space Station 30 feet in diameter and 40 feet tall, with floors: one would be the control center, one the astronauts’ quarters, one the propulsion systems. It also included the solar arrays for its power supply. It was to be a 12-man Space Station that would stay up for about 10 years. We took that and showed it to NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. They said, “No we cannot do that. President Nixon has just cancelled the Saturn Booster.” I think that it was a big dumb political mistake. We could have put it up with one booster, and it would have been far superior to the Russian Space Station at that time. We got rid of our big boosters, and we have been suffering from that for all of these years.\\n\\n Then I went to Max and asked, “Max, what do we do now?” He said, “Well, you can put it up with a Shuttle.” I asked, “How do we do that?” You see I was not very smart very long. He said, “The Shuttle is 15 feet in diameter and 30 feet long. Design modules that are 15 feet in diameter and 30 feet long and you take them up in the Shuttle, and you put them together like a ‘Tinker Toy Set.’”\\n\\n This [above] is a model of what we developed at that time, and that was in the early 1970s. We had to put it on the shelf because we didn’t have money to do the Shuttle and the Space Station at the same time. It turned out that 20 years later they started building a Space Station. Now it has been developed into the International Space Station that is being put up by the Shuttle. I also went through an iteration of an operational Space Station with Bob Piland.\\n\\n Now of course they have the one which is the International Space Station. What they’re building today is the concept that we put on the shelves back in the early 1970s because we didn’t have the money to do both at the same time. When they say that NASA was not forward-thinkers, that they did not think ahead and all that, it wasn’t true. It was because Congress cut the funds on the space program. After we put a man on the Moon, the press went around asking people, “Do you think we ought to be spending all that money on the Moon?” People would say, “No, we should be spending it for the people right down here on Earth.” Another Alan Shepard famous remark was, “We didn’t spend a penny of it on the Moon. It was all spent right here on this Earth.” You can see how these things go.\\n\\n When I retired, Chris Kraft presented me with this framed U.S. flag that has been to the Moon: [below]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I see your bowling and golf trophies. Were you active in any organizations on the site?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that was with the NASA bowling team, and we won first place several times. We won it two years in a row, and then the next year, when we came in second place, the team was dissolved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a shame." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When we were not good enough to win first place, we quit. It was almost like that but not quite. I played a lot of golf, and I got that one somewhere in some tournament. I forget where it was now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think this might be a good place for us to stop and then regroup for tomorrow?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John B. Lee", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, I think I probably got way ahead of myself in some of this, because there are some things that we probably need to go back to on the spacecraft." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, absolutely." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00196", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GeyerM/geyerms.htm", + "original_file_name": "GeyerM_1-26-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/GeyerM/GeyerM_1-26-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Mark Geyer", + "location_date": "26 January 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rich Dinkel" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Mark Geyer" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Rich Dinkel on Monday, the 26th of January, 1998, at 2:33 in the morning at 34,000 feet, somewhere between Gander, Newfoundland, and Washington, DC, with Mark Geyer on our way back to the United States from seeing the rollout of the FGB, the first element of the Russian segment to be launched for the International Space Station.\\n\\n Mark, I appreciate you doing this interview. Can you tell us how you initially got involved in the Space Station Program and in the Russian element, specifically?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I took a job with the ACRV Program Office back in, I guess, it was '92." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "ACRV?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Assured Crew Return Vehicle. At the time they were looking at both putting an ACRV on the Space Station Freedom. They were looking at a couple different options. One was a U.S.-made, another was a European-made, and another was a Soyuz capsule. So what I did was first I worked with the Europeans and then eventually I went over to start working with the Russians. That program ended in December of '93 as the [Space Station] Freedom Program ended, basically. With the Russian experience, I interviewed with Keith who was starting to build his office on the Russian segment, Keith Riley [phonetic]. So he invited me to come on over and try it out. So I started out as basically just one of the integration team in the Russian segment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's your job today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, right now I have what used to be Keith's job. I'm the head all the Russian elements, and basically in charge of making sure that the Russian segment is integrated with the U.S. segment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's great. Can you describe at a necessarily high level for the sixth grader in Peoria what the purpose and the functional requirements are for the control module and for the FGB?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I guess some people are struggling with the name, but I've always called it FGB. It's kind of a strange translation of Functional Cargo Block, and the letters in Russian are FGB, so we call it FGB. It's kind of stuck. It doesn't make a lot of sense, but that's where it's name comes from and that's what everybody calls it.\\n\\n FGB's real function, I think—there's two main functions. The first function is really it's our foothold in orbit. It's where we start. It's what we build off of. It has to maintain orbit and hold attitude close enough so that the shuttle can dock to it, allow us to put the node on there and then it goes and docks with the service module. After that, the service module basically becomes the guidance navigation and control system for the station. Again, its first function is really just give us a foothold in space to build off of.\\n\\n After the service module comes up, its main function is really as a gas tank. It has the main tanks, holds upward of six tons of prop that can be refueled and reused. Really those are its two main functions. It has some pressurized volume that we use. We can store several items. We have volume in the FGB that we can store important stuff in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The recent control module name, I take it is from the recent NASA desire to make all our modules and space things that the American public can relate to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess. It's a good question, because I have heard almost nothing about this name change, so I'm not sure what the status of that is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, you only run the Russian elements. Why should anybody tell you? [Laughter]\\n\\n Could you take a minute or so and give us—actually it will longer than a minute or so, to give us a functional description of the FGB, or the control module? I can't bring myself to say it yet. With whatever technical insight and some lessons learned. You might want to talk about some the eleventh-hour mods while you're at it as you go through it also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as I said, its main function is to give us a start, give us a foothold in space. It's launched on a proton launch vehicle from Baikonur in Russia, or actually in Kazakhstan. Gets to 51.6 degrees inclination. It has a guidance navigation system that allows it to hold attitude. Its propulsion system is nitrogen tetroxide and udium-H [phonetic]. It has on both ends docking systems that, of course, that allow for us to attach other elements to it. On the forward part it has an APAS [phonetic], which is androgenous docking system. APAS, again, is an acronym that the Russians use. We put the same kind of reverse mechanism then on the PMA and that allows us then to dock the PMA to the FGB at the forward end." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "PMA being?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pressurized Mating Adapter. And that's really where the U.S. segment starts, is right there at that interface. At that same node, let's say that same area where that APAS mechanism is— [Radio interruption]\\n\\n At the nader part of that forward compartment, there's another docking mechanism that is used for Progress and Soyuz docking to the FGB. Eventually there will be what we call a docking stowage module, which is basically an extension, so that when the station begins to build up, there'll be so many obstructions that we need to be able to extend that docking mechanism out further." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me interrupt just one second here and say that we're looking at a diagram now that will be appended to the transcript of this interview so the readers can see what we're talking about right now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the aft end of the FGB then there is another docking mechanism they call a hyber docking mechanism, which is a mix between this probe and cone, which is used for the smaller vehicles like Soyuz and Progress, and a larger mechanism like the APAS. So it's kind of a combination of that. That's where the service module will dock to the FGB. Again, that's part of its main function, which is to allow other modules to be attached to it. The tanks are external to the vehicle. Again, as I said before, that becomes its main function after the service module docks. That's basically it, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Does it have an ecosystem?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it really doesn't have an ecosystem. It has a scrubber on it to clean the atmosphere. When the service module comes up, that scrubber will be turned on. But it doesn't have an ecosystem by itself. You couldn't live on the station with just an FGB. You need the service module there to actually clean the air and produce the oxygen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The FGB is currently being provided by Krunichev [phonetic], a Russian manufacturer. I'd like you to talk about that just a little bit. They're under contract to the International Space Station prime contractor, Boeing, to deliver this. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Then I'm going to come back and ask some contractual questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Krunichev, of course, has been a major aerospace manufacturer for years. In fact, they built bombers in World War II. The rocket factory they now have is actually built on what used to be the runway for their airplane manufacturing system. So they've been a major part of the Russian Space Program. They've built vehicles much like the FGB before. In fact, if you look at the Mir modules, other than the base block, they look a lot like the FGB. The aft part does.\\n\\n Energia, which, of course, is the integrator for the whole space station, provides a lot of the parts of the FGB, including pumps, valves. All the software integration is done by Energia. So they play a big part in that in that vehicle, as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's NPO Energia, another Russian aerospace contractor. Mark, had the contract between Boeing and Krunichev been let when you arrived?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I first came on right at the beginning of '94, and so it had not been. We were still struggling with who was going to pay for the FGB and how that was all going to be worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[unclear]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's exactly where I was going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What then was the origin and idea for the Russians to build for us and us to pay the bill?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, to get the full story, I think Doug's the right guy to talk to, but I'll give you what I know. In the end, my understanding is the Russians came back, after our initial discussions, and believed that the FGB was really not required, that we could have started building off the service module, which is kind of what had happened on Mir. I think Doug can explain more why we decided to do that, although in the end I think it was a good decision. RSA [Russian Space Agency] then basically said, \"Well, if you really want to do this thing, then you can pay for it.\"\\n\\n In the end, we agreed that the United States paid for development, design, development, and manufacturing of the FGB. Well, RSA then pays for operations, sustaining, and for launch." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "By Doug that you refer to, you mean Doug Drewry [phonetic], of course. Let me change gears here just a little bit. Now, I'm not specifically talking about the FGB after right now, because we sent money through our prime direct to the manufacturer, a direct line. We basically had no monetary or programmatic problems, which we'll come back in a minute. But could you discuss and sketch the general funding problems which are related to the Russian flight hardware products these days?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You mean, basically the service module and other—okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Trace the [unclear]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All right. Well, when we first started integrating this, we were working pretty hard on specifications and ICDs and overall bilateral agreements that you need at the very beginning of a program. Energia did the majority of that work, and Krunichev. So even though they weren't getting much money at the beginning, it was difficult to tell, it was difficult for us to see the impacts, because we really didn't expect to see much hardware in those early phases.\\n\\n About, I'd say early in '95, we began to get hints from Energia that they were not going to get the money that they expected for service module and that it was going to start to be a problem. It turned out that, that was in '95, and it was almost a year and a half later before we actually got any resolution to that. It just continued to get worse. I think the problem was that they were still funding the Mir heavily and the government had so many people that were looking for money, [unclear] and so forth, that they just didn't have the money to give to the station. It took a lot of political clout. Basically, we were about to run into a brick wall, where it was pretty clear the service module, one, was not going to make its original launch date of 4/98, but may never actually be launched at all unless this funding issue was solved.\\n\\n As you know, I guess in April of '97, they got a substantial amount of money from their government. They got more in May. Things started moving very quickly. They did not get all that they expected, that they thought they needed by the end of this year, end of '97. We got back from GDR [General Design Review] last—I guess it was Monday, almost a week ago, where a lot of the subcontractors were continuing to complain that they had built the hardware and not been paid. I think really we're going to see this all the way through the program. They're going to get allocations of money early in the year. They're never going to get quite what they think they need to get. Some of it they can maybe do without. Some of it's going to hurt. I think this is going to be an ongoing struggle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I agree, Mark. Mark was referring to the General Design Review that we attended on the 19th of January at Energia. When all the subcontractors who were not delivering on time were asked to stand in front of us and their Energia counterparts and explain why, it was a very distressful situation to me and did not give me confidence that the subcontractors were going to provide. I'd like to hear your personal opinion on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, part of what we saw was truly there is a funding shortfall. Part of it, I think, was a little bit of grandstanding for us, as well, to get the United States to help scream a little bit about this money, because normally they don't show us things that they don't really want us to see. But the good news is that a lot of these guys have already built the hardware and they're just waiting to be paid to ship it. Also, there don't appear to be a lot of technical problems. So it's just a matter of if the money flows that they'll be able to provide the boxes on time. So that's the good news.\\n\\n As I said before, the bad news is, I think this funding, this squeezing of the funding is going to be something we're going to see all the time, and I think even when we get over the service module hurdle, we're going to have the problem with the Progresses and Soyuzes because they take money, obviously. They're building a lot per year. We already heard at the General Design Review on the 19th that some of the components for the early Soyuzes and Progresses were also having some funding problems." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's focus back now on the control module, the FGB again, regarding the contract with Krunichev. Compared to the other Russian elements and the way they were supposed to have been funded, the FGB has worked quite well. We haven't had to worry hardly at all, and it was delivered on time, on cost. What is your personal comment on this and perhaps you can shed some light on why it worked so well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think the strength of the Russian segment of the industry is their continuity of experience. These are the same guys that have been building stuff for thirty years, not just the designers, but the guys on the floor, which is something that we don't really have. Some of the designers that we have here are the designers we had for shuttle. Not many. Almost none of the guys on the floor are the same guys who built shuttle or who built Skylab or built Apollo. So we're making mistakes like drilling holes in the wrong place, you know, on the node and so forth. The Russians don't really have that problem.\\n\\n Some of the hardware for ISS has been upgraded because of the Mir experience. Some of it has to be changed because ISS has different requirements than the Mir did. But a lot of it is very, very similar, so they know what they're doing. They've done it before. They work very hard. It seems to me, the only real issue with the Russian segment is the funding problem. So if they get money like they did on FGB, they know how to perform." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Show me the money." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm going to ask you this question, but I don't want you to use up all my tape when you answer it. But give me a good answer and your personal opinion and tell us what you can about the development and the evolution of our personal relationships, as well as our professional relationships, with the Russians, both at Russian Space Agency, Krunichev, etc., since you've been with the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think the biggest change has been that the Russians are always very suspicious about our asking questions, our need to know and understand details of the Russian segment. They basically are of the opinion, when we started in '94, that they know how to run a space station, they've flown them before, they don't need us intruding on their work. It took a long time, and, in fact, we still struggle with this on occasion. It takes a lot of effort to justify NASA's need to know and understand details of the Russian segment in order to make sure that it's an integrated station. That's really our function, is to make sure that from end to end, it works together.\\n\\n I think they've come around. We've actually gotten a significant amount of information on the Russian segment, I think enough to do our job. I think that's the biggest change. It was very, very hard at the beginning, getting that information, getting through that brick wall of \"Why do you need to know?\" I think we've gone beyond that.\\n\\n RSA's role at the beginning was we didn't have a lot of dealings with them, at the beginning, as I said before. Really, it's really picked up in the last couple of years since the funding issue has been a problem. They've been a bigger participant. Energia has brought them in and made them sign the protocols. Especially when we talk about assembly sequence, make them part of the agreement, because funding is such a big part of the agreement now. So they've started and stepped up and played a bigger role.\\n\\n Krunichev, I think, actually, their overall role in Russian aerospace, I think, has made a quantum leap. Before, I think, as [unclear] after the GDR they used to be considered the younger brother. But now with this FGB success, I think they're being seen as on par with Energia. So they've really moved up in the world. I think we've learned how to work with them, as well. It has caused some stress between those two companies, but that's another thing that's changed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a good answer. On that same subject, considering all the things we've discussed thus far, what were your personal feelings, or what are your personal feelings right now after having just witnessed the FGB rollout on the 17th of January [1998]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I'm very excited, because we're done playing with paper and things are actually going to launch pad. All the work that we've done, we're making real decisions, we're taking risks. We're actually going to learn a lot by having to fly real hardware. We're close. Even with the service module problems, you know, it's not a \"They're never going to come.\" It's just a matter of which month. The node's down at Kennedy and it's just getting to be a very exciting time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I agree, I feel the same way. When you think that the FGB and its rocket are going to be put on a rail car here very shortly and shipped to Baikonur for preparation to shoot, it's just around the corner. Let's hope it keeps going good.\\n\\n I also noticed something when we visited the plant at Krunichev. I came to the realization that NASA builds space hardware in plane rooms, and Russia builds space hardware in factories. I'll let you comment on that and see if you make the same comment I would have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think that clearly based on their success you can do it either way. I was startled once when we were at the Krunichev factory near the complex stand and I actually saw birds flying around in the factory. That's something you would never see at Kennedy. Yet, again, they have a high success rate. Their equipment is just made such that they don't have to worry about those details." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I need to ask you just more personal-opinion question, if you don't mind. What effects will a further slide in a service module completion schedule potentially have on a launch date of the FGB?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as you know, the FGB goes up first, then the node comes up, and then service module comes up. Right now there's about a six-month gap between FGB and service module and that gives us some time to ring out the operations and so forth before the crew comes up. The crew comes up very nearly after the service module comes up.\\n\\n The problem is, again, that the service module is the key guidance and navigation system for station. The FGB is really just again giving us a foothold. It's up there temporarily. The FGB avionics only lasts, are only certified for four hundred days. So you're taking a risk. The longer you expose that system by itself, without having the service module up there to take over, you're risking the overall station. So you don't want that stuff to be up there any longer than it needs to be before the service module comes up.\\n\\n So we need to look hard at when we think the service module will actually launch. That's what we're going to be doing in April and early May, to try to make a decision as to whether we think it's close enough that we're going to go ahead and launch the FGB." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm beginning to feel like Yosarian [phonetic] here a little bit, too. It's another Catch-22, because if our Russian friends and partners are late on their element, the service module, the element that we paid for is going to have to be stored or handled in some way at our expense in Russia somewhere. So to lower our own risk, we're going to have pay the fiddler yet again. An interesting concept. I don't know how we managed to get ourselves into these." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Of course, you've got all the shuttle launches that are slipping, too, which is a cost for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely. Mark, this has been a great discussion. But before I give you the opportunity to get the last word or words, to discuss whatever questions I should have asked, but didn't, or just wrap up whatever you want to say, I need to ask you who else ought to be interviewed regarding the FGB, the control module, or any of the Russian-related topics that you think we need to go to talk to next." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I certainly would talk to Doug Drury, who is the FGB program launch package manager. He's been there since the very beginning. In fact, went with the first team to Moscow in August of '93. Certainly, with Keith Riley, who had my job at the very beginning and is now mission integration manager, so he's got a lot of background, too. I think those are two key people that you ought to talk to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rich Dinkel", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thanks. That's all the questions I had written down. Do you have anything special you want to say, or say \"hi\" to your mom or anything?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Geyer", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe there's one thing. What's really been an honor for me to work on this segment is the fact that on the NASA side, a lot of our, let's say, graybeards have either retired or some have passed away, including the astronauts. The astronauts who were there back in Apollo, I think John Young's the only one who's still around.\\n\\n On the Russian side, it's very different. The guys that I worked with that are my counterparts in negotiations and so forth have been part of the Russian Space Program since the early to mid-fifties. I've worked with guys who are on console during [Yuri] Gagarin's flight. I've worked with guys who have gotten the Order of Lenin for designing the Soyuz, and the guy who designed the guidance navigation for the Laika [first dog in space] flight. It kind of takes you back every once in a while about the history that these guys have and their dedication to space. It's more of the more fascinating things about this job.\n\nThat's great, Mark. That was a great interview. I appreciate your time, your effort, and your candid responses. Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00646", + "metadata": { + "category": "Orion Program Oral History Project 2016", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Orion/DumbacherD/dumbacherd.htm", + "original_file_name": "DumbacherD_6-21-16.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Orion/DumbacherD/DumbacherD_6-21-16.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Orion Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "location_date": "Indianapolis, Indiana – 21 June 2016" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Daniel Dumbacher" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 21st, 2016. This interview with Dan Dumbacher is being conducted for the NASA Johnson Space Center Orion Oral History Project. Mr. Dumbacher is speaking with us today by telephone from Indianapolis, Indiana. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you again for taking your time today to talk to us. We really appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I want to start today by asking you to briefly talk about your background and how you first started working with the Orion Program. As we were talking about a moment ago, I know you worked at [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] most of your career with NASA. You were working with Constellation [Program]. You were the Director of Engineering for the Ares Program. If you can talk about that, and how that transitioned to your next position, and that whole transition between Constellation and Orion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It goes back to basically the Return to Flight era for [Space Shuttle] Columbia [accident, STS-107] when at the time I was working in the Safety and Mission Assurance Office at Marshall trying to help with all the efforts we were going through to get back into flight after Columbia. Then in parallel with that, the Agency under [Administrator] Mike [Michael D.] Griffin at the time was doing a study to determine what we ought to be doing in exploration.\\n\\n As we were getting close to Return to Flight, basically I got asked if I would go over and work on Ares as the Deputy Program Manager working with Steve Cook. That’s when I first got involved with Ares and Orion, with Jeff [Jeffrey M.] Hanley and Mark [S.] Geyer and those guys. As I’m sitting here thinking, I just realized I skipped a step.\\n\\n Back in the 2004 timeframe actually, under Sean O’Keefe when he was the Administrator, I was working X-37 [Orbital Test Vehicle] at the time. Admiral [Craig E.] Steidle was brought in to head up [Office of] Exploration [Systems], and the Agency was going through a lot of analysis to determine what the next steps ought to be. At some point, they stood up an early version of the Constellation Program. I was asked to help out with that at the Chief Systems Engineer level in addition to my X-37 duties, and that’s when I first got exposed to Orion, back when they were trying to figure out what the spacecraft ought to look like. They were going through the phase of what should the requirements be.\\n\\n At some point in all of that I got asked to go over to help Safety and Mission Assurance and work on Columbia Return to Flight, so I got out of that business and moved over to Return to Flight, until I got back to the Ares Program like I mentioned. Then from the Ares Program, I did that for two or three years, I can’t even remember, and then Dave [David A.] King was the Center Director at Marshall at the time, asked me to come over and be the Director of Engineering at Marshall. That was the job I held until the fall of 2010, when Doug [Douglas R.] Cooke and Bill [William H.] Gerstenmaier asked me to come to [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] to basically—I can’t even remember what the title was at the time—but basically to come up and be the Program Director for SLS [Space Launch System], Orion, and Ground Systems [Development and Operations].\\n\\n Really what that job was all about at the time was trying to get the strategy put together within the Agency following the budget that canceled Constellation. I came up to Headquarters. There was a little bit of an organizational change. They combined Doug and Gerst’s organization into one. That’s when they slapped the title on things of Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems, but the job content was all still the same. It was Program Director for SLS, Orion, and Ground Systems.\\n\\n That’s when I got engaged, but I had seen Orion from the mid 2000s up until 2007 when I got asked to go to Engineering Director, and then Marshall had a little bit to do with Orion, particularly on the launch abort system, working through [NASA] Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia], so I stayed in touch with Orion, and then back to it at the Headquarters level. So, I saw it at about three or four different levels and different time phases, which is interesting.\\n\\n That’s probably the short version of the background as best as I can do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since you did see it at three different levels and different places and from different perspectives, can you talk a minute about the cancelation of the Constellation Program and the budget? February 2010 was when it was announced by the President that he was going to cancel it, and then it wasn’t until April 2011 that it officially ended. There was a time period in there that people were still working on something that they knew there was not going to be any funding for as far as Constellation, and that whole process of moving to Orion from that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was a particularly interesting period of time. I frankly don’t want to have to go through that again. It was rather stressful to say the least. I think we were all surprised when the budget proposal came out that canceled Constellation. When that happened, we started struggling with what to do next, and I give Jeff Hanley and [Lawrence] Dale Thomas and Mark Geyer a tremendous amount of credit in that they were astute enough to figure out what they could best do to keep the hardware moving, what was the best way to keep the hardware available, and how much progress could we make given the overall environment in terms of hardware.\\n\\n They did a tremendous job of doing that. As we worked through the transition from Constellation to what became Exploration Systems, their thought process and the basis that they laid for that turned out to be critical, because once the Agency went back and relooked at the strategy and relooked at the requirements and realized that Orion was still the right thing to go do, then we already had a jump on the hardware, we already had a jump on the design, and we were able to get a test vehicle built in the form of EFT-1 [Exploration Flight Test 1] that provided us a lot of good engineering test data for the overall Orion Program.\\n\\n Those three guys, Jeff, Dale, and Mark, along with their teams, I don’t mean to say they were the only—because obviously it takes a large team to go do this. They really did a masterful job of figuring out and sorting through the strenuous situation and keep the right things going. We got through it. The Agency came out in May of 2011 with we still need Orion and here’s why. We got that approved up through the [presidential] administration and Congress and so that’s when we reinvigorated it and got it going again at the level that it should have been. That led to the progress they’re making today and EFT-1. We went through that valley, and I don’t think many of us want to go through that valley again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I can understand that. While that was happening, budget obviously was a big concern. I know with Orion it’s a different type of budget, it’s not like the older budgets where the money is all given up front and it’s a lot of money and then things level out. This is a pretty level budget from what I understand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was actually one of the overall constraints that was put on the Agency by the administration, namely the Office of Management and Budget, that basically said, “Here’s the level of money that you’re going to get. Oh, by the way, no inflation, don’t assume inflation, it’s going to be flat. Here’s what you’re going to get.” We had to put a lot of work into figuring out what we could do and how we could do it under an annual cost constraint, which is different than any of our prior experience in terms of a development program where you have a funding level that starts out relatively low, it peaks around critical design review when you get the initial hardware built and tested, and then as you get into operations it comes down.\\n\\n This was, “Here’s a flat line, figure it out.” In that flat line we had to get not only Orion, but we had to get SLS and the ground systems at KSC [NASA Kennedy Space Center, Florida] all developed under that flat line, which led us to making some rather difficult decisions. I think Mark and company, the Orion team, did a wonderful job of working through and figuring out how they could phase the work and how could they go about making things more efficient, particularly between the government and contractor, Lockheed [Martin].\\n\\n Then we had to get SLS into that same flat line budget, and we looked at several options, but we ultimately concluded that we may not have gotten the highest-mass-performing capability launch vehicle, but we got one that did what we needed and it did it within the cost constraint.\\n\\n Then the same with the ground systems guys. The folks at KSC, Pepper [Phillip E.] Phillips and his team, were working hard to figure out what needed to be done and how could we do it in a flat funding scheme. As you might imagine, that was a challenge among all of us. But, I think everybody kept their heads about them and worked hard to come to a reasonable conclusion for the overall team, so it turned out.\\n\\n It is different than the way we ever managed a program in development before in our lives, although somewhat similar to the [International] Space Station flat line experience after the mid ’90s. But, they were further along in hardware when they had that limitation put on them.\\n\\n The team has done well, the Orion team in particular. When Mark and company came to NASA Headquarters with the idea and the proposal to do Exploration Flight Test 1, at first we all wanted to do it, we all recognized the need of getting a flight test, but we had some higher level strategy issues we had to get addressed before we could approve EFT-1, and we had to see how the budget worked out. Once we got to a certain point and realized that the strategy is settling down, now that we have a better clearer understanding of the strategy, we have a clearer understanding of the budget, now we think we can get EFT-1 in the budget, and then let Mark and team go off and execute." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know part of what early on in Orion they were doing and also with the SLS, they were going back and looking at other technology that had been used before in Apollo or Shuttle and reusing or revisiting that technology. Was that for budgetary reasons mainly, or was it just because it was more practical to do it that way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of it was driven by the budget and the need to stay under the budget caps. The classic big example is frankly not an Orion example, although there are Orion examples. Big one on SLS is the fact that we stayed with a liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen core stage because we had 16 engines from the Shuttle Program we could use, and we didn’t have to do an engine development program. If we went with the other options that we assessed, we had to develop a new engine, and we just didn’t have the money for that. So 16 engines sitting on the dock ready to go more or less was more cost-effective than developing a new engine.\\n\\n As I recall, and actually the Marks, Geyer and [Mark A.] Kirasich, could answer this question better, I know that they were making some decisions based on some of the subsystems in Orion to keep the cost down. Because of the progress they had made on Orion from the mid 2000s and the beginning of the Lockheed contract, they already had some things in place. Their effort was more around not so much how do we change the design, because the design in some respects was already set and it’s going to cost us more to change it than it would to just keep going. Although in some of the details they found options where they could do things, use some older technology to keep the costs down, they were really focused on how do we phase the work so that we stay within the cost caps. Which led to, pure and simple, the budget drove us into the situation where we could fly crew no earlier than 2021 on EM-2 [Exploration Mission 2]. That was purely budget-driven." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ve read that in several places that the budget drove the schedule." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about when they asked you to come back with the Exploration Systems Development Division [ESD] and that work that you were doing there. If you could just explain what your position was in that. You mentioned that you had three areas, the Orion and the SLS and then the Ground Support. Talk about what you were doing at the beginning when you moved into that position, and explain that position as you saw it at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first thing I was doing was saying, “How the hell did I get here?” There was an interesting thought process going. Even before I came up to Headquarters there was a discussion at least running around at Doug Cooke’s level, the Associate Administrator for ESMD [Exploration Systems Mission Directorate] level, about how do we do things differently.\\n\\n Obviously we knew we were going to get a budget cap. We knew that the budget squeeze was going to be on. We didn’t know how much. We didn’t know what. We didn’t know how long, but we knew the budget squeeze was coming. The question was, “Are there ways that we could do things more efficiently?”\\n\\n I very well remember this conversation with Doug. Doug asked me one day in a hallway conversation when I was still Engineering Director and actually Steve [Stephen J.] Altemus and I were cochairing the Human Exploration Framework Team, HEFT. It later became known as HEFT 1, because there was a second version that got started up. Doug stopped me in the hallway one day and he says, “What do you think we could do more efficiently?”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t know. I got some ideas. Let me go do some homework.”\\n\\n Next time I was in Washington he stopped me again, “Well, you got an answer to my question?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, actually I do. Let’s go take a look at the Apollo Program Management Manual from 1968.” I don’t know what he thought. He probably thought I was nuts. I said, “Doug, if you look at it, what we’re trying to do is not that different than Apollo. It’s a launch vehicle, SLS, like Saturn V; it’s a spacecraft, Apollo like Orion, and we got to have ground systems to prep and launch all this stuff.” I said, “If you look at this Apollo Program Management Manual from the ’68 timeframe, it’s clear. The lines are clear. There’s not a lot of overhead. There is an integration function over this, but it’s different than the way we’ve done Shuttle and Station.” I looked at Doug and I said, “I know this is going to be different than what everybody is used to, but it got us to the Moon.”\\n\\n This is one of those times where opening my big mouth got me in trouble, because it was in that conversation that he looked at me and said, “How about you come to Washington to start taking care of this?”\\n\\n I said, “How about I don’t?” After a couple iterations of that, we all know what happened. That’s really where it started from was a notion. There was another dynamic working in the background, which was from a congressional viewpoint whether you like it or not or agree with it—I’m trying to figure out how to say this nicely, and it doesn’t really come out nice. But, to be blunt about it, there were legislative forces from specific congressional delegations that did not want to see their respective NASA Center reporting to another NASA Center on a program. They didn’t mind reporting to Headquarters, but we were actually getting legislative pressure that did not want to have another Shuttle management or Station management setup.\\n\\n That is so foreign to the thought process at JSC [Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas] that they struggled as much as anybody with it, if not more so. Frankly, Kennedy and Marshall struggled with it also, because everybody figures you go to Headquarters, as soon as you get to Headquarters you got a lobotomy because there’s no technical expertise whatsoever up there.\\n\\n Fundamentally what we were trying to do was look at how could we get the same job done more efficiently. It wasn’t a whole lot of science to it. It was basically going back and taking a look and saying, “If this worked for Apollo why can’t this work now?”\\n\\n A couple of us went off and had some conversations with George [E.] Mueller, who was the AA [Associate Administrator] during the Apollo days, and then I talked to a couple of my other colleagues. I’m drawing a blank on names right now, but they had all worked Level 2 integration for Space Station and other things. As you might imagine, George Mueller was one of the ones who actually put me on the idea with, “What you’re describing and what you need to do is not that different than what we did in Apollo. Why don’t you go back and look at how we did it?” We spent some time, George and I. In fact a couple of us flew out and spent a day with George Mueller, just getting his input on things. Then we went and did a little bit of other homework and came back and said, “If this worked before, why don’t we try it again?”\\n\\n One of the things it did do was it allowed in theory—and I think it did work this way out in practice—that it didn’t put a program office located at a Center in a bad place about having to make a tough decision concerning that Center. We ended up down this road in this model. It’s still the model that they’re using today as near as I can tell. But it was driven by two forces. What can we do to be more efficient? Two, we’re getting help from a legislative perspective on how they want to see the management between Centers lined up, so how can we address that? That’s where the Apollo model came in and served needs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "These congressional forces that you were hearing from, were they satisfied?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. As much as they get satisfied." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As much as they’re ever satisfied?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The truth is every congressional delegation wants all the money sent to them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, and that’s why they’re elected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’re like, “Wait a minute. No, that’s not going to happen.” We had an interesting debate—well, not debate. It took us two or three years to finally just get the Alabama congressional delegation to realize that all of the money under SLS cannot just go to the launch vehicle and the Marshall Space Flight Center. Some of it had to go to Kennedy Space Center to be able to be ready to launch a rocket. What good is it to build a rocket if you’re not going to have a place to launch it? I’m not kidding. The discussion was at that level with some people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You are talking to elected officials and not engineers. I’m sure that has something to do with it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They certainly come at it from a different perspective." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. I can imagine. Probably quite an education." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Trust me. My last five years, Sandra, at Headquarters was quite an education." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It usually is, going to Headquarters after working at a Center, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What was interesting is this was actually my second or third trip through Headquarters. You got inklings of it before, but boy, not like this last time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that they didn’t necessarily understand that you had to change things at KSC. Can you talk about some of that ground support and those changes? I know we hear a lot about the SLS and a lot about the Orion, but what was going on at KSC and the changes that had to be made? I know the launch pad was changed and some other things. Of course I think they had to refigure buildings for the stack. Can you talk about some of that for a few minutes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The KSC guys had—and they still have, and they’re actually doing a really good job with it—two problems. Number one, they as much as anybody else had to get the cost down. The typical past experience of Shuttle level budgets and Station level budgets was not going to happen again. Yet we still had to figure out a way to do exploration under a lower budget. All of us felt we basically had a choice. We either figure out how to do it within budget, or there wasn’t going to be any human exploration. That second option was not acceptable.\\n\\n The KSC guys had to start figuring out how to do things with modifying facilities, not building a new facility. They had to figure out how to make launch pads more efficient, how to design things. They actually had to get into more of the design and development mentality and less operational mentality. It took them some time but they got there.\\n\\n The other thing that they were trying to do at KSC, which is extremely important and is playing out—I think over time we’ll see how strategically intelligent this decision was—is to actually make KSC a spaceport that could address more than just NASA launches. The Blue Origins and the whoevers come to Kennedy Space Center, and it’s treated as a spaceport able to launch multiple different vehicles and support different systems.\\n\\n That can actually be competing demands. Get cost down on SLS and Orion processing, but oh, by the way, we want you to be flexible enough to handle other systems and be able to support the commercial launch vehicle market.\\n\\n The KSC guys worked it pretty hard. They figured out ways to use some of the launch pad work that had already been started for Constellation. They figured out how to use that for SLS. They did things like we’re not going to have two crawler [transporter] systems for SLS, we’ll have one. They actually did that in a lot of ways. A lot of redundancy that we were used to under Shuttle went away under SLS and Orion simply because of the cost constraint. It drove us to a single system, so one crawler, one pad, one high bay in the VAB [Vehicle Assembly Building], as opposed to two high bays in the VAB. Right now they couldn’t stack two vehicles at one time without having to refurb [refurbish] one of the other high bays, because we just had the money to refurb one high bay to get ready for the first couple of flights. The crawlers, the same thing, and they limited themselves to one pad, 39B." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They went to what is referred to as a clean pad approach. The processing for the Shuttle was around 30 days, but they can do it much quicker now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That was the whole idea. That was part of the efficient and be flexible was that SLS is going to come up on a crawler on its launch support structure with everything it needs. We’re going to set it down. We’ll launch it, and then be able to move that stuff and get it out of the way so that the next customer coming in can put their own system in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is quite a change in the way we’re looking at things. Also the Orion itself was developed to make it more flexible and to be able to go to different destinations and not just one, as opposed to pretty much everything NASA has built up until this point." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. That’s an excellent point. We went to a lot of work with Orion to make sure that we had flexibility but yet were able to do it within the cost constraint. The good news here is that from the beginning they had a little bit more of a multimission mentality on Orion, because they saw this coming in that it had to be able to link up with habitats. It could be the only habitat for some missions, like EM-2 or an asteroid redirect mission. That’s what drove the 21-day crew of four life support requirement, the ability to go do some missions only with Orion, recognizing that if we were going to need a crew module or a habitat longer than 21 days, we were going to have to build something else in addition to Orion, because Orion also serves that absolutely necessary function of getting them home safely on reentry.\\n\\n One of the key trade discussion topics that we had to work ourselves through before the final approval to continue with Orion in May of 2011 was there was a concept of just leave Orion in Earth orbit, and as the astronauts are coming back from Mars, or wherever they’re coming back from, they just go into low-Earth orbit and meet up with Orion, and then they come home from low-Earth orbit in Orion.\\n\\n We had to show people that that was actually going to be a more expensive operation. More expensive in terms of just the technical needs, because we now have to be able to slow down. I got a vehicle screaming back at high velocity from Mars and now I got to slow down the vehicle, and that takes propulsion, that takes propellant, and that’s propellant and propulsion hardware and tank hardware that I got to take all the way out to wherever I’m going and all the way back.\\n\\n Once we walked everybody through all that analysis the reentry function that Orion provides, people understood it better that you’re just not going to slow it down and stop the crew in low-Earth orbit, let them change buses, and then come on home. Whatever bus they’re in on the way back from Mars is probably the bus you want them in, because that’s the most efficient way to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was reading, it’s actually your testimony before the House Science, Space, and Technology Subcommittee on Space in October of 2015. It was just a statement in there that struck me. You said that “The team is dedicated to building all systems as safely as possible, as soon as possible, and as cost-efficiently as possible.” When I read it, it reminded me of Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin’s famous faster, better, cheaper philosophy. I don’t know how familiar you are with his faster, better, cheaper idea, but can you just talk about that for a minute? What would be the differences between what you were talking about and the idea he had?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From me you’re going to get a little bit different answer than you get from most people on this faster, better, cheaper thing. I actually did live firsthand that faster, better, cheaper, because there was a time where I left the Shuttle world and went over to the reusable launch vehicle world, and did things like DC-XA [Delta Clipper Experimental], X-33 [rocket plane], X-37. Certainly the DC-XA stuff was all in that faster, better, cheaper mode.\\n\\n My interpretation of faster, better, cheaper when those words were used was not go cut corners that don’t make sense. I think some people misinterpreted faster, better, cheaper as they were allowed to go further on the risk acceptance scale than they should have.\\n\\n In the DC-XA arena, we were able to accept more risk, simply because it was a flight test program sitting out at White Sands Missile Range [New Mexico] and we didn’t have astronauts on board. We were allowed to do things a little bit that the Shuttle guys would not be allowed to do, nor would we want them to go do it.\\n\\n I think the faster, better, cheaper got misconstrued. Maybe that’s not fair. It got perceived and some people implemented it, and they implemented it in a way that they took too much risk that ended up costing them, like MSL, Mars Science Lab, and those other things. All true. I don’t deny the failures that occurred under faster, better, cheaper. I also know from my own Shuttle experience that I treat systems that have people on board with one level of risk tolerance, and I treat flight test systems with a different level of risk tolerance. I actually think faster, better, cheaper if appropriately implemented is actually looking for a proper balance and allows the program management engineering team to be able to try things that they may not be able to try under a strict human spaceflight risk tolerance model.\\n\\n My statement to the House Science Committee was meant to try to get a point across that this is all a balance. It’s not about skewing the equation in one of the three directions or the other. I think it was a recognition, at least from my perspective, that certainly when we send humans to Mars or even to cislunar orbit we’re taking on risk that frankly we’ve never taken on before, and it’s actually in some ways riskier than Apollo. EM-2 for example, assuming they stick with the current plan, or something similar to it, will have astronauts in a situation where they will be a minimum of nine days away from home if an emergency occurs. That’s a whole different thought process than an hour and a half away on Station or three days away from the Moon. We have to think our way through that. We have to be able to make sure that we prepare for that.\\n\\n At the same time, and this is where I have a little bit different perspective than a lot of people that live their lives completely in human spaceflight, we have to figure out ways to do things more efficiently. Over NASA’s history we have been limited by budget. Shuttle was certainly a budget-limited design, no doubt about it. Over time we did things and requirements crept in, but we never—well, we did once, and we actually went a little bit too far. Sometimes it got us into the Columbia problem. We have a hard time on the human spaceflight side figuring out what risk tolerance we really are willing to take, and how much money we’re really willing to spend to go get that risk reduced. We will sometimes—or a lot of times—spend a lot of money for very minor gains in risk tolerance or risk acceptance, when we could be using our resources better.\\n\\n There is a history within NASA that basically over time it has been mitigated, but I used to hear these words when I was at Headquarters. “Well, listen, Dan. Your job is not to tell us how to do it more efficiently. Your job is to go up to Headquarters to get more money so that we get what we need.”\\n\\n That’s all fine and dandy, but in Washington, DC, where NASA actually has to compete with everybody else for federal funding, you better think about being cost-conscious. You have to have some level of cost-consciousness about it. What we were trying to do, and the message I was trying to get across to the House, is this isn’t an easy job. We’re doing stuff that nobody’s ever done before, and it’s risky, and we’re doing it with people. Number one, it has to be safe, but we also have to recognize that we are stewards of taxpayer money. We have to be able to think through and make reasonable assessments of what resources are required, and then how are those resources utilized to keep the risk level at what the Agency would consider acceptable.\\n\\n That’s a tough thing to do. It’s not easy. It requires all the best technical talent, best risk assessment talent, best cost estimating talent, to try to sort through those trade studies. They’re all subjective. I can guarantee you that never will everybody be happy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Spaceflight is a risky business." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Spaceflight is fundamentally a risky business. One of the things I think is hard for the Agency—and I think it’s coming around to understanding this. I think the planetary science people understand this actually better than the human spaceflight people understand it. That is there’s only so much money to go around. As long as we are funded by the taxpayers, in the United States democratic system, we have to answer to their representatives in Congress. They have the right as representatives of the taxpayer to hold us accountable for how we spend the money. We don’t get to play the card of, “We’re NASA, we’re special, give us more money.” That worked for a while, but that doesn’t work in today’s environment.\\n\\n All of us engineers, we like to think things in terms of black-and-white, right or wrong, yes or no, this’ll work, that won’t work. There’s a lot of gray area in all this. There’s much more subjectivity to it than we’d all like to admit. The laws of physics I can’t argue with, nor do I intend to, but, when it comes down to those hard decisions and those subjective decisions of what risk level is acceptable and how much am I willing to spend for it, that’s the hard conversation that requires everybody’s input." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The risk level, like you said, is what you can accept changes when you put humans on board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, it definitely does." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know when EFT-1 flew and now for EM-1 and then EM-2, some of the systems that maybe people would like to see on EM-1 aren’t going to be there, because they’re not ready, or because of the schedule and the cost. Some of them will be flying for the first time with the astronauts on board.\\n\\n I know you’re not with NASA anymore, but is that something that your comfort level allows you to accept as one of the risks of spaceflight in today’s budgetary climate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I tend to take these things one step at a time. If I look back, the big reason that we decided to go try to figure out how to put EFT-1 in the budget was because of the big risks that it was going to reduce or mitigate or give us a better understanding on for Orion. Is the heat shield going to work? That heat shield is tied directly to the structure. The more we understand that earlier, the better off we all are. I’m one of those who’s a firm believer—and I know this is why Mark and the Orion team even put EFT-1 forward, because test data is worth a lot more than a bunch of expert opinions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Exactly. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We timed EFT-1 so that we can get the data back and give the engineers time to assess it before Critical Design Review for the EM-1 vehicle. That’s what set the timing of EFT-1 was when do we need the data so that we can impact and influence and get that knowledge into the design process where it can do the most good, and that’s before the Critical Design Review. That’s what set the time for EFT-1.\\n\\n That’s step one. EM-1 is uncrewed so that we can go test out a bunch of other stuff, the next round of things, before we put crew in it. We do have the problem I think from what I remember of the program plan where we have some of the life support system—not all of it, because actually we’re going to test as I recall the thermal management part. The thermal management part I know is going to get tested on EM-1. There are elements of the life support system that weren’t going to get tested till EM-2. Then the debate was going to be what checkouts do I need to do before I leave low-Earth orbit and make sure we have everything working before we leave low-Earth orbit, because obviously we don’t want to commit to an orbit where we’re nine days away from home if we don’t have confidence that the life support system is going to work.\\n\\n All of that work is ahead of those guys. They’re still going to have to sort all that out. But, I think if they’re allowed to think it through in a step-by-step fashion and people recognize that this is a learning process along the way, they’ll get there. There will be differences of opinion, but that’s okay. It’s in those differences of opinion and perspective that as we work our way through them we get ourselves to a better answer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were talking about the Service Module and now we have the agreement with ESA [European Space Agency] where they’re building the Service Module based on their ATV [Automated Transfer Vehicle]. I know that was happening right at the end of your time at NASA, but maybe some of the agreements or some of the conversation if you were involved in any of that with bringing ESA on board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was certainly involved with that. I think that was an interesting idea. I’ll be honest with you, when I first heard the idea, I was worried. What I was worried about was you guys are holding me accountable for a schedule for EM-1 with SLS and Orion and now you’re putting extra risk into my ability to be able to meet that flight date and budget. But, as we worked our way through all that there was no doubt that from the beginning, from a strategic perspective, getting international partners involved in Orion and actually doing it in a way where we were able to take advantage of the Space Station barter agreement to get some value for exploration was a wonderful strategic move. It got the international partners involved, made them part of the team, and all the benefits that go with the international partnership.\\n\\n There are costs associated with that. The integration job is now a little harder. I’ve now taken on some more programmatic risk because I am now reliant on the Europeans meeting our schedule. The first flight of any system like SLS and Orion is obviously very important. You’re taking on more programmatic risk, but as we worked our way through it, we realized that the benefits far outweighed the cost.\\n\\n We had to work through the agreements and get all that in place. Had to make sure we understood the design that the Europeans were coming up with. Did it meet all the requirements? How were we going to do the interfaces? That was a big challenge. In the end I think it’s all going to play out extremely well.\\n\\n I can tell you this. For the second year in a row now I’ve taken 15, 20 students over to Europe after the end of the spring semester. Of course with me setting up the trip it is space-related. When you talk to the Europeans, the pride that comes out, the recognition that now they are part of the overall human exploration and they’re more engaged in human exploration, is not only a point of pride for them, but it’s a recognition that they’re part of the team. Yes, that European Service Module costs us a little bit in terms of integration cost, but in the end I think from a strategic perspective and building a sustainable exploration program, it was exactly the right move to make. I was nervous about it at the beginning. It took me some time to come around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m sure you’re not the only one since it was the first time NASA has ever teamed with another country or another space agency to actually build the vehicle. I’m sure it was a little bit of a sales job to get everyone comfortable with that idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually the way the sales job worked is it was really just let’s go through the process step by step. Understand what needs to be done and what our risks are. As we understand things, let’s continually assess those risks against the benefit. If at any time we think that the cost or the risks outweigh the benefits, we’ll pull the plug on this. But, we never got to that point because even when the risks and the costs seemed a little bit on the high side, when you stood back and looked at the benefits, you said, “It’s still worth it.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s always a balance, I’m sure. Let’s talk about some of the technological advances that have come from this new generation of spacecraft. Do any come to mind and stick out in your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. There are a couple but the problem is they’re not obvious when you just look at the vehicle on the outside. It’s all buried inside. I think on the Orion side they’re using gigabit Ethernet to be able to process more data, have better communications capability within the vehicle and with the ground.\\n\\n Mark and the team had to figure out how to do heat shields to withstand reentry velocities from the Moon and Mars and not be able to use asbestos just like the Apollo guys regularly used. With all the latest panels I think one of the things that Mark and the Orion team is certainly working hard to do is to get the electronics so that they’re upgradable over time as new electronic capabilities come into the marketplace that they can incorporate those. As opposed to the Shuttle, where we put ourselves into a box where it cost us so much to make a change that we were still flying late ’70s early ’80s technology by the end of the program.\\n\\n From an SLS perspective, the new technology is frankly buried in the manufacturing with friction stir welding and some of the things they’re doing to get the tanks built, where we’ll have higher quality tanks, less defects to process. It’s buried in the manufacturing part. John Q. Public does not see it. A rocket looks like a rocket. It’s in the details that the technology is coming in.\\n\\n This is where you get into an interesting discussion. There are people out there that will point to lifting body designs and other things as this is the new technology. Yes, it is, but just because it looks the same on the outside as it did in the 1960s doesn’t mean that there isn’t new technology buried inside. New manufacturing technology, new communications technology, new computer technology is all buried in there.\\n\\n One of these days we’ll have laser communications based on some of the experiments that people have run. That’s all going to come to pass. The external shape basically is shaped by the physics, and the physics hasn’t changed, that any of us can determine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nor is it likely to, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nor is it likely to. If it does, we got some interesting other problems to deal with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "More than spaceflight, that’s for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know Kirasich could give you a long list of the new technology that’s in Orion and the SLS guys could give you a long list of the new technology in there. I think those teams are done a disservice when the simplistic view of well, if it looks the same there’s no new technology.\\n\\n It looks the same because the physics are the same. The new technology is inside. That simplistic view that I hear out in the press and other places every now and then bothers me. You probably could pick up on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I think so. Yes, they can’t see what’s inside the cockpit or the digital changes and everything that’s happened like you said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What they don’t understand, friction stir welding for example, we started using it on External Tank. We refined it for SLS. SLS is actually using the largest friction stir welding machine in the world. That technology is starting to make its way into the shipbuilding, aircraft manufacturing, other places, because they see that it’s successful. NASA has figured out how to use it and has worked out a lot of the technical kinks. Now it starts to show up in other industries, which you don’t hear a lot about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They’re not the things that people want to read about. They’re not all that exciting to the normal person.\\n\\n [Interview scheduled time ended and second interview was scheduled.]\\n\\n All right. I appreciate it. I will talk to you then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Daniel Dumbacher", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, glad to do it, Sandra. My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00487", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ReedLM/reedlm.htm", + "original_file_name": "ReedLM_7-24-15.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ReedLM/ReedLM_7-24-15.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Lisa M. Reed", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 24 July 2015" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Lisa M. Reed" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 24th, 2015. This interview with Lisa Reed is being conducted in Houston, Texas, for the JSC Oral History Project. The interviewer is Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for driving down here to spend some time with us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My pleasure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really appreciate it. Last time, we had a great conversation. One of the things we didn’t talk too much about, though, were the tools that you used, the simulators themselves or the trainers. I noticed, according to your resume, that you developed simulator model requirements. Can you talk about that and what that involved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Every instructor that worked in the simulator at some point would come across a need to write requirements for the simulator. If you think about the simulator being a machine that is run by computer programs or models—if you got a new system that was going to be put into the Shuttle, that model would now be obsolete until you wrote the requirements to tell the programmers how to program it to make it work. I’m not talking about telling them how to code.\\n\\n For example, we got the [the Androgynous Peripheral] docking system. We had not had that docking system [model in the simulator] before. It came from Russia. We needed to create a docking model in the simulator in order for us to do these docking simulations for Shuttle–Mir and then later for Space Station. [I] worked together with the MMACS [Maintenance, Mechanical, Arm, and Crew Systems] flight controllers, because they were the operations engineers, and others in my group to determine what did we need to train, because you really train from what you have in the procedures. What were the [docking] procedures? That started way back with learning about the system and flying down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and actually seeing the docking system before it was put in the vehicle, and going out to Rockwell, [in] Downey [California].\\n\\n When they [Rockwell in Downey] got a test unit out there, of the docking system, we sat, and basically—I’m going to use the term loosely—played with the system to see how it operated. We would activate sensors and see what it did [how the system reacted]. We would activate it, and watch the docking ring go in and out. You go and you learn about all this first, and then, from that, the fight controllers would write the procedures, determine what the crew display needed to look like, and then we [the instructors] would get involved because now the simulator had to be programmed to be able to do that [simulate how the docking system works]. I wrote requirements along with others for the various systems, [and] wrote those for the docking system.\\n\\n What came along with the docking system was this airlock. It [the docking system] sat on top of the little airlock right outside the hatch of the Shuttle. The crews were going to need to be able to practice venting that airlock and bringing it to the vacuum of space if they were going out to do a spacewalk. Or if they docked [to the Mir], the hatch was up above in that airlock—the external airlock—and that’s where the folks [astronauts and cosmonauts] would be coming over from Mir when you opened the hatch and saw all of the handshakes, and later on Space Station, every time you saw a crew dock and greet the Space Station crews [until the Space Station airlock was installed on the Space Station]. All of that [those models] had to be programmed. When I refer to writing requirements for the simulator, I was writing those requirements whenever they came up.\\n\\n Then sometimes the [Shuttle system] model was already there [installed in simulator computers]. It wasn’t a new system, but you would, usually through actual flight experience, learn that the parameters or the numbers that were [modelled and] showing on the [CRT or Instructor Station] screen were not quite [exactly] what they were in real life [during a real Shuttle mission]. We would write a new requirement and submit it to the programmers, then they would figure out how to do all of the code, how to make that happen, but we would tell them what we wanted it to do. That’s what we did.\\n\\n Then for every Shuttle mission, they had a generic set of Shuttle [simulator computer] models. They used flight software from the GPCs [General Purpose Computers] that interacted with that [those computer models], so if the mission had a particular payload on it, the payloads guys would have to write the requirements for the flight-specific training software that would go in that simulator [model] for each mission, or if it was an [ISS] assembly flight, or deploying a satellite, all those kind of things. That’s why I say just about every instructor at some point in their career had to write some requirements." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there periods when the simulators were down? The Orbiter did change over time. There were those Orbiter Maintenance Down Periods out of Palmdale [California], and then they moved them to KSC [Kennedy Space Center, Florida]. Were there lag times in between, when the simulator didn’t actually reflect what changes had happened? Like [Space Shuttle] Discovery might get something, but [Space Shuttle] Atlantis was behind. How did those affect your simulations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s a very good question. They did. This is like a three-part answer. In general, the Shuttle Mission Simulator [SMS] had the basic [Orbiter system] models down [programmed] for every Orbiter. Like you said, there were some idiosyncrasies between the Orbiters. Little things, for example, toward the end of the program, [Space Shuttle] Columbia did not have that external airlock because it was never planned to go to Space Station, or never planned to dock to Shuttle–Mir. It was a little bit heavier because of some of the equipment that it had on it. If you were flying on Columbia, the [crew station simulator] visuals [simulating the in space view out the Shuttle windows] would not show an external airlock, something you [the astronaut crew] didn’t have [on their mission]. When they would deliver that load [simulator computer model software] for Columbia mission, they had programmed that [external airlock visual] out of it.\\n\\n Now, there were times when you did a major [overhaul]. For example, the electronic displays, the glass cockpit, if you will, that came later on in the Shuttle Program—that took down one of the simulators I want to say for, I can’t remember, but a long time. It was just out of commission because they were installing those displays in there. We were still flying missions, so we had two others [simulators]—a motion base and a fixed base—that were up and running so that we could maintain the flight training for the crews that were in their training flows.\\n\\n You had the fixed base and the motion base in Building 5, and then there was always a Guidance and Navigation Simulator—the GNS—that resided in Building 35, right across the street from Building 5. When they would take one of the things [simulators] out of commission. They took that one down, put the glass cockpit displays in there, and when it came back up, then they took down the other and put the displays in there. We always had the capability to train on whichever configuration until the whole fleet was transitioned over to the glass cockpit. Usually for just the small little tweaks or the little idiosyncrasies between the vehicles, they would do that in the programming of the actual mission load—the flight-specific software loading—so you didn’t have to do major things and take the simulators down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was curious about that. Did you work at all in Building 9? I noticed that you mentioned Building 5 and the other one [Building 35]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most times the simulator instructors did not train in Building 9 in the mockups. We might be asked to go over by what they call crew systems instructors—they worked with all the flight crew equipment, habitation, how to use the toilet, how to work with the lockers and your stowage—they would set it up and train them on that.\\n\\n When I did teach classes later—and this was a little bit of an anomaly [from the normal training process]—when they added that external airlock that went with the docking system, I went over there with them to provide training on the air ducts that went between the airlock. There was a lot of different configurations you had to do of pressure valves and equalization valves, as well as a booster fan that resided in the floor of the airlock. It was this little fan that would boost air—if you imagine your air duct in your house—it would boost the air through that airlock and down into the Spacelab or the SPACEHAB. Or, if you needed to push that through the airlock and make sure you didn’t have carbon dioxide from when the crew members would be breathing out and not being able to clear that out of there. [During a real mission], we could get it [the airlock] closed up, and then all of the sudden you could have people getting headaches [due to high carbon dioxide levels] and not having a good amount of oxygen in there to breathe, so that fan was in there for that reason.\\n\\n We developed a whole class that taught just how to deal with this new external airlock and its ductwork, its valves, its hatches. I taught that in conjunction with the crew systems instructors in those mockups. Then usually after that, when the crew would go down to the Cape, I was down there oftentimes to go in there and teach them about the docking system [and external airlock]. It was our [training instructor and mission crew] first time to really see it, when they would do their crew equipment interface test, where they could actually see the real docking system, open the actual airlock, and go in there and walk through the procedures and explain where everything was and what they were going to be doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was an unusual system for you to learn, I imagine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was unusual, and it was very tight quarters because it was only just a little bit bigger than the circumference of this table. Probably another 12 inches all the way around. You would have three, four crew members in there with you. You would all be sitting on the floor with your knees [pulled] up, pointing to things. In microgravity, they could consume the whole volume, but when we were in the OPF [Orbiter Processing Facility] down at KSC, you just had to squat down and everybody try to fit in there for the class." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wondered if you would talk about starting to work with mission commanders, flight directors, and mission directors on a mission. Coming up with a flight crew training plan, what did that involve, and how did those shift or change as a result of what was going on with the program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Obviously the Shuttle Program Office would set a flight manifest. They had the objectives of the flight, and what was going to be conducted, whether it was going to be deploying a satellite, was it a science mission like a Spacelab, or later on in the program was it going to be an ISS [International Space Station] assembly mission? Rendezvous and dock? Whatever. Hubble rescue [retrieve] or Hubble repair. Those sorts of things. Those initial requirements get set by the program, and they would come down probably about a year or two before [the mission flew]. You’d know that those flights were in the offing.\\n\\n As they got closer to flight, you [the training team] were usually assigned. You knew what your next mission was going to be. As a trainer you were waiting for the crew assignment, but you might have line of sight as to, “Oh, this is going to be a fun flight” from what they were doing [on the mission] perspective or what the objectives of the mission were. You may go to meetings and learn about it, usually before the full crew was set. You might have an idea, because you’d see the CB [Astronaut Office] rep for that flight in those meetings, and you’d go, “I wonder if that person is going to be one of the crew members?” More often than not, they were. They were assigned eventually.\\n\\n As far as the training requirements, the training division set basic requirements for all Shuttle crews based on their [experience]. Some of them had to take everything in a training flow, once they were a mission crew. Others were designated other requirements that they needed to take, by their position, their role: commander, pilot, mission specialist, payload commander, or EVA [Extravehicular Activity]-1, EVA-2. Those requirements were known already and determined by the training division, just over experience and long time [training these missions]. There was a basic training flow.\\n\\n Once you, as a team lead, were assigned a crew, you met with the commander; typically first, you would sit down [together with commander]. Because the commander was allowed to make crew assignments, who was going to be what [position], you’d go up and then a commander would say, “Okay, here’s what I’m thinking.” For example, with Eileen [M. Collins], obviously the pilot was going to be the pilot, and she was going to be the commander. So whoever was pilot, you knew who that was. That was set. She said, “I think that Dr. Stevie [Steven A. Hawley] is going to be the flight engineer, the MS [Mission Specialist]-2, but he’s also going to be key for the Chandra [deploy]. Then she would go through and assign other little tasks. We had a whole list. Who’s going to take the photos of the ET [External Tank] when you separate? They always try to capture those pictures and review them. Who was going to be responsible for going downstairs and helping the crew de-suit [after they were on-orbit] and in what order? You’d get a rough idea. It was all thought out. “I think I’m going to have Cady [Catherine Coleman] doing this. I think I’m going to have,” so on, so forth.\\n\\n There was generally that idea, when the commander had an idea of what they wanted everybody to do. Once you knew that, you could go back to your training team, let them know. It was all in a little list, a matrix. You could see who was doing what, and you would begin to train. That was just for the generic, upfront training to get ready for their mission. They would start through a series of SSTs [Single System Trainers], refresher courses.\\n\\n You would then begin to do some initial training in the simulator. You might not have your flight-specific simulator models yet, because they [the programmers] might still be working on it. They called it your SMS load. It was the software load for that [mission]. So you would do some generic training with them upfront. Just get them all together as a crew, fly some ascents, do some orbit stuff. They began to learn how each other works. Because while they’ve all been trained, people are different, so that’s a good time for them to begin to understand how each other works. Eileen, or Jim [James D.] Wetherbee, if he was the commander, began to lay out how they want things to go. You usually had rookies and experienced people, so the rookies were always very eager and wanting to do just anything they could. There was a lot of teaching of them, not only by the trainers, but by the flown crew members who were with them.\\n\\n Just before you began to get into the flight-specific training, which meant you would be doing integrated simulations with the Mission Control Center [MCC], you would already have an idea. At the same time, they could see who was assigned in the training division to work this mission, and you could see who was assigned as the crew. You would know who was the flight director, the lead, the ascent/entry [flight directors]. You’d learn who your CapCom [Capsule Communicator] was, who the Flight Activities Officer was, because they were going to be responsible for putting out that flight data file and the flight plans that you were going to be training from. You began to meet people along the way, and you knew who was working it [the mission].\\n\\n It was not uncommon for the Sim Sup [Simulation Supervisor]—who led the team of instructors that were more senior, that sat in the simulation control area, monitored, and were responsible for putting together the scenarios to train the mission controllers along with the crew—it was not uncommon to sit down with them and the flight director at some point in time. They would begin to ask, “You’ve been training your crew for a little while now,” and just ask what were things that we thought we needed to work on, or what did we feel was important to exercise [the crew on with respect to mission activities]. That was really all it was, because then they were responsible for setting the [simulation] scripts.\\n\\n Early on, we, the SMS team, developed all the scenarios that the crews would train on, and we would train them on all their specific mission stuff. An example of [STS]-93, the major objective was the Chandra Observatory deploy. We had classes that taught them how to: leading up to the deploy, deploying it, post-deploy. You had the initial normal deploy, get it out there, and then after that you start breaking things and getting them used to working the malfunction procedures without anybody else in the sim. It’s just a stand-alone sim. It’s just the crew and the instructors, to prepare them for any eventuality, but they haven’t worked with their MCC counterparts, or the team that will be on the ground with them, who they’ll be relying on, on the actual day. That’s how that went.\\n\\n There was a training flow, but there were always discussions. As you go along, you think, “wait,” or you learn things as well. Some things may change about the flight, maybe the launch window changes. Well that changes some of the parameters, if you slip. We slipped a lot on 93. Not necessarily due to 93, but other events just caused us to slip. Every time that would happen, the crew would see a little bit different ascent. Maybe it went from a daytime launch to a nighttime launch, or an early morning launch to a dark launch, because it was even earlier morning, and it was still really, really dark. All of those things, you wanted them to be trained on. That’s the little tweaks that you would have, and that’s why you might have conversations, not only within your own team, but with the flight director and others, and the commander." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was curious about that, because I was thinking sometimes they might add an EVA or a new payload, what have you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we would have to shuffle to accommodate. Sometimes we had to do those pretty quickly. If it was nearing the end of the training timeframe, you’d have to go, “Oh, this changed.” It may be a very good reason. I think that’s one of the reasons that most of the instructors and the flight controllers that I know, just by our nature—you may not like change, but change does not ruffle us too much. If something happens, it’s like, “Okay, well what’s the re-plan?” You’re just thinking that in your mind. You learn, because every day was something different. Launch slips happened, and launch scrubs happened. You might have sent them down there for a launch, and maybe they get down there, and a vehicle problem happens. They scrub, and it’s two months. Well, you thought you were done training that crew and would go on to the next one; they would be back, because you didn’t stop training if they came back. They had to maintain their proficiency. You just had to be flexible with whatever happened." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Roll with the punches, as they say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly, roll with the punches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So many of the Shuttle flights had industry. Later on, there were a lot more international partners flying. Then there were also DoD [Department of Defense] flights. Can you talk about the different challenges each one of those kinds of missions would pose?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the time, I did not work any of the DoD flights, because they actually ended before I actually got into the SMS as a certified instructor, but we did have DoD partners that had experiments. I can talk about the industry and the international partners. Let me think.\\n\\n On STS-93, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, if you can imagine, this observatory had scientists that had been working on it most of their [adult] life. A lot of them had spent their career working on this observatory. They were waiting to have it be assigned a flight. So 93 comes along, and they’re very excited about it. They were all over the country. There were some that were resident at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. There were some that were up at a center in Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland], so there was a Goddard component to the folks. They were going to be the ones—and I think they’re still the ones that—or it might be in Boston. Anyway, they were back east somewhere, and they were going to be the ones actually sitting in the control room, who still monitor it to this day. They still send back those wonderful pictures, all these years later, that monitor what’s going on with Chandra, with Hubble, with all that.\\n\\n You would have the scientists who understood how it worked, and you would have to deal with them coming in [for training and simulations with the crew]. We tried to welcome them, because number one, this is somebody’s life work. You can tell by the minute they walk in the door, it’s their baby. We all had our particular babies that we were keen on. Also, these were the people who were going to be able to talk to the crew about how this thing worked the best, if you think about it.\\n\\n Then you would have the Air Force folks. In this case, we had a couple of Air Force experiments, if you will, on 93. They were testing out different materials that they were developing that were flexible materials but super strong and lightweight. There was an experiment there that they flew, HDTV [High Definition Television] way back when. We had an experiment on there—so this was industry, if you will—that was bringing in a high definition television camera, which by the way was about the size of a suitcase, a big one. I shouldn’t say that, but it was large. It was like one of the video cameras you saw back in the ’80s. It was large, a little bit larger than that. Luckily, it was microgravity when the crew was having to handle it. They learned how to use that and wanted the crew to capture some high definition television shots from the mission. It was an experiment, because this was already in development, and here we sit, 16 years later, and HD is everywhere out there. They’re broadcasting in HD. Well a lot of this started with some of those early experiments, before it came out.\\n\\n I do remember when the crew came back, but they had to be trained on this by the folks that were working with the camera. The crew came back, and we saw they were playing some of the actual footage from the HD camera of the mission and of the deploy that we saw. I have to tell you, none of us had ever seen it before. We’re used to it now, but it was like, “Wow!” The women, of course, were going, “Hmm. This is a little bit too good on the pores of the face and the wrinkles. Hollywood may not like this.” But the definition, you really could see. That was an example.\\n\\n The Chandra had an Air Force booster, an inertial upper stage [IUS], which was a booster that would fire after we deployed it. That was a DoD piece of equipment. We went down for briefings and training with the crew down to Cape Canaveral Air Station and got briefings on the IUS and how that worked. In the event the crew needed to go out and do an EVA on this, because the deploy failed for some reason, we always had a contingency. You know, Cady and Michel [Tognini] going to go out, and what pieces could they detach to send it on its way?\\n\\n With the international partners, first experience would have been with Shuttle–Mir. That was predominantly just learning—I think, for me—the docking system. It was a Russian docking system. We had to write those requirements that I was telling you about for the trainers, and we had to develop a whole training flow to teach people on our side the docking system. That required us having to work a lot with some of the Russian engineers to just understand how it worked. I remember some of our engineers bringing out the Russian drawings, and that’s when we discovered how their system was so very sophisticated. It was simply elegant in how it was wired and still achieved the same outcome of having some redundancy. Whereas the Americans, same way, but just different. They each result in having that redundancy that you need in space in case; a single point failure, that’s a bad thing.\\n\\n It was funny, we always had maybe one, two, three failures deep. We would have, for example, in electrical things, certain ways that we would ground the system, so you didn’t have shorts that could happen and tried to avoid them. They still happened, but you’d try your best to engineer that out. The Russians just did it totally different. We began to discover wow, that works. It’s just a totally different way of looking at things. When we began to talk to them and also train them on it. It was the same thing when we were training the cosmonauts. You would see, for example, pressure drops. If you had a leak in the cabin, it’s a bad thing when you’re on orbit. You’re losing your air. How you go about doing things. They use millimeters of mercury. We use pressure per square inch, absolute. So training the difference, but they all worked. When we docked with Shuttle–Mir, those would be in millimeters of mercury. Their gauges and things like that, and ours would be in pressure. It would be a pressure gauge. You had to learn to translate things back and forth.\\n\\n We had to write procedures. We called them the joint procedures for these Shuttle–Mir missions any time we were either going to approach and dock, so rendezvous in proximity operations to the Mir. Docking. Joint ops, that’s when we’ve docked. Everybody shakes hands, and now we’re open. The two vehicles are connected as one; the airlocks are open. They’re doing whatever their experiments and missions were. You had to have procedures for that. So half of the books had to be written in English, and you’d flip them over, and there’s a Russian version for the Russians. So there’s a little more work to do there. The way it was written later, I think, in Station, you had similar types of things. If it was a Russian module, Russian-built module, then it would be in Russian and they would work it. The American’s module would be in [English].\\n\\n All the crew members had their native English and would learn Russian; the Russians had their native Russian and would learn English. They trained for a long time having their languages so that they could read those back and forth. The international astronauts from other countries had to learn both. A lot of them came either already knowing English or they may have already flown on the Mir Space Station. For example, Michel Tognini had flown on that. Some of them had already had experiences flying on the Russian craft. That was just a natural thing. A lot of the international partnership thing, from the instructor’s perspective, was just making sure that the crew members that came in that were international astronauts—I would try to counsel them, especially the American crew members, if you’re talking, they may not know when you’re saying, “Hey, let’s go around the horn,” what that means." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What does that mean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Everybody gets to have a say during the debrief. That was just a common phrase some of them would use in the cockpit up there. “OK, let’s go around the horn. Jeff, you got anything?” Trying to think of others. We’d try to especially caution them. We use a lot of slang, and in their language, I’m sure they do too, but you have to be very careful to at least explain to them what you mean before you use it. That’s very important to that whole crew resource management, which is how a crew is working together so that everyone has the situational awareness of what’s going on and knows the role they need to play and things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine it was interesting working with all these different groups, because obviously, you saw a different culture with the Russians and the international partners. Also having these Air Force people come, and then also these highly regarded scientists who have been working on this one piece of hardware for so long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For me, I just remember respecting, because at that time, I was like, I can’t imagine working my whole life on something like Chandra or Hubble. Before it ever got to fly, and the world ever got to see how beautiful it was. Having the passion to stick with it, and not knowing when, if any time, it was going to get on to some launch vehicle, whether it was a Shuttle or one of the expendable rockets that was launched. I just thought, “Wow, that’s dedication.” Wanting to stick with it for your whole career.\\n\\n Then I also, because I’m a little bit of a feeler, I could think how cool it was to finally get to this point, now you’re going to see this thing get launched into space. That’s really what you’re waiting for. See what it’s going to return back to you. That’s cool. I still am on the lists—the payload flight controller, he still stays in touch with those guys, and he’ll say, “Oh, here’s some new stuff from Chandra that got released today.” Then I’ll be sitting at my desk, here in Houston even today, and an email will pop in, and I open it up, and go, “Wow, that’s really cool!” It’s still out there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ll have to go out there and look. Hubble gets all the attention." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It’s funny, I walked in to a conference room where I work now, which is in the energy industry on the other side of Houston. Hanging on the walls is just some beautiful pictures from Hubble that they’ve had that they thought were cool to hang in this conference room. One of the guys was sitting there, and I said, “Oh wow. Horsehead Nebula.” And he goes, “You know what that is?” I’m like, “Yes I do.” He says, “It’s so cool, isn’t it?” I said, “It is.” I still see these little bits, even though I’m not actively working in the space program. That’s the reach that it had, I think. Everywhere I go, I still run into things like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had worked Shuttle training for so long, but towards the end of your time here, we started with the International Space Station. I was wondering, how did things start to change in the training world now that we’re moving to a fully crewed Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "How things changed. They changed a lot. I’ll try to be clear. Prior to Space Station flights and the construction of the Space Station, Shuttle did some sort of deployment mission, and/or they did payload missions and science missions, not to say that any of those were simple. But they weren’t—let’s say if—and this is for example, because I’m not saying it happened—but there was some reason to slip a Spacelab flight, and the crew would be training in Marshall, and they would be training with Spacelab people, and that was the payload. They sat in there, and there were all these doctors and scientists that had experiments that they were also waiting fly on the Spacelab and see how things turned out. Let’s say that mission was going to go in May of a year, and it ended up slipping; it was indefinite. It was not going to impact either mission in front of it or behind it because they were independent missions.\\n\\n When Station came along, they were simply build flights. It had already been planned how the Station would be assembled, piece by piece. If a Station assembly flight on a Shuttle, maybe the hardware wasn’t ready, the piece that they were supposed to take up, or the Russian side slipped, you couldn’t leapfrog over one to the other, because each mission was assigned that next piece. It became a little more difficult for the program when there were flight slips. All it did was just compress the timeline that they had. It would affect every mission after it. Does that make sense? You needed to take up the truss, the zero truss, and anybody that had the next trusses to go up couldn’t go up until you got that truss up there. That was one of the biggest things I saw as an effect to that.\\n\\n It affected how you trained, and in some cases, it compressed some of the timelines for the training. Maybe that thing that you were taking up for Space Station did slip, but it wasn’t such a long slip, maybe it was a month or so. There still is crew next to you training that’s on the next flight. It compressed your time to be able to get everything done. When I say “your time,” whoever you were supporting that mission. Whether it’s a trainer, a crew, the people having to get the procedures ready, the mission controllers, and being able to get all of their required training in, the integrated sims in if the stuff was down at KSC in the Space Station processing facility. In other words, everybody’s timeline might get a little slip, but you still try to make it, because you really didn’t want to slip that next flight if you didn’t have to, because it’s just a domino effect. That was the biggest thing.\\n\\n I think that the second way that I saw it change, that impacted us [the instructors] directly, was that they built a Space Station simulator. That was fine. It was right next to ours in another part of the same building, in Building 5. In the past where we would do testing on all of that software, when we would do the requirements, we’d get our load and we’d have to make sure our training load worked for a Shuttle mission. Well, we now were integrating with a new simulator for the parts where they docked and were going to do whatever—attach that air lock, or that truss, or go out and service some equipment—whatever it was, those on-orbit pieces, we now needed to train with these two simulators.\\n\\n Initially, in the first few flights, the simulators didn’t play well together, for lack of a better word, so that became quite a task to get them to work. We would test them together, for example, bringing the two ECLSS (environmental control environments, Environment, Control and Life Support Systems) together oftentimes was a thing that would just kind of take them both down. It just wasn’t working. It was probably a few years before that got where it worked a lot better.\\n\\n Each time, I would just remember that the two teams—because there would be a training team in the Station, and a training lead in the Station simulator, and you’d be working with them on headsets, before you ever got Mission Control involved. We had one simulator and one Mission Control room. When we had the ISS, if it was orbit, we had two simulators that had to connect and play well, and then we had two Mission Control rooms, a Station control room so it just got more complicated in that respect. It took a few years, but eventually it got ironed out, and things got smoother, but there was a lot of learning. A lot of late nights, a lot of what we called anomaly reports on the simulator: This doesn’t work; you got to get it fixed. We’d be writing ARs [Anomaly Reports] all the time, and the poor software guys were trying to noodle on these things. How can we fix it and work together? Because it was two separate sets of programmers that programmed each one. That’s how our world changed. For all of us, and not just us; it was the Station guys as well.\\n\\n The third biggest thing I would say as a trainer that impacted us when Station assembly flights came along is, in the past, those crew assignments that you had. The smallest crew I was ever assigned was the crew of STS-93, so it was five people total. Between those five people, they had distinct tasks, and you usually didn’t have as full a flight with activities as you got with the Station assembly flights.\\n\\n Let me explain. Chandra, the main objective was deploy the Chandra X-ray Observatory. That was the big thing. There are always lots of little experiments or tests that they may be doing, but none of them require flight critical, on-orbit type training. You don’t have them all stacked together like rendezvous proximity operations. Every Station mission was going to have that as a given, because you’re docking and building on. That’s a very critical operation. Every rendezvous and docking would also have maybe two, three, four EVAs on them, that’s a whole lot of training for the crew members that going to be doing those EVAs as well. There was an element of resupply obviously needed once we had crews living on Station, so you might be taking up a multipurpose logistics module (MPLM) full of stuff that you were trying to stock the Station with, and then stuff to bring back that they didn’t need anymore.\\n\\n All of that took extra training, if you had it all added to one flight. The Station flights became more loaded with a lot of very critical and normally high task, and therefore high training requirement activities. The flight plans got a little fuller, but the training plans also got a little bit fuller. At that time, they separated [kept the ISS crews and Shuttle crews training flows separate].\\n\\n Let me back up. There were two ways that you could get crew members to the Space Station. They could go up on the Space Shuttle, or they could go up on the Soyuz. For those that went up on the Soyuz, all of the crews—the Space Station crews—spent [an] amount of time training in America, and an amount of time training in Russia, and that was worked with a set of training managers there and in Russia that determined what that would be. It might be a two-year training flow or a year-and-a-half training flow. You’re going to be in Russia here [during a certain timeframe], you’re going to be there, and then you’re going to fly back this time—the last-minute details of working with the Shuttle crew you’re going to go up with. Then you launch.\\n\\n At first, there was not a whole lot of interaction between those [ISS] crews [launching to ISS on a Space Shuttle]. It was almost as if they were flying up on a Shuttle, they were passengers. They weren’t assigned any Shuttle tasks, in other words. If you think about having all of these Shuttle missions, which now have a rendezvous, proximity operations, a docking, four EVAs sometimes, and then any other experiment, maybe it was IMAX. That requires training and teaching them how to use that. Anytime we teach them how to do something normally, you also have to teach them about the malfunctions in some way, so that adds to the training.\\n\\n What we were seeing was, you had seven seats in the Space Shuttle, and only four of them were actual Shuttle members of your crew. Because the other three were ISS crew, you couldn’t use them, so these four crew members would get really heavily loaded in their training, right? Their hours in training would go up, and that’s what I began to see as a concern. Just like you don’t want your airline pilots having long duty days such that they’re tired and they don’t get enough sleep—it’s documented. There’s evidence that when people are tired, when they’re fatigued, they will make more mistakes. They may not process things as well as they normally do. It was a concern. That was sort of the biggest effect I saw for those missions where it was a Shuttle taking up the ISS crew because that took away, potentially, bodies that you would have assigned to the Shuttle side, that could then be used by that commander to do those things.\\n\\n I did raise that issue on STS-102. Long story short, I don’t think the two programs had been talking [about the unintended consequences caused by keeping the crew training separate for ISS and Shuttle]. It’s just like, oh, Station—I don’t think they intentionally meant it to be separate, but it just was a lot easier when you’re talking about it on paper [in planning that ] the Station crews will just be separate, and the Shuttle crews will be separate. Then when we started trying to train those, we realized these people are having long, long days to get in all these requirements, especially EVAs. You can be in that [Neutral Buoyancy Lab] pool sometimes and the way the schedule just worked, they might have them going from your ascent sim into an EVA for eight hours. So we just began to say, this isn’t going to work.\\n\\n They reached sort of a happy medium at some point where they realized—because some of these American crew members that were flying up as part of the Space Station crews were many times flown Shuttle crew members that could maybe not be assigned a major task that would require a lot of training, but they had some previous knowledge, and maybe they could help with some of the photo, TV things. Maybe they could help with the [hand held] laser on rendezvous, and whatever. We left that up to the commanders later to use them [and how they would use them on their flights]. I think it got much better toward the end, but when it first happened, it was one of those things people didn’t think about the unintended consequence of, “Let’s just keep them separate and bring them back together a few months before.” It put a heavy, very heavy, load on the smaller Shuttle crews as the missions got more complex." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was the change out from Expedition One to Two? That 102 mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. The thing about that is, that particular mission timeline also got crunched for that same reason I was talking about. As things slipped, you still tried to make the dates. It just began to roll down [it snowballed]. So we didn’t have quite as long to train STS-102, which was the expedition flight that took them up. My training team trained them. I was seeing the effects of that. The other thing that I also began to experience is as we got to the end of that training flow and they were getting ready to launch, I had already been assigned my next crew for a Space Station assembly mission. We got our next crew, which was unheard of [in the past]. You usually at least got a little—not that you got time off—but you got time off from flight-specific training. We were in the end of our training STS-102, and we had already begun to have early briefings with the STS-110 crew, which was our next crew. They were initial briefings and now moving into the training flow. We were just beginning to see all of that extra work that was coming along with the first crews that were going up on the Shuttle to go to Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know we’ll get to this later, but I have to ask now, because it’s an obvious question to ask. Was this because of the deadline set to complete Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t know that at the time. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t know that at the time. In our little world—not that we didn’t get out and talk to people—when you’re training that simulator and you’re focused on that mission, you don’t understand why they’re saying, “We’re not moving the launch date.” I have come to learn since then, but yes, that seemed to be what it was. We didn’t know all that was going on, because that kind of goes on up at this much higher level [organizational level]. Maybe Congress and other people are involved. It didn’t necessarily roll down to us at that time. I just knew that the timeline was tight. Didn’t know the reasons why. I was raising it to my management.\\n\\n When you got within 12 weeks of flight, we were required as team leads to go in and brief status to our management, and there were reps in that meeting from the Astronaut Office; the chief of the Astronaut Office was invited to attend or his or her rep. Everybody could hear, “Okay, here’s how the training’s going from the team lead’s perspective. The Station team lead would do the same thing. You would stand up and brief it, and you did that every week until they flew, so that any issues could be brought up. I do remember bringing that up when I began to see the schedules come out, and I knew that we, as a training team, were simming unbelievable amount of hours. Who are we simming with? We are simming with our crew, but I’m also looking at the other requirements on their time for training in the NBL [Neutral Buoyancy Lab] and training in the mockups in Building 9, or maybe some sort of payload training.\\n\\n I hadn’t seen this in my entire time in the training division with just the Shuttle crew missions. Hadn’t put it all together in my head, but I do recall asking my boss—went in and told him, “I don’t think this is necessarily safe, or the way we want to do this going forward. I don’t know who we have to ask, but is there any way that we can slip mission, even two weeks, just to give these guys a break? Four weeks would be great, but we’ll take what we can get.” They kicked that off. They got the head of MOD [Mission Operations Directorate] together, and they got everybody together. How’s everybody doing preparing for this mission? Because we were feeling a little crunched. What basically came back, is just about every division in MOD stood up from the flight control world, but whether it was Station or not, and we could use more time. We don’t have these things ready. We’re really pushing to get them ready for flight. Stuff like that.\\n\\n I don’t remember how it all happened, but I do remember that they then began to—there were training managers, so these were people who put the schedules together for the crews. They began to work together and first thing was they began to use previously flown Shuttle crew members that were going up on a Shuttle flight. They began to use them and work where they could use them. Work with the commanders that were flying the Shuttle for that mission, taking them up, and use them where they could to alleviate a little bit of the pressure. Then these training managers also began to report weekly on the crew loading. How many hours were they [doing] and trying to keep it, if you’re judging it by a stoplight—red, yellow, green—trying to keep it in the green. Maybe a little into the yellow sometimes, because that always happened with any flight. There were weeks you just had to train more hours, but you didn’t want it to be a consistent thing for months and months on end, because that’s just fatiguing and not good practice. It did get better after that, but those first few flights were kind of hairy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like it. From what I also read, you were also providing some real-time support for Mission Control occasionally. Can you talk about some of the times you might have been called?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Well, it’s a side benefit or side effect of being an instructor and coming up through the instructor ranks. This was everybody in the training division. You worked so closely with the mission controllers. You learned the systems, because you have to learn the systems to teach the systems, that you can sit in Mission Control with the system you’re certified on and you understand the signatures, pretty much, like a flight controller would, but you may not have gone through the flight controller actual certification.\\n\\n I’m trying to think of when this was. It was probably in the early 2000s. They asked the team leads if we could—I don’t recall if it was they were shorthanded, or if it was attrition, or if it was just that we’d had some Shuttle mission controllers go over to the Station side because that was now 24/7/365, right? Either way, they didn’t have people to sit in the Mission Evaluation Room [MER], in Building 30, which is a backroom that supports every mission. Has a lot of different folks in there, and one of those positions is the spacecraft analysis (SPAN).\\n\\n They asked for the missions going forward—I believe the first one I worked was STS-105—if the team leads could come in and do shifts. Because it was basically gathering data from others in the evaluation room, and at periodic intervals, when they would hand over from flight control team from flight control team, reporting out to the flight director. Here’s the status and here’s what we got. You would get consumables information from the consumables guy. Anybody that was having an issue or anybody who had requested the evaluation room look at something. You might get the stuff passed back to the SPAN room to forward on and report up to the flight director. You would sit for a shift, and talk to people as required. Just like anybody sitting in there, or the flight director, or any flight controller, or anybody in that room could call you and say, “Can you get me this?” or “Can you find out more about this?” or “Can you send me this? Have you got this report yet?” Then if you weren’t responsible for the report, which we usually weren’t, we’d call the person that was. “When are you going to have me the report?” That’s really what it was.\\n\\n They knew that the team leads had been [around] enough. Because you do time in your training flow as an instructor. You sit a lot of time in the Mission Control Center learning from those guys from the time you’re—I’ll call you a baby instructor. Before you get certified, you will sit in the backrooms with everybody that you’re learning from. Then you sit—and there’s a certain requirement that you do that—then you learn; that’s how I learn better, because you can go watch actual mission stuff happening, or during sims, and you can begin to understand how they handle it. You begin to understand why did you see that that was a leak and not just a sensor? They would be able to tell you later. You would learn.\\n\\n Then by the time you were a team lead, you had a pretty good handle on rounding up people, getting things from them, and disseminating things to higher-ups. That was what the SPAN position was all about in the MER that we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there ever any time when something happened on orbit that they called you because they were, “We need to figure out something, a solution?”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that too. The team leads did real-time support in the form of sitting in Mission Control, but every member of a training team, when their crew went into quarantine, was given a beeper, back then. A beeper with your own little number, and your team lead would fill out everybody that got their beeper, and it would be handed to them and you had to wear it on your person or have it near until post-landing. That was in case something happened that they needed you to come in for.\\n\\n You also had a backup. That was the prime team for that crew. Because you don’t know when this is going to happen—it’s entirely possible that somebody may be out of range or not able to get back in in time. Because we didn’t put them on a requirement, “You have stay in town.” Most people did stay in town, but sometimes they were down at the Cape. If it happened right after launch, you couldn’t get back, so there was a backup team that also had numbers. You would give the beeper to them, and when the person came back they’d hand it back, but you always had a backup person for each discipline.\\n\\n I got called in two times for real-time support, and one time it wasn’t officially real-time support, but the crew was down getting ready, and it was a docking thing. Something changed with the attitude of the Mir, and we had to go in. We got called in to do some sims and sort things out before the docking the next day.\\n\\n The two times I got called in, was on STS-60—this was one of those cases where I don’t believe they were not able to deploy the Wake Shield Facility as planned. That’s one of those cases where it changed the time, and therefore the environment in which they were going to be—maybe the sunlight was now going to be in their eyes, or things like that. We got called in for that. That one was less critical, but more of a function of going into the simulator. Anytime you do that—the crew is usually asleep, and maybe they’ve, and I’m really having to dig back here—but as I recall, I know they couldn’t deploy on the first attempt. Everybody’s trying to figure out why can’t we deploy this Wake Shield Facility? Pretty much called it a day.\\n\\n The planning shift comes on, and Mission Control, it was during that time they were trying to look at what had happened. Sort through, do we know why it’s not deploying, and what can we try for tomorrow? When they decided they were going to try the next day, that’s when they called us in, and they call in astronauts who are also on-call to come over to the simulator. The flight planners put together the new profile for the deploy and a lot of them usually come over. We all sit in the simulator with the crew members and do the deploy on the ground with the new daylight visuals, or sun position relative to the attitude of the Shuttle. Whatever it was. That’s what’s sticking in my mind, was they were worried that the crew was going to be doing it in sunlight, and it might be a little bit difficult. Don’t quote me on that. Okay, quote me on that, but I might be wrong. I’m old now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ll get a chance to review." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can fill it in later. We went in for that one, and that one was a pretty cut and dried one, because you’re going through the procedure and making sure. You’re talking back and forth. There’s some flight controllers there, payload guys. They’re relaying information back to the guys in Mission Control, because they’re writing all this [in real time]—what we’re finding out. Does anything need to change, because we’re going to send the execute package up to the crew when they wake up. That’s the whole purpose. We’re in there doing all of that. There was nothing anybody saw, so we got called in. We did our job; we went home. It was pretty benign. Didn’t see any problems.\\n\\n The next one was STS-102, and I’ll never forget because it was St. Patty’s Day. We had gotten back from the Cape. The whole team had gone down to see the crew launch and come back. It was March 17th, St. Patty’s Day. It’s a Saturday, and we’re all just like, “Whew.” Okay. Everybody’s doing their own thing. My team’s scattered to the wind, and it’s our first real weekend off from training in a long time. I had gotten invited to the Outpost for a St. Patty’s party, and a bunch of friends were going down. I’m like, “Oh great, I’ll meet you there.” I hopped in the shower because I’d been doing yard work. I hear this noise. I’m like, “What is this?” The shower’s going, and I’m like, “Is my alarm going off?” Then it dawns on me, and I’m like, “Oh, crud. That’s the flight beeper.”\\n\\n I get out of the shower. I go, and I call back in. My boss, the team leads’s boss—over all the team leads and Sim Sups—it’s him on the phone. He says, “Guess what I’m doing?” I said, “Working.” He said, “Yes.” He goes, “Guess what you’re doing?” I said, “Working.” He said, “Yes, I need you to round up the team and get to the simulator within an hour.” I’m like, “Okay, what happened?” He proceeded to tell me, and then it sort of rolls down. It’s a call list. He calls me, and then I got to call my whole team. If they can’t make it in, they got to call the guy who’s their backup.\\n\\n The way it turned out is they’re on-orbit. They had received a “Freon flow low” message. The EECOM [Environmental, Electrical and Communication] had seen that. Those are not normal. That was a little unusual. Got the EECOM’s attention. Freon loops are what help cool and remove the heat [from the Orbiter equipment]. It goes out through the Freon loops and gets radiated and gets out into space. It’s the way they shed the heat. Obviously if it’s low, it looks like it’s getting too cold. Maybe we’ll turn on some equipment. When you get on-orbit, a lot of things get powered off you don’t need anymore. Some of those are the GPCs. You don’t have all of them powered up. The EECOM’s solution to turn on some equipment to get more heat was turn on one of the GPCs.\\n\\n The way it was related to me is there were three switch positions on the GPCs, and there was a certain protocol for how you started them up, going from them being completely off. There was an off position—that’s where the switch was—then a standby, and then a run. There was a certain amount of time in the procedure that you needed to wait in standby before you took it to run. There was some concern—and this wasn’t a concern that day—but the way that the procedure was written, there was a concern. Way back when, that if you did that, you could potentially corrupt some of the software by going right through there [immediately from standby to run], potentially. I don’t know all of the ins and outs of how it was programmed, but that was the concern, so that’s why the procedure was written that you did this pause.\\n\\n Apparently the crew member did not pause long enough, so this then set off this whole question of, okay, what do we do now? Because those GPCs were not large enough to house all of the software needed for every phase of flight. You would have the pre-launch and ascent software loaded. Then when you got on orbit you would load the orbit stuff, and so on, so forth. What they were concerned about was the entry load. They were in no danger right then and there, but they were very concerned about that [for entry].\\n\\n We got called in because the Mission Control Center was simultaneously working with their backrooms and other people, trying to find out—this 10-second rule of staying in standby, where did that come from? Was it padded? Some of these procedures were written a long time ago. People were off working on that, but we had to come in then and look at the normal procedure that you would go in to for a failed GPC and redline it for this situation. Again, same thing, my team, we all assembled at the simulator. The astronauts who were here that were on-call for those sorts of things came in, and we began to work through what they called [Failure Recovery Procedure [FRP]-1, which was a DPS [Data Processing System] malfunction procedure. It was about that thick. [Demonstrates] We began to work through that, and it was a recovery type of procedure. Because we weren’t sure we even had a failure, there were things that the data processing system instructor on my flight was having to go through.\\n\\n I remember I had flight controllers on the phone over to MCC [in the simulator]. DPS flight controller who was not on console, standing right next to my DPS instructor. They were both looking at the FRP, and meanwhile the astronauts were out in the simulator working through the procedure and working through the steps. At each step, they go, “Do we really need this step? No. No, we can’t do that here.” They were literally redlining it [the procedure]. Then she would call it back over to the Mission Control Center. Because we were coming up very quickly on the time when the crew would be awakening, they were hoping to get a reworked procedure up to them [the crew on orbit] in the execute package.\\n\\n That took hours. It really did. We had a cast of thousands. Then word got out. The potential, if they couldn’t figure this out, we might have to to engage the BFS (the backup flight software system), which had never been done. We had it [the BFS]. It was developed by a different vendor than the GPCs [software], for obvious reasons. What if we had some issues with the GPCs [software]? It was developed to fly the Shuttle and work the Shuttle just like the others [GPCs] did, but that way you wouldn’t maybe have the single code glitch that might take down everything. This got everybody’s attention when even the mention of potentially having to engage the backup flight software system.\\n\\n One of the big concerns about the backup flight software system being engaged, is you [the commander] had to manually fly [the Shuttle] everything after that [after you engaged the BFS]. There was no automatic [computer flying the Shuttle]. Any flying that needed to be done, the commander was going to have to [manually] fly it. That would have meant, in the entry phase especially, because they do a lot of manual flying on-orbit, but in the entry phase, after you’ve gone on-orbit for however many days, flying the de-orbit profile to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. It was not something that anybody would take lightly. People just came [to the simulator] to watch [what we were doing] because they heard this was happening: the head of the Astronaut Office, the deputy of the Astronaut Office, deputy center director. We had mission controllers from DPS, the flight director who was over the [entry], because the mission management team [MMT] was meeting. Because that’s what they do. When something comes up that you don’t know how to do, that’s the mission management team’s job. They were waiting for our input, because that was data to help them make a better decision with all the other data that they had. We were getting called from folks over there [in the MCC]. “Have you got it yet? Have you got it yet?” I’m like, “We’re doing the best we can. We know we have to send the execute package up.”\\n\\n Finally we got through it. The chief of the Astronaut Office and the deputy were talking to me, and we went outside because it was just a den of noise. A lot of people talking, and everybody on headsets. That’s very uncommon, actually. We walked outside the instructor’s station, and at the GNS, you’re in the bank of those big mainframe computers that are running that baby, so it’s fans and noise, but it was actually not as loud. They were getting ready to go over to sit in the MMT meeting and were just asking me how I thought it went. I said, “Look. If you ask me, this crew—we had a tough training schedule—they’ve had a tough flight. Not that I distrust any of these crew members—they were well trained—but I think we ought to be very careful about engaging the backup flight system. Right? That would not be my first choice.”\\n\\n They left and went over and were like, “Well, are you going to come watch?” Normally I would have walked over because it’s just walking from the simulator over there [to the MCC], but I was so tired. We were just all mentally drained. It was about 10 hours, start to finish. I just sat there, and I’ll never forget—Wendy [B.] Lawrence was the Space Station Astronaut Office lead at the time. She was still sitting there. I came back in, and I said, “I’m just going to sit here and listen to the MMT,” because you could call it up on the loop. She’s like, “Do you mind if I stay?” I’m like, “No, go ahead.” Three of us—I can’t remember who the third on was—we all just sat and listened to the meeting. It went round and round, and there was this concern that the entry flight software would be corrupted. Nobody really wanted to do that [engage the BFS], and the flight director running the MMT kept saying, “We’re waiting to find out if anybody can tell us why. Number one, if there was this rule of 10 seconds, if it’s a hard and fast rule, we just want to understand [why it’s 10 seconds]. When you wrote it [into the procedures] was that out of an abundance of caution, or what?” Still couldn’t get the answer on that.\\n\\n Finally this person in the back of the room—and to this is day I still don’t know who it was—stood up and said—I knew he was obviously from the software committee. He stood up, and he said, “There’s one thing we can try.” The flight director zeros in, “Well tell me what it is.” I don’t remember what it was, but it was one little trick that they could find to do that data dump. See how the 1s and 0s lined up, and it would tell them [give them confidence the software was not corrupt]. By this time, the execute package for the crew had already gone up. They [the MMT] were still working it [the problem]. The package that went up was like, “Good morning Discovery,” and all of the morning’s news and stuff. Then it says, “Today you’ll engage the BFS,” because that’s where they left it [the MMT was still debating when the execute package needed to be uplinked to the crew].\\n\\n They didn’t want to send that redlined procedure. That mega procedure is a malfunction procedure you work all the time. It’s a very long one, and nobody wanted to redline it and then have them [the crew] try to go through it. That was risky. They were just going to engage the BFS and test it out. The MMT says, “Okay, well let’s try that [the suggested test from the software person],” and said, “When the crew wakes up we’re going to have to call them off of this—what went up about the BFS. And if that works, then we’re fine.” The crew at least got a little bit of a start.\\n\\n The pilot, I’ll never forget. He told me when he came back and said, “When I read that, I was like, “What?” All in all, whatever little test that guy did—I think it was some software dump or some dump of data—he’s obviously very much smarter than me. However those 1s and 0s lined up, we would be able to tell. It would give them enough comfort that the software was working as planned so that they could load the entry software when they got to the time to do that. That one was a little more exciting than the Wake Shield thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They didn’t end up using the backup flight software?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They didn’t. As a matter of fact, right after the crew call—they wake up, and the execute package has gone up, they may very well have printed it out and look at it before the crew actually gives them their morning wakeup call. As soon as MCC started talking to them, they readjusted that, and said, “Okay, things continued, and we’re going to do this now. We’re not going to engage BFS.” Everybody was very happy. We ended the program without engaging the BFS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ll have to ask some of those old-timers and MOD if they remember why that rule was that way. I’m sure they won’t remember. It was many, many years ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To me, that really brought out—number one, how long the program had been going along. It’s one of those things—it’s why I’m glad you guys are doing this kind of stuff—that somebody probably knew; there was a rationale for it when they wrote it. It may not have ever really been tested that you needed to not do it. It became the norm. Also that rationale, as people moved on, maybe they took that data. It wasn’t necessarily written down anywhere as to why, the actual engineering hard data. Why did you say this, then put it in the flight rules, and then put it in the procedures? To this day, in those 10 hours, no one had the answer. Not saying they didn’t get it eventually, but it made me think, “Wow, this is a longer program, for example, than Mercury, or Gemini, or Apollo.” We’re a generation in, almost, and this stuff could get lost as people move away, move on, pass, or change jobs, whatever it is. In the end, it all worked out, and the process worked.\\n\\n That’s why the Mission Control’s there. That’s why the MMT was there in those cases of stuff that wasn’t written down in the flight rules. Occurrences that would happen that were out of that flight rule boundary, and therefore procedural boundary, because the flight rules were established and the procedures were written based on what was in those flight rules to protect the systems [and the crew]. Things are going to come up that nobody planned for, and that was one of those. All in all, the process worked, the Mission Management Team and the Mission Control team working through it. The training team helping out. It all worked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were assigned to a couple of other teams over the years, and that was the Crew Procedures Control Board and the Joint Operations Working Group. What were those two groups? What was their task, and what was your role as a trainer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’ll take the Crew Procedures Control Board [first]. That was affectionately known as the CPCB, because we talk in acronyms. I was the training division rep for a short time. Well, short as in a couple years. The CPCB was there to control changes to the crew procedures. As I was alluding to, the flight rules are developed, and they are the guidelines for each system: each phase of flight, how they expect the flight control team or crew to handle failures, or weather, or anomalies, or various things.\\n\\n The flight rules, if you ever go pull them, they have different sections. They would have an ascent, orbit, entry section. Then they would have a section by discipline. There would be one for MMACS, EECOM, DPS, GNC [Guidance, Navigation and Control], so on, so forth. In the rules, they’ve tried to think of the things that may happen and already have a plan of action for how to handle them. If you lose one engine, and you’re within these boundaries, you will press to MECO [Main Engine Cutoff]. If you lose two engines and this is happening, contingency abort. If you lose one Freon loop or you have a Freon leak, you’re likely going take one rev [revolution around the Earth] and come home. It just laid that out.\\n\\n If you think about it, it was beautiful in its simplicity. Every time they were on orbit, nobody had to think through all of this if it happened. There was this set of things that were already pre-defined. You trained on those, and the procedures were written for the dynamic phases of flight, especially in the ascent procedures, based on that rule that said if you lose one engine in these boundaries, do this. You lose two engines, do this. This you’ll abort RTLS [Return to Launch Site]. This you’ll abort TAL [Transatlantic Abort Landing]. It was right there in front of the crews, and they worked it. The mission controllers knew those boundaries. They had it down. They had their procedures. Everybody knew what they were going to be doing if those things happened in those really dynamic phases of flight like launch, ascent, and entry, coming in on landing. Orbit, you had a little more time, because you weren’t sitting on the rocket engines underneath you and going somewhere really, really fast.\\n\\n That was what the procedures did; you didn’t want to change those procedures. Sometimes you had to change them. Usually it came up when you were in training or they were flying a mission, and you realize that didn’t really work in this case. Then you could write a proposed change to that. Everyone in MOD had a rep, and they would send out, “Here’s a proposed change to a crew procedure, and we will be reviewing all of these”—sometimes it would be a stack of them—“we’re going to be reviewing these at the next meeting before we approve them.” Nobody could just go in and change procedures, in other words. It was a control board so that every voice was heard, because you may think, “Oh yes, that’s fine.” The other guy’s like, “No, if you change that, then it affects this, this, and this.” In worse cases, “If you change that, that is really a bad thing because it might affect the software in this way. It might create this other problem or do damage.”\\n\\n You’d read it beforehand, and you would come with either your yea or your nay, and you would be able to state your case if you didn’t want it to change, and why. Then the board would vote on it. Oftentimes as the rep, it might not be in your area of expertise, but you would send it to the people in your division ahead of time. “Okay, I got to go represent this. Give me your feedback.” That was the control board for the procedures.\\n\\n The Joint Ops Working Group really started with the inception of Station. We had done a little bit for Mir flights, but it wasn’t a formal group. Anytime you bring two separate vehicles together, two separate crews, and you begin to plan flights, there’s other things you have to think of. It’s no longer just you and the vehicle that you’re flying on and your crew that you’re training. That Joint Ops Working Group would get together ahead of time. People would raise issues, the same thing. “Okay, I see the flight plan is planning for this on this EVA and adding this, we’re going to be doing this. This is the best way we think we ought to do it.” You’d put it again out to all of the reps, similar from all of the different groups, and everybody would weigh in. It was typically chaired by a flight director. There was representation from the crew office, and all of the MOD, and others maybe brought in.\\n\\n More or less, that one was the actual operation of these joint flights; what were things that needed to be thought of? Maybe new procedures needed to be written. Maybe there were better ways to do things than these people who were proposing. It was any number of things, so it wasn’t definitely the crew procedures in that case, but it was more or less looking at the flights that were coming up as they began to actually plan how they would carry them out. Those flight objectives I talked about in the flight requirements documents that were handed down from the program. They would start earlier, before the mission even flew. With these working groups, “Okay, how’s this going to go? What’s your proposal?” Whoever it was. Sometimes the training people would be the ones coming in. “We propose, because this is a new system, here’s how we’re going to train it. It’s going to require, however, engagement from this team, and can you guys support?” It was those sorts of negotiations. Sort of thinking ahead of time and planning for the joint operations and how they were going to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I thought we’d turn our attention to Columbia [STS-107]. Wanted to ask where you were on February 1st of 2003." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was asleep. I had moved in June/July of 2002. I had decided to leave NASA. Quite frankly, I wasn’t having fun anymore. Not that it was all about the fun, but it was beginning to be the compressed schedules, training all the time, and not getting a lot of time off. Also, I was getting older. One of the things I was thinking in my mind is, “Wow, I have so enjoyed and just loved doing what I got to do on Shuttle.” It was the weirdest thing. I remember coming back from a sim, sitting at my desk, and you know, “This is all going to end one day. The programs are going to go away, and I don’t want to be 50 years old trying to find a new job.” I don’t know why that popped into my head, but it did. It got me thinking. Every couple of years I had a friend who used to work here, had left, and gone to work for Space Command in Colorado, then moved from there to work with this consulting firm that supported military space. Every year she’d call me and say, “Oh, would you like to come up here? They would love to have you if you want a job.” I’d say, “No, I’m still having a great time; I don’t want to leave.” She finally called that year. I was like, “Well yes, let’s talk about it.” She goes, “No, really. You ought to consider coming.” I said, “I said yes,” because I had said no so many times.\\n\\n I went up there, interviewed, got a job, and I moved to Colorado. I was also getting very worried that we were pushing a little too hard. Things were happening. It just felt like we might have another accident, and that’s the honest truth. I had no idea it was going to be as quick after that as it was. I was not feeling real comfortable, and it just was a good time for me to leave.\\n\\n I was up there, and it was a Saturday morning. I was asleep, and I don’t keep the phone ringer on in my bedroom. Something just woke me up. I heard my house phone ring, and then immediately heard my cell phone ring, two different rings. My friends know better than to call me on a Saturday morning, that early, which would have been before 7:00. I’m like, “Darn it, they know better than that,” and I rolled over. It got quiet, and I’m like, “All right. Phew.”\\n\\n Then they both started again, and I thought, “Okay, that’s weird.” I thought something had happened to somebody in my family. I got up and thought, “Well I need to go see what’s going on.” When I got to the place where I had the house phone and I saw the caller ID, it was my dad. On the other caller ID it was my best friend here in Houston. I actually picked up her call, because I didn’t want to talk to my dad; I thought somebody had died in the family, and I was just going to be a mess. I picked up the phone, and she said, “Lisa, they’ve lost contact with Columbia.” I’m like, “What do you mean?” She goes, “They lost contact with Columbia. It’s gone.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “Turn on the TV.”\\n\\n As I’m on the phone with her, I walked in and turn on the TV. It just so happened that the news was on there, and I saw this helmet laying on the ground. They were already flashing bits of debris. Don’t remember too much after that, because I just kept saying to her, “No,” and she said, “Turn on the TV; turn on the TV.” I did, and the first thing that I saw was a piece of crew equipment that shouldn’t be on the ground somewhere in wherever it was. I still didn’t even know where it was at. I don’t remember much after that. I just fell down [to my knees].\\n\\n After that, I called another friend who was out in California, who I knew probably wouldn’t know. Woke her up even earlier. It kept ringing, and then I kept calling her back. Same thing, she finally picked up the call. We knew everybody onboard, and several of them were people I viewed as close friends over the years. Really, really hard. I know one of them she had grown up with, and was a very, very dear friend of hers, so I wanted her to know.\\n\\n There wasn’t much to say. I called my friend who was the team lead, because I knew she would be a mess. She was a mess. They [she and the 107 training team] were in the SCA [Simulation Control Area in the MCC], so they [had already] locked down the Mission Control Center [as part of the contingency procedures]. Well, the SCA’s in the Mission Control Center. They [the training team] all were in there, and when they got out, after they had quarantined everything [all the flight data and records. [Normally the training team] would decorate the hallways, the big, long hallway in Building 4 South, so when the crews came back you always had that ready for them [to welcome them back]. She, bless her heart, because her team was just a mess, went over and took down every piece of that [the decorations] then worked with the Astronaut Office later on what could they do [instead given the loss of the crew]. That was one of those rites of passage, that hall decoration is how you show how much you love your crew, and how great the training was, and welcome them back home. It was going to be stark to not have it there. What they came up with, which I thought was brilliant, that she did, was they got butcher paper and they let people write their feelings. People would come [and pay tribute on the wall]. They put pictures. Some of the pictures that they had from the mission and everything, but it was no longer the fanfare and the welcome home kind of thing. I thought that was really good [to give the people some outlet to express their grief and feelings]\\n\\n That’s where I was [Colorado]. I immediately wanted to be back in Houston, and I remember my new boss in Colorado Springs called, and said, “What can we do for you?” I just apologized. I said, “I don’t know at this point in time, but I know I’m going to want to go home.” He said, “Just let me know.” He said, “Do you need anybody to come sit with you?” I said, “No, I’m okay.” I was never okay, but of course I’m saying I’m okay. I was in shock. Quite frankly, I was in shock. The rest of the day is a blur. Lots of parts of that time are a blur.\\n\\n I was just really devastated because I had just been talking to Dave [David M.] Brown not too long before that. Rick [D.] Husband had come to Colorado Springs, and a couple of us that knew him, we met at the A&W and had burgers. He flew in real quick, and he was flying back out. He had come to Air Force Space Command for something. KC [Kalpana Chawla] was just a dear friend. All of them were great, but those were some that I just really, really liked, biked with, sang with, and just did stuff away from work for many, many years. From the time they were AsCans [Astronaut Candidates] until they flew. It was a difficult time for everybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then you were somehow contacted and asked to be an investigator. How did that happen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I flew to Houston for the memorial service. Then I flew back home. The memorial service was beautiful and awful all at the same time. Wanted to be there and be with my friends. The thing about being in Colorado Springs at the time—no one meant any harm—they knew I’d worked at NASA, but they kept coming in and showing me pictures of debris. It was not what I needed to see. They didn’t know that. They were just like, “Do you know what this is? Wow, look what they found.” I’m just like, “Eh.”\\n\\n At a certain point, about two weeks after the accident, I walked in to my new boss’s office, and I said, “Look. I need to take a little time off. I need to go home and just sort out whether I can stay here, or what I can do.” I really wanted to come help out in some way. I had a lot of friends who were working out in the field collecting debris. We knew the Orbiters, just like the guys at KSC, so we would be able to identify and maybe help lead some of the teams. That’s what I was wanting to come home and do, go in the field and help lead some of the teams, or work on some of the teams and try to find out what went wrong. That was first and foremost in my mind, and everybody that I worked with minds. All you wanted to know is, what happened?\\n\\n Also, I couldn’t even sit in my office without just bursting out crying like three times a day. I’m like, “Okay. This is not any way to work.” It was all over the news. I was just a mess. I flew back home. I stayed with my parents. It was good to be back here where I could be with friends who understood. We would just sit. We didn’t even have to talk, because we all knew what we were all going through. It was our worst nightmare. We were able to talk when we needed to, and it was a safe place. That was helpful for me.\\n\\n One day I’m just sitting in my bedroom at my parents’s house. I was staying in their guest bedroom. My cell phone rang, and it was a gentleman. He said, “Hi, this is Dan so-and-so from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.” I’m like, “Why are you calling? “Oh crap, why are you calling me?” I didn’t say that out loud, but that’s when I go, “Oh, okay.” He said, “We got your name from some folks working at NASA and said you might be a good person to come work on the Columbia Board with us, on the group that’s investigating the training.\\n\\n I said, “Well, yes. I’ll help out.” Because I was coming down and wanting to help out. I actually had been on the phone trying to figure out how to go out into the field. Long story short, he said, “Do you think your bosses will let you off for that long?” I said, “Well, as it turns out, I work for a consulting firm, so I’m pretty sure that if you guys want to get in touch with them, I can work for you,” because they were going to pay me anyway just hire me as a consultant. I called my boss in Colorado Springs and made his EA [executive assistant] get him out of a meeting. She’s like, “Well he’s in a meeting.” I said, “I think he’s going to want to hear this. Look, they want me to do this. They think it’s only going to be a couple of weeks.”\\n\\n He put them in touch with contracting people, and I showed up the next day at the Regents Park building where the CAIB [Columbia Accident Investigation Board] was housed. They were trying to find a desk for me, because it was just this hub of activity. There were people coming and going. It was, like I said, just flurry of people everywhere. They sat me in a room with people who each had 50-pound brains. Hard engineering that were talking through equations, velocities, and impacts. It was fascinating stuff, but when you think about the context in which they were talking, I was like, “I don’t want to be in here.”\\n\\n Then they moved me into what was known as Group Two. They had Group One, Two, and Three. Group Two was looking at operations, and safety, and training. That’s what they were doing. They came to me and said, “We have to go through all this quarantine data from the training records, the stuff in Mission Control. Half of it is in code, basically all the NASA acronyms. We can’t read this. We’ve tried, so we were talking with folks over in MOD and your name came up.”\\n\\n Basically, they needed someone who had recent experience in the training division, but was not a contractor on the Shuttle Program or working for NASA. I was six months out from doing that, so someone gave them my name, and that’s how I did that.\\n\\n My first task was looking at all the training records and ensuring that all the people were properly trained, from the crew, to the flight controllers, to the launch controllers, the mission personnel that support in any way. If there were training requirements for them, did they meet them? Had they been trained properly? NASA has always had a very good training process,—I won’t say it was quick. Look at the training file of each person. Look at the requirements book of what they needed to take. It was all in order. They said, “Well, okay, next thing is to go look at the data from MCC.”\\n\\n The guys that were on Group Two with me, it was led by General Kenneth [W.] Hess. He was one of the board members. He was the head of the Air Force Safety Center [Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico]. They were accident investigators. That was part of their job. If there were aircraft accidents or incidents from the Air Force, his team would do that. Also Steve [Steven] Wallace was a board member on Group Two, and he was the head of accident investigation for the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration]. The week I was there, they added Sally [K.] Ride, so she joined that week. She flew in and became the third board member representing Group Two.\\n\\n There were some Air Force Safety Center investigators in the room with me. There was an Air Force PhD psychologist from a standpoint from a lot of the crew resource management and studying accident investigations and how people react and things like that. There was an NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] investigator and an FAA accident investigator. Now I was the only one that had the NASA background, so that was good, but we’re talking about these investigators. For example, the FAA guy had investigated the JFK [John F. Kennedy], Jr. airplane crash and the Twin Towers.\\n\\n It was a little intimidating, but they all had some great experience. They were all wonderful people and realized that I was not in a fun position, because I was actually going to be looking at information about friends. Not only the ones deceased on the crew, but friends that were still here [at JSC]. It’s hard to grow up in MOD and not know a lot of the people and the players that were there. They were all very nice, and they introduced me to the world of accident investigation. You have to park the emotional piece. You can’t write emotionally about it. You need to just stick to the facts, and that’s what needed to happen. They realized for me that this was an emotional event. They were very helpful.\\n\\n We went over to the Mission Control Center. I’ll never forget the day we went there. I went with two of the Air Force folks from the Safety Center. We were all just going to go look at the data. As we pulled up, there was a huge—looked like a tour bus—in front of the Mission Control Center. That was weird at that time, because there was a guard check. I’m like, “Maybe it’s a Space Center of Houston tour.” Then I saw Cady Coleman walking up toward the bus. She had been a crew member of mine on STS-93. She came over and gave me a hug. I’m like, “What are you doing?” She goes, “Oh, these are all people who were out in the field. They just came in from Hemphill [Texas] and we’re just going to give them a briefing and talk to them about NASA and give them a tour.\\n\\n All these people are getting off, and you can tell they came in the clothes they were searching in, so they look like they’ve out in the field searching everything. I said, “Well that’s pretty cool.” You had these people out there just for the love of the program. Were volunteering their time. Everything from Forest Service people and firefighters, and just normal, everyday Americans. I just thought that was so cool. Here it was, it was very personal to us, but you realize it’s very personal to them, too. These are our American heroes in their minds, and something America’s very proud of. The space program is this shining example of what Americans can do. There they were, giving it their all. I was standing there talking to her, and she was shaking their hands. I joined in. I was like, “Thank you.” Because they were out trying to help us. Just shake their hands and say thank you for doing this. No, they didn’t have to. They volunteered their time. That was very touching.\\n\\n Then we went on into the Mission Control Center, and luckily the guys I was with—you’ve probably been in there, but there’s the turnstiles and getting around here and there. I don’t know what they would have done if I hadn’t been with them, because they’re going [demonstrates]—I’m like, “No, no, come this way.” You don’t know; is that an in-turnstile? Is that an out-turnstile? Those are the outs, and this is the in, and you got to put your little card in here. Then we were met by the Columbia taskforce, so a NASA rep who took us back.\\n\\n I was really surprised. Basically they had everything in the area off of the loading dock there at MCC. There was a JSC security guard at the door. They said, “Here are all the boxes. We’ll leave you to it. Only requirement is you can’t take anything out, but we’ve got a copier in here for you.” Blue paper, so that we could print off anything, but that way they could tell it wasn’t the real thing we were carrying out. I understood all that, but I just thought it was funny. It was all sorted out when we got there. We sat down. We spent two days going through.\\n\\n Basically what it was, it was flight log books. Each console either kept it—at that time, they could have kept it electronically. Some of still use the old log books that I was familiar with. It was any number of that. Looking through. That was from every position from flight director all the way around the room and all the backrooms. Reading through those for anything. You don’t know what you’re looking for but anything of note. There was the flight log books, and there were some tapes and things like that.\\n\\n When I first got here, the front page of The Houston Chronicle was talking about all of these mission controllers what-if-ing about the landing gear, and how did they know that this was going to happen? I immediately kind of chuckled. They didn’t know it [was going to happen], it’s just they had a failure, and the way we train them is you always think of what’s the next failure and what’s the next failure so that you plan for the next worse case. If it’s critical, you handle that first, but then you’re going to be looking at what’s the impact if the next thing happens? It was just good flight controllermanship. They were doing their thing, but to the world, it looked like they had some idea and they didn’t flag it. Not that at all. That was a flurry of activity in the paper for the first few days, and I felt so sorry for them.\\n\\n I knew half these guys that were talking all that stuff. They’re like, “Why did they wait to the last day to bring it up?” I realized when I got into those books that one of the reasons they waited until the last day is, for whatever reason, their being able to play the video on their particular console was broken, and they had turned it in to the IT [Information Technology] guys. It didn’t get sorted out. They had gone back and forth with whatever the problem was. They finally got it fixed the day before the landing. That’s why then all the emails started flying, once they got too look at the video of the foam hit. They began to do their what-if-ing with each other and get other people involved. It made perfect sense to me. They weren’t holding this, they just hadn’t seen [it]. They saw it, and then they’re like, “Oh, well this could be bad if it’s all these things,” but they had no idea the exact thing that happened.\\n\\n As an engineer that is trained as a flight controller, you’re going to be thinking, “What if it damaged something on the underbelly of the Orbiter? What if it damaged the landing gear door? What if it damaged this? What if it damaged that?” They weren’t thinking, “Oh, it’s put a hole in the reinforced carbon-carbon,” which we learned later. Hot plasma got in there, and there was a failure. Thank goodness I knew that, but also that the FAA guys told me, “You’ve got to remember, when you’re reading all these things, they don’t know an accident has happened. You’ve got to be looking at everything—don’t attribute to them some pre-knowledge, because they don’t know the accident’s happened.” As the mission’s going on, you’re seeing what they’ve written in real time, and everything was fine. They kept bringing me back to that, and it was an interesting thing.\\n\\n That was a couple weeks in. Then I was wanting to get out of there. I’ll be honest with you. My duty’s up, I’m ready to go home. I didn’t want to stay. Because every day one of the guys in my group was working with the medical staff, and I finally had to tell him, “Please quit.” Because he was asking me questions, “Okay, the suit. Tell me about the suit. Would they have gloves on, would they not have gloves?” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll talk to you about how things work, but don’t show me any pictures, number one.” They kept all those quarantined, and I don’t think he would have, but I just wanted to make sure. “Don’t ask me any questions that are personally about someone on the crew, but if you want to know about any of the equipment, I’ll talk to you or get you in touch with somebody that knows it even better than me.” He said, “Okay.”\\n\\n I’ll never forget, one day he was sitting over there. Because each day, pictures would come in from the field, from where they were searching and recovering debris. One day he was sitting behind me, and I heard him say, “Lisa, are there fire extinguishers onboard the Space Shuttle?” I said, “Yes there are.” He goes, “Well, what do they look like?” I said, “Well, they’re kind of short—not big ones—but short. About this round. [Demonstrates] They’ve got a little tube on them so they can shoot into the fire hole behind the panels. Got a little label on it.” He says, “Well come look.” I look, and there laying in leaves, like some leaves somewhere in a field, there’s a pristine flight fire extinguisher from Columbia laying there that someone had found. It still had the markings on it. I said, “Yup, that’s it.” He said, “Okay, I was just surprised they had them.” I’m like, “Well of course they have them. You got to be able to put out a fire.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you just stay those two weeks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well I just wanted to stay those two weeks. I was actually packing up my desk and getting ready to fly back to Colorado Springs. I’m a little like, “Phew.” The exec for General Hess, so another Group Two member, came walking down and he said, “General Hess would like to talk to you.” I went in. I don’t know if he talked to somebody or he knew or whatever, but he said, “I hear you’re leaving today.” I said, “Yes, sir, I am.” He goes, “You don’t have to call me sir.” I’m like, “Well everybody calls you sir.” He was very nice. He was actually a really, really sweet man. He says, “I just want to know something. Tell me why you left NASA.”\\n\\n I told him my story, which I told you earlier: why I decided to leave and all that other stuff. He said, “I’d really like you to stay.” I said, “Well, okay. How long?” He goes, “Until the end.” I said, “Well, how long is that?” He said, “However long it takes.” I really wanted to go home and sleep in my own bed. I had gotten my dog down here, but she was living in the hotel while I was gone, the Candlewood Suites. I said, “Well, let me go talk to my boss. See if it’s okay if I extend because they are my employer. I don’t know if they have work for me.” They said no [pressing work I needed to get back to], so I signed on [to continue with the CAIB], because I’m still not thinking it’s going to be really close to six months at this point in time, but that’s what it turned out to be.\\n\\n By this time, you’re getting more data and you’re timelining things out. You’re beginning to see questions that pop up. “Okay, we need to go look more into this.” At that time, he [Hess] had assigned the FAA investigator to look at the Mission Ops timeline and how things went, and the decision-making behind it. He assigned me to work with him. Again, it was a lot like I was the translator. I could translate some of the things they were reading, seeing, and explain things, the NASA-ese. If people were talking about procedures or this or that, I could translate things for them. He and I began to work together on just putting together the Mission Ops timeline from a what happened when, who knew what when, what emails. In addition to all of the stuff that’s quarantined at Mission Control, we could make a request. “Do you have the training records for these positions?” They [NASA] would send them in. “Can you provide us the emails from these roles leading from this time to this time?”\\n\\n We would make those requests through our Columbia Taskforce representative, which was Kelly [B.] Beck. She was the lead flight director for STS-107. My heart really went out to her because she was the lead on that flight, and that was her crew too and her team. She had my sympathy the whole time. She was very professional and did a great job, but there were days I know it was probably as tough on her as it was for me. She would make the request and they would get those things for us. We just began to look at that and put together a timeline.\\n\\n One of the things I got assigned to do was listen to all of the flight audio. I believe it was Flight Day 2, don’t know for sure, something flew off of the vehicle. The crew reported seeing something floating away from the vehicle. They asked me to hone in on that and if we could figure out what that was and what became of it. I worked to pull that together. Gave them my thoughts on what I heard, and was also able to get—through the request—whatever they needed to see about that.\\n\\n The Board would get together every morning at about 8:00. All the teams would come in, and if there was anything to be briefed on, the board member that you worked for would say, “Tomorrow you’re going to talk to the Board about your findings thus far on this.” Every day there was something like that. Then they would break at about 9:00, and everybody would go off doing their different investigations.\\n\\n One of the guys on our team was also looking at the history of foam coming off the vehicle. I’ll never forget. As the requests would come in, this data was coming in from each flight. He would get the history. If you imagine all the flights up to that point, he had mounds and mounds of data. It was his job to put together the history of the foam from start to finish, and how it was handled.\\n\\n I was working with the FAA investigator on the Mission Ops stuff. We spent a lot of time either going to interviews, going to look at the facilities. They needed to understand, for example, where was this person in relationship to this person’s office because they’re talking? In other words, sometimes it was really I need to understand how this was going on here. Where is this backroom flight controller who’s talking to this other one? I’d take them and show them. “Just so you understand, these guys are behind a wall here, so they’re on a headset. They’re talking.” They’re like, “Okay.” Sometimes it was that miniscule that they were trying to figure something out, and I’d be explaining, “No, it’s not what you think.” Sometimes it was just easier to drive over there. Finally I took them to try to explain to them, number one, you might be in very close proximity, but you’re separated by a wall, and you’re talking over a headset. Or you may be separated by a continent. You weren’t in this case, but you’re not always having these face-to-face conversations. You’re also looking at a lot of data, and that’s what you all might be talking about.\\n\\n At a certain point, when they were beginning to get some rough idea of what was going on, there was a whole group looking at just the actual cause—the foam—or what was it? They’re beginning to hone in on the foam. We’re still looking at how the operations went. I had already closed out the training stuff and turned in my write-up; they would figure out how that went into the report. I wrote rough drafts of what went into the report to give to them and to the members of the Board. Then they would decide what pieces they wanted to put in. There was a group of editors that worked with them on everything that went in the report.\\n\\n We had a lot of feedback from the interviews that seemed to reflect that people felt that there was some schedule pressure, if you will, for that date, for the end of the Station program. I got assigned the task of doing the schedule pressure investigation. This was toward the end of my—I won’t say the end, because it was still another two months—but toward the end of my tenure, I guess, because I’d already been there four months. They said, “We want you to look and see if there was any [evidence of] schedule pressure in this.” It was going to feed into that whole mission decision-making [piece of the investigation]. Because if there was schedule pressure to launch these things at a certain time, it can affect decision-making was the basic premise there.\\n\\n In doing that, I started looking at every schedule I could get, first off, just to see what were the schedules. That meant Orbiter processing schedules from KSC, training schedules from these guys, crew training schedules. Just what were the schedules around the flight that we needed to look at?\\n\\n There were people who had done just initial interviews, because they just began to interview players right after the accident. Those were all transcribed. If any of the board members remembered anyone speaking about, “Oh, well we were a little bit under the gun,” or any kind of little thing, they would say, “Go talk to this person more, or go talk to this person more.” By this time, and working for a couple of months with the FAA guys, they literally had a whole timeline on one whole wall—because we were in a big bullpen, just one big conference room that had a bunch of desks around it and a big conference table in the middle for Group Two.\\n\\n We also had beads hanging in the door and lava lamps. People were doing things to break the tension. All these guys were living away from their families. They were not from Houston. You’re staying in hotels and you don’t know the area, you’re missing your family and your kids. One guy came in one day, and he just set this lava lamp on his desk. Everybody’s like, “Where did you get that?” “Target.” The next day, another guy gets one. I started getting a lot of crap for not having a lava lamp, so I bought one. We became known as the lava lamp room. It was a little bit of levity in a really awful situation.\\n\\n That’s how we handled it, and we also had an admin named Helen who was great. She kept us stocked—that big, long conference room. We had those meetings with the Board every morning, but then the group would meet every afternoon to close. This was usually closer to 6:00 p.m. to talk to the group members about that day’s findings, just talk through things and answer their questions. She kept Goldfish, chips, and Hershey’s Minis in the table there. That was what the room was like.\\n\\n These guys, on that long hall, had placed this timeline. It was butcher paper, and each day they would find something, they would just put it on the timeline. They wouldn’t ascribe any, “This is what I think it means.” It was just, “This email here.” Or, “This flight event here.” They would just put it on the timeline. Lo and behold, after a certain point in time, you could kind of see how this decision was made here. It began to tell the story. They kept telling me that. They’ve been doing this for years. It began to tell a story, without anybody [filling in the blanks]. It was just a fact. A fact, a fact, a fact, a fact, a fact all along this timeline. The story began to speak itself. That’s what I found fascinating. I’d never done anything like this. Over the months, that timeline got filled with more and more stuff. If there was something they wanted to dig a little deeper into, they would tag it, and somebody would be sent off to work it and talk to people and understand it more. It was pretty amazing, that timeline.\\n\\n It was similar to the engineering timeline that was on a big hallway out there of the flight. How it broke up, the pieces, and where they were found, to tell the physical story of what happened to the vehicle. Here was one that was telling sort of the emotional story, or the people speaking and doing their job kind of story, not the vehicle, not the engineering, not any of that. That was beginning to take place. You had both of those that you’d see every day. They got more and more fleshed out. It was pretty fascinating to actually see how that, over time, transpired and grew and grew and grew. Someone just needed to put words around it, because the story was there. Pretty fascinating.\\n\\n Anyway, I began to work on the schedule pressure piece. In the middle of all of that, the person I was renting the house from in Colorado—because I was going to rent the first year I was there so I could see where I wanted to live, and then buy—who had told me, “Oh, you can stay as long as you want. We’re not going to need it back for years, because I’ve remarried, I’m living with my husband,” calls in the middle of May and says, “Well, your lease is up in June and we need you to move out because we’re moving back in.” In the middle of all of this, I’ve got to go find a house. I did that, but I told General Hess, “I have to go back to Colorado Springs, but I can take my computer. I can work there and I can do a lot of this stuff as phone calls. You guys can send me the data electronically.”\\n\\n They agreed, and I went up there, and I had found a house that was already built. A new one, but it was built, and it was in a good area. I loved it, bought it. Believe it or not, I had my mass of friends who lived up in Colorado Springs—it was like Acme Moving Company. Acme Moving comes in, they move me in one day, and a good friend from the Army who was up there. My friend Michelle Truly and her husband Mike, and Susan [J.] Helms who was Expedition 2 crew member was now up there, had gone back to the Air Force, and Brian Lee, who was an army colonel. They helped move me in one day and get me moved in. I didn’t have all the boxes unpacked, but my furniture was in. I sat with my computer on a box and did a lot of my writing and phone calling from a box and my laptop.\\n\\n Just before I’d left, though, I had begun to look at all those schedules that had come in. I began to notice it seemed like number one, the mission training schedules were really compressed. For example, the flight controllers, every year or every couple of years, they have to recertify. It’s a proficiency requirement. There were a group of people that their cert records had not been signed. That had to be called out in the report. It was called out in the training piece. I thought that was weird, but in looking at it they had continued to work straight through and had no problems. These were very experienced, so there was no loss of proficiency in other words. They weren’t off console where they were going to get rusty. In fact, they were on console a lot, working all of the missions.\\n\\n I stated that in the write-up, because I didn’t feel like the fact that they weren’t done—but to me it was a little flag that because of this, they’re not able to fulfill the requirements. Either change the requirement to say, “If you’re continually on missions—” because here it looks bad if you don’t get this requirement filled. They didn’t fill it because they were actually doing the job that they’re trying to prove they’re proficient in, and they’re obviously proficient. Those kind of things.\\n\\n Then I began to see the Orbiter. To me, it was almost like there was this little dance going on, because they were having to move one in, and take one out, more moves than I had normally seen in the past, and just knowledge that you had of that. Then you began to see emails from working groups, or meeting minutes from meetings about Space Station, and them needing to move stuff either on the Shuttle or off the Shuttle. There’s a weight limit to go up, so sometimes you’re trading things off. A lot of this all just kind of came to a head.\\n\\n I’ll never forget. I went down the hall. When Sally Ride joined the Board, obviously she had a NASA background. She spoke the lingo. She understood what a team lead was, what I had done, when they told her. I was her person she’d come to first, there in the room, to ask, “Well how do they do this now? Because I know this is how they do it.” I’d say, “Oh, they still do it the same.” Or, “Here’s how they do it now.”\\n\\n I was beginning to see a picture in my mind, because I was laying my timeline out on the table in the form of the schedules. It was very late one afternoon, just before I left. I went down there, and I said, “Sally, do you mind coming down here and take a look at this? I just want to see what you think, because you know what these are. You’ll know them when you see them. Just give me your impressions.” Because I already had my impressions, but I was really not wanting to be biased in any way, and I didn’t want to bias her. I just wanted to see if she and I were drawing the same conclusions. She’s like, “Sure.” She came down there, and I kid you not, this is a very long table. It’s probably about 20 feet long. Everybody was gone. I said, “Well just start here. I’ve got them all laid out, and you just take a look at these.”\\n\\n I’ll never forget. She kept grabbing handfuls of Goldfish, because we had the Goldfish and the candy. She would have her hand like this [demonstrates], and she’d be popping them. She’d read this schedule, or this document from NASA, and she was just walking down there, and she’d just be popping them [the Goldfish]. It was like, “Hmm.” Kind of like this [demonstrates]. All the way down. When she got down to the end, she tells me everything I thought. Verbatim. I didn’t say one word to her other than, “Tell me what you think and what you see here.” That’s when I thought, “Okay, I think we can start writing something here.” I just laid out the actual NASA documents based on the flight and when they came out and the timelines.\\n\\n She was the one assigned to work with me on this piece. She didn’t work on it, but when I wrote, all of my drafts went to her and the FAA investigator. When I was in Colorado Springs, when I got back there, I sent my first drafts, and she would wordsmith it. I’ve actually saved some of the emails [she sent me], because heck, this was Sally Ride. She got selected when I was a senior in high school and flew when I was just a sophomore in college. She wrote a note and said, “This is great.” By the time the draft got ready to be sent to other members, she actually wrote John [M.] Logsdon who was on Group Three. They [Group Three] were [writing] chapter five, and we [Group Two] were going to be [writing] chapter six. Part of my stuff, in the schedule pressure section, ought to go in theirs. She wrote to him, “Here’s the schedule pressure write-up. I think this part of Lisa’s write-up needs to go in section five, and you’re not to change a word of it.” I saved that email because that just made me laugh. He wasn’t going to say no to Sally Ride. I thought that was really nice.\\n\\n It was funny, because she was traveling back and forth. She lived in San Diego, so she would go home periodically. When I was working, I’d go home once a month, and then I had that extended time when I was moving. I’ll never forget, my car battery’s dead, so I went to Sears to get a new DieHard. I’m standing outside, and I’m in Colorado Springs, a beautiful city. I’m looking at Pike’s Peak, and my phone rings. It’s Sally Ride. She goes, “What are you doing?” “I’m at Sears.” She goes, “Oh.” I said, “But I am looking at Pike’s Peak.” She said, “Oh, well, I’m at home writing,” and she said, “but I’m looking at the ocean.” She said, “Well that’s good, at least we got something nice to look at.” We would call back and forth, and she would ask questions. There was a little bit more of investigation, or interviews, or call up people to find out more. We would get things from them, and it’s like, “I have a few more questions.” It was that kind of stuff.\\n\\n Then ultimately, I got a call in July. That was June, so probably mid-July. The CAIB had moved. It had left the offices here in Houston. All of our documentation, had people from the National Archive come down and take all of our computer hard drives and salvage all of that. That’s stored somewhere in the National Archive. I’m assuming, for historical reasons, I don’t know. Everybody’s computer, they had to come by. Also, if we had hard copies, they copied every bit of hard copy that we had. All of that was preserved. Then the CAIB moved, because they were then having to go to Congress and do hearings. People were beginning to want them to talk more about this, what it meant to NASA, when was it going to come out [in the report], and what’s the report going to say, all of that kind of stuff. There was more requirement for them to be in the DC area. I got a call, and said, “Okay, we like your schedule pressure draft, but we need you to come up here because we’re in the final push.”\\n\\n I went up for about 10 days, it was near Arlington. We were in an office there. Everything at that point in time was pretty locked down. It was locked rooms. You had to have keys and key codes to get in everywhere. A lot of people were trying to find out what the Board was going to say. I don’t mean NASA, just everybody. There was press. We had to shred. You can’t leave anything on your desk. It was a little craziness. I never quite worked in an environment like that.\\n\\n Sat in there. I wasn’t quite getting the schedule pressure piece. I could tell that the write-up was not exactly what they wanted. I sat down and said, “What is it that’s missing?” They said, “Well, it needs to tie together with the piece that comes before and the piece that comes after.” I said, “Well I haven’t seen those. Do you have drafts?” They’re like, “You haven’t?” I’m like, “No, I’ve been in Colorado Springs.” The minute they gave it to me, I read those, and I’m like, “Oh. Okay.” I was writing in more of a college paper type of format. This was more of a story. I’m like, “Okay.” I went back, and I just outlined it differently and told the story. They liked it, and that’s when Sally sent the thing. “Use this, but don’t change it. Don’t change a word.” She was actually pretty funny. She had a wicked sense of humor.\\n\\n Anyway, there was a sociologist on the Board who had written a book on [Space Shuttle] Challenger. She was brought back in [to the CAIB] by the Columbia board. Her book was called—well it was the one that had the normalization of [deviation]. I can’t believe I can’t remember it. The Challenger—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it’s Challenger Launch Decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Challenger Launch Decision. Yes. That’s what I was thinking.\n\nDiane Vaughan. Anyway, she was writing a piece in the next chapter about the comparisons to that. She was actually waiting on my piece to get finished to finish her piece. She had a draft. And when I read her draft and I read my draft, that was the first time I really understood the parallels to Challenger that had happened with Columbia based on the findings of that piece of our group that was working on that.\\n\\n Whatever you were assigned, that’s what you were working on. We would talk a little bit at the end of the day, but I had no idea. When I read her piece, I’m like, “Wow. Okay. That’s a little scary, but it makes you think how 19 years later we trend back into doing some of the old behaviors that were unintended consequences of when you’ve got really can-do people.” That’s the way I view it. At NASA, it’s one of the greatest environments to work in. The teamwork, and just the mission and the can-do attitude and spirit to pull off these great things. This was just Lisa’s perspective on it. You lose perspective on those unintended consequences of things that you’re doing to pull off these really wonderful feats and technological events. It’s kind of interesting.\\n\\n I finished that up. I hightailed it back to Colorado Springs, and about a month later, I woke up, getting my coffee, and I always turn on the news in the morning. Headline that came across—because the Board had released the report that morning—and the headline that was coming out of the TV was “Columbia accident investigation says schedule pressure may have been a contributing factor.” It was a strange day. I hadn’t actually read what was in there [the final report], but they had a whole set of editors that one-voiced [made it sound like it was written by one person] the whole report. They went through and did everything, but it was not edited too much from what Sally and the FAA guy and I had done. It was pretty much the same." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s Section 6.2?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "6.2." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you feel like that six months was a healing process for you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. Actually it wasn’t. The healing came later, and it was because I almost had to—as much as I could and it wasn’t easy—put that aside. Dealing with the grief, feeling it and healing it. I wouldn’t have been able to deal with a lot of that and then write about it. In other words, my emotions would have been too much involved, so I had to separate that. I had a long little talk with myself in my head when I was choosing to accept the CAIB. “Are you going to be able to do this?” Because I am a bit of a feeler, I love my friends. I feel things deeply. Not that most people don’t, but I’m an expressive kind of person. I cry, and I laugh loud. I get mad. I wanted to make sure I could do that without doing damage to myself, but more importantly, I wanted to do that so that it did the right things for my friends that died, for my friends that remained, and the program that I loved.\\n\\n I postponed that. When I got home, I have to say, I felt like I helped, number one. I’m not sure if that’s everybody’s opinion, but I felt like I’d done my part. Then it came over time, but I began to really feel that delayed effects of the grieving. The loss and the change of the program and all that other stuff. That was hard. It hit me hard. I had some long months after that. It was probably a couple of years, overall, before it finally got to where I could not bawl my eyes out if I saw a picture of the crew, or every anniversary, or things like that. I had not allowed that, so it was only natural it was going to come up some way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’m looking at the clock. I should have asked you. It’s 3:30, so I wasn’t sure. Do you have plans with your friends?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do. I probably need to—well let me just see if they’ve—they were supposed to tell me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We were just talking. I thought, “Well, it’ll just be a few more minutes.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Lisa M. Reed", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I told them 3:30. We may need another [session]." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00896", + "metadata": { + "category": "Earth System Science at 20", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/ESS/TapleyBD/tapleybd.htm", + "original_file_name": "TapleyBD_1-12-10.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/ESS/TapleyBD/TapleyBD_1-12-10.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Earth System Science at 20 Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Byron D. Tapley", + "location_date": "Austin, Texas – 12 January 2010" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Byron D. Tapley" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 12, 2010. This oral history with Dr. Byron Tapley is being conducted in Austin, Texas for the NASA Headquarters Earth System Science at 20 Oral History Project.\\n\\n This interview is part of a series that is gathering experiences from those who significantly were involved in the efforts to launch and foster the concept of Earth System Science. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thank you again for finding time in your busy, busy schedule to talk with us today. We’d like for you to start by telling us how you first got involved in your field of expertise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My introduction into the space research field came as Sputnik was launched in [October 4, 1957]. I had just finished my academic work, accepted an appointment at the University of Texas [UT, Austin, Texas] in the field of Engineering Mechanics, after performing my doctoral research on the plastic deformations of materials under high strain rates.\\n\\n When the Sputnik was launched, the university decided that it would be appropriate to introduce a space-related course in aerospace engineering. I was approached by the Chair of the Aeronautics Department about teaching the course. I decided that, if I were going to make this change, I wanted to develop a complete program, rather than just one course.\\n\\n The university agreed that I would develop a program in the field of astrodynamics, as a part of what became the aerospace engineering department. It was a big change to leave an active and mature program of research to initiate a program with a clean sheet of paper. This proved to be a very big challenge. There was no academic capability on campus. No curricula and no students at that point, and actually no one to have an intellectual discussion about space issues. There was considerable interest and excitement in the student body and after a couple years the first set of Ph.D. candidates began to mature and the program began to take on a life of its own, and a number of leading engineers and scientists at various NASA and other government centers, academic institutions and space related industrial firms passed through the academic program on the way to their numerous accomplishments.\\n\\n My early research was related to the theory of low thrust transfer trajectories, which was of interest in the early design concepts for interplanetary exploration missions The early research came out of a early meeting with Dr. C.R. [John] Gates who was in charge of Section 312 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This section had the responsibility for developing the guidance and orbit determination algorithms to support the unmanned lunar missions in the early decade of space exploration. In addition to encouraging NASA to provide the first research grant that I obtained, Dr. Gates provided an introduction to a number of pioneers in the space field including, Bill Melbourne, Carl Salloway, Tom Hamilton, Harry Lass. I spent summer periods with this group during the first decade of my career and I learned a great deal from their collective expertise. The connection with JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California] has been a long and close relation because of the intellectual interest and the fact that so many students have initiated their careers there.\\n\\n The first topic of low-thrust trajectory analysis proved an interesting path. The technology for conducting the missions failed to mature and the concept has never played a very large role in the missions for interplanetary exploration. However, as the basis for initiating a space related curriculum, it proved an excellent choice in that the topics of orbit determination, guidance and navigation, and trajectory optimization were all encountered as an integral part of the study. Courses in each of these disciplines were added to the curricula and a good part of the period between 1965 and 1975 was spent studying various parts of this field. The first group of very good students matured during this effort and most migrated to JPL to take on increasing responsibilities during the subsequent decades.\\n\\n Around 1968, we were approached by Gene [Eugene L.] Davis at the NASA Johnson Space Center to assist with developing orbit determination capabilities for the manned exploration program. We began working on the development of batch estimation techniques and Kalman filter techniques for navigation of Earth-orbiting satellites, and extended some of the effort into the early Apollo program, with the navigation related to lunar exploration.\\n\\n In the early part of the 1970s program, we initiated application of the Precision Orbit Determination [POD] capability Geodynamics Program at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center [GSFC, Greenbelt, Maryland], to participate in the analysis of some of the first satellite laser ranging [SLR] being collected under a program put in place by NASA Goddard. Dave Smith who was in charge of the geodynamics program at NASA GSFC was interested in looking at how the sequential processing or the Kalman filtering of the laser data would essentially compare with what would be done with the traditional analysis results that NASA Goddard acquired using their GEODYN [software] program.\\n\\n This essentially led forward to our first exposure to satellite acquired geodynamic-tracking data. We essentially began to develop our own software systems to process that data. This activity led to developing a software system called UTOPIA, the University of Texas Orbit Processor Incorporating statistics Analysis, the first of a long line of software systems that we developed to look at the solid Earth dynamics and the Earth System Science type applications.\\n\\n This capability allowed us to propose for a mission called GEOS-C [Geodynamics Experimental Ocean Satellite]. It was one of the first satellite altimeter missions. Our proposal was accepted and we joined the science team for this mission. We began to analyze the altimeter data in combination with the satellite laser ranging data. This data combination stimulated the analysis that we performed at the University of Texas during the subsequent decades. And it was through this analysis that we began to have a significant input into the NASA Earth System Science program.\\n\\n The first major step occurred in 1977. At this time, the Seasat mission was being developed at JPL as the first microwave remote sensing satellite and its primary focus was on studying the oceans. The objectives of the mission were to make the first global measurements of the ocean surface and the surface winds in the microwave frequency range. The all weather and global nature of the altimeter, synthetic aperture radar and scatterometer data promised a significant advancement in our understanding of the ocean dynamics. Of these sensors, the radar altimeter required an accurate orbit to utilize the measurements.\\n\\n I was approached by George [H.] Born, who was in charge of the Seasat data system with the question of whether I would take on the management of a GPS [Global Positioning System] instrument team. The instrument would have been the first GPS reviver to fly on a satellite. I was tasked with assisting in the delivery of the accurate orbits required to apply the Seasat altimeter measurements. I agreed to the assignment. Early on it was apparent that there were a host of issues related to the technology that required resolution.\\n\\n The manufacturer fell behind schedule, overran the budget and the project finally decided to eliminate the instrument. At that point there was a problem with the Altimeter/Precision Orbit Determination team. Although the implementation was through JPL, Seasat was a joint NASA-DoD [Department of Defense] satellite. The Altimeter/POD Team was composed of a contingent of NASA and DoD members with strongly differing opinions on the mission implementation of the altimeter measurement. The nature of the team interactions suggested that an individual that was not in either camp should act as a leader of the team, so I was asked to take on that activity. The decision to act as the Altimeter/POD team leader turned out to be a very important step in setting the direction for the research that I, and the Center that evolved from the research, conducted during the next three decades. This activity was centered on a strong collaboration with two of my early students George H. Born and Bob E. Schutz.\\n\\n As mentioned earlier, George was a former student that completed his graduate work in the late ’60s, and migrated through NASA JSC to JPL. He was one of the early vanguards of the numerous students that joined JPL after completing their graduate studies. Bob joined the faculty at the University [of Texas] after completing his academic studies. The problem of determining accurate orbits for altimeter satellites provided a collaborative bond for our interactions during the next three decades. The knowledge gained in these studies was the basis for our manuscript on Statistical Orbit Determination.\\n\\n The Seasat altimeter evolved and had another significant connection. The altimeter instrument leader, who was the engineer in charge of the altimeter fabrication, was Bill [William F.] Townsend. Bill joined NASA HQ [Headquarters, Washington, DC] and was part of the management structure that implemented the remarkable successful follow-on satellite altimeter missions. He later advanced to Deputy Director of Goddard Space Flight Center and served as [NASA] Acting Associate Administrator for Earth Science. There was significant and enjoyable interaction with Bill throughout each of these phases.\\n\\n The Seasat activity actually was an extremely important mission in terms of demonstrating the capability of the satellite laser ranging-radar altimeter connection. The requirement for precise positioning of the satellite, in order to be able to use radar measurement, was a requirement to contend with. The effort that we made to satisfy this requirement turned out to be a major factor in developing a capability that, over the ensuing decades, has been a recognized standard of our program and that’s the ability to compute orbits very accurately or the development of the precision orbit determination area.\\n\\n When I began involvement with the Seasat mission, one could make height measurements with the altimeter at the sub-decicentimeter accuracy level, but the best orbits had accuracies at five meters. With this level of orbit accuracies, one could not use the use the altimeter measurements of the ocean surface to meet the oceanographers needed.\\n\\n The Seasat effort was relatively short lived. The Seasat launch placed a really remarkable suite of instruments on orbit, but after an exciting start, the satellite failed 90 days into orbit due to a significant short in the power system. There was a solar power panel slip ring design problem that had been identified in the military applications at Lockheed Martin but the information hadn’t been passed to the civilian applications area. Although the short caused failure of the satellite, during the 90 days in orbit, we did get enough information on the altimeter to know that we had a very powerful measurement technique. We immediately set out on an effort to develop a program to fly a mission using an altimeter and focused on an accurate measurement of the ocean surface topography.\\n\\n Stan Wilson joined NASA Headquarters to take over the oceanography program. In one of his early actions, he convinced Bill Townsend to move from the NASA Wallops Island Facility [Virginia] to the Headquarters program to take responsibility for the mission that we were trying to initiate to continue the altimeter measurements that we had started with Seasat.\\n\\n This effort continued during a several year formative stage to define a mission concept called TOPEX for Ocean Topography Experiment. Although it was proposed during early budget preparation activities, it was successful. For the 1983 NASA budget submission, an agreement to team with CNES [Centre National dUEtudes Spatiales or National Space Study Center, France] and make it a joint NASA-CNES mission was completed, and this arrangement led to a mission start.\\n\\n The effort associated with the TOPEX/Poisedon Mission, which was the bi-lateral mission name, consumed most of my attention during the period between 1983 and 1992. The Precision Orbit Determination Team that I led was charged with delivering an orbit whose accuracy would not limit the accuracy of the altimeter height measurement. The altimeter was designed to measure the height with a precision less than three centimeters. To be able to use these measurements for oceanographic studies, an orbit accurate to five centimeters in the radial component was required. At this point, the best orbit accuracies were on the order of five meters in the radial component, and increasing the accuracy from five meters to five centimeters required making advances to allow a two orders of magnitude reduction in accuracy. We recognized this task as a significant challenge.\\n\\n After considerable initial study, we agreed to commit to a ten-centimeter radial orbit accuracy. We had assembled an astrodynamics team composed of members from JPL, NASA Goddard and UT to conduct the required effort. So the better part of the 1980s decade was focused on defining and satisfying the requirements for computing accurate satellites orbits.\\n\\n Early in the investigation, errors in the Earth geopotential model were identified as one of the limiting error sources. The better part of the ten-centimeter error budget that we committed to satisfy was responsible for errors in the gravity model. In an alternate effort, we had been encouraging NASA to initiate an effort to improve the Earth’s gravity model. While there was a recognized need for improved shortwave length effects in the existing models, it was assumed that the long wavelength content, which is of primary concern for satellite orbit determination, was reasonably well known. While this was not correct for our requirements, it was true for most of the other stated needs and, since one could not measure the short wavelength gravity signals from satellite altitude, most of the NASA funding for gravity model development was being eliminated. This had a significant impact on the significant space geodesy effort at NASA GSFC, where the NASA Gravity Model development effort was centered.\\n\\n In a highly serendipitous development, Bill Melbourne, Jim Marsh and I attended a meeting in San Matteo, Italy, to propose that the GPS receiver that we were developing for TOPEX be added to the ERS-1 instrument. The European Remote Sensing, ERS-1, satellite would implement the first European satellite altimeter. The GPS receiver that we proposed would be the first satellite born high accuracy receiver. Our proposal was not successful, because the German PRARE receiver had already been selected. After the meeting was over, we offered to drop Stan Wilson, who was the Oceanography program manager at Headquarters, off at the Milan airport. Bill, Jim and I were going to drive overnight from Milan across to Toulouse [France] where the four of us would meet the next day with members of the French Space Agency, CNES, to discuss tracking systems for the proposed TOPEX/Poseidon mission.\\n\\n As it turned out, we managed to miss Stan’s plane connection. He noted, with some concern, that he had funded three of the world’s best navigators to work on the POD problem, but they couldn’t navigate to the airport in time for his plane connection. But in any event, as the situation evolved, he had no choice but ride with us during our overnight journey.\\n\\n So during the overnight drive, we had a captive audience in which the problems with the gravity model errors and the impact on the TOPEX mission were discussed for an extended period. Stan sat through this lengthy discourse without comment. I was not sure whether or not he was attentive to the message, but shortly after we returned to the US, Stan asked Bill Townsend to get with TOPEX project manager Charlie [Charles] Yamarone [Jr.] at JPL to put in place funding to improve the gravity model. Although TOPEX was an oceanography mission, the geodetic measurement requirements associated with the gravity model and reference frame are fundamental building blocks for an accurate measurement, and the gravity model development initiated by Stan, Bill and Charlie as a result of this chance contact had very broad importance to the Space Geodesy community. A significant portion of our knowledge today can be traced to this event.\\n\\n We implemented the gravity model improvement effort as a collaboration between UT and Goddard. The plan was to develop a series of models that we called the Joint Gravity Model, joint for UT-Goddard Gravity Model. There were three models developed during this effort: JGM-1, JGM-2, and JGM-3. The JGM-1 and JGM-2 model developments were executed at GSFC with UT supporting the effort. UT took the lead in developing JGM-3. The JGM-3 model incorporated the first of the satellite acquired GPS tracking data. Although JPL completed the GPS receiver development and we launched it, the Air Force was restricting use of the signals to military applications only. After lengthy discussions we negotiated an agreement by which the signal denial would be turned off during three 10-day periods. The satellite ground track covers the Earth’s surface once every 10 days, so the 10-day interval for the GPS tracking gave global coverage in each of the 10-day intervals.\\n\\n We took the data from the three 10-day periods and combined it with the information used to develop the JGM-2 gravity model to develop an extremely good model for the TOPEX mission. In fact the JGM-3 proved to be the best model for precision orbit determination for most satellites until 2002, when we began to get the first results from the GRACE [Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment] mission. The gravity model effort started for TOPEX led to our being in a good position to propose a gravity mission as a response to the call for this first Earth System Science Pathfinder mission.\\n\\n In a follow-up effort, I collaborated with Goddard on a gravity mapping mission called GAMES that had a pair of satellites orbiting, one behind the other, in the same orbit plane. The gravity information was to be inferred from accurate intersatellite measurements of the relative motion of the two satellites. The intersatellite distance was measured using a laser link between a passive trailing satellite and an active leading satellite. This mission was given serious consideration, but as with numerous other proposed missions in the two decades beginning around 1980, this mission was not implemented. A few years after the GAMES mission was rejected, the call for the first Earth System Science Pathfinder mission came out.\\n\\n JPL approached me about essentially collaborating with them on a concept similar to GAMES that involved an accurate microwave ranging measurement with two active co-orbiting satellites. I also got a call from Goddard about the same time about collaborating on a mission involving a gravity gradiometer that had been under development. At this point, we’d been trying to get a gravity mission since it was first recommended in 1967. All of the missions proposed in the 1980s and 1990s were not successful.\\n\\n It is interesting to note that when TOPEX was finally selected in 1983, there was a mission called Geopotential Research Mission, which was in strong competition for a mission start. The Geopotential Research Mission established measurement concept was proposed for GRACE, but the mission was to fly at a much lower altitude and would be much more expensive than the GRACE mission turned out to be.\\n\\n Regarding the selection in 1983, we argued in a mission review at NASA Headquarters that, since the ocean is changing with respect to time and the gravity field is fixed, (conventional knowledge referred to the gravity as a onetime measurement and you are done) we should do the TOPEX mission first and then follow up in a few years with a gravity mission. Shortly after TOPEX was accepted, we had the first Space Shuttle disaster [January 28, 1986, STS 51-L, Challenger], which delayed most mission implementations for several years. It delayed the TOPEX launch until 1992 and it eliminated any chances of getting the GRM [Geopotential Research Mission] gravity mission selected. The GRM team was finally disbanded in 1986.\\n\\n For the GRACE proposal, we took the base intersatellite measurement approach from GRM and upgraded the concept by bringing the GPS receiver on board to satisfy the orbit determination and time synchronization requirements that were a challenge for GRM. We raised the altitude to increase the mission life and we added an accurate accelerometer to measure the surface forces due to drag and radiation pressure. This eliminated the costly and mission life limitations associated with the drag-free concept adopted for GRM. This allowed fairly low-cost mission implementation mode that had the potential for a long mission life. We proposed a teaming arrangement with German colleagues at the GeoForschungsZentrum [GFZ] in Potsdam, Germany. Under the direction of my colleague, Christoph Reigber, they had flown an earlier single satellite gravity and geomagnetics mission called CHAMP [Challenging Minisatellite Payload] which would provide most of the satellite technology and the accelerometer needed for GRACE. We formed a team to develop the proposal for the GRACE mission. We were successful in that proposal, and it led to a really remarkable approach for measuring the Earth’s gravity field.\\n\\n The mission concept proposed to measure the Earth’s gravity field at monthly intervals. Since the gravity field is determined by the Earth’s mass distribution, changes in the monthly gravity fields are caused by changes in the Earth’s mass distribution. This realization allowed the focus on measuring the mass exchange between the oceans, atmosphere and land surface as a consequence of the Earth’s dynamic system interactions. The major component of the signal observed by GRACE is water moving about. Rather than focusing on only the fixed or stationary gravity field, we proposed to look at the time-variable nature of gravity also.\\n\\n We had been measuring the long-wavelength components of the time variable gravity using satellite laser ranging to a series of spherical satellites called cannonball satellites—LAGEOS-1 [Laser Geodynamics Satellite], LAGEOS-2—since the launch of LAGEOS-1 in 1978. LAGEOS and Starlette [Satellite de Taille Adaptée avec Réflecteurs Laser pour les Etudes de la Terre], which was launched by CNES, were round balls with optical retro reflectors spread over their surface. We mostly focused on the time-variable nature of the J2 coefficient, which is mostly related to the oblate nature of the Earth (e.g., the polar diameter is less than the equatorial diameter). We measured the annual variations and observed that the annual variations appeared to be caused by both geophysical and climate related effects.\\n\\n We didn’t fully understand the climate connection at that point, but we knew that there was annual variability in gravity field at the long-wavelength components. This was one of the important topics for study that we highlighted in this GRACE mission proposal. Not only would we do the mean field, but we would study the time variable nature as well. As we noted, gravity comes into play in a number of ways. The mean field is important in the satellite altimeter missions such as TOPEX and the Jason follow-on missions, both for computing the orbits and to define the ocean surface geoid to which the altimeter measurement is referenced.\\n\\n Also the surface that one uses to reference the altimeter measurement against, to get the quantity of interest to the oceanographers, is the dynamic ocean topography. This quantity is the difference between the sea surface height that the altimeter measures and the marine geoid. The water would go to a surface that’s defined by the gravity over the ocean (the marine geoid), if the effects of the Earth’s rotation and the effects of atmospheric pressure and winds were not present.\\n\\n The altimeter measurement is extremely difficult because the dynamic ocean topography has signals with amplitudes of about one meter, but the actual shape of this ocean’s mean surface has variations with amplitudes as large as 100 meters. That is, there are 100-meter highs and lows at various points over the ocean surface, where the water departs from the best fitting ellipsoid by as much as 100 meters below it and/or 100 meters above because of the internal mass distribution of the Earth. So you’re looking at a one-meter dynamic ocean topography signal and imbedded in a marine geoid with100-meter level variations. At the time of launch of the TOPEX mission, the errors in the gravity field were such that small errors in that marine geoid totally dominate the dynamic topography signal.\\n\\n At the time of the GRACE satellite launch, we had ten years of very accurate altimeter measurements of the ocean surface, but they could not be used to determine the general ocean circulation because the errors in the gravity field hid the dynamic ocean topography signal. As we noted, one of the objectives of the GRACE mission was to get a very accurate mean sea surface to allow full use of the altimeter-defined measurements. The other was to look at temporal variations in the gravity field and relate that to mass flux going on in the Earth’s dynamic system. That mass flux is mostly water moving around. Some of the signal is related to long-term trends while other signals have a seasonal variation that repeats from year to year at yearly intervals. The measured phenomena with long term trends are related to ice mass loss in the polar regions and the signals present in the rebound of the North American continent after the unloading of the ice following the last ice age (e.g., the glacial isostatic adjustment).\\n\\n The more interesting activity is the ability to be able essentially to look at the water in most of the major river basins in the world, and look at the seasonal changes in this water. That’s both surface water and subsurface water; the subsurface being the large-scale continental aquifers, and the water changes in those are fairly interesting topics, and of quite a bit of concern at the present time.\\n\\n We also proposed some breakthrough measurements such as the ability to use the mass measurements of the column including the ocean and the atmosphere as an indicator of the ocean bottom pressure. By using these measurements to infer change in the ocean bottom pressure, one deduces information about the ocean bottom currents in the deep oceans.\\n\\n There has been a number of really very interesting measurements that have come out of the GRACE-related activities. It’s evolved from the concept of a gravity mission into one of a mass flux mission, in which the mass flux is mostly water, although, as we noted, phenomena such as the glacial isostatic adjustment can be observed. You also see large episodic changes. One gravity signal in this category is related to the [2004 Indian Ocean] Andaman-Sumatra Earthquake. You see a very sharp difference in the gravity field before and after that Earthquake occurred." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of GRACE, I believe it was selected in May of 1997 and it launched in 2000. Can you share some of those interactions of getting it to that selection process and then its launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The GRACE mission was the first one of the Earth System Science Pathfinder [ESSP] missions accepted. It was submitted as a response to the first call for ESSP mission. The Earth System Science Pathfinder Program was to select innovative low-cost missions that could be placed on orbit rapidly. Further, the mission manager of the program could be outside NASA and, under this approach, an academician could be responsible for the entire program.\\n\\n In the teaming arrangement, we proposed what was to be demonstrated as a very good concept. Under the teaming concept, JPL would be responsible for the mission implementation, including the satellites and the instrument compliment, UTCSR [University of Texas Center for Space Research] would be responsible for the data system and for the overall mission management, GFZ would be responsible for the German contributions to the mission, which included the satellite launch and the mission operations. Ab [Edgar S.] Davis, who ended up being the proposal project manager, and Mike [Michael M.] Watkins, who later became the project scientist, were very influential in maturing the concept. Mike Watkins was one of our students who after completing his Ph.D. degree had joined JPL. While at CSR, Mike had supported our effort on the proposed GSFC GAMES gravity mission that I mentioned earlier. Mike had been involved in simulations that we performed to support this proposal so he had a good understanding of the nature of the mission concept. He was also involved in the SLR studies of time variable gravity.\\n\\n Ab had been involved in developing accurate GPS ranging systems, so he understood the nature of intersatellite ranging measurement. As I mentioned earlier, the Geopotential Research Mission had developed and demonstrated the concept of using the accurate phase measurement to do the “micron level ranging” between the two satellites. We essentially adopted the intersatellite range measurement concept that had been developed for the Geopotential Research Mission.\\n\\n We had available all of the technology developed for all the missions that were proposed, but were not successful in the 1970s and ’80s. A concept called gradiometry, in which one measures the gradients directly, had gone forward. ARISTOTELES was a joint ESA [European Space Agency]-NASA mission that was given a great deal of consideration in the mid 1980s, but wasn’t accepted. In the development effort for this mission, the gradient measurement was obtained as the difference between accelerometers located at different points on the same satellite. The differential acceleration contains the signal associated with the gravity gradient that one wants to measure. As a consequence of developments related to this mission, the technology for accelerometers had been advanced extensively in France at ONERA [Office National d'Etudes et Recherches Aerospatiales, French Aerospace Lab].\\n\\n Rather than use the GRM concept—in which they were going to put a lot of propellant on board the satellites and fly the satellites so that a proof mass in the center was shielded by the actual shape of the satellite for any surface forces associated with radiation pressure or atmospheric drag, the so-called pea in a pod version. That is a hard requirement to satisfy. In addition to the difficult control requirements, a great deal of propellant is required to maintain this condition at the approximately 170 km altitude proposed for the mission. This fact necessarily limits the life of mission. Rather than adopt this concept, we chose to use a three-axis accelerometer to measure the surface forces directly. We got a very accurate three-axis accelerometer from CNES, and specified that it be located at the center of mass of the satellite to eliminate the effects of the rotational accelerations. With that accelerometer measurement sensitive to the surface forces only, we could use the high accuracy intersatellite ranging measurements to focus on the gravitational effect. That idea allowed us to design a concept with a multi-year mission life and focus on long-term gravity changes.\\n\\n With the POD requirements and timing requirements satisfied by tracking with the GPS satellites, another major problem for GRM was eliminated. The development of the GPS system, the development of the accelerometer, the adoption of the formerly developed intersatellite ranging system that had been developed for GRM, allowed us to apply existing technology to implement a micron level intersatellite ranging system.\\n\\n With the measurement concept in hand, we needed a satellite bus that would satisfy a number of demands to be sure that the high accuracy ranging measurement was not corrupted. The demanding requirements on the satellite buses included high structural and thermal stability to ensure that the micron level ranging accuracy is not influenced. A micron is about a tenth the size of a human hair, and we’re measuring at distances on the order of 200 kilometers. Anything that happens on the satellites is a potentially troublesome source of error in measurement. We leveraged some extremely difficult arrangements on requirements on the actual satellites.\\n\\n In the first ESSP proposal call, the dollar value of the missions was really limited. You could either bid for the first mission with a $60 million cap or the second mission, which was to be launched at $90 million cap. We clearly needed at least $90 million, so we bid for the second mission. But to buy two satellites buses, build two paradigm-shifting type intersatellite ranging measurements, provide the accelerometers to measure the surface force measurements, and launch the two satellites for $90 million was an extreme challenge. In the innovative teaming arrangement we proposed, we would buy the satellites from Daimler Space Systems (which later became Astrium) in exchange for the satellite launch and the mission operations.\\n\\n Astrium had demonstrated a satellite bus for the CHAMP [Challenging Mini-Satellite Payload] mission, which could be modified to meet the GRACE mission demands. It had accommodated an earlier version of the ONERA accelerometer that we wanted to use. JPL had provided a GPS receiver for the CHAMP mission, so this element had been accommodated on the proposed satellite bus.\\n\\n In deciding to buy the satellites from a foreign vendor (in this case Astrium [EADS, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company]), we proposed that the German Space Agency [German Aerospace Center, DLR (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt)] agree to launch the satellites. There was a strong interest at the German Space Operations Center in operating the satellites, so we agreed to this element of the collaboration. The important thing for us was the launch vehicle. That was a tall pole in proposal “tent.” With that arrangement, we could submit a proposal, which would allow us to stay under the cap, but just barely. We proposed a cost of $87 million, but with essentially no reserves in the budget.\\n\\n In the first scenario that went forward on this, they essentially took the initial proposal and screened those for possibilities to allow one to go back and prepare a more definitive proposal. In that first proposal screening, I understand that we were almost at the bottom of the ranking. There were approximately 45 or 46 proposals submitted and we ranked somewhere in the 30s. Some of the negative ranking was associated with a lack of belief in the proposed teaming arrangement.\\n\\n The scenario in Germany was uncertain, because a number of the DLR staff that interacted directly with NASA was saying that DLR was not going to do this mission. Other individuals in Germany were pushing the mission. So we were involved with the ones that wanted to do the mission in preparing the proposal.\\n\\n There was also uncertainty associated with whether or not we could implement what GRM had proposed for a 1983 cost that was an order of magnitude larger. We did make the first cut. They did request that we prepare the second version of the proposal. Early on in the rankings for the second version, we advanced into the upper ten, and were ranked somewhere around seven.\\n\\n I was told later that in the final selection process that a fairly important factor in our selection was the strong endorsement of Bill [William M.] Kaula, who is one of the eminent names in satellite geodesy and in gravity model development. Bill had been the project scientist for the GRM, so he clearly understood the nature of the measurement and the importance of the results if we were successful.\\n\\n He also had chaired the highly important 1967 Williamstown Conference. The report from this conference made the recommendations that provided the basis for most of the geodetic and oceanographic missions that were implemented in the 1970s and 1980s. The altimeter missions were recommended in this report, and, to go along with the altimeter missions, a dedicated gravity-mapping mission was proposed. So Bill clearly knew that among the suite of missions recommended in the Williamstown Conference Report, a gravity mission had not been implemented. He had chaired a couple of other major studies and had been pushing NASA very strongly for the entire timeframe to actually do a gravity mission. I think he saw this as a chance to finally implement a credible gravity mission.\\n\\n He was influential in arguing the importance of doing the mission, provided that the technical story came together. After extensive deliberation, we actually became one of the three that were selected. In that process they selected two missions and one alternate or backup in case either of the first two failed in the implementation process. If either of the missions has problems with either cost or schedule, the plan was to cancel the mission and look to implementing the third mission. An interesting and perhaps important side note is the selecting official for the first ESSP selection was Bill Townsend, with whom I had had a number of years of interactions during the TOPEX mission and after in his management role at GSFC. That Bill would be responsible for setting our first gravity model effort in place under the TOPEX mission framework and that he would be the official to set GRACE on its historic course is a sense of personal pleasure.\\n\\n At the time we were selected the actual feeling at Headquarters was that we weren’t going to be successful, because the NASA selection didn’t commit DLR. We were selected provided that DLR actually agreed to provide the launch. In other words, we had a mission concept that proposed elements that NASA would do and other elements that DLR would accomplish, and if either one of those were not present, then we had no mission.\\n\\n The official stance of DLR indicated that we had difficulties. In the mission concept we proposed, as the PI [principal investigator], I had the ability to make all the final management decisions. I was responsible to NASA for all elements of the mission. In the teaming arrangements, a colleague Chris [Christopher] Reigber agreed to be the Co-PI and to assume responsibility for the German elements of the proposal. Chris was a very well established geodesist and geophysicist in Germany and was the PI on the CHAMP mission. Chris, in addition to having outstanding scientific and engineer credentials, was extremely astute in the political ramifications in Germany. His capable efforts in the political community were extremely important in the final success of our efforts.\\n\\n In addition to Chris, the other individual that was very important in getting the mission in place was Ab Davis. Ab had spent an extended period in Germany working with Chris at GFZ in implementing the GPS receiver on CHAMP. He used this period to establish contact with the accelerometer group at ONERA. During this period, he also established a friendly relation with the CHAMP satellite provider, which we turned to for the GRACE satellites. As a consequence, he understood very well the requirements for the teaming arrangements.\\n\\n Through the combined efforts of Astrium [then Daimler Space Systems] and Chris in approaching the ministry that funds DLR, DLR was encouraged to go forward with the mission. Even with worst early prognostications, the collaborative MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] between NASA and DLR for the GRACE Mission was signed. As we found later, there were two internal reasons for the ministry support in Germany. Astrium wanted to build the satellites. They had a very good bus. They were trying to get the bus established with NASA as a credible vehicle for future business, so they gave us a very good price for building the satellites. In a development that proved important, they agreed to build them at a firm fixed price, which was fairly important to us since we had no reserve, and if there were cost overruns, we ran the risk of cancelation.\\n\\n As follow-on to the success of the GRACE mission, Astrium has been able to get their Flexbus, as they named the bus used for GRACE, selected for a number of subsequent missions. They accomplished their objectives. But it is important to note that they did an incredible job in building the GRACE satellites and delivered for the cost that they had agreed to. There were a couple of design changes made late in the fabrication phase, which added additional cost.\\n\\n We were extremely lucky in that we actually negotiated the price in terms of German marks, which later became Euros. Most of the payments were made during a timeframe in which the dollar strengthened against the euro, so that the cost in dollars was less than we anticipated. We were able to cover some of the cost growth in other elements of the development by this international fluctuation in the dollar. There was some risk though, because the dollar value could have declined. We were carrying some reserve for the dollar fluctuation, which we were able to apply in other areas.\\n\\n The other interaction involved the launch vehicle. We proposed the mission expecting that we DLR would provide the Cosmos Russian launch vehicle, since this vehicle had been used to launch CHAMP. We didn’t know that another group inside Germany that was working on a commercial venture with the Russians. This interaction led to the decision to launch the GRACE satellites on a launch vehicle called the Rockot, which was provided by the Eurockot Consortium.\\n\\n When this was first announced, I indicated that I did not want to provide the first satellites for launch on a new launch vehicle. I was assured that there were other commercial customers and that the launch vehicle would be used a number of times prior to the GRACE launch. It turned out that their industrial customer was the Iridium [satellite constellation], and shortly after making the announcement related to GRACE, Iridium went bankrupt. All of a sudden, the GRACE satellites are first in line.\\n\\n As preparation for the Iridium launches, Motorola [Inc.] had negotiated a test flight, which was not conducted, and they turned over the actual module that they were going to fly on the Rockot for a demonstration test for GRACE. The first two stages of the Rockot were military missiles that had a long very successful launch record. We weren’t worried about the first two stages. We were worried about the third stage, referred to as the Breeze, that was a new development and had never been flown. It was developed for injecting commercial payloads into orbit. To demonstrate the Breeze, the Rockot Corp. took the two Motorola demonstration payloads, configured them to simulate the GRACE mission, and actually flew a preliminary demonstration GRACE launch. In this demonstration, they launched the Breeze into a GRACE orbit; the Breeze then injected the two payloads into orbit, and finally the Breeze deorbited, effectively simulating the requirements that we had for the GRACE mission.\\n\\n The test was very successful and we got the actual loads and vibration information that we could use to support our design and test program. With that successful test, we agreed to the Rockot launch vehicle. As a final point, the Rockot launch of the actual GRACE satellites was perfect, and 45 minutes after the launch the two GRACE satellites and the Breeze were mapped by the German military radar as they made their first orbit over the German Space Operations Center in Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany.\\n\\n The mission cost growth exceeded the $90 million cap by approximately $7 million. Most of this overrun was due to a set of Red Team Reviews and additional testing required by the agency to move away from the “faster better cheaper” implementation mode that evolved as a consequence of the two Mars Mission failures around 2000. But we were able to get the two satellites on orbit and get them in an operational mode for cost on the order of $100 million NASA dollars. There was probably another equivalent $50 million provided by the collaborative agreement with DLR, so the overall mission cost for the two satellites on orbit was approximately $150 million.\\n\\n Present time now, we’re approaching 10 years in orbit. The last Senior Review extended the mission out to 2015. There is concern as to whether the components on the satellites will last that long. They’re aged and the batteries are giving us problems. There’s a few other things giving us problems, but the mission to date has provided a remarkable dataset in place. The data has led to a paradigm shift in how we view observations of the Earth system dynamics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Has it met your expectations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were pretty sure that the fundamental baseline requirement that the mission had to satisfy, the determination of an accurate long wave mean field, would be satisfied. We believed that if we collected global data for a period of two to three months, we would meet this requirement. That turned out to be correct. The first gravity model, based of 111 days of data, provided a gravity model that allowed determination of the general ocean circulation features from the decades long sequence of satellite altimeter measurements. So the first 111 days worth of data in the mission essentially gave us that very significant dramatic result.\\n\\n The more difficult objectives associated with the mass flux measurement was a more significant challenge. To validate these measurements interactions with the oceanographic, cryospheric and hydrology communities was required. The hydrology community was a new community in the gravity applications area. They understood what we were talking about in general but they didn’t understand how to use the global gravity coefficients that we were distributing as the primary data product. After extensive interactions a procedure for satisfying their requirements has been developed.\\n\\n Recent investigations show applications of the data for seasonal river basin water balance, changes in lake impoundment, change in underground aquifers and drought monitor indices. After the slow start, the community has just really embraced the measurements. There was a very interesting AGU [American Geophysical Union] report that came out in December [2009] showing the depletion of the water in the San Joaquin Valley Aquifer in Central California. This water depletion is important, since a significant portion of the agricultural produce consumed in the US is dependent on the water from this aquifer.\\n\\n There was another investigation that focused on an aquifer in India that provides water for most of the Indian population. You have a very large population where the underground water is going down very rapidly due to agriculture applications. So there are a lot of these application-related issues that are satisfied by the GRACE ability to sense underground water change. These results, along with other important climate-related measurements, suggest that the GRACE observations need to be continued. There are plans for a GRACE Follow On Mission, but it is scheduled to launch after the likely end of the current GRACE mission. One of the things we’re working on now is trying to establish a bridge mission to the next mission to keep the measurements going.\\n\\n But, with regard to your question, I would say that the ability to accurately observe a wide range of Earth System processes has been rewarding—to see the wide ranges of communities utilizing the data for applications that we didn’t originally anticipate is very rewarding. We knew we could measure the global signal with unparalled accuracy, but we didn’t fully understand all the ways the measurements would be used.\\n\\n We think we’re at the point now where the measurements from GRACE are ready to be ingested into models to assist the prediction process. That’s one of the more difficult challenges facing the Earth System research. When you assimilate global measurements into the accurate models for the Earth Dynamics processes and use those models for improving the forecast, then you not only help the overall operational areas, such as weather predictions, but the climate predictions where the long-term forecast accuracy is under considerable scrutiny.\\n\\n There have been some really nice additional results in the climate arena. The altimeter measurement that we discussed above provides one example. By using the global altimeter measurements for one 10-day ground track repeat cycle, one can measure the average or mean global sea level. This quantity is related to the volume of water in the ocean. By repeating the measurements at ten-day intervals, you can observe a change in global mean sea level. The global sea level change is currently recognized as an important climate signal and has an important connection to the GRACE mission.\\n\\n We’ve been able to accurately measure the sea level change since the beginning of the TOPEX mission. The original average of the global altimeter measurements was used to calibrate the bias in the altimeter measurement. If one can use other measurements to determine the bias, then the global average of the altimeter measurements during a given repeat cycle can be used to observe the mean seas level. This concept was first proposed by Bob Stewart during a collaborative between Bob, George Born, and I in determining procedures for calibrating the TOPEX altimeter bias calibration.\\n\\n One of the things that we were concerned with was understanding the various error sources in the altimeter measurement. Bob noted that if we successfully calibrated the altimeter measurement and accounted for all the other error sources, then the remaining signal would be due to sea level change, and that this could be an important signal for study, in its own right. So we proposed in this 1983 paper, as an aside comment, that one of the things we could do with global measurements of a properly calibrated altimeter would be to measure the global sea level and its changes. One did not have a set of altimeter measurements to test this concept, so the idea lay dormant for a while. In 1987 there was a call from NASA looking for climate related measurements. Wes [Wesley T.] Huntress drafted the call and was the program manager for the effort. I submitted a proposal to evaluate the use of the altimeter measurement record as a means of sensing climate change.\\n\\n This was the first study devoted to using satellite altimeter measurements to observe global sea level change. The first test of this concept was performed using GEOSAT altimeter measurements and the results were not positive. The altimeter was a single frequency altimeter with uncertain accuracy, and associated orbits were not accurate enough to allow a credible measurement of sea level change. I initiated a study of the problem with a few Ph.D. candidates. We conducted both simulated studies to look at the issues that limited our ability to make this measurement as well as attempts to use the data for recovery of the ocean circulation. One of the students in this initial study was Steve Nerem, who has devoted a significant part of his career to the question of Global Sea Level Changes and is one of the current authorities on this effect. His work is currently referenced as the NASA standard sea level measurement.\\n\\n With the TOPEX/Poseidon mission, the accurate altimeter measurements and the accurate orbits allowed an accurate measurement that has been maintained for almost 20 years and is one of the fundamental climate change measurements.\\n\\n Although we could make the measurement, understanding the nature of the temporal variations was a much bigger problem. We know that there are two effects present in the sea level change. Temperature change will cause sea level change due to the water expansion, and if you add mass (water) to the ocean, the sea level will change. We know the polar ice caps and continental glaciers are melting; the water released in this melt ends up in the oceans. We also believe that the climate is warming up and the water should be warming as a consequence. We know that both of these effects are underway, but we do not know how much of the sea level rise is due to ocean water heat increase and how much is the effect of the addition of water from the melting glaciers.\\n\\n The interesting thing is that GRACE will measure mass changes in the ocean, but it’s not sensitive to temperature changes. The temperature changes will not have an associated mass change and the mass change is the gravity signal that GRACE can measure. So by using the altimeter measurements of the global ocean surface topography, the total sea level change can be observed. By flying GRACE, you observe the mass change component. What’s left over is the temperature component, so those two measurements allow you to separate the steric or the temperature-driven component of sea level rise from the mass driven component. The mass changes are due to water that’s actually being added, which is fairly important in trying to understand from a climate point of view what is influencing the sea level change. To help close the global mass change budget, GRACE also measures the mass loss by the glaciers, which should be most of the mass added to the ocean. Agreement with these two GRACE measurements is a confirmation of the GRACE measurement accuracy.\\n\\n I’ve been fortunate to participate in a number challenging missions and it has been a great pleasure to see the successful application of the measurements from these missions. It was very exciting in the 1970s to begin the work with the LAGEOS laser ranging and it was more challenging to address the requirements of the TOPEX mission. But GRACE I think probably has been perhaps the most rewarding of all the missions that I’ve been privileged to be associated with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like it keeps providing you more information to benefit from." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I think we’re still finding new ways that we can use the measurements. It’s an extremely important interdisciplinary mission. GRACE is the only mission with the ability to directly measure the regional mass flux. Most of the other missions measure radiometric (reflectance) or metric (height) properties in one form or another and, where required, these measurements are used to make inferences about the mass flux. But GRACE measures the effect of the mass itself. So it’s a very good complement to most of the other measurements.\\n\\n GRACE in combination with the SAR [Synthetic Aperture Radar] radar missions, the altimeter missions and the satellite laser ranging missions, as well as results from a number of the hydrology related missions, provides the basis for a wide range of inter-disciplinary studies. One example is found in the ICESat [Ice, Cloud,and land Elevation Satellite] mission, which implements a laser altimeter to measure the ice sheet topography. From these measurements one can determine the change in the ice sheet volume. The SAR missions will measure surface velocity. GRACE will measure the mass changes, so together they give a complete picture. There will be missions to measure soil moisture, which along with the total subsurface water change observed by GRACE will provide essential information on the water budget." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You used the word interdisciplinary. Let’s talk about the whole concept of Earth System Science. How are the benefits that GRACE is providing for us working with the other concepts, how are you able to help the other disciplines within Earth System Science with the work that you’re doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In the GRACE proposal we described an interdisciplinary climate-related mission. The name GRACE is an acronym for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment. We actually proposed several paradigm shifting climate related measurements for the GRACE mission. The ability to infer mass change below the Earth’s surface was a paradigm shifting capability that had not been provided by any other mission.\\n\\n In response to the interdisciplinary related capabilities, the mass flux measurement concept evolved from an extension of a program initiated under the Earth Observation System, the EOS program. I led an interdisciplinary EOS science investigation proposal, which was selected to look at the integration of data from the EOS measurement suite with the objective of focusing on the Earth system dynamics. I proposed an investigation that would study a number of the topics that GRACE is addressing.\\n\\n The EOS implementation was delayed and the data needed to accomplish the investigations was never provided, but we did perform a number of simulated investigations and we did use the time variable gravity measurements observed by the LAGEOS satellites to begin initial studies that were very beneficial to the GRACE mission. We actually understood a lot of the inter-disciplinary applications that GRACE addressed when we proposed the GRACE mission. In the GRACE proposal, we outlined contributions to oceanography, hydrology, cryology and contributions to geophysics. We also proposed some paradigm shifting measurements, such as inferring the deep ocean currents and the change in underground continental aquifers.\\n\\n In oceanography we focused on providing the mean ocean geoid to allow determination of the general ocean circulation from the satellite altimeter measurements, we described changes in the mean sea level, and we proposed inferring the ocean bottom pressure changes as a means of inferring deep ocean currents. The GRACE measurement component was viewed as an essential augmentation to other measurements and, without GRACE, an important part of the overall puzzle would not be measured. So in the initial context, GRACE was always viewed as having a strong interdisciplinary thrust in the Earth System Science context. Early on in the GRACE mission, we argued that GRACE is an essential member of the satellite suite that NASA provides to observe the Earth’s dynamic system. In all of the base objectives of the Earth science program, there is a place where the mass and the mass flux provided by GRACE are essential to the scientific interpretation. The mass flux taken by itself usually won’t solve the problems, but it is a very important piece of the puzzle. You usually can’t solve the problem without understanding the associated mass and mass flux.\\n\\n So the measurement of gravity has evolved from what was viewed in a fairly narrow context as a geodetic measurement, the mean gravity (or static) gravity field, into one that’s really central to in the climate change considerations. It is being recognized as one of the significant climate parameters that we should to be measuring." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you see that needs to happen in the next 20 years in the field of Earth science?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The transition in the NASA mode of operation is undergoing some interesting perturbations. NASA, from the beginning, has had a mission of developing new technology and providing new proof of concepts. It uses the missions as a rationale for the technology development. The idea of repeating a measurement that you’ve already demonstrated has been a big problem for them. It’s has been a problem for management in deciding what NASA should do, and it’s been a problem in terms of resource allocation since they are always budget limited, and repeating a previous measurement means that you will not be able to do some new measurement.\\n\\n However, we find ourselves at the present time with a serious need of having observations of climate related quantities that extend over multi-decade time frames. The satellite role in making many of these measurements is crucial, because the satellite measurements are the only acceptable way of getting global near-synoptic measurements. The accuracy of these measurements and the global nature of those measurements are extremely important for climate change studies. NASA is the only agency that has demonstrated the capability and the will to this role.\\n\\n NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] could improve the operational-related measurements to meet the climate needs, but they have not delivered the measurements with the precision and accuracy associated with NASA products. So at the present, the issue of maintaining continuity of some important measurements has not been resolved and some of the quantities that we’ve talked about such as the sea level measurement has become a global climate change indicator, and maintaining a continuous measurement is fairly important.\\n\\n The sequence of mass flux measurements coming out of GRACE has the potential for becoming such an important data record, if we can continue the measurement sequence after the current GRACE mission. But the issue of how NASA responds to the need for measurement continuity to support climate change studies is a difficult one to address. Either the NASA mission needs to be enlarged to allow the agency to address these issues, or their needs to be another agency put in place and charged task.\\n\\n On another front, the missions themselves are getting extremely expensive. All of them are in the few hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars. We can’t do very many missions under this cost profile. In the technology development mode, NASA needs to develop the ability to get the critical measurements in a cheaper way. One proposed technology that may come into play is associated with the smaller satellite implementation. The nanosatellites have been fabricated and orbited, but the requisite technology base to use them is not in place. Actuators, thrusters, instruments and power supplies are needed for the nanosatellite regime. If these technology demands can be met, then clusters of satellites that allow you to distribute the required measurement functions can be discharged in a more cost friendly implementation. Development along these lines is one way in which we have the potential for essentially making the measurement systems more robust and to provide them at a lower cost. I think there will be considerable effort in this direction in the future.\\n\\n The one measurement sequence where the US seems to be lagging is in the radar measurement area. We demonstrated the first satellite radar capability on Seasat in 1977, but we haven’t had another dedicated polar orbiting radar on orbit since that time. We’ve done short-term radar demonstrations such as the SRTM [Shuttle Radar Topography Mission]. However, none of the proposed dedicated radar missions have been successful. All of the other nations have. Canada, Germany, Japan, and ESA all have flown dedicated satellite radar missions. I believe that this situation will be remedied in the current decade.\\n\\n Looking down 20 years and trying to use the history to project forward 20 years is a risky venture. But if I looked at where we are now, one of the key problems that we need to solve is how we maintain, hand off, operate satellites in a way to continue some of the high-quality measurements sequences. Future requirements will require that we use cluster and constellations of satellites to satisfy increasing demands for higher spatial and temporal resolution (or coverage). Development of the nanosats may be one way of satisfying these requirements, so I see development in this area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since you looked forward, let me ask you to look back. What do you believe to be some of the greatest accomplishments of the last 20 years since Earth System Science has developed and evolved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The development of the metric range measurement accuracy, which allowed us to define the shape of the Earth, the reference frame used to describe changes, the dynamic properties on and inside the Earth, is one of major accomplishments. The measurement accuracy, the metric/measurement accuracy, has gone down from the five-to-ten-meter level in the mid-1970s to the micrometer level today, with the nanometer level accuracy just over the horizon.\\n\\n The ability to define positions in a geocentric reference frame, to be able to observe changes in this reference frame, allows the ability to study tectonic deformations, land subsidence, and the ability to observe the millimeter scale movement of the Earth’s center of mass as various dynamic processes occur, represents one of the great achievements of the past few decades. The development of laser and microwave ranging systems with the measurement accuracy required to perform these studies has been one of the biggest accomplishments in our ability to study the Earth, and an extremely important point in being able to figure out how you’re going to conduct studies.\\n\\n The idea of making micron-level measurements over a distance of 200 kilometers was a concept that was proposed in the ’70s and early 80s timeframe. We are demonstrating these measurements on GRACE today.\\n\\n Another success lies in our ability to put these measurements together and to look at the whole Earth system, at one time, with this level of precision, and it gives you a new way to view the Earth and to understand what’s going on both in scientific and in application terms. This global, near synoptic measurement capability brought forward by the satellite platform has allowed Earth system studies to be conducted in a completely different context.\\n\\n Some of the unique investigations include the ability to measure the mean sea level change with the millimeter level precision, to use the ocean surface topography measurements to infer the general circulation, to infer changes in the deep ocean bottom currents, to observe changes in the mass of the polar ice caps, and to measure changes in ground water aquifers throughout the world. These are all views of the Earth that are completely new, very important, confirm studies that people have conjectured about for long periods, and allows us to quantify the processes that are underway.\\n\\n Out of all this we begin to get both the database and the confidence in the database to think about assimilation of the measurements into the models. I fail to include this area in the accomplishments of the next 20 years. I do think that during the next 20 years we’re going to achieve the capability to assimilate the satellite data into the models, improve the model fidelity and use the improved predictions to understand multi-decadal climate trends. That’s the next significant step in using the satellite data. In addition to the predictions of future trends, ingesting the satellite data into models allows the models to extrapolate the satellite information to a higher spatial and temporal resolution.\\n\\n Satellites are limited to observing phenomena only when they overfly it. But the models allow you to assimilate the measurements and then extrapolate spatially and temporally between the subsequent views so that you can “observe” the phenomena at more frequent intervals. I think evolving our current capabilities could be one of the biggest steps forwards in being able to understand the Earth. It’ll help improve the physical principles on which the models are based. Then once the physics is right, the initialization and steering provided by the satellite observations will allow the prediction modes to be conducted with the requisite accuracy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me switch subjects as our time starts to close, because I wanted you to have an opportunity to talk to us for a few minutes about the fact that you have worked 50 years in your field. During that time period you founded the Center for Space Research for the University of Texas at Austin. Share with us why you felt that was a good thing for the world, for us to have the center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For most of my early career, I operated in the individual faculty member, graduate student mode. This is the way most faculty members want to work. That’s the best way to conduct a teaching-research relation. Although I did not want to get into administration, I did agree to serve as the chair of the Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics Department for the 11-year period between 1966 and 1977. During that time period, we organized an informal institute for advanced studies in orbital mechanics. The institute was organized primarily because the Air Force was willing to provide funding for an institute to study astrodynamics. A colleague that we had hired by the name of Professor Victor Szebehely had brought the Air Force funding with him. We put reports out under the institute name for about 10 years, but it had no management structure within the university.\\n\\n In 1982 or 1983 there was a move on campus to form a space-based research center. I worried about the direction that the proposed management was going, and what impact it might have on what we were doing. At that point, we had a pretty healthy program underway. We’d already done the Seasat mission and were involved in the formative stages of the TOPEX mission.\\n\\n To protect the thrust that we had developed, I decided it would be best to propose that we become an organized research unit. So we put the proposal in place and formally organized it at that point. We were assigned to the Bureau of Engineering Research, primarily because most of the faculty came from the Aerospace Engineering Department. From the beginning, the center has evolved with a strong interdisciplinary focus. We’ve had good collaboration with astronomy, collaboration with physics, with the natural sciences including the geography and geophysics group, and more recently with the Jackson School [of Geosciences, The University of Texas] in terms of the geophysical-related areas.. It’s evolved into an internationally recognized an interdisciplinary research unit.\\n\\n Because of the success of the LAGEOS efforts, the TOPEX mission, this EOS interdisciplinary research grant, the ICESat mission and the GRACE mission, we have had a very productive three decades of activity. The research effort has allowed us essentially to establish collaborative relations with a number of internationally recognized research groups, such as GFZ Potsdam, Shanghai Observatory, etc.\\n\\n The organized research unit also provided a basis for larger student involvement and a place of employment, once they’d finished their academic work. A major factor in our success has been our ability to keep some of our best graduates active to allow them to continue their research. So it turned out that forming the organized research unit was an important step in the evolution of our program. We’ve extended the center not only in the space geodesy area, but also into a number of other satellite remote sensing areas that we have not discussed. We have established the capability for receiving satellite data in a direct broadcast mode. In addition to supporting research, we use the data in teaching and in a number of other areas such as regional hazard monitoring.\\n\\n Gordon Wells, who is one of the key individuals in this effort, is a lead member of the governor’s Division of Emergency Management. He plays an important role in the states response to natural and manmade disasters such as hurricanes, floods, fires, etc. We also are the home for the multi-university Texas Space Grant Consortium. It’s an outreach type program that NASA funds. Under the center's effort, we prepared the proposal for this program in 1980 and have been involved with its efforts since that time frame. I was the PI and Steve Nichols was the Co-PI on the proposal. Steve was influential in establishing and actually chairing the first national space grant organization.\\n\\n So the Center for Space Research has been a good way to combine our interest in space research and exploration with our interest in teaching in one unit. The general thrust has been a campus-wide focus for both space research and space applications, and the academic components that are associated with this effort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In your spare time you currently serve on the NASA Advisory Council [NAC]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is that a relatively new role for you or is that something you’ve been doing for a while?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Byron D. Tapley", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think I went on this—time gets by on that. I don’t actually remember. It must have been two years ago in January. I’ve been involved in a number of advisory positions over the years. I’ve bumped around a couple times. At one point I looked fairly carefully at taking the Associate Administrator role for Earth Science when Charlie [Charles F.] Kennel left. In fact Bill Townsend actually moved into the position. GRACE was at a point where it was critical for me to not make this move. I really did want to participate in the GRACE mission. This fact, coupled with some family medical problems, prevented me from making this move.\\n\\n But the NAC role required a smaller time commitment and it does give you the chance to provide advice that can have an impact. Although you do not have the ability to make decisions, you can have an input to put the thought process. It’s rewarding to be able to work at that level.\\n\\n I did a fair amount of alternate advisory work in the late ’80s and up through the middle of the ’90s for the National Academy [of Sciences] in which I was a member of the Space Science Board and Chaired the Committee on Earth Science. During this time, the EOS mission suite was going forward and we were able to provide advisory oversight to this process. It’s been interesting to see how the NASA side of the advisory process evolves. Both activities are rewarding as long as you feel that your efforts are making a contribution." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00810", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project 1998 - 1999", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/MottM/mottm.htm", + "original_file_name": "MottM_4-23-99.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/MottM/MottM_4-23-99.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Michael Mott", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 23 April 1999" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Paul Rollins" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Mike Mott" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 23, 1999. This oral history session is being conducted with Michael Mott in Houston, Texas, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, by Rebecca Wright, assisted by Summer Bergen and Paul Rollins. Today's subject will be Mr. Mott's involvement with Phase One of the International Space Station.\\n\\n Thank you for taking time out of your schedule. I know you're very, very busy, especially today. We'd like to begin by you sharing with us how you first became involved with Phase One." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. Phase One, my involvement actually started as far back as the Space Station redesign team, and Phase One was an outgrowth of really of the redesign effort. One of the things we were looking for at this particular point—this is now 1993. I was not part of NASA, although I was part of the redesign team. What we were looking for was what was an interim step to the International Space Station from where we were to now in the pure Space Shuttle Program. We actually started out, what can be the Gemini to Apollo, Mercury to Apollo, that we had to do that within the Space Station Program. What came up very rapidly, since we were now partnering with the Russians, is can we use the Mir Space Station to learn better how to live and operate in space, using the Space Station." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did you actually become involved with NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I became an official card-carrying NASA civil servant on December 28 or 1993, and was actually formally appointed to the associate deputy administrator job. I believe it was announced sometime in early January of '94." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your roles and responsibilities when you first started?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My real role as the associate deputy administrator was to function more as a chief of staff, chief operating officer, and really to work with the day-to-day activities across all of the enterprises of NASA and in all of the functional areas. However, human space flight comprises such a large portion of NASA on a proportional basis, my daily activities, a lot of it evolved around Station, Shuttle, and Phase One." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your efforts on the Redesign Committee help you in this new position?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little bit, mainly because the redesign, I had a little better base in where we were really going on Space Station. I had not been involved in Freedom at any point, and so at least I had some idea of the basic design on Space Station, where it was going, how the Russians had become involved, etc." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were the goals of Phase One when you became involved with the program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fundamentally how to operate for long-duration space flight. You know the Shuttle, as a general rule, goes up something like seven to fourteen days. Our entire time, I think, on Skylab had been, what, eighty-nine days, something like that, and we knew that we couldn't operate minute to minute as we do on Shuttle. So how are we going to modify our operating procedures? How are we going to train for long-duration space flight? What can we learn by a continuous human presence, American human presence up there? Those were the primary objectives.\\n\\n There were a number of scientific objectives, mostly medical, with regards to humans, but there were some other science conducted, but those were absolutely secondary. I think, in retrospect, the media lost sight of that, but countless occasions, as Dan Goldin would say and we would all say, the science is purely secondary. We are really interested and here to learn how to live and work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you give us some of the episodes and the events that led to the reality from the idea and how it moved in to working to becoming something successful for NASA?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, George Abbey, who at that time was a special advisor to the administrator, and still in Washington, D.C., George believed that we needed this interim step, and he was looking for some kind of step to do that. He put together a team, and I don't remember, there were five or six of us. We actually had an early meeting. This was now late '93, I want to say in the September, October time frame. We were working with these same engineers that were working on the redesign. They were still working now, finalizing the Russian involvement and those kinds of activities. So the Mir became prevalent.\\n\\n But I'd actually have to say I think it was really George's idea. I think George is really the one that deserves the credit. I know that he and Dan were bouncing ideas back and forth, but certainly I think those are the two that really came up with the concept and it really came up to some of the others to figure out how do you make it work. I think that was on one of Dan's very early visits to Russia, and you all have probably got the real dates, but that was probably around November of '93, is my best recollection." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you see as the difficulties of making this program work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I thought we had all the difficulties that you can imagine. We had the obvious technical challenges, which I never felt—I thought they would be easily overcome. I never felt like it was going to be a technical challenge. I thought we had a number of political issues that were going to be difficult. This was the first major involvement with the Russians, really since Apollo-Soyuz, as far as the Space Station Program had been. And a lot of different cultures. We were going to involve a lot of different NASAs—Johnson, Marshall, Kennedy, Stennis, Human Space Flight Centers, and some other roles as well.\\n\\n We were going to involve all sorts of agencies within the federal government—State Department for sure, obviously NASA. There would be a defense role. Obviously the intelligence agencies were going to get hot and sweaty. The Department of Defense, working within the agencies. The Executive Office of the President, from the Office of Science and Technology Policy, Office of Management and Budget. By now the Space Council was gone, so they were not required. We worked with the Office of the Vice President. National Security Council.\\n\\n So I don't know how many I've done in the last couple of minutes, but I've probably got to take off my shoes to count them, so I'd say it's a lot of folks, and you've got to coordinate. So I really felt like that was going to be the challenge of really getting through, and I thought we were going to have an internal NASA challenge, and that, in fact, was the case." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you share some of the information about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The original concept was ten flights, and immediately that got whittled down, I believe, to four, because that was \"all the Manifest that they could support.\" I remember when we were talking about doing this, the Shuttle Manifest is pretty well laid out until we start Station, so it wasn't like that the Shuttle was sort of parked on the ground with nothing to go do. It had a number of missions. In fact, at this time we'd not even flown the Hubble repair mission, if you remember the first Hubble servicing and repair mission. We still had a number of Space Lab flights to go. So Manifest was blocked.\\n\\n So the Shuttle Program, shall we say, was not enthusiastic about all of a sudden adding a bunch of flights to the Manifest. So their original number of ten, they wanted to knock down. I think they knocked it down to four. There was some, shall we say, guidance provided, and we increased that to seven, and then I think we ended up with nine. I don't know whether we count Jim Wetherbee's—the first rendezvous. I count it. I don't know how they count that officially as one of the missions or not. But that's about right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was your job involved with the day-to-day activities of all the Shuttle-Mir activities, or were you on the higher level? Tell us how you were involved with the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was definitely not involved in the day-to-day activities. I was actually physically [located] and functioned as a part of the Office of the Administrator. There were three individuals up there: the Administrator, Dan Goldin; Acting Deputy Adminstrator, Jack Dailey,and myself. I became the primary interface between the Office of Space Flight, for a number of reasons, the simplest of which, I had more background in that particular area than either Daley or Dan Goldin. So, consequently, I was just the easiest conduit. So I normally got the first call of anything that was going on, and then in some cases I would say, \"That's fine. Proceed,\" in some cases I'd say, \"We need to bring the administrator in. We need to prepare a brief. We need to do this, we need to do that.\" But I was not involved at all in the day-to-day activities. It was all done either at Headquarters early on or ultimately ended up—well, in fact, Phase One, almost from day one, was managed entirely out of Johnson [Space Center]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did some of those first calls include the fire?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the collision?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The fire and the collision. My favorite call was the 2 a.m. on the East Coast time that I received that they had abandoned the Space Station, which it turns out was not in regard to either the fire or the depressurization; it was the computer had shut down and they'd actually gone in the Soyuz just to maintain attitude control. It was fundamentally a nonevent, but the report that I had received, the initial report, that they had abandoned the Space Station and were returning to Earth in the Soyuz capsule, which, like I said, turned out to be erroneous." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your duties take you to Russia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They did. I made one of the very early trips in March of 1994, originally planned as a strap-hanger, but the administrator was involved in a bicycle accident, so I went from the strap-hanger role to leading the delegation role, and we conducted meetings with RSA [Russian Space Agency] over a period of about three days, which included Yuri Koptev, Alex Krasnov, and Valery Ryumin were the three principals that we dealt with. We signed the protocol. Most of it dealt with Station. There was about one day, most of one day was Phase One. Myself, George Abbey, Arnold Nicogosian, and Will Trafton were on that trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this your first time to Russia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First time to Russia, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever return after that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, have not been back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you give us a little more detail about that meeting and how it went, since that was your first encounter with the Russians?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was not my first encounter with the Russians. First meeting in Russia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there were some interesting points. If I remember right, we actually flew in and arrived on a Sunday, and the meeting was supposed to start Monday morning. We were scheduled for nine o'clock, and they kept us waiting till about nine-thirty, and I made a very loud announcement, if they didn't meet with us in fifteen minutes, we were leaving, much to the people being appalled all around me. Then lo and behold, fifteen minutes later, the doors magically opened and we were ushering into Yuri's office.\\n\\n The meetings were very cordial and very professional. I don't think there's any doubt that—I was impressed with their knowledge in the space flight business, that they wanted to be partners in the Space Station. I think there were a few pride issues that we saw, not from Yuri. I think Valeriy Ryumin was one. I think he had some concerns. I felt like he felt it should have been the Russian Space Station, of which we were a partner, or they should have had the lead, if you will. But the meetings were very professional, very cordial, very informative. Like I said, their protocols were signed.\\n\\n I was a little surprised at the conditions in Russia. This is in '94, and I haven't been back, so I had expected a little more U.S.-like. Maybe it was the time of the year, because March was sort of dingy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A short trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Short trip. I was glad to return to the good old USA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You started your career with NASA at a time when the administration had just changed. Do you feel like the effects of working with one President, moving in to a new President, affected the Shuttle-Mir Program in any way, or do you feel support was there from the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Let's see. I think the administration would have killed and canceled the Space Station if given the opportunity, and I think that was the reason of the redesign team. You'd have to ask some of the people who were actually in those meetings, but I think the real purpose of the whole redesign was to try to give the administration \"an affordable Space Station.\" In the administration's defense, I think that Freedom, as it was even planned then, was not buildable, but that's certainly one person's opinion.\\n\\n I don't think the administration was enthusiastically supporting the Station. I don't think they enthusiastically supported the Phase One. I think they viewed it more as a foreign policy initiative than a scientific and technical exploration initiative. They supported us publicly, but I think the record will show—I think the record does show—a very lack of support in financial resources." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You spent four years with the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Four years and six months, if I were counting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And give us your thoughts on what you believe the benefits the Shuttle-Mir provided for the space program and for the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the Shuttle-Mir Program was probably the best expenditure of government funds in a long time. We learned more in one year that we were up there than we would have learned in five years. No telling how much we saved ourselves in understanding how to operate, how to train, how to think differently. We suffered two major emergencies, obviously, both with the fire and with the depressurization, which are the two biggest emergencies you ever worry about in space flight. I think that we showed that we had good training from our crew's standpoint. They had good training. They put up with a lot of stress, being able to work the international issues, the communications deal with the media. I think we met every objective ten times over, and for the bargain basement price of probably under 400 million dollars. I don't think we could have gotten that kind of thing anywhere else. It was just a superb program.\\n\\n I think the Space Station, the day that we operate on Space Station, we will just be years, years ahead of where we'd have been if we had not had the Phase One Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the time you were there, did you ever have a doubt that it wasn't going to work, that maybe this wasn't the right idea?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't think I ever did. No, I'm sure. I may have [unclear] when they called me at 2 a.m. in the morning and I thought they'd abandoned the station, but even then, you know, I believe that hopefully the United States will lead, but I believe that the world will eventually get back in the exploration game, and I think it's very key to our roots of fundamental human psyche, if you will, the role of exploration. So in order to explore, you've got to be willing to do risky things. If not, we'd have never moved west of the Mississippi. Somebody's got to have the courage to move out.\\n\\n I think what we learned on Mir is we learned that we can deal with these risks. We can manage the risk to some extent. We need to understand. We shouldn't go off on a known unknown. We ought to resolve everything that we can, whether it's analytical or engineering or however you do those things. We should go do that, but we shouldn't be timid and not explore. I can tell you that in many of the decisions to go fly, especially after the fire or the depressurization, we got a lot of external help that I thought was absolutely of no value. It was very much based on taking a political survey and asking the public what they thought, and if they thought it was a bad idea, there were people that were willing to scrub the whole thing, which I thought would have been a huge mistake. So I don't think at any time I ever had any doubt. I mean, I never doubted it one bit. I think it was a very well-run program. I think we got a lot for our money. So, no doubts. Long answer. No doubts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure you faced a lot of people that had doubts, especially the time when you had to make the decision whether or not to go ahead and put Dave Wolf on the Mir and bringing Mike Foale home. How were you able to help reassure these folks that was the right thing to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we tried to present them with the facts. I think within the administration, the administration did not want us to fly Dave Wolf. In fact, I don't think there's any question about that in our meetings at the White House. However, I don't think they were prepared to overrule \"NASA,\" which would have been doubting the administration and ultimately the President overruling the head of an agency, which is a pretty slippery slope to be on. But there's no question about it, they were not the least bit interested in flying Dave Wolf, and wished that we would have canceled the activity.\\n\\n I sat there in the meeting and we left with—at least I believe the decision made that we, NASA—the NASA administrator said, \"I have decided to fly Dave Wolf.\" Obviously the President could have overruled him and we would have certainly lived by that, but I don't think they had any intention of \"overruling\" us, but there was no doubt they would have been very delighted with the administrator at that time if we had not flown Dave. Now, since everything worked out, I think they now can embrace it, but I sat there in the meeting and they didn't want that to happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of the administrator, Dan Goldin was still relatively new in his job when you moved in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's true. He was appointed, took the job on 1 April of '92, and so he'd been there right at two years, two and a half years, when I joined the agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were able to help him? How were you able to help him learn more about the Space Station / Mir Projects? Did you have specific duties assigned by him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had about 150 duties assigned by Dan on a daily basis." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Added to the ones you had the day before? [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Added to the ones I had before. He would have specific things that he might want to know more something about, but there are not any that I immediately recall, \"Hey, I want you to go off and [unclear] this out on the Mir.\" Normally, \"Get these folks together, get agreement, get a consensus. Let's make a decision and move on. Come to me. Make a recommendation,\" that kind of thing.\\n\\n I think Dan was committed to it from day one. He saw the utility and the value of it. He was under a lot of pressure, but I don't think Dan ever wavered. I think he believed in his heart it was the right thing to do. Clearly he had some anxious moments because it was going to come to rest probably on his shoulders as much as anybody, but I think Dan was very committed, and to this day, especially in hindsight, I think he feels very justified at everything that he did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You spent four years, six months, and a few days in this job. Do you have any regrets of moving into it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no. I wouldn't have traded it for anything. It was a wonderful experience. It was a very honor, privilege, whatever you want to call it, to be able to operate at that level of government. I certainly was able to move in circles that even as I look back on it, I have to find very exciting. You can get caught up in the Washington and the Potomac Fever, but I got to be privileged to be part of a lot of very unique things and on some decisions that I think will make a real difference for America. So I have absolutely no regrets.\\n\\n I love NASA. I love the agency, I love what they stand for. It was just a time for me, time to look at going to something else. But, no, I think it's a great agency, they've got great folks, they do great things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Previously to this NASA job, for some years you had served as a United States Marine Corps aviator. Did you have any personal challenges you had to overcome now that you were sitting across the table from people that you had been trained [to view as] your enemy and now they became partners? How did you address those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think that was ever an issue, never consciously. There was a humorous meeting in Russia when I was across the table with Valeriy Ryumin and he was, shall we say, being a little loud and obnoxious. I turned to the interpreter who was sitting next to me, and in a stage whisper, in my finest English, Southern English, said, \"Valeriy looked much better when he had a gun sight on his forehead.\" Of course, most of the Russians speak very good English, so I'm sure that they all heard me, which was my intent, and the meeting became a lot more cordial at that point than previously.\\n\\n No, again, I think the Russians always dealt with [us] professionally. If they had a hidden agenda, maybe I was too naive to see it. The engineers were superb. They built great hardware. They've got great experience. There are differences of opinion, but, heck, we can find differences of opinion anywhere. So, no, I don't think that was ever really an issue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Although you left, have you been able to keep up with the Station, the impacts of Shuttle-Mir as it's affecting the ISS and moving into its next era?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To some extent. I'm with the Boeing Company now, and I do a lot of work with the Station, so I follow it, but very similar to the capacity that I followed with NASA. I'm more on the periphery and the fringes than actually down there in the weeds of the day-to-day-type operations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before we close, I was going to ask Paul or Summer if they had a question for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who took your place at Headquarters?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The honest answer is, they replaced me with five people. They had now assigned the job to five people and they told me the other day that there are now seven that are doing the duties that I was assigned. I don't know whether that is a compliment or a criticism. But the office is still there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where do you see us going now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Hopefully back to the moon and on to Mars. We need to get back in the exploration game. We need to quit messing around in low Earth orbit, and we need to start today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And with all your dealings on Capitol Hill, do you feel that the Shuttle-Mir Phase One Program and early days of ISS have shown Congress that there is a path that's further than what we've gone?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm not sure about that. I think with Phase One we've shown that we can work with international partners. If you look at the Space Station that's on orbit right now, you have two pieces of flight hardware that were never within 10,000 miles of each other, flown in space, rendezvoused, docked, and the light switch was turned on and everything worked. That is an incredible engineering achievement. Not ever have we done that before in the space program. Every other thing in the space program had always been end-to-end tested on the ground. So that's a remarkable engineering feat.\\n\\n I think what we have shown is we have the ability to go back to the moon and on to Mars as soon as we get the commitment to go do that, and hopefully that commitment will come soon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything you would like to add regarding your contributions to this program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I was just, like I said, proud to be a part of it. It was a fun time to be with NASA and a fun time to operate with a bunch of great people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We thank you. We appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mike Mott", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00616", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WrenRJ/wrenrj.htm", + "original_file_name": "WrenRJ_10-23-07.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/WrenRJ/WrenRJ_10-23-07.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert J. Wren", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 23 October 2007" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert J. Wren" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is October 23rd, 2007. This oral history with Bob Wren is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal is the interviewer, and she is assisted by Rebecca Wright. Thanks again for coming for a second session. Really appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Glad to be here. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wanted to start out today by asking you about some awards and commendations that I saw on your biographical datasheet, which you so kindly provided us. You were the nominee for the Texas Society of Professional Engineers Junior Engineer of the Year Award. Can you tell us about that award and who nominated you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was Joe [Joseph N.] Kotanchik, the Division Chief of the Structures and Mechanics Division. Joe nominated me, and I didn't win it, but I was the nominee from MSC [Manned Spacecraft Center] from NASA, Houston. And that was about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you nominated based on the work that you had done for the Vibration and Acoustic Test Facility [VATF], or what was the nomination based upon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was based upon when I was trying to figure out how to make those simulations I was talking about last time. We were working with Ken [Kenneth McK.] Eldred and so forth at Wyle and trying to come up with a unique way to do this. Nobody had done it and I think it was probably for that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I also saw that you received a group award for the Lunar Module Test Article-3. Can you tell us about that award and the test as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When we started it in VATF, and I didn't mention -- I left out a few things last time. Arnie [Arnold N.] Levine led the vibration group, and when we first got out to Building 49 I was leading the acoustic group, but I knew how to do the vibration, but you only knew so much, and Arnie was great. He led the LTA-3 vibration test but I helped him a lot because I had done a lot of that sort of thing in the past.\\n\\n LTA means Lunar Test Article. North American used the term BP boilerplate and Grumman used the term LTA Lunar Test Article, same thing. Depending upon what the test would be that they're intended for, there'd be anywhere from just plain structure with lump masses representing the subsystems and components to perhaps partial systems. Usually not complete flight systems. And of course there's exceptions. Because like we said last time 2TV-1 for Block II thermovacuum number 1 was actually a test article, but it was a complete system. It could have flown. Lunar Module 2 is the same thing. But the LTA-3 was a lump mass structure. We had some boilerplate command modules that we also tested the same way. I can't recall the nomenclature and the names on it. It was the same idea that you had lump mass representation.\\n\\n What are you trying to do? Well, what you're trying to do is I guess a couple things. One is to investigate the structural response behavior, dynamic structural response behavior, of the structure, and framework and so forth. Find the vibration, what we call the vibration modes: first mode, second mode, third mode and so forth. What that means is that you get resonances at certain frequencies, and you like to know that because that's where you get the highest stresses is when you're in a resonance mode and you're stressing it real high, and it's the most severe test of the primary structure and secondary structure and bracketry and so forth. The second thing is almost always what you usually do is come up with structural models so that the analysis can go forward when you're designing these vehicles. You'd like to validate your structural model and show that you've got a good model, and you did your modeling correctly.\\n\\n So by instrumenting a lump mass vehicle like that and shaking it and pushing it and testing it and so forth, either statically or vibration-wise or acoustic-wise, you excite the responses in the structure. Then you can compare that with the model you've been using and say, ah, I had a good model. So therefore my analysis is probably pretty close to being accurate, right on the button. Or, hey, way off. So you got to go tweak the model or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall any instances where changes had to be made as a result of your testing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. I don't remember any specific ones. I know that almost always you find some things that need to be tweaked. You find areas where you need to strengthen perhaps some secondary structures, some gussets and brackets and that sort of thing. But what you try to do when you design these things is the same classic tradeoff. You want to make it real strong but the stronger you make it the heavier it's going to be. The heavier it is, the bigger problem you got because we have what we call throw-weight and you're limited with your throw-weight, which means the amount of mass you can take to orbit by the amount of thrust that you have available in your different stage vehicles. You have that constant tradeoff. If you make it too light of course then it'll fail. You don't want that. Of course the same sort of thing is going to apply in some of the other systems.\\n\\n But in the structures world what we try to do is envelope. Take all the loads that we think a vehicle will see when it's put to use and envelope that. So in other words we create some diagrams of stress and strain and frequency and so forth, that it will never see any loading that's above that envelope top, and then we call that limit load. Then we take that and we'll design the vehicle say with a 1.1, 1.2 yield on that limit load. Yield is when the structure actually deforms. But it deforms to the point where it won't go back to its original shape. That's called yield point. Then we also design it for ultimate where it will break. On top of the limit load we'll put like 1.4 or 2.0. Usually classically we put 1.4 if we test it. In those cases where we don't test it because of schedule or funding or perhaps we want to fly the article, then we usually put a 2.0 factor on the limit load, which we call the design ultimate of 2.0. Then not test it but make measurements and so forth.\\n\\n By the way, just to complete that, at the end then when you actually construct the vehicle and pick out all the parts -- and parts come in standard gauges and so forth. So what you do is you analyze, but then when you actually pick out the part, suppose it's, oh, a quarter of an inch instead of five-eighths of an inch or something. So you go back and then back-calculate and see, well, what kind of stresses did you really have based upon the materials you actually used. Then that comes out of a formula as what we call margins of safety. So when you hear the folks talk about, are your margins positive or negative or what, that's what they're talking about. You’ve got your margins on your finally as-constructed vehicle. The ideal that you want to get is a margin of zero. What that means is you've got a perfect design, you're right there, you haven't wasted any weight, and you're the most efficient from a thrust and throw-weight point of view to get the payload. Any time we have anything on top of a booster we call it a payload. And so to get your payload in orbit or wherever it needs to go. So that's kind of what we did on LTA-3." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you hit that ideal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes I think we came pretty close to that. What you do is if you're way far off, you're going to get it close, because you'll make some modifications. You'll either carve some weight out somewhere, lighten it, drill some holes in low-stress locations and so forth, or you'll beef it up and strengthen it and that sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the test require you at all to go to Grumman up in New York?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I did not go to Grumman on that. We had Grumman folks down. Came down from Bethpage [New York]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had mentioned there were a few things you hadn't mentioned last time. Are there some things that you wanted to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wanted to be sure that I mentioned on the acoustic part. I had forgotten Omega D Squared. That's Wade D. Dorland. I called him Omega D Squared. When I was working with Ken Eldred at Wyle, we were fishing around for acoustic experts around the country. Ken said, “Hey, you got one right there at NASA. He's up at Marshall [Space Flight Center] at Huntsville working on the Saturn.”\\n\\n So I went up and paid Wade Dorland a visit. Boy he was good. He was a good person in structural dynamics with acoustics. Acoustician. So I tried to talk him into coming down to Houston. He didn't want to leave Huntsville. I think he was from Nebraska or Kansas, and he liked it up there. He didn't want to go to the subtropics down there in Houston. The British embassy was on subtropical duty pay when we arrived in Houston. I don't know if you knew that or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can see why. All those mosquitoes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Anyway I finally managed to talk Wade and his wife Corinne into coming down to Houston and joining us, and that was wonderful because he was a big help. Later on when I got pulled away from VATF and Building 49 to go do 2TV-1 and LM [Lunar Module]-2 and the project stuff I talked about last time, Wade took over for me in the VATF. By that time Arnie Levine had left and gone on to Building 13 to do other things. When I went back to do LM-2 which we'll talk about later, why, Wade was right there to help with that, because we were doing it in VATF. So I wanted to be sure that Wade Dorland got mentioned. We had a good group of people out there. I can't remember all the names. But I tell you one thing. When I had the section there we had an Experimental Dynamics Section. Gosh, I can't remember all the names. They may be in my notes. But oh, in addition to Wade, Steve [Stephen] Huzar, I can't remember all. But I do remember that Estella [Hernandez] Gillette was my secretary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was she?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then later on, why, she became equal opportunity officer person at the Center. She married Pete [Peter] Gillette. Pete was a member of the instrumentation group that we had out there. The electronics group for measurement of instrumentation and so forth and recording and that. Bob [Robert P.] Bolte and all those guys. Pete was part of that group. And Don [K.] McCutchen, oh, Eddie [J.] Jung, I can't remember all the names. But we could find them in the notes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, absolutely we can add those." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And let's see if there was something else that I inadvertently -- oh did I tell you about when we did 2TV-1 about David Llorente? Ben Boykin and David Llorente were the engineers that came from Downey [California] on that. John Stungis had all the technicians. Turns out that David Llorente, boy, he was a character. David Llorente flew airplanes and he flew for Hollywood [California]. As a matter of fact he flew the biplane Gypsy Moth in the movie\\n\\n Gypsy Moth\\n\\n for Hollywood. So we rib him about all that. So he worked in the movies.\\n\\n The other thing I wanted to be sure to mention is Doug [Douglas] Ward from PAO, Public Affairs Office. When I had to do all those press conferences and so forth, Doug Ward, he was the jewel, he ran front for me and made all arrangements for the press and for the interviews and so forth. Heck of a nice guy. I was fortunate to be acquainted with him for a number of years from then on. Thought highly of Doug. He did a lot of commentary for the missions also. He was a good troop. And let's see if there was anything else.\\n\\n I think I mentioned that my most prized letter of commendation was -- well I got a couple of them from George [M.] Low, but the first one for 2TV-1 meant a whole lot to me. He also sent one for LM-2.\\n\\n I noticed somewhere that it was stated, I think in the material you had, and I had forgotten all about that logo, that symbol thing with the roadrunner and the proud bird with the heavy tail. I had forgotten. That was a riot. That was so funny. But I noticed in the little write-up you said that 2TV-1 was a constraint on Apollo 7 and I don't remember that. I know it was a constraint on Apollo 8. But it might have been on 7 also. Seven was an Earth orbital flight just before eight and there were a lot of things about the Command/Service Module that answers would help with Apollo 7. But I don't recall it was an official constraint but it might have been an unofficial one.\\n\\n I guess the other thing I wanted to mention. Oh with Rolf [W.] Lanzkron I think I mentioned that I had standup meetings with Rolf every morning during 2TV-1. I remember the very first time that we met one another. I have to back up. Although he was very very good and very capable and very much admired, he could be a holy terror. He made people shake in their boots. Just his mannerism and his demanding style. And we needed that at the time. But it made a lot of people kind of nervous. So the first time I met him he started to tear into me. I said, “Ooh wait a minute, uh-uh. We're not going to conduct business this way, we're going to keep it civil, and if we can't keep it civil and professional then you can get somebody else and I'm going to go do some other job.” He looked at me and his eyes got real big. I don't think anybody had ever talked to him like that.\\n\\n I think he respected that, and he got a big smile on his face, and from that point on we worked together just fantastically. People kept saying, you're working with Rolf and you're not having any trouble? Said, no he's great. We're doing good. So we're good to go. So I wanted to mention that. Rolf was a great guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did he work for Engineering Directorate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. He was in ASPO. He was in the program office, Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. He was head of the Command/Service Module. He was manager with Command/Service Module in ASPO. Let's see. Oh, there was a couple more funnies. You want some more funnies?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely, yes please." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I was out at Ken's house. Ken Eldred out in El Segundo [California]. Actually he and his wife lived up in Santa Monica [California]. We went up there one night. I was invited for dinner and went up there and I was amazed, because here I was a neophyte, I didn't know anything, and his backyard why had limes growing, lemons, avocados. Wow! It's a hilly area. So we're having dinner and all of a sudden, why, this guy comes in through the front door, a neighbor from across the street.\\n\\n He came in and turned out it was Frank Gorshin. You may not know but at the time one of the funny people in entertainment at the time; what reminded me was that the movie\\n\\n Where the Boys Are\\n\\n was filmed in Fort Lauderdale [Florida] at the Elbow Room, and there's a whole story about how that movie with Connie Francis -- well I just picked up the DVD [Digital Video Disc] because my middle son is in the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation]. Lives in Fort Lauderdale. He's in the Miami [Florida] office. FBI office. And so the guys stop and hang out at the Elbow Room. It's still there. In the afternoon after work. They filmed the movie\\n\\n Where the Boys Are\\n\\n there. It had Frank Gorshin in it. Well I went and found a DVD. They finally put the movie on a DVD.\\n\\n So I got it the other day at Barnes & Noble and I'm going to play it when Pat comes in. We'll have a lot of fun with it. But I noticed on there that Frank Gorshin was in that movie. I thought, oh that's that funny guy that wandered into Ken's house that night. You never know what will happen in this world, but he was a great guy too, [Frank] Gorshin, funny, oh he was funny.\\n\\n Another thing I guess I wanted to mention, kind of funny, is we had two guys in materials. If I recall I think they also came down from General Dynamics. R. L. Johnston and R. E. Johnson. They're both Bobs. Bob Johnston. See, and R. E., Bob Johnson. Okay, but one had a T in his name and one didn't. Now the only way I could ever keep it straight -- and I love both these guys, they're a riot. But is the taller one had the T in his name. So Bob Johnston, R. L. Johnston, that meant he was taller. R. E. Johnson, he was a little bit shorter. Anyway they're both great guys. And Sam Glorioso (phonetic) and all that bunch, yeah. I guess that's probably enough of all that. I just wanted to be sure. Oh, I know. A couple more things.\\n\\n The sign of the times, we talked about everybody wore narrow black ties, white shirts and crew cuts and flattops. We also had to wear coat and tie. We were very professional and that came from the top down. You had to have your coat and tie on, and that's why in a lot of the old pictures you'll see everybody's wearing coat and ties. When you finally maybe get on the consoles or something, why, you'll take your jacket off. But you had to wear coats and ties. You had to be professional. I thought that was interesting.\\n\\n Then the other thing about badge control. This is just a minor thing. But it's interesting. Is that you were not allowed to wear your badge off-site. Why in the world, is that? Well, the reason was that you're working with classified information. It just helped the situation if you didn't advertise when you're off-base or off-site where you worked. In case the Russians or some bad people might come and try to compromise your situation and gain information and whatever. So if anybody was caught wearing a badge outside the plant, off-site, that was bad. There was disciplinary action. Then we came to NASA. Of course a lot of us did that, every time we went across the street to the post office or went off-site for anything, why, you took your badge off and stuck it in the pocket so it wasn't exposed. It's funny, through the years, all that just drifted away. You see folks everywhere. They don't pay any attention to it because it's not important anymore. Anyway that's where it had its roots." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting, because I think a couple of times people have told me you need to take your badge off here, you're not on site. You get used to wearing it. So you don't really think too much about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's where it had its roots, why it happened. So that was the things I wanted to be sure to pick up that I omitted last time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let me ask you a couple questions based on that information you shared with us. Were there any other women who were working in your group besides Estella Gillette? Any other female engineers? Or was that primarily men who worked in that branch or section?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I had a woman boss when I was with the Bureau of Reclamation. There were some ladies that worked with me at the bomber plant at General Dynamics. But when I was out in VATF I don't recall any lady engineers at that time. Now, we were adding lady engineers. [Later on I had at least two crackerjack female engineers on my Engineering Directorate Support Teams, Nancy E. Tengler from Structures, Coupled Loads Analysis and A.R. Shamala from Materials, Fracture Mechanics Analysis and Control. And Karen S. Edlestein and Lynda R. Estes both from Structures, Glass Window Analysis. Also, the Orbiter payload customers, the ISS Work package contractors and the ISS international partners including the Russians had many female engineers.]\\n\\n But no, I don't recall any at that time. But like I said, I had certainly had a very excellent -- June Brooks [phonetic] was her name in Austin [Texas] at the Area Planning Office of the US Bureau of Reclamation. When I worked there part-time going to school, and then later I worked there full-time when I was in grad school. We all worked for Melvin Schwab [phonetic] and Harry Burleigh [phonetic]. But yes, June Brooks. So no, I don't think so. As long as I'm looking here, I might as well see if I left anybody out in Building 49.\\n\\n Estella was our secretary. I had J. D. [James] Johnston. Oh yes. Steve Huzar. Wade Dorland. Bill Boyd. Billy [M.] Adams. Randy Dickson. I forgot Randy. Some of these folks are still around. Don McCutchen. Art [Arthur] Chapman was the -- now Art Chapman was the technician. He wasn't an engineer. But boy he was great and he coordinated with all of the technicians that we had on contract with Brown and Root-Northrop. So he was that interface. [Also Bud Murray and Billy Nelson.] He did a fantastic job and he made great coffee in the morning, real strong. No, that's it, I think, on that. I guess some of the folks I worked with out when we were doing all those vibration and acoustic tests.\\n\\n Milt [Milton A.] Silveira. I didn't mention Milt the other day. Uncle Milty. These are NASA folks. Dick [Richard A.] Colonna. Dan Newbrough was with GE [General Electric] and he was Dick's sidekick. Ben Holder. Tom Modlin. On and on. Some of the Rockwell people out at Downey were Lou Walkover, headed up the design group. And Bob Westrup, the structures group. And oh and John Heldenfelds. Structural dynamicist. Was excellent. And Joey Yahata. I guess I forgot to mention the instrumentation people. I'm jumping around here but --" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's okay, this is great information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The instrumentation and data group out in VATF. John Lowry. Remember Johnny. Married a girl that came from Alaska. And Bob Bolte. Pete Gillette. Al [Allan D.] Gist. See, I forgot some of these. Billy [B.] Nelson and Eddie [J.] Jung. All fine folks. And I think that's probably it. [Charlie D. Stamps, Austin W. Frost and others provided great NASA QC—Quality Control—inspection and sign-off support. QC stamps were very important on our TPS’s, etc.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's quite a crew there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes and then -- oh and I didn't mention all the folks when I did 2TV-1 who were associated on the NASA side with the SESL, the Space Environment Simulation Lab. I think I probably mentioned Jim [James C.] McLane. But I didn't mention Jim [James S.] Moore, Rich [J.] Piotrowski, Rudy Williams, Don [Donald C.] Cole, [M. Gene Goodhart, William W. “Bill” Killingsworth, Marion M. Lusk, Albert L. “Al” Branscomb, James “Pete” Vincent] and then Bill [William W.] Petynia did the Lunar Module chamber test of Chamber B. Very capable. I think he came down from the original Space Task Group, Bill Petynia. Of course I mentioned John Stungis. His crew from Downey and Ben Boykin and David Llorente. I just like for the folks to get credit. Those that I can remember. I apologize for the ones I can't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well this is good detail. A lot of people mine those oral histories for information about who worked there and what various people did. So it's fantastic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can remember some of the names of the subsystem managers at the time, but I can't remember all of them, like the ECLSS [Environmental Control and Life Support System] guy, oh he's so smart and so good. Frank [H.] Samonski [Jr.]. Jim [R.] Jaax worked with him, who later came, rose up in the Center management, and Hank [Henry A.] Rotter [and John E. Whalen], who's still around, by the way, today [and Richard J. “Dick” Gillen and Wilbert E. “Will” Ellis]. And then the passive thermal, we had [R. Bryan Erb, David H. Greenshields,] Jim [James A.] Smith and Bob [Robert G.] Brown. Oh boy, so good. And Jim Janney, [Robert A. “Bob” Vogt, John Strouhal, Ed Chimenti, Donald M. “Don” Curry, Robert L. “Bob” Dotts, Ray Serna, Bob Ried, Winston D. Goodrich, Carl D. Scott, Tommy [J.] Taylor, Carlisle D. Campbell.] And oh so many -- and power, Tom [Thomas L.] Davies and Shelby [L.] Owens. And so on and so forth, [James Barry Trout], Bob [J.] Bragg, [and John Casey] in batteries. But I think that's about it on the folks I wanted to be sure got mentioned somewhere. And then we'll have some more when we talk about LM-2. So think that's about it. [Also, we worked with Charles A. “Chuck” Berry and Willard R. “Royce” Hawkins, M.D.’s, for crew support. Also Warren J. North, Scotty H. Simpkinson, Martin L. “Marty” Raines, Joseph H. “Joe” Levine, Richard S. “Dick” Johnston, Robert E. “Ed” Smylie, Bob Gardner, Paul Vavra, John D. Overton, Ralph S. Sawyer and others.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned Doug Ward and Public Affairs interviews. Can you tell us about those press conferences and how frequently you had them while you were working?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the most terrible times in my life. [Laughs] No. No, I finally got used to them. But for an engineer to have to do that sort of -- and it was required. It was needed. It was necessary and it was good. But it's an uncomfortable thing for most of the technical folks to try to do that. Doug understood all that. He paved the way, settled you down, and he'd get you positioned in the chair right. Get your tie right and your jacket and all that sort of thing. That was very helpful. Doug was real good at that. I did another thing one time.\\n\\n I wanted to know about this Space Act of '58 because we came down here for the Mars mission. I think I mentioned that, not for the Apollo. We came for Apollo, but we really came because we were going to go to Mars. Somewhere along there later on, why, we drifted away from that. Well I asked Doug to go see if he could dig out a copy of the Space Act of '58, and he did it, and he came back with it within hours. Of course in there it said that the agency was created to do exploration and then generate the capability and hardware and methodology and control and operations and so forth to be able to do that. But the main purpose was non-DOD [Department of Defense], nonmilitary, nondefense exploration. Later on we'll come to find out that we drifted away from exploration and more into just Earth orbital stuff and so forth. We'll talk more about that perhaps later. But Doug Ward, he went and got that copy of the Space Act of '58, and I read through the whole thing. But I appreciate that he went and found it and brought it to me.\\n\\n But the press conferences, I guess the one thing -- and I got used to it, and bless their hearts, is that you'd have some people in the press who were science people or engineering technical people, like [Mark] Carreau with\\n\\n Houston Chronicle\\n\\n is very good. But of course he wasn't there at the time because this is a long time ago, but folks like that. But then you'd have some others that would come in and bless their hearts just didn't have a clue about the technical aspects. When you're in a rush rush rush round the clock going fast, and this is a failing I guess on the part of us that were working, you didn't have a whole lot of patience for silly questions where there wasn't any understanding of what was going on. That's a failing on our part, because you should just stop, take a breath and say now wait a minute, not everybody is core-drilling and in-depth in this technical sort of thing.\\n\\n That was what was good about Ken Eldred I mentioned. He could actually work his equations and all this sort of thing, but then he could talk about it and explain it where people like me could understand it. Anyway I learned that you needed to have more patience and understanding when you're working with the press, with the media. At that time we called them the press." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did Doug Ward give you any instructions or training before your first press conference?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. Yes. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did he tell you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He'd tell me how to sit, how to patiently take the question and try to work with it as best you can. Be patient. If you keep repeating the same question, why, then just how to move on to something else. Little suave things to do. Doug was great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the only member there who was describing what was going on or were there other people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Usually I was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had to bear the brunt of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How frequent[ly] did you have these press conferences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I can't recall. Maybe weekly. Of course during the course of the test we probably had -- when we actually put the crew in the chamber for example in 2TV-1, put them in the vehicle, I can't recall, but we probably had a press conference every day there for that seven, eight days. We probably had them weekly maybe leading up to it and monthly even before that. After it was over and everything was okay, why, then we didn't have them anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the media ever come out and shoot footage while the test was going on itself?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think they did. Yes, they were around, and shooting motion as well as still photos. Trying to do a little bit of interviewing. But that was difficult because everybody was working hard. I think they were allowed in there as I recall. I'm a little fuzzy on that, though. Don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you carry over these press conferences when you started working on LM-2?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, not as many because we didn't have crew involvement. The crew involvement made a big difference in the interest of the media, the press. Which is natural. I don't know if I mentioned another thing.\\n\\n When you work with these space vehicles there's a big difference as to whether it's man-rated or not. Of course when you work in airplanes, why, they're all man-rated. But when you work with rockets and launch vehicles and satellites and things so many of them are not man-rated. They're not carrying men. Carrying satellites, communication, so forth, or missiles, whatever the purpose is. What's the difference? Well the difference is that first of all like you can have a higher G load for liftoff on your rocket because you don't have people in it. People have limitations on G levels. Can only take so many Gs. If you don't have any people on board, why, then you can just go for it and have all your components and subsystems and of course structure designed where they'll take a high G load, high thrust level, a high stress. And of course you can get higher performance because you go like crazy.\\n\\n But when you get people involved you've got to back off of that. That's why we throttle down, by the way, today when we have the launch of the Shuttle. You'll notice that they'll be talking about throttling down at a certain point of the engines. That's the reason, because you're trying to keep your G level. In the case of the Shuttle we try to keep it at three Gs. Generally speaking about five or six Gs is pretty much the limit for folks. Now in special training for high-performance aircraft we have some of the crews that are used to it, to be able to take eight to ten Gs. But that's pretty high-performance. Then we have G suits that the guys wear. That's another thing.\\n\\n On for example the performers like the Air Force Thunderbirds and the Navy Blue Angels, especially the Blues, they don't like to wear G suits when they fly. Of course they're pulling maneuvers that are very high G level. Because the suit gets in the way of the stick and it's very sensitive how you're controlling your stick for your motions and maneuvers. And so what do they do? Well, what they do is they've developed procedures, which they practice in centrifuges, to constrain the abdomen and so forth, and the throat. And grimace like this [demonstrates] to keep the blood flowing to the brain -- what you want to do is to avoid blackout and do this on their own without the advantage of having assistance from a G suit. A G suit applies pressure. The whole idea is to keep the oxygen to the brain so you don't black out. But anyway the difference between man-rated and nonman-rated if you hear those terms, that's what that's all about. Is for the crew as well as for the systems.\\n\\n Of course everything we've been doing here naturally at Manned Spacecraft Center is man-rated. We have margins probably that we put on there for crew -- we think a lot about crew safety. In fact that is probably uppermost when we design vehicles. First of all what is it you want to do? What do you want to accomplish on your mission? Do you want to go to the Moon? You want to go here? What do you want to do? Okay, now how are we going to do it? What kind of equipment would it take to do it? And so forth.\\n\\n You go through that scenario and you end up developing some hardware and some subsystems and so forth to accomplish the task. But if you got a crew involved then it's got to be operable, they have to be able to fly it, they have to be able to withstand the loads and the environments, you got to have the right atmosphere, oxygen and so forth and so on. So there's a lot of considerations when you have people involved in what you're doing, and that's what we mean by man-rated. So those are considerations that you didn't have to deal with when you're working just with say like we put a TDRS satellite, Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, in orbit for communication purposes, etc. You don't have to be concerned about being man-rated.\\n\\n But crew is always uppermost in everything we do. The crew has to be able to survive, they have to be safe, they can't be hurt in any way. That's the goal. They have to be able to perform what it is you're asking them to perform function-wise. Then whatever kind of equipment that you have, it has to be able to be operated by the ground controllers, mission ops [operations] and mission control. So there's a lot of considerations when you do manned activities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that there was great interest by the media in the crew itself. When the crew was finally released, did they take part in one of the press conferences that you participated in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't recall but I would be very surprised if they did not. I'm sure they must have, yes, yes, yes, and I don't recall whether we had one where they joined me, or whether they had their separate one.\\n\\n At the time the schedules were hectic. And that's part of the reason why for example each three-person crew -- in Apollo we had three sets of three crew people assigned to each vehicle, the primary crew, the backup crew, and an assist crew. Each one of those, especially the prime crew, had a nonastronaut helper, like I mentioned Joe [Joseph A.] Gagliano. The point is that the crews were extremely busy, because not only were they flying but they were going to design reviews, testing, involved in testing, witnessing, helping, doing this and that. They're all over the place. They could be at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida], they could be in Downey, or they could be at Bethpage. In Gemini they could be at the Cape or they could be in St. Louis [Missouri]. Everywhere. Somebody has to orchestrate all this. So their time is very valuable. So it could well be that they had separate press conferences as they could work it in. So I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the things that we did not talk about last time was the Apollo 1 fire. And I was curious what impact that had on your duties and assignments in the building that you were working in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, first of all I've been through three of these, Apollo 1 and of course the\\n\\n Challenger\\n\\n and\\n\\n Columbia\\n\\n . It's no fun. I also went through some of these at the bomber plant when we lost some B-58s and lost a crew and had to go out and recover things in the bush out there. It's not fun. But there's risk. You can't fly with zero risk. It's impossible. So the question is how much risk do you assume.\\n\\n Now the case of Apollo 1, everybody thought at the time that things were moving pretty well. So complicated. So many problems to solve. And as I recall Apollo 1, it was a test down at the Cape and we had it on the stack. I believe it was on an S-IB stack as I recall. It was going to be an Earth orbital flight. They were doing a preflight checkout, like you go through these rehearsals if you like. Put the crew in and there was a fire and couldn't get them out. So it was as bad day. Everybody was all down in the dumps. It was bad. So you had an emotional thing on the part naturally of all the workers. People had been working so hard solving problems, seeing successes. Two steps forward, one step back. Then all of a sudden the whole thing just fell apart.\\n\\n Of course the press at the time said, oh boy, better cancel the whole program. We can't do Apollo. We can't go to the Moon. NASA doesn't know what they're doing. All those negative things. Of course you felt bad for the crew because you knew the crew and in some cases the families. I don't know how to describe it other than it's a bad day, just a bad day.\\n\\n You know it can happen but you hope it doesn't. Now as far as what caused it, we think we know what caused it. Probably to this day we don't know exactly what the trigger point was. But probably what caused it was first of all we had a pure oxygen environment inside the Command Module. Had talked about earlier on trying to go to a two-gas system where we'd have oxygen and nitrogen. For weight-saving purposes and other reasons, why, we didn't. We had pure oxygen, 100%, which is highly flammable. Probably what happened is we had a spark in the wiring. Might have been in ECLSS, not quite sure. But then it ignited and of course it just flamed and got high temperatures. I believe that the crew very quickly ran out of oxygen. I think the reports would show, if I remember correctly, it was anoxia, they were suffocated. Not so much just burned up. Of course they'd have burns. But they just asphyxiated, ran out of oxygen and had toxic gases from things that were burning and so forth. But what did we do then as we tried to recover?\\n\\n We went back and again think brought up going back to two-gas system. It was late to do that because of where would you put the parts, the components, and of course weight and so forth. So what was decided on that front as I recall is that we would start out with two-gas on the pad and then as we launched we would bleed down the nitrogen until we finally achieved 100% O2 for the rest of the flight. On the pad before that, why, by the way it was overpressurized with 100% O2. So instead of 14.7 PSI [Pounds Per Square Inch] I don't recall, it was probably a couple PSI over, 16 something perhaps. So we did go to a two-gas environment on the pad.\\n\\n What else did we do? We had a massive reassessment of the flammability characteristics. R. L. Johnston and R. E. Johnson [and Lubert J. Leger, Mike Pedley, James D. “Don” Medlock, Dwight Janoff, Mike Steinthal, Calvin Schomburg, Glenn M. Ecord, Bud Castner, Samuel V. “Sam” Glorioso, Royce G. Forman, Dave Moore, John H. “Howard” Kimzey, Steve Jacobs, James E. “Jim” Pavlosky, Paul Ledoux, etc.] and all those smart materials people did exhaustive work on that, as well as support from Downey. What we did is we eliminated as much as possible all flammable materials. What do I mean by that? Well first of all the metallic materials in a lot of cases where we could, we changed the tubing from titanium as I recall to stainless steel, which had better flammability resistance characteristics. We changed to brazing and we changed quite a few things with the hard goods, if you like, with the metallics. On the nonmetallics we tried to go away from flammable materials as much as possible. I don't recall if we achieved it 100%.\\n\\n What did we use? We used a lot of beta cloth and Nomex and things like that trying to get away from nylon and flammable things. So we had the materials change. What else did we do? We created very stringent requirements for inventory of what the materials in every single Command Module. And same thing applied, we did the same thing to the Lunar Module also by the way ascent stage compartment. So that there was very tight control on the materials.\\n\\n We also introduced another thing, which is a break in the propagation paths was very important. So if something was flaming, why, it couldn't spread very rapidly. There would be a break in the path. Some folks out in California right now wish they had that with the fires in their Malibu homes. But tried to create breaks in the propagation paths. We instituted flammability assessments where the contractor as well as the civil service folks had to follow very stringent flammability requirement -- created some flammability assessment booklets and directions and so forth, requirements. Everything had to have a flammability assessment analysis backed up by test. So we went to a lot of configuration control measures to keep a good handle on flammability and materials in the cabin.\\n\\n Then the other thing we did is that they had trouble trying to get the crew out. And the crew was trying to open the hatch and couldn't get it open in time. So there was some major changes in the hatch. We ended up with something called a unified hatch. This unified hatch could be opened from the outside or from the inside very quickly with an arrangement of some over-center cams and some different latching and so forth. So it was quick opening. It was one hatch. Before there was a hatch and then there was another kind of a hatch thing that was on a cover that we were flying that went away with the launch escape tower. The cover was over the top of the vehicle to keep soil and debris and so forth off the windows and off the main Command Module structure. That protective cover had an opening. Ended up with one unified hatch, quick opening. I guess that's probably -- as I recall what we did.\\n\\n Now later on of course when we got to the Shuttle and then all the studies we did for Space Station and Space Bases, we went to two-gas system with an Earth-like environment, 14.7 or slightly over pressure. But always with the standard makeup of nitrogen and oxygen 80-20. So we don't do pure oxygen anymore." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that it was a difficult time because you knew the families. You knew the crew. How closely had you worked with the astronauts prior to this time when you came on board at MSC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I hadn't worked with any of them before I came on board in MSC. I didn't know any of the crews. No astronauts came from the bomber plant. So I didn't know any of them. I got to know them when I got here to Houston. We used to hang out at the Outpost, which is still here by the way, several other hangout places are not here anymore. Singing Wheel, and Guy Francis's old Flintlock Inn, and so on and so forth. But you got to know them. Working with them as well as after-hours. I was acquainted with all three. I was not personal friends with any of the three in the fire. Of course when you went down to the Cape, why, you'd usually find some of the guys hanging out after work. I don't remember the names of all the places where you'd go by and have a little food.\\n\\n When you're in that business of a flight crew and high performance and especially the test pilots, it's so stressful that you got to have some way of relief. Humor and comic relief and so forth. Kidding, that sort of thing, you just have to have that. And of course it's highly competitive. So you always have competitions. For example, when you land the Shuttle -- I don't know if you know this or not -- but the guys always have a competition going to see who can get right on the centerline of the runway when you stop. Wheel stop. And so oh yes, yes, well you did it better, Navy guys fly better than Air Force -- you have all that banter that goes on. That's good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about we talk about the LM-2 test that you were working on? How did you get involved in that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay, well when 2TV-1 was over, and I thought well maybe I'll be going back to Structures Division and perhaps back to VATF, although by that time, why, Wade Dorland was doing a great job out there, and I was losing my depth capability, more broad and all that. Well anyway I didn't have to think about it much because I got grabbed by the Program Office. And said hey wait a minute, we got LM-2 coming up and we want you to do that job. So there was announcements and I got appointed to do that. Same thing, it was a project sort of job. Of lesser magnitude people-wise because we didn't have a crew in it. [I was to report to Owen G. Morris, Manager of the Lunar Module in the Program Office.]\\n\\n But what was it that was needed to be done? The Lunar Module needed to have a demonstration of its survivability on landing on the Moon. There had been some series of structural tests earlier on in the development of the Lunar Module. I was not involved in a lot of those. Some of those were done up in Bethpage and I think maybe some were done at Langley [Research Center, Hampton, Virginia]. I don't recall. But anyway we're getting right down to the wire now. We're getting close. We're talking about we only got a couple, three more flights, and we're going to go land. George Low and the guys were really pushing it. We really need to have a demonstration of an all-up Lunar Module and it will survive.\\n\\n So okay, and what we had is the LM-2, Lunar Module 2, had been used for some earlier tests and I don't recall what they were. But it was a fully flyable Lunar Module. What that means is it had all the systems on it. Was ready to go, was all operating, just like the 2TV-1 was for the Command/Service Module. We did not have a crew in it because we didn't need to. What we were trying to do was show the survivability of not only the structure -- because a lot of that had been proven earlier -- but all the systems.\\n\\n So when we did the simulated landings, the protocol was that we would fire up all the systems, power up everything. Of course that entails then just like on the 2TV-1 that you've got all of your Apollo support equipment, checkout equipment and so forth, all there and hooked up so that you're operating the systems and you're monitoring their behavior and so forth. So you want to know that the systems are operating before you land, that they're operating and there's no transient glitches during the impact of landing, and that they're still operating satisfactorily after the landing, or after the impact. So that's what we had to do, and we hooked up all the support equipment. Had all the systems running. Then we would drop it for the conditions.\\n\\n As I recall you always want to check envelopes. Different conditions and limits and so forth. So I think we tried dropping at different heights, at different angles. And I think that was probably the test control conditions. The Lunar Module for shock absorbers it had crushable honeycomb built into the legs and also into the footpads. That was supposed to take the shock. So we wanted to again see that all that worked. Although it'd been demonstrated earlier on. But that's what we did. We dropped it -- powered up all the systems and kept them on and then made the drop and checked it to be sure it was still operating after the drop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of surface were you landing the LM-2 on? Was it a surface that was ideally similar to the Moon? Or was it just a concrete surface?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Just a concrete -- or some kind of hard surface. It was not necessary to have representation of the pockets and holes and so forth of the lunar surface. We didn't need to do that. We just needed to impact impact loads on the vehicle. Like I said the main thing was that all these systems -- although all the systems had already been through component tests, subassembly tests for vibration and acoustic, lots of different things. But when you put it all together you want to be sure it all works, the total end vehicle package works.\\n\\n Give you an example. I'll back up a square. When we were doing vibration and acoustic tests in VATF earlier on with the Command Module and with the LM, we did some tests on the instrument unit, which was the interface between the SLA [Spacecraft Lunar Module Adapter] and the S-IVB. The instrument unit served two purposes. One, it was interstage, structural interstage. The other thing was it had a lot of components on it. Instrumentation, avionics and so forth. So we did a vibration test on this, and it had been tested a lot at Marshall and other places. And so just as a final quality check, why, we were going to set it on some things and vibrate it and see if anything happens. We fired that thing up and parts started falling all over the floor. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's not what you want to see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So there was major scramble to go back and beef up a few things. So my point being is that that's why you want to do things like the LM-2 test where you have all the systems there and hooked up the way you're going to do it on the flight vehicle, per all the configuration control drawings, all that, inspections and QC and all that. Now let's see if it really holds together and does what it's supposed to do, and doesn't do what it's not supposed to do. That's what we did. I recall the end result of the LM-2 test is that it performed beautifully; I can't recall any glitches. It was very successful.\\n\\n Also by the way we had a full load of propellant for propellant weight in the ascent stage naturally and a partial in the descent stage, because when you come into the lunar surface you've used up part of your propellant in the descent stage of course. The descent stage had a throttlable engine so you could hover and the crew could find the good landing spot. But the ascent stage -- and these were hypergols as I remember. Hypergol is propellant and a fuel and oxidizer where when they meet one another they immediately ignite. That's what a hypergol is. And we used hypergol on those engines. It just went like a skyrocket. It was not throttlable. It just went. We didn't need to hover. We're going to go get back up to lunar orbit. But anyway so we had a partial load in the descent stage and a full load to represent the mass and slosh and all that sort of thing in the ascent stage." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you learn from working on the 2TV-1 test that you applied to this test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, again how to orchestrate a sizable group of manpower and resources. A typical project engineering function, management function with all the different systems, subsystems, components, all the different people, subsystem managers. And the tests, all the different test crews, all the different instrumentation crews, so on and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had mentioned last time when you were working on the 2TV-1 test that it took a while to get to the testing stage. Was it the same case for the LM-2 test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, yes. Yes, same idea. You create test plans of exactly what you're going to do, and you follow those very precisely. Complete with, in both cases, test readiness reviews, just like you'd have a flight readiness review, where you have a review board that reviews everything. It's set up with the management and the Program Office. And that everything's good to go and we're ready. All carefully controlled, everything is precisely written down and controlled. Nothing just off the cuff. It's all done in a very measured meticulous fashion, very rigorous." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was the lunar landing then dependent upon the success of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. LM-2, like 2TV-1 was a direct constraint on Apollo 8, LM-2 was a direct constraint on Apollo 11. If we did not complete the LM-2 all-ups, systems drop test successfully, we could not go to the Moon with Apollo 11. Or could not do a landing. Now we went to the Moon in Apollo 10, where we did a circumlunar and we went around, but did not land. We couldn't land, which is what we did on 11, without successfully finishing LM-2. So yes it was a direct constraint on Apollo 11." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did I see correctly from your notes that you watched the Apollo 11 launch? Is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you want to take a break for a second?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's all right. I just needed to wet my whistle with a good coffee. Everything's helter-skelter 24/7 round the clock going crazy, got to beat those Russians. Finished LM-2. I don't remember what we were doing just prior to July 20th, but I know that we were working on -- you had to do the test report and a lot of paperwork after the test, report it, get it down quickly and all that while everybody's remembering, and wrap it up if you like. We were probably doing that. And it came time for the Apollo. Of course you had Apollo 10. Then it came time for the Apollo 11 launch and we said, “Hey, we need to go see that.” So we couldn't get any commercial flights. Oh my gosh, how are we going to get down to the Cape?\\n\\n So several of us rented a Cessna Skywagon and took off out of [William P.] Hobby [Airport]. That time I guess it was still just the airport, Houston Airport. We were going to fly down there. We had a mechanical [problem] as soon as we took off. We went back and had to change out a component and wait while the techs [technicians] at the airport changed the component. Finally got that fixed, took off. Running late, we got to get down to see the launch. We had to go around the thunderstorm. That took up more time. And oh God, we got to hurry. Finally we got down somewhere. I don't know whether it was Tallahassee [Florida] or Jacksonville [Florida]. Before we got there we lost all power. Electrical power. Magneto or something went out. So we're flying along with a flashlight on the controls and on the dials. [Laughs] We pass by the tower with this darkened bird a couple of times trying to wake them up. Finally got their attention and they realized, ooh, those folks have got a problem.\\n\\n So we landed, because we couldn't talk to them, we had no coms [communications], so we couldn't even get clearance. So we just finally landed. And of course that [led to a] mandatory investigation later by the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] on all that. But meantime we designated one person to stay with the aircraft. We went and rented a car real quick, van or something, and we piled in that thing and drove like crazy the rest of the way across Florida to get down to the Cape to see the launch of Apollo 11. That was the first full Saturn V launch that I had ever seen. And oh my goodness, we barely got there in time. We saw the launch and it was something to behold.\\n\\n Shuttle launches are great, but that Saturn V, my goodness. Like I said the other day, the frequency, the rumble and roar that comes from it, is just amazing because of the size of the engine bells. It just would shake your whole cavity, chest cavity. Even though we were miles away from it. The other thing is that it seemed like it was in slow motion. It took forever and a day for the Saturn V to lift off the pad, where the Shuttle goes a lot faster. And of course unmanned ones, they go zip. But that Saturn V, it just lumbered up, you think, oh my God is it ever going to clear the tower. Week later maybe it clears the tower. But oh what a sight, what a sight, to see a 36-story building in effect lifting off the pad, just amazing, just amazing. Never forget it, never forget it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you feel a sense of pride that day knowing that you had participated in this event?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely. And it was wonderful. We made our way back of course so we could see the landing on the lunar surface, but oh yes, this really felt like all the hard work and the effort and all the round the clock sort of thing was well worth it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And where were you when they finally did land on the Moon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was at home in the middle of the night watching it on TV. I wasn't even in the control center, no. Black-and-white TV. Yes that's where I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you seen other Saturn launches? You mentioned that that was the first --" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't believe I had. I had seen a lot of Titan launches and Atlas launches and Delta launches and so forth on different occasions. But no, that was the first Saturn launch. I didn't see an earlier Saturn with the S-I, II, whatever it was. No. But I saw the big one. Saturn V." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's pretty impressive. What a great story to have taken all your friends." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. And by the way we went back -- and later on the guy that we left there to talk to the FAA and get the plane fixed and fly it back, why, he finally got back, we managed to grab commercials and get back in time to see the landing. Of course in those days, we [were] a lot younger and we had a lot of vim and vigor and vitality. So, moved pretty quick." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What are your recollections of Apollo 13?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By that time I was not on Apollo anymore. I was off on Space Station, Space Base studies. So I was not directly involved. But it was a harrowing experience, but I was not directly involved. So I was more on the periphery." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well let's talk about your Space Station, Space Base studies that you were working on. How did you get involved in those studies initially?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Can I mention a few things about some of the LM-2 people? Or is this appropriate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Some of the folks where I forgot them before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Absolutely please do so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wanted to be sure that I mentioned Moe Roth. And I may have mentioned him the other day. Was from Grumman. He brought down a whole team of technicians and engineers. I can't remember all the folks' names and I apologize for that. There was a structural dynamicist in particular. I talked to Owen the other day. Owen Morris. He can't remember his name. We both envision him. I can't recall the name and I apologize. But he was so sharp. Then in my little group, my little office, Lillian [M.] Hudson was my secretary. I had Tom [Thomas L.] Moser who later went on up in the management ranks. Tom was a great guy. I had done a lot of structural work with Tom and knew his wife real well, Nelwin. Ken [Kenneth L.] Suit, Bill [William T.] Mulcahey. We had a small little group. Then of course we were supported again by all the subsystem managers. About the same as what I mentioned the other day I guess.\\n\\n One little funny thing is that Tom and them came up with a wooden plaque that they gave to me. I still have it somewhere in a box. On the plaque it says he hung in there. It was a safety pin kind of a drawing thing on this wooden plaque. He hung in there. With a safety pin. Anyway that was cool. I guess that's probably about it. I mentioned Don Teegarden was the spacecraft manager on 2TV-1.\\n\\n I want to be sure to mention the spacecraft manager on LM-2 was John, John [G.] Presnell. And he worked and was in Carl [B.] Peterson's office. All of those folks were in Owen Morris's shop. Owen Morris was like Rolf Lanzkron, he was in ASPO and he was the manager for the Lunar Module at the time, Lunar Module manager in ASPO. Again on the LM-2 again Milt Silveira, Dick Colonna, Dan Newbrough, Tom Modlin, Ben Holder and so forth. And then this dynamicist and his team that I can't remember the name from Grumman. So I just wanted to be sure that I mentioned the names. That's all. [Also, from Grumman, Jack Buxton and Jim Reinhartsen.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, that's a nice touch because you did work with a large team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, they're all fine folks. Really proud to have been able to work with all those fine folks. Anyway so then LM-2 was over and now we're getting excited too because hey remember we came, a lot of us, for the Mars mission. So what do we follow the Apollo with? Of course we still had a lot of Apollo flights to go, and some Apollo Applications and AEXs and so forth, and later on the ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project]. But what are we going to do beyond Apollo? Okay, well, we got to go to Mars.\\n\\n So what's the first steps? The first step is the Space Station in Earth orbit. Then something bigger in Earth orbit like a Space Base. Then we'll probably need to go establish a Lunar Base and then a Mars mission. So that was the thinking. So Rene [A.] Berglund headed up a study office in the Program Office for Space Station, Space Base studies. And the way it was generated, or created, was that MSC -- I don't remember, we might have been JSC by then, I don't remember when the name changed. Would head one study. Marshall up at Huntsville would head the other study. They'd be parallel studies with parallel support contractors.\\n\\n In the case of the one at MSC it was North American. I don't recall when the name changed to North American Rockwell and all that or North American Aviation. Later on it just became Rockwell. I think I mentioned the other day too that when I talked about STL [Space Technology Laboratories], and I did all that studying back at the bomber plant, that's part of Thompson Ramo Woolridge, which is TRW. That's what Space Technology Laboratories. Anyway so we had North American. And up at Huntsville they had McDonnell.\\n\\n We did these parallel studies and what was it we were supposed to do? We were supposed to proceed with definition studies. When you do that sort of thing you put it into a phase nomenclature. So A, B, C, D. Phase A is requirements definition. Phase B would be preliminary design. Phase C would be final detailed design and manufacture. Well, D would be manufacturing and operation and so forth. So what we set out to do was to do Phase A and B studies on the Station and Base and so forth.\\n\\n So what we ended up doing is we did a Phase A and B on a 12-man Space Station, Saturn-lifted, with Saturn rocket technology. We also then did a Phase A on a 200-man Space Base, Saturn-lifted. All these are Saturn-lifted. We did a Phase A on a lunar base and a Phase A on a Mars mission. These were like as I recall the studies lasted about a year or two. Then later on when it was all over with we had a comparability assessment between the two studies, Marshall and JSC did. When we got all through -- and I can go back and talk about some things, but we got all through, then we put it on the shelf. They asked us to go back now because I guess it was becoming apparent that we were not going to be able to continue to fly the Saturn Vs. And we had Shuttle development starting. So said okay ,what would it take to do the same thing, put up a Station, but do it modular in little chunks using a Shuttle. So we went back and did a complete Phase A and B study on a Shuttle-lifted modular Space Station so we did that. Now back up and say, okay what did we do.\\n\\n Well, on the Space Station, like I said, you create the requirements definition, what is it you're trying to do and how would you go about it and so forth. I don't remember all the details now. I remember that on the Space Base we used a Tinkertoy or stair-step approach where we took some of the Station developed modules. For Skylab we used the upper stage in effect as the vehicle, on orbit vehicle, and we may have done the same thing on the Station. We had a 12-man station. We came to the Base, then we took several of those and put them together [for a 180 to 200-man Space Base]. We had several questions that we kept asking the medics to provide answers for that would become design drivers for the vehicles. We were having trouble getting answers. What were the questions?\\n\\n Well, some of the questions were can the crew survive extended zero G or not. We didn't know at the time. Can the crew survive radiation from solar radiation or maybe cosmic radiation? So nobody really knew. There's a lot of work on the part of the life science folks to try to find answers to that, but we didn't really know. So we said well okay in the meantime then we'll design the preliminary design, the vehicles, like we need all that stuff. We need the protection.\\n\\n So on the Space Base where you're going to be up there for extended period of time -- and the same thing for a Mars mission for say a two-year mission -- we'll create for example artificial gravity. So in the case of a Space Base as well as Mars train, we came up with -- of course you come up with a lot of different ideas. Most of them are no good and you throw them out. Some of them maybe they survive. But one of them was a spoke. We had a rotating spoke thing. And so it had a rotating hub and then it came out with arms and these spokes. Then we put the living and working modules and so forth at the end of the spokes. So then when you rotated this you ended up with artificial G out at the end. The further out you were the higher G. And rig it where you had 1.0 G out at the very end, see, and then lesser as you came in. So we got artificial G. The medics came back and said, well that's okay, except that now when you're rotating you get something called a Coriolis effect and that could make the crew dizzy. Said well okay, but maybe it's more important to have some G and get over the dizziness. They agreed with that. So that's some of the things we did.\\n\\n We came up with different ways of power on the Space Base. I think on the Station we just used solar arrays as I recall. But on the Space Base we did some investigation into -- I think we had three different power arrangements, potential arrangements. One was a solar array. One was radioisotope thermal generators, RTGs. The other one was a regular nuclear reactor sort of thing. So we had two based upon nuclear approaches, different approaches, Rankin cycle and the Brayton cycle. Then we had the solar arrays. We never got to the point of choosing one over the other because we just did Phase A on the base and Mars train. But that's the sort of thing we did.\\n\\n What did we do for protection from the radiation? What we tried to do was keep the crew when there was a solar flare alert or something or somehow they would know there's cosmic radiation coming more than normal, we'd put the crew in the center so that there'd be equipment around the periphery and the equipment racks and so forth would serve as protection against the radiation. My pet idea, especially here later, and somebody asked me for new activities that we're doing these days to go back to the Moon and perhaps finally go to Mars -- because I've asked them again, I says, “Hey did you guys ever really solve those two problems?”\\n\\n “Well, we think zero G is OK now. We've demonstrated that long-term up to a year and probably more. But we still don't know about the radiation.”\\n\\n I said, “Well look we generate all kinds of water up there with our fuel cells and so forth. And we got the consumables to put together to make power and the byproduct's water. So hey why don't we put water tanks all around the outside?” Because the smart people use water as a radiation barrier for a nuclear power plant on the ground. So why can't we use water up there and surround the crew with water? I hope that they're going to take advantage of that and do it. Later on we came up with inflatable structures. That's another whole story but it would be easy to come up with water containment capabilities, but anyway. So but at the time back in those studies, why, we just got them inside a lot of equipment for protection. That's what we did in those studies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working those Phase A type studies are you working within the constraints of a budget or are you just simply coming up with ideas to present to the folks at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. You have constraints of cost as well as the schedules and of course obviously capability, performance, and crew considerations as always. So no you have cost considerations too. Although in Apollo I had mentioned that we didn't have any funding problems, that's not to say there wasn't funding problems. We didn't see them in the trenches where we were working. Now Webb, Jim [James E.] Webb, and [Robert C.] Seamans [Jr.] and the top management practically lived in Congress working the budgets and so forth. Jim Webb, he was a perfect I think NASA Administrator, especially at the time, because he knew how to work with Congress. And so we were sheltered from those kind of funding problems. He worked all the budgets, those fellows at the top. But we didn't see the funding. In classical project management, the cost is part of it as well as schedule and performance yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall what the costs were at that point for the Space Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. No. I just flat do not remember the dollar figures. If I happened to say something it would be wrong, and I wouldn't want to do that, no, I can't -- don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What impact do you think that these studies had on the follow-on program to Apollo? The Skylab Project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Skylab as I recall, it was a combination of what do we do with Apollo hardware -- we had some hardware. Remember, I talked about the Command/Service Module Block I and Block II. Well the Block I was meant to operate in Earth orbit and Block II to work with the Lunar Module and go to the Moon. So for example the Block II, while it had in addition to side hatch, it had a hatch up the top so you could go into the Lunar Module, Block I did not have that. But it was easy to add that. Block I vehicle. And then be able to dock with something like a Skylab.\\n\\n We used the fourth stage, S-IVB, as I recall, for the Skylab. But the Skylab did a whole lot of good things. It made use of some existing Apollo hardware, the S-IVB tank and the Command/Service Module. It allowed us to explore the capability of staying on orbit for a period of time in a Station. Or in something like that. So we would be learning a lot in designing the Space Stations and Space Bases and these other studies we were doing. So it helped a lot in that. Plus it put more people on orbit in Skylab. Did that. It also allowed us to explore more some scientific returns.\\n\\n When we did the Space Station and Space Base studies, we created a whole great big huge book called the blue book of scientific requirements. What would be the science requirements to do those missions? We got all the smart science people, a myriad and numerous studies and meetings and so on and so forth, to create this big old blue book. What did we do with that? Well we took the blue book then and said, “Okay that's what the science guys want. Now that becomes a forcing function on the design of our hardware. And so we'll design our Station and our Base and Lunar Base and Mars train and all that to satisfy and accommodate the scientific requirements, in addition to just exploration and crew requirements and operability and mission ops and so forth.” So we used that as a forcing function for design.\\n\\n A lot of the experiments then that we demonstrated and tried out on Skylab were along the same vein. What is it that the scientists, smart people, would like to see us do? Quite a bit of it was life sciences. How does a crew function for extended periods of time in zero G? The mobility considerations. All kinds of things, life support. Even to food and so forth.\\n\\n Now we didn't get to do a whole lot of science things on Apollo. On 11 for example it almost was like that the science requirements, they were asked, the smart scientist community was asked, but then it became so apparent that we were having trouble even getting the confounded hardware to work and accomplish the mission and land before the end of the decade and before the Russians, that the scientist people almost got in the way. “Hey, sorry guys, yes we thought we could accommodate you but we're having trouble even flying this thing and getting the crew there and back,” so the scientist community was put on the back burner.\\n\\n Now we flew some science experiments on the first one. We had a skinnied down list of things that were very important. The most important things, scientist guys, pick out your top ones of all the things you want to do, say what's your four, five, six most important. Those were developed but off line if you like so it wouldn't conflict with Apollo hardware development. I don't remember the names of all those things. But they were like the ALSEP [Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments] Package and so on and so forth. We managed to find places to carry them, the weight, and where do you put them. We left them on the Moon. And I think there was a reflector we left up there for the laser to measure the distance between the Moon and the Earth and that sort of thing and seismometers and so on and so forth. But it's very minimal.\\n\\n Now later on as Apollo went along, why, we managed to get more and more science things. And of course on the very final mission, Apollo 17, why, we actually got a scientist person as a crew. Harrison [H.] Schmitt was a geologist and actually flew, and he could go out and poke around on the rocks and so forth and actually do his geological work. But my point is even though [science] progressed in Apollo, it still was minimal. So we wanted that to not happen when we did Station and Base Studies. That's why we created this big blue book so that we could be sure that the science requirements were right there and visible and in the front. They became design drivers on all the hardware. Of course we wouldn't be able to accommodate all, but at least you had a sizable shopping list and you could end up with a sizable list of things that you really could fly that the scientist people wanted to fly. Everything from materials experimentation in zero G and new processes and so forth to life science kind of things. As well as some astronomy things and ground observations and so on and so forth. So that was a driver on the Station and Base Studies big time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who was working with you on the Space Station, Space Base studies?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me be sure I don't leave out some names that I remember. Sorry about this, but, of course it was Rene [A.] Berglund's office in the Program Office. Leonard [S.] Nicholson worked with him. I believe he was a technical assistant. Sam [Samuel H.] Nassiff was there in that office, interfaced with him. In the Engineering Directorate, why, I worked with Don [Donald C.] Wade. By this time I guess I was back from SESL and from VATF now and I was back in the Structures Division and I was working with Don Wade, who was the deputy SMD [Structures and Mechanics Division] manager. Don started out -- because I wasn't there, they started this two, three months before I got back, as the manager for Space Station for the Structures and Mechanics Division. I became his assistant. Then later on I took over and Don vacated that position and I just did it. I worked directly with Don and then later I guess I was put into what we had called a little project office in the division that worked all kinds of projects, various projects. Bill [William G.] McMullen, [P. Paul] Don [Donald] Smith, [W.R. Downs], Les St. Leger, oh and Andy Meyer, who came over, joined us from Gemini Program. I think he had come from Langley originally, Space Task Group. I don't recall all the names of the folks at Rockwell and so forth. I don't remember.\\n\\n I think I put in the notes, and I probably don't need to reiterate them here, but when you're doing those kinds of studies now you really have to know your systems engineering, and all the different systems have to play together. In addition to those for which the Structures and Mechanics Division was responsible, all the disciplines of structures and materials and thermal and so on and so forth, mechanical systems, you had to be conversant with all the other systems, because they interplayed with one another, all the avionics systems, guidance and nav [navigation] and communication and so on and so forth. So you had to know enough about that to be sure everything hummed and worked together and nothing would interfere with one another, or at least minimize that effect.\\n\\n Oh Tony [E.] Redding. I can't remember all the names, I name one and forget [one], but I remember Tony Redding was a power expert and a lot of fun to work with. Another guy that worked with out of the guys out of the engineering directorate at the time was John [B.] Lee, which I still see John all the time. John flew P-51s in World War II and he was with the old Space Task Group. Another was Jack [C.] Heberlig. I think he went back to Virginia. I haven't seen him in a long time. And Jack Eggleston was Max's technical assistant. These are all fine people. And so that's the people I remember and unfortunately like I said a lot of them I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the reaction at JSC when folks found out that well we can only do the Space Shuttle, we can't do the Space Station, we're going to scrap the Mars Program, all these ideas that you'd been working on? What was your reaction and the team that you were working with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well we were crestfallen, because it was exciting to get the accomplishment of landing on the Moon in a decade and beat the Russians. That was great. But remember, we wanted to go to Mars. So when Apollo was cut short, and we had extra flights that we could have flown and we didn't -- of course they ended up as good exhibits, but we couldn't fly them. Golly, we've got -- now the scientists, we can even get more science and send some more geologists up there and get some more rewards.\\n\\n Well, Congress's mood I guess was well you've been there, done that. We’ve got Vietnam and got other problems in the country, so on and so forth. So we felt like that they said, “Okay, well, the space program's over.”\\n\\n “But hey, we wanted to go to Mars and establish base on the Moon.”\\n\\n “Well, no there's no money for that.”\\n\\n So we took those studies for example and put them up on the shelf and they started gathering dust. Said, well okay, well let's come up with an Earth orbit capability. So we started in the Shuttle where it was an airplane that could fly up and fly back. It was a challenge to fly an airplane up to orbit and back, there's no doubt about it. But it's not the same as exploring the universe. It was just different.\\n\\n Another beautiful thing about Apollo -- and I think I mentioned it somewhere in the notes -- one of the reasons why we were so successful in Apollo was because we had a singular clear goal, very crisp and clear, very defined. Land men on the Moon before the decade is out, period. So everything truncated into that. Everything we did, if it didn't go to that end result, it didn't get done, it was set aside. Like Apollo Applications. Well yes we thought about that, but do that some other time. Right now we got this singular goal. Okay well, what happened?\\n\\n Then after Apollo we didn't have a singular goal. We had one to fly this airplane up there and bring it back, but it was Earth orbital. Well, we had accommodations like a truck to take up a bunch of payloads for different things. Maybe there were upper stages that would go on up in the geosynch, or maybe go on some other place, or maybe they'd just stay in low Earth orbit. But it was a truck, and you'd fly up and fly back. And so you think, well okay, if we're not going to do that, we'll develop the capability again. NASA Space Act of '58. And then why don't we just turn it over to a contractor, commercial outfit, to operate it? Then we'll go on and continue to explore. Well that never happened. It never happened. So in that sense I think there was a little bit of disillusionment. You just kept on solving problems and working technical things.\\n\\n But it didn't have the same aura and the same excitement. Yes there was some excitement when we did the -- and I'll get into it later perhaps about the first drop test we did of the Orbiter and so forth, and some excitement when we flew the first launches and all that. Still it wasn't the same. Somehow it wasn't the same.\\n\\n I mentioned like on the Apollo we have splashdown parties. And we'd all gather, and the contractors would have these big humongous parties, and nobody worried about that the contractor was paying for civil service to be there, you know, this conflict of interest. They didn't worry about all that. And they'd have these big ice sculptures there and everybody's having a good time, lots of hors d'oeuvres. It was a happy time. It was a happy time. Everybody was prideful of what had been accomplished. By all the people: civil service, contractors, everybody. And a lot of that excitement has gone away.\\n\\n To this day we don't have that, I don't think. The folks and all the young people over here working, we got some really sharp folks. Thank goodness, we still have sharp people working. But there's no singular goal. Now maybe this new program will satisfy that, establish a lunar base, and later on a Mars mission. I hope so. Because you need an air of excitement other than just technical challenges. You need to have a purpose. Why are we doing this? I have trouble describing what I mean there. So yes it's like we're doing a good job, but we're just going up to Earth orbit and going around and round and round. There's a lot of little goals, get this payload or this satellite up and that's fine. But there's no singular goal. And sometimes when you're doing different satellites and different programs, why, they might conflict with one another too, and your manpower and resources.\\n\\n I guess the Catholic church is unique in the fact that it's like the military, you got one person at the top that is in charge of everything, the Pope. Or the general or somebody. Well that's the way we were in Apollo. We had one goal. A real 91 approach." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think this might be a good place for us to stop and then pick up with your Space Shuttle work next time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert J. Wren", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well I hope it's helpful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is. It is." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00784", + "metadata": { + "category": "Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project 1998 - 1999", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/EngelaufPL/engelaufpl.htm", + "original_file_name": "EngelaufPL_6-24-98.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Shuttle-Mir/EngelaufPL/EngelaufPL_6-24-98.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Shuttle-Mir Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Phillip L. Engelauf", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 24 June 1998" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Mark Davison", + "Rebecca Wright", + "Paul Rollins" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Philip L. Engelauf" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 24th [1998]. Today's interview is with Phil Engelauf in the flight director's office. We're in his office, in Building 4-North [Johnson Space Center]. We're conducting an interview with Mark Davison, Rebecca Wright, and Paul Rollins.\\n\\n Good morning, Phil. I wanted to start off with a history of how you got involved in the Phase 1 Program and what your duties were in the beginning of the program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, as a flight director, here in the flight director office, I was pretty much just being assigned to flights in the rotation originally. One of my assignments early, about the time the Phase 1 was starting, was STS-63. At the time that I was a lead flight director initially on that flight, that was not a part of the Phase 1 Program and was not affiliated with the Mir Program at all. In fact, [Robert E.] Bob Castle and Gary Coen had been doing the bulk of that work at the time.\\n\\n As events evolved a little bit further there, we decided to turn STS-63 into sort of a dry run for the first docking mission, which was going to be STS-71. Because I was a lead flight director there, I obviously got swept up into the activities and had to get pretty familiar with the rendezvous process and the issues that we had addressed for docking with Mir.\\n\\n Around that same time, Gary Coen, who was the head for our office of Phase 1 activities, was proposing a concept of sort of a cadre, or a core of people, that would be affiliated with Phase 1 and was sort of lobbying to have a central core of people continue to do all of the Phase 1 flights. Since there's quite a bit of overhead in establishing the relationships with the Russians, getting familiar with how they do business, rather than have to train everybody in the office on all those things, we went with that core concept. After I'd sort of gotten my feet wet on STS-63, it was pretty natural that I would continue on with the rest of the Phase 1 activities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk a little bit about your role as the lead flight director on 63? We've heard a little bit about the rendezvous, but can you tell us how it was for you working here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually, it was almost traumatic, I guess. We work as project managers, so to speak, for putting a Shuttle mission together, starting from about a year before the flight. At the time, we had cargo in the bay of a Space Hab, which had a lot [of] science experiments inside, and a Spartan [retrievable free-flying satellite] on the flight. We were working on plans for an EVA test to go out in the payload bay and do some work. The addition of the rendezvous to Mir really didn't mesh very well with the way we had built the mission up to that point. This was my recollection on the order of five or six months prior to the launch date, the flight that we started talking about this.\\n\\n We tried, at first, to put the mission together, to add the Mir rendezvous in, in the easiest way, by sort of tacking it onto the flight in the simplest way. It really didn't work out very well. We pretty much had to go back and start from scratch and put the mission together, essentially tear everything apart, start with a clean sheet of paper, and go put the mission back together.\\n\\n It took quite a bit of work to figure out how to make the mission work, given the constraints and the payloads that we already had assigned to a flight, but we'd already been doing a great deal of work on designing the rendezvous process for Mir in Mir flight techniques, which was our working level forum for working out those kinds of details. So at least we had a good set of procedures and the initial requirements to draw from. But as soon as we started thinking seriously about doing this, I got involved in a large number of meetings with my Russian counterparts, Victor Blagov and Vladimir Soloviev at the time. It took quite a bit of work to work out the final details.\\n\\n Up to that point, it had been sort of a paper exercise. We were building flight rules and doing the procedures. But when the time between the current moment and the first mission that we were really going to do this suddenly moved up several months to STS-63 from 71, it kind of injected a new dose of reality into that process and it took us a little bit by surprise, but we managed to go off and work out those details and come to some agreements for the close approach part of the phase." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also went onto work subsequent Shuttle-Mir flights. I think you worked STS-71, as well. Can you tell us about the emotions that you felt when the docking actually occurred? Where were you in the Control Center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, starting with 63, really. After we had made the close approach and separated back away from Mir, there was a huge feeling of accomplishment of everybody in the Control Center. A lot of the people who had been working towards STS-71, naturally became affiliated with 63. When we completed the rendezvous and the separation on 63, there was a huge, huge feeling of not exactly relief, but of success at having accomplished it and having pulled that all off properly.\\n\\n At that point, I was originally assigned to go to Moscow to be the flight director representative in Moscow for STS-71. Bill Reeves had been in Moscow doing that particular job on STS-63, and we were essentially going to switch roles. He was going to come back and work a shift on [STS-] 71, and I was going to go to Moscow. But Bill established a pretty good working relationship with the Russians while he was in Moscow and had really served well in that position because of some situations that arose on STS-63.\\n\\n At the same time, Bob Castle, who had worked closely with me getting ready for [STS-] 63 and was now lead on [STS-] 71, felt that my experience from 63 would be valuable in the Control Center for STS-71. So our office made a decision to switch those assignments around, and leave me here in Houston and send Bill to Moscow. It was sort of a step backwards, to me, in some ways, because I had been lead on [STS-] 63, and I was now going to be working for Bob on [STS-] 71. But happily, the rendezvous happens at a point in the crew day that's real close to our handover of shifts in the Control Center. So I was able to come in and at least sort of sit side-saddle with Bob during the flight and get to feel like I was having a real participatory role.\\n\\n It was satisfying to me to feel like we had dry-run the procedures, validated everything, and we did make a few small refinements in the process of getting ready for 63. So I felt like we at least contributed a significant part to the success of 71." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've heard the term RIO, the Russian Interface Officer, that was working with the flight director's office. Can you tell us a little bit about their role over Moscow and how they interfaced with you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. There are two different roles here that are significantly different in function. The RIO, or the Russian Interface Operator, was a Houston Control Center position that we invented specifically for these Mir flights. Because the Russians don't speak a lot of English and we didn't speak a lot of Russian, being able to have the two Control Centers communicate with each other mandated that we use interpreters for most of our communications. But we also wanted to be able to manage the flow of information and the conversations between our groups and have a function that could set up conferences between technical experts for the joint Shuttle missions, Shuttle-Mir flights. So we invented the Russian Interface Operator to be that focal point for communication, or facilitator for communications, between the two Control Centers. They managed fax traffic back and forth to the Control Centers, as well as the voice conversations.\\n\\n The Shuttle-Mir missions were only a piece of Phase 1. Of course, we had the long-duration crew members on Mir as a secondary, or as a different function. I shouldn't say secondary. In order to support those people, we had a staff working in Moscow to provide long-duration mission support to those people. The head of that group was called the Ops Lead, and their function was to be sort of the primary contact to the NASA crew member on board Mir and to provide all the work on the ground for coordinating answers to questions or updates to science procedures, and that sort of thing for that crew member.\\n\\n When it came time for joint missions, it's natural that the Russian Interface on our side and the Ops Lead in Moscow would be one of the primary paths for our communication, either because the crews on board Mir were handing over from the oncoming long-duration crew to the off-going or to help answer questions. Plus, it made it a little easier to have an English-speaking American contact in the Control Center that we could call and ask to go find another individual and set up a meeting.\\n\\n But for the Shuttle-Mir part of the missions, really the Russian Interface Operator and his Russian counterpart, the PRP [pronounced ‘pay-err-pay’] assistant to the Russian Flight Director, essentially, were the official line of information for the short missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the RIO would actually go over to Moscow during the Shuttle-Mir docking portion of the -" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, he was a Houston console position. He would sit at a console a few feet away from flight director console and would call and talk to his Russian counterpart, which was the POP, or the assistant to the shift flight director." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I understand now. Would they interface between missions, like between 71 and the follow-on mission? Would they interface with the shift flight directors about what was going to be happening on that mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we sort of evolved the RIO position. We set up extensive procedures between the two Control Centers for exactly what information would be exchanged at what milestones during the mission and the format of the information exchanged. We used the RIO to establish those procedures jointly with his Russian counterpart. Prior to the flights, we would build a document which would define all of the interactions between the Control Centers, and the RIOs were responsible for that document and for establishing those agreements with the Russians." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If we can get back to the Ops Lead, was that a position that was, I guess, supporting the flight director's office directly or indirectly, or were they supporting Phase 1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Actually, more indirectly. They were really more supporting Phase 1. The flight director office initially did not have a very significant role in even the long-duration missions. We sort of were in a position of just doing the Shuttle missions themselves. The operations leads were not originally drawn from the ranks of mission operations here. We found out through experience that MOD's operational experience was valuable and applicable to conducting that function.\\n\\n After Norm [Norman] Thagard's flight, we revised that function somewhat, so that those people were drawn from the ranks of mission operations and had a much more interactive role with the crew member prior to them launching the Mir, so that they had established a good personal relationship prior to that flight.\\n\\n The flight director office didn't have direct control over that function. We really sort of manned it from mission operations. But the flight directors were not in charge of that and it was almost a separate function. As that evolved through the duration of the Phase 1 Program, I think that relationship changed somewhat, to where although those people were still autonomous, the flight director office had a closer relationship with them. The fact that they had first-hand day-to-day experience with the status of Mir gave them a new position of relevance to the flight directors in terms of being a good source of information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We haven't had a chance to talk to [William H.] Bill Gerstenmaier, but we noticed when we were doing some research that his name appears on the flight director's list there as -I forget the term that they used, whether it was a candidate or something. I didn't quite understand that. Maybe we'll have to ask Bill the background." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it's best to ask Bill, I think, in that particular case. Bill actually had been selected as a flight director, but he was doing a stint in Moscow as an Ops Lead at the time. He returned and set up shop in an office here in the flight director office, only for a very brief period of time, and was immediately swept away to another assignment over in the Shuttle Program office. So the details of that you'll have to talk to Bill." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you mentioned whether they'd come from a flight director's ranks, I couldn't figure out how that transpired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they didn't come from the flight director's ranks. The Ops Leads were selected across MOD and essentially selected by the flight directors, or nominated, maybe, would be a better term, by the flight directors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that the RIOs, I guess, were assisting the flight director. We know that Sally Davis was one of the RIOs and since been selected as flight director. I think she's worked one of the missions so far now. So the experience the RIOs gained sounds like it was pretty valuable for what you're doing in the flight director's job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I think it was. The people that we picked for RIO generally consisted of people who had a fair amount of operations experience and understood how the Control Center works and how to get things done in the context of real-time operations. Naturally, we tried to pick people who we thought were talented and had a lot of capability. The fact that Sally fell in that category, I think, is the thing that made her a candidate for flight director. Not necessarily that the RIO job is a training ground or specifically suited to flight director office, but they should attract the same kinds of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk a little bit about your experiences over in Russia and tell us how many trips you took over there and the contacts that you made?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'd have to go back and add up the list of travel, but I've probably made ten trips to Moscow in the last three or four years. As I said, I wasn't really one of the original people that started the Phase 1 Program, and a number of others had gone to some of the first working group meetings in Moscow. I think I probably went over on about the third working group trip to Moscow.\\n\\n Before each of the Shuttle missions, we would have a joint working group meeting, where we would finalize a lot of the agreements that we had been working on. We would make any additions to the flight rules that had evolved since the previous flight. We would finalize the joint agreements. For example, the communication between Control Centers that I talked about before, with the RIOs, joint flight procedures that the crews would be executing and that sort of thing. And we would alternate. First, we would have one meeting here in Houston. Then for the next flight, the meeting would be in Moscow. Then for the next flight, back in Houston, and so on. I went over for three or four of those meetings in Moscow between flights over the course of the program.\\n\\n Additionally, as my position in Phase 1 elevated to more and more significance, I wound up going to Moscow to be present for some significant events on Mir that were unrelated to the Shuttle. So I wound up making a handful of trips over for other activities, like EVAs with American crewmen who were on Mir, and things like that.\\n\\n Every time I went over, the experience seemed a little different. At first, it seemed like I just sort of had bad luck. I always went over when it was extremely cold, it was snowing, just miserable. No matter what time of year I went, it seemed like we just really had bad weather. It's kind of strange, because being as far north as Moscow is, the sunrise was late in the morning and sunset was early in the afternoon. You would get up early in the morning to ride the bus out to the TsUP, out to the Control Center from Moscow, and it would be dark. Of course, it was often cloudy because it was winter months. We would go meet inside rooms that often didn't have windows. Then you'd go get on the bus at five o'clock in the afternoon, it was already dark outside. For two weeks at a crack, it just seemed like you never saw the sun.\\n\\n The atmosphere was quite a bit different in Moscow than it is here because of the economy and so forth. You really didn't just jump in the car and go down to the local coffee shop for a meal. There just weren't a lot of the things available that we were used to. People would take food with them in their suitcases, snack foods and things like that, because you couldn't just go buy a candy bar at the snack counter and things like that.\\n\\n The people that we met, though, were just wonderful people. The Russians, I think they were at first a little suspicious of us, as we probably were of them. We've been on opposite sides of the fence for a long time. But as we got to work together and got to know one another and trust and respect each other technically, we really developed some really strong friendships and a lot of deep respect between each other, and that was really what made it liveable in the early days going to over to Moscow. People would take you in, literally bring you to their homes and share whatever they had with you and have you over for dinner and do everything they could to entertain you and make your stay in Moscow as pleasant as possible.\\n\\n We did the same for them when they came over here. We would set up trips to Galveston or to visit the sites around Houston. Even took them on a trip to San Antonio, in one case, just to show folks around and show them a little bit of American life and culture.\\n\\n Over the duration of the program, though, the conditions in Moscow changed significantly. My observation is it became much more Westernized. Private businesses flourished. Availability of goods that we take for granted became much greater than it was initially. Westernized shopping became available, so that we could go get toiletries and daily needs that we needed at shops close to the hotel. It changed quite a bit and became a lot easier to survive in the trips over there.\\n\\n But the thing that was steady through it all was the friendships with the Russians, and we built up some really good relationships there that have been steadfast throughout the whole program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the stories that we heard was, before the Soviet breakup, there wasn't that many products on the shelf, like what you said, but people didn't really want for anything. But now that the shelves are full of all kinds of appliances and food and everything you want, people just don't have the money in their pocket to buy everything that's there sometimes. So it's kind of a dichotomy that's been set up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it's a tough situation. I'm sympathetic to the Russian people. They're going through a hard time. The one thing I can say is, just watching the individual snapshots that I have seen over an extended period, my impression is the conditions are improving significantly and things will improve quite a bit more in the next few years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's good. Let's talk about the transition that was set up between yourself and Bob Castle. Bob Castle started out as the working group lead for three, and then you took over that job. How did the Russians accept that transition, and how did it work over here with you two?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a little bit -I don't want to say difficult for the Russians, but the Russian culture is such that people get into one job and they stay there for a long time. I'm not going to say their whole lives. But it's just not common for the Russians to change position or move around a lot, whereas it's almost standard in American business. If you stay in one place for more than a couple of years, people perceive you as stagnated in that job.\\n\\n Bob had been with the [Phase 1] program pretty much since the beginning and had been one of the strongest technical forces through STS-71 and into 74. Even though we assigned individual flight directors as lead flight directors, Bob had been operating as the sort of head of Phase 1 for our office after Gary Coen's departure. He established an extremely strong relationship with Victor Blagov. Even after there was an official hand-over between Bob and myself, it was still Victor's tendency to turn to Bob first when there was a question or an issue. I guess I didn't really take much offense to that. I think I understood the situation fairly well. It wasn't like Bob had dropped off the face of the Earth either; he's only two offices away. So it's not like we stopped talking to each other or that he was banished from Phase 1. We still all pretty much worked as a group.\\n\\n But over a period of time, when I was running the telecons with the Russians for a period of time and took over, of course, I was lead on STS-76, so that put me back into the forefront again for a while, and again on 84 and subsequently on 89. But as I became more prominent and showed up more often, Victor eventually got the idea, I think, that I was the primary guy at the time. We had a good working relationship.\\n\\n Again, as I said, I'd been around since 63, so I wasn't completely a new face to Victor. It wasn't a terribly difficult transition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let's talk a little bit about the long-duration versus the Shuttle missions and how the operations differ, and maybe what we learned from the long-duration that we're going to bring to Space Station. Can you talk just a little bit about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I could probably talk for weeks on that. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We only have so much tape. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were several things that we learned that were actually sort of relearning things from Skylab. The way we do Shuttle missions, these are short, seven- to ten-day missions typically, sometimes as long as fifteen days, which is the blink of an eye compared to the long-duration missions. The American crew members that flew on Mir had all had Shuttle experience. When we fly Shuttle missions, we staff our Control Center three shifts a day for the duration of the flight. We will call in any amount of support that's required to get answers to questions, because with only a ten-or-so-day mission, you really have to do the most you can to maximize return from the flight. You can't just wait until tomorrow to get an answer to a question; you have to get it now. The crews were used to receiving those answers right away.\\n\\n When they flew on the Mir, the nature of the long-duration mission was such, coupled with the ground site coverage availability for Mir for the Russians, was such that crews would ask questions to the ground and folks would say, \"Okay, we'll get an answer to that.\" But that meant tomorrow, or \"It's Friday. We'll get you an answer on Monday.\" And that was extremely frustrating for some of our crews initially, not because that really wasn't acceptable, it just wasn't what they were accustomed to, and it had not occurred to anybody to change the expectations for those sorts of things.\\n\\n The limited availability of communications between the ground and Mir, I think, was also a significant contributing factor to that kind of surprise, so to speak. Again, we have coverage about eighty minutes out of every ninety on Shuttle missions because of our satellite coverage. The Russians use primarily only their ground-site coverage, except for crucial events that can't be scheduled over the ground sites, and then they will schedule up a satellite, but that's very expensive and they try not to do that if they can avoid it. As such, the crews had much less communication with the ground. Much of the communication with Mir was dedicated to running the Mir systems, and so the availability of time for the NASA crew members to work science issues and so forth was really limited. As a result, again, crew members, I think, felt a lot of detachment and sense of separation from folks on the ground.\\n\\n It took us a while to work up methodologies to combat that and to try to work around that. That was actually part of the genesis of the Ops Lead concept, of being able to provide a familiar voice and a familiar relationship that the crew members could feel more comfortable with when they were talking to people on the ground and to have a feeling that they really had a genuine advocate on the ground who was going to go off and try to help them out. We think that that worked well over the course of the program.\\n\\n Obviously, it's very personality-dependent. Some people's needs are different than others. But it was something that we think we've relearned, I guess I would say. I think there was a certain knowledge of this already from the Skylab Program. But again, we had been doing Shuttle operations for so long that we'd fallen into a certain mode of operation. It's a matter of changing our expectations back to the other way.\\n\\n Again, with short Shuttle missions, we'll work the full nine days or ten days of the flight, with hardly any time off for the crews. They work long days. I think we have gotten into the habit now recently of giving crews a half day off on anything over about a nine-day flight. The Mir crew works on much more of a five-day week, with a steady schedule and they have recreation time available to them. So there's a little bit more of a normalcy to those kinds of operations and feeling that you get up in the morning, you have some time to yourself. You have a work day. Then you're off in the evening, and you have your weekends to yourself.\\n\\n Obviously, there were hardware failures and there's overhead tasks, just like the equivalent of our mowing our lawns and doing our laundry on the weekends, that still have to be done by the crews, but it's much less a sense of having your day totally structured for you the way we do in the Shuttle, where we've pretty much planned the crew's time down to the minute. Again, this is sort of a mental attitude that we had to get used to in planning the day for the Mir crews and something that we'll carry on into the station program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the communication difference, as far as availability. If you had a Shuttle-Mir flight and you compared it to a Shuttle Space Lab flight, would the communications be different? Say, when you're docked, would you let the crew kind of do their own Mir operations and not have a constant communication with them, like you would on a space plan flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, very much so. We tried several different approaches to this during the course of the Mir Program, actually. One of the most difficult things we had to come to grips with was how to do transfer of the cargoes between the vehicles and to keep track of what got transferred and what didn't, in both directions, from the Shuttle to Mir and from Mir back to the Shuttle.\\n\\n We tried on the early flights explicitly scheduling the transfer of every item, and that didn't work very well at all, quite frankly, because when we would stow the vehicles, what might be the highest priority item and the thing that you'd like to schedule first might not be the most accessible item on the vehicle. If you tried to follow a rigid order or schedule, you would wind up having to dig behind something to get to something else, take it over to Mir, bring something else back to Mir, but now you didn't have a hole big enough to put this in back in the Shuttle. Crews spent more time temporarily moving things and stowing them and relocating them than they did actually transferring them.\\n\\n So we evolved that process a little bit and came up with some different ideas for on-board tracking using cue cards and lists that the crews could check off the items as they got transferred, and just scheduling large blocks of time and saying, \"Go transfer stuff. Go move things around on the vehicles.\" That let the crews, who could see the stowage configuration in the vehicles, use their judgment and their time to do that the most efficient way that they saw fit.\\n\\n Again, over the program we actually did that in a couple of different ways. Before the Progress collision, when we had the Spektr module and a large amount of volume available to us on Mir, they actually staged all of the transfers. They basically took all the things that were going to go to the Shuttle and they put them in one module out of the way, and cleared out space in the different module for all the things that were coming on. That made it really easy. You could take everything out of the Shuttle and move it over to the Mir and put it someplace, and then take everything that was going to come back out of one place on Mir, and bring it over and just pack it in the Shuttle. That was extremely efficient.\\n\\n But after the Progress collision, when we lost a significant amount of the volume available on Mir, we were unable to do that, and we had to go back to a mode that was much more strategic in terms of, \"Let's clear out a little place here and take all these things over. Then we'll bring this big box back and put it in here,\" and so on and so forth.\\n\\n One of the other things we did is, rather than trying to account for and transfer hundreds of little individual items, we would have the Mir crew returning, pack or pre-pack bags of return items. Then you had only a large bag with a known inventory of items in it that had to be transferred back. Once that was across the hatch in the Shuttle, then you knew you had transferred all those items and you could check those off. And the same thing going back towards Mir. So we moved from transferring individual items to transferring pre-packaged collections of items and again gained some efficiencies in doing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The communication between the Cap Com and the Shuttle was subsequently less often, since they kind of gained more autonomy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right, because we pretty much gave the crew autonomy to do the transfers. We'd give them their marching orders, said, \"Go transfer this stuff,\" and let them go off and do those things.\\n\\n With the science missions, routinely the principal investigators on the ground want to participate in that science, so they will talk with the crew and keep abreast of the events all the way along, ask for observations from the crew through the experiments. We did some small amount of docked science while we were jointly docked with the Mir. Not very much. The main job there was to get the transfers done.\\n\\n Occasionally we would have specific activities that had to be done at a certain time. For example, an item that was powered, that had to be transferred and plugged in in a short period of time, and we had to know where that was going to go. Then we would have some communication with the crew to make sure that the timing worked out properly and that you had the stowage location where it was going to get plugged in was all cleared out, and all that sort of thing. But by and large, the communication with the crew was minimal during the dock operations in the later missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If we look at how the TSUP communicates with the Mir, I think, if I remember correctly, it was pretty much the flight director and other controllers talking with the crew. We use the Cap Com concept with the Shuttle. What do you think ISS [International Space Station] is going to adopt? Some compromise between that? Or do you think we're going to have a round-the-clock Cap Coms?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I project that at least when the operation matures for ISS, that it will be closer to the scheme that the Russians use now than what we do at this point. As to whether we have a designated Cap Com who is from the astronaut corps to work with the crew through specific items, I expect that we'll probably still do some of that. But I think also, just for variety and keeping the crew members in touch with the ground and providing them with a broader spectrum of contact, I think we'll probably go to a period of having more individuals talk to the crews and be in contact with them. Also, rather than having to spend a lot of time educating the Cap Com on the breadth of things that you might encompass in a long-duration mission, I think we'll go to probably having individuals who are expert on those particular topics come in and work with the crew on an orbit for those particular activities. In a science operation we'll still do, I think, very much the way we do space lab missions or other science missions, where individual principal investigators will have the freedom to talk to the crew for selected periods of time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the shifts? We run now nine-hour shifts, twenty-four-hour coverage for the Shuttle mission. But the Russians use more of a twenty-four on and forty-eight off, or something similar to that. Do you project us going to something in between one of those ideas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's been a lot of discussion of the different methods that can you use to try to skin that cat. I'm a little reluctant to forecast how that's going to play out in the end. We have talked -I think everybody realizes that we're not going to be able to do the high-energy, three-shifts-a-day kind of support that we do in Shuttle missions. That's another thing that we already learned in Skylab. That we don't need to go do that again.\\n\\n Exactly what format that takes, we've talked about shift duty officer concepts for quiet periods where you could have just the smallest handful of controllers in the Control Center monitoring the systems or available if the crew calls down, but sending most of the folks home weekend periods and quiet times. Most of the folks here are five minutes away from the Control Center if we really needed an emergency team on. But those concepts haven't really been 100 percent nailed down. But certainly we recognize that you can't do ops the way we've done the Shuttle operations.\\n\\n I think the twenty-fours on, seventy-two hours off type of approach that the Russians use, we'd have a hard time finding acceptance here initially and probably isn't required. I think it's driven by some aspects of Russian culture in the transportation systems that are available to them and so forth, and not required, given the infrastructure that we have available to us here. So I don't think we'll probably wind up with anything that looks quite like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When was their hand-over when they had that twenty-four? Is it in the middle of the day? Because you mentioned transportation. I noticed their trains stop at a certain time during the night." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was usually in the morning. I think it was either seven to eight or eight to nine in the morning Moscow time. So the incoming team would ride the train in, when the transportation was still available for the off-going team to get home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since you brought the subject up, I remember some of the scary trips between the hotel and the Control Center. The traffic seemed to get worse every time you went over there, and more lanes where there weren't lanes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, noticeably. When we first started going to Moscow, I think gasoline was not terribly available. From talking to some of the flight controllers, simple car parts were not available. So there wasn't a lot of private automobile traffic early on when we started. But it seemed like every time I went over there, it got worse and worse, more heavily traveled. Yes, depending on which direction you were going in the morning or the end of the day, traffic could be quite a zoo. As you say, lanes where there weren't lanes.\\n\\n I don't want to be critical of the Russians. I think what they do is probably fairly typical of a lot of other European countries. I think it's different from the degree of order that we're used to here in American highways. I won't say whether it's good or bad, but it was sure different." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anybody that complains about the traffic on NASA Road One ought to go to visit some of the roads over in Moscow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's probably a good point. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you share with us some of your most memorable experiences during the Shuttle-Mir Program, whether they were in Russia or here in Houston?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had a handful of them. During STS-63, one of the issues that we were most concerned about, or I should say that the Russians were most concerned about, was redundancy of our jets, to make sure that we weren't going to come in and crash into Mir because we lost redundancy, and also contamination of the Mir spacecraft from our jets. As a result of that, we wrote a bunch of flight rules before the first rendezvous on STS-63 that mandated at least two lines of redundancy available for the rendezvous for certain key jets.\\n\\n As a result of that, we did some work in the first couple of days of the Shuttle mission for STS-63 to test-fire most of the jets on the orbiter, so that we could say we have demonstrated the necessary redundancy prior to the approach. As fate would have it, we developed a leak. Actually, we had leaks on two jets, and those jets were leaking such that the Russians didn't want us to come and approach Mir. That would have been just a terrible thing to have had happen to us. It took quite a bit of effort and quite a bit of thinking and work to come up with a procedure to try to recover those jets, so that they weren't leaking anymore.\\n\\n These happened the day before we were supposed to fly the approach. I was on the first shift of the day and wound up staying halfway through another shift. We came up with a test and a procedure, really, that allowed us to recover those jets. We finally persuaded the Russians that it was going to be okay for us to come in and fly that approach. But it wasn't until the morning of the rendezvous that we had finally gotten an agreement from the Russians that we were going to be able to go ahead and make the close approach. I was scared for a long time that we were not going to be able to get to that point on that mission, that we were going to lose the rendezvous. I remember that as being a great success of that mission, of being able to recover from that situation.\\n\\n I also remember a number of other events, one of which ultimately took me to Moscow for a series of other pretty interesting events. After STS-84, in the May time frame of 1997 [in fact, it was June], I had the privilege of taking a trip to Europe with the STS-84 crew. We visited the Paris Air Show and visited a number of the European Space Agency facilities, along with one of our crew members, Jean-Francois Clervoy, who had flown on STS-84. I came back to work and had been only back a day or two. And I'll never forget it. I was just stepping out of the shower. My wife knocked on the bathroom door and stuck her head in and said, \"The Russians just had a collision with Mir with one of their Progress vehicles and they're losing pressure. They're talking about abandoning the vehicle.\" This was being broadcast on the local news, which my wife was observing.\\n\\n So I threw some clothes on and raced in here to work to find out whatever I could find out, and we had a fairly hectic couple of days here trying to really get our arms around what had happened and understand the condition of the vehicle. Of course, Mike Foale was on board, so we had some concerns about his welfare, obviously.\\n\\n [Subject’s note: This next paragraph is probably what I said, but it does not come across accurately. We were aware of the EVA plan, and that is what prompted sending me to Moscow. The possibility of Foale doing it is what was new to us when I arrived at TsUP]\\n\\n I had got orders to pack and head for Moscow as quick as I could get over there. So I got on an airplane and showed up in Moscow late one afternoon, slept the night in a hotel and rode out to TSUP with the other folks the next morning. As soon as I walked into the Control Center, Victor Blagov came up to me and asked to talk to me for a few minutes, and then explained that they were discussing doing an EVA to reconnect some electrical cables, but asked if Mike Foale would be available to do this EVA. This was the first I had become aware of this proposal for Mike to do the EVA. I think it was the first anyone had. I think it was one of those situations where because I had a good working relationship with Victor, it probably made it easier for him to talk with me and propose this than to try to pick up the phone and talk to somebody else in Houston.\\n\\n For about the next two or two and a half weeks, I acted as sort of an intermediary there and worked with Victor and worked with some of our EVA experts on the prospects of Mike doing that EVA. Of course, the history will show, eventually we postponed that EVA until after the change-out of the Mir crew. But it was a pretty interesting time in Moscow during that period, right after the accident, and watching and learning a lot about the Russian process and how they recovered from that situation.\\n\\n Probably the one other most interesting period of time was the fire that the crew experienced on board Mir, the oxygen-generation candle mishap. As fate would have it, Victor Blagov and Yuri Antoschechkine, and one of their other technical experts were here in Houston having one of our joint meetings with us.\n\nWe were just down the hall in one of our little conference rooms, meeting. We got the word here, from our folks in Moscow, about the fire. We were receiving the air-to-ground and picking up the transcripts and having them translated as quickly as we could. So I think Victor found out about that from me directly, because I'd gotten the information a little before he did. Of course, he got on the phone back to Moscow as quickly as he could, and tried to get a good understanding of that situation. Of course, history, I think, shows where all of that [went] eventually. But it was kind of intriguing to be in that situation of being the first one to break the news to Victor and, again, watch how they handled that situation and how they recovered from it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting. Were you able to bring any of your family members over to Russia for any of the trips that you made?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Never have done that. My wife and I have talked about it. I'd like to be able to take my wife over. Of course, she also works in the program now and is involved in the ISS Program, so we're looking for opportunities when we might both have business over there. If that doesn't work out, we'll probably just wind up when one of us goes over for business, with the other one buying a ticket, and going on over and doing a little touring around. But so far, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure you painted a colorful picture for her from all the trips you've made." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Had some good stories for her. [Laughter]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm going to see if Rebecca or Paul have a couple of questions for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You worked on [STS-] 63?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You worked on [STS-] 91?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was just really a short amount of time between those two, but yet lots of experiences in between. Can you give us an idea of how you felt, from the exhilaration of being on the first one, to working on the last one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. This has been dynamic program all along. I don't think anyone could ever say that the Phase 1 got to a point of stable repetition. Clearly, the first couple of flights were far and away the most challenging because we were really laying the groundwork and really kind of polishing the procedures and getting things to where they worked the way we really wanted them to. It was all so new to us, and working with our Russian counterparts, whom none of us could have imagined, even a couple of years earlier, that we could possibly have been doing what we found ourselves doing in those early days of the program.\\n\\n Now as we've gotten into the end of the Phase 1 Program and worked all the way through [STS-] 91, it's a transition, I think, more than the end of a program. I think all of us who are working in Phase 1 know that as soon as we finish writing our last post-mission reports and things, that our next assignments have already been given to us to work some aspect of the Phase Two Program, which I think has maybe made it seem like a little more seamless transition, but you can't escape the obvious significance of what's happened with this first true long-range joint endeavor.\\n\\n Apollo-Soyuz was a one-shot deal. While that was valuable and I think we used a lot of that experience, this is the first time that we've had an extended relationship with another group of folks. Some of the people that we worked with on Mir, we may not be working with in ISS. That's unfortunate. It's sort of sad for some of us, because we've built good relationships with those people. But it's been, I think, extremely satisfying to see the evolution of the whole program, watch the maturing of the working relationships with the Russians. I think people take that as a positive springboard into the Phase 2 Program. So while you can be melancholy about the end of this program, I think people think of it in a more positive way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "There are all kinds of duties and roles and jobs that you could have done during this Phase 1 Shuttle-Mir Program, but you're a flight director. Would you have done anything else? Are you glad that you're in the position that you're in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think if you ask that question of anybody, the first thing they'll tell you is, \"Well, I would have liked to have flown.\" [Laughter] But having been consigned to the ground, I think the flight director job was probably the job that I would have chosen if I would have had complete freedom to pick. I've had a fairly high amount of authority and freedom to go do my job in a lot of aspects. I felt like I was able to make a significant contribution. I really think I had an input into things that happened and steered things in the right directions when I had a chance to participate. So, in retrospect, I can't see anyplace where I'd say, \"Gee, I wish I had been over there,\" or, \"I wish I had been in a different place or been doing something different at the time.\" In this period of the program, I think this was the best place to be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were a little boy, did you want to be a flight director when you grew up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Either flight director or an astronaut." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Seriously?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Seriously. I'll never forget, when I was a kid, sitting in elementary school with my head down on my desk, listening to Alan Shepard's first flight, and I was bitten with the space bug." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I remember that, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Through my whole childhood, I didn't miss a launch or a splashdown or a moon walk. I'm sure if you ask a lot of other people my age, I fell asleep on the living room floor in front of the TV, watching people walk on the moon in the middle of the night, California time.\\n\\n I really did want to be in the program here and steered my education in that direction. Like everybody, I wanted to be an astronaut at one time, you know, but just the statistical probabilities of getting selected into that small pool of folks are tough. But as a kid, I used to remember reading the newspaper, \"Flight Director, Gene Kranz,\" and I kind of thought that that was a fascinating job and would really like to be in that position.\\n\\n I had a really interesting experience. About five years ago, I sat on a panel discussion in front of some high school students. I was on a podium with Gene Kranz and Henry Pohl and a gentleman from Lockheed. I looked down the row, and was sort of taken aback for just a minute, that I was considered worthy of sitting at a podium with people of that caliber, and that of all of my childhood ambitions, to sit in a chair that those kinds of people sat in, to sit in the flight director console where Gene Kranz had sat, and to be in the company of brilliant engineers like Mr. Pohl, that was probably the first time in my life that I ever really felt that I had accomplished my objectives. Because being the hard-driving type, we're always feeling like we should have done more or accomplished more or wish we'd gone further. But that was a real moment of satisfaction for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What does one do to become a flight director? I mean, you sit at console for a while, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Most of the folks that work at our consoles come directly out of school and come here to be flight controllers. They're hire on to working in one technical discipline or another. In general, those people will start out in a back room working for maybe two or three years getting smart in that one technical discipline and learning the console skills before they're promoted to a front room flight controller position. After they have achieved that, they'll probably work out there for another three or four years, proving themselves and sort of catching management's eye, showing that they've got what it takes to do that job, showing that they've got the judgment and the technical expertise to do that.\\n\\n Then as we pick flight directors here every couple of years, a lot of names get thrown in the hat. Some people are cut out for this job, and others aren't. It certainly takes a certain type of personality. You can't be too terribly thin-skinned. You got to think you're right all the time, or you can't do this job. [Laughter] But like I say, it takes a certain personality type. I feel like I'm fortunate to be counted in that group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul Rollins", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for your time. We enjoyed your stories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Mark Davison", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's next for you with your next mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Philip L. Engelauf", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right now I'm assigned as lead flight director for STS-95, which will be the next flight in October, which is Spartan and Space Hab and has the crew with John Glenn on board." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00070", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BoldenCF/boldencf.htm", + "original_file_name": "BoldenCF_1-15-04.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BoldenCF/BoldenCF_1-15-04.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Charles F. Bolden", + "location_date": "Houston, Texas – 15 January 2004" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Charles F. Bolden" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is January 15th, 2004. This oral history interview is being conducted with Charles Bolden in Houston, Texas, for the NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Rebecca Wright and Jennifer Ross-Nazzal.\\n\\n During our last interview, we talked about your first two missions and all of your activities around that time period. Today I’d like to begin by talking about your next assignment in August of 1990 when Administrator Richard [H.] Truly appointed you to lead an agencywide review of the policies and the process for honor awards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I forgot about that. You guys are smart." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you don’t mind sharing some details about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can. As a matter of fact, Admiral Truly was concerned that there was not an equitable distribution of recognition throughout the agency, that some centers got more awards than others, that there was not an award that was available for recognition for people who weren’t engineers but who did just as valiant an effort at supporting the agency. And if I’m not mistaken, what he had in mind was trying to build a system that would have two equivalent awards, or closely equivalent awards, like we have in the military, which are, in the Navy and Marine Corps it’s the Navy-Marine Corps Achievement Medal and a Navy-Marine Corps Commendation Medal, with very minor distinction between the qualifications for the two. What the committee was charged to do was try to evaluate all of the NASA awards, but specifically look for something that would be able to recognize people in nontechnical fields.\\n\\n Long story short, after weeks of deliberation what we came up with was something that I think the final name of it was the NASA Exceptional Achievement Award, as opposed to the NASA Exceptional Service Award. When we talk about culture again, we had to advise the people in the chain of command, the NASA managers, that this was a new medal in the NASA awards system and that it was intended for this group of people; however, anybody who met who the prerequisites could receive it. But it was now their vehicle through which they could recognize people in the administrative field.\\n\\n To my knowledge, as I remember, we may have tweaked the words on the prerequisites for some of the other awards, but we validated those that were in the NASA system. We decided that there would be no hierarchy. That was one of the things we discussed, whether there ought to be a ranking of awards just as there are in the military, so that you wear them in some ascending or descending order. And we said, no, you don’t really want to do that; that’s not necessary. But we did come up with an additional award, a brand-new award. And I hope I got the name right. Did that come close?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounded good to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ll have to go back and look. I have my notes somewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How long were you there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I completely forget that. We met off and on. Boy, I want to say it took us about six months to finish all the deliberations. And it wasn’t an ongoing—you know, we didn’t meet every day for three weeks or something like that. We met and went back and thought about it and polled people, went back to the centers to try to find out what the level of reception would be. Interestingly, there were some people who were opposed to it, for a variety of reasons. You could not get people to understand that these were going to be two co-equal awards; it was just that the criteria for receiving one as opposed to the other was technical versus nontechnical. There was nothing for the nontechnical people up until that time. Although anybody could receive an Exceptional Service Award, it was always considered to be something for technical achievement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At what point did you learn that you were assigned to your next flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, my goodness. I really don’t remember, because my next one, it was my first command, and that was being the commander of STS-45 ATLAS [Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science]. And I actually think, if I remember correctly, much the same as I had learned that I was going to be on STS-31, the Hubble Space Telescope mission, it was in the latter phases of preparation for that flight that I was advised that two years hence I was going to get an opportunity to command my first mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mention, this is your first as a commander. What were the differences for training and getting ready for this mission?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, huge. The biggest difference in being a commander and a pilot is that the commander has—we talked about this a little bit the last time—but the commander has overall responsibility for the organization of the crew, overall responsibility for conduct of the mission on orbit, and depending on how the commander views his or her duties, I viewed it as I had responsibility for organization of the training, including the training plan and the training flow, and then the exercise of the flight itself, once we actually got finished with the training and went on orbit.\\n\\n I had no responsibility for the selection of the crew. I learned that, “Here’s your crew. You got any objections?” So I did have an opportunity to identify if there was anybody that I thought I would have a difficult time working with. I did not, and so the crew stayed intact up until about six months prior to the actual conduct of the mission, at which time we lost one of crew members, and that was Dr. [Michael Logan] Mike Lampton. Mike was one of the two payload specialists we had. We had Mike Lampton and, if I remember correctly, Byron [K.] Lichtenberg, as our payload specialists.\\n\\n ATLAS was scheduled to be a nine-day mission and it was going to be NASA’s first space laboratory mission dedicated to the study of Earth. It was the first in a series of flights called Missions to Planet Earth. ATLAS was the acronym for the flight, and it was Atmospheric Laboratory for Applications and Science. It contained thirteen specific scientific payloads, ten of them were dedicated to Earth’s atmosphere, and three of them were solar studies experiments.\\n\\n At the time, it was an international mission because the bulk of the experiments were international experiments. They were non-NASA. At the time that Mike Lampton, who had been complaining of back problems, was diagnosed with having abdominal cancer, then he was removed from the flight by his doctor.\\n\\n The payload community went out and elected Dirk [D.] Frimout, who was a Belgian engineer who had been responsible for the design and development of one of the critical experiments that we had on board that was a—boy, I’m getting way over my head here, but it was an atmospheric experiment that measured—I can’t remember the name of it, but it actually measured aerosol content in what we call the mesosphere. We called it the “ignorosphere,” the part of the atmosphere that’s ignored my most scientists and about which we knew very little.\\n\\n In fact, it turned out the focus of the flight, really, other than the three solar experiments, was principally to help us understand the middle part of Earth’s atmosphere, the mesosphere, because that’s where everything gets mixed. We understand Earth relatively well, we understand space relatively well. What we didn’t understand—I think we have a significantly better understanding today, but what we didn’t understand at all back then was the middle atmosphere. And that’s where a lot of the weather is made, a lot of pollution comes about, and we just wanted to understand exactly what’s going on there. How does God do this thing in what we call the middle atmosphere? Ozone layer overlying it, a lot of other things.\\n\\n So Dirk had gained the respect and admiration, actually, of the payload community. It was an opportunity for them to involve a real-live foreign payload specialist, and so although he was not a payload specialist, per se, he was elected from the payload community. He came on board about six months prior to the flight, came up to speed very quickly, and ended up flying as our second payload specialist and our seventh crewmember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You ran twenty-four-hour shifts on that flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this the first time that that was done?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. As a general rule, the space laboratory missions were twenty-four-hour ops [operations] because you had a laboratory there and you really wanted to optimize the scientific return on the mission, and the best way to do it was to operate around the clock.\\n\\n Ours, being an atmospheric studies mission, we wanted to be able to take all the opportunities that we had to measure Earth’s atmosphere, and so the advantage of working around the clock for us was that we had an opportunity to look at daylight and darkness in both hemispheres, and daylight and darkness in both parts of the world, north and south, and, well, east and west, even. So by having two separate crews that were up all the time, you got daylight in one part of the world that you wouldn’t have been able to get had you gone to bed when it was daylight in your normal launch time.\\n\\n And we had what—we called it Red and Blue Crew. I was blessed to have had just an outstanding crew of people, and so the way that I elected to do it was I made Brian Duffy, who was my pilot, my co-pilot, I gave him primary responsibility, on-orbit responsibility, for one crew, and then [David C.] Dave Leestma, who was our mission specialist number two, but was a Navy F-14 RIO, Radar Intercept Officer, I gave him on-orbit responsibility for running the second crew, which meant that he flew the vehicle, which was great for him. I felt perfectly confident in his capabilities and ability to do it, and he was superb, as I had expected.\\n\\n [Kathryn D.] Kathy Sullivan was the—I used another position that sometimes we use and sometimes we don’t, and I made her my payload commander. So she had primary responsibility for the organization and the conduct of the payload operations on board. I worked with the flight controllers in overall oversight of everything, but she had primary oversight of the payload side of the flight. So when there was a question about this experiment time that was going to be allocated to it, assignment of who was going to be the prime and the backup for each of the experiments, that was Kathy’s responsibility and she just advised me of it, and unless I had some heartburn about it, then that’s the way we did it. And it worked very well, again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement in the experiments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Everybody did, and this is the way that NASA crews always do it. Everybody on the crew, you can’t afford the luxury of having somebody not be involved, so everybody has some experiments for which they have primary responsibility, and some for which they are the backup. As a pilot, my involvement was really as a backup on the real hard science, and then we had a number of student experiments, so they were low-enough-level science that I could handle those as primes, so I did the prime responsibility there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement with the SAREX [Shuttle Amateur Radio Experiment]?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "SAREX was my primary responsibility, although I hated it, to be quite honest, initially. I was not a ham radio operator and did not want to be a licensed ham radio operator, but the counsel was that the commander really needed to be a ham radio operator to encourage the rest of the crew members to do it, and also because they would use my call sign on orbit for the crew.\\n\\n So I went through the training and certification, became a licensed ham operator, and actually kind of fell in love with it. The big reason was because it gave us an opportunity to interface with students, just the ordinary man and woman on the street, and it gave you a way to just relax and enjoy yourself in the free moments you had, and also to turn working time into enjoyment. Because we had a set schedule of SAREX opportunities, or communications, that we were supposed to make with school groups, individuals on the various continents of the world, and I think it was Dave Leestma and Kathy actually established communications with somebody from every single continent in the world, so they became unique in the fact that they had accomplished that in one flight. And I’m not sure whether that had been done before. Owen [K.] Garriott was a very ardent ham operator, and so he always did it on his flights. But we ended up, everybody tried to add more SAREX opportunities as we went through the flight. Turned out to be a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any challenges during that mission that you’d like to talk about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the biggest challenge was organizing and integrating a diverse crew of very strong personalities and the like. And I did something that was probably considered strange at the time; I went to the NASA psychiatrist and I actually brought a psychiatrist in to do the—I forget what they call this thing where you get classified psychologically, but to spend time with us. And we actually did a written psychological typing test, and he sat and worked with us and our spouses on what our psychological profile was, what kind of things would set us off, what kinds of things would cause us to be not at our peak under stress, and the like. And then we spent time, crew and spouses, getting to understand what characteristic each of us had so that if we got into a stressful situation, whether it was the spouses on the ground or us on board, that we’d have some idea of where to turn or what to do to try to alleviate the problem or whatever it was that the other crew member was having.\\n\\n For us, at least for me as a commander, I found it invaluable because it helped me to understand little quirks that you saw in the crewmembers, both in training and on orbit, and I thought it was good. Although I didn’t go to that extent on my next flight, we did spend time at least talking about psychological factors of flying.\\n\\n It’s something the Russians—and I’d heard about it—either something that the Russians put a lot of stock in—they do a lot of psychological profiling, because their whole program is geared toward long-duration space flight. They had a couple of bad instances where, at least reportedly, they actually had to terminate a mission early because of just psychological conflict among two crew members. Now, whether that’s true or not, I don’t know, but that was good enough for me. And although nine days is not a long time, I had learned from my first two flights that things do happen to crews once they get on orbit, and I wanted to optimize our chances of being very successful and not having any problems. So for me it was invaluable to have done that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the rest of the crew?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The rest of the crew said they were happy having done it, the spouses were happy having done it, and I think the other thing was it really made everybody—again, I’m probably saying this because I thought it was great, but I think, at least my perception was, it really did make everybody feel like they were a family a little bit more than you ordinarily get when you’re training together as a crew.\\n\\n I think every crew comes together in a lot of different ways. If you look at the STS-107 crew, while I did not know many of them intimately, the one thing that struck me in getting to know them through their friends and their families and everything was how close they had become in comparison with other NASA crews, other flight crews. I think Rick [D.] Husband is credited by everybody that I’ve ever talked to concerning that particular crew with having been a master at molding a team and getting them all to feel like they were family, to include the spouses and kids and all that. And I think that’s one of the reasons that their loss was so traumatic to the agency, was because everybody recognized how close they were as a crew, but also that because of how close they were, they had pulled the training team in, the flight control team, people in the community, and that really makes a difference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else about that flight that you’d like to share?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was fun. It was a tremendous amount of fun. It gave us an opportunity—I will share one other thing, and that’s post-flight. As a general rule, on every flight you go somewhere that you get to share your story and your experiences with people who helped you get there. My first two flights we didn’t do a lot of international travel, but after ATLAS, one of the most enjoyable trips we did was a ten-day trip to Belgium because Dirk Frimout had become Belgium’s first astronaut. He was the Alan [B.] Shepard [Jr.] of Belgium. The Belgium government invited us to ESA [European Space Agency], and the Belgium government invited us to come over. We operated mostly out of Brussels, but we got a chance to travel around and visit the country and everything.\\n\\n I think the highlight of the trip was actually being a guest of the King and Queen of Belgium. The King was actually a scientist/engineer, amateur astronomer, and everything. Unlike a lot of monarchies, Belgium’s government is such that while it is a democratically run government with the structure of a cabinet and all that kind of stuff, the monarch, the King, actually has some input into what the government does. While we were there, in addition to the brief that we did for him personally, we went into the royal viewing room, if you will, like a small theater, and we actually did our post-flight presentation for the Cabinet, for the Belgium Cabinet, and Ministers, and everybody.\\n\\n The King intended for us to provide food for thought for those people in the Belgium government who were going to make decisions about how their budget was going to go for the next year, and it was interesting to see him interact with them and put demands on them for having some vision and thinking about where the country should be going with reference to science and technology. I was impressed. And it was also kind of a big deal to be there in the presence of the King and having some influence on what a country’s going to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Certainly an opportunity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had not seen that on either of my first two flights. When you come back, you go to the White House, you go to the Congress and you brief Congress, but it’s form more than substance. If you find somebody like a, back then, Senator Al [Albert] Gore [Jr.], who was very, very keenly interested in the environment as, I think, he is still now, when we went back and briefed Congress after this flight, he had worked with Franklin before, with Franklin [R.] Chang-Diaz, and so he had personal interface with astronauts, so he had a very keen interest in what we had found over the course of our flight. Of course, being flight crewmembers and not the researchers, we couldn’t give him any hard data, but we at least knew what the scientists had told us about the findings from the mission. So there you felt like you were giving somebody some useful input." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your next opportunity after that involved NASA Headquarters [Washington, D.C.]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Unfortunately, it did. I’ll say that with all sincerity. Another one of the unpopular decisions that I made as the commander was I agreed with the medical community. We had done, as do most crews, we had done a lot of space and life sciences, human medical research, and for that the life sciences folk really preferred that we not go through a significant amount of re-adaptation to the gravity environment when we came back. The way that they wanted us to ensure that we would not re-adapt was to get on a gurney as soon as we got out of our seats, be wheeled off the vehicle, and go in for the initial post-flight medical exams without any significant gravitational re-adaptation.\\n\\n So I talked it over with the crew; they didn’t really care. There were some thoughts that, “Well, but we’re not going to get a chance to walk around the vehicle and kick the tires?”\\n\\n And I said, “No, we’re not going to get a chance to walk around the vehicle and kick the tires,” because it’s symbolic more than anything else. So I agreed that we would be wheeled off on the gurneys and go in and let them do whatever they wanted to do.\\n\\n As a result, as I was waiting for my time to come off, I was laying there with my eyes closed, relaxing, and all of a sudden I hear this voice that I didn’t recognize, and I look up and it’s this guy I’d never seen before. And it was a gentleman by the name of [Daniel S.] Dan Goldin, who on that day had become the new NASA Administrator. So this was his first official act was to come to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and greet the crew of STS-45 as they came back. And so I’m sitting there, and he says, “I want you to come to Washington [D.C.] and work, and I’d like to talk to you about it.”\\n\\n And I said, “But I don’t have any interest in coming to Washington to work. I’ve avoided it all this time, and I don’t want to do that.”\\n\\n He said, “Think about it and then come talk to me.”\\n\\n So I went, and we went through our post-flight and everything, and then Mr. [George W. S.] Abbey, who at the time was now up in Washington as a Special Assistant to the Administrator, he said, “You know, you really ought to come up and talk to him, at least, and see what he’s got to offer.”\\n\\n And so I did that, and went up. And I was impressed by him, to be quite honest. He was, I thought, a visionary; I still think a visionary, and had some great ideas, things that he felt the agency should be doing and places we should be going to help the nation go in the right direction in terms of space exploration. So I agreed to go and work for him for, I said, a year. And what he really wanted me to do was assume the duties of the Assistant Deputy Administrator, working, actually, for Dr. Aaron Cohen, then, because Aaron had left JSC as the Center Director and had gone up to Washington to be the Acting Deputy Administrator with Mr. Goldin.\\n\\n So I went up, and my primary task was to lead the effort to reorganize NASA, to figure out how we were going to get our budget in order and how we were going to decide what should be our major thrust, both in, well, whether we should continue to have any interest in human space flight, what we should do with all the different areas of scientific and technological research and expertise that NASA had.\\n\\n The two big things I did was establish and organize what NASA then called the Red and Blue Teams. We kind of patterned it after the way that the military does things. They put—and I will get it wrong—but one of the colors, I think the Red Team, is actually a grouping of outside people, outside experts, who take a look at you from the outside in, kind of look at your plans and evaluate them and say, “Yeah, we think that’s okay. That’s not okay.” And then the Blue Team was internal organizations, internal teams of people from within NASA. And we got—I can’t remember exactly how many we did, a significant number, but we looked at every primary area of the agency, whether it was robotic exploration, planetary exploration, space and life sciences, human space flight, aeronautics, and the like. I think we organized ourselves along the same lines as the principal codes at NASA Headquarters. So [Code] R, D, S, T, whatever we had back then.\\n\\n The Blue Teams—if I remember correctly, we allowed whoever happened to be that Deputy Associate Administrator select the head for that Blue Team so that there was at least some representation from the hierarchy of the organization. But we got people from across the board; the makeup of the team was primarily not from that area. They looked at major projects that were under way, opportunities for new projects, opportunities for budget cuts, opportunities to do away with projects that were costing NASA money and getting no return because we had to shrink the budget.\\n\\n I think that was the [George H. W.] Bush-[J. Danforth “Dan”] Quayle early years, Bush-41, and that was our charter, was to find ways to—we were under the mantra, “Faster, Better, Cheaper.” Mr. Goldin had decided that NASA would be the trailblazer for government, that we would set the example for all other organizations in government in demonstrating that you can do bigger and better things for less money, and you can do them quicker. So that was our undertaking. So I organized the Red and Blue Teams, kind of oversaw how they went.\\n\\n And then the other major thing we did was six town hall meetings around the country. I think the sites we selected were Tampa, Florida; Pasadena, California, for southern California; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; somewhere else in the South, I don’t know, so as to get the geographic regions as well as the centers of expertise. And they were open fora for anybody. Anybody in the American public who wanted to come to a town hall meeting came out. We had, preferably, all the codes, their Associate Administrators, not a representative of them, but the people, the NASA leadership. And they each gave a very quick pitch, I forgot what it was, like fifteen—these were half-day events. They gave a quick rundown on what was going on in their particular code, what they envisioned in the future, and then the floor opened up for questions and comments. And people from all around America came in. It was all televised over NASA Select [Television], so people could e-mail in comments and questions, they could come up to the mic [microphone] and do comments and questions.\\n\\n We amassed all this information from the town hall meetings and presented it to the Administrator and said, “Okay, these are some programs we think we need to get rid of. These are some new directions we think the agency needs to go in, and here’s how much money we think it’s going to take to do this.” And then I left. So I think what he did with it was took it to the White House and to Congress and to the Office of Management and Budget.\\n\\n But anyway, between the Red and Blue Teams and the town hall meetings, that formed the basis on which the first Dan Goldin NASA budget and the first Bush-Quayle NASA budget was formulated to turn the agency around. It looked like it was working for a while, but I think something went awry somewhere.\\n\\n The overarching organization that oversaw NASA at that time was the National Space Council, and it appears that although it started—to my knowledge, the first National Space Council came under a Democratic administration. I know when [John F.] Kennedy was President, there was a very strong National Space Council. And then after that it seemed like every Democratic administration that came in did away with the National Space Council. A Republican administration came in and they stood it up again. And it gave the Vice President of the United States something that he could hang his hat on and for which he was responsible.\\n\\n The interesting thing about the National Space Council under Quayle was, since you started seeing talk about him becoming a presidential candidate should President Bush not choose to run again or something like that, I got an opportunity to see the infighting between candidates, and the likely candidates coming to the fore were the Vice President and the Secretary of State, who was Mr. [James A.] Baker [III], Secretary Baker. So we had the Vice President and the National Space Council pushing one agenda, and the State Department, through whom everything has to go when you’re talking about international negotiations and the like. If it was the Vice President’s idea, they kind of said, “No, we don’t think that’s a good idea. We’re not going to let that go,” and then other things rising from the Baker part of the House. So that was interesting during that, it seemed like a year. It seemed like a long time that I was up there. It was only eight months, to be quite honest.\\n\\n I spent most of my time back and forth to the Hill. In addition to doing those things, I was one of NASA’s principal lobbyists on the Hill for support for the International Space Station. That was the big thing we were trying to push. And it was interesting because I never got the feeling that the Administrator at the time, Mr. Goldin, was a big Space Station fan. And much as happens every time any Administrator comes in, there’s always rumors as to, okay, this is their mission. And the rumor at the time was that his mission was to kill the International Space Station, any concept of it. And yet here was the Assistant Deputy Administrator heading to the Hill every day, lobbying Congress to fund the International Space Station. It was interesting watching how it ebbed and flowed, and how we added money to the cost of it over the—just over the eight months I was there, I think we were doing our fourth or fifth revision of the International Space Station Program, and it was really frustrating.\\n\\n Back then we had Code X, I think it was called, that was Mike—former Air Force guy who has been in the paper here lately talking about the [George W.] Bush-43’s initiatives to the Moon and Mars. But Code X was going to be our planetary exploration code. They were looking at the kinds of stuff that the President mentioned in his speech Wednesday. Was that yesterday?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yesterday." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "How we lose track of time. So back then we were talking about Moon and Mars. We were beginning to increase our—although our ties to DoD [Department of Defense] had waned after the [Space Shuttle] Challenger accident and the pronouncement from the [Ronald W.] Reagan administration that we would not launch anything on Shuttle unless it absolutely required human interaction, so the synergy between DoD and NASA went away in the Reagan administration after the Challenger accident.\\n\\n Under Bush-41 and Dan Goldin, I saw a resurgence of, an attempt, anyway, to put NASA and DoD back together again. It didn’t work very well, but you see it again now under Administrator [Sean] O’Keefe. Because of his former relationship both with the Department of the Navy, his time in the Office of Management and Budget, and then maybe some of his aspirations, you see NASA and DoD, especially under the umbrella of the President’s vision, you see them potentially coming back together again, for whatever that’s worth.\\n\\n So that’s my time in Washington. I tell people, in thirty-four and a half years wearing the uniform of a United States marine, it was the only time that I didn’t like, that eight months. It just wasn’t me. Either you like Washington or you don’t. It’s for power people, so if you go there and you like being with the power people and at least pretending that you’re wielding a lot of power, it’s a good place to be. If you’re not a power person, you don’t like it. I didn’t like it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you already know about your next assignment while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I did not. As a matter of fact, I learned about my next assignment about halfway through my time there, which gave me some hope. In fact, that was what I used as my reason for having to leave when I did, because Mr. Goldin was beginning to feel like—I think he was beginning to feel like I was making some contribution and so he wanted me to stay longer. And I said, “No, I’ve got to get back because I’ve been told that I’m going to command STS-60, and I really need to get back to my crew.”\\n\\n Ironically, it was a flight that I did not want. I think I mentioned this when we talked earlier. I think everybody has something in their mind that they would really like to do. Because I had participated in STS-31 where we deployed Hubble, and we had subsequently found that Hubble wasn’t whole, I kind of harbored some desire to have an opportunity to command the first revisit and take part in that, and that wasn’t to be. I ended up getting offered the opportunity to command STS-60, which was going to be the first joint Russian-American Shuttle mission and the first flight where we worked cooperatively with the Russians since Apollo-Soyuz. My initial reaction was, “No way.” And it was just my upbringing as a marine; I did not have any desire to work with the Russians. Period. And again, Mr. Abbey said, “Well, why don’t you just at least meet the guys and take an opportunity to meet the two prospective crew members.”\\n\\n And so I said, “What the heck.” And so when it was announced that we were going to fly a Russian as a mission specialist, not a payload specialist, was going to actually fly for the first time as a mission specialist, Sergei [Konstantinovich] Krikalev and Vladimir [Georgievich] Titov came through Washington on their way down to Houston, and I had an opportunity to meet them and have dinner with them and talk a little bit with them, and I was very impressed by both.\\n\\n Vladimir was a MiG-21 pilot, Colonel in the Russian Air Force, had actually flown once prior to that, had had two missions. The first one was aborted on the launch pad when the vehicle caught fire and he was ejected, in their escape capsule and everything. So a very short flight. But then he came back and flew 366 days aboard Mir [Space Station], which, at the time, he was a co-world-recordholder for long-duration space flight.\\n\\n And then Sergei Krikalev had flown twice before, had actually flown a five-month mission on Mir, and then shortly after the wall fell [collapse of the Soviet Union], he had flown a ten-month mission on Mir. I’d actually had an opportunity to communicate with him in space. When I was flying ATLAS, he was in Mir, and we talked via the ham radio, so we had never seen each other, but we had at least communicated. He spoke fluent English, Sergei did. Vladimir spoke none. Zero. Nada.\\n\\n So I kind of took a hankering to both these guys right away, and I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and we got started in trying to figure out how we were going to integrate them into the crew, but more importantly, integrate them and their families into the American way of life. And it turned out—when people ask you what was your most rewarding or most interesting or most memorable experience, they mean on orbit, what was the most interesting thing you saw or did. And I always tell them the thing that I remember the most was not a flight, but it was the preparation and post-flight activities involved with STS-60. And it was the opportunity to bring people from a really foreign culture to the United States and introduce them to our way of life and help them adjust and adapt, and getting to know them as true friends and establishing a lifelong bond with them that exists today. And then, after the flight, having an opportunity to visit their country and for a very brief period of time see how they lived and have an opportunity to interface with them in their own environment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that Vladimir Titov didn’t speak any English at all." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nada." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And later, once Shuttle-Mir got going, the astronauts did learn Russian. Did you or your crew study any Russian?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were really bad. Because this was the beginning, this was the leading edge of this movement, this was the first flight in what became phase one of the Shuttle-Mir Program leading up to the International Space Station. We hadn’t thought it through well enough, and so there was not felt that there was a need for us to learn Russian. English was the official language, was going to be the official language of the International Space Station, everybody had already determined that. We had, anyway; I’m not sure the Russians had agreed to it. But that was what we had determined in our own inimitable way, and so there was not a feeling that we needed to be able to converse in Russian.\\n\\n As we started going thorough the training and thinking of things that we wanted to do on orbit, it became very clear to us very quickly that while we didn’t need it for flight, it would be really a nice gesture if we could at least communicate some simple things in Russian from on orbit. And the fact that almost all of us on the crew really liked kids and liked schools and liked visiting schools and the like, we wanted to be able to interface in some way with Russian youth, and we felt the best way to do that would be able to converse in their language, if only briefly.\\n\\n So we went to NASA and told them that we really wanted to learn Russian. We realized that we wouldn’t have an opportunity to become fluent in it, but we would like to learn at least enough conversational Russian to be able to say hello to kids from orbit and maybe do something cute. And so the “cute” became sing a song. It was easier said than done, we found, but actually we ended up, we were put with an independent contractor, and it turned out to be company with whom I work now, TechTrans International [Inc.], was just starting in 1993, they were just getting founded. And so TechTrans found us a Russian teacher who came down from Houston and met with the crew a couple of times a week for about an hour, which was not anywhere close to sufficient time, but he taught us rudimentary Russian terms and taught us a Russian song that was actually a traditional Russian lullaby that was sung every night in Russia at eight o’clock, and it was the official “Go to bed now” thing on Russian TV, on state television, for Russian children.\\n\\n So we learned that song, [Tired Toys are Asleep], or something like that. My pronunciation is horrible. But we were told that every Russian child would recognize the song, and if we did it right, we could sing it at eight o’clock Russian time and they would be impressed. So we learned the song; we cheated and had notes, since most of us didn’t learn it very well and most of us couldn’t sing. But, anyway, so we sang “Spyat Ustalye Igrushki” to the children of Russia, and learned a couple of other terms that we could say to them when we did our space-to-ground press conference." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that you felt that it was part of your responsibility to bring the families and get the families involved, and you also mentioned the [STS] 107 crew and how close they were. What ways did you do that? What methods did you use to get everyone involved?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The first thing we did was when the families came they were initially put in an apartment complex right here on the corner of NASA Road 1 and El Camino [Real]. We took one look at that, and—in fact, what I did was in the division of labor, since I knew that I wouldn’t be able to adequately have oversight of the Russians and the oversight of the crew, [Kenneth S.] Ken Reightler [Jr.], who was my pilot, my co-pilot, I made him responsible for the Russian interface. So he really took both of them under his wing and saw to it that everything that they needed was taken care of.\\n\\n Ken came to me after the first couple of days and said, “We’ve got to get them out of those apartments.” Not that there was anything wrong with it, but they really weren’t going to get a good feel—they were going to get a good feel for American life, but not the feel that we wanted them to have. So we wanted them to be in individual family homes, so we went back to NASA and said, “Hey, it’s going to cost some more money,” because we were paying the bill, “but we really think we ought to put them into local communities and let them get a taste of Houston, real time.”\\n\\n And so Sergei and his family were moved into—I’m not sure which subdivision it is now, but it was an area in Clear Lake City [Texas], maybe Middlebrook or something like that. And then we moved Vladimir and his family to Friendswood [Texas]. We kind of took them around and put them with a realtor and let them pick the place where they wanted to live, and the two families selected the areas that they liked.\\n\\n Sergei and his wife, [Elena], were both very technical people. She was a controller in Moscow in the Mission Control Center, and they had a four-year-old daughter, and so they didn’t really see a need to be in a community that there would be a lot interface for kids. Whereas Vladimir, his wife was a nontechnical person, she was very astute socially and everything. They had spent time in, I think, three years in Paris where he was the air attaché to Paris, to France, from Russia. So she was very cosmopolitan, wanted to be able to get out and interface with people, whereas the Krikalevs were relatively quiet. They had an eight-year-old son who we enrolled in public school in Friendswood; had an eighteen-year-old daughter, she spoke fluent English, so she enrolled herself in San Jac [San Jacinto College] in a pre-business curriculum and all that. So it worked for both families. The Titovs, their son began to speak fluent English after about six months, became a cowboy. And the daughter is still here, worked for Enron [Corporation, Houston, Texas] for a period of time, and is now still working in business; that’s her area of expertise and interest. But it worked real well.\\n\\n In getting them into the communities, getting them to do the kinds of things we did, happy hour, church if they wanted to, but those kinds of things, we just kind of took them by the hand and let them see and do as much as they wanted to. And we had social functions as frequently as we could, generally tried to have at least something once a week where we got the families together and that kind of thing, and their kids met our kids, and began to feel that they were a part of the overall STS-60 family.\\n\\n We had a tremendous training team. The training team, as always happens, they become very close to the crew because they live with them, eat with them, sleep with them. You’re just with them all the time. So they became very close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Because of the obvious Russian presence on this flight, and the day of the launch NASA announced that [Norman E.] Norm Thagard and Bonnie [J.] Dunbar would be training for a mission to Mir. What type of media coverage did the crew have to deal with? Was there a lot at that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a lot of interest from the Russia media pre-flight, when we did our pre-flight press conference. As I remember, a tremendous turnout of Russian media for the pre-flight press conference to hear Sergei’s take on what he was going to do. I think Vladimir did participate in a pre-flight press conference with us as the backup. Because the Russians decided which of the two was going to fly, and I think we knew prior to the pre-flight press conference that it was going to be Sergei, but we still, as I remember, had Vladimir participate in the pre-flight press conference. So it gave the Russian media an opportunity to ask them about training differences and the way we do things, their impressions of life in America and all that kind of stuff. So there was a significant amount of interest from the Russian media.\\n\\n The American media, quite obviously because Bonnie and Norm were getting ready to move to Russia, they had an interest in how we had treated the Russian crew, so they would have something to compare it with when Bonnie and Norm went over." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did the training differ, as far as you’re aware of, between the way the Russians were used to training and then the way they trained for this flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because their thrust is long duration, they are much less—we are very regimented. I mean, our flight schedule, for example, in Shuttle, was what we call the Crew Activity Plan, the CAP; the flight plan for every day was laid out in fifteen-minute segments. There was very little margin for going away from the schedule, because every experiment was given x amount of time, and when that period of time was over, you were supposed to move on to the next thing.\\n\\n That’s not the way the Russians train. The Russians give their crews a number of tasks for each day, or maybe a number of tasks for a week and then leave them alone. It comes out of necessity. Back before we got involved with them, the Russians, because of the communications system that they had in place, their infrastructure, they could only talk to the crew for a limited amount of time each day. They had a number of very short communications opportunities on each pass, and so they didn’t do a lot of just talking.\\n\\n In the United States, we use the tracking and data relay satellite system, so it was only for a very few minutes each hour, very few minutes each day, that we couldn’t talk to the ground. So we talk all the time. You know, in fact, you frequently just say, “Give me a break. Just be quiet so we can go work.” And you got a lot of help from home. The ground was constantly looking over your shoulder. If you were trying to work an experiment and the ground wasn’t sure where you were, they didn’t hesitate to come up from the payload community. They’d say, “Okay, how are you doing on this experiment?” or that experiment. “Have you done so-and-so?” And you say, “Yeah, it’s in progress. We’ll let you know when it’s done.” But frequently they weren’t happy with that.\\n\\n That was something that bothered Sergei, as a matter of fact, not only during the training, but one incident that occurred on Flight Day One. When Franklin Chang-Diaz and [N.] Jan Davis went back through the tunnel to open the hatch for the space habitation module—we actually had our own laboratory. We had a half-module, which was called a space habitation module, built by SPACEHAB [Inc.]. They went back and opened the hatch so as to activate the SPACEHAB [module]. When they did that, they noticed that there was a hose about the size of a hose going into your dryer, coming out of the back of your dryer, very similar in form and substance. Its purpose was just to allow air to flow from the air system on the Shuttle into the module so we could live back there. Franklin and Jan noticed that the hose was crimped. It wasn’t shut off, but it was significantly crimped that they were just concerned that there would be some constriction or restriction in the airflow into the module.\\n\\n So we called the ground’s attention to it. They said, “Okay, we’ll work it and get back to you.” Days passed while they worked it to get back to us, but we didn’t say anything, so they didn’t seem to worry about it. And Sergei, as soon as he found out what had happened, he said, “Why don’t we fix it?”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, because that’s not the way we do it. We’ve advised the ground, we’ll give them an opportunity to come back and tell us what they think, and then we’ll go around to it.”\\n\\n He said, “This stuff you guys do doesn’t make any sense to me.” He said, “On station, on Mir, I wouldn’t even have called them. I’d have just fixed it and then I’d let them know what we had done.”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, we just don’t do it that way.” And, fortunately, it didn’t cause any problem.\\n\\n But Franklin, several days into the mission, was conducting a tour, a video tour, of the Orbiter in Spanish for Costa Rican television. And as he went through with the camera and everything, he paused at the entrance to the SPACEHAB module and put the videocamera down on this crimped air line, and said, “This is a line that’s crimped, and we’re working on this and waiting for the ground to give us some stuff.”\\n\\n Mission Control Center saw it and went, “Holy jeez.” So they called up and they said, “Hey, you guys didn’t tell us it was that bad.”\\n\\n So we said, “Well, it’s not a big deal. If it had been that bad, we would have either fixed it or told you.” So they stepped up their efforts to find a solution and they came back within a few hours, and we looked at what they had proposed, and right away it just was a nonstarter because they wanted us to cut some—it was just flexible rubber, like rubber from an inner-tube, almost, and kind of put it around this thing to fill in the area where the crimp had been. And we took one look at that and said, “Not going to work. All it’s going to do is just collapse on itself, and then we are going to shut the line off.”\\n\\n Fortunately, as things would happen, while we were evaluating what they had sent up, we lost com [communications] with the ground. We had one of these rare blackouts because the satellite wasn’t in position and everything. So we had about ten minutes, and Sergei said, “Look. I told you. My recommendation, days ago, was we should have fixed this thing.” And we had a plan to fix it. The ATLAS in the Shuttle is about this big and, about roughly fourteen inches across by twelve or fourteen inches that way. So if you took just the plastic cover on the ATLAS and rolled it up and stuck it inside the hose, then it expands; it wants to go back to being flat. So it expands and makes the hose stand out. And so that was the solution we would have proposed to them if they had asked us, but they didn’t.\\n\\n So we took a look at their solution, we didn’t like it, and so I said, “Okay, what the hell.” So we took the hose off, stuck the little plastic in there and it stood everything out and we put the hose back on. And when we talked to the ground again, we said, “Hey, we just want to tell you what we did and show it to you.” And so we took the videocamera back in the back, showed it to them, and said, “Hey, this is what we did.”\\n\\n And they said, “Okay, we’ll get back to you.” And they evaluated it, and we never heard anything. And then post-flight they said, “Well, we wish you hadn’t done it that way, that you hadn’t just gone ahead and done it. We wouldn’t have disagreed with it if you’d told us that’s what you were planning to do.”\\n\\n We said, “Well, we told you the first day that we needed to do something and we had a plan, and you all chose not to listen.” And so that was a real-life example of the difference in the way the Russians work and we work.\\n\\n We’re seeing it every day as our experiences on the International Space Station evolve. We saw it with the initial experiences on Mir. We saw it with Bonnie and Norm as they went to Russia. Accommodations, you know. They were initially unsat [unsatisfactory] for an American crew. We didn’t want to live the way the Russians live, because we didn’t have access to a washer and a dryer, and we didn’t have access to this and that, all these amenities that of course an astronaut crew should have. So we put demands on the Russians they couldn’t deliver, so we spent a slight fortune to go and build things and make them look Western for us. So, just some differences that we had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During this flight, you had communication again with the Mir." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. In fact, Sergei, he talked back and forth quite a bit with his friend there. And I can’t remember whether it was a former crewmember of his, I don’t think so, but it was a very good friend, and they talked back and forth about things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of those conversations was on television. Good Morning, America telecast it live." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I’ve got to remember if it worked. Ideally what we were going to do was that we were going to do split screen, or tri-screen. And I think it was [Charles] Charlie Gibson, but I can’t remember. I think it may have been Charlie Gibson was going to do the interview, and we were going to have us on [Space Shuttle] Discovery, and the Russian cosmonauts on Mir, and Charlie Gibson on this tri-screen thing. And we did have the conversation go on. I’m not sure that we were able to get Mir simultaneously with us, other than voice. But it went pretty well, and they talked back and forth and among each other and compared notes and all that, as best I can remember. You have the advantage of the transcript." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You also received a phone call from the [Russian] Prime Minister." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that’s right. That is right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you have any memories of that phone call?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do, because we knew it was coming and so we set it up such that Sergei would be able to talk to him because he was the only one that spoke Russian. As I remember, it went very well, and that was the time that the invitation was extended that we come to Russia, the invitation on the part of the Russian government from Prime Minister [Boris] Yeltsin. I think it was Yeltsin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Viktor] Chernomyrdin?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, Chernomyrdin was the Deputy Prime Minister. And Chernomyrdin I knew because he had come to Houston during our training and I had had the opportunity to demonstrate the Remote Manipulator System to him over in Building 9. We had him in a simulator. Pretty sharp guy, as a matter of fact." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they extended an invitation to go to Russia for post-flight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which we took. We accepted, and we went to Russia post-flight. That was another one of the highlights of that particular flight and my time down here, because it gave us an opportunity—it was the first time I’d ever been to Russia. And for Ken Reightler and me, I think more so than anybody else on the crew, because, as I remember, we had Ken and me, [Ron Sega], Sergei, Franklin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Jan Davis?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Jan Davis. So Ken and I were the only [active duty] military guys, and when we went to Moscow, one of the first things we did was tour the Kremlin. And there we were standing on the wall of the Kremlin, looking down on Red Square, and we both looked at each other and kind of went, “Pinch me. This can’t be real.” Never in our lives did we, as military guys, did we ever envision that we would be standing on the Kremlin wall looking down on Red Square peacefully, as a partner, so to speak. For the two of us it was pretty spectacular. The whole episode of coming together as a crew, bringing the Russians here, training, flying together, and then going to Russia and having exposure and an opportunity to go into the things that formerly had been verboten was pretty impressive to us, to the two of us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quite an experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Stayed in the old KGB [Russian Committee for State Security, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti] Headquarters, which had been converted to a hotel; very ornate hotel, by the way; hardwood floors, lots of marble all over the place, chandeliers hanging and everything. We had been told that even though the wall had come down and things were different now, that you still should expect that there would be some remnants of the old Soviet Union. And sure enough, my wife and I were in our room and I said, “Let’s try this.” And so I said, “Boy, it sure would be good to get a Coke.” And about five minutes later, a knock on the door, and it was the bellhop, and he said, “Would you like Coke, water, something else?” And he had it there. “Oh, thank you very much.” So we knew that there was still some semblance of the old Soviet Union left over and everything.\\n\\n But the Headquarters probably had bugs all over it. It was about the same time that we were discovering that the new American Embassy in Moscow was completely bugged. We had hired a Russian contractor to do the construction, and every inch of it was covered with listening devices and all kinds of stuff. We were naïve enough to think that we could have them build an embassy and it would not have any of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s amazing. Is there anything about that flight or any of the experiments that you took part in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes. The best part about it—and Franklin and I both hated it. The flight itself was principally medical. It was a medical research flight, for all intents and purposes. It was an opportunity for the Institute of Biomedical Research in Moscow and NASA’s Space and Life Sciences Directorate, along with places like the Medical Center and everything, so a lot of the principal investigators for this flight were medical people. We divided ourselves into two components on the crew. One portion of the crew, in fact, I think it was Sergei and Jan, if I remember correctly, did most of the neural sensory experiments; balance, effects of the lack of gravity on vision and your eyes and all that kind of stuff.\\n\\n Franklin and I had principal responsibility for the human body parts, just the normal human body functioning parts of it. I’m just having a brain fart right now; I can’t remember what it’s called. But there is a medical term for it. Neurovestibular was one side, and we did metabolic studies, that’s what it was called. So Franklin and I were the guinea pigs. The blood draws were done on us, the urine samples, saliva samples. We drank liquids that contained isotopes to measure how fast stuff went through your body and all that. We were looking at things like renal functions, the functions of the kidney; is there a difference between the way your kidneys function here on earth and the way they function in a microgravity environment.\\n\\n Franklin and I underwent a year of training to become certified as phlebotomists. A phlebotomist is the person that draws blood when you go to the lab or go to the doctor. Although we were going to do it on each other, we still had to be certified. And so for a year, a couple of times a week we’d go over and the docs would bring in volunteers, just, there’d be a line of people outside the door who’d come walking in and sit down and we’d put a doggone tourniquet on and stick them, or try to stick them, and we got trained on how to draw blood and do all that stuff. Both of us hated it because we hated sticking people. And you do anywhere from, jeez, a half a dozen to a dozen people a day just until you got it down and understood how to do it properly and all that.\\n\\n Then on orbit what we would do would be, when I was the subject, he would take my blood, and when he was the subject, I’d take his blood. We have some video to prove it. But it was pretty interesting doing it on orbit because you got an opportunity to see all this stuff and everything. So that was fun, really, when we look back on it.\\n\\n Ken Reightler, being the person that wasn’t involved in either experiment sequence, became the person that ran our centrifuge. So for all the metabolic studies, he took our urine samples, made sure they got in the freezer, he took our blood samples, spun them down in the centrifuge and then got them in the freezer. Same thing for saliva samples. So he was the datataker, the repository for all of the samples and everything, and then he oversaw the collection of data for Jan and Sergei as they put themselves in spinning things and blindfolds and all this kind of stuff. So he was the recordkeeper.\\n\\n We actually had a furnace on board and Franklin was the principal investigator for it. I think Sergei was his backup. There was another experiment that we did that was looking at microgravity effects on something that Sergei was the principal and Franklin was his backup. Franklin and I were each other’s principal, prime and backup, on the metabolic study stuff, and then Jan and Sergei backed each other up on the neurovestibular studies and the like.\\n\\n As with all flights, a lot of photographic documentation, Earth observation stuff. Sergei was really good at that. He was good at everything because of the long period of time that he had spent in space. So he became sort of a mentor to all of us. Although he didn’t have as many flights as I had, he had vastly more experience than I did. So we relied pretty heavily on him for the expertise about living in space.\\n\\n What else happened up there? Something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Wake Shield Facility." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wake Shield Facility. Ron [Ronald M. Sega]. I forgot all about Ron. How could I forget Ron Sega? Ron was a co-principal investigator on the Wake Shield Facility. This was about a twelve-foot-diameter satellite that was manufactured in a storefront right up across from Ellington Field [Houston, Texas]. The company that did it at the time was Space Services Incorporated, and it was a company owned by [Joseph P.] Joe Allen [IV], who was a former Apollo-era astronaut, had flown on Shuttle and everything. Dr. Joe Allen was my first officemate that I talked about earlier.\\n\\n Joe had gone into business with a couple of friends, and his company actually built, manufactured, the satellite to the specifications of Ron Sega. The co-principal investigator was a guy by the name of Dr. Alex Ignatiev, from the Center for Epitaxy Research [Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center] at the University of Houston. Basically the principle behind the satellite was, as its name implied, Wake Shield, it was in the form of a shield and it created its own wake as it went around Earth, flying like a flying saucer on end. Theoretically what would happen, even in space, although it’s a vacuum, there are still a significant number of measurable particles out there. And as these particles go around the shield, they create a hyper-vacuum on the backside of it. So whereas space in itself is a vacuum, you get an even purer vacuum back right behind the shield because all those little particles are pushed away from that area right behind the shield itself. So there there’s nothing and it’s truly a vacuum.\\n\\n So the theory was that we could produce extremely pure semiconductor materials. The material that we were trying to produce was gallium arsenide. We were trying to produce gallium arsenide wafers that could then be used in semiconductor research and development. Again, the theory was we would lift this satellite out of the payload bay with a remote manipulator system, make sure everything was working, and then turn it loose and let it fly itself as an independent satellite for a couple of days and then we would re-rendezvous with it and pick it up, bring it back in the payload bay and keep all of the samples.\\n\\n A side benefit of it was that we would get the first batch of data, real live impact data, for use in the design of the International Space Station. As the Shuttle flies toward or away from anything, every time you fire one of its small jets, it sends out a wave from out of the jet. Every time it comes out, the thruster puts out stuff and it generates a force on anything that it hits. We had concern that the force, the thrusters from the Shuttle, if they were strong enough, might cause damage to the solar arrays or to some other component of the International Space Station.\\n\\n We had built models to tell us whether it was going to be okay, but we didn’t have any in-flight data. So what we were going to do was take advantage of the Wake Shield. It had some very, very, very sensitive accelerometers on it, and as we approached the Wake Shield Facility, we were going to put the Shuttle in different attitudes and fire different rockets at it so as to measure the amount of force that the Shuttle imparted on the Wake Shield Facility in order for us to help the designers of the International Space Station make it better.\\n\\n The unfortunate thing was, in the “faster, better, cheaper” mode, when they designed and built the Wake Shield Facility—like I told you, we built it in a storefront across from Ellington Field—it was a $12 million facility, the Wake Shield itself, compared to several hundred-million-dollar satellites for other programs. One of the ways that they saved money was limiting the amount of pre-flight testing that they did. One of the crucial tests that they did not do was something called an EMI test, an electromagnetic interference test, whereby you put the satellite together in its flight configuration and turn it up and see if there is interference among different components in it.\\n\\n What they satisfied themselves with pre-flight was that if we ran this test, if we powered it up when it was down on the floor of the integration room down at the Cape and everything seemed okay, then we’d go with it. And it did. It worked superbly in the test site down at the Kennedy Space Center [Florida]. But when they bundled up all these feet of electrical cable, what we were reminded of post-flight in analyzing what the problem was, was that you get a current generated around an electrical cable. Even the things here going to your camera generate a current around it, and that generates a magnetic field which, if it comes in contact with another electrical cable, it generates a current inside that cable.\\n\\n Well, when we powered up the Wake Shield Facility on orbit and tried to turn on the attitude control system, there was a 5 Hz signal that was generated by the power cables inside the electrical components to the Wake Shield that shut down the attitude control system and it wouldn’t let it run. So every time we tried to power it up, it would start spinning and cut itself off. We didn’t have any clue what was going on, we just knew we could not reliably release the Wake Shield. We didn’t know what would happen to it. If it got out of control, we may not have any way to control it, and so the option was to just put it out on the end of the arm and take as much data as we could, which we did. And we got some pretty good data; not at all what you wanted, but what we missed was the approach to the Wake Shield that would be used to gather data for Space Station.\\n\\n The good thing was Wake Shield lived on because it flew again a year later on a flight very similar to ours with Vladimir Titov. So Vladimir flew a year after Sergei, and the flight was essentially the same. It was the Wake Shield Facility 2. The profiles that they flew and everything were the ones that we had designed and tested, and they did get an opportunity to measure the forces from the thrusters on the Shuttle and it went into the design of the Space Station. So we finally got it, it just took a year extra to get it.\\n\\n That was a disappointment to us, mainly because I had not flown a rendezvous mission and I was really excited about being able to rendezvous with something since I wasn’t going to be around for the International Space Station. I knew I wasn’t going to be around because my wife and I had talked, my family and I had talked, about my future in the space program. And sort of a combination of things; the fact that we were starting to get more astronauts in the office, it was starting to take people a little bit longer to fly, and the backlog of astronauts flown was increasing. The other thing was the fact that we had been here for fourteen years. I had been offered an opportunity to go back to the operating forces of the Marine Corps, actually go back to the [United States] Naval Academy [Annapolis, Maryland] first, as the Deputy Commandant of Midshipmen there.\\n\\n The fact that after I came back from my experience in Washington I was never the same, to be quite honest. As the Assistant Deputy Administrator, whether you can or can’t, people think you have some effect on things and that you have some influence and that you can make things better. I think I did do some positive things for the agency, but when you come back to Houston and you’re in the Astronaut Office, you’re just another astronaut. I think there’s a biblical verse that says something about a prophet is never more despised than in his own home town or something like that, so you come back to Houston, just as another astronaut, you can’t do anything. And it was very frustrating being here and having people who would confide in you and give you ideas and expect that you could make a difference, and you couldn’t.\\n\\n And then the combination of the fact that I was growing more and more out of sync with the NASA leadership at the time. My wife and I talked about it a lot, and I have been one who always believes that if you’re in an organization and you can’t support what’s being done, you can’t be a spokesperson for it, then you really ought to pack your bags and go somewhere else. You shouldn’t expect the organization to change. You just ought to leave. And so a combination of all those things, we decided, approaching my last flight, that it would be my last flight. A very difficult decision, but we made it.\\n\\n I can’t remember how soon before the flight, but at some point several months before the flight I felt an obligation to let the crew know. That was hard. That was really hard. It kind of felt like you were walking out on people. But we got through it.\\n\\n So the flight became extremely special because I knew it was my last. But hard. The fact that it became special and all that didn’t make it any easier. But we did the best we could do and had a great time and then left. We left the agency after that flight. In fact, we left NASA a week after my daughter graduated from high school here. We flew in February, came back and did all of our post-flight stuff, we went to Costa Rica with Franklin, and I think I told you about that, and then we went to Russia, and finished up everything I had to finish up, I thought, and left. Went to the Naval Academy. But that was very difficult." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine it would have been a difficult decision." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was good preparation, however, because nine years later we determined that—my wife and I had always said that if you’re not enjoying something, if we’re not having fun, we’re going to quit. And we said that about everything. And so I had spent thirty-five years, almost thirty-five years, in the Marine Corps. Even while I was here, I was still an active-duty Marine. We were never not Marines, she and I.\\n\\n I eventually became the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing out at Miramar in California, and that became the most rewarding thing I’d ever done in my life. But, again, it took its toll on your family and stuff like that. My wife asked me one day, she said, “You know, I thought you told me when it quit being fun we weren’t going to do anymore.” And I was still having fun, but she wasn’t. So I said, “Yeah, you’re right. You know, we did say that.”\\n\\n So we had orders to leave that duty and go to another position, another command, as a matter of fact, on the East Coast. The day before the movers were supposed to come, we talked about it as hard as we could, and it was sort of reminiscent to talking about leaving NASA. And we made the decision that the right thing for us to do was, again, because I didn’t think I was fully in sync with the hierarchy in the Department of Defense at the time, and, really, if you’re going to tell young men and women that you want them to put their life on the line, then you really need to believe in the people that you work for. And I had gotten to the point that I wasn’t comfortable with that, so we decided that we had given the Marine Corps the best we could give. And so told people we were leaving. That was hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I can imagine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I had had the preparation because we had been through that once. So that was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As one of the astronauts that flew before and after Challenger, can you share with us some of the significant differences between the suits, the launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A big difference, huge difference, that’s visible to everybody is what you wear. When we went into orbit my first flight on [Space Shuttle] Columbia, we wore a plain old flight suit. The only difference between my flight suit and the one that I wore as a marine was color and I think it was a little bit more expensive. They were made on some Indian reservation in New Mexico or something like that, so they were tailormade with a gazillion measurements, whereas my flight suit, you go over and say, “I wear a thirty-eight short,” so you got a Nomax flight suit. But these were Nomax flight suits, but tailormade. You put on a helmet to protect your head if you bumped it or something like that, and also it had a visor that came down so if something happened in the cockpit and the atmosphere got bad, you had breathing oxygen for an emergency or something. That was the way we went to orbit on STS-61C.\\n\\n As I mentioned, ten days later, after I came back, we lost Challenger. And then in hindsight, some people decided that had the crew had some other form of protection, what became the launch and entry suit, that they conceivably could have survived. I never bought into that, I don’t believe it now, but that was the decision that was made. And it was, I think, as much to placate the American public. We decided we’d stick this eighty-five-pound suit on everybody. And so that was the way I flew my second and subsequent flights.\\n\\n Boy, the oversight, the safety oversight. I felt, while I didn’t think it was bad prior to Challenger, I think, some of our earlier conversation, when I got into the safety organization there were some modifications we made trying to get some operational input into the safety oversight itself. I thought it was improved when I went back and flew the second time. Did it make it any safer? I don’t know. Space flight is risky business.\\n\\n We had made some definite material improvements on the system itself. The O-rings were different. The way we oversaw the construction and assembly of the Shuttle and the system, that was a little bit different, but I didn’t feel unsafe the first time I flew, so I didn’t feel any safer the second time. We had done a lot, but I didn’t fool myself that maybe there was some modicum of improvement in the safety, but contrary to what people will tell you, that the Shuttle is not safe and it’s already been proven to be not—I heard a lady on television, on radio, this morning talking about the President’s plan, the fact that, well, it’s been proven that the Shuttle’s not safe. Not true. The Shuttle is very safe, relatively speaking. The level of safety on the Shuttle, it’s 99.99999 percent assured that you’re going to return. After Challenger, it became 99.99—maybe we added one more nine out there somewhere, but it still wasn’t 100 percent. Nor will any other vehicle that we build. Human beings cannot put anything together that’s 100 percent safe. The only way to be 100 percent assured that you’re not going to lose somebody in space flight, in exploration, is don’t go. And I don’t think we want to go there.\\n\\n So there were some things that we did that I—while I could live with them, I just thought it was a waste of time and money. If you look at what we’re doing now, people that demand that we have a crew escape mechanism, we did that. We put the pole on the Orbiter, we designed this mechanism, it was good. I felt a little bit better about it. But when it’s your day, it’s your day and you can have all that stuff. It would not have helped this crew; it didn’t help this crew because if you don’t know that you’re about to lose the vehicle, you don’t have time to activate the crew escape system and go jump out. So life is like that.\\n\\n There’s always going to be something that you didn’t expect that’s going to bite you. And the way that we do things in the NASA culture is you put a team together that what-ifs. And we do it in the military, and I think you do it in industry. And you what-if and you Red Team and you Blue Team and you Pink Team and once you’ve satisfied yourself that, “Okay, we’ve thought of every bad thing that can happen, it’s okay to go turn the valve now,” and you go turn the valve, and six days a week it works. Six days and twenty three hours and fifty-nine minutes it works, but one day you go and turn a valve and something you never expected goes wrong. And if you’re lucky, somebody gets hurt. If you’re not lucky, somebody gets killed. And that’s the way space flight is and is always going to be. So, for somebody to think that we’re going to build a new vehicle that’s going to be significantly safer than Shuttle, they’re smoking dope, to be quite honest.\\n\\n Now, we do need a replacement for the Shuttle, but not because of safety. I think we need a replacement for the Shuttle because we need a vehicle in which we can go to the Moon and to Mars and on to other places the way that we envisioned it when the concept of a space transportation system was briefed to President [Richard M.] Nixon. I don’t think there was anything wrong with that. And I think you could still fly that system, but add the third component, the orbital maneuvering vehicle that we didn’t have enough money to build, and don’t have enough money to build now, and you could have been flying Shuttle for the next thousand years to an International Space Station and the orbital maneuvering vehicle, or orbital transfer vehicle as it used to be called, from Station to the lunar surface, or from the lunar surface to Mars, or wherever you want to go.\\n\\n That’s essentially what we’re going to do, but what we’re going to do now is we’re not going to have a Shuttle. We’re not going to have a vehicle, a reusable vehicle, that we can use for routine access to space. So we’ll make the same tradeoffs that we made back when we decided to go with Shuttle as the first of the three components to the space transportation system. We’ll now have a space transportation system that doesn’t give us reusable routine access to space. And that’s okay. I’m not sure we saved any money with Shuttle, anyway. I don’t know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think we’re going to stop and take a break real quick, and then I just have a couple more questions after that.\\n\\n [Tape change]\n\nWhen we stopped, we were talking about the uncertainties of space flight. And, of course in light of what happened to the Columbia, on your last flight there was a problem with the Thermal Protection System [TPS]. Were there any concerns about reentry?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Boy, I’ve got to remember this. See, I always remember the good stuff. Refresh my memory." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The TPS blankets around the forward RCS [Reaction Control System] thruster began to peel back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think I do remember that vaguely. Yes. Okay. What was your question?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just if there was any concern with that as far as reentry was involved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. Just as I think—and I can’t speak for anybody else, and no one will ever know—but my suspicion is the crew of 107 didn’t have any concern about their safety because they depended on the team and figured that people had looked and done the best job they could. I know hindsight is always 20/20, but I didn’t have any concern, not during our reentry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We talked about the launches and we talked about the flights. Let’s talk for a moment about landing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As a commander on the last two flights, what was that experience like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Landing’s awesome. It’s awesome, period, no matter where you are on the vehicle. I can’t speak for a mission specialist sitting in the mid-deck, but I would imagine that even for that person who can’t see anything, just the physical changes have got to be pretty doggone awesome.\\n\\n But when you’re sitting on the flight deck looking out the front window, the most spectacular period of time during the reentry, especially if it’s night, is the initial reentry heating when you come into the atmosphere and the vehicle just—it heats up and it glows. The way I describe it to schoolkids, it’s like being inside a lightbulb and you’re the filament in the lightbulb. You’re just glowing and you can’t see outside the window. You see this dull, sort of a dull red glow start at the base of the windshield and then what we call St. Elmo’s fire. You see that in a normal airplane, where you get static discharges going up the window, kind of eerie-looking stuff. And then before you know it, it gets orangeish and then pinkish and then the whole windscreens in the front are obscured, like you’re in a cloud, or like you’re inside a lightbulb. You can’t see out of them because of the bright light that’s coming off the tile.\\n\\n If you look out the overhead window, it’s a different world. Up there you see the plasma going just [demonstrates]. It’s charging and discharging and it’s like there’s this monster up there, and this thing forms and then collapses. And it’s an absolutely fascinating light show. So you’ve got that going on up there, and then you can’t even see out the front window. And it lasts about ten or fifteen minutes, and then as you get deeper into the atmosphere, the temperatures stabilize and the vehicle, the tiles begin to cool down again. They’ve been able to dissipate all the heat, and then you can see out the front window.\\n\\n The range over which you can see is unbelievable. My last flight we did, I guess it’s an ascending entry. We came up over from the southern hemisphere into the northern hemisphere and then I say turn south—you don’t really turn south, because the way Earth is tilted, it appears that you’re coming like this and then going south to the Cape. But we came down from Canada. And we had been waved off at least once for weather. They had a storm system off the coast of Cape Canaveral, and the weather guys judged that if we had come in on our first opportunity it probably would have been right in the middle of a thunderstorm. They were pretty right. Those guys had gotten really good, and so what they saw was two waves, one that they figured if we didn’t come in on the first opportunity, we’d be able to sneak in between these two waves. And they were absolutely right, because everybody said it rained cats and dogs on the orbit opportunity we were supposed to land, people who were down there waiting.\\n\\n When we came in, because it was the middle of winter in the northern hemisphere, there was snow, all kinds of stuff all over Canada, huge weather system all the way over the U.S. from northern Florida all the way up into Canada. So you couldn’t see the ground, but you could look from over northern Canada up around St. John’s and all that kind of stuff, and you could see Florida, you could see the Florida peninsula, and you went, “Oh, that is really impressive.” You’re a hundred-and-some-odd-thousand feet, but looking at the Florida peninsula sticking out from under all these clouds and you say, “Oh, those guys are pretty good.” But you could see the other storm system coming from off the Atlantic, but you figured, okay, we’re going to make it. And so we came back.\\n\\n The entry and landing is unlike almost anything you ever experience in any other kind of aerospace machine because it’s relatively gentle in exact terms. In terms of G-forces [gravitational forces] and stuff like that, it’s very docile. Unless you do something wrong, you don’t even get up to 2 Gs during the reentry, the entire time of the reentry. When you bank to land, you come overhead the landing site, and then you bank the vehicle and you just come down like a corkscrew. As a general rule, you don’t even make one complete rotation; you go 180 degrees or something like that. But you’re just falling out of the sky. And it’s about 1.2, 1.4 Gs or something like that, which you feel that in a car. But, it feels like you got gorillas sitting on your shoulder because you’ve been weightless for x number of days. And so it’s just a really different feeling. You have to hold your head up because you’ve got this big old heavy helmet on and it probably weighs ten pounds, I’m not sure what, but it feels like it weights a hundred. So, you know, you learn to keep your head straight and all this kind of stuff.\\n\\n It takes a little bit of energy to get your hands up off the console, because once you start feeling gravity again, your hands just kind of go down and they want to stay there; everything does. So the two pilots onboard are doing a lot of isometric exercises all the way down, and I think I mentioned to you once before, I tried to do very gentle head movements to get my head oriented and get my gyros caged again without having something go wacky on me that I couldn’t recover from. So you do a lot of just trying to get your body physically adapted to being back in a gravity, kind of hurtling your body at the ground until you get to 2,000 feet to pull the nose up is different, but it’s like you’ve done it all your life because you have. You’ve done it thousands of time by now in the Shuttle training aircraft for real, and you’ve done it probably tens of thousands of times in the simulator. So it doesn’t look abnormal at all; it’s just something that you’re accustomed to.\\n\\n And you’re constantly talking to the crew, those on the flight deck. One of the things that I always said was you really want to try keep the guys on the mid-deck informed, because they don’t have the luxury or the privilege of seeing what you’re seeing. So we tried to paint a word-picture for them as to what we were seeing, how things looked. So, a lot of conversation, surprisingly, on the flight deck that gets onto the OPS [operational] recorder. But the ground doesn’t hear it because the ICOM, the intercom, is open loop; it just gets on the recorder, but people on the ground don’t hear any of it. But you’re talking all the time, just chattering away and oohing and aahing and all that kind of stuff. But it’s very spectacular.\\n\\n And then when you touch down, if you do it right, again, you hardly know you touched down. As big as the Orbiter is, the way that we land it is we just get it into an extremely shallow approach to the landing, and so it just kind of rolls out on the runway, and if you do it right, you all of a sudden you notice that things are starting to slow down real quick and you’re hearing this rumble because the vehicle’s rolling down the runway on this grooved runway. So you know you’re down, put the nose down and step on the brakes and stop. That’s it. And then you go, “Holy G. I wish it hadn’t been over so quick.” It doesn’t matter—I don’t think it makes no difference how long or how short you’ve been there, it’s over too quick. You’re ready to come home, but once you get back, you say, “Boy, I wish I had had a few more days,” or something like that. And for me, my last two, being the commander and actually being the guy that had the opportunity to fly it to touchdown, was thrilling.\\n\\n In my particular case, I think the rules at the time said that only the commander was supposed to fly, but that didn’t make any sense to me. So the way we trained and the way I did it was I always let the pilot take the controls first and fly the first part of the entry, the last little bit, so that he got an opportunity to see what the vehicle felt like and all that, and then I flew the last part and the landing itself. And so it’s pretty good, for whatever it’s worth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I imagine it was a different experience for Sergei Krikalev, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, coming back that way? Yes. Much gentler. Did you all interview him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, we haven’t." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Will you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I hope so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It would be interesting to see what he says. But I know, just asking him about differences, very gentle compared to Soyuz, and again, he said there’s no question when you land in Soyuz because you’re fearing for life. He said the hard part is after you land, because if the winds are high on the desert, you get dragged around by the parachute until it gets released, and they have guys get injured post-landing, just getting thrown around inside the capsule. Ours is real nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you mentioned before we took a break, you left NASA and returned to the Marine Corps. In 2002, you were nominated for a position as Deputy Administer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, we’re going to talk about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Only if you want to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it’s okay. I don’t have any secrets. Somebody knows it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. If you could tell us about the circumstances around that nomination." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can tell you what I know, okay? Actually, when it was finally decided that Mr. Goldin was going to leave as the Administrator, NASA started looking around and I had an opportunity to go—well, I was asked to go to the White House and talk to the people in the Personnel Office there. I interviewed eventually with Clay Johnson [III], who’s the President’s personnel manager; I don’t know what he’s called [Deputy Director for Management at the Office of Management and Budget]. He was with “W” [George W. Bush] here in Texas when he was the Governor and everything. But he’s supposedly the guru for people. And so I went and talked to him and they were in the market for somebody to be the NASA Administrator, and I made it very clear to them that I was not interested in being that person. And he made it very clear to me that I wasn’t there to interview for that position, but they just wanted ideas, just wanted to hear what I thought NASA should be doing, where they should be going, what would I do if I were the Administrator, what would be some of the first things I’d do. And I shared my thoughts on that with them, and then I went away, after the second time.\\n\\n And then Sean O’Keefe was named to be the Administrator and I was real happy. And then he called. Actually, he didn’t call, but the Commandant of the Marine Corps, who is a friend of his, because I think they had both been legislative people, General [James L.] Jones having been the Congressional Liaison from the Marine Corps while Sean was working for Senator [Ted] Stevens or somebody. And so the Commandant said, “I want you to go and talk to Sean about being the Deputy Administrator.”\\n\\n I said, “Well, I’m not interested.” We’d been through this once.\\n\\n And he said, “Well, I’d really like for you to do this. It would be good for the Marine Corps, good for you, good for NASA and everything.”\\n\\n So I said, “Okay, I’ll go talk to him, but I’m going to tell him I’m not interested.” And so I went back and I talked to Mr. O’Keefe, and we talked for a long time and I explained to him that I really didn’t have any interest in coming back, I really liked what I was doing and I wanted to stay there. At the time, I was actually in my first year as the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing out in California and loving what I was doing, flying all the time, having fun. And so he said he was very disappointed that I felt that way and that he had really hoped that he could talk me into coming to be the Deputy Administrator because he felt I could make a contribution. I said, “I appreciate it, I’m honored,” and all that kind of stuff, “but I don’t think so.”\\n\\n And so I went back and thought I had gotten away, and I got a phone call from the guy that was my friend, who was the general responsible for personnel in the Marine Corps. And he says, “Oh, I’ve got a message from the Commandant. He said it’s not over ‘til the fat lady sings.” And I went, “Oh, jeez.”\\n\\n So I guess he and Mr. O’Keefe talked a little bit more and so then he said, “Okay, I want you to go back and talk to him one more time, and I want you to keep an open mind, because we need for you to do this.”\\n\\n And I said, “Okay, I’ll go do that.” And I went back and I talked to Sean, and we talked about how long, and I explained to him that I was not ready to leave the Marine Corps, that I enjoyed what I was doing and that I would be willing to come if I could just finish my tour. And he said, “Well, I don't think that’s possible, but we can guarantee that you won’t have to get out of the Marine Corps. You can stay on active duty, and there’ll be a promotion,” and this kind of stuff.\\n\\n And so I said, “Okay, what the heck. I’ll try it.” And so we started the proceedings for the nomination, and I got word. In fact, the Commandant announced it this time of year, back then. In a forum of all the general officers in the Marine Corps, he brought my wife and me up and announced that I was being nominated by the President to be the Deputy NASA Administrator and I was going to be a lieutenant general and stay on active duty and all this kind of stuff. Shocked me, but I said, “Okay.”\\n\\n We started doing all the paperwork and all that stuff that’s required, and I had an appointment for my confirmation hearing, and I think it was a Wednesday, and I can’t remember the specifics because I purged it from my mind, for the most part, but Sean and the folk back at NASA Headquarters asked me if I could come back a few days early because they wanted me to go over to the Hill; I needed to meet all the different committees and speak to Senator [John] McCain, and the Chair and the ranking members on all of the committees that had to do with NASA, and go through some stuff and get their blessing so that the hearings would not be painful.\\n\\n Ironically, everything in NASA is handled through the Senate Commerce Committee, so it was Senator [Fritz] Hollings was the ranking member, he was the Democrat, and Senator John McCain was the committee chairman for the Commerce Committee. So that was the committee to approve me, confirm me, to be the Deputy Administrator.\\n\\n So I went through all my briefings, all my meetings; I had spent a lot of time at NASA Headquarters getting briefed by everybody so I’d be ready, and went in for my last meeting on the Hill. I had seen Senator McCain’s staff that morning, and then that afternoon I went in to see Senator Hollings. He’s my home senator from South Carolina and we’ve known each other for a long, long time, and he’s a very good friend of my family and everything. So we talked mostly personal stuff, asked about the family and all that.\\n\\n It was through Senator Hollings that I learned that there was about to be a hiccup. He said, “I wouldn’t worry about the questions being asked by the Armed Services Committee. We’re going to take care of that.”\\n\\n And I kind of went, “Sir, you’ve got me. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”\\n\\n So he shared with me a letter that had been sent to the Office of the General Counsel in the White House, from Senator [Carl] Levin, who was the ranking member, the Democratic ranking member, and Senator [John] Warner, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It had, I think, three or four questions for the President, through the General Counsel, and they were essentially, “You’re going to take a guy that’s an active duty military person at a time like this, when we’re engaged in the war on terrorism, and you’re going to make him the Deputy Administrator at NASA. Do you really want to do that?”\\n\\n Question number two. “We don’t have anything against this guy, but why him? Why do you particularly want him? Do we want to set the precedent of taking a high-ranking military official and making him the Deputy at a civilian organization?” We’ve got some things in the past, Admiral Truly did it, but he retired and stayed on as the NASA Administrator once he became the NASA Administrator, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I forget what question number three was. It was something again like “Why him?” or something, I don’t know.\\n\\n So Senator Hollings said, “I wouldn’t worry about it. We’ve got it. I’ve already talked to John McCain, I’ve already talked to Levin and Warner and everybody, and we’re happy. So we’ll see you tomorrow.” I went back over to NASA Headquarters and I was actually meeting with [William F.] Bill Readdy, and he and [Frederick D.] Fred Gregory were giving me my—because Fred had Code Q [Office of Safety and Mission Assurance] and Bill Readdy was, I think, was not the principal at Code M [Office of Space Flight] yet, I don’t think, but, anyway, so we were talking about ticklish issues that might come up in the hearing when I got word that Sean wanted to see me.\\n\\n So I went down to Mr. O’Keefe’s office, and he said, “Hey, this is gotten to be too difficult. We’ve talked with the White House and everybody else, and we think the best thing to do is withdraw the nomination.”\\n\\n I said, “Sounds good to me.”\\n\\n And he said, “You know, I could fight it, but I don’t think it would do you any good if you want to stay in the Marine Corps. I could go talk to [Donald H.] Rumsfeld, but I don’t think it’s good for any of us. So we’re just going to back off.”\\n\\n To this day, I have no idea what really happened. I don’t know whether the White House just didn’t want to answer the questions that came from the Armed Services Committee, whether Secretary Rumsfeld said, “No way,” or what. All I know is that the word was that he wasn’t aware that I had been nominated, which I found flabbergasting that the Secretary of Defense would not be aware that the President had nominated one of his general officers. But I believe what people tell me; I take them at their word.\\n\\n So I ran from NASA Headquarters back to the hotel and packed my bags and jumped on the Metro and went to Ronald Reagan National Airport and asked Continental [Airlines] if they could get me on, told them I was scheduled to go the next day, but could they get me on a flight back to Houston, and I got back here before anybody could change their mind. And that was it. Never heard anything else about it.\\n\\n So that was my moment in the sun and my almost being the Deputy Administrator. I went back to my job in the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing and served out that tour. I think I served my Marines well. And then we decided to leave the Marine Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you came back here, obviously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I came back here originally to think about what we were going to do and where we were going to go, thinking that we would go back out to San Diego [California], because I really love it out there. But my wife came back knowing that she wanted to live here, because our kids had grown up here and she has tons of friends here.\\n\\n So we came back here, and I had several months before my official retirement, so I had a lot of time to think and do stuff like that, and I think, as some of you may know, my first civilian job was actually going back to work with Mr. Abbey. We had the water company, which for me didn’t work out. Had nothing to do with him, it was just a lot of different reasons it didn’t work out. I stayed with the water company for about four months, and then opted to take a job with TechTrans International, the company I’m with now, which is tremendous.\\n\\n We were talking about things that people always ask you what do you remember, and the Marine Corps and NASA are very similar. They’re both relatively small organizations that work on a shoestring, and they are both organizations that are as great as they are because of their people. The funny thing about NASA is NASA is more than just NASA employees, and you all understand this because you’re a part of the family. I learned, anyway, over the time that I worked, that the organization was as successful as it was because of all the diverse and divergent ideas that were able to bubble up, contrary to what anybody says, and people’s stick-to-it-iveness and persistence and their dedication to what they do.\\n\\n Just like in the Marine Corps, where nobody ever looked at their watch, that I can remember, in my fourteen years here at NASA I don’t ever remember anybody looking at their watch. They worked until they were either tired or until what they were supposed to do was done that day, then they went home. And that’s something that I cherish. People ask you if you miss NASA, I say, “Not on your life.” And they ask you if you miss the Marine Corps. I say, “Not on your life.” And do you miss flying? “Not really.” “Shucks, you must miss something.” I say, “I miss the people.” That’s it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’ve mentioned before your favorite memories or the things that you found the most enjoyable. Is there any one thing, looking back over your career, that you found the most challenging?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My NASA career, or my entire career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your NASA career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, without a doubt the most challenging in my fourteen years with NASA was getting on the airplane and going back to Washington. And it got harder and harder every time when I’d come home; going back to Washington for that job. Seriously, that was my undoing. I have never hated a job. I hated that job. I just could not convince myself that I belonged there, for one thing. I never got a feeling that I was making a difference, the other thing. And I always had the feeling that I was swimming upstream, and it just wasn’t pleasant. So while I enjoyed the people, it got harder and harder. And my wife and my daughter will tell you—my son doesn’t know because he was gone; he was a marine by that time—but my daughter was here in high school, and they would literally have to push me out of the house either to go to Ellington [Field] to get on an airplane and fly back, or take me to the airport and get me out of the car to fly back to Washington. I dreaded that. And it got worse and worse every time I went back. I wish I didn’t have to say that, but there is no question what was the most difficult thing for me.\\n\\n And second most difficult was the decision to leave. And third most difficult was telling my crew and my training team. In that order.\\n\\n Then in the Marine Corps the most difficult thing was—boy, that’s easy, too. Sending people in harm’s way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you don’t mind, I’m going to ask Rebecca and Jennifer if they have any questions for you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I have one for you. When you were talking about preparing for STS-60, negotiations and plans and meetings were being held in parallel to start the Shuttle-Mir Program. Were you aware of that, or what were you aware of what was going on at the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were quite aware of what was going on because a lot of times it affected what we were able to do with the Russians. We were aware of some of the stumbling blocks that were arising, and there one of the things that made you feel good was that while I didn’t have any direct input into Shuttle-Mir and what was going on between us and the Russians, because of our contact with Sergei and Vladimir and the fact that they were consulted constantly by the Russians, by their side, and they had input—at least we were led to believe they had input—we were able to talk to them a lot and try to instill some reason in the discussion that was going on. So, undoubtedly we didn’t know everything that was going on, but we were aware of how difficult it was going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was curious because it was announced as a one-time, and then before you launched it became the beginning of several years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, you’re right. When we were first assigned, I don’t think there was any such thing as Phase 1. We were not the initial flight in Phase 1. And that didn’t come until almost before we flew, that we were identified as a part of the Shuttle-Mir Program, as the first flight in Phase 1. I think that came real late, as I can remember, if it did, before we flew, to be quite honest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had a couple of questions for you. We talked to Dave Leestma. He talked about how your class called themselves the “Needless Nineteen.” Do you remember anything about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Laughs] Jeez. We had so many things we did. I don’t. I don’t remember why, to be quite honest, and it may very well—I can only guess—it may have been because we had nothing—we had no responsibility. We were entrusted with nothing. You were just kind of existing, jeez, until after we got STS-1 gone. Because until that time, everybody was focused on STS-1, getting it safely into space and back, and then we turned to STS-2, because that was the groundbreaking flight because everybody knew we could get the Shuttle into space and back safely, or at least we were relatively confident we could. I’m not sure we were convinced we could turn it around and get it back into space again.\\n\\n We got a scare when we had the water problem. We had the problem with hydrogen bubbles in the water on STS-2 and brought it home early. So I think there may have been some people—although as minor as it was, I think it caused a lot of people a lot of consternation thinking that, “Holy jeez, we’re not going to be able to do this. We’ve got these guys up there, and now we’ve got to get them home, and the water’s not right, and we don’t know where this hydrogen’s coming from,” and all this kind of stuff. We made things difficult on ourselves.\\n\\n But that’s probably what he was talking about, the fact that we may as well have been nonexistent. For what we did, we didn’t really need the title astronaut or astronaut candidate or whatever it was. We were gofers. And that was okay. Everybody who comes here is. I think the most difficult part of being an astronaut until you fly is being a gofer. And you really are, especially now, I think.\\n\\n The Astronaut Office—and this is my opinion; I don’t know whether anybody agrees or not—it’s too big. It’s too big for the vision, it’s too big for the assets we have, it’s too big for the flight schedule, even before Columbia was lost. And so you put people, very, very talented people, in a position where they have to make very difficult decisions about their lives. And in many cases, they put their lives on hold, and in many cases they turn their lives around from great things that they could achieve, just because in their mind—and I know, because I’ve been there—in your mind, there is nothing greater than going to space. It’s a dream that everybody probably has. And so you think it doesn’t make any difference what you have to do, it’s worth it. I’ve served with a lot of people who would have made tremendous contributions to the country and to the world had they not become astronauts, but they became one of the needless however many there are. So that’s probably what he was talking about. I don’t whether he described it that way or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, he gave us a sense of the fact that there had been thirty-five people there and the Apollo astronauts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When the thirty-five came in, that just exploded the size of the office. I’m not sure where they were. I think when the first group of Shuttle astronauts came in, I know the size of the office more than doubled. And then when they brought us in, that put it off the page. There was no question that you could go home and nobody would miss you, especially here in Houston. So that’s why a lot of people like to go places. If you went to [NASA] Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama], or you went over to the Cape or somewhere else, you became a rock star. But around Houston, shucks, you’re Amy’s mom or dad or whatever it was. Oh, another astronaut." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just had one other question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was wondering if you could give us a sense of how you think the position of astronaut changed from when you became an astronaut until you left the office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The biggest thing, and I think it’s an evolving thing, it’s when I came, at least, the number of astronauts was such that somebody who really was a space junkie could remember the names. So it was hard to go somewhere and be introduced as an astronaut and not have everybody there at least recognize your name. The more people we started bringing in, we put people in the position where now they’re almost anonymous. And that’s hard to take, to be quite honest, for somebody with a big ego. And a lot of us have big egos. Not many of them have the kind of ego that makes it unbearable, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t say there’s some people that go through the office—and some of you probably know some or have run into some. That’s really traumatic for somebody who has been king of the hill up until now and they come down here to be where they think they’re really going to be king of the hill, and nobody even knows who they are, doesn’t even recognize their name. That’s probably the most significant change that I sense.\\n\\n The other thing that I think has happened in the agency has been—some people take it the right way, some people take it the wrong way—the misuse of astronauts in using them to plug management positions because somebody thinks that that will make something happen good all of a sudden, or it’ll take the heat off, or whatever reason they use. So we now have astronauts up and down the management chain, some of whom really shouldn’t be there, to be quite honest. Because, one, they don’t have the training nor the expertise. When I stop and think about it, when I came here, I was a captain; I was selected for promotion to major. The things that I was entrusted to do when I finally was assigned as a crew member, and especially when I became a commander, were unbelievable in terms of magnitude as to what I would be doing if I were out in the operating forces of the Marine Corps. And there the ultimate, the big differences as a marine—I can speak for the Marine Corps—as a very junior marine, you’re entrusted with the lives of your marines and sailors. So that is a big deal.\\n\\n But in terms of making decisions that have big monetary impact or things like that, you don’t. Nobody asks your opinion, nor does anybody care. In the Astronaut Office, you do. The assumption that because somebody’s flown four times, that’s why I kind of chuckled at—I was honored, to be quite honest, and I don’t mean to make light of it at all, but the fact that being considered to be the Deputy Administrator or the Administrator of NASA because you’ve flown in space four times.\\n\\n Am I qualified to be an SES [Senior Executive Service]? To be quite honest, when I look at Jan Davis—I don’t think I mentioned this previously. The person I admire, and I won’t say the most, but one of the people that I admire unbelievably is Jan Davis, because Jan recognized early in her astronaut career that she didn’t want to do that for a living, that she really did like being a worker bee, and she really wanted to be a manager. She wanted to stay in NASA, but she wanted to get into the SES hierarchy, and that she felt the way to do it was the legitimate way to do it, and that is you go to school, you go to seminars, you go through all the testing and everything else. And she did that for years on her own and finally qualified to be an SES, and then waited her turn to get appointed to an SES position, which is what she fills up at Marshall right now. And she is tremendous in it. She earned the respect of everybody with whom she associates because they know that nobody put her there because she was an astronaut. She’s there because she is fully qualified. And I’ve always respected her for recognizing where she wanted to go in life and then doing the things necessary to get her there, not depending on a title or something else to get you there.\\n\\n I don’t intend that to take anything away from anybody who is serving in a management position, but there are some of us who don’t belong there, to be quite honest, because we haven’t paid our dues. And I don’t think flying in space is paying your dues. That’s fun. There are other people who would kill to do that.\\n\\n I don’t know if that answers your question." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we’ve talked about lots of stuff, everything. The thing that I would re-emphasize is the key role that people play in the organization and in the concept of an organization whose responsibility it is to explore, not only for the nation, but for the world now. We’ve grown beyond it. That is my biggest concern with NASA right now, is that contrary to what I think a lot of us think, I think we’re turning inward. And I think even with the President’s announcement of going back to the Moon and on to Mars, I think there is a very good chance that we’ll do it all wrong and we will make it a U.S. effort. And we should have learned by now that that’s not the way of the world. We know that in the military. You can ask any military person from PFC Benoit to General Schmuck, and they will tell you that you don’t do anything by yourself anymore. As much as every service would like to believe that they’re the best—and we in the Marine Corps think we’re the best—but even in the Marine Corps we recognize that you don’t go to war by yourself anymore, ever again. And if you ever try it, then you’re going to have hell to pay, because that’s just not the way the world works.\\n\\n So what I hope is that we won’t try to venture back to the Moon and on to Mars or anywhere else alone, as the United States. My fear, from listening, is that we’ll decide that we’re going to do it all by ourselves and screw everybody else, they can go play with the Space Station, you know. For what it’s worth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I appreciate you coming back and talking with us again today, and thanks so much for participating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles F. Bolden", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks a lot, I enjoyed it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00051", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BoyntonJH/boyntonjh.htm", + "original_file_name": "BoyntonJH_3-19-09.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/BoyntonJH/BoyntonJH_3-19-09.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "John H. Boynton", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 19 March 2009" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "John H. Boynton" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 19th, 2009. This oral history interview with John Boynton is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. We thank you for coming back and visiting with us again. We’d like for you to start today by providing the details of your experiences when you were working in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division during Project Apollo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wanted to work in Apollo Mission Planning when I came here, but a guy named Joe [Joseph V.] Piland talked me out of it and said, “We need you in Mercury.” So I was so glad to come back into the fold, because I did Apollo mission planning at General Dynamics. I wanted to do that again. John [H.] Mayer, who was head of Mission Planning and Analysis Division, wanted me to come work for him. I did. He set up an office called the Apollo Trajectory Support Office. They always liked to use acronyms, so that was called ATSO. He had a guy named John [P.] Bryant heading it up. He said to me, “John, as soon as you get your feet wet and you know your way around, you’re going to be heading it up.”\\n\\n Well, I had some personality conflicts with John [Mayer], and that never happened. He never did make me head of that office. But that’s okay. Bryant did a good job. I was his servant. I worked in that area for about a year and a half and did some good stuff. At least I was made the mission engineer for what in those days was called Mission F & [Mission] G.\\n\\n [Mission] F was when we go to the Moon but don’t land; G was when we go and land. It was a generic job, because that was early in the program. That was ’63, ’64. So I was the mission engineer for that, a term that I had never heard before, and I don’t think anybody else did. But basically you were in charge of designing the mission.\\n\\n Then the Apollo Program Office decided to set up what’s called the Apollo Mission Planning Task Force [AMPTF]. Probably my most important contribution of all the 11 years I was at NASA was being a part of that AMPTF, Apollo Mission Planning Task Force. Jack [John R.] Sevier was the chairman of our group. The guy in Grumman, Tom Barnes, was the official head of it. The AMPTF had representatives from all the contractors, North American [Aviation], MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts], Grumman [Aircraft Engineering Corporation]. Myself from Mission Planning and Jack were the main characters on the panel, but we had all these other people contributing. We met sometimes three times a month but usually about once a month. We would go to the various plants, but almost all the meetings were held at Grumman, because Tom Barnes was the official leader.\\n\\n The purpose of the Apollo Mission Planning Task Force was to make sure that we could come up with a mission that everybody could fly, all the systems would work, all the crew could do all the things we told them to. We didn’t want anything to be a surprise when we flew to the Moon. We came up with what was called a Design Reference Mission; the first one was DRM I. Then we wanted to modify that because it wasn’t quite inclusive enough, so we came up with DRM II. Then the final one, the report was about two inches thick. The final one was DRM IIA. That was the one that everybody finally designed their systems and timelines on. By the way, that came out after the Apollo 1, the fire and it included the new Block II spacecraft. So if anybody says, “What did this guy do?” I helped come out with the DRM II. I honestly don’t think we could have gone to the Moon by 1970 without that.\\n\\n Now a lot of things allowed us to go to the Moon by 1970. Not the least of which was the Apollo 1 fire. But the DRM II—it was the Bible. So that was probably my greatest part because I had to go back to the Mission Planning Division and get all the data that they needed to go into that report. We had to work closely with the crew. That started when I was in that early phase of Apollo Mission Planning.\\n\\n Now [Christopher C.] Kraft in his infinite wisdom says, “We’ve got some guys that show great promise in our divisions that we want to groom to be managers.” John [G.] Zarcaro was one of them and I was another one. Smart kids that were going to go places. What’s interesting is both Zarcaro and I went to and graduated from MIT. Zarcaro went on to become a great manager and then he started his own business and now he’s very wealthy. So he’s a very successful guy. Zarcaro and I went up and worked on the Directorate staff. We worked for a guy named Dennis [E.] Fielder. That was supposed to be a temporary job. One year we were going to go up there and we’d cycle through and then we’d go back and supposedly do something really important in the Division. I worked on that for—it turned out to be almost two years. I think partly because we did a good job, but partly because Kraft was so busy.\\n\\n The purpose was advance operations planning. The reason for the office was this. Beginning in about 1964, [NASA] Headquarters was sending down messages to the various centers, particularly the ones that were involved in manned spaceflight. “What are we going to do after Apollo? What are we going to do after Apollo,” because they wanted to be able to go and lay the groundwork for funding. As early as ’65 we were sending out studies to Headquarters and other places. They kept coming to Kraft, and there wasn’t any place in the center that you could go and say, “You guys put this report together,” because they were all involved in operational missions, particularly Gemini.\\n\\n They told Dennis to do this, and Dennis actually didn’t like to write. He was a very verbose guy. He got Zarcaro and me to do that to help him. So, that’s what we did. We looked at Space Station. We looked at Skylab. We looked at planetary missions. We looked at Venus. We looked at post-Apollo and lunar base and that kind of thing. As it turns out, nothing was ever done with any of those studies, which is a shame. So I did that for almost two years. Then they sent me back to MPAD [Mission Planning and Analysis Division] to continue doing what I was doing. I was still a mission engineer on Apollo F&G, which is now rapidly becoming Apollo 10 and 11. And, I was made the mission engineer for Apollo AS-501 and 502.\\n\\n That was exciting for two reasons. One is AS-501 and 502 were repeats of each other. One was a repeat of the other. It was where they launched the Saturn V, which had the three stages—for the first time. AS-501 was the first time the whole Saturn V had been launched. They took the third stage, which is Saturn IV, and they drilled the Command Module right down in the atmosphere to get close to entry velocity from the Moon. When we came back from the Moon, it was very close to what’s called escape velocity. Escape velocity is the velocity that if you’re going that velocity, you’ll leave Earth’s magnetic field and go away. When you go to the Moon you go very close to escape velocity, which means of course when you come back it’s the same deal. So I’m thinking escape velocity is like 36,000 feet per second or 25,000 miles an hour. We came back at 24 something. I don’t remember the entry speed for AS-501, but it was close to that. The S IV stage just drove it back in the atmosphere, and then it separated.\\n\\n They found out a lot from those two flights. But the other important reason was I got to go down to the Cape [Canaveral, Florida] and see the first Saturn V launch. What an experience that was. It was just unbelievable, the power of that launch.\\n\\n Then I worked on the F & G missions as they gradually became [Apollo] 10 and 11. Then [Donald D.] Arabian, who was head of the Test Division in the Apollo Program Office, needed somebody to do the postflight reports, like I did in Mercury. There wasn’t anybody that wanted to do them. They had one guy but he wasn’t a technical person, he was simply a technical editor. They didn’t have a technical person to write those reports, and you really couldn’t find anybody. I hate to say it, but most engineers simply can’t write. So I got roped into that job and pulled out of mission planning in ’68. But personally it wasn’t so bad, because basically all the planning for Apollo 11 had already been done in 1967, so all of that had been done. That was nailed. They were building the spacecraft actually. They were making it.\\n\\n So I went over to work for Arabian, and again, it was another case of personality conflicts, because I have a lot of personality conflicts. Arabian is a guy that likes to dictate, like a tyrant or a dictator. He’s ruthless actually. I got to where I hated him. But when I went over there he said, “We’re going to have a thing called a Mission Evaluation Room.” It was actually a wonderful idea. In the Mission Control Center, you have specialists who are sitting at the consoles, and they’re flight controllers, and they’re trained to be a flight controller for their system. Like they have the guidance officer. They really know very little about the design and operation of the guidance system, but they know how to find out if anything’s going wrong. So that’s their job.\\n\\n Then they have a Staff Support Room. In that Staff Support Room there are experts from NASA who know more about the design and operation of their system. If they have any problems, they can call a contractor guy into that room. But the idea for Arabian’s job was to have a Mission Evaluation Room over in Building 45 which would support the staff support rooms. That’s where the contractor people could hang out during the flight and watch all the data, the same data that they would see in Mission Control, only they didn’t have any decision authority, but they were there in case something like Apollo 13, they were really busy. All the systems were involved in that. I can tell you that. To get those guys back up.\\n\\n I was going to be the head of the Mission Evaluation Room. In fact the first mission that I was over there, I was head of the Mission Evaluation Room for Apollo 7, which was the first manned Apollo flight. Then when Arabian found out that I wouldn’t do everything he wanted me to do, because I didn’t believe in it, I didn’t have that job anymore. But that’s okay. So I wrote all the postflight reports for Apollo, beginning with Apollo 7, the first manned flight, up through Apollo 13 which of course was a tragic mission. Then I got caught in the first reduction in force and was sent back to Mission Planning. So I didn’t do any postflight reports after Apollo 13. But actually the rest of the flights were routine, and Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan will tell you that. He flew the last flight. So [Apollo] 14, 15, 16, 17 were fairly routine flights. I don’t remember any major problems. They came up with the [lunar roving vehicle] rover, which was wonderful. I didn’t know anything about the rover, because I went back before that, but great design. They went to a lot of different sites on the Moon, and basically it was a very successful program after [Apollo] 13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you take just a few minutes and share a little more information about these postflight reports? Why they were important and what all was added to make them what they needed to be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Apollo, we had a higher priority for the reports, because when Mercury started flying after [John H.] Glenn’s flight being so successful and the general public being so interested in it, they weren’t much interested in the flights after that, because they were kind of repeats of the same thing. [Walter M.] Schirra’s flight was twice as long as [M. Scott] Carpenter’s. Carpenter’s was the same length as Glenn’s. Finally [L. Gordon] Cooper went into a flight that was over a day long, but by that time people were “Ho hum.” But in Apollo everybody was interested. We had what’s called the three-day report and the five-day report. It was just a little summary of everything that went wrong, and what did we think, what it was that went wrong and why it went wrong, with the understanding that we could change our minds completely after that.\\n\\n Then the postflight memorandum report, which is similar to Mercury, came out I think in 14 days. It’s still a phenomenal report. It was about that thick [indicating thickness]. But it had all the details and everything we knew from testing down at the Cape. Still almost all the testing took place down at the Cape. So that was a very important report, because it went to all the contractors to say, “This is what you better fix for the next flight.” That’s one reason it was a 14-day report. We were trying for a two-month turnaround on flights. We wanted to be able to keep that. The 14-day report was going to help that.\\n\\n I know we came out with a postflight report in 21 days sometimes. We had to keep extending it to make it right. Apollo 7 was an eleven day mission, a long time in Earth orbit. They stayed in orbit the whole time that they were supposed to, but they had a lot of little two-bit problems. I do remember that we had like 35 or 40 what we called anomalies, things we had to chase down, not the least of which was Schirra had a cold and he [later] became a spokesman for what was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actifed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, Actifed, for years and years, because he was having a rough time. Schirra—I got to say a little anecdote. Schirra had a temper, and he was a friendly guy, joke any time you wanted, but you push him so far and he went over, and he was cussing the ground [Mission Control Center], and they were fighting with him. They turned off the air-to-ground voice so people around the country couldn’t hear it. They were basically ready to bring him home early, because he wasn’t doing what they wanted. He said, “Look, I’m the one up here, I’m sick, you leave me alone.” So there was a big battle in Apollo 7. I think the reason was they were having so many problems. The ground said, “These are serious,” and Schirra was saying, “No, they’re not,” because he wanted to keep flying. They all want to keep flying. I remember that mission had a lot of little tiny bad things going wrong.\\n\\n At the time I worked at NASA, I didn’t know why they did Apollo 8. I found out later they did it because they thought the Russians were going to go to the Moon, but I didn’t know that at the time. So when they decided to make Apollo 8 a lunar mission, of course that made me feel good, because I was the mission engineer for the lunar missions. The interesting thing about Apollo 8, as I remember it, is almost hardly anything went wrong. It was a really really successful flight. Now they didn’t take the LM [Lunar Module] with them. They went out, with just the Apollo [Command]/Service Module. They didn’t go into orbit, which was a risk right there, because that burn is behind the Moon. It worked fine. I don’t know if you remember, but the Earthrise was the first picture, and that is so famous. Frank Borman was the commander of that mission. I have to tell you right now all the astronauts that I knew—let’s say a couple dozen that I met—Borman was the smartest guy. He really, really was bright. When we came back and I had to debrief him with all the other systems people, it was a joy to be in the room and ask him what went wrong and how did this happen and to hear him talk about it. Because he knew what he was talking about. Of course he didn’t have a lot to talk about because the mission was incredibly successful.\\n\\n I remember how proud I was after Apollo 8, almost more so than Apollo 11, because we went to the Moon. By the way, one thing I’m going to say later, and I want to make a point now, is when we go to Mars we ought to go into orbit first and not land, because it’s so risky. I’ve been telling people that for at least three decades. I’ve written letters to Presidents. If we go to Mars we ought to go into orbit, because that’s what we did on Apollo 8. The risk was a lot less. If we had said, “Okay, we’ll send Neil [A. Armstrong] and Buzz [Aldrin], and they’re going to land this time,” bad things could have happened.\\n\\n Then on Apollo 9, that was an Earth orbit with the LM to test out the whole stack. It’s a good thing we did that, because we found some problems that it would have been kind of hairy if we’d found them out at the Moon. So 9 was a good mission as far as developmental. [Apollo] 10 was the one where we went to the Moon and we went through all the steps except we didn’t land. A lot of the astronauts—and I’m included in the group of engineers that agreed with them—thought it was a wasted mission. Since everything was working, why didn’t we just go down and land? Well, that was [Thomas P.] Stafford, Cernan, [John W.] Young. So basically we went all the way up to the Moon, we took all those risks, everything was working, they went right down to the lunar surface, and then they didn’t do the final burn. They came back. So that’s the feeling. All the systems people and the engineers wanted them to go ahead and just go ahead and land, because what if [Apollo] 11 had failed, had to bring them back early. But that’s the way life is. [Apollo] 10 was successful from that standpoint, then we flew 11 and that worked.\\n\\n I want to tell a story about [Apollo] 11. Neil was a self-contained guy. He didn’t expound very much on anything. He liked what he did. He was a test pilot. But when everybody asked me how did they come to choose Neil Armstrong to be the guy to land on the Moon the first time, the answer that people always gave—and I was familiar with the astronaut selection procedures—they said, “Well, his turn just came up.” We were training for lunar missions. We had two or three crews doing that. When we finally said, “Okay, [Apollo] 10 was good, we found out what we needed to with 10; [Apollo] 11 is going to be a landing mission,” we didn’t say, “Neil is going to be the one to be the commander,” he was the next crew up, he was the most trained, let’s put it that way. So his number came up. I tell people this, because very few people know it. He was under investigation for three flight failures prior to that. I don’t think they ever resolved any of them. Now they knew a lot more about some than others, but the first one was an X-15. He crashed an X-15 and the plane broke right in the middle and went skidding down the runway. Well, fortunately it didn’t start a fire and he lived through that. But they don’t know whether it was pilot error, the way he landed, or there was something wrong with the vehicle. He was selected soon after that to be an astronaut. I think they kind of said, “Okay, we’ll stop looking at that.” Because what if they found out something bad?\\n\\n So there was the X-15 [crash]. The second one was Gemini, where he and Dave [David R.] Scott were spinning out real crazily and somehow they stopped that spin. In another two or three seconds they would have been dead. Well, dead at some point, because they would have run out of RCS [reaction control system] fuel, and they would not have been able to do a proper reentry. Somehow they would have probably not come back. So it was very lucky about that. Again they don’t know whether it was pilot error or whether a thruster stuck or they did something wrong. That was never resolved. Although they’re pretty sure it was a system failure, but it could have been Neil.\\n\\n Then finally he was in that flying bedstead thing [LLTV—Lunar Landing Training Vehicle] that they had out at Ellington [Field]. It was a jet engine, but they were doing LM simulation landings, and that thing failed, and he had to eject from that. He was at such a low altitude that when he ejected the parachute just barely came out before he hit. Again another two or three seconds and he would have broken his back. That kind of thing. So his three failures that don’t speak well for the next one. So you could have said, “Well, why would they choose Armstrong if he’s smitten?”\\n\\n Well, as it turned out, he landed. But I got to tell you this little anecdote. When they got the 1201, 1202 alarms coming down through the final burn [descent to the Moon], they had two different kinds of alarms, but they all said the computer was overloaded. A guy that sat at the console was a guy named Steve [Stephen G.] Bales, and he’s gotten several awards for this. They’re in the final burn, and I’m going to say the final burn is about eight minutes. So they’re like a third of the way through the burn, say two and a half minutes, and they get a 1201 alarm and hear this “beep, beep, beep” on the panel. Neil calls down to the ground and says, “What is this? What is it? What do we do?”\\n\\n Bales of course had no idea, not even a clue. So he said, “Hold a minute. We’ll find out.” He went to the Staff Support Room and asked the head guidance guy, and he had no knowledge either. He said, “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why they’re getting that alarm.” Well, as they’re running it around, and they’re looking through manuals and trying to come up with an answer, while the burn is still going on, it goes off. So they called back and said, “We don’t know what it is. We’ll let you know as soon as we do.” Of course they know they’re still in the burn. Neil says, “The light went off.” Oh, okay, they were hoping it stays off, so they go another minute or two and the light comes on again. Now that might have been a 1202. Again I don’t know the details, but it comes back on. So Steve Bales says, “Wait a minute,” and he goes back in the Staff Support Room, asks the same guy. The same guy has not found an answer yet. There’s an MIT geeky guy standing there—as they did. A lot of the contractors would hover around in the Staff Support Room. This MIT geeky guy—and I have no idea who it was—says, “That’s no problem. It’s getting rendezvous radar data. It doesn’t operate on that anyway. It’s not calculating it. Just forget it.” So he told the guy in the Staff Support Room to tell Steve Bales to tell the crew, “Continue.”\\n\\n Well, a lot of people got credit that shouldn’t have gotten credit for that, and I want to go on record that that’s true. Now Steve Bales had a tough job. I’m not saying there’s something wrong with him. But he could not have possibly known. This guy, the geeky guy, had the flowchart in his head. He was one of those people. He could go through the flowchart and say, “Oh yeah, rendezvous radar, they forgot to disable.”\\n\\n Now the end of the story is this. Knowing Neil like I did, I was at a party in 1989, a 20th anniversary lunar landing party. Neil and Buzz were there. I walked up to Neil and he knew who I was, because I had worked with him on a previous report. I said, “Neil, I got to ask you a question.” He said, “What’s that?” I said, “When you were in that final burn landing on the Moon and we didn’t know what that 1201 alarm was, if the ground had said, ‘I’m sorry, we can’t figure it out, you’re going to have to abort”—there were all kinds of abort situations that we’d studied, so that was real cut and dried, he would have just turned [the LM] over like this and gone back to the Command Module. I said, “Would you have aborted if the ground had told you to abort?” He had this huge grin. The Cheshire Cat grin. He said, “We’ll never know.” In other words, he probably would not have aborted. They would have landed successfully. I want to make this on the record that they practiced manual landings with the LM hundreds and hundreds of times, and it wasn’t that hard.\\n\\n In fact, they used to have a simulator over at Space Center Houston and you could go and do it yourself. Now they have the Shuttle; you can land the Shuttle. But they used to have a landing with the LM. These guys got to be really good at it. It wasn’t that hard. It was like flying a helicopter. So I’m sure that if you’ve seen any of those World War II movies where the guys want to continue the mission and it’s saying, “Turn around and abort, everyone’s going to die, please turn around,” they would say, “Sorry, I can’t hear you.” [Imitates static.] “You’re breaking up.” I think Neil would have done the same thing. “Sorry, I didn’t hear that.” [Imitates static.] Then he would have landed. Everything would have been great. But then you slap people in the face when they get back and say, “I don’t care.” But I think Neil would have landed, and I think it would have been a successful mission. But it would have been for the wrong reasons. The rendezvous radar problem we didn’t know, but it turned out.\\n\\n So that’s the end of that anecdote, but I just love the personality that he had. As you know, Neil just went into reclusion after [Apollo] 11, because he really didn’t like all the fanfare. The only explanation I can give you for that—I haven’t talked to him about this, but all the astronauts want to give credit to the people on the ground that did all the work, and they will all say that to a person. “I flew the mission, but there were a thousand people that made it possible.” I think Neil had an overreaction to that on that basis. It’s like the people that survive a crash, and then they feel guilty because they didn’t die with the others. I think Neil just was tired of people saying, “Oh, what a hero you are. You built the spacecraft, you built the booster, you did the whole thing.” He’d say, “No, I didn’t.” So Apollo 11 was a great mission. It was the culmination of my ten years of work in Apollo. Few people worked that long. So I was amazingly rewarded by that.\\n\\n I have to share one other thing with you. I worked on the radio during Apollo 11. I was a color announcer, whatever you call it. I did a good job. I enjoyed doing that. So I was explaining what happened during Apollo 11. When it got to the time—I think there was quite a wait from the time they landed to when they got out and walked on the Moon. I think they had to take a rest, and that was abbreviated, because they wanted to get out. Then they had to put on their suits, which was a horrible—it was like if you ever watched a lobster shed its shell. It was really hard to get that suit on. So they both had to suit up and then depressurize. Neil was the first guy to go up. But I’m working on the radio, and a guy came down from Dallas that was on the sister station of KMSC—and I think that’s what it was, KMSC. He came down. His name was Lincoln Carle. He said, “I’m going to go ahead and take over the mic [microphone].”\\n\\n Gordon Bassham was the head guy, but he wasn’t a technical person. So Lincoln basically told me, “Get out, it’s my turn, I want to be famous, I want to make history.” So I had to go into the auditorium at NASA, the Building 1 auditorium, and watch it on the screen like everybody else around the world. His wife, who was a very cute young English girl, came in and sat beside me, because he didn’t know what to do with her either. So we’re sitting there watching it. I have to tell you. Despite the fact that few people knew all the details of that mission and how they did it and how they got on the ground and how they got out and all the suit—it was surreal to me to see that black-and-white image of this person coming down the ladder and making that final hop. It was like I was—an out-of-body experience. It was weird. Again, it was the culmination of ten years of my work, and nights and working late, and not seeing my kids and all that. That was an incredible moment, to see Neil jump to the surface.\\n\\n [Apollo] 11 was a successful mission. They brought back some rocks. There wasn’t anything unusual about those rocks. We were very afraid of a lot of things in Apollo. One of the things we were afraid of was we were going to bring back some microbe and it was going to go around the world and kill everybody, it was going to be something that was totally out of control, we wouldn’t have any vaccines, we wouldn’t have any—and so to be doubly safe we put these guys in quarantine.\\n\\n They had to be in quarantine away from the people on the ships when they recovered, and the airplanes bringing them back. Then they went into this fancy Airstream trailer. You know what an Airstream trailer looks like? They’re all aluminum. The poor guys stayed in there for two or three weeks. Here are these guys, the most famous human beings in history for that period of time, and they had to stay in the trailer for two weeks, imprisoned basically. I remember pictures of them looking out the window. That was kind of sad, because they didn’t bring any microbes back, and neither did any other crew. Eventually they disposed of [the quarantine], because there was nothing on the Moon that was going to kill anybody.\\n\\n In fact, when I talk about the future of NASA and what we should have done, the Moon simply was not a very interesting place once we got up there a couple, three times. By the way, Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt was the only scientist to go to the Moon. He was in fact a geologist. I talked to him recently. He was lucky to get on that last flight. That’s another mistake that NASA made as far as public relations. To put the one guy that should go in the last mission. What if they’d canceled [Apollo] 17 and said, “Okay, we’ll cancel 18, we’ll cancel 17,” and then—but he got to go. They didn’t find any volcanic activity. We thought there probably was. You see all these craters on the Moon. Did any of them come from volcanoes? No. We had seismographs on the Moon and we didn’t hear any kind of volcanic activity. There were no earthquakes, there were no—the Moon was dead. Nothing was happening. There’s no atmosphere. Everybody knows that. The gravity is very weak. The rocks were not exotic rocks, like they came from Pluto or Saturn or something like that. They were just plain old rocks like we have on the Earth.\\n\\n Jack Schmitt knew pretty much what he was looking at. He was only on one part of the Moon. But he went to a place that had a good variety of different soils and rocks. So I’m just going to say right now, because this is the appropriate time to say it, we want to go back to the Moon and set up a lunar base and supposedly farm or extract nice things from the lunar soil. I think it’s a mistake. I can’t think of any mission that we could fly in the solar system that would benefit from getting stuff from the Moon. I really can’t. I don’t know how NASA has been sold the bill of goods. But I don’t think it’s time for us to go back to the Moon. I think we should go to a planet and capture the imagination of the American public.\\n\\n [Apollo] 12 was a repeat of 11. We just went to a different place. Nothing new came from that. [Apollo] 13, we went to one of the highlands or way up in one of the high areas. So they went to a whole variety of landing sites. I was present in most of those scientific mission planning for the lunar surface exploration. I went out to Flagstaff [Arizona] where the US Geological Survey is located. I even got to hear [Eugene M.] Shoemaker, the famous guy. He was an interesting guy.\\n\\n So the lunar geologists had a lot of interesting things they wanted to look at. When they found out that a lot of things weren’t true that they thought might be true, they had to change. They changed in real time. I think Apollo 17 was the most ambitious geological mission, and that’s a good thing that Jack got to go on that, Jack Schmitt.\\n\\n I don’t remember any problems on any of the flights except [Apollo] 13. Let me say a thing about 13. Again, I told you when I started this I have two different audiences that I’m talking to. One is the technical people that want to see how did we really did that, 100 years from now. The other is the people who are fascinated by the adventure story and don’t have much of a technical background. For those people I talk about [Apollo] 13. Number one, [movie director] Ron Howard and [actor] Tom Hanks both demanded that the [Apollo 13] movie be accurate. They had a lot of consultants. I wasn’t one of them. I offered, by the way, to be a consultant on that. They had other people. In fact Jim [James P.] Lovell was one of them. The movie was very accurate, even to the point of using acronyms without telling you what they were, and technically what went wrong and the problems they could have had were demonstrated in the movie. I can’t think of anything they really left out that was important.\\n\\n That was good, because I think people are going to watch that film, that DVD, for years and years and years. I want to talk a little bit about the movie and things that happened during the flight. I’m getting more religious as I get old. I have to tell you I’m getting a little bit more spiritual. You talk about divine intervention. There’s a story that goes with that flight that’s interesting. I’m one of the few people that can tell it. When they’re coming close to the Earth they have to make their final midcourse correction. Those are made so they could hit what they call the entry corridor. They had to be within a certain degree angle of the atmosphere or they would burn up. If they were too high they would come in too steep and burn up. If they were too low they would skip out like a rock and they would come in and burn up. In fact I think I said Carpenter almost did that. They had to hit the entry corridor.\\n\\n That’s no big deal. That wasn’t one of the ways that they were going to kill themselves. But they had to do a midcourse correction using the Lunar Module engine, the descent engine. The guidance system on the LM was not designed to do that, so they had to do it manually, which means they punched a button, got the rocket motor firing, they held the attitudes, and then they shut the motor off. The turning on and shutting off is easy. But holding the attitudes is kind of hard, because they hadn’t trained for that. They had trained to do it with the [Command]/Service Module. So they told Tom Hanks in the movie and of course Jim Lovell in real life, “You’re going to have to hold the angles yourself.”\\n\\n He said, “What am I going to use for reference?”\\n\\n They said, “We don’t know. You got to find a star in the window. Once you get to the right angle that we tell you”—by the way, the ground told them what angles to get to. “You’re going to have to look out the window, find a star, and hold that view out the window.”\\n\\n He said, “What if I don’t find a star?” Because some stars are bright, some stars aren’t.\\n\\n They said, “Do the best you can.” So they go around and they maneuver the spacecraft to the right angle to make this burn. As they come up in one of the angles—let’s say it’s pitch. As they come up to pitch, it showed the triangular mirror—triangular window of the LM. Lovell is at the commander’s console. The Earth comes right up in the window. Could you get a better reference than that?\\n\\n The odds on having the Earth in the window when they’re making these burns are like one in ten million. It’s just incredibly improbable. That’s in the movie where he says, “What are we going to use for a reference?” and they said, “We don’t know,” and then Tom Hanks says, “Well, I guess I got a good one, it’s the Earth,” or whatever he said in the movie. So that’s a divine intervention.\\n\\n There were about three ways that they could have died on that mission if things had gone wrong. We solved every one of those. The ground did a wonderful job supporting the flight and getting those guys back home. I’m not going to go into the details of how they would have died, but one is they could have run out of oxygen. They had to sit in the Lunar Module, cold as it was—it was freezing in there. Fred [W.] Haise had a fever because he had some kind of a low-grade infection. They couldn’t even talk because when you talk you’re using oxygen and they would talk like this, “Do you feel okay?” “I’m okay.” They couldn’t move their arms. The only thing I can claim to fame that is being an artist myself, when they found out that they had a CO2 level in the cabin of the Lunar Module that was getting too high, they had to do something to get the CO2 out, or these guys were going to asphyxiate. The LM was pumping oxygen into the cabin that they could breathe, but the concentration of CO2 was getting so high that pretty soon it would push out the oxygen.\\n\\n As you know, when we breathe air, it’s 27 percent oxygen. Normally they would have 100 percent oxygen in the cabin. So they said, “Look, the only way we’re going to do this”—and this was a ground recommendation—“is go in the Command Module and get one of the CO2 canisters.” These are canisters that they plugged in to take the CO2 out of the Command Module environment. As you know they spend two and a half days out, two and a half days back. So that was a routine thing, what they called scrubbing it. They had to modify, they had to adapt this square canister to a round hose in the Lunar Module. They had a roll of duct tape on board. This is really funny. This is standard procedure. We had duct tape. So they took this duct tape and they had to tape the square canister to the hose.\\n\\n The environmental control system people came up with a way to do this but they didn’t know how to explain it to the crew, because it was complicated. They said, “What we really need is a picture.” So I drew a picture of this, what’s called an isometric view, a three-quarter view, so you could see where the hose went in, how the box was taped, and even the taping pattern, because that had to be just right, or you didn’t seal the back of the canister. When I finished that drawing we sent it over to Mission Control and the CapCom, who was an astronaut, then told them how to do it, and the rest is history. That saved their life.\\n\\n But my drawing. I wish I still had that. In fact, Ed [Robert E.] Smylie, who was the ECS [Environmental Control System] guy, was given an award about a year or two ago for doing that. They had a special breakfast for him over at Space Center Houston, and I was going to crash the thing. I thought it was a luncheon, and I went over there at lunch, and because I knew Ed real well, I was going to crash my way in and sit down beside him and say, “I’m the one that drew the damn picture, I ought to be here too.” I got over there at noon and there wasn’t any luncheon, it was actually a breakfast. So I missed it.\\n\\n But that’s just one of the ways that we saved their life. It was quite a story, really. We had no way of knowing that we would get an explosion in the tank like we did. By the way it wasn’t a bang explosion. It was suddenly an outgassing of the oxygen. We lost all the oxygen, which was running the fuel cell." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You had mentioned to me before about all the different types of meetings that you attended and what a benefit it was to be able to collect information from all. Share with us how you were able to gather that information, and how it provided an overview of work within the upper management and also down in the trenches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was very fortunate, because I didn’t have a top management position, so I wasn’t routinely invited to all these meetings. The only reason I went to high-level meetings was a lot of times the Mission Planning people didn’t have anybody to send, or they were too busy. Since I really had the ability to discuss anything with anybody, I was sent to a couple meetings at Headquarters. I even had to pitch stuff to Headquarters when I was on the Apollo study. So I got to see all those high level people. Then I got to go to quite a few high level meetings at JSC [Johnson Space Center], which was MSC [Manned Spacecraft Center] then. I was in quite a few meetings with [Robert R.] Gilruth. But I knew what they were afraid of, and I knew how they kept things secretive. When I talk a little bit about the culture of NASA I’m going to talk about what I found out from those high level meetings. But most of the people that wasted their lives in those horrible meetings that went on and on and on and didn’t accomplish anything—and there were a lot of them unfortunately. By the way our AMPTF meetings were always just chock-full of stuff. We never had enough time to do everything. So those meetings weren’t wasted, the Apollo Mission Planning.\\n\\n But then I went to a lot of working meetings. I was secretary on two panels, the Flight Mechanics Panel and the Advanced Planetary Trajectory Panel. I was the secretary, so I had to write up the minutes. I got to see how that worked. I went to a lot of meetings where they discussed physical things. Bill [Howard W.] Tindall headed up a lot of meetings, because he really knew what he was talking about when it came to rendezvous. One of the guys I really respected was Bill Tindall. So I got to sit in in what I call midlevel management meetings. Then I got to sit in on meetings where all the Guidance people got together and said, “This is what we’re going to do.” I happened to be the guy from Mission Planning. So I knew what these guys did in the trenches, particularly in Mission Planning where I worked. But I also went over to E&D [Engineering and Development] and all these other places and talked to people sitting at their desks.\\n\\n I knew the concerns of everybody from the lowest guy on up to the highest guy. I knew what they thought of and how they did it and what they thought was important and wasn’t important. Quite frankly there was a lot of difference. We’re not going to waste the time to do this, but I could spend three hours just talking about how those environments were different. The thing I want to bring in later when I talk about culture is the paranoia that was evident at the higher meetings. That’s something that people should know. So yes, that answers your question.\\n\\n I saw these guys waste time. I saw some of them working hard. I remember leaving Building 30 and going to my car at 3:00 in the morning when I just finished doing something. Guys were carrying decks, IBM [International Business Machines] decks, over to where the computer building was from Building 30. I knew those guys knew they had to finish that program development. That was what was funny in those days. We fed the programs with all those cards, those IBM cards. Remember the hanging chads? Well, that’s what they were. They would carry a deck that’s about three feet long. Can you imagine if they dropped that? All those had to be in a certain sequence. Sometimes a guy would drop a deck and then they have to put them—oh, God. But that’s what they do in development is they run the program, say a three-foot deck, and this 28th card here has an error in it. So they put a thing in, take out the 28th card, repunch it, and put it back in. All those cards had to be in the right sequence.\\n\\n But those guys worked hard, and I knew the ones that worked hard, I knew the ones that didn’t. Some guys were dumb but they worked hard and overcame their dumbness. Some guys were really smart and they didn’t do much of anything. For the most part the really smart guys worked hard though. We landed on the Moon because everybody was conscientious. They really and truly wanted that to succeed. I was one of them.\\n\\n Let’s go on. I worked on Apollo up through Apollo 13, and then I got caught in that RIF, reduction in force. I wasn’t kicked out the door. Reduction in force means they have to eliminate certain jobs. Congress said that. That was a congressional mandate. I think it was like 400 jobs, but the first RIF did not take 400 people. I think it was more like 110 or something. I was one of those 110 that got affected and went back to MPAD. My final job there—interestingly—I told you I had a personality conflict with John Mayer. There were several reasons why he suddenly changed to thinking from I’m Einstein to he hates me. He always wanted me to do what’s called contract engineering. Well, contract engineering is where you manage a contract, a small contract with some organization, usually a school, a university, or a very small company. I remember one of them was Booz Allen. Philco [Corporation] had a contract with MPAD which had maybe a half a dozen, maybe even a dozen, small contracts to help them do what they do. A lot of it was advanced stuff, advanced planning stuff.\\n\\n He also wanted me to do that. Quite frankly you didn’t have to have much of a technical background. So I just said, “John, that’s an insult. I’ve got two degrees in aeronautical engineering. I don’t want to be something a high school kid can do in managing a contract.” That’s all it was. Just to make sure they met the objectives and you gave them the money. So every time he asked me to do that I always said no. But then when I got RIFed back I had no choice. It was either that or go out the door, so I said, “Okay, John.” For two years I did contract engineering. I hated it. I will make a comment in this time, because it doesn’t embarrass me now. But then I would have been embarrassed. I wrote three books of poetry in that two-year period and published them. I started building a house in Colorado. So I started that in fall of ’71 and I published the poetry in ’71 and ’72, so obviously my heart was not in my job. I was doing things outside of my job. But I did whatever they asked me to.\\n\\n That two-year period was just kind of coasting until I went out the door. I was RIFed out the door in June of ’73. I knew that was going to happen. It had nothing to do with ability at that point, because people were tired of NASA. People were tired of Apollo. People didn’t care anymore. The interest, the public interest, wasn’t there. Well, as soon as the public interest goes down, the representatives in Washington say, “Well, we don’t need to fund that anymore. We don’t need to do that anymore.” I knew I’d probably eventually go out the door, and it turned out it was a good thing, because I went off and did other things. But I was RIFed out the door in June of ’73. So that was the end of my Apollo experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you like to talk about some of the managers of Apollo? You mentioned you wanted to talk about Bob Gilruth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me say the meaning of Apollo and then—because I want to cover that. This is a good place to cover it. Then we’ll talk about some of the managers. Apollo showed us a lot of things. The number one lesson was technical teamwork. If you look at it objectively and qualitatively, technical teamwork. I think of the pyramids and the Panama Canal, two huge technical achievements. The pyramids certainly, when you consider when they were built, unbelievable that they could build something that big with those huge rocks. As you know, it took thousands and thousands of slaves, and they died in the process. But it was teamwork. The Panama Canal when it was built, a lot of people died in that, because it was so incredibly difficult, and it was an amazing feat that they did. But we went to the Moon and we had at one point people said 500,000 people working on it. Well, give or take 50,000. That’s still a lot of people.\\n\\n So a lot of people could say, “I had some small part to do in that.” Some of them as little as a screw, a stainless steel screw, and some of them were whole systems. That’s the number one lesson, is that we could do that. Now the Manhattan Project, as you know, was secretive. I don’t know how many people worked on the Manhattan Project, but it wasn’t more than a couple hundred. So suddenly we had all these people realizing what you could do.\\n\\n Number two, we could capture the national and even the global vision. When [President] John [F.] Kennedy says, “We’re going to go to the Moon and we’re going to come back safely before 1970,” a lot of people said, “How can we do that?” It’s such a big jump from what we were doing at that point in aviation. We had jet planes. By the way, the airlines were just starting to use all jets, pure jets. We had prop [propeller] jets, and before that we had propeller aircraft. So when we went to a prop jet, that was quite a thing right there. Even though we still had pure—the 707 I think came out before the prop jets. But there were a lot of prop jets because we had to get in and out of small airports. But the 707 and the 727 were in the ’60s. So we’re saying, “We’re going to go from a fairly fast airliner, a subsonic airliner, to landing on the Moon.” We captured the imagination and vision of the American people. Not only that, people around the world said, “God, if the Americans can pull this off, they’re really something.”\\n\\n That was my second lesson from Apollo, is that we could capture the imagination and then the third one is the can-do attitude. I don’t think we’d ever had anything quite like the can-do attitude—except in World War II. When we finally won World War II—and I can remember that, because I was 11 or 12 years old—it was by God, if the United States sets out to do something, we can do it.\\n\\n Then finally the astronauts. I want to say the astronauts were simply regular people doing unusual jobs. I think of the first seven being just absolutely regular guys. There was nothing really really outstanding about any of them except maybe John Glenn being such a pure-hearted individual. He was very religious, very Christian. But the other six guys if you take Glenn out of that picture were just plain old ordinary guys you’d meet on the street. But they happened to be test pilots. They were good at what they did. But if you didn’t know what they did you wouldn’t know that they were any different from the guy working on your car. I got to know almost all seven of them. I didn’t know Cooper very well, and I didn’t know [Donald K. “Deke”] Slayton very well. But I knew the other five.\\n\\n I’m going to tell a little story about each one, but the point I want to make is that we found out that astronauts are just regular people. They weren’t the gods that we wanted to make them, like we made [Charles A.] Lindbergh. Glenn really didn’t like the idea that they made him some kind of a god, because he was an ordinary good guy, but he was able to go out and speak to groups and say, “Look, what I did was because of a lot of other people.” I really liked John Glenn.\\n\\n But let me say a little story about the five that I know besides Glenn. I can tell you Glenn right now was a straight shooter. Didn’t swear, didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. He was a God-fearing Christian. But I’m going to talk about [Virgil I. “Gus”] Grissom first. I got to know Grissom the best because I worked on his report after I came to NASA, even though it was after the Glenn flight. We were still putting out reports on these previous missions. So I remember working on Grissom’s report and realizing that he did a mission that was just a repeat of [Alan B.] Shepard’s. Shepard’s was a suborbital flight that didn’t achieve very much because the Russians had already put a guy in orbit. But at least we got a guy into space. Grissom was just flying that mission over again. A lot of times people said, “Well, that’s a waste of time.” But NASA had this theory, this part of the culture actually, “If we do something, let’s make sure we can prove it’s not just luck. We’re going to repeat it.” So that was the reason for MR-2, which was Grissom’s flight. But I got to know him at the Cape, because whenever I had to write a pilot’s report—like in Carpenter’s case and Schirra’s case—they had to take off to do public relations stuff as soon as they scribbled out this report. I had to edit the thing. Grissom was down there, and he would help me edit it. I got to know him.\\n\\n He was a fairly quiet guy, very nice, very caring. He was not the abrasive person that people made him out to be, because he had an incident with his hatch on MR-2. I want to make a comment about that. Gus was the kind of guy that would never tell a lie. When the hatch was blown on MR-2, that caused them to lose the capsule, because it filled up with water. The helicopter had to let it go. By the way, Gus almost drowned. He’s in there, treading water, treading water.\\n\\n He’s treading water, and he’s got this heavy suit on, which is now full of water, so it doesn’t have any buoyancy anymore, it’s heavy. He damn near drowned. The helicopter is worried more about the capsule. He said, “No, I didn’t punch it.” They said, “No, you were scared.” He was in a heavy sea state, which means he was rocking back and forth. The people who didn’t know him said, “You must have been really scared in a heavy sea state. You popped the hatch so you could get out of there, didn’t you?” Well, first of all, Gus wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t going to jump out into the water with his helmet off and risk drowning. So that’s one reason you could tell he didn’t do it. But he didn’t have any marks on his body which indicated—if he had hit that plunger, it recoils back. That’s the way it’s designed. It would have left a red mark. He didn’t have any red mark. So he carried that to his grave, this stigma that he was the one that purposely blew the hatch because he was scared. I can tell you right now he didn’t do that.\\n\\n We couldn’t get the capsule back to check things out, because it sank. But I got to know Gus real well. I was one of the people thoroughly affected by the fire, because that was something. They had no way they could get out of the capsule. He died in the fire.\\n\\n Schirra I got to know because I was down there when he was practicing for his flight. I was down there after Carpenter’s flight. I got to know Wally. We’d have breakfast together. He had a sports car like mine. I had an Austin-Healey and he had one just like it. So Wally was just a great guy. Easy to get along with, funny, but you didn’t want to cross him. If he got mad you knew he was mad.\\n\\n Carpenter I’ve talked a little bit about. Cooper, I didn’t get to know him very well, but he was lighthearted and worked very hard at his job. I did know that. I think the image that Dennis Quaid portrayed in The Right Stuff gave a perfect depiction of him.\\n\\n I didn’t know Slayton at all, but I do know that he was terribly upset that he couldn’t fly and they told him that he had this heart murmur I think was the deal. Then ultimately he got to fly in Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project]. But he was made head of the Astronaut Office as a plum. “We’ll give you this little plum so that you won’t feel like we’re leaving you out.” But that was terribly disappointing to him, that he wasn’t going to get to fly. Of course he ultimately did.\\n\\n Shepard I didn’t know very well, except I knew him peripherally, because I had a Jaguar sports car, an XKE. They’re beautiful, most gorgeous sports car ever made. As far as how it looked. It would go very fast. The astronauts after about 1963, pretty much when Mercury [Program] was getting over, they had a deal with one of the auto dealerships down in Florida where they could buy a Corvette at cost. They could get on it whatever they wanted. They could trick it out, so he always had a new Corvette every year. We would race on the Gulf Freeway coming down to NASA, because he lived somewhere up the Gulf Freeway, and I lived always up the Gulf Freeway. Whenever we came into work at the same time, which was usually 9:00 or 9:30 [am] we both came in late, he would see me, I would see him, I’d hit the gas, he’d hit the gas. We raced for about three, maybe four years. Each time I always beat him, until the last year that we raced. I remember he got that new 427. They had that 427 cc engine. Huge engine. He hit the gas and I hit the gas, and we were going side by side. I looked at my speedometer, and I was doing 133 miles an hour. The front end of my car was starting to float like I’m not sure I’ve got control of it. A car was way up ahead of me and it was coming like this at me, because I was coming up on it. I backed off the thing, he went shooting on past. So he never did beat me, but we were tied at that point. I used to race Al Shepard. That’s how we lived, 100 miles an hour all the time.\\n\\n A lot of people don’t remember, but he [Shepherd] actually took a golf ball to the Moon. He had a special golf club made. It wasn’t like your regular thing you have at the golf pro shop. It was made so he could assemble it on the Moon. It had this little head. Unfortunately he whiffed the thing. He just didn’t hit it very well at all. It went about 40 feet. But if he’d gotten a really good whack on that thing with the one-sixth gravity it would have gone 600, 700 yards. That’s what he was hoping he could do, because he was a golfer. So that’s the end of my stories about the Mercury astronauts. But they were all regular guys. I respected the hell out of them.\\n\\n Let’s talk a little bit about NASA public relations. If I have a criticism of NASA as an agency it’s the fact that they’ve handled the public relations poorly. Now I remember [John A.] “Shorty” Powers. Shorty Powers was an ex-Air Force guy who came on to be our voice on NASA, the NASA voice. Unfortunately Shorty wasn’t as smart as all the people that worked it from the journalism side. We had some really great people. As you know, [CBS newsman Walter] Cronkite was one of them. The guy with ABC, [Jules Bergman]. Anyway, they were really good people. Shorty was just happy-go-lucky. He was the one that supposedly came up with the term A-okay. But aside from the fact that we gave this little smiley image of Shorty Powers during Mercury and the original seven astronauts, we didn’t do very good PR.\\n\\n People were interested in Mercury. They followed it. Glenn was a hero. After Carpenter’s flight nobody cared. Even though Cooper’s flight was a day and a half and it was quite a jump ahead, nobody cared. Now Gemini came back and they did some interesting things in Gemini, but nobody really understood why we had Gemini. I think NASA dropped the ball there, because they could have made it obvious to the American people if they’d done the right kind of things to say, “Well, we’re doing Gemini because this is how we’re going to fly Apollo. This is what’s going to happen when we finish on the Moon. We’re going to come up and rendezvous with the Command Module.” Let them know that rendezvous was a very critical part. The fact that it was done 200,000 miles away. We’re going to have to prove this out in Earth orbit. So Gemini is important. Plus we had two astronauts. It wasn’t just one guy going around in a can.\\n\\n NASA dropped the ball. The biggest thing they did was they didn’t really cash in on the enormous public interest that people had. I gave 75 talks to regular groups, organizations, public organizations, like the Rotary Club and the Lions Club. I went to several churches and schools. You name it, I gave a talk to some of those kinds of groups. I enjoyed doing that. First it was Mercury.\\n\\n I found out two things. I’ve written this in a letter to Mike [Michael D.] Griffin, and now he’s no longer the [NASA] Administrator, but a year or so ago I wrote a letter to him. I told him I found out two things from my 75 talks. Number one is that the general public knows absolutely nothing about space, or virtually nothing. They have no technical knowledge. Even some of the technical people, the scientists and the engineers out there in the real world, they really didn’t know much about space. The other thing I found out was that the average person on the street was intensely interested. So you take those two facts. That means there’s a whole void that you can throw all kinds of stuff out there and fill and interest these people. We just didn’t do it.\\n\\n Now NASA made piecemeal contributions. They would put things on the Discovery Channel. They had their own NASA channel, which hardly anybody ever watched. But occasionally you’d see something that was interesting, but it wasn’t enough repetition that people would say, “Wow, NASA is really a good deal.” So I think we really dropped the ball. As a result, after Apollo nobody was interested in doing anything after that. We didn’t have anything except [Space] Shuttle, which of course took a long time. We didn’t have the funding that we should have had because of NASA doing a poor PR job.\\n\\n We’re still doing the same thing. We’re still not really selling the program to the American public. I’ll tell you where—and in this letter I wrote to Griffin I pointed this out. They had the first Hubble [Space Telescope] repair mission on TV. They showed these guys out there repairing the Hubble and taking panels off and slow—as you know, when you see EVA [extra vehicular activity] on TV they’re doing everything very slowly. It’s almost like slow motion. Quite frankly it was fascinating. It’s fascinating to me, knowing what I know about space. A lot of the general public watched that first mission and said, “Wow, this is why they have manned missions. Because we have this telescope up there. We found out it had a problem. We send guys out there and they fixed it.” Then when it was announced a couple years ago that we were not going to make the final repair on the Hubble, we were going to wait until we put the new one up, and people screamed. Because the general public likes to see that kind of thing.\\n\\n Well, I wrote that in my letter, that you should reinstate that mission. I’m sure my letter didn’t make Griffin do that, but they have now reinstated it. It’s going to be delayed for several reasons, but they are going to do it. They’re going to repair the Hubble for several reasons. One is, it’s going to take a while for the new one to get up. I think it’s called the [James E.] Webb Observatory, but anyway it’s a brand-new telescope. But the American public is going to see that on TV again. They’re going to make it more public, this new mission, this next mission, the final mission actually of the repair. That’s going to bring the public back into it.\\n\\n The other example I want to give there is the enormous success we had with rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on Mars. They got quite a bit of that into the television general public. They didn’t have enough of it but they had some of it. Quite frankly I watched it on the NASA channel, and it was fascinating. They’ve gotten so much more from those missions than they planned. It was supposed to be like three months, 90 days it was going to work. The thing has worked for three years. They found out so much more than they expected to. It’s just amazing what they’ve done. Now that’s an unmanned mission. So here I am, a manned NASA guy, saying, “Well, we ought to have more robotic stuff.” They need to get that on a regular basis and get the networks to agree to do those, even if they don’t sell advertising. In other words, we give them the money they would get from advertising to make an interesting story on ABC and CBS. I think we should do that. We should do that now. We’re not doing it.\\n\\n Okay. Future plans then and now. Well, I think I told you that one of my jobs was when I worked for Kraft under Dennis Fielder. We looked at advanced operations planning. For some reason all the time I was there, even right up until I left in ’73 I still was involved in advanced planning, which I loved to do. I was on that Trajectory Panel, which went right through ’73.\\n\\n The reason was that we were always asked to tell Congress, “What would you like to do beyond Apollo? What would you like to do?” That’s how the Shuttle came about is we said, “We need something that will take people up into space and come back, and we don’t have to keep building a new spacecraft.” We were able to convince Congress to fund the Shuttle because it was reusable. The bad news there is it cost a fortune to turn that thing around. It should have been designed so it was much cheaper to turn around. I know the heat protection system is one of the things that was a bad design. It’s got all those tiles and panels. They should have redesigned that about halfway through the Shuttle program so that they didn’t have to replace half of those panels. It’s just a bad design.\\n\\n So we had future plans. We spent millions and millions of dollars doing studies. We went out to industry and had them do studies like you remember I told you the Apollo study. I was on that. We send studies out. What was it like going to Mars? Lockheed [Corporation] ran a whole bunch of those studies. We spent millions of dollars on contractors to look at future programs for NASA, and then they would end there, because we didn’t have enough public relations to where we could go to Congress and say, “Look, the general public wants a Mars mission. The general public wants a lunar base. The general public wants this and that.”\\n\\n The general public did not want the ISS [International Space Station]. They didn’t really know about it. The only reason the ISS got funded is we told Congress, we being NASA, and this was after I left, by the way, we went to Congress and said, “Well, look. We’ve got the Shuttle now. It’s flying. It’s going to work. What are we going to do with it? We got to have some use for the Shuttle now. Let’s have a space station. Let’s get these other countries involved.” Congress bought it on the aspect that we had to do something to keep our hand in space, that it was a technological mandate that we needed to continue our development of space technology. I know that DoD [Department of Defense] had some part of that. The Defense Department wanted us to keep our finger in it, because what if we had to start building weapons in space? Hopefully we won’t have to do that. So we’ve had all these advanced program studies done and they haven’t led to anything really useful. I think ISS is a great program, but the general public doesn’t know much about it.\\n\\n By the way, there’s an IMAX movie made about ISS. It’s a wonderful movie [IMAX Space Station, 2005]. I think everybody in Congress should see that movie. Even though it’s way back when the ISS was first starting to be built. It didn’t have many modules but it’s narrated by Tom Cruise. It’s just a really well-done movie and shows how hard they worked on the ISS even up to that point. Well, now we’ve got four times as much stuff up there. We should do another IMAX movie and then force Congress to see it, everybody in Congress and say, “This is what we’ve done with all your money.” Then we should make something like that available to the general public.\\n\\n For example, if we made another IMAX movie—if we did—and it was done as well as that one, then we put it into the theaters and we use some names, like [director/producer] “Ron Howard just produced a new movie on ISS, and we’re making it available to the public for a huge reduction.” Let’s say NASA picks up two thirds of the cost, so you can go to the movies instead of for six or seven bucks like you’d pay to see a regular movie, you pay a couple bucks. Well, there are a lot of people that would go and take advantage of that. I would. So get the general public to see something like that ISS movie. But again future planning.\\n\\n We did a lot of planning that never went anywhere. It’s sort of like the city of Houston. I have to tell you one of my real gripes about the city of Houston is they spent millions and millions and millions of dollars looking at mass transit systems and they went to Germany and they went to Disney World and they looked at all these other people doing mass transit. Nothing ever happened. So finally when they figured out they had to do something, they bought buses. Buses come from 1920. It’s only recently that we got that light rail that goes out to the medical center. I don’t think too many people use that. Now they’re thinking about adding—they should have done it 40 years ago. I remember when Kathy [Kathryn J.] Whitmire was mayor and they went on all these junkets to study mass transit in other places. So NASA is the same way. They’ve spent so much money for studies that haven’t gone [anywhere]—and I was involved in it. That’s what makes me mad is I was involved in many of those studies. When I worked for Dennis.\\n\\n I think [President] Barack Obama, being a new person starting a new era of White House politics, ought to just completely relook at the whole thing. I’ve written letters to [President] George H.W. Bush about how we should go to Mars. By the way, when I wrote my letter to [President] George Bush it was in ’89, right after he got the presidency. I thought he might want to have an initiative like Jack Kennedy and say, “I’m George Bush, and I think we should go to Mars by the year 2000.” We could have done that. In 1989 if we’d funded it we could have sent an orbital mission to Mars before 1999. Can you imagine if we planned it so they were inserting into orbit—you know what insertion is where they brake and go into Mars orbit—and that happened at midnight of 1999? How dramatic can you get?\\n\\n He didn’t do it. I don’t even think he read it. He’s got a place up in Maine. I’m from Maine. I’ve often wanted to go by their compound in Kennebunk and knock on the door and say, “Hi, I’m a Maine person. Can I talk to you about something?” Well, I wrote another letter to George W. Bush. That never went anywhere either. So I’ve written all these letters and I just recently wrote a letter to Barack Obama and said, “We need to have a Mars mission.” By the way, the thing that I’m pushing—and I wrote a paper on this and presented it a year and a half ago. The thing I’m pushing is to change what we have now from going to the Moon, setting up a base, getting that to work, and then funding a Mars mission, to having two parallel programs. The way to do that is to take some of the money from this Moon mission, Moon program, and put that into Mars orbit, and so that would delay the Moon program. You run it out another five or eight years but you’re doing the Mars orbit mission at the same time. What would happen is the public interest would grow on the Mars thing if they did their public relations right, and the general public would want that funded more. So they would continue to delay the Moon program.\\n\\n By the way, Glenn was giving testimony to that. You know they had an august panel after Columbia tragedy. They asked a number of people what we should do in the space program. I remember Glenn said the same thing. He said, “I don’t think the Moon is all that interesting. I think we need to do some planetary missions first.” Very same thing. It isn’t just me. If we could capture the imagination and spirit of the American public, they would be behind it, but they don’t know about the Moon, and they don’t know what we’re going to learn. They don’t know what all that money is being spent for. We really should be going to Mars. I can tell you this. The major difficulty with sending humans to Mars is long-term duration in space. That causes two problems. What’s going to happen to their physiology? Are they going to get to the point where they can’t even walk on the Earth when they get back? It really is a problem when you’re in weightlessness for that long.\\n\\n The other thing is long-term exposure to space radiation. A lot of people think well, space radiation is solar flares. No, there’s cosmic radiation all the time. By the way, when the astronauts [went] to the Moon and come back, they did get cosmic radiation, although it wasn’t anywhere near lethal dose. Airline pilots do. Did you know that? Airline pilots fly at 35,000, 40,000 feet. They’re getting a lot of radiation. I’m sure some of them are susceptible to genetic damage when they’ve flown for 40 years. I don’t think they carry dosimeters, but they really should." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are these some of the areas that you looked at with your advanced planning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never looked at radiation factors. I did look at duration of weightlessness. I want to mention that early in the space program, the manned space program, around 1960, ’61, there were a lot of things we were afraid of. I remember every one of those fears. One of them was what is it going to be like to put a human in a weightless environment. We weren’t even sure if they could handle weightlessness right off. You know what I mean? Of course Gagarin went into orbit and he didn’t come back dead, so somehow you could take weightlessness. But we didn’t know how it was going to affect their orientation or their vestibular function.\\n\\n I remember all of those fears. It turned out the weightlessness problem was an ill-founded fear, except for what it did to your physiology. We’ve had what’s called calcium mobilization. For some reason when you’re in zero G—the calcium that floats around in your body becomes deposited where it’s supposed to partly because of gravity, because we walk around. That’s over millions of years of development. When you get in orbit that stuff floats around in the body and doesn’t seem to go where it’s supposed to, so we have bone loss and calcium loss in our bones. Exercise is supposed to help that; that’s why these guys exercise on the ISS.\\n\\n But the Russians had a lot of data on that, because they had guys in space a lot longer than we did. But that is something you can get around. By the way, if we went to Mars, there’s a thing called artificial gravity. All it is is if you take two components of a spacecraft and separate them, say with a cable or a big long tube, and then you start spinning that thing around, then you’re going to create gravity because of centrifugal force, okay? That’s called artificial gravity. Then there’s a thing called Coriolis Effect, which is bad. That’s a negative thing. That’s the only thing negative about giving gravity like that, is that you’re going around in a curve. It isn’t like you’re standing on the flat Earth, so the longer you make it, the less Coriolis Effect. Well, when you’re going to Mars, if you’re going to be gone nine to 12 months getting out there, you could extend the thing out on a huge long cable, 500 feet, and just very gradually swing around on that. It’s something we could solve. Unfortunately you can’t do a burn. If you wanted to make a midcourse correction you can’t do that with cables. But I think the zero gravity thing we could definitely solve over a long period of time. Mars mission is roughly two and a half to three years by the way.\\n\\n The radiation problem, that’s a little hairier. I stopped at Brookhaven Lab [Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY], a year ago last summer, and Loyd [S, Swenson] was with me by the way. We were talking to a guy on the NASA contract to study long-term radiation effects on astronauts. It’s his job. He was getting paid at Brookhaven to look at it, because they have an atom smasher up there, a cyclotron. I asked him a couple questions, and he gave me honest answers, and the questions went like this. Isn’t it true that some people are subjectively more affected by radiation than others? In other words more at risk. He said, “Yeah, that’s right.” As you know, some people smoke all their life and don’t get lung cancer. Some pilots fly airplanes for 40 years and they don’t get any radiation damage. I’m sure others get cancer from it. Like brain cancer is a common thing with someone who flies an airplane for a long period of time. They have more of a possibility of brain cancer. So it turns out it’s subjective, and it has to do with whether you’re born with bad genes or not. Now they’re finally being able to find things like that. Which gene is it that produces breast cancer? They just found that. So they may be able to find the gene that produces—or the dysfunctional gene that produces brain cancer, and then they only hire pilots that don’t have that.\\n\\n The guy said, “Yeah, that’s true.” I said, “Well, then why couldn’t we select astronauts that were less susceptible?” He said, “That’s fine, except the general public would call that discrimination.” I think that could be sold to the American public. Look, we don’t want to send people that are going to die from the radiation. But the other thing was the question I asked him was isn’t it true that if you told people they were going to go to Mars and come back but they had a much higher risk of cancer or that they’d better not have any kids because their sperm would be genetically altered, wouldn’t there be a lot of people that would say, “Fine, I’ll go.” He said, “Yeah, but again the general public would say, ‘Hey, you’re sending guys out to cream their kids or give them brain cancer.’”\\n\\n I’m going to say right here and now NASA has done a lot of things—the DoD especially has done things that they do in secret. They do it because the general public wouldn’t understand. I’m going to use one example. If Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only person that knew about killing Kennedy, do you tell the American public that? I don’t think you do. If it was a conspiracy and the Warren Commission came to that conclusion, I can see [Chief Justice] Earl Warren sitting there and saying, “Okay, Oswald was a patsy. Do we tell the American public that Jackie Kennedy knew about it or the Mafia knew about it or Castro did it or the Russians?” I actually think Jackie Kennedy may have been involved. I hate to say that, but that’s a possibility, because he had a horrible back pain, horrible back problem, and he may have martyred himself. It may have even been Jack Kennedy in on the conspiracy. Isn’t that weird? But I do think that there are some things you don’t tell the American people. If you’re sending three astronauts or five astronauts to Mars and you’ve selected them on the basis of their lower susceptibility and even then they’re going to come back half cooked, you don’t tell the American people that.\\n\\n I’ll tell you one thing that was a big concern. I went to almost all those planning meetings where we talked about how we really didn’t know what the depth of the dust was on the Moon. We had no way to measure that. You probably remember that we sent Surveyor and Prospector, a couple of those landers on the Moon that were unmanned, but unfortunately they might have landed in a place where there was very little dust. We knew that dust would build up in certain places and not build up in others. We were actually afraid that there might be up to ten feet of soft dust on the surface and these guys would land in one of those and one of the legs would go down. That’s the reason the LM looked so gangly. That’s the reason they had those funny round-looking pads on the feet was that even if we did land in ten feet of dust they would have enough time to abort and light the ascent engine and get out of there before the thing tipped over. They really were afraid of that. It turned out that was ungrounded. There was never any dust—some of the regolith, they call regolith; it was maybe an inch thick. You could see—you saw Neil’s footprints on the surface. It was not a big deal, but we didn’t know that. We didn’t know the effect of weightlessness. We didn’t know what the effect of radiation was going to be. We didn’t know what the dust was going to be. We thought about microbes.\\n\\n I mentioned about all of the big fears. I’m trying to think if there were any things that happened that we didn’t predict. I do know this. We had no idea what to do if all of the electrical power went out in the Command Module, because everything was doubly redundant and we had things backing up other things. But because of the explosion we lost almost all of the oxygen. We didn’t have any electrical power and they didn’t have any oxygen to breathe; we hadn’t simulated that. We didn’t know that that would happen on Apollo 13.\\n\\n One of the things that MPAD did where I worked was we ran thousands and thousands of abort profiles from virtually every situation. We had abort profiles off the launch, near the Cape. We had abort profiles that meant we were going to somehow make Madrid, Spain. All the way around the mission we had profiles. We had looked at immediate returns from going to the Moon. Say we just started out to go to the Moon and we had to abort it, something went wrong and those guys—say the oxygen system crapped out and they had to come immediately back. We had abort profiles that brought them directly back. We looked at all of those. The interesting thing about Apollo 13 is it was a little over halfway to the Moon. I forget how many hours, but it seemed like it was 56 hours. If we had had that problem occur say 12 or 14 hours earlier, it would have been relatively easy to have them come directly back. It would have been like a day and a half mission back, maybe two days, no probably a day and a half. But because they had gone an extra 12 hours, they didn’t have that option of the immediate return, because what if the engine didn’t operate properly? We just didn’t want to take that risk.\\n\\n We had what’s called a free return trajectory. It’s a figure eight to where even if the engine doesn’t burn on the far side of the Moon they continue to come back and they can make small corrections using the reaction control system. We had all that covered, that if the SPS [propulsion engine], the big engine, didn’t work, the free return would allow them to come home.\\n\\n It turns out on Apollo 13—and this was a gutsy move. Because they were low on electrical power in the LM, and because they were low in oxygen, because they had to use LM oxygen when they got to the far side of the Moon on Apollo 13, they made a correction there which brought them back a little bit faster, and they did that because things were tight as it was. Now what if that burn had been partially successful? They would have been dead. So that was a risky maneuver. If it’s only a half burn and then the thing shuts out, we lose three astronauts. If it didn’t light at all, at least we were on a free return, if they punched the button and nothing happened. But they decided to make—and that was a great decision, because I think they could have died if we’d come back on a free return. It was that close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s take a look at your notes and see what other things you wanted to talk about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. When I started doing talks for the general public, I got to enjoy that, and I wasn’t sure that I could go anywhere I wanted to. If I said, “I want to go to Oshkosh, Wisconsin,” are they going to send me up there? But some guy told me. He said, “Anyplace you want to go, just tell them you want to go and talk to a high school group.” I thought well, let me see. So Christmas of ’62 I went to Maine to visit relatives. My sister still lived up there and other people I knew. I stopped by to see my physics instructor in high school, the guy that thought I was [Albert] Einstein and I was super super smart. I said to him, “Look, I found out NASA will send anybody just about anywhere even if they want to just go talk to a high school group.” He was still teaching physics at my high school. So I said to him [Ed Barnard], “Why don’t you send a request in to NASA, Johnson Space Center, that you’d like to have me come up and talk to the physics class?” Now having been in his physics class, I knew there were only seven or eight students in there. Small Maine high school. But NASA didn’t know that. But he said, “Okay, I’ll do that.” That way I can go to my class reunion at MIT which was the five-year reunion, 1963, at MIT. So I was going to cover two birds with one stone and it was a free trip as far as I was concerned. He said he would do it. I thought they’d probably approve it.\\n\\n Well, that was Christmas of ’62. I came back [to Houston]. I was working hard on still Mercury. I forgot about asking him. I actually forgot. Well, this is what happened. It’s really interesting. He went down and spoke to the principal of the high school, a guy named A. Hamilton Boothby. He told Boothby, he said, “Look, Boynton wants to come up here and talk to our physics class. Would you just write a letter to NASA and see if they’ll send him?” By the way, I told him to write Johnson Space Center, which then was the Manned Spacecraft Center. Boothby says, “I’m not going to bring him all the way up here just to talk to the physics class.” Because again he knew there were only seven or eight students, he said, “We’re going to bring him up and he’s going to talk to an assembly of the school.” I remember when they used to have those all-school assemblies. So he wrote—and he said, “If we’re going to have him come to talk to an assembly of the whole school, I’d rather have a friend of mine write the request instead of me. They don’t know who Ham Boothby is up in Rockland High School. I’m going to write a letter to Margaret Chase Smith. She’s a senator from Maine. She’ll write a letter to the Manned Spacecraft Center.” So he calls her on the phone; he happened to know her pretty well. By the way she was a remarkable human being. She would be president today if she were at the proper age today. Just a great lady.\\n\\n Calls her on the phone and says, “Senator Smith, this is Ham Boothby in Rockland. We got a kid that graduated from Rockland High School, works for NASA now, he’s doing a really great job, and we want him to come up and speak to an assembly of the school.” She says, “Well, if he’s that important at NASA”—I’m telling you all this went on unbeknownst to me, so I’m making up essentially what went on, but I know. She says, “If he’s coming up to talk to the assembly and he’s a big cheese at NASA, let’s have him speak at graduation.” The 1963 graduation. Well, it turns out they had moved into a new high school four years earlier. Not the high school that I went through, this old brick building. But they had a brand-new high school so this was the first graduation from the new school. It’s still there.\\n\\n So she wrote this letter, not to Gilruth at JSC, but to [NASA Administrator James] Webb. She writes this letter to Jim Webb. Of course they knew each other because he always went to Congress to get the money. So, “Dear Jim Webb, we got this guy from Rockland, blah blah blah, we would really like to have him come up and speak at graduation.” So he writes a letter to Gilruth. Gilruth writes a memo to Kraft. Kraft sends that memo down to John Mayer. John Mayer sends it to John Bryant, the guy that I was working for. He comes in and he says, “We got a letter here wanting you to speak at graduation.” I just almost fell over. Well, I wound up doing that. It turns out—I have to tell you this. I was working so hard, and I was so busy, I didn’t even have time to go to my college reunion. But I did go up and give that talk.\\n\\n I tell you this. I was embarrassed, because I was only nine years out of high school. That’s almost the first thing I said to those kids. Bright-eyed kids sitting there looking up at you like a bunch of chickens. I said, “I don’t know what I can say that you’ll believe, because I’m not that much older than you are, and I’m not the hero at NASA that they’ve made me out to be. Yeah, I’m doing a lot of important things and it’s interesting.” I said, “The only thing I can think of”—and I told them to pick goals. That was the whole point of my talk, to pick goals. Even if you don’t do that you’ve learned something on the way. So I gave that talk. Just an amazing story really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s close up today’s session if you would. We know that you worked with a tremendous amount of talented and interesting people. Have you got some thoughts on some of those that you’d like to share at this time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "John H. Boynton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have to confess to something. I have an opinion about everybody. Having graduated from MIT—and again I’m not saying I’m some kind of super genius Nobel laureate. But MIT is a good school. Unfortunately when you graduate from a school like that you expect everyone else to be smart. I’ve been disappointed many many times. When I worked at NASA I would meet people and work with people and question people and do my job with people, and I would size up what I thought of them. I didn’t necessarily tell them. Most of the time I didn’t. But whether I respected them, whether they had technical ability, whether they had interpersonal ability. So I’m going to talk about some of the people. I want to start off with Bill [William M.] Bland and Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht because Kenny was the project manager—and by the way I want to bring a distinction right now. Mercury was a project. I think it was only a project because we built the spacecraft and the booster was an Atlas ICBM. That was from another program. So we had the project to put a guy on the top of the Atlas and put him into space.\\n\\n But Apollo was a program and Gemini was a program. So we always made it very clear that Kenny Kleinknecht was a project manager and I’m making that distinction. Bill Bland was his right-hand man. You could say he’s assistant project manager, but it didn’t make any difference. Kenny made all the decisions, but Bill was the technical person. He was really good and I respected Bill a great deal. Kenny was the kind of person that would tell you, “I’m not the best technical person around, but I do know how to lead people.” He was very good. Mercury was successful partly because of Kenny Kleinknecht. I actually think Mercury was successful because they complemented each other so well. Bill really knew what was going on. Whenever I wrote reports and I had a question about some system performance I would go ask him. He almost always knew the answer or could find it.\\n\\n I had great respect for both of them. Bill Bland is someone no one has ever heard of. I’m sure if anybody reads this transcript or listens to the tapes in the future they would say, “I’ve never heard of Bill Bland.” But he was a very important person. Let me say one other comment about the Mercury Project Office before we leave that. The Project Office was full of a bunch of people who are what I call baling wire and Band-Aid engineers. They did whatever it took to make it work but they were not the most brilliant people on the planet. They didn’t act like they were. They didn’t go around saying, “Well, I got degrees from this and I can do that.”\\n\\n We had the Little Joe Program, the suborbital program was Little Joe out on Wallops Island. [Edison M.] Mac Fields was the guy that had my job before I took it over, the postflight reporting, because he didn’t want it. He just was not that kind of guy. So I can’t remember anybody in Mercury that I would call a super technical person with the exception of Bill Bland. But they all did their jobs and they all worked hard. I have immense respect for every one of them. Joe [W.] Dodson was one of them.\\n\\n The last thing on Mercury I want to say is there was a guy named John [F.] Yardley. I don’t know exactly what his position was at McDonnell [Douglas], but he could have been a vice president for technical. It was that kind of level. The highest level at McDonnell. As you know, they built the spacecraft. He was always at the Cape whenever we did the postflight evaluations of what went wrong and why did it go wrong. I really think he was the smartest technical guy I ever met, because he knew a little bit about everything. He worked on Gemini, but I know that he was very very very instrumental in getting Mercury to continue to work because of systems problems that we overcame. I remember him at all the meetings at the Cape. So that finishes with Mercury. It was a successful program. We were able to cut it short because of its success. Cooper’s flight was 9, and we were supposed to have three more flights after that, and they were canceled.\\n\\n Now I want to talk a little bit about Apollo. I had almost nothing to do with Gemini, so I’m not going to sit here and talk about Gemini. I don’t pretend to know that much about it. I do know it was an important program. But in Apollo the Program Office had a variety of people heading it up. They had so many program managers. I’m sure you had people talk about some of them. [William F.] Bill Rector came here from GDA [General Dynamics Aviation]; he was the head of the study that I was on out at General Dynamics. He came here hoping to be the program manager for Apollo. He didn’t quite make it. I think when he got here Caldwell [C.] Johnson, some of those people were in there. He was like an assistant program—but Bill, bless his heart, did not have a very strong technical background, but he was a good manager. He ran the study very well. He got people to do what they were supposed to do. I’m not sure he understood what anybody was telling him, but at least he was a good manager. If he were here he’d be very offended by that remark, but unfortunately it’s true. He went on to get jobs at TRW Inc. and he was really good at self-promotion. He got himself into some great positions but he was not one of the key people in Apollo.\\n\\n Of these other people, I’m going to name four people that I got to see in meetings. Bob [Robert O.] Piland, George [M.] Low, Joe [Joseph F.] Shea. That’s three actually because I had Bill Rector. So of those three the most important person in Apollo in allowing us to go to the Moon was George Low. Very brilliant guy. He came in at just the right time.\\n\\n Joe Shea was a real go-getter, and technically competent, although not as smart as George Low. But Joe Shea was important. Bob Piland was certainly important but he never wanted that job. He was asked to take it because they needed someone to take over. That could have been right around the fire time. I had respect for all three of those guys, Bob Piland, George Low, and Joe Shea, although George Low was probably the most important person, single most important person on Apollo.\\n\\n I want to say something about Gilruth and Kraft. Bob Gilruth was always the director of the Center right through Apollo. He came from the original Space Task Group, as did Chris Kraft. Bob Gilruth was not your typical academic. He knew a lot about engineering and he knew about technical things and he had a feel for them, but he wasn’t the kind of person that could sit down and design something and it would be really top-drawer. He didn’t see himself as an engineer designer. He saw himself as an engineer manager. By God, in that respect he was the most important person in the entire manned space program up through Apollo. I saw him at so many meetings, and he was the arbitrator. He was the moderator. He was the person that when they started going off on a tangent he got them back on track. If someone was spouting off and trying to toot his own horn he would slow him down. He was really great at managing a meeting.\\n\\n He always picked the right people under him. For example Chris Kraft was perfect for that job. I’ve told Chris that to his face. Hardly anybody could do that operations job the way he did. He was just—and Chris, bless his heart. I remember in a meeting he said once, “I’d rather be lucky than smart.” He was, he was very lucky. But I had great respect for him in that job. He ultimately went on to become director of the Center. I don’t think he would have been as good as Gilruth if they had switched jobs. I’m not even sure Bob Gilruth could have done the operations part. Because Kraft had the respect of his people. I don’t think the kind of people that had to be flight ops people would have had that much respect for Gilruth, because he was so conservative. So you see the difference? Kraft was very flamboyant. When he said something you listened to him. Whereas with Gilruth you had to respect him to listen to him. When he was in a meeting they all knew he was director of the Center, so they respected him. But it’s interesting how those two guys interplayed.\\n\\n I want to say something about Max [Maxime A.] Faget. This comes from my MIT background thinking that I’m an expert engineer. I don’t think Max Faget was that great an engineer. He’s gotten many awards. He’s gotten lots of awards, and he’s been the person that designed the Mercury capsule and then that went on to be like Gemini and Apollo capsule and now the Orion is basically Max Faget’s design. Well, first of all I don’t think he originally came up with the conical design. I think he was the one that adapted it to Mercury. But I think someone else had that idea. I don’t ever remember anything that Max did in my presence that I said, “Wow, he’s really smart.” I’m thinking of Yardley. Every time Yardley opened his mouth, that guy is really smart. I was in probably half a dozen meetings with Max. So if anybody is going to sit down years from now and says, “I want to find out the history of some of these important people that were made gods,” I want him to look a little harder at Max Faget as to what he really did, do a little more research. Now he might have been. I’m going to leave that caveat, that he might have been smarter than I thought he was.\\n\\n Now let’s talk a little bit about Bill Tindall and Carl [R.] Huss. Tindall and Huss were the two most important people that worked with John Mayer. I wrote a letter to Chris Kraft about a year, year and a half ago, because I had invited him to a couple of birthday breakfasts that we had, and he had decided not to come, and I thought well, he hates my guts. I think there’s some stuff he doesn’t know about me. I wrote him this letter to try and clear that up, because I know John Mayer had said some things about me that probably discouraged Kraft as to whether my contribution was all that important. I think that’s why I was probably caught in the last RIF, if you really want to know why I went out the door. So I wrote this letter to Chris, and I told him that he was lucky that John Mayer had the people working for him that he did, because I didn’t have any respect for John Mayer’s technical ability at all.\\n\\n Quite frankly nobody in the Division did either but he was the guy that Chris wanted in that job, and they respected Chris enough to say, “Okay, let him do that.” But John was not a good manager. Technically I don’t think he had the foggiest idea what his people were doing but he had some really good people under him. Morris [V.] Jenkins, Bill Tindall, Carl Huss, Pete [M.P.] Frank. He went on to become a flight director like Gene [Eugene F.] Kranz. I think he’s the best one they ever had. Pete Frank used to be in MPAD. By the way Glynn [S.] Lunney was too. Lunney came from MPAD. So those two guys were technically competent. Frank was better than Lunney. He had some really good people.\\n\\n Let me tell a story about Carl. Carl would be the first to tell you that he’s no genius, but he knew how to get people to solve problems. He was really good at that. He understood enough to say, “Why don’t you do it this way?” Carl eventually became division chief I think when John retired. He was always the acting division chief. Carl did me a favor I want to put on tape, because it’s so important to me. I think I told you that during the flights I didn’t have anything really to do. I felt like a fish out of water if you really want to know, because I was always so intensely involved before the flight, making sure they were meeting objectives and meeting my flight plan and all that. Then after the flight of course I worked my tail off to figure out what went wrong, so during the flight I just had to go around and find things to do. I told you I worked on the radio. That was one of the things I did during Apollo 11 was I was on the radio but I wasn’t on the radio all the time.\\n\\n When they were landing on the Moon I was not on the radio so I went over to mission control and I was going to try and figure out some way to sneak in. Now they had beaucoup security all over the place because they thought the Russians were going to sabotage our mission. They were very careful about who they let into the [Mission] Control Room. Now I could get into Building 30, because that’s where I worked, but the Control Center is an adjunct to Building 30. This is again serendipitous spirituality, whatever you want to call it, I wouldn’t have thought of that then but I do now. I walk into the passageway between 30 and the Control Center. There’s this passageway. In fact it has “gnashing teeth.” Carl is sitting there writing something to the security people sitting at a desk. He wouldn’t normally sit there, but the security guy wanted him to sign something. So I walked up to Carl, and I said, “Carl, would you do me a favor?”\\n\\n He said, “What?”\\n\\n I said, “Can you get me approved to go in just for this burn? Please?” I said, “I’ve worked on this mission for a long time, nine years. Let me in.”\\n\\n He looked at me like this. He said, “I’m going to get in trouble for this.” But he wrote me a pass to the recovery control room. Now the recovery control room is a small control room off to the side, off to the right. Has a glass window. It’s where the people sit when they’re getting ready to reenter and come in. They have to control the ships and all that stuff out to sea.\\n\\n They had to know what was going on flightwise. Then of course once they splashed, then the recovery control room actually took over and all the flight controllers took off. So during the burn to land on the Moon, there was nobody in the recovery control room that was needed. It was basically an unnecessary room. It was packed with people that wanted to be a part of that experience. I got a clearance to go in there. Of course we were like sardines.\\n\\n But the great thing about that experience—and Carl did this for me. Again I’ve told you I worked on it from day one. It was especially rewarding to me. I could see the tension in the room when they’re going through that burn. I could hear the air-to-ground voice and I could hear them say, “What’s about this alarm?” It was part of history. I wasn’t a part of it in the sense that I was doing anything. But I was an observer. I was right there. The only closer I could be is if I was in their capsule. Because no one’s closer than—and I saw Chris Kraft and I saw Bob Gilruth. They were all in that top row echelon of high cheeses. I saw Gene Kranz. Just an unusual experience. I will never forget that. Chris has been famous for saying, “We’re all holding our breath. We can finally take a breath now.” He did say that. You could cut the tension with a knife. So Carl did that for me. He could have very easily said, “No, John, I’ll lose my job, sorry, get out of here.” I’ll forever be in debt to Carl.\\n\\n Then I’ve told you how much I respect Gilruth and Kraft. Let me say a little bit about some of the astronauts. Then we’ll just go on to something else or finish it up. The astronauts I want to mention. I didn’t know Lovell very well, but I did know that he was a pure test pilot. He had the attitude that this is what I’m supposed to do and I’m going to do it. He’s such a nice person. I’ve met him to say, “Hello, I’m John Boynton,” and he said, “Okay, what’d you do?” and I tell him what I did. But he’s been asked at least a thousand times, “When you were coming back from the Moon in that LM were you scared?” He always has to give them the same reason. “We had a lot of things we had to do. We had to plan on our entry. We had to think when we’d do our midcourse correction. We had to make sure that we were not consuming”—he had a lot of things to think about. He was the commander. He said, “Quite frankly I didn’t have time to be scared. I knew the ground would do everything they could. If they didn’t succeed they didn’t succeed. Wouldn’t be their fault. No, I wasn’t scared.” So I knew that was true. I knew he didn’t say that for the benefit of the press. I want to say that about Lovell. He was the brave guy that they made him out to be in the movie.\\n\\n Cernan I got to know real well because I’m a Phi Gam from MIT. Phi Gamma Delta. He was a Phi Gam at Purdue [University, West Lafayette, Indiana]. So I was active in our Phi Gam graduate chapter where the people that have—and so we would get him to come over and speak about once every two years. I was program chairman one year and so I got him to come over. I remember one time he was showing a film and I actually got the projector to work because he couldn’t get it to work because I used to be a projectionist. I got to sit beside Gene and talk to him quite a bit.\\n\\n I want to tell a little story about Gene that I think is interesting. When I was in MPAD—let me see. When was it? Oh, the second time, just before I went to work in the Program Office. It was right around early ’68. Some guy came from Germany. There was some kind of an institute in Germany called the Institute for Eastern Culture and Western Science* or something like—I think that’s what it was. Very close to that. It was a marriage between how the West thought and the East thought, the Hindus and the Confucianism and all that. Anyway, it was an interesting place. This guy came over, very nice German gentleman, spoke pretty good English. He had come over and wanted to talk to some of the astronauts about their spiritual experiences in space, if they had any. Since I knew several of the astronauts that had already flown I was commandeered to do that. They didn’t want to waste anybody else’s time.\\n\\n So I took this guy around and we talked to about six or seven astronauts. One of them was Gene Cernan. I tell the story because every astronaut that I’ve ever talked to, or every astronaut that I’ve ever read about, that was asked about spirituality, to a man they all said their spaceflight experience made them a different person when they came back. Now I remember Cooper was especially vocal about how it was such a moving spiritual experience for him. He wasn’t a Jesus freak or a born-again Christian but just being in orbit for a day and a half and looking down at the Earth. You can imagine what it was like for Glenn. He was a Christian. Ed [Edward H.] White was a Christian. I can’t think of anybody who said that it wasn’t something important spiritually. Except for Cernan. Cernan had not gone to the Moon at the time.\\n\\n Here I am talking to Cernan. He’s flown Gemini. Yes, he’s flown in Gemini, and that’s it. He didn’t fly Mercury. So we go in, and he recognized me, because I knew him from the Phi Gam stuff. I said, “Gene, there’s a guy here from Germany. He’s interested in what your experiences were in space, particularly anything you had that was maybe of the spiritual nature.” He said, “I know it affected all those other guys. But it was no big deal for me. I don’t know why they go through all this BS. They’re saying prayers and all that.” He was trying to be Mr. Tough Guy. The German guy is sitting there, okay, and he’s asking him questions and writing down. I thought that was kind of cute, because Gene was hiding behind something. He was embarrassed to say that it was moving.\\n\\n It’s possible that his Gemini experience wasn’t. Well, it’s even possible when he went on [Apollo] 10 but didn’t land that it wasn’t that big a deal. Although I would doubt that, because you’re way away from the Earth, you see the Earth as a little globe. I can’t imagine anybody not being spiritually moved. But after he was on the Moon and the last person to walk on the Moon and he stepped off into the capsule and rocketed off and that was it, he said to people, “When I stood on the Moon,” and I remember him saying this on TV because he was one of the people they had for color commentary during all the Shuttle flights and not ISS but Apollo-Soyuz, he became a media guy. He said, “I remember standing on the Moon in [Apollo] 17 and putting my thumb up and I could cover the Earth with my thumb.” He said, “I just knew then that this all had to mean something. There was some greater meaning than us just walking around on the Moon.”\\n\\n See? So he changed his tune. I’m telling that story because he was the one holdout. I honestly don’t think anybody, including the current crew that go up on the Shuttle and go in the ISS, I can’t believe that they don’t have a different view of mankind. I’ll tell you this, and this is all I’m going to say about it. I’m a pilot, and I started flying in ’64. I used to fly a Beechcraft Bonanza. Nice thing about a Bonanza is it goes up to 16,000, 17,000 feet without—you don’t have to do oxygen. I used to fly at high altitude because it was so much smoother. I remember looking down and seeing all the little towns and the little cars going on the freeway. It always looks so peaceful. By the way I’ve had a couple flights in military jets too, so even higher.\\n\\n It’s hard to look down at the Earth and know that there’s a couple fighting and one of them beating the crap out of the other one and kids are stealing and people are doing drugs. You just don’t see that from 10,000, 15,000 feet. Well, from space it’s got to be—and it is remarkable. That’s what most of the astronauts that went to the Moon said is “I could see the Earth and all the people and it looked peaceful and so inviting.”\\n\\n I want to say something about Al [Alan L.] Bean. Al Bean I got to talk to because I remember him writing a pilot’s report for [Apollo] 12. I remember going over to his house in Nassau Bay and he was building a Heathkit. I got to know him pretty well as we worked on the pilot’s report for 12. Then he got a divorce. I was single at the time so when I left NASA in ’73 I would go to all these singles functions. I was single for 25 years. I went to thousands of them. I would go to some of these church singles groups. Al Bean would be there. It’d be like a dance, and the lights were down, and I’d be talking to a girl. I’d say, “See that guy standing over there?” “Yeah.” “He’s actually walked on the Moon.” Of course nobody knew who he was. He’s standing there. Well, I told him that one day when we were talking on the phone about something else.\\n\\n He said, “I married one of those girls.” He said, “I’m still married.” So they’ve been married 25 years. That happened back in the early ’70s. Al, as you know, has gone on to become a very famous artist. I bought a couple of his art pieces. The great thing I want to say there, because it probably won’t be on anybody else’s tapes, is the neat thing about him is when he’s having an art show and they look at his most famous painting, which is the guy in the spacesuit with the reflection and the guy is taking the picture, and they’ll say, “That looks so realistic. How could you possibly have done that and known all those angles and lighting?” “Well, I was there.” He can just say—“I was there. I’ve been there.” People say, “What?” So it’s one of those unbelievable things that he can say, “Yeah, I’ve actually walked on the Moon.” That’s all I’m going to say about Al Bean.\\n\\n Lovell I’ve talked about. Cernan I’ve talked about. Let me just talk about Ed White and John Young real quickly. John Young, I want him to go down in history as being the test pilot’s test pilot. Of all the people you can think of, Glenn is a good example of someone who did a lot of test flying, and he was famous before he came on the program, because he flew some transcontinental record. They all were good test pilots, most of them, until you got into the scientific type people. Lovell, Borman. But John Young was the kind of guy you’d want if you had to test an airplane and make sure it worked. He was just really good at what he did. All the astronauts respected him for that. He never got any guff from anybody. The others were given a lot of trouble and guff and Cooper especially. But I want to say about John Young if you had to pick one guy and say who was the most representative test pilot, not the smartest guy, but the best test pilot, it was Young.\\n\\n Ed White died in the fire. I didn’t ever meet Ed White, but I wish I had, because one thing I can tell you about Ed White is nobody was more Christian than Ed White. He really followed his faith. He told people about it. He was never embarrassed about it. He said he prayed and he said what he was doing was meant to be and all that. You couldn’t laugh at him for any of that. Now Glenn was very Christian, but he didn’t talk about it, and he didn’t say, “Well, I’m here because God told me, I’m doing God’s work.” He kept his Christianity to himself. But he was a devout Christian. But Ed White. If you think of anybody that’s going to die, you don’t pick Ed White, you know what I mean?\\n\\n So I got to say something right now. There’s a reason for everything, there is a reason for everything. One of the life lessons that I’ve had myself is that nothing is all bad or all good. Nothing is all bad or all good. Cernan is the first person to say—and he’s given this talk to many people—the Apollo fire was a tragedy, three guys died, and it was a horrible situation, they couldn’t get out of there. But because of Apollo 1 we redesigned the capsule, we did some things that we should have done anyway that we didn’t, and the spacecraft that we flew to the Moon was a lot better than the one that burned up.\\n\\n Because of those guys dying we got people to work on what we needed to work on. So Cernan—and I believe him 100%—is that we would not have landed on the Moon by 1970 if we had not had the Apollo fire. If you think about Ed White’s purpose on this Earth, maybe that was part of it. If you had three bad guys that were living life sentences in prison and they were in there it wouldn’t be the same thing, you know what I’m saying?\\n\\n Now let’s finish up with the NASA culture. I am going to shorten it as much as I can. But this [culture] is a new word. I didn’t hear that term until Columbia. No one ever talked about the NASA culture around [Space Shuttle] Challenger [STS-51L] or the Apollo fire. But it’s a good term, because you think of culture, you think of ballet and symphony and rock music and that kind of thing but culture is the way people live their life. That’s what culture is.\\n\\n From ’62 to ’73, the years that I was there, and I can speak authoritatively, NASA Manned Spacecraft Center was very conservative. What little I knew about Huntsville, they were conservative too. Conservative in the sense that they were very image-conscious. They did not want to make a mistake—not so much because it might kill an astronaut, although that’s a horrible thing. If you said, “What’s the main reason you don’t want to make a mistake?” it’s because we don’t want to lose our funding. We don’t want the Congress to say, “Oh, my God, you guys don’t know what you’re doing. We’re just going to cancel the whole thing.” They always had that fear when I was there.\\n\\n I think I told you in our first session there were a lot of things we had to cover up in our reports. They were basically cover-ups, because if the public saw that they would say, “Oh, these guys don’t know what they’re doing.” There was a horrible paranoia about being canceled. By the way, you can knock Carpenter for not telling the ground that he had a problem, it’s the same thing we were doing with the general public.\\n\\n There was a highly conservative culture, image-conscious. But the other part of the culture—and I don’t think this has been true since, I really don’t—and that’s that everybody worked hard. The dumb people worked hard, the smart people worked hard. We landed on the Moon because people were dedicated. That was a part of the culture that I don’t think has been present since 1970. By the way people stopped working hard pretty much after Apollo 12, because all the engineering work was done. Just operations.\\n\\n Now pre 1969, if you take that period from ’62 to ’73, if you break it into pre ’69, before Apollo 1 and after Apollo 1, the NASA culture changed because a lot of people felt ashamed of what happened in the Apollo fire. A lot of people wanted to blame themselves, particularly guys that were working on the consoles when that happened. That was called the Flight Readiness Review and they were trying to see if the spacecraft could go through an end-to-end check. A lot of the guys that were working the consoles felt personally responsible for that because they didn’t get the guys out, they didn’t see it happening. There was a change in the culture because of the Apollo fire. I remember what I was doing. We were going to go play poker that night. John Zarcaro and I were working for Kraft then, so I wasn’t directly involved in Apollo at that point, but we were going to go play poker. The guy who was hosting it that night was a guy named [Manfred] “Dutch” von Ehrenfried. Zarcaro and I didn’t have that much to do, so we went to his house about 3:00 in the afternoon. It’s important, the time is important, because we left early. We went to his house and had a couple drinks and sat around and talked. Then at 6 [pm] we went over to von Ehrenfried’s house to play poker. When he answered the door his face was ashen. It looked like he just lost his wife and kids.\\n\\n We were in a high mood, a couple drinks, hey, ready to play some poker. He said, “You didn’t hear about the fire?” We said, “What fire?” I don’t want to tear up, but he said, “We had this fire on the pad and the three astronauts died.” We couldn’t believe him. It just seemed so far-fetched. Really? Of course the poker game was canceled. It was a horrible, horrible experience for those of us that had been on Apollo since day one. Dutch had been a longtime flight controller so it took me a long time to get over that, particularly since I knew Gus. It was a horrible thing but again I look at it in two ways, that without the fire we would have not landed on the Moon. We wouldn’t have achieved that, so the culture did change because of the fire, because it was a horrible thing. Everybody was touched by that.\\n\\n Now let’s look at post ’69, pre Challenger. Horrible event. Oh, Challenger. I’ll tell you how I felt about Challenger. We lost seven people. Six of them were NASA astronauts. The seventh one was an astronaut by definition but she was only an astronaut in name, and that was Christa McAuliffe. I felt really bad for her, because I understood the test pilot mentality, and I knew that every guy that had flown in space up to that point knew there was a risk and knew that there was a distinct possibility they could die. But Christa McAuliffe was not of that culture. She was a teacher and she gave her trust to NASA, [thinking], “you’re going to fly me and bring me back, and I can tell the world what it was like,” and then she died. I felt really bad about that and I had left NASA at that point. I came back. I remember [President Ronald] Reagan coming down [here] and speaking to the NASA community. I remember sneaking in. I still had my old badge so I showed them my old badge and sneaked in. I cried like everybody else because the jets flew over in the missing man [formation].\\n\\n It was a bad bad thing. Challenger. I think if we ever came close to canceling the space program, that was it. Because with Columbia we weren’t going to. ISS is flying. But with Challenger it would have been a time when we said, “To hell with the Shuttle. If you can’t design a Shuttle that will keep from killing people.” We came real close to getting Congress to say, “Okay, that’s it.” That’s the thing I told you earlier. We had a culture of being afraid. So after Challenger the culture made a definite change about. We can’t do that again. That’s really bad. Of course those guys lived for two minutes because they came coasting down —they didn’t die until they hit the—so everybody woke up. That was a wake-up call. I don’t think anybody took that lightly.\\n\\n But I do want to say one thing about the astronauts before we get off the Challenger and get onto Columbia. None of the astronauts were permanently affected by either Apollo 1 or Challenger. The reason is that they accepted the risk. They know that humans make mistakes. Now I want to say one thing about the Flight Readiness Review. I don’t know how many people you interview that are going to talk about that, but the Flight Readiness Review is a test on the Cape of the countdown. A test that we can make sure we can fuel the thing and all the checkout systems work. It’s basically a test of the preflight procedure, that’s what it is. That’s why they call it Flight Readiness Review. It involves the Control Center so it’s a training mission for the Control Center.\\n\\n [With Apollo 1], the mistake they made there was they had 5 percent psi oxygen overpressure. Well, in space they’re at 5 psi, which means you don’t have a lot of oxygen in there, because it’s reduced pressure. On the pad you got 14.7 psi of atmospheric, so you have to crank in another five. So now you got 19.7 psi oxygen, pure oxygen. It’s a wonderful environment for fire. You can’t burn oxygen, but you can burn everything else if oxygen is around. A lot of people don’t understand that. Oxygen itself is not flammable; it was an invitation to a fire. I can tell you right now, whether anybody else is going to mention this, the reason that we didn’t have the hatch that could open quickly was because Max Faget and some of these other very conservative people said, “We don’t want a hatch that you can open easily in space, because it may open unexpectedly.” We wanted these guys to be able to go to the Moon out of their suits. That’s a horribly restrictive thing. They might take off in their suits, but then they’d get out of them. You’ve seen Apollo 13. They would be able to float around. By the way, the Command Module wasn’t all that big either.\\n\\n That was the deal. Here they are without their suits on, what if the hatch just went off like—in fact it’s interesting. Gus Grissom’s problem with his hatch [MR-4] probably caused his death. Isn’t that interesting? It was the fact that they think his hatch blew inadvertently that they did not design the Apollo hatch to blow off. That’s an interesting irony right there. I don’t know any of your people are going to mention that, but it needs to be mentioned.\\n\\n We did not have to have five psi overpressure. We could have just had five psi air overpressure, didn’t have to be pure oxygen. That was a bad mistake. Now whether it would have prevented the fire I don’t know but it certainly accelerated it. By the way, there were ways that the ground crew could open that hatch and get those guys out. But I think it took like two or three minutes, by that time it was too late.\\n\\n The only other thing I have left here, and we can just finish up with this, is after Challenger the culture was—and this is really sad—we had been so successful in all our flights with the exception of Challenger that we began to take success for granted. I don’t know how much of this got into the public media, but when they talked about the problem with Columbia and the pieces of foam breaking off, the only thing the engineers could say—and by the way they had some good people working on that. Is that we had seen that so many times before. It wasn’t that big a deal. We’d seen foam pieces break off before. While this isn’t exactly what’s true, it’ll exemplify what I’m saying. Let’s say the first time a piece of foam broke off it was only fist size and they looked and said, “That didn’t do any damage.” So then the next one that broke off was two fist sizes, and it kept getting bigger, and each time they kept saying, “We better do something about that,” but then they said, “Well, that didn’t do anything, we’ll wait till a bigger piece, maybe we’ll see something.” Well, unfortunately they waited too long.\\n\\n I frankly don’t think it was the foam that did it. I’m one of the few people that don’t believe it was the foam. I think it was something in space. There’s all kinds of debris flying around in space. I hope it’s not a cover-up where they did know it was something in space but they didn’t want to tell the American public. I hope that’s not true. I frankly don’t think the foam had enough energy to do the damage that it did, but I can’t prove it.\\n\\n I do know this, that the culture, if there’s any criticism of the NASA culture it’s that you get to take success for granted. By the way, Mercury and Gemini were immensely successful programs. Apollo was immensely successful except for that one little problem with the tank on 13, and we didn’t kill any astronauts. From Mercury right through Apollo we never lost a guy in space. I think that’s what caused the Challenger mentality, well, once we get them off the pad they’re fine. Then of course Challenger blew up.\\n\\n So Columbia has reversed that culture, and now I think they’re actually too conservative. I’ll tell you why. This is a criticism of what’s going on right now, but I have a right to have an opinion. Now every flight they go to the ISS with the Shuttle they do a complete inspection. So they’re not actually busy for two days. They basically waste two days because of their conservatism. I’m going to tell you right now a lot of it is done for what they do for the American public because there are two kinds of failures that could happen during launch. One is that maybe something did break off and cause a severe problem, and the other is it didn’t. Now they’ve already found—I read Mark Carreau’s article in today’s paper [Houston Chronicle] and it said that they found three small problems with this Shuttle. But they’re okay, they’re cleared to come home. So it either falls—now what if they do get a huge chunk, it falls out. I don’t think they can fix it. I think they would have to come back in the [Russian] Soyuz [TM] or somehow crowd guys in. I don’t know what they would do. Or send another Shuttle up. I know there are going to be problems that they can’t fix.\\n\\n So the space program is important. We need to do better public relations. We need to reorient our initiatives and I hope we do that, I really do. I’m through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Thanks." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00693", + "metadata": { + "category": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office Oral History Project 2012 - 2013", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/RichardsRT/richardsrt.htm", + "original_file_name": "RichardsRT_6-4-13.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/RichardsRT/RichardsRT_6-4-13.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Robert T. Richards", + "location_date": "Dulles, Virginia – 4 June 2013" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Hackler" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Robert T. Richards" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 4, 2013. This oral history interview is being conducted with Robert “Bob” Richards at the Headquarters of the Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Virginia, for the Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Hackler, assisted by Rebecca Wright.\\n\\n Mr. Richards serves as the company’s Vice President of Human Spaceflight Systems and has been with the company since 1988, involved with numerous programs including the Pegasus launch team that was awarded the National Air and Space Museum Trophy in 1990. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today, and we’d like to begin by asking you to give us a brief overview of your background and how you came to be involved at Orbital." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you. I have certainly had an exciting career at Orbital. As you mentioned, I joined in 1988 to work on the Pegasus air-launched booster. Orbital was about 60 or 70 people in the earliest days and has grown to around 3,600 or 3,700 people now. During my career there have really been large changes at Orbital, but my focus has been commercial space, civil space, and trying to field innovative products that met some customer need. More often than not, that customer was NASA.\\n\\n Pegasus has become one of the most important boosters for small NASA scientific missions, and we’ve flown many, many NASA missions. Pegasus missions also provided the first experience with commercial contract terms with NASA. For example, NASA Kennedy Space Center [Florida] procures launch vehicles using a commercial approach, which means commercial practices are applied.\\n\\n It means that the ownership of the actual space hardware is maintained by the industry contractor, and certainly it allows us a partnership-type of relationship with NASA as well. That type of contract and procurement strategy was later applied to the COTS [Commercial Orbital Transportation Services] program, and I’m sure we’ll spend a lot of time talking about that in particular.\\n\\n I’ve had many different jobs at Orbital, starting with launch vehicles but then moving more into the human spaceflight side. I was the Capture Manager for a variety of our bids, including the COTS bid that we won and the [International Space Station (ISS)] cargo resupply contract [Commercial Resupply Services (CRS)] that we also won. I then became the first Program Manager for COTS and CRS, and basically ran the program through about the PDR [Preliminary Design Review] timeframe. So it’s been a lot of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk a little bit more about Orbital’s involvement in some of NASA’s earlier commercial initiatives like SLI [Space Launch Initiative] and Alternate Access to [Space] Station?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We actually started, even before Alternate Access to Station, with a concept called Orb Express. That was Orbital’s first foray into trying to support the International Space Station with cargo. We were also trying to leverage what we had within the company, which were small launch vehicles. Using a small launcher, regular cargo would be unaffordable. And also the Space Shuttle was also up and running and doing all the assembly missions, so the need for an independent cargo vehicle was less in those early days.\\n\\n We focused in on contingency cargo. The scenario is there’s an emergency on the Space Station, you need something up there, some critical spare, and you need it now. We looked at a few day call-up, where one of our vehicles, for example a Pegasus, could essentially be on alert and could take a few hundred kilograms up to the Space Station. It used a similar concept of operation that we ultimately put into the Cygnus, where it would fly up next to the Space Station, be grappled by the Space Station robotic arm, and then the cargo would be separated off. This vehicle was so small, the cargo could actually come through the JEM [Japanese Experiment Module] airlock as opposed to the approach we use today with the Cygnus that involves berthing to one of the nodes of the Station. Nonetheless, it was similar in concept from that perspective.\\n\\n The focus was a few day call-up, rapid rendezvous, small emergency cargo. We thought that was a pretty slick concept, and we extended some of that work into Alternate Access to Station. Although the main focus for Alternate Access to Station, which is now in the 2002 timeframe, was review of the entire logistics systems for Space Station: what types of cargo were needed, what types of vehicles could meet those needs. It was a much bigger look at cargo as a whole.\\n\\n Orbital has been interested in Space Station cargo resupply since 2000, with the Orb Express concept, and 2002 through about 2004, with the Alternate Access to Station concepts. We also contributed to Space Launch Initiative in several areas. We performed a series of studies for crew and cargo transfer under Space Launch Initiative as part of the OSP, Orbital Space Plane Program. We also ran an on-orbit demonstration of rendezvous technology called DART, Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology.\\n\\n All through that timeframe, we were certainly interested in the technology associated with cargo resupply, as well as trying to take steps towards collaboration with NASA. Those early steps then led to the COTS program, which is Commercial Orbital Transportation Services. There were multiple procurements of the COTS contract. The first procurement, as I recall, was in the early 2006 timeframe, and the second procurement, which we were selected on, was in late 2007 through early 2008.\\n\\n COTS was similar to some of the work that NASA had done with launch vehicle procurements in the sense that it was a commercial service contract. It had some unique elements to it which allowed it to leverage private industry investment with government investment to develop a new capability. Had the nation not used that type of procurement approach, developing cargo systems for NASA use would have been more expensive.\\n\\n For industry to put money towards the development of COTS, we’re looking for a long-term business relationship to amortize and get a return on our investment. That long term business was the Cargo Resupply Services contract, or CRS. I think it was very smart for NASA to their ongoing cargo needs to attract investment from private industry. We bid on CRS and were awarded that in early 2008. I was actively involved in the bids and then, as I said, ran these programs about through PDR.\\n\\n Our designs changed over time as we got deeper into product development. For example, our COTS demonstration mission was originally conceptualized as a demonstration of unpressurized cargo, cargo that goes to the outside of Space Station. We, in concert with NASA, determined that the most effective use of the system would be for pressurized cargo, or things that are going inside the Space Station, like food, clothing, equipment that the astronauts use, etc.\\n\\n We reached an agreement with NASA, at no cost to NASA, in early 2009 that we would change our COTS demonstration objectives from unpressurized cargo to a full pressurized cargo system. It was always the intent to demonstrate that pressurized cargo capability, but the original intent was to demonstrate it on a later mission. The overall service has changed, morphed over time, and I think in all cases it’s really been to NASA’s advantage to get a more cost-effective system and a capability that more closely matched their needs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If I can go back and ask you a few questions about your earliest involvement with NASA—you were talking about Alternate Access to Station, Space Launch Initiative, Orbital Space Plane—it’s kind of a chicken and egg, which came first question. Do you remember if you were proposing those ideas to NASA, or if NASA was soliciting those ideas and studies?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Concerning Alternate Access to Station or SLI?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For both." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think in that timeframe, basically industry was saying, “Here’s what we’ve got,” and NASA was also doing a kind of demand pull. Certainly also in that timeframe, “NewSpace”—I put that in quotes—was really starting to pop up, and there were some very small companies that were very vocal. This was a chance for small companies to get involved in NewSpace activities, that NASA should utilize these companies to perform cargo resupply and other types of things. That was particularly the case in Alternate Access to Station.\\n\\n I think Space Launch Initiative was more mainline, if you will, trying to develop a capability that NASA had a strong interest in. That’s not to say that NASA didn’t have an interest in Alternate Access to Station, because that was also very important to NASA, but the context was that they also had this extremely capable vehicle called the Space Shuttle flying at the time, and limited budgets.\\n\\n Orbital sort of fell in the middle of that. I don’t think we were as vocal on Alternate Access to Station as some of the really small NewSpace companies. In fact, we were trying to develop capabilities that would maybe be more of an augmentation to the Space Shuttle, as opposed to a replacement of the Space Shuttle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It took a few years for NASA to be able to make those type of commercial relationships possible, where they were actually developing and soliciting the capabilities for commercial access to Station, especially after the Shuttle’s retirement [in 2011]. Can you go back and talk a little bit more about your role in the Round 1 and 2 COTS competitions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were two rounds, the first around early 2006. Orbital bid on that and we were not selected. The selectees were Kistler Aerospace [Rocketplane Kistler] and SpaceX [Space Exploration Technologies Corp.]. Then, between early 2006 and late 2007, there was a series of milestones which Kistler had to achieve to stay in the game, and they did not achieve those milestones. In October of 2007, NASA put out a Request for Proposal [RFP] to find a replacement for Kistler Aerospace.\\n\\n The idea of recompeting nonperforming contracts was built in to the original procurement strategy of NASA. They wanted competition; they didn’t want a single provider. And if a provider was not meeting milestones, was not performing, there was a way to move that provider off and have a new competition, and bring a new system online. While the exact timing of that was somewhat of a surprise to us, and was kept within NASA, the broad capability of switching out one provider for another was something that was understood from day one. When the RFP came out we jumped on it, and I was the Capture Manager for that procurement as well, and we were selected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What sort of changes did you make to the proposal from the first round to the second round, when you were successfully selected?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The second round more utilized our geostationary satellite technology, and it was more of a clean sheet design. The first bid was a big focus on lowest risk possible, lowest cost possible, so we had bid certain foreign electronics and foreign elements that were very flight-proven and very low cost. After not being selected, we had more of a focus on U.S. technology. We were just a couple of years smarter and had some stronger technology in certain areas, so we bid that. Our second bid had some really significant changes compared to our first bid." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of discussions and negotiations do you recall going through with the NASA representatives when they came to do their due diligence sessions and meet with company representatives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was an interesting process, because not only did it focus on the technology—is this a good design and does it meet the contract needs—but there was a pretty rigorous look at the business case and overall economics of the system.\\n\\n More than that, NASA asked for and we provided a lot of ideas on how you could take that basic technology and utilize it in adjacent markets. Could you modify the hardware and make it do a different mission besides cargo resupply? In particular, something that would help facilitate the return on investment and the overall business case. We spent a lot of time discussing the concept of adjacent markets and commercial markets.\\n\\n I think there was also a fairly detailed look by NASA into the overall health of the companies because a lot of the bids were by really small companies. There were, I’m sure, question marks in NASA’s mind about, “Well, this is a great design, but can this company generate the capital and stay in business and implement it?” I guess the results of the first procurement highlighted the importance of corporate financial strength and stability when developing a cargo resupply system.\\n\\n I’ve been in an early phase company and seen it mature to a later phase company. A lot of companies don’t make that transition. It’s difficult to make profit year after year, and some fall by the wayside. I recall there was quite a lot of looking by NASA on these topics." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the adjacent markets. Can you explain a little bit more about which markets you were looking into then, and how those have changed? What sort of future you’re looking at for these technologies that you developed for COTS and CRS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, COTS and CRS were full service. So they included a launch, they included a cargo vehicle, and they included a mission ops [operations] piece. When you think about it, each one of those elements has adjacent technologies, adjacent markets. The easiest to understand would be the launcher. We did extensive market studies on how the Antares launch vehicle—we called it the Taurus II during development—could not only support COTS and CRS, but could launch a lot of NASA scientific satellites in the medium class.\\n\\n That was of great interest to NASA because their primary medium-class launcher, the Delta II, was in phased-out mode. They were running into a lot of obsolescence issues, and NASA was interested in alternatives for the medium-class. I think the adjacent markets for the launch were really satellite launches and other things like that.\\n\\n On the cargo system piece, we conceptualized ways to use the basic rendezvous technology and the rendezvous sensors, and some of the technology in the Cygnus vehicle for other missions. Satellite servicing would be one example. There’s a case where if you want to send up a servicer to fix an on-orbit satellite, you have to be able to rendezvous with it, you’ve got to be able to attach yourself to it and then you need to do whatever the servicing is—refuel it, swap out a bad electronics box, or something like that.\\n\\n While that particular market I haven’t really seen come to fruition, certainly we looked into it, and that was part of our proposal on how some of these adjacent markets could be addressed by Orbital products. That further emphasized the overall business case argument that was so important to NASA." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We also understand that the Round 2 COTS competition and the CRS competition took place almost contemporaneously. Can you talk to us about the CRS competition and how you maintained those two separate efforts?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was somewhat of a management challenge, but let me say right off the bat, I think NASA did the right thing there by overlapping those two contracts. The reason they did the right thing is had they selected CRS only after COTS was completed, which of course is the most intellectually pure way to do it, they would significantly delay the introduction of an operational system. My sense is that probably, hindsight being 20/20, NASA wishes they had started COTS earlier.\\n\\n The original plan was to implement CRS after the COTS demonstrations were complete. That would have just added years to the implementation of the service, and so NASA was clearly smart to overlap those two procurements. It also really helped out within our management structure of keeping the company focused on this project, because we could see a clear longer-term business [ISS resupply] that was essentially in place. We could see objective evidence of NASA moving towards that longer-term business and putting that out to private industry.\\n\\n As far as the operational aspects of managing that, we had a large extended team. We had a lot of good people, and so we had some people writing the CRS proposal at the same time we were doing requirements reviews on the demonstration mission. Basically, the overall team, including the management team, worked both contracts at the same time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you involved at all in the GAO [Government Accountability Office] protest of that CRS contract? Can you share with us a little about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We certainly felt like the protest was without merit, and the fact that we were allowed to continue the CRS contract throughout the whole protest period I thought was very telling, because that required NASA to get a dispensation to continue the contract while the protest was underway. Ultimately, we prevailed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You talked about the change on the demo [demonstration] flight from the unpressurized to the internal, pressurized cargo. In what other ways did your agreement with NASA evolve over the years of its enactment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The overall visiting vehicle requirements have evolved some. NASA was starting with a pretty good set of visiting vehicle requirements because they had run the [Russian] Progress [cargo delivery spacecraft], the European [Space Agency] ATV [Automated Transfer Vehicle], and the Japanese [Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency] HTV [H-II Transfer Vehicle], and all three vehicles were operational or nearly operational when we started.\\n\\n The Safety Review Panel, which I think is a very competent organization and very good to work with, already had a lot of experience on what does it take to integrate a visiting vehicle into the Station, and NASA had a clear vision of what they wanted as far as cargo. That said, deep in the details, there have been some changes in the visiting vehicle requirements, and those were more or less worked out as we went along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about your relationship with the ISS Program Office and how you negotiated those changes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First of all, we’ve had a very good relationship with the ISS Program Office. I am very impressed with Mike [Michael T.] Suffredini’s leadership, and it’s overall been a very good experience. I’d say a lot of the negotiation of really detailed requirements came in after I had moved from being program manager, so it’s probably a good question to ask Frank DeMauro when you interview him later. In general, both sides came together to get the best overall result." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Another significant change to the program was the addition of some augmentation money for fiscal year ’11. Can you talk to us about how you found out about that augmentation, and then how you implemented it in your development program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I think NASA was becoming more and more concerned about how many eggs they’d put in this COTS and CRS basket. CRS was very lightly funded because cost effectiveness was a big part of the initial goal of CRS. Over time, CRS moved from being an augmentation of basic cargo capability, to becoming really the prime cargo capability. I think that NASA looked at that scenario rightly and said, “Boy, CRS is so important to our extremely expensive Space Station. Are we spending our money in the best manner to drive down risks associated with the development of these new vehicles like the Cygnus?”\\n\\n I was part of the discussions, as well as other people on the management team, as far as what are the risks, what is the best place to spend money to drive down risk? We concluded that an Antares test flight was really the primary element that we thought that we and NASA together should focus on. I think that was, still looking back, the correct answer. We’ve had that test flight, and it was very successful. We got lots of useful data. Overall, launch is a very high risk part of an overall system. That’s one of the riskiest phases of going to Space Station, so putting funding into that was, I think, the right thing to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you tell us about your experience on the launch day in April [2013], when that test flight went off successfully?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We’d had several countdowns and the final one, I really felt the professionalism of the team. I think it went very smoothly and I was just excited to see it fly after so many years. Taking a few countdowns to get to launch is not unusual in this business at all. The amount of work that goes into these missions is really very large, particularly a development flight. The team did a really fantastic job, and by “the team,” I count both NASA and Orbital working together. It’s just a great sense of satisfaction when everything works so flawlessly and we obtain such a good result. Now on to the next thing, because as much fun as it is to accomplish these things, we’ve got a lot more still ahead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The last thing I’ll ask before we conclude this morning’s session and let you get to your other meetings—how has your relationship evolved with NASA? Not only your current work on the COTS project, but also your previous interactions with the space agency." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert T. Richards", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Personally, the interaction with NASA has always been very, very good, and I see a lot of parallels when working with one NASA center versus another. There’s a lot of the same types of challenges, and generally a positive type of relationship. My sense is that space, being difficult, and the bringing together of experts with this really specific and narrow skill set, is what helps bring everyone together.\\n\\n In fact, I’ve worked with foreign space agencies and have been surprised at how positive that can be, and how people, even with fairly diverse backgrounds, end up solving the problems in the same way, and can immediately resonate with difficult problems and how to solve them. I think our interaction with NASA, in my whole career—not counting just COTS and CRS, but other parts of NASA—has been a very positive experience, and it’s just a great feeling to accomplish something so difficult with the extended team." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, thank you very much for your time this morning." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00664", + "metadata": { + "category": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office Oral History Project 2012 - 2013", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/AlexanderB/alexanderb.htm", + "original_file_name": "AlexanderB_3-18-13.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/C3PO/AlexanderB/AlexanderB_3-18-13.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Bretton Alexander", + "location_date": "Washington, DC – 18 March 2013" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Rebecca Hackler" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Bretton Alexander" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is March 18, 2013. This oral history interview is being conducted with Brett Alexander in Washington, DC for the Commercial Crew & Cargo Program Office History Project. Interviewers are Rebecca Wright and Rebecca Hackler. Mr. Alexander is the former president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a member of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee, and current Director of Business Development for Strategy at Blue Origin [LLC].\\n\\n We thank you for stopping in today and visiting with us. If you would start by giving us the background of how you got involved in these commercial space activities and how that brought you to where you are today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I started at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as a Senior Policy Analyst for Space Issues, which covered NASA, NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration], and some national security space activities. I was there from May of 2000 to January of 2005. While I was there, on February 1st of 2003, we had the Columbia [STS-107] accident, which led to a year-long process that arrived at the Vision for Space Exploration [VSE] that was announced by President [George W.] Bush on January 14th, 2004. Throughout that process, I was one of the primary authors of the Vision for Space Exploration and the different activities that led to its development.\\n\\n One of the cornerstones of that Vision was that NASA needed to get back to exploration beyond low-Earth orbit [LEO], leaving low-Earth orbit to both international and commercial activities. From my perspective and from the perspective of many involved in the Vision, it really was about NASA going beyond LEO and commercial taking over the LEO activity. In the summer of 2004 was the Aldridge Commission on the implementation of the Vision [President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy], which was much clearer on turning LEO over to the private sector.\\n\\n I think a number of folks, looking back on the Vision, we would have written it a lot differently had we known how it would play out. We would have been much clearer on the commercial side of do this, or do that. We thought we had been fairly clear in putting implementation actions in there like retiring the [Space] Shuttle, completing the [International Space] Station, building a new crew launch vehicle and a Crew Exploration Vehicle [CEV]—those sorts of concrete actions which had been missing from the Space Exploration Initiative speech by President George H. W. Bush, 20 years earlier.\\n\\n Those concrete implementations were light on the commercial side. One of the reasons for commercial being in that Vision the way it was—within the White House process of getting to a Vision, a number of the players at the table were internal White House offices. One of them was the Council of Economic Advisors. Everybody was told to come up with a vision that they thought was the right one, and the Council of Economic Advisors came in and their vision was to disband NASA except for the top few hundred folks and put the money out to the private sector.\\n\\n Getting rid of centers, getting rid of those capabilities—what we took from that was the importance of commercial and the importance of industry, but we weren’t willing to go as far as disbanding NASA. That was not what survived, but what did survive from that was that core of commercial is ready and should have been brought along in the human spaceflight arena. Of that 40 years of human spaceflight that we’d had—42 years by that point—where the government had done it but nobody had ever come behind.\\n\\n One of the things in President Bush’s Vision speech over here at NASA Headquarters [Washington, DC]—he was alluding back to Lewis and Clark, and he said that government sent Lewis and Clark to explore so that other people could follow. The problem with human spaceflight is nobody had ever followed because it was so expensive. From the government perspective, it was getting more expensive per mission or per person in space, as opposed to getting less expensive. It wasn’t getting safer, it was getting less safe.\\n\\n Those trends are typical of government-controlled institutions, the opposite of private sectors, where you have competition and you have increased productivity and lower cost over time. The goal was let NASA do the exploration, the pointy-end-of-the-spear type of real cutting-edge exploration, then turn the more routine—certainly not routine, and certainly not mundane—human spaceflight and low-Earth orbit activities over to the private sector.\\n\\n That was the vision in January of 2004. For the next 18 months or so, you had Sean O’Keefe as NASA Administrator, and you had someone he brought in named [Rear] Admiral Craig [E.] Steidle as the Associate Administrator for Exploration [Systems]. Admiral Steidle had been at the Pentagon with the Navy, doing the Joint Strike Fighter [F-35 Lightning II]. They’d had two major contractors develop their aircraft independently, and then there was a fly-off, and eventually they selected one winner.\\n\\n That was the model that he brought to Exploration. He wanted to have a fly-off of two vehicles by 2008, and he was on that path to do so. One of the things that he did in the summer of 2004 was put out a program called Concept Exploration and Refinement. It was known as the CE&R contracts, and he awarded I believe six contracts, for $3 million each, to a number of companies both big and small, for each company to say, “Here’s how we would go back to the Moon. Here’s the architecture we would use to get back to the Moon and how we would do it and what the vehicles would look like.” Sizing and that sort of thing.\\n\\n I later joined one of those companies in January of 2005, which was called Transformational Space Corp., or t/Space. t/Space was actually formed just to respond to those CE&R contracts, and actually won one of the $3 million contracts. It was later awarded another $3 million extension. The other winners were Lockheed Martin, [The] Boeing [Company], Northrop Grumman, Orbital [Sciences Corp.], companies like that.\\n\\n t/Space was a new startup with just a couple of people, but the idea that they put forth was a very different architecture. It was an architecture where astronauts would fly Earth to orbit on a commercial taxi, and I think that’s really the predecessor of Commercial Crew [Program] and COTS [Commercial Orbital Transportation Systems]. Astronauts would then go into a vehicle that’s already in orbit, that would go from low-Earth orbit all the way to the Moon, down to the surface, and all the way back to low-Earth orbit. One vehicle.\\n\\n They’d actually travel in pairs of vehicles so that you had redundancy and you could transfer from one to the other if something happened. The idea was you had an Earth-to-Orbit part of the architecture, and then you had an in-space part of the architecture, all the way to the lunar surface and back. That was fundamentally very different, radical if you will, and I think that’s obviously what won them that contract. They were able to, with that $3 million, explore that idea further.\\n\\n Back along the timeline, that was the summer of ’04 that [the CE&R contracts] started. In December of ’04 Sean O’Keefe resigned, and I left the White House in January of ’05. A new NASA Administrator wasn’t appointed until Mike [Michael D.] Griffin came in of April of that year. Then, he started up the ESAS study, which was the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which led to Constellation [Ares rocket and Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle].\\n\\n Constellation got in place about 18 months after the Vision, and after Admiral Steidle and Sean O’Keefe were well on a path to do something that was very different. One of the things late in that Steidle-O’Keefe period was that the folks at t/Space started to explore—Gary [C.] Hudson and David Gump mainly, with Admiral Steidle and other folks in that office, maybe [Michael F.] Lembeck and maybe Steve Isakowitz. He had been the [NASA] comptroller and became Admiral Steidle’s deputy.\\n\\n They started exploring an idea of what was then called “nontraditional crew.” That would have been, as it was conceived, a $400 million demonstration program to give funding to I think one company, but there was some talk of leader-followers who might have other companies in it. Really to take one company through a demonstration of flying people in space, to do that demonstration of that commercial taxi, Earth-to-orbit commercial crew. Not to go to the Station, not to levy any requirements on it, but just to simply show the fact that it could be done. That would change the paradigm of everything, if you could show that the private sector was capable of doing human spaceflight.\\n\\n That idea had gathered significant ground. When I moved to t/Space, when I left government, I chose not to go to another government agency. I chose to go into the commercial human spaceflight arena because I thought that was the only thing that was ever going to change NASA, change spaceflight, and change what a lot of us had been working towards, which was a robust space program that was both exploration and expanding the number of people that could fly in space, which had not really changed for a long time.\\n\\n With Admiral Steidle still there after Sean O’Keefe left, when Mike Griffin came in, they did not see eye to eye on any of this. As you know, the ESAS study recommended a large Shuttle-derived vehicle. Two vehicles, Ares I, Ares V, Altair [lunar lander], and the other pieces of Constellation, and Admiral Steidle then left shortly after that. It was clear that they were not compatible. With that being said, Mike Griffin was interested in doing something with commercial that would grow out of Alt [Alternate] Access [to the International Space Station] in the 2001 to ’02 timeframe. The Orbital Space Plane idea that was in that same rough timeframe was about a sort of a space taxi.\\n\\n He had interest in doing something, and I met with him a couple of times. We talked about it, we talked about Steidle’s nontraditional crew activity, and really discussed the concept of Other Transaction Authority agreements. They use the term Space Act Agreements. Space Act Agreements have always been in place, but funded Space Act Agreements were very different. The use of Other Transaction Authority, to do it that way was very revolutionary, I think, and very critical to setting up COTS the way it became.\\n\\n The other thing was the milestone payments, the retention of IP, intellectual property, by the companies, and the fixed dollar amounts rather than a cost-plus type activity. The limited requirements from the government side, where they would just put out a statement of objectives, like, “We want you to do these things, see how close you can come,” as opposed to a traditional government program that says, “We’ll pay you and you have to do exactly these things,” where NASA retains the oversight authority. They have the power to direct the contractor to do things, to make design changes.\\n\\n In this other transactions world, where it’s insight, not oversight, the government doesn’t have the ability to direct any of those changes. In the end, they don’t have to buy the capability either, if it doesn’t meet their requirements. They can terminate somewhere along the way if they’re seeing, “Hey, our paths are diverging too far.”\\n\\n Mike and I talked about that quite a bit, and then he announced the COTS program at a Space Transportation Association breakfast in June of 2005. What came out of that then became a program office, the C3PO [Commercial Crew and Cargo Program] Office, that then put together a draft RFP [Request for Proposal] that came out in December of ‘05. The formulation of the program was really in the middle of the summer, with Mike Griffin saying, “Yes, I want to do something commercial. What should it be, how should it be done?”\\n\\n Where he and I would differ on the setup of COTS—and ultimately, I think, the success of COTS—is that his view was, and it’s enshrined in the way it came out in the program, was cargo first, people later. From my perspective, and from the perspective of a number of other people, there is no market beyond NASA for cargo to a space station. That is a confined government market, and you can’t really develop commercial capabilities if they’re only going to serve the government market.\\n\\n The market that exists is for people. NASA has a market for people and other people have a market for people, based on the tourists that have flown on the [Russian] Soyuz, the idea of doing a Bigelow [Aerospace space habitat] module, other foreign governments that want to put people in space. There are other markets for people besides NASA, but by turning it into a program that was cargo first and people later, they ended up with a more complex solution, I think. Some of us believe that automated rendezvous and docking is harder than piloted rendezvous and docking, but also that the first market really is people, and until you get there it’s just a government infrastructure.\\n\\n That was one big disagreement that we had. The other disagreement, I would say, with the program was Mike had this absolute insistence that you had to develop a new launch vehicle. That was never written down, but that was very clear to everybody. He would not allow the existing Atlas and Delta vehicles to be any part of a winning solution. That, everybody thought, was because it was a direct threat, in his mind, to needing to develop the Ares I for Orion. If you had existing launch vehicles that you could put people on top, then why did you need to build Ares I? The whole program would fall apart.\\n\\n Whether that is his view or not—I’m sure he would dispute that—it was very clear within C3PO, within the COTS program, and very clear within the contracting community, and very openly discussed. We all knew that, talked about that. There was quite a bit of frustration on the part of the ULA [United Launch Alliance] folks. I think they may not have been ULA yet, they may have still been Boeing and Lockheed, but there was quite a bit of frustration on their part about that. I think the subsequent COTS awards, the two selections that they made, bore that out. I think, from the administrative perspective, whether you believed it would deliver cargo or not, it was useful to get new commercial launch vehicles started to lower the cost of satellite launches later on, while putting off any threat to the Constellation activities.\\n\\n In my mind, when you distort the playing field in that way, you end up with different winners than you otherwise would. If the goal is cargo to the Space Station, I think the program has worked out very successfully. When you compare metrics of capability that they got—how much did it cost, how long did it take, what was the schedule growth and cost growth—when you compare those to a traditional government program, in terms of scheduled growth and cost growth, clearly what so far SpaceX [Space Exploration Technologies Corp.] has done and hopefully Orbital will as well—what they’ve done has been very cost-effective and schedule-wise not terrible. Hasn’t been perfect, but it certainly was better than, I think, the Constellation Program exhibited on its own." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned Alternate Access to [Space] Station—those concepts compared to what actually came out as the final COTS program, how much is similar, how much do you feel is different?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don’t have a good memory of what came out of the Alt Access program. If I recall, Alt Access was one budget year, and it was only $10 million. They spread that money between four to six companies to do thought activities. Much the way the CE&R contracts happened in the summer of ’04, which was six contracts, $3 million each. So that was $18 million, and then more money for some options for a couple of companies. Alt Access was sort of seed money. That $10 million led to a lot of thinking that then came out in COTS. There’s probably a direct trace to some of them.\\n\\n There was a company called Constellation Services [International], CSI, that wanted to do a Russian-based system. It was basically a Progress [resupply vehicle] that would undock from the Station, go down to pick up a can full of stuff that had been launched into orbit, and then take it back. I think they started that concept with Alt Access money. But they weren’t awarded anything under COTS, which said “no Russian content”—except for the engines that [Orbital’s] Antares [rocket] is using—“no Russian content, no existing launch vehicles.” There may have been other things that came out of Alt Access that were more directly traceable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Based on your experiences through this evolution, back to the early 2000s, do you feel those were stepping stones to get to where COTS could be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, absolutely. COTS was able to be a success because of where the commercial market, commercial companies, where industry had gotten to. Both in technological process, but also the ability to think commercially. There were many, many stepping stones along the way. Alt Access certainly was part of that. Orbital Space Plane was part of that.\\n\\n In the late ’90s there was something called STAS, the Space Transportation Architecture Studies. When I was at the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration], I was on the government advisory group for that. There were a whole bunch of commercial companies then—Kistler [Aerospace], Kelly Space [and Technology], Orbital, and others—that were pitching new launch systems. New ways of getting satellites into orbit, not people. That was driven by the Iridiums [Iridium Communications, Inc.], Teledesics [Teledesic, LLC], Globalstars [Globalstar, Inc.] that were starting to drive commercial launch demand.\\n\\n That commercial launch demand for geostationary COMSATs [communications satellites], which has been relatively steady between 15 and 30 satellites a year—all of a sudden you had all these low-Earth orbiting satellites of Iridium and Globalstar, and then possibly Teledesic that were proposed. They spent real money on them, and they bought real launches, and they launched them on Delta IIs, Soyuzes, and Protons.\\n\\n For example, Iridium spent about $1 billion on launching their first satellites in the [Iridium satellite] constellation. Globalstar probably spent about the same amount, and Teledesic was supposed to be many many more satellites, and then the Iridium and Globalstar constellations were going to be replenished seven years out. Both of those ventures, Globalstar and Iridium, went bankrupt and lost all that money. They’re still around, they’re still functioning. Iridium was sold for $50 million after putting in $5.5 billion. You can probably make a going business out of a $50 million investment, but not out of $5.5 billion.\\n\\n They wanted to sell cell phone time basically, worldwide handheld satellite phones, for $8.00 a minute. Very simple data and very choppy voice capability that only worked outside, not inside. And as you know, in the 10 years it took them to put their system up, the cell phone market went from something that you would see in a TV show or a movie to something that everybody had in their pocket by the turn of 2000. They totally missed that market. All of those companies, Kistler, Kelly Space, and the others, essentially went bankrupt because they had no customers, and therefore they had no investors. Kistler had already spent $600 million, but in the end, they had no money and no investors.\\n\\n Alt Access came about before that had all collapsed completely to say, “Okay, if people are doing all these commercial things, how can we use that capability? How could we help that capability?” It didn’t work out, but by 2004 and 2005 people were starting to say, “Yes, but they still have the technology, and companies have the ability to do these things. They don’t have the money. What if we gave them the money to demonstrate it?”\\n\\n That $400 million that Steidle was thinking about for a nontraditional crew activity, Orbital Space Plane, which would be a similar capability they were talking about doing for $5 to $10 billion. You’re talking about an order of magnitude less, in dollars, saying, “If we could demonstrate something like that with that kind of money, then it would be worthwhile to do it.”\\n\\n At the same time, you had Scaled Composites [LLC] win the [Ansari] X Prize with SpaceShipOne in 2004. You had three flights of that SpaceShipOne, which was the first private spacecraft to put people in space. It was suborbital, but it showed that you could do it for very limited funding. [Elbert L.] “Burt” Rutan and Scaled Composites spent $26 to $27 million on SpaceShipOne and the carrier aircraft, and they flew it into space three times in 2004.\\n\\n That had a large impact on NASA’s thinking as well. That said, “Okay, if you can do that for $27 million, then orbital you might be able to do for an order of magnitude more, $300 or $400 million.” It wouldn’t have the safety and everything that was needed to do the transfer to the Station, but let’s demonstrate that first, and then let’s go do the real activity after that. I think that had a lot of impact on the O’Keefe-Steidle part of NASA, and then Mike Griffin picked up on that later." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were working on the Vision for Space Exploration, were the commercial efforts to support that Vision of going to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ll give you a different paradigm. It was a stepping stone mentality, and I think the Vision document, NSPD [National Security Presidential Directive]-31 [U.S. Space Exploration Policy], actually says “stepping stone.” The Moon is a stepping stone elsewhere, and LEO was the stepping stone to get to the Moon. We’ve been in LEO with Shuttle, we’ve been in LEO now with Station, we know how to do that.\\n\\n The idea was that NASA would only be doing the exploration activities. They’d finish the Station and use it to develop capabilities for exploration, but eventually they would only be doing exploration. All of low-Earth orbit activities, which were more routine, would become private sector and international activities. The private sector, the commercial activities, would definitely support exploration, but it wasn’t about the act of exploration necessarily.\\n\\n If the Station was used for developing exploration capabilities, then support of the Station with people and cargo would be supporting that. But it wasn’t, “Let’s take the commercial sector and get people to the Moon to support exploration, or get cargo to the Moon to support exploration, or put the elements of the exploration architecture in low-Earth orbit.” The CEV and other things, that’s what I mean by support.\\n\\n It was also specifically to drive other activities in low-Earth orbit, meaning non-government space activities. People flying in space that weren’t the few select chosen by the government and paid for by the government. Other people flying. Once you have other people in space, people do lots of things, and a larger economy of people flying in space will make NASA’s activities more cost effective and let them do the actual real exploration activities. That’s safer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that when the Council of Economic Advisors got involved in some of the communications, people felt that the commercial sector was ready to move into this level of operation. Can you give us an example of why the framers believed that was a true statement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think there’s probably three things for that. Number one was the private sector was the one always building space systems for the U.S. From the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo [Programs], it was always a contractor-built system. The government acted as the integrator, or the owner and the operator, but even with the Shuttle the operations were turned over to the private sector. There’s no doubt that the industrial capability existed, and the intellectual capability existed in the private sector. It was always a question of, certainly at the price point that government did it, there was no commercial activity to be done. Nobody was going to be building and operating a Space Shuttle to fly people in space on a completely full-cost accounting basis, because it was just too expensive.\\n\\n SpaceShipOne was big, but the late-’90s space companies, those activities were also important in showing that. The Iridiums and Globalstars, even them, what they showed was that space did not have to cost what it cost the government. While the 30 years of Shuttle history was the cost per seat and per pound going up, and safety wasn’t really improving, the opposite would be true if you brought the private sector in because that was true in every other sphere of the economy, historically. Productivity benefits from competition, and quality benefits from competition. Safety and cost for human spaceflight should benefit from competition as well. Those were really the big things out there.\\n\\n Frankly, this is going to sound harsh—as a lot of things I say sound harsh—but everything the government had tried with NASA, the White House, elsewhere—everything that had been tried in terms of replacing the Shuttle had failed. Not necessarily because of technology, although technology was a big part of it, but the government never saw it through. National Aero-Space Plane [Rockwell X-30] in the ’80s, [Lockheed] X-33, Orbital Space Plane, SLI [Space Launch Initiative]—SLI and Orbital Space Plane were about the same time as Columbia and then the Vision.\\n\\n We had been trying to replace the Shuttle for a long time, and you couldn’t have two things at the same time. You couldn’t have the Shuttle and have the funding to replace it. In the development of the Vision, that’s what led to the gap between the Shuttle and what would come after it, the Crew Exploration Vehicle. That was a presidential decision; that decision went all the way up to President Bush.\\n\\n Sean O’Keefe made a last-minute request for additional funds so that there would be no gap, but the amount of money that he was requesting to eliminate that gap, which then was a four-year gap, 2010 to 2014, was $27 billion. That was $5 to $6 billion a year over the development period, which at that time was about a 30 percent to 40 percent budget increase for NASA. It just wasn’t going to happen, ever.\\n\\n The magnitude of the problem is framed by that issue. You can’t do two things at once. The Vision had to say, “End the Shuttle and then build something new.” That led to the gap, which then, consequently, led to the need for something like COTS." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Rebecca, you want to switch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, I did jot down a couple of thoughts. First, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about your background. Specifically, how you first became interested and involved in commercial space and its potential to do space travel more cost-effectively than the government?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I went to the first Shuttle launch [STS-1] when I was a kid. I grew up in Florida, so I’ve been a space geek since I was 13. Fortunately, I also got to see the last Shuttle launch and the last Shuttle landing [STS-135]. I got the first launch and the last landing, which was a nice pair of bookends on the program.\\n\\n When you’re inside the government—and I wasn’t inside the government for a long, long time, from ’97 to 2005, but a formative part of my career—what I saw was a program that, again, hadn’t made any improvements in safety. Being at the White House when Columbia happened was—I mean, everybody that was involved with the program has their own experience with that accident.\\n\\n It was really a profound experience, having to explain to people that day, in the White House situation room—like the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, who became Secretary of State, Governor [Thomas J.] Ridge, who was Homeland Security Advisor, the Science Advisor [John H. Marburger]—simple questions about the astronauts on the Station. Were they stranded there, could they get home, what do we think the cause was, what does this mean for the space program? All those things. It was a very clarifying moment in time.\\n\\n One of the things that had bedeviled the program for a long time was the cost of the Shuttle, balanced by safety. There had just been wiring issues with the Shuttle, it was suffering from age, the program had tried to become more operational to lower cost. Cost was always an issue. What the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB] showed—they said, “You’ve got to recertify it, will cost you about $10 billion. Or you have to retire it after a certain amount because it’s just not going to be operational.” They also said, “It’s just a flawed system the way it is.”\\n\\n There was a moment in time that said, “We have to do something different.” If you don’t do something different, the next time there’s an accident it’ll reflect back on that President. The CAIB said to the President, “This is not your fault. It’s the fault of 30 years of administrations at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue [White House and U.S. Capitol] and lack of a vision, but if you don’t fix it now it’ll be your fault ten years from now, long after you’re gone.” That was clarifying for the political environment.\\n\\n From a commercial standpoint, I went to the [FAA] Office of Commercial Space Transportation in the late ’90s. I went not really as a huge pro-commercial advocate, but because I was a Russian and foreign launch systems expert. I had been to Russia a bunch in the ’93 to’96 timeframe. I was there before the NASA office got there and everything, and had watched that develop. At the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, I was involved in the policy debates around launch and saw the impact of NASA’s human spaceflight activities and science mission activities on that.\\n\\n When I ended up at the White House, there were lots of discussions about how do we change this paradigm, what is the vision? Those discussions happened before Columbia happened. In fact, when Columbia happened we were in the final stages of putting together the U.S. Space Transportation Policy, which came out as NSPD-40 in December of ’04. Flashback to January of 2003, two years earlier, we were almost done with that policy. We’d worked on it for a couple of years, and it said all the right things about commercial is good, and do commercial, and buy commercial services. There was one open issue, and we had a meeting on the Wednesday before the Columbia accident with the National Security Council Staff and Sean O’Keefe.\\n\\n The open issue was Sean O’Keefe’s insistence that the language in there prohibiting commercialization of the Shuttle be taken out. It was still a law, by Congress, that you couldn’t sell off a Shuttle and commercialize it. There was a real effort by NASA and by Sean O’Keefe to commercialize a Shuttle. There had been a RAND [Research And Development Corporation] study to look at the full-cost accounting of Shuttle. In fact, from OSTP [Office of Science and Technology Policy], I was the COTR [Contracting Officer Technical Representative] of the contract that NASA had funded it through, through the Science and Technology Policy Institute, which is a federally-funded research and development center. It’s operated by IDA [World Bank International Development Association] now, but it was RAND at the time, for OSTP. There had been a real push to commercialize Shuttle.\\n\\n That had been discussed pre-Challenger [STS-51L accident] and then it had been sort of lingering for a while, and Sean O’Keefe was making a big push. This idea of commercial had come back to the fore, and there was a lot of debate about how to do something commercial. Obviously, with the Columbia accident a few days later, the idea of commercializing Shuttles was over forever.\\n\\n That was, ironically, the last open issue for that policy. The policy came out two years later looked, obviously, completely different. There was a palpable sense that commercial was ready, and I think we saw that even before Columbia. I gave you an example of SpaceShipOne before, but that commercial Shuttle effort was another big one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you describe the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation’s role in some of these commercial endeavors, from your perspective when you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure, let’s see. I have a lot of respect for the office. I think they do a good job, but I think they are not a heavyweight, if you will, in terms of the interagency discussions. They are a constant advocate for commercial. At the time Patti [Patricia] Gray Smith was the head of that office, and full disclosure, she was a good friend and remains so. Having someone like her constantly saying, “What about this, what about commercial?” was helpful. It forced everybody to really think about why or why not.\\n\\n Most people would start with “No, we’re not doing that,” but it forced them to at least think about it. Some of those, in that thought process, ended up changing their minds. Certainly Columbia and the process that came out of Columbia ended up changing people’s minds. SpaceShipOne and those sorts of things changed people’s minds.\\n\\n When it came down to the last four months of development of a Vision for Space Exploration, from mid-August to January when it was announced, there was a series of White House meetings led by the National Security Council, called deputies meetings. The deputy secretary of each of the departments, led by the Deputy of the National Security Council, which was Steve [Stephen J.] Hadley at the time, who later became the National Security Advisor.\\n\\n The Deputy Secretary of Transportation would come to those, and represented the Office of Commercial Space Transportation through that. You also had the Deputy Defense Secretary or one of his designees. The Deputy Secretary of State was Richard [L.] Armitage, who was a big advocate for finishing the Space Station and meeting our international obligations. You had members of the Council of Economic Advisors, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, White House National Economic Council, Domestic Policy Council, and all these others that normally don’t play with space issues.\\n\\n At that level, it had a lot of fresh thought on it because most people around the table were not the ones that had been doing it forever. When you look at NASA and you look at space from the outside, it’s a much different view than those of us from the inside. Somebody would say, “Well, why is government the only one that’s been putting people in space for 50 years?” If you look at the Navy he’d say, “Why is the Navy the only one that has aircraft carriers?” Well, they’re pretty much the only ones who need an aircraft carrier, and if the private sector wanted to develop a huge platform to put planes on, they might go off and do that. Human spaceflight sort of begged that question because everybody wants to go to space.\\n\\n The people sitting around that table grew up thinking, “I watched a man walk on the Moon, and when I get to be that age, I get to fly in space,” but nobody ever got that. There was a huge disconnect, like, why is that? “Well, it’s really complicated.” That didn’t wash. You had these fresh questions coming at it and saying, “Isn’t it time?” Usually it’s, “No, the capability doesn’t exist out there.” Now it was, “Well, wait a minute, the capability could be out there.” That was a big part of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were also involved in the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee. Can you talk about your role in that capacity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "COMSTAC [Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee] is an advisory committee for the FAA administrator and the Secretary of Transportation, so it’s appointed by the Secretary but really reports to the FAA administrator. It is about, let’s say, 20 people from the private sector as a FACA [Federal Advisory Committee Act] advisory committee to the FAA and to AST, the Associate Administrator for [Commercial] Space Transportation.\\n\\n I’ve been on it since 2008. At one point I served as the head of the RLV, or Reusable Launch Vehicle working group for two or three years. It seemed like a long time. They’ve recently changed the working group structure, but I was there for a lot of COTS and for a lot of the commercial crew development.\\n\\n In that capacity, I would say I was a strong advocate for commercial human spaceflight and for NASA to help enable that, and to set it up the right way. To do it with FAA licensing, to do it with funding that was not cost-plus type contracting but actual commercial-type funding, contractual arrangements, and those sorts of things. I think that there was probably 90 percent agreement on COMSTAC for those sorts of things, so my position was certainly not out of sync with the rest of the members, but more to actually put our voice on record as supporting what NASA and the administration were trying to do, and then to improve that.\\n\\n I was also on the NASA Advisory Council. Administrator [Charles F.] Bolden [Jr.] appointed me to the council in October of ’09 I think, and I was on it for two years, until October of ’11. That was when I was the head of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. I was also a consultant for a number of companies. I left the Commercial Spaceflight Federation in June of ’11, and then went full time with Blue Origin in October of ’11, after I left the NASA Advisory Council." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Since you have worked for many years on helping develop commercial space capabilities, what do you see as the barriers to that progress? Both barriers that may have existed that the COTS program helped to break down, and those that still need to be addressed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The biggest barrier and the biggest enabler is NASA. It is a very double-edged sword because while NASA can bring money, and almost all of the companies that are out there need the government money. I would take exception for two companies. One is Blue Origin, where I am, which is funded by Jeff [Jeffrey P.] Bezos from Amazon[.com], and the other is Virgin Galactic, which is funded by Richard [C.N.] Branson and other private investors. Maybe XCOR [Aerospace], which is doing suborbital [tourism] as well.\\n\\n Almost all other companies that are trying to put people into space need the government to fund them to do that, certainly in the near term. I think a company like SpaceX would get there eventually, but everything it’s building is predicated on government investment. They put in $100 to $200 billion of private investment, and they’ve gotten $1 billion-plus from NASA. Even the old EELV [Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle] program was about 80 percent private funding and 20 percent government funding at the time.\\n\\n The biggest enabler there is funding coming from the government, and the reason I say NASA is the biggest block as well is because what comes with that money is two things. It’s requirements that the commercial sector may or may not need, such as, “You’re going to be a lifeboat on the Space Station for six months. You’re going to have one vehicle and it’s going to have to stay on the Station for six months.” Well, if I’m trying to build a space tourism vehicle that takes people up and down, or is a taxi that takes them somewhere up and down, I don’t need the capability to spend six months up there, micro-meteoroid [debris protection] and all that other stuff.\\n\\n That is a capability that only NASA needs and that the private sector wouldn’t do. That one, in and of itself, is not a huge driver, but you add up all the capabilities that NASA wants, and its [Crew Transportation and Services] Requirements Document that they’ve narrowed down to only 250 requirements instead of the 2,000 requirements—granted, they’ve come a long way, but those 250 requirements, or whatever the number really is, have a significant impact.\\n\\n You cannot build a Gemini [capsule] today that had two seats, went up and did the docking, did all the things that NASA really needs. You cannot do that because NASA’s mandated that it must seat four people. A Gemini would not work. NASA, by definition, when it’s bringing the money, the requirements it’s bringing change what the commercial sector can do. It’s probably more cost effective or easier to develop a vehicle that seats two people, like a Gemini, than it is something that seats four people, but NASA’s already said, “You need not apply.”\\n\\n Their requirements for suits—Boeing and the Commercial Crew Program had a very intense dialogue over the need for spacesuits. Boeing and Bigelow said, “We don’t need them.” NASA said, “You must have them.” The requirement wasn’t in there. The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel has said things like, “That’s why we need to go to a cost-plus, requirements-based contracting method, so that we know what we’re buying and we can tell them what we want to do.” Now you’ve changed the whole program and it’s no longer commercial.\\n\\n With NASA, those requirements drive it, and then the contracting, the oversight and insight—so far with the Commercial Crew Program, they’ve stuck to Space Act Agreements. They’ve put requirements out there, but they’re not able to do that beyond this phase. They might do it a little bit beyond this phase, but you can see the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel weigh in and say, “You must have cost-plus contracts.” NASA won’t be able to afford that, and they’ll end up with one company instead of the two. It won’t have competition and it’s what I would refer to as contractor crew, not commercial crew.\\n\\n In the end, that per-seat price for a contractor crew is going to be much higher than the per-seat price would be from a real commercial crew activity. If we’re paying $65 to 70 million for the Russians now—when tourists paid the Russians $20 million—when commercial industry says, “Hey, we can do this for $20 million a seat,” and I know certain company leaders have guaranteed $20 million a seat—that won’t be the case in the end when they can say, “Well, you gave us all these requirements and you made it take so much longer because of the cost-plus nature of it. It took three years longer, cost is three times as much, we’re going to have to charge $60 million not $20 million,” or whatever the math works out to be.\\n\\n Those requirements and the oversight process end up driving the cost per seat much higher and probably eliminating competition. You end up with NASA being the biggest enabler of commercial, because it puts the money in, but then it drives the requirements such that it’s not useful for anybody other than the government, and it’s no longer a commercial capability that gets other people into space beyond the government.\\n\\n If that’s the case, it does still represent a victory on the path towards commercial because it changes the paradigm of NASA-owned-and-operated vehicles, like the Shuttle and Saturn [rocket] and elsewhere, to something where they’re buying, in the end, a commercial service. If that stays part of the program, they’re buying a commercial service, then that means someone later, like Blue Origin or anybody else, can come along with a better mousetrap that’s cheaper and safer and say, “You should be buying services from us, not them,” and there’s a contractual mechanism already in place to do that.\\n\\n The cultural shift inside NASA will have been 75 percent complete, even if you end up with one contractor crew vehicle versus a real commercial activity. To get to fully commercial, the full paradigm shift, to get 100 percent over, you need multiple providers and real services, and NASA being one customer among many." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know we’re at our time limit, but I wanted to ask you if you would—it’s been about ten years since the time you started on the VSE and a lot has happened in that ten years. Can you share with us what you think, where we are in the environment today, how it’s impacting the commercial sector? Especially what you just mentioned about the cultural shift, because I remember reading through the Aldridge Commission report that a cultural shift has to change within NASA to allow this to happen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is a very mixed environment. It has come a long way since the CAIB Report and the Aldridge Commission Report, but I would say that there is a huge cultural war going on still inside NASA. It’s not clear where that will come out. I think you see that not just within NASA, but in the political leadership as well. The Obama administration came in and said, “Constellation is broken,” put the Augustine Commission [Review of United States Human Spaceflight Plans Committee] in place.\\n\\n Norm [Norman R.] Augustine is one of the most well-respected people in the aerospace business, and he said the program was broken. It could be fixed, but with so much more money that it didn’t make sense, and that what should be done was a combination of commercial and exploration, or a different path for exploration. The so-called “Flexible Path.”\\n\\n That set off a huge holy war, if you will, and that fought out on the [Capitol] Hill between the administration’s FY [fiscal year] ’11 budget proposal and the cancellation of Constellation, and culminated with the NASA 2010 Authorization Act, which was supposed to settle the religious war but didn’t. That fight just continues. You see it now with folks on the Hill still wanting to have hearings about why Constellation was cancelled. That literally came out in the last couple of months. There was supposed to be that grand compromise with the 2010 Authorization Act, but it doesn’t seem like that compromise has held.\\n\\n In situations like that, the rank and file within an agency doesn’t know how it’s going to play out and isn’t committed to one or the other. Whether they agree with one or the other, they need strong leadership to go in one direction. That was one thing that Mike Griffin was very good at, saying, “We’re going in this direction, and you’re either with me or you’re against me,” and everybody moved in that direction. That doesn’t exist now, within the Agency or within the political structure.\\n\\n From the administration’s standpoint, I think they feel like they came in, they tried to do the right thing, even though it would be politically unpopular—just like the Bush administration with the Vision was just trying to do the right thing and they didn’t think it was going to be politically popular. This administration now basically doesn’t want anything else to do with space. Like, “Don’t mention another problem with NASA, because it’s not an easy solution.” There just isn’t political consensus, and I think that’s holding the Agency back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything else you would like to add, or anything else you thought of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn’t mention about the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. We started as the Personal Spaceflight Federation in the 2005 to 2006 timeframe. It was really companies like Virgin Galactic and the X Prize Foundation and Scaled Composites, XCOR, Armadillo [Aerospace], folks like that that wanted to do human spaceflight, but it was really more suborbital focused. Then SpaceX was on board with an orbital system. It was the Personal Spaceflight Federation because it was about people getting into space. Like you have a personal computer, it’s personal spaceflight.\\n\\n We changed the name in 2008 to Commercial because that really had become the theme around which all of our activities—they’re still about human spaceflight, but the word “spaceflight” to us in the community means people. You don’t talk about spaceflight from a satellite. You talk about a spacecraft with a satellite, but when you say “spaceflight” to us, it means humans. Commercial meant really private spaceflight, non-governmental spaceflight, so commercial was really the word.\\n\\n That was the 2008 timeframe, when this whole debate over COTS [Capability] D [commercial crew option] and what became Commercial Crew [Program] was just starting. I didn’t lose faith in the COTS program, but I thought it had sort of cut the baby in half by only doing cargo and not doing people. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation—which I did part-time, it was a 15 to 20 percent job for me and I worked X Prize during that time, I consulted a lot as well—for me, it was always about getting people in space.\\n\\n COTS D, I remember pushing Mike Griffin to try and do commercial crew in the 2008 timeframe as a way of basically saying, “It’s going to happen anyway, but if you want it to be your legacy, you should fund it while you’re still here.” But he was convinced he was going to be here anyway, and he thought it was such a threat to Constellation that he couldn’t do it. I think that that is a real shame because he did start the COTS program and put real money behind it. Commercial is his legacy, but commercial crew is definitely not his legacy because he fought it tooth and nail.\\n\\n The Obama administration, in the transition, when those folks came in they picked up that idea and ran with it. It was much more of a Republican [political party], free trade, free market idea, and you wouldn’t expect it coming from a Democratic administration, but these guys were on board.\\n\\n There were a couple of people that were critical of that. One was a guy named Jim [James] Kohlenberger who became the Chief of Staff at OSTP in the Obama administration. The other was Lori [B.] Garver, who was the space person for the transition team and had worked the campaign. What’s important about them is that both of them had prior experience at the high levels of the space program. Lori as a policy person in the latter [President William J.] Clinton years, over here at NASA, and Jim Kohlenberger had been Vice President [Albert A.] Gore’s science guy for all eight years in the Clinton-Gore administration.\\n\\n Vice President Gore had the space portfolio, so he did all the work with negotiating with the Russians, was very involved in that. Saving the Space Station, reorienting NASA towards completing that, all the budget overruns that went through, the Hubble [Space Telescope] science missions and that sort of thing. They both came in with preconceived notions about what was not working with NASA, and then were presented with a Constellation Program that was so far over budget and was never going to get there. They said something had to be done, and I think, to their credit, they put it to a commission like the Augustine Commission, where they didn’t stack the deck.\\n\\n By putting someone like Norm Augustine at the top, I would have thought you were guaranteeing it to never say anything good about commercial, because he was not known for that. I think the chips fell where they did because of the magnitude of the problem. I think the legacy of commercial crew comes from them. The legacy of COTS comes from Mike Griffin, but crew wouldn’t have happened without them. From a Commercial Spaceflight Federation standpoint, we worked very hard to support the Commercial Crew [Development] Programs, CCDev 1 and CCDev 2, and the whole Commercial Crew Program. Lobbying up on the Hill as well. Working with the Hill and working with the folks at NASA against very significant companies that were working as hard or harder to kill it. The fact that the program exists at all is kind of a miracle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A story for another time. I’ll let you go, but we sure appreciate it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Hackler", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you very much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bretton Alexander", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We learned a lot, thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00147", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2020-040.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Kelly, Nancy A. (1979-1981): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2020-040", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2020-040", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Nancy A. Kelly served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea from 1979 to 1981 on a maternal-child health (MCH) project. She did her basic training in Chuncheon and Seoul as part of the first MCH group sent to Korea. She worked in the health center in Goseong under the supervision of a senior Korean midwife, who had been trained by the Japanese during the occupation in World War II. During her two years of service, Kelly helped deliver over 1,000 babies. She later established a career in public health as the executive director of Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO). Upon a return visit to her Korean community, many of her now-adult \"delivered babies\" came with their families to welcome her and thank her for her service. Interviewed and recorded by Russell E. Morgan Jr., December 10, 2019. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "10 December 2019", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 59 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "047. Korea (South).", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Korea (South). Kelly, Nancy A. (1979-1981): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "South Korea", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2020-040", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2020-040-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/56xm5bjus7y0r6uh5le5jt0lv2pdix6m.pdf?odc=20240104074012-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/0d6a5d86-59b4-4e9a-b3a2-fa05e5fc8092/b9d70aa3-93fa-4b87-8a6d-62ac3d8f6737/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI4ODFfNjdiNWZlMDVlNGVlNzFjMWRlOWU4ZTRlYmUyYzAxMjI2MDg3ZmRiMWVjMDEwNjkxNzdlNWI4OGNhMTMwZmI2OV8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS8wZDZhNWQ4Ni01OWI0LTRlOWEtYjNhMi1mYTA1ZTVmYzgwOTIvYjlkNzBhYTMtOTNmYS00Yjg3LThhNmQtNjJhYzNkOGY2NzM3L21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Washington, D.C.", + "length": "44 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed February 4, 2020, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Nancy A. Kelly Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Russell E. Morgan Jr." + ], + "respondents": [ + "Nancy A. Kelly" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:03", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is December 10th, 2019. This is Russell Morgan. And I'm interviewing Nancy Kelly, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in South Korea from April 1979 to September 1981. And during that period, she served as a maternal and child health worker. Welcome, Nancy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, Nancy, tell us a little bit about where you're, where you were from in the United States and how did you hear about the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was born actually just a few blocks from here over at GW. So I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:00:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Here being D.C.?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:00:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "D.C. My dad was with the State Department. And at the grand age of two, we moved overseas to Thailand. So that was the first of several countries that I lived in as a kid. And when I first heard about Peace Corps was overseas when we were actually living in Bogota. And my dad would occasionally bring Peace Corps volunteers home to dinner, he would see them in the embassy or wherever. And he always said they looked hungry. And so he would bring them home to dinner. And two or three that I remember having dinner with. And I just thought they were such interesting, wonderful people. And so at the grand age of eight or nine, I announced that I was going to grow up and be a Peace Corps volunteer. And my father said, well, that's a nice two year strategy. But, you know, it's not a lifetime career, which was a bit of a shock. And I said, oh, okay. So I have to have some other plans too.\n\nSo that's how I first heard about it. And I really was, it became a family joke, but I was really serious. I did want to do the Peace Corps from a very young age." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you finished undergraduate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I finished undergraduate at the University of Virginia. One of my professors there was in what we call K-1. So we each had a group number. So he was K-1. He was in the first group to go to Korea, he and his wife. And he knew that I had lived in Korea as a kid. One of the other countries that I lived in was Korea. And so at the end of my time at UVA, I talked to him about whether I should do a Fulbright or join the Peace Corps. And he suggested that either would actually be fine. So I started out by applying to the Fulbright and getting rejected and, but I had my application into the Peace Corps the next day. So it all worked out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what did you major in in undergrad or sort of undergraduate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "History." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:02:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "History?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:02:41", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:02:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah. So what was your reaction when you were accepted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:02:48", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I was delighted. Well, actually, I mean, it was a bit of a process because they kept calling me and offering me places in South America. I think Ecuador was one. I can't remember exactly where, they offered me a couple of postings. And I said, well, actually, I was really interested in going to Asia. I had, most of my history courses at UVA were Asian. So I'd taken every single Asian history course they had. And I really wanted to go back to Korea. In those days, you didn't really get to ask, but I basically told the recruiter at one point. I said, I'd really like to go to Korea. And he said, well, and he started looking at my list of countries that I lived in as a kid. And Korea was towards the end of the list. He said, oh my God, you lived there? I said yes. And he said and, you know I don't know that the Peace Corps would particularly like to hear this, but his comment was, well, no one wants to go to Korea. And I said, well, I do.\n\nAnd he said, well, we have a group going in nine months. Can you wait? And I said, yes, I can. I had a job where they said, you know, stay as long as you want. So I, you know, six or seven months later, I got the call. Yes, they're putting together the group. It's going to be a health group. And they were going to put me in maternal child health. And so I thought, well, this is going to be a steep learning curve. Asian history to maternal child health. But I said yes. And, you know, and I was on the plane and out the door. And what's interesting is in my group, which I think we were about 50 people, there were five of us who lived in Korea as kids and all of us asked to go back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:04:26", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think interested you when you were an undergraduate or before then in Korea and in Asian studies background? Can you, have you ever teased out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:04:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Why? No, no. I always liked history as a kid. I mean, I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:04:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:04:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I could tell you everything there was to know about the British monarchy. And then I branched out a little bit beyond that. Life was more interesting than Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots. But, um, I don't know. I don't, I don't know that I could tell you. I know that I felt very, I mean, I lived in Cambodia, Thailand, Korea over the years, and I felt very comfortable in those countries. I didn't feel so comfortable in some of the other countries we lived in. For example, in Colombia, I didn't feel all that comfortable." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:05:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why so?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:05:17", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was a security concern." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:05:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, it was security. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:05:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, even back in the sixties, I was never allowed to be alone because of concern that I could be kidnapped so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:05:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is drug cartel or that kind of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:05:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was really before the drug cartels." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:05:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:05:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was '60, '63, '64." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:05:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:05:36", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And there were embassy kids that were. I remember there was at least 18 year old boy that was kidnapped. So as you can imagine, a nine year old girl was not going to be left alone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:05:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:05:46", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So and that was oppressive. Whereas, you know, in Thailand now, I don't remember this, but the family story is that at three years of age, I knew all the neighbors and I knew who was the good cook. And I would go visit in the afternoon for snacks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:06:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Smart." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:06:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Speaking Thai. And my parents had no idea I was doing any of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:06:08", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very smart. Very smart. So there were 50 people in your group when it first started out. Actually, where did you do your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:06:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We, we did three days in San Francisco, sort of what they call staging I think. And a few people were disinvited and then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:06:24", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, they had deselect or whatever, disinvited was the term?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:06:28", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Disinvited. And then we got on the plane and flew to Korea. And we were trained in a town called Chuncheon, which is 3 hours east of, well, now it's an hour and a half. But in those days, it was 3 hours east of Seoul. Now, in the K-1 era, my professor, for him it was a three day trip. So he got there in 1966 and a trip from Seoul to Chuncheon was three days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:06:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Three days. Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:06:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So what were the rest stops for us on the three hour trip were the places that you spent the night, which was really kind of amazing when I realized that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:07:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so do you all live in family, with families, or how did that work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:07:09", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We, most of us lived with families. I think there were, there were a couple of married couples who I think ended up staying in local inns, but we lived with families. Well, I did my training there for a month. And then the second part, the second eight weeks or something, those of us in maternal child health were moved to Seoul. And we went, we did our training at the Family Planning Center in Seoul. We were the first maternal child health volunteers in many, many years. And so they, they, the training was brand new. And unfortunately, some of it was kind of irrelevant. We had a lot of sessions on malnutrition in Africa, which we found kind of confusing. But during that, when we were in Seoul, we actually lived in inns, local inns right near the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:08:08", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Neat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:08:08", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The center. The inns, the local inns also had sort of business going on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:08:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:08:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Short term, hourly kind of business. It was kind of interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:08:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You picked up on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:08:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did. We picked up on it. We learned to play cards with these women. And, um, it was, it was an interesting sort of intersection of different lives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:08:34", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I'm sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:08:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were delightful. I mean, you know, you know, but it's sort of the strange thing where they couldn't quite figure out what the heck we were doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:08:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:08:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, why would we come to live in this place, you know, and, and we're sort of sitting there going, wow, figuring it out, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:08:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why are we? Well, maybe you could practice some of your MCH skills there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:08:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So anyways." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:08:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that was how long in total?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:09:01", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had 12 weeks of training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:09:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Twelve weeks, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:09:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the big challenges was because they hadn't been training maternal child health volunteers at all, if ever. I think they had some back in the sixties. But they gave us all the wrong language, so they trained us as though we were going to be interacting with well educated women in Seoul and we were being sent to the country. And so literally the language that we learned for interacting with women who are pregnant or with mothers about vaccinations for their children, the language was all wrong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:09:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So are there just different dialects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:09:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. It has to do with, um, status." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:09:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, really?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:09:46", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And status between the people who are speaking." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:09:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:09:49", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I was 23 years old and unmarried and female, so that was one level of influence on the language. And who I was speaking to, if it was an older man, that would necessitate certain language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:10:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:10:07", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If it was a younger girl, that would be different language. You know, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So you have to learn all the honorifics and the high form and the low form. And then there is dialect, satoori they call it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:10:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:10:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And when you're out in the country, you really have to be able to speak to the people in the language that they use. And we were totally unprepared." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:10:26", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is Korean difficult to learn? I mean, you had the background of having lived there, so you had a?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:10:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I mean, what I retained from having lived there as a kid was minimal. Hello. Thanks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:10:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So but as a group then, did your group pick up Korean and this, these subtleties you're talking about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:10:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was, that's 12 weeks of language training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:10:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did it, huh, just like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:10:48", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, it was tough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:10:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must have been very tough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:10:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They used something called the silent method, which meant the teacher said nothing, which of course was a real challenge. We were not allowed to have paper, pencils, books, anything in the classroom. We had these little sticks called mategis, and they were different colors, different lengths, and the teacher would use them as sort of, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:11:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Little props?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:11:18", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Props." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:11:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:11:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And believe it or not, we, we learned the language that way. Interestingly enough, my understanding is that this is now being used as language training even in the States now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:11:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No kidding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:11:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it's, um, very frustrating. But you do learn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:11:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It forces you. Yeah, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:11:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, exactly. It forces you. And of course, if you're living with families or hookers or whatever, every day you go home and you say something more and, and everyone was so excited to hear you start to put a sentence together." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:11:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:11:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it's all positive reinforcement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:11:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that's nice. So out of the 50 or so that started, do they all, did all those complete? Or what did it look like at the end of your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:12:01", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We probably had 25. I don't know at the end of two years. We had 25 at the end of training. We probably lost four." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:12:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:12:09", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Four or five. Several of them were in maternal child health and they were the older women who just really couldn't handle the squat toilets." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:12:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the cultural stuff like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:12:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sleeping on the floor. And the language, they just were blown away by the language. They were blown away by the silent method. Just I remember this one woman. I was in a class with her and she just, you know, threw up her hands. I think she had a piece of paper and the teacher told her she couldn't have that. And she threw it up and she said, I don't know what I'm doing here. And she was gone the next day so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:12:42", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That clarified it for her. Well. So overall, you were pretty well trained. I mean, even though some things were for Africa and so on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:12:55", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, well, I think we were well trained in that we, we had a basic language. We could get around, we could navigate. We had a lot of cross- cultural training, which I think was very, uh, very much on target. That was pretty much arranged and organized by volunteers who are finishing up their service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:13:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:13:17", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they really had a good sense of what we needed as skill sets." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:13:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:13:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And, um, and then, you know, it was the luck of the draw in terms of where you were assigned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:13:27", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So where were you assigned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:13:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was assigned down on the south coast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:13:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:13:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Goseong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:13:34", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the name again?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:13:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Goseong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:13:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Goseong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:13:36", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We spelled it in my day K-O-S-O-N-G. It's, they've changed all the transliteration. But anyways, a small town, basically the intersection of two dirt roads." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:13:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many people roughly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:13:51", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "20,000." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:13:51", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "20,000." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:13:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now, my first site though, and I guess I should have said this first. I was, when we, when we get to town, there was another volunteer who was assigned to the same town. My maternal child health center was 13 kilometers outside of this Goseong, which was a two and a half hour bus ride on a really rough little road. And that was a really small little intersection. 70 people. And I remember, and it was a traditional Korean style house with a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:14:24", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is the MCH center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:14:26", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the MCH center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:14:27", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the name of the town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:14:28", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh, Sangni, S-A-N-G-N-I. And it was a town of 70 people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:14:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that's where you basically spent your?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:14:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's where I thought I was spending my two years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:14:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, where you thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:14:41", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I remember walking around. There was a little creek and these two dirt roads and a school and the maternal child health center. And that was about it. And I remember walking around thinking, what the hell have you done, Nancy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:14:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well, you didn't make the Fulbright." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:14:58", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And there was a doctor there at the center, at the, at the health center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:15:04", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. A Korean doctor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:15:05", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Korean doctor, Dr. Kim and his wife. They were from Seoul. And they were as out, you know, to sea as I was. I mean, they were from Seoul. They, they were sitting there going, oh my God. You know, they had never been to the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:15:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was he a government doctor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:15:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Government doctor. They all did a two year rotation training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:15:25", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:15:25", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Lovely couple, a little, two little kids. They had me over to dinner the first week and we had spam, fried spam and Johnnie Walker." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:15:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right at home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:15:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I didn't know it at the time, but that was actually a very expensive meal for them as it was, you know, all black market stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:15:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:15:47", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But they were, they were really sweet. After about a month, I discovered that my health center was moving into Goseong, the main town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:15:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:15:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the end of, in two more months. So I basically only spent three months out in this little place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:16:03", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they reestablished it there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:16:05", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the World Bank built a new maternal child health center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:16:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:16:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In Goseong. And we moved in there and delivered babies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:16:14", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you say we?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:16:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My, my coworker." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:16:17", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so another Peace Corps volunteer or a Korean?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:16:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, well, the other Peace Corps volunteer, Linda, who also had the same background I did. She was State Department and had lived in Seoul. So Linda was assigned in Kosong in the tuberculosis program. I was out in Sangni with the maternal child health program working with a midwife. So we actually delivered babies out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:16:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, did you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:16:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, out in the countryside. We delivered maybe 15 or 20 a month. When we moved into Goseong into our new delivery center, it got, it immediately went up to more like 30 to 40 a month. And then sometimes we had bumper months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:16:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "30 or 40 a month?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:16:55", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then there were the months where we had 60. Mrs. Choe would always be really tired at the end of those months because she was on. She lived at the center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:17:05", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mrs. Choe is who?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:17:06", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mrs. Choe is the midwife." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:17:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, she's the midwife. You were under her supervision?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:17:09", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:17:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or whatever. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:17:11", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mrs. Choe, C-H-O-E. But spelled, but pronounced \"che.\" She was a midwife. She was about 60 years old. She had been trained, um, by the Japanese during the occupation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:17:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:17:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. One of the interesting things that she said to me was, can you get me a book on midwifery in Korean? Because she only had books that were in Japanese." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:17:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:17:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, um, so anyways, I, you know, my language was pretty bad because I couldn't really talk to the women. I had to learn all the new language. But she was on 24/7, so she needed help. And she taught me how to assist her in the delivery room. She taught me how to do the intake interviews and the language. And I got better the more I did it. And then I finally got to the point where my language was good enough that I could go to all the schools in our county and do health education. So Linda, the other volunteer and I went out to all the schools, all the middle schools and all the high schools, and gave talks on health care, sanitation, nutrition. Linda would talk about tuberculosis and some of the symptoms. We'd make a pitch for the health centers as a place to go. And then, of course, we always had to do the English. They wanted to speak English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:18:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you do family planning?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:18:41", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did. We were just really quite successful. We didn't do family planning as an explicit program, but within maternal child health." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:18:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:18:49", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was part of the discussion with the mothers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:18:51", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was included?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:18:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:18:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you also hand out contraceptives or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:18:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not at the maternal child health center." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:18:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did the, I mean, if you educated them about this, where did they have to go then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:19:02", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They probably went over to where Linda was, which had a broader range of services." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:19:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:19:07", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was a half a block away. But now, of course, Korea. I was back there for a revisit that the Korean government sponsored and there was this joke about how you volunteers were too successful because, you know, they have a very steep decline in the birth rate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:19:21", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You got the message across." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:19:24", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They blame it all on Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:19:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had a, when you were in the city there, did you have, stay with the family or do you? How was, what were your housing like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:19:36", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The housing. So when I, when I was out in Sangni, out in the very tiny place, I lived at the center and I just had a room right there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:19:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this Linda lived with you or nearby?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:19:48", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Linda was in Goseong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:19:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, she was. But when you came back in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:19:51", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I came back in, I was, I started. My first family was a Jehovah's Witness family, which didn't mean a thing to me, but it didn't work out well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:20:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:20:02", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mainly because at some point we had this conversation and they told me I was a sig-injong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:20:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sig-injong." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:20:08", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so I'm sitting there with my dictionary. You never went anywhere without your dictionary. And I'm like, I must be, I must be misunderstanding. So I asked them to write the word for me, and I said, oh my God, I'm not misunderstanding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:20:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they Korean or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:20:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were Korean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:20:21", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were Korean Jehovah's Witnesses. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:20:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And sig-injong means a cannibal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:20:24", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A cannibal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:20:25", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. So I'm like trying to figure this out. And then I realized that because I had said I was Catholic and you eat the body." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:20:34", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The body of Christ." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:20:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I was like, this isn't going to last. So I went to the." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:20:42", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Clash of cultures." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:20:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was, it was, I felt uncomfortable, shall we say. And I think they did too as a matter of fact." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:20:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:20:49", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were saying something by telling me that. So I, the next day at work, I said to Mrs. Choe, I'd like to move someplace. Do you have any suggestions? And I knew that Linda actually wanted to move as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:21:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:21:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So Mrs. Choe, being Mrs. Choe, picked up the phone and called people. And we had a place together with a family the next week or two. He worked for the government, so he was, worked for the city government." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:21:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So he had access." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:21:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that's how Mrs. Choe knew him. And basically we had two rooms off to the side of a house that's called the chacheche, which is a fairly common housing arrangement, or at least it was 35 years ago, where, you know, it's like a mother-in-law suite or something. So they had these two rooms that were to be let and we had a little kitchen area and that's where we lived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:21:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's alright." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:21:42", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:21:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So tell us. And you were there two years, correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:21:48", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:21:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there some, or can you relate one or two really unusual experiences that you, that stand out during those two years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:21:58", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. Yeah. I mean, it's. I remember the time that we were at home visiting. Linda and I did a lot of home visiting. There were these subcounty health workers. And so we would make arrangements to go out and meet a subcounty health worker. Family planning and tuberculosis were usually the two workers that we would go home visiting with. And then we would go generally to all the tuberculosis patients' houses. And then occasionally I'd see a pregnant woman, which would be very exciting.\n\nBut there was this one day that we were out walking along the street, and one street is more like is a dirt road. And all of a sudden these men came out of this warehousey looking kind of building, and they were, they were like, you're, you're from the health center, right? And we're like, yes. Well, come, come, come! Do you have a stethoscope? Yes. And I did. And so we go in and there's a man on the floor. Well, they said, you need to pronounce him dead. I'm like, okay. So I turned to the health worker and she looked at me. She said, you got a stethoscope, I'm not touching him. So I went over and took his blood pressure and he indeed had passed away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:23:13", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, he in fact had?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:23:14", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He had. They wanted me to. So I actually." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:23:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, this is odd." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:23:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had to go to the county office before we left that day and I had to sign some papers saying that he was dead. That's kind of unusual for maternal child health." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:23:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You try to bring them in, not take them out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:23:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then there were, I mean, home visiting was just wonderful. I mean, you just had these incredible opportunities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:23:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:23:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There was a woman, she was probably in her eighties, lived all by herself in the, on the side of a hill with an outhouse down the hill a bit. Her house was absolutely immaculate. Everything was immaculate. And she, she said, she told me to come and sit next to her on the, they have something called a mattu, which is a wooden floor. We might call it like a porch. And she said, come and sit by me. And then she just started talking about she couldn't believe I came all the way from America to see her. And I couldn't bring myself to tell her, well actually, you're not pregnant, so you're not the person I came to see. But, you know, she was just so excited that these two Americans had come and she just wanted to have a little social." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:24:32", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Social. Yeah. Good for her." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:24:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so we did for a little while." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:24:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:24:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so you had a lot of those kind of interactions. A lot of, I had a lot of times where when I did find a pregnant woman, I really needed to talk to the mother-in-law, because in Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:24:49", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The mother-in-law?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:24:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The mother-in-law traditionally births the babies." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:24:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:24:55", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So what I needed to do was to convince the mother-in-law that our health center and our midwife was the best." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:25:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:25:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And the good news was that my midwife was actually excellent. So I could do that with a with a clear conscience. And if I could tell that the mother-in-law wasn't being persuaded by my argument, then I would come back with a kit, a birthing kit, to make sure that everything was clean and that she understood not to use the knife from the kitchen and that kind of stuff. But I persuaded a lot of mothers-in-law." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:25:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:25:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were like, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:25:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So over the two years, how many babies would you guess you delivered? Well, ballpark." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:25:42", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh. I would, I would phrase it that I assisted because Mrs. Choe took the lead, except for one time when we had three women delivering simultaneously. That was, that was a bad day. Um. I would say we averaged, what, between the 30 and the 60, probably go with 40 a month. So 24 months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:26:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What would that be? Uh, 12 months, four 12s, forty. Like 500? So if you double that, a thousand. So you figure there's 1,000 young people over there who can say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:26:17", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. When I went back, I took Michael and we went back in '80 just after HVO [Health Volunteers Overseas] got started. And I was walking down the streets of Goseong, and mothers were coming and picking up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:26:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And showing you their baby." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:26:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You delivered this one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:26:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How lovely. How lovely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:26:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that as really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:26:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's very satisfying. I mean, that's the same as a doctor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:26:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And they remembered that I had been there. And Michael was, you know, he was kind of amazed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:26:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Blown away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:26:46", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I said, well, I was the only white woman in the room, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:26:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You stood out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:26:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some interesting deliveries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:26:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to say, do you have any like breaches or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:26:58", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, yeah, we had, we had a woman who came in and she, she had a baby. And then I looked at Mrs. Choe and I said, well, she's still pregnant. And Mrs. Choe hauled off and slugged me and said, you, you fool. And I was like, well, what did I do wrong? She said, there's another one in there. I said, oh my God. The good news was that it wasn't breach so we got the second baby out. But that's always a problem with twins, is the possibility of breach." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:27:22", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:27:24", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did have a young lady and this was, this was a sad story. A young lady came in, she was probably 14, and she had been raped. Probably by someone in her family, that was never made clear to me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:27:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:27:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But she had hidden her pregnancy and she walked into the center with her very pregnant older sister. And I immediately went to get the older sister to take her into the examining room. And Mrs. Choe, years of experience, said, no, take the girl. And I looked at Mrs. Choe, like? And I was like, well, she knows what she's doing. So I took the girl in and then she started unwrapping. She had, she had wrapped." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:28:08", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "She had tied herself up that tightly?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:28:09", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "00:28:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "00:28:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But Mrs. Choe could see it. I had no idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:28:12", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:28:13", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She delivered the next day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "00:28:15", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Holy mackerel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "00:28:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, she was terrified." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:28:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm sure she was. Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:28:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was one of those things where I realized, wow, Mrs. Choe sees things at a level." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:28:25", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, no, it's many years of experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:28:28", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:28:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "She's not seen at all, but seen more, more than others. Were there any young boys, not young boys, the young men in your group who were in the MCH program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:28:41", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was all female." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:28:42", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was all female?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:28:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All female." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "00:28:44", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "00:28:44", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And most there were in, there were ten of us in the end, and eight of them were in vaccination programs, and two of us worked with a midwife." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "00:28:53", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "00:28:53", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I was always so happy that I worked with a midwife as opposed to the vaccination programs, because all, all that you did if you were in the vaccination program was go to the schools and have children start screaming as soon as they see you because they know it means shots." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "00:29:10", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So while, every once in a while I'm sure you took some kind of time off. Did you have any interesting vacation experiences?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "00:29:18", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. Went to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "00:29:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Uh huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "00:29:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. Planned those right away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "00:29:22", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, you were single at the time, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "00:29:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. We went, Linda and I went over to Kyoto for the Cherry Blossom Festival." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "00:29:32", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, such a beautiful place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "00:29:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And that, you know what was interesting about that? We took the ferry from Pusan, and we met a Japanese student on the ferry, and he just couldn't believe that we were, what we were doing, you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "00:29:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No kidding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "00:29:46", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And when we got off the ferry, we were going to take the bullet train. Well, actually, we were going to take the regular train because we're Peace Corps volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "00:29:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "00:29:54", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To Kyoto." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "00:29:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "00:29:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he came back and he said, I got you tickets. And he said, it's my, my thank you for what you're doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "00:30:03", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "00:30:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he gave us some tickets and he put us on the train and we're going along. And I, I looked at Linda and I said, I think this is the bullet train. And she said, no, he wouldn't have done that. And I said, well, we're going very fast. And it was a bullet train," + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "00:30:17", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How cool." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "00:30:18", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then we went to the, in Kyoto we stayed at the youth hostel. And when we signed in we had Korean youth hostel cards and the guy looked at us and said, well, you're not Korean, how do you have Korean youth hostel cards? And we said, we're Peace Corps in Korea. So he gave us a private room. I mean, it was just amazing. So, it was very nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "00:30:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow, the respect. Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "00:30:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, wonderful time. Then the second year, the second winter, we got smart and went down to Thailand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "00:30:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "00:30:47", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Spent a couple of weeks in Thailand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "00:30:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So no bad experiences and all that, everything was just perfect?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "00:30:54", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "On the vacation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "00:30:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On vacations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "00:30:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. No bad experiences. I mean, it was a little unnerving when I got on the bus in Bangkok to go down to Surat Thani or wherever we went. There were bullet holes, and you're kind of like, in the windows. I was like, okay. So what I decided to do, I had my backpack, which had everything of value. I had it in my lap and I said, okay, if the rebels come on with guns, I'm just handing it to them. You know, be done with it. I'm not making a fight. And there were no rebels that night. So it was good news." + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "00:31:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. So looking back on your two years, what do you think were your main accomplishments, if you had to sort of package it somehow?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "00:31:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there was a moment when I just felt like, you know, this is why I came. Um. There was a young boy in our county who we met one time when we were out home visiting, and I said, a line I used a lot. Are there any children, any sick children? So they brought this little boy who had blue lips, blue fingertips, and he's obviously too small for his age. And the father came with him. And, you know, so I asked a few questions and they, they knew what he had, that he had a hole in his heart, but they just, that was it. They knew that, but they didn't know what else to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "00:32:21", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "00:32:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So that was the beginning of a several month activity of going to Seoul and talking to people and figuring out what he needed and identifying a surgeon. Taking the family, the mother, the father and the five year old boy up to Seoul, which was an experience. I mean, we did the escalators dozens of times because they were so much fun. We did the elevator too. Anyways, we got an idea of what he needed and it was going to cost money. So we organized with some input from another volunteer who had this great idea. She said, I'm going to walk for Sung-mu. And I looked at her and said, well, why don't we just have Peace Corps walk? And she said, yes!\n\nWell, so we had to walkathon. It was the first walkathon in Korea and it was a big deal. And the U.S. Marines at the U.S. embassy wouldn't allow you to go to work until you'd pledged. You know, they had a thing at the front and have you pledged for the walk?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "00:33:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Perfect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "00:33:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we raised all the money. We raised more money than we needed. We had the walk. Some of the Marines came down. All the Peace Corps volunteers in the country came. The local alpine climbing club was there in full outfit. The mayor led off the parade. We got a lot of great press, raised way too much money." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "00:33:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what did that go for, the money?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "00:33:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For the surgery." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "00:33:53", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, it was specifically for this young boy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "00:33:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a surgery for Sung-mu because there was a doctor at Severance who was American trained, could do the surgery, um, and he contributed his services. But there was all the, you know, the hospital bill, etcetera. So, um, it's a good news, bad news. The really bad news is that Sung-mu who did not survive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "00:34:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The operation or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "00:34:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "00:34:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "00:34:21", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He, his heart had, uh, atrophied too much. So that was devastating." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "00:34:30", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I'll bet that was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "00:34:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And especially because this was on national news. So people actually saw this and knew this and that was not so pleasant. But as I said, we did raise a lot of money." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "00:34:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "00:34:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "With the rest of the money, we were able to fund three more children and they all lived. So. And it became an awareness on the part of the public that this could be done in Korea. I think there had always been the assumption that these kids had to go to the U.S." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "00:35:00", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, oh, interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "00:35:02", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it was a realization that the Korean medical." + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "00:35:04", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had their own capacity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "00:35:05", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Had their own capacity. And, um, so from that point of view, it was like, you know, we did, we did something that I think demonstrated to Korea that they had, they had this capacity. And the, the day of the actual walkathon where at the end of the day, when we were back at the health center, one of the health workers said, you know, we could organize something like this in the future if we needed to do that. And I thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "00:35:38", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ding, ding! Ding, ding!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "00:35:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's what I said. That's it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "00:35:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I hear it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "00:35:43", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 312, + "timestamp": "00:35:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've done our thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 313, + "timestamp": "00:35:44", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's success, we can go home now. And that was right at the end. It was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 314, + "timestamp": "00:35:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, that's a nice way to sort of tie it up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 315, + "timestamp": "00:35:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 316, + "timestamp": "00:35:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So as you reflect back on this, um, that's a positive thing. Were there any failures or regrets that you have from your time in the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 317, + "timestamp": "00:36:05", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I think when I first came back, I felt I felt like I was out of step with all of my colleagues. I think we all do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 318, + "timestamp": "00:36:13", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 319, + "timestamp": "00:36:14", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Feel like that two years. Oh my God, everyone got married and finished their law degree and bought a house, for God's sakes, you know? And here I was still at the same place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 320, + "timestamp": "00:36:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 321, + "timestamp": "00:36:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think you feel a little out of sorts. Um. But what I've come to realize over time was that I had experiences that were, you know, incredible. And I caught up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 322, + "timestamp": "00:36:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 323, + "timestamp": "00:36:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, no, I don't, I don't have any, any regrets. I think I learned, uh, I learned a lot about myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 324, + "timestamp": "00:36:46", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 325, + "timestamp": "00:36:46", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I learned how to perhaps be a little bit more patient. You know, because you realize that getting mad or yelling, that's not going to get you what you want. So what do you have to do to get what you want? And, you know, and I think that, that sort of skill and that sort of awareness has helped me a lot with HVO." + }, + { + "turn_id": 326, + "timestamp": "00:37:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Staff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 327, + "timestamp": "00:37:13", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 328, + "timestamp": "00:37:14", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As she runs out screaming. What would you say has been the big impact on your life if you can sort of package it in some way, of your experience in Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 329, + "timestamp": "00:37:30", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think it, it fundamentally changed what I thought I was going to do. I went into Peace Corps absolutely convinced that after my two years I would come back and, and pursue Asian studies, probably Korean history, and get a PhD. I mean, that was the plan." + }, + { + "turn_id": 330, + "timestamp": "00:37:51", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was the plan, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 331, + "timestamp": "00:37:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And for me, going to Korea was part of that plan. This was going to give me an understanding of the culture, etcetera, to move me onto that path. About a year into the assignment, I realized I found this really interesting. And what I found interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 332, + "timestamp": "00:38:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This being what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 333, + "timestamp": "00:38:11", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This working in the health center and working." + }, + { + "turn_id": 334, + "timestamp": "00:38:14", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Working with the people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 335, + "timestamp": "00:38:15", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And what I found interesting was that what we were doing at the, at the field level, they didn't really know about at the, in Seoul, at the, at the ministry level. They didn't have a sense, I didn't think, of some of the issues that we faced. The Minister of Health at the time had a couple of lunches where he invited Peace Corps volunteers to come and have lunch with him because as he said, you'll tell me the truth. And he would just pepper us with questions about what we saw and what we thought the issues were. And I found that really interesting, to realize that I was being a conduit of information as opposed to their having." + }, + { + "turn_id": 336, + "timestamp": "00:38:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "His own." + }, + { + "turn_id": 337, + "timestamp": "00:38:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "His own system that he trusted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 338, + "timestamp": "00:38:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 339, + "timestamp": "00:38:59", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, we had a closet filled with prenatal vitamins that we never gave out because we had to have an inventory that showed we had this inventory. We weren't going to get new ones. So, you know, I mean, so it's this. You know, I mean, it's just not a working system like that. So, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 340, + "timestamp": "00:39:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 341, + "timestamp": "00:39:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I found it really interesting. How do you, how do you get that information? How do you plan a project at a community level when you're in Seoul? How do you find out what's happening, what's working, what's not working? And then I sort of realized at some point that that sounded a lot like public health. So I completely came back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 342, + "timestamp": "00:39:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Shifted gears." + }, + { + "turn_id": 343, + "timestamp": "00:39:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Shifted, and I applied to, what, three or four schools that, the last one being Hopkins. And I, I had the application sitting on my desk for days. I didn't apply because I thought, well, there's just no way. There's absolutely no way someone with a BA in Asian history is going to get into Hopkins. The family I was living with, the gal picked it up, mailed it, because she saw it there. And I said, oh my God, why did you do that? And she said, well, just assumed, sorry. Well, then I got accepted. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 344, + "timestamp": "00:40:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you major in maternal and child health there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 345, + "timestamp": "00:40:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 346, + "timestamp": "00:40:19", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. So it just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 347, + "timestamp": "00:40:21", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They did. They called me in for an interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 348, + "timestamp": "00:40:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 349, + "timestamp": "00:40:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was a whole day. I met the entire department and they were going to start a new master's degree in the department. And in the end, they offered two of us openings. So myself and a woman named Donna Petersen, who is currently the dean at the School of Public Health at the University of South Florida. So the two of us started this program together, and she stayed on and got her ScD." + }, + { + "turn_id": 350, + "timestamp": "00:40:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 351, + "timestamp": "00:40:53", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, yeah. So we were the guinea pigs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 352, + "timestamp": "00:40:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Isn't that wonderful?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 353, + "timestamp": "00:40:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it was definitely, they were aiming at people who weren't coming in with the usual." + }, + { + "turn_id": 354, + "timestamp": "00:41:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 355, + "timestamp": "00:41:03", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Public health background. She had a liberal arts degree and as well as me. And so that was what they were looking for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 356, + "timestamp": "00:41:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On the other hand, you had all that practical experience of having been in a country and seeing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 357, + "timestamp": "00:41:18", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 358, + "timestamp": "00:41:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see yourself then not only going into public health but into the international health side of it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 359, + "timestamp": "00:41:23", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did. I was very interested in the international side of it. And as you know, I interned at NCIH [National Council for International Health]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 360, + "timestamp": "00:41:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 361, + "timestamp": "00:41:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. That being part of my international interest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 362, + "timestamp": "00:41:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 363, + "timestamp": "00:41:36", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I also realized, though, at that time, partly with parents and their needs, etcetera, that I probably wasn't going to be going overseas and living. I think I knew that would be too challenging, especially for my mother. So I was trying to figure out a way where I could still be doing international but basically be stateside. And eventually what it evolved to was HVO, which worked out very nicely in terms of all my touch points. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 364, + "timestamp": "00:42:08", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just a little bit about Peace Corps having these three goals of providing technical assistance, which you've talked about a lot, and then to promote a better understanding of Americans. Do you think you're being in Korea and these rural areas help them understand Americans better?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 365, + "timestamp": "00:42:26", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I do. Do I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 366, + "timestamp": "00:42:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 367, + "timestamp": "00:42:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you know, the joke was, you know how everyone thinks all Koreans look alike. The joke is the Koreans think we all alike. And I remember saying to one of my colleagues, how can you think that they're tall people, short people, red hair. And they said, no, you all look alike. He said, But. But this was the end of my service. He said, I've now met a lot of your friends and I know you. And he said, I now see you as people. So, I mean, he really he was being very sincere when he said. And I think that's that what is what happens. You become real and suddenly all the assumptions that people have. I remember inviting a whole group of women over to our little two room, and they come in and they're looking through everything. They're looking to see how where the clothes are and, you know, opening things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 368, + "timestamp": "00:43:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not modest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 369, + "timestamp": "00:43:29", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not, not shy at all. And they were like, Oh, you're so clean. Well, yeah. What do you mean? Well, you fold things. Well, yeah. Would you expect that wasn't what they were? They would. They didn't know what to expect, but they we were more organized and cleaner and ready than they thought. And, you know, and it was kind of like you didn't you didn't know if you should be upset or happy. You know, you passed inspection. Why would they think we wouldn't be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 370, + "timestamp": "00:43:58", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right. So looking back now at Peace Corps and where you are now, what do you think have been some of the longer term impacts resulting from your being in the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 371, + "timestamp": "00:44:14", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, for me personally?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 372, + "timestamp": "00:44:15", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For you personally." + }, + { + "turn_id": 373, + "timestamp": "00:44:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, certainly my career choice. I think without Peace Corps, maybe the circumstances would have. Well, I would probably have never gone into public health and then that whole chain of activities wouldn't have happened. But I think that what I'm doing here at HVO is to a large extent impacted by the lessons I learned in Peace Corps. I think volunteers can be useful, but I think you can't just throw a volunteer out there. You have to, you have to get the right volunteer. You have to design the project. You have to know what is expected of them. You have to provide support to them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 374, + "timestamp": "00:44:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm, mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 375, + "timestamp": "00:44:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it can be all kinds of different levels of support. But they can do a lot. If, if you've thought of all of that that goes around them. And that's probably the biggest takeaway that I had from my time as a volunteer. One of the things I find interesting when I talked to people who served in other countries is how often they would talk about Peace Corps staff as being a hindrance or, or not helping. And one of the things about Peace Corps career staff was my country director was incredibly engaged and supportive and helpful. All the staff were there, were just really there to help you if you needed help and to give you feedback and guidance. And so I never had this sense of, you know, staff. And so I looked at the staff in Seoul as being our partners and our friends." + }, + { + "turn_id": 376, + "timestamp": "00:45:53", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they Americans or Koreans or a mix or how did that work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 377, + "timestamp": "00:45:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Primarily Korean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 378, + "timestamp": "00:45:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Primarily Korean? Even the director?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 379, + "timestamp": "00:45:58", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, the director was American, but all the director and then we had an APCD." + }, + { + "turn_id": 380, + "timestamp": "00:46:04", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 381, + "timestamp": "00:46:05", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But then all the other staff were Korean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 382, + "timestamp": "00:46:09", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were Korean. Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 383, + "timestamp": "00:46:09", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's interesting now, all these years later, I see a lot of them. And I mean, Peace Corps was as important to them as it was to us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 384, + "timestamp": "00:46:18", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 385, + "timestamp": "00:46:19", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. The Peace Corps, the Korean Peace Corps staff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 386, + "timestamp": "00:46:21", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, I see. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 387, + "timestamp": "00:46:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They love their affiliation and their time with Peace Corps. They love the volunteers. These are incredibly deep relationships." + }, + { + "turn_id": 388, + "timestamp": "00:46:31", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have they come over to the United States or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 389, + "timestamp": "00:46:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yes, they come over to the States. They visit." + }, + { + "turn_id": 390, + "timestamp": "00:46:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 391, + "timestamp": "00:46:36", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Korean government has been doing a series of revisits." + }, + { + "turn_id": 392, + "timestamp": "00:46:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No kidding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 393, + "timestamp": "00:46:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where they have invited all former Peace Corps volunteers to come back. You have to pay your way to Korea. But then when you get there, they treat you for a whole week of basically a thank you trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 394, + "timestamp": "00:46:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 395, + "timestamp": "00:46:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And they take you back to your site. They do a whole range of things. It's an amazing thing. I've, I've been on my thank you trip and I've helped organize five others at this point. And the Peace Corps language teachers and the Peace Corps staff, we always try and make sure that they're invited to one of the events. And when they see someone who was one of their students, or in the case of staff, someone that they worked with, I mean, it is, you would think that, you know, blood relatives or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 396, + "timestamp": "00:47:23", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's the first time I've heard about that. I don't know, do other countries do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 397, + "timestamp": "00:47:28", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not that I know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 398, + "timestamp": "00:47:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don't know, I've never heard that. I mean, I want to encourage my friends in Kenya do, do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 399, + "timestamp": "00:47:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it's, it's, it's an amazing thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 400, + "timestamp": "00:47:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's a very nice, it's a very nice acknowledgment." + }, + { + "turn_id": 401, + "timestamp": "00:47:40", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 402, + "timestamp": "00:47:40", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I mean, you would think they'd pick up that or pick that up. Um, my Pennsylvania Dutch came out the wrong way there, but you'd think they'd pick that up on the headquarters here as something to build relationships with the ambassador. And I mean, that's a nice ongoing package." + }, + { + "turn_id": 403, + "timestamp": "00:48:01", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's very nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 404, + "timestamp": "00:48:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a really, very interesting. I've learned something. I mean, I've learned a lot, but I mean, I'd never heard that one before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 405, + "timestamp": "00:48:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think at this point we've had about 450 volunteers who have gone." + }, + { + "turn_id": 406, + "timestamp": "00:48:15", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 407, + "timestamp": "00:48:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it is, you know, even if you're a person, like this most recent trip, several of the people have made Korea their careers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 408, + "timestamp": "00:48:24", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure. Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 409, + "timestamp": "00:48:25", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As a professor or whatever. So they've gone back on business trips. But even for them to go back in this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 410, + "timestamp": "00:48:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's a different context." + }, + { + "turn_id": 411, + "timestamp": "00:48:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you context." + }, + { + "turn_id": 412, + "timestamp": "00:48:35", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what's nice. Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 413, + "timestamp": "00:48:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I was very sad this last trip that happened. I couldn't go, I just had too much going on. But I helped organize it. But my professor from UVA, K-1 and his wife, they were on the trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 414, + "timestamp": "00:48:52", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 415, + "timestamp": "00:48:52", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I was like, ah, that would have been a great time to spend a few minutes with Jim Baxter 40 years on, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 416, + "timestamp": "00:48:59", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how long are these? Is it a week long?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 417, + "timestamp": "00:49:02", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's a week long trip." + }, + { + "turn_id": 418, + "timestamp": "00:49:03", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Event kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 419, + "timestamp": "00:49:04", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 420, + "timestamp": "00:49:04", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you pay your way, and once you get there, they pick up a hotel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 421, + "timestamp": "00:49:08", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And they put you up in this very nice hotel in Seoul, and then they arrange for you to go back to your town. So, like, for me, I, um, Linda and I were. And Linda's daughter came so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 422, + "timestamp": "00:49:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, how nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 423, + "timestamp": "00:49:22", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So they flew us from Seoul down to Sacheon, and we're like, we're flying? We went with an interpreter and I thought, wow! We were picked up. And then they drove us all around and then we ended up in our town. And I realized later that why they did it that way. We said we really wanted to see some of the region around Goseong where we used to go home visiting because it was so beautiful, just stunning. So by picking us up in Sacheon they could do the coastal route." + }, + { + "turn_id": 424, + "timestamp": "00:49:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 425, + "timestamp": "00:49:55", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then take us into Goseong. And then we go to the health center, which has moved to a completely different part of town." + }, + { + "turn_id": 426, + "timestamp": "00:50:01", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 427, + "timestamp": "00:50:01", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And we walk in and the director of the health center looks up. My maternal child health center is gone. He looks up and he says, Linda Nancy? And we said, yes, we're Linda and Nancy. And he thought Linda Nancy was one person. So here he had two and then a daughter. But we had brought some photo albums." + }, + { + "turn_id": 428, + "timestamp": "00:50:25", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Aw, how cute." + }, + { + "turn_id": 429, + "timestamp": "00:50:26", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we got the photo album out. He got a cell phone and he started calling. And within 20 minutes we had eight or nine people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 430, + "timestamp": "00:50:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "A reunion, how nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 431, + "timestamp": "00:50:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, it was really something. You know, people were crying because they had no idea we were coming." + }, + { + "turn_id": 432, + "timestamp": "00:50:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What a pleasant surprise. Do you, on a regular basis, aside from a trip like that, do you keep in touch with a few people back there or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 433, + "timestamp": "00:50:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I keep in touch with a couple of former volunteers who are still there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 434, + "timestamp": "00:50:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 435, + "timestamp": "00:50:57", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "People in my town, it's kind of hard. Well, they've all moved, so I do like WhatsApp occasionally. And you know, it's mainly photos." + }, + { + "turn_id": 436, + "timestamp": "00:51:06", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You didn't do any teaching of students or anything like that that would?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 437, + "timestamp": "00:51:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. Yeah. No, I didn't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 438, + "timestamp": "00:51:11", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how about your supervisor, Mrs. Choe?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 439, + "timestamp": "00:51:14", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mrs. Choe passed away a few years ago, so she was, she was 60 at the time that I was there in '79 so. I did see her a couple of times after I finished." + }, + { + "turn_id": 440, + "timestamp": "00:51:28", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you continue your involvement with the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 441, + "timestamp": "00:51:31", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I'm very involved with the Friends of Korea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 442, + "timestamp": "00:51:34", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. The affiliate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 443, + "timestamp": "00:51:35", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The affiliate group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 444, + "timestamp": "00:51:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 445, + "timestamp": "00:51:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was president. Yes, I was brought on the board and became president very quickly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 446, + "timestamp": "00:51:45", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that. They see a live, a live one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 447, + "timestamp": "00:51:49", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was one of those things where I run an organization." + }, + { + "turn_id": 448, + "timestamp": "00:51:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, you had an." + }, + { + "turn_id": 449, + "timestamp": "00:51:55", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 450, + "timestamp": "00:51:55", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The intuitive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 451, + "timestamp": "00:51:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the nuts and bolts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 452, + "timestamp": "00:51:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You knew what needed to be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 453, + "timestamp": "00:51:59", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 454, + "timestamp": "00:51:59", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Of course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 455, + "timestamp": "00:52:00", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, anyways, I was president, and then I became vice president. And I just became what they're calling the COO, which is the person who's making the things continue to, the wheels continue to turn. So I'm an ex-officio member of the board." + }, + { + "turn_id": 456, + "timestamp": "00:52:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 457, + "timestamp": "00:52:17", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which takes me out of some of that stuff. But, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 458, + "timestamp": "00:52:20", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 459, + "timestamp": "00:52:20", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The bank is across the street. The post office is down the way. I handle the website. So sort of, a lot of the things that just keep things running along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 460, + "timestamp": "00:52:29", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 461, + "timestamp": "00:52:30", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm handling and I find that fun. And I also didn't, didn't want to see it sort of spin down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 462, + "timestamp": "00:52:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right. Well, look, just in wrapping it up then, are there any other things or any sort of overall thought you have about the value of Peace Corps and the future of the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 463, + "timestamp": "00:52:49", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think, I think the Peace Corps for individuals on both sides, I think it's, it's an amazing eye-opening experience, even for someone who'd lived overseas. I mean, I did 16 schools in 12 years, so I, I moved a lot. I went to a lot of countries and, you know, I did that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 464, + "timestamp": "00:53:10", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 465, + "timestamp": "00:53:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But still, what you learn in the Peace Corps when you're there and you really have a role and you're, you're really working alongside people, be it in education or health or whatever, um, just gives you a completely different perspective. And I think, I think it helps. There's a whole set of cross-cultural skills and communication skills, etcetera, that that develops. I think the people to people thing, you know, is on both sides. I, I'm amazed sometimes. I met a Korean woman here who started to cry at the thought that I had done Peace Corps in her country. And I said, but, I said, except for the winters, which were kind of difficult, otherwise it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. And she said, but I'm crying because I can't believe, why would you come to our country when it was so poor?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 466, + "timestamp": "00:53:57", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 467, + "timestamp": "00:53:58", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I was like, well, you know, I did. I didn't even think about it that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 468, + "timestamp": "00:54:01", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 469, + "timestamp": "00:54:02", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So it's just, it's good for people to have those conversations and be a little bit more open. I think in this world today, we're not, we're not all that embracing of other cultures and sort of being open minded. As to the future of the Peace Corps, I think it's going to go, well, I think it already has gone through a huge change. Just, you know, when I talk to some of the younger volunteers who have Facebook and Twitter and their cell phones, and they're, they're still so completely connected to the world, even though they're thousands of miles away. I think they've lost something in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 470, + "timestamp": "00:54:41", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 471, + "timestamp": "00:54:41", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm probably sounding like an old fuddy duddy. But there is something about being completely on your own and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 472, + "timestamp": "00:54:48", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No technology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 473, + "timestamp": "00:54:50", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. And you're just relying on those little blue aerograms that come in every now and then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 474, + "timestamp": "00:54:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 475, + "timestamp": "00:54:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think that that's changed and maybe, you know, maybe programmatically for the better. Maybe it's good to be more plugged in, etcetera. For the individual growth, I'm not so sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 476, + "timestamp": "00:55:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 477, + "timestamp": "00:55:07", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the concept, though, I think still the, the people to people thing, as long as that's not getting lost in all the technology, etcetera, I think that that will always be the major strength of Peace Corps. Um. I think it's been good for U.S. diplomacy to because, you know, if you go to Korea, all the people right now in the senior level of the government, they all had Peace Corps language teachers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 478, + "timestamp": "00:55:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No kidding?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 479, + "timestamp": "00:55:37", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No kidding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 480, + "timestamp": "00:55:39", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 481, + "timestamp": "00:55:39", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I get emails from the website. I'm now Nanos, whatever, and my father had a Peace Corps language teacher. My father is now retired. He was the minister of dah, dah, dah. We get these emails a lot and I am usually successful in finding them. And it's, um, you know, there was actually a woman that applied for a job with another organization where I'm on the board. It turns out she's Korean. And during the interview, she was asked why she was interested in working for that organization, it was an international NGO." + }, + { + "turn_id": 482, + "timestamp": "00:56:16", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 483, + "timestamp": "00:56:16", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And she said, the most important person I ever met in my life was a Peace Corps volunteer, and he was my language teacher when I was in middle school. And she said, he opened my eyes to the world and to needs and to our obligation to help. And she said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 484, + "timestamp": "00:56:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 485, + "timestamp": "00:56:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's why she. And that was, that had to be 50 years ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 486, + "timestamp": "00:56:37", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 487, + "timestamp": "00:56:38", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so the guy who did the interview called me up and said, you're going to love this story, Nancy. But I think that's true. I mean, there's, there are these, these moments that I think crystallize for people. I hope that this is transmitted to children. One of the women that I worked with in Korea, there was a museum exhibit about Peace Corps Korea at the Museum of Contemporary History. So Kang Young, who was a health worker down in our town, she came with us to see the exhibit and brought her son, who was 32. He had no idea his mother had been a TB worker out in the country. He went through this exhibit and said, you did this? Because she was like, oh, here are the forms. This is, this is what Linda and I did, this is what Nancy did, you know. And he was just." + }, + { + "turn_id": 488, + "timestamp": "00:57:32", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Blown away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 489, + "timestamp": "00:57:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Blown away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 490, + "timestamp": "00:57:34", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Isn't that interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 491, + "timestamp": "00:57:34", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 492, + "timestamp": "00:57:36", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. I tend to think that a lot of people aren't as familiar with the Peace Corps today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 493, + "timestamp": "00:57:42", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that's true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 494, + "timestamp": "00:57:43", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And I don't know why. Well, I guess part of it, I don't see a lot of marketing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 495, + "timestamp": "00:57:48", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You don't see the ads, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 496, + "timestamp": "00:57:50", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, I don't see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 497, + "timestamp": "00:57:51", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The young people who rotate through here, um, Peace Corps is often on their radar." + }, + { + "turn_id": 498, + "timestamp": "00:57:56", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 499, + "timestamp": "00:57:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And we do, I have been very successful. Quite a few of them have gone on to be volunteers. Um. So, but, you know, that's a subset." + }, + { + "turn_id": 500, + "timestamp": "00:58:07", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 501, + "timestamp": "00:58:10", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I, I don't know. I had a friend who was a country director. He was Peace Corps Korea with me and went on to a State Department career and then did a stint as country director. And he talked about, um, he was very concerned about the, the constant interaction of the volunteers with home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 502, + "timestamp": "00:58:33", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 503, + "timestamp": "00:58:33", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he talked about this technology piece and he felt it really was almost a hindrance to their really being in the here and now in Ethiopia, you know, because they were constantly tweeting and Facebooking or Instagramming or whatever. And I think, that is, as I said, that's the one thing that I, I don't see how you can change it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 504, + "timestamp": "00:58:54", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Right. It's part of today's life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 505, + "timestamp": "00:58:56", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But it is, it has an impact, I think, on the experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 506, + "timestamp": "00:59:02", + "speaker": "Russell E. Morgan Jr.", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thank you very much, Nancy, and we appreciate this. And it will now go into the archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 507, + "timestamp": "00:59:08", + "speaker": "Nancy A. Kelly", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00100", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-091.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Pusch, Christeen (2005-2007): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-091", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-091", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Christeen Pusch served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras from 2005 to 2007 in a municipal development program. She was stationed in Colomoncagua and assigned to work with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to provide support to nearby residents and farmers. In the second half of her service, she focused more on basic student education with a USAID program called Educatodos (Education for All). Pusch formed friendships with her neighbors, including one neighborhood girl that she tutored named Karin. Karin later went on to become the first person in her family to earn her high school diploma and inspired her younger siblings to do the same. Some of Pusch's favorite things about Honduras were the natural beauty, the walkability of the neighborhoods and towns, and the openness of the culture, which allowed her to visit neighbors at any moment. She credits her Peace Corps service with altering her perspective on her life by making her more appreciative and, as a child of German immigrants, helping her find her own cultural identity back at home in the States. Interviewed and recorded by Sally Waley, June 13, 2019. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "13 June 2019", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 65 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "039. Honduras.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Honduras. Pusch, Christeen (2005-2007): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Honduras", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-091", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-091-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/ucyacr371pdq8ve28ud802701gp13731.pdf?odc=20231115173743-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/fd0a9b68-d2ed-41d8-9694-0abf4ec77889/cff25d7e-4d41-4f09-a919-4c5f91c21201/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI5YjlfODgwNDQ3NTkxMmVmYmIxNDhlMWU3Y2I0YWRjNDdlNThlYzcyZWEyNTFjYmY2Mzg1YzhkYjgzMGEwNzIyNmJhOF8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS9mZDBhOWI2OC1kMmVkLTQxZDgtOTY5NC0wYWJmNGVjNzc4ODkvY2ZmMjVkN2UtNGQ0MS00ZjA5LWE5MTktNGM1ZjkxYzIxMjAxL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Austin, Texas", + "length": "39 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed July 17, 2019, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Christeen Pusch Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Sally Waley" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Christeen Pusch" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:01", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Sally Waley. It's June 13th, and I am conducting this interview for the Oral History Project. Can you tell us your name and your country of service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:16", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Christeen Pusch, I was in Honduras." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:18", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year did you serve?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:00:19", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "2005 to 2007." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:00:21", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was your assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:00:23", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Municipal development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:00:24", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. So going back to kind of the beginning of why you wanted to join Peace Corps, where did you hear about Peace Corps? What made you want to join?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:00:34", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I remember my senior year of high school, one of our teachers actually decided to join the Peace Corps the year after I graduated, and she was really excited about it. At that time, it wasn't anything that occurred to me. But then my final semester of college, all my friends had studied abroad, so I thought I wanted to do something like that too. So I spent a semester at American University in D.C., and I wanted to go on the one where we would travel far away. So I went to, it was International Environmental Development Seminar, and we went to South Africa for a month for that. And our, one of our professors there had done Peace Corps and he showed us a video and really was promoting it. And at that point, I was like, wow, that'd be really neat. But it took me almost a year to get up the guts to apply. So I kind of just lounged around for a year after college and then finally applied.\n\nUm, but the thing is too, I grew up, my, both my parents are German immigrants. So I actually learned German before I learned English and spent quite a bit of my childhood there. And so I think, I had actually have a lot of culture shock when I was younger. But I think that actually, it piqued my interest in travel. But I think also, um, kind of getting, jumping ahead a little bit. But I think, um, part of like the Peace Corps, what I got out of it too was just that understanding of where I stood, where I, where I fit in, I think, because part of it I always felt like an outsider because of culture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:14", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's a really interesting reason to like consider going into Peace Corps. What, when you applied, did you have a concept of where you wanted to go, what you want to do, what it was going to be like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:26", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, you know, I mean, I think another reason for wanting to apply was just I thought, I thought magically I would gain all these skill sets. So that was, you know, you don't gain the skill sets unless you actually really try and put something into it. But yeah, I mean, I was open. A lot of my friends from college were actually, like my, two of my best friends were from Hong Kong and I had a lot of friends from there. And so I kind of thought it would be interesting to go to Asia. The lady who interviewed me had actually gone to Poland and we spoke a lot about Eastern Europe and we spoke about her experience as well. And so initially when I had the interview, it looked like I was going to go to Eastern Europe. And so it was only when I called to check up on my application like months later or something, they said they had an opening in Latin America. And my only reason for wanting to go to Latin America is I thought I would improve my Spanish and then I thought that would make me more marketable. And I thought I thought that would be useful in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:03:23", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:03:24", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:03:25", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your application process like? You said it took several months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:03:29", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean, for me it was pretty easy. I think maybe other times it's a little bit more rigorous. I think at the time when I was applying, it sounded more that a lot of people, when they had problems, it was more for medical reasons. And I didn't really ever have any medical issues. So it was pretty much just going through the steps and then I was accepted. I don't think they really denied anyone at that time for reasons other than medical reasons." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:03:58", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What year was that that you were applying?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:03:59", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "2005. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:04:02", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And when you, so you applied in 2005. How long did it take you from your application to staging?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:04:08", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't remember exactly, but I think it was a few weeks. A few months, sorry. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:04:11", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Do you remember what month you left? And where are you met your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:04:15", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I left in September, so actually we, our, um. We went to D.C. September 19th. And we landed in Honduras September 21st, 2005." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:04:27", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What was your group like when you met them at staging?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:04:32", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Great. I actually missed a day of staging because I was living in Los Angeles before joining Peace Corps, and so I'm from outside Dallas. So I drove from LA to Dallas and got a speeding ticket on the way, one of two speeding tickets in eastern California. There's just nothing going on. And so I was bored and wanted to get there faster. But because I had the pending ticket, I had to make lots of phone calls to try to get that the process sped up and paid before I left the country. Because I couldn't leave otherwise. So, yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, um, my roommate in staging was actually Katie Long, who you've met, and she was really nice. You know, she's a very friendly person. So, yeah, we got along. But yeah, I think I was a little freaked out too, obviously." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:05:23", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's kind of a traumatic thing to happen right before you were leaving." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:05:26", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, no, no. But just even just leaving the country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:05:28", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay. Yeah. What, how many people were in your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:05:33", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think the people, so we had. There was municipal development and there were youth development or something like that. And there were like about 30 of us total. And I think in D.C., I think there were some people there who were going to Guatemala or El Salvador as well. So we had something to do with them. But not too much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:05:56", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why were you picked for municipal development?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:06:02", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had a degree in planning and development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:06:05", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is a great criteria." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:06:07", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Although I'm not sure that that qualified me. But yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:06:12", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your first impressions when you stepped off the plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:06:16", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, well, I remember, I think at the airport there was some guy who just kind of picked up my bag and was trying to take it, but he wasn't trying to steal it or anything. He was just trying to take it to his taxi so that he would get the business. And there was someone who had to kind of, one of the trainers kind of stopped him and took the bag from him, like, no, no, she needs that. You don't need it. Yeah. So just, yeah, I mean, that experience. I mean, I had traveled quite a bit, as I said, I had gone to South Africa, I had been to Hong Kong to visit my friends. I'd been to Mexico a few times, so it wasn't anything I had never seen before. And I do know that, I mean, I had Spanish in high school, but I never took it in college. So my Spanish level wasn't the best.\n\nAnd so the first day we got there, we were already staying with host families. And I just remember they were talking to us or to me, and I didn't understand half of what they were saying. And they kept on calling me esperante. And I was like, what? And I guess that's a trainee, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:07:24", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:07:25", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And so kind of and, you know, they showed me to, they were really nice and they showed me a book of all the old esperantes. And I was just like, oh, okay, this is, this makes sense. And, um. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:07:35", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where were you with the training family? You got off the plane and they took you to?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:07:38", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, yeah, so we got off the plane and then we all went to the training center and then the host families were all there and then they took us to their homes. Yeah, immediately. Yeah. Um, which was probably good. And then, I mean, I love the town where we were. It was just a really pretty scenic town. I mean, very, very tranquil, you know, not much going on, but also in the mountains, that's one thing. Honduras has a lot of mountains. And it would be get really pretty because you'd see all the clouds up in the mountains and stuff. Very green at times, right? They had rainy season and dry season. So especially during the rainy season, it would be really green." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:08:18", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. Where was the, and that's where the training center was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:08:21", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. In Saint Lucia, outside Tegucigalpa, which is the capital." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:08:25", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How far or how far was the drive?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:08:28", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'd say half an hour." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:08:29", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, it was close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:08:29", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Or something like that. Yeah, not far." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:08:31", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And your host family there had had trainees before, esperantes before?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:08:36", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yeah. And so I think one of my favorite memories there was we would, uh, there were a lot of little kids. And so I feel like, I don't know if other people's experience is like this, but I think sometimes you make friends with people of different ages just because there aren't really, you know, you're lonely for friends or, you know, but they were really nice too. And so we would just kind of have, uh, dance parties to Britney Spears and Kumbia Kings. So like a mix of everything. Um, so, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:09:07", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. How long were you there at the training with your family and the training center?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:09:12", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we had training for three months. I think we did two months there, and then we had definitely a month somewhere else, in La Esperanza, which was closer to actually the site where I ended up later on. And then in La Esperanza, that was more, we had, we were separated. So when we were in Santa Lucia, we were with the youth development and then in La Esperanza it was just the municipal development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:09:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. So you then split up by sector." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:09:40", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:09:41", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many of them, how many of you all were there in the training group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:09:45", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think it was about 30, just over 30 for both groups. So I would say about half half." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:09:51", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, so 15?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:09:52", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:09:52", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow, that's small." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:09:53", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:09:55", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What, um, you mentioned your first roommate, Katie Long. What, um, who, you know, did you end up being very close? Did you bond with everybody there at training or was everybody close or were you more focused on getting to know the language and your host family and?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I mean, I think everyone was like a good support system. I think later on I ended up kind of being the recluse who stayed at site really a lot. So I think maybe I didn't bond as much as others, as others did. But yeah, I think. It is a very intense experience, and when you have such an intense experience, I think you just, you bond. You're kind of almost forced to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:10:35", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:10:35", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just to have that support." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:10:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah, I know the feeling. What was your training like? What did you learn while you were there for your couple of months?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:10:47", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't really, um, I learned Spanish. I don't remember. I think we went to some municipalities. But, you know, I was looking over questions before, and I think that's something that maybe could have been improved at the time, you know. I think later on they did do more projects and stuff. Um, but yeah, I mean, I remember the Spanish, um. We had people from Honduras teaching the Spanish classes, and I think they didn't speak much English, so it was almost purely in Spanish. And what they did was we all took a test and then we would, we were grouped with people of our like of similar level. So I was with two other people learning Spanish. So it was almost like one-on-one Spanish class. And then you're with the family as well. So I think, I mean, you learn very quickly. You're forced to. I mean, one of the things my dad always used to say, he learned English in six weeks. Don't believe him quite. But I think you do learn when you're forced to like that. You do learn a language pretty quickly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:11:49", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What were the levels of Spanish coming in? And were you and where did you fit in that kind of ranking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:11:58", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was somewhere in the middle lower. I mean, there were, well, Katie again, because you know her, which she I think was like amongst the highest levels. So there were people who had, I don't know if she had her degree in Spanish, but there were people who had degrees in Spanish and were, I think, close to fluent just coming in. And then there were people who had almost, or had very little Spanish. But I think in order to go to a Spanish speaking country, you did need to know a little bit. But I know, um, one girl, Tonakita, who I've kind of kept in touch with, I know she wanted to go to Africa. And then they sent her to Latin America. And I know her Spanish really didn't, wasn't very good at the beginning, but she improved it a lot. And I think she actually ended up working with an NGO later on with Honduras and stuff. And so, I mean, it just, yeah. I mean, I think by the end of it all of us spoke Spanish." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:12:51", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And what was it like when you found out where you were going to be for the rest of the, of your service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:13:00", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You mean the site?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:13:02", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the process for like finding out? Did you find out in advance? Did they surprise you with it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:13:06", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean, I think it was just a few weeks. I mean, a week or two before we got to site. One of the things is we had a site visit beforehand. And my site visit and my counterpart were both in the neighboring town. And so, um, with, you know, there was another volunteer over there too. So I did all that over there. And then when I got to site, it was like right around Christmas time which is vacation. And I had never met anyone else. And, and no, I didn't. My counterpart wasn't there. So I think that is the loneliest I've ever felt. That is the only time where I just needed to talk to anyone. I mean, it was like days where, like, the only conversation I had with anyone was like the lady at the corner store buying toilet paper and food with my broken Spanish. So that's, yeah, that was again, very intense.\n\nAnd, you know, it was, you know, we had cell phones, but you could only text. And there was an internet cafe. But, you know, I mean, you could make a call, but it would've been really crazy expensive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:14:14", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:14:14", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So yeah, just sitting, I mean, I was just sitting in my house, cleaning it, you know, preparing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:14:20", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who brought you to, how did you find your house? Who brought you to site, did somebody?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:14:25", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess one of the Peace Corps, you know, I don't even remember, but I think it was someone with Peace Corps. Yeah. You know, I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:14:36", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How far away was your site from the training site? You said it was close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:14:40", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no. My, the site where I was stationed was actually pretty far away. So I was actually just like 30 minutes away from El Salvador. And again, distances aren't. Honduras is a very small country. But because, like, so, okay, sorry. To get to La Esperanza was probably like a three hour bus ride. And then to get down to my town was another 3 or 4 hours. The thing is, it was only, I think it was 89 kilometers. But like but because the roads aren't paved and you're in like the mountains and stuff, you have to take a bus and the bus is very slow. So yeah, I mean, it was always a day trip and then you don't have your own vehicle, so you have to go when the bus goes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:15:25", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. So how did you, do you remember a Peace Corp staff or somebody like kind of escorted you down there and helped you get there or did they provide you a bus ticket?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:15:35", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't, I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:15:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:15:38", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess. I mean. Yeah, no, I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:15:40", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, no, I'm just curious. And your house, was it just like a rental or did somebody own it in the village or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:15:47", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. So actually the house where I lived and there were actually two volunteers who stayed there before I was there. So it was a huge house. It had like two bedrooms, pretty big living room, kitchen. I mean, you know, a tiny kitchen, whatever, and then outdoor bathroom and shower, which was more space than I needed. And, you know, you have running water like once a day and you fill up what we call a pila, just a big ol' basin. Cement basin. And then that's how you take your shower. And the kitchen was very basic. I just, I bought two, like I guess, two burners or whatever, and that's what I cooked on if I could. Yeah, but yeah, I mean, but yeah, I mean, yeah. It was nice though.\n\nUm, and then, I mean, one of the things too, I mean, I had studied planning and we always talked about new urbanism and building to the street and walkability. And I was like, the town where I lived was a perfect example of that, you know. You know, everyone, you could walk everywhere. There were three streets and they were all parallel and, yeah, and people would leave their doors open. So if you were ever bored later on when I got to know people, you just walk over to your neighbor's house and hang out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:17:03", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:17:04", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Which is, I don't know, I kind of miss from that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:17:06", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. How big was the town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:17:13", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, I want to say the whole area was like a thousand. I don't know. It was pretty small." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:17:18", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Okay. And who did you report to or did you work? Did you work with the local government?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:17:23", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, so well so they gave me, like my main assignment was actually working with the Food and Agriculture Organization. So it was me and one other guy was staying in the neighboring town. And so that was one thing maybe could have been better organized. And then also me being kind of inexperienced. It took me a while, but essentially we were assigned with that organization and what they did was they worked with farmers and they gave them some kind of some help, I think, with even seeds and stuff. But they also taught them about like farming techniques. But it was like me and one other guy who was from New York. And so neither of us had really ever lived in an agricultural society. Neither of us had much experience farming. So who were we to go in there and give them advice about what they were supposed to be doing?\n\nAnd so both of us kind of tried for quite a while, for almost a year, to try to make it work. And then later on it was just like, no, let's just do what we want, you know, what we want to do, where the need is. The other thing for me, it was really difficult to get there because there was no, like the first year, there was no bus. Later on there were some people from the town who just had a van and they would charge money to get a ride in their van. But again, that wasn't very reliable. Because also, I think in Latin America, they tell you what you want to hear. So they'd go in the morning, but then you'd ask them, so when are you coming back? They'd ask you, oh, when do you want to come back? Well, at 7:00 or, you know, at 4:00 or something. Okay, we'll go back then. And then they would leave at 3:00. You know, just tell me when you're leaving. I can, I can come back, you know, I can leave early. But yeah. The first year too, it's like you'd have to get, you'd have to hitchhike more or less. You know, you ride in the back of people's trucks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:19:21", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:19:21", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, and, you know, you didn't always know when they were leaving. So it was both difficult to get there, and then also just the work itself didn't really make much sense. The other thing I did was I worked with a program called Educatodos, which is like an educational program. And so it essentially, the program is also a USAID program. But it helps to educate people who may have dropped out of school. So in Honduras, you only have to go up to sixth grade legally. And then a lot of people don't even do that. And so what they have is they have little, they have little tape, um, cassettes, and they would have lessons on there. And so anyone could use that cassette to learn, um, or to teach someone else. So I was teaching classes. They wanted me to teach English. So I was teaching English.\n\nBut I think again, when you look at it later on, you're like, that didn't really make any sense because these, I was teaching seventh and then eighth grade. And, you know, these people are people who, they dropped out. We didn't, we had classes once a week. And so to focus on English, I feel like doesn't really make sense. It would have made more sense to like focus on math or Spanish or some of the other basic classes. I mean, another kind of, I had said before, there were a lot, there were a lot of regrets.\n\nBut one of the other things was just I know that a lot of my students, or some of them, some of the students were motivated and they were saying, you know, they wanted to go to the high school. But I wish I had motive, I wish I had motivated more people to actually do that. So there were a few on their own who actually kind of ended up finishing high school, but I'm not sure with most of them whatever happened to them, if they ever went on. And I think the year I, I'm not sure. There were volunteers after me, but I'm, I'm not sure how much, how long that program lasted afterwards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:21:26", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah, it's hard. I mean, it's hard in hindsight to think like I could have done more, but at the time, you know, you're kind of doing the best that you can. And sorry, some of the background noise is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:21:36", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:21:36", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "My cat wandering around, for anybody listening to this. So what, you said that you had a site mate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:21:46", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn't. So I had, he was actually, um, so he was with the same counterpart, but he was in the neighboring town. So it was probably like a 40 minute drive to there, you know, and I'd hitchhike to get there or walk or combination. And then, that was actually one of the bonding experiences I had was coming back from the town one time and it's like, we got to, we hitchhiked part of the way and there were some other girls there too. And then we ended up walking back, probably like 2 hours in the pouring rain. I had like a little tiny, I mean, I had some kind of rain jacket, but it wasn't very good quality. They had nothing. So we were all soaked and saw each other later, like, oh yeah, those. And you're all muddy because the roads aren't paved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:22:40", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. What, um. How did you get to know people at your site and when did you start, like, forming those relationships?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:22:49", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So again, you kind of, you form random friendships or you talk to random people sometimes just because. And so I kind of, there was one strange guy who lived next door to me and I kind of talked to him and he was kind of like, I guess the mechanic or he. I don't know, anyway. But he, one day he was like, hey, there's this, um, there's a venado. And I was like, what is a venado? You know, like, I want to show you this venado. And so I go, um, this is again, the very beginning. So I didn't know much Spanish. And so I go to this family's house and it turns out venado is a deer. And so we wanted to show me a deer at his family's house. But then he brought me there and I wonder, like I was thinking about it just recently. Like, I wonder if that was an excuse. But it was a family. And so I kind of started hanging out with them.\n\nAnd then I remember one girl, actually the cousin of the one family. She approached me one day and she spoke English, so she spoke to me in English. And then I think one other guy, he had been, the volunteer before me. She had tutored him, he was like 16 at the time. And he also, because the volunteer before me had taught him English, he spoke English. So, yeah, I mean, just randomly and, yeah, I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:24:07", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was the deer alive or was it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:24:09", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:24:11", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I didn't know if they were eating the deer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:24:13", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. But I mean again, it was a fairly rural area. So yeah, people have deer there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:24:20", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it a pet deer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:24:22", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't even remember. It was a small one too. I mean, it wasn't big. I don't. Yeah, I don't remember the whole story. I just remember that's how I got to know the family. The deer. Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:24:35", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what, I mean, did you, do you ever have an office that you went into or was there? Were you working in from the neighborhood, from your house?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:24:44", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, um. The one organization, they did have an office. So I went into their office. The classes they, the people running the program. And there were two ladies and then one lady in the second year who ran the program, Educatodos, they had a secured place. And so we would just meet there. And it was, I think later on it was at some church, just using it during the weekday or Saturdays." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:25:11", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. And the same for like the English lessons you taught or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:25:16", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was the same thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:25:16", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was the, okay, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:25:18", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. Um, and I, I tried at the beginning to, I think that's one of the things too is like I was 23 at the time and so I didn't really have much work experience. So part of it was also trying stuff out, realizing I was really bad at certain things or really didn't like things. But I think one of the things they wanted me to do was like teach little kids English and I realized I would not be a good teacher for little kids. I like teaching older people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:25:42", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:25:42", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I'm better with, I'm not very good with little kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:25:45", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "English is hard to teach anyway, I mean to anybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:25:48", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:25:48", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like especially to kids I would say." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:25:50", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then, I mean I really like numbers. So the second year I was there, I focused more on math. And that was cool too. I mean, some of the stuff, um, they, like USAID, they met with me and some other volunteers too, who were using the same program. And were asking for like suggestions on like how to improve the program. But, I don't know, just a random comment. It was funny that like the English, there was one lesson about vocabulary you would use if you landed in the U.S. at an airport. Like, what, why? But anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:26:22", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. What are the chances? Yeah. Yeah. Think about practical English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:26:26", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:26:27", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What, um. So once you kind of. What were some of the projects that you tried with the agriculture stuff like in the year that you and your?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:26:36", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know if we actually did much on our own. We, we went, they took us around, they showed us what they were doing. Like I made some kind of poster for them. I did some kind of like talk or something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:26:49", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:26:49", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the talk. But I don't really remember doing too much useful. But I do remember, I mean, I remember going to the things they did and I mean, it was kind of fun to see. They would go to schools to and just, we did a lot with like teaching people how to cook, use soy, and so they would make some like soy milk thing, like sweet thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:27:12", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:27:12", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So and yeah, stuff like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:27:16", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever talk to Peace Corps, the country staff, about kind of your challenges working in that sector in the place that they, in the organization they placed you with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:27:28", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think. I think they became aware of it. I don't know if I, I'm not sure if I ever really specifically spoke to. I mean, I think we would, somehow I think we had to submit reports. And then, you know, that's how they become aware. And I think they, they would also do site visits. Yeah. So I think they were just aware that like we both, you know, me and the other volunteer both felt like it didn't really make any sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:27:54", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Were they a resource or were they kind of just like, okay?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:28:01", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. I think they were fine. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, again, I think one of the things. I mean, the volunteer, the other volunteer, I think he was like a super volunteer. And he got really involved with the municipality and did a lot. So I think just with Peace Corps, you have to be, at least the assignment I had, just had to be very motivated and just kind of a self-starter and a leader, you know. And so I think I was still developing some of those skills." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:28:35", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you were just out of college and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:28:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, but I think too that, I mean, like looking back, it's like I also realized that I had pretty much the opportunity to do any volunteer work I wanted and I was still getting paid enough to live." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:28:50", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:28:51", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I mean, I think, for me, I was paid like $3,000 a year and I was like saving my money. And then after I was like, wait, this is worth nothing in the U.S. I better like, actually use it and enjoy it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:29:03", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how did you spend your money or did you pay for your house rent or just food or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:29:08", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I mean, house was separate, but yeah, I mean, vacation. I mean, you know, food. The thing is too, where I was, there weren't many options in terms of food. And so that's one of the things I missed the most coming back. But there was, there were like two ladies who would at the time who would cook out of their, they would use their living room and cook. And so you had like rice and tortillas and beans and some kind of meat pretty much every day. And so, you know, that's what there was. So that's what I ate. I didn't really like cooking. And then the other thing is too, there weren't really, you couldn't get as many ingredients down where I was either. And now I think there are actually more like places opened. So actually I think the one thing I think I did that probably made the biggest difference that, I mean, what I feel was my biggest accomplishment was.\n\nThere was this one girl and she worked for the lady next door to me, who I knew pretty well. And she was in fifth grade or sixth grade and she like, she just didn't go to her last, her final exam. So she was already, like, I mean, she was already in fifth or sixth grade and working for the lady next door, which was normal. Her mom, you know, had several kids. She didn't come up from very well-off family. Her mom also, no one in her family had gone past that grade. So I think it was just kind of psychological, like, I'm not supposed to go past this grade either. But she like a very sociable person. And I think that's why we got along, because I'm pretty introverted. So, like, she's, you know, just like a fun little girl.\n\nAnd, uh, she, um, so what I did was I tutored her, and I made sure she grad. She did two grades in one year. Because with Educatodos, you could do that. And so then she like was able to be with her old classmates again. And I think that's all really, that was really important. And so then she ended up graduating high school and all her younger siblings have graduated high school or are on their way to graduating high school. And then she actually has her own cake business now. So she sells cakes. So it was just like thinking about food." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:31:20", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:31:21", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So she, you know, she started working for the lady next door to me when she was really young and cooking and cleaning. And so she learned a lot of those skills really young. And so she, she was able to use those. Um, I was hoping she'd go to college, go further, obviously. But, um, I mean, I think with a high school degree she's okay. And I talked to her somewhat recently and she like was building her own little house. I mean, it's, you know, fairly simple. It didn't look very big. She showed me, sent me a picture. But yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:31:50", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was her name?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:31:51", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Karen." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:31:52", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Karen. Yeah, that's easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:31:53", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:31:54", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was in Cambodia. I try and tell people the names, they're like, say that again. What was your and Karen's relationship like? Did you tutor her also or was it just a social?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:32:05", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, no. I mean, I think, I tutored her, so we did, um, I kind of tutored her on the side, um, kind of doing those two grades with Educatodos so I used their curriculum. Because I like math, I would focus on math and she, you know, made fun of me just like, oh, you're all about numbers. But yeah. And then I would also go over. It was like she and this one other girl who's probably like 20 at the time. Um, so, yeah, I remember Karen turning 13. So she, you know, pretty young, but, um, we would just hang out and like talk and like clean. I would help them clean dishes and they'd be making food or whatever else. But yeah, again, you have random friendships." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:32:49", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Who are some of the other important people in the village to you? You talked about one of the families and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:32:55", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. That one other family. Yeah. They were, um, they. Yeah. And I actually I went back so. I finished Peace Corps end of 2007 and I went back end of 2010. And so I stayed with that other family and kind of still keep in touch with them. And then actually, you know, I'm like Facebook friends or Instagram friends with people. So I kind of see what they're up to, kind of talk to people like every once in a while. But yeah, I mean, the one boy who, um, the volunteer before me had tutored. He ended up going to med school. I think, you know, the volunteer before me, she always wanted him to go to med school or to school in the U.S., but actually he went to med school in Honduras, ended up getting his degree. He was practicing as a doctor and now he's in med school in Spain." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:33:46", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:33:47", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think his plan is to stay there. And then another girl I knew, she also, um, she was the one, the daughter of the lady who lived next door to me. And she actually also went to Spain. She also got her degree in pharmacy in Honduras and then went to school there in Spain. And now she's back in Honduras." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:34:07", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:34:07", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I talked to her a while ago. I don't know what, you know. Because I was thinking, you know, she could stay in Spain, but I think, I don't know. She had a boyfriend who was Spanish. So I don't, I don't know. I don't know what's going on with them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:34:19", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:34:21", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:34:21", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel like, what do you feel like your impact on, on those families and those relationships were and what do you feel like their impact was on you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:34:31", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I don't know. I don't know. I think maybe like people, they get to see you as a person. I know I definitely got to know people as people. I think sometimes you see people in one dimension and I think even going I would say like. Sorry. So, yeah, I mean, I think it just, just seeing people as people, um, and I mean, I think even. Sometimes I question how, I mean, I think a few of those people, yeah, a few of Hondurans see me as a person but I think a lot of, most people still probably see me as an American. And I think it's very difficult. And I think that's one of the things that like because you're one of the first Americans they've ever met. And so it's, you're always afraid about like your behavior or what you do. They're going to say, oh, all Americans are like that. And it's like, no, no, no, just me, you know?\n\nAnd I think even, even when you're first coming into that society, it takes a while for you to figure out what's cultural and what's actually that person. And I think for me, it was kind of like, it makes, it made me also question like, who would I have been if I had been from Honduras? And just really made me also think about just, I'm very interested in philosophy and sociology and all that. And so just kind of thinking again about just what is learned behavior and what is actually like us. Like, I don't know. I don't know.\n\nYeah. What were some of the impressions? What were the differences in the culture that you did learn about?\n\nWell, I think, okay, the first thing that, I mean, you know, and I think. Sorry, the first thing that came to mind was like, ah, the Hondurans, they just say what you want to hear. They never tell the truth. And so that, yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the big ones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:36:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think holds both for like Hondurans talking to other Hondurans, or do you think it was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:36:40", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, yes, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:36:41", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:36:42", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think, well, so I think, okay. So my family is German. So I think that's the one extreme, where Germans are very blunt. They say exactly what they mean. You know, my family, it's like I haven't seen them for like years. And like as a kid, they were like, you're getting fat. I'm like, I'm eight. I don't, you know, like, I can't do anything about this, you know, just please don't, you know? Or just like, oh, you look so tired. I'm like, yes, I got four hours of sleep. Yes, I'm tired. Versus like the Hondurans is the other extreme. So like, they would also be like, even when you're like looking awful, just to be nice and, oh, you're so beautiful and you may actually look like crap. But it's like a compliment. It's trying to make you feel better. And so, and I think the U.S. is somewhere in between.\n\nAnd so it's not always like meant in a bad way. Sometimes it really is just trying to, it's like actually complimenting the person as a person. But sometimes when, you know, when you're trying to get that right and you just want to know when are you really leaving? And they don't want to tell you. It's annoying, you know. Or you know, yeah. So stuff like that. I mean, I think one of the other. See, I'm coming up with all of the bad, but so there is some good to that, to just being complimentary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:37:59", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:38:00", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The other thing is, I mean, I feel like Latino men are kind of, you know, just the stereotype of very machisto and, you know. But those are the big stereotypes. But it just, I think also like another thing is just like where you fit in your society too. And I mean, I think. So. Yeah, I think just that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:38:29", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And you lived in a very small, rural place. What was people's mindset about kind of where they were inside of Honduras and where Honduras sat inside the larger world? Did they have a perspective that they shared with you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:38:40", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. But I think, like one thing that struck me was that I feel like Hondurans don't have much pride. So like coming from the U.S. or having the German family, those are both cultures with lots of pride." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:38:53", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:38:54", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They're very proud of their heritage. Versus Honduras, I don't think they are. And I think that even, like. I think, like, the whiter you are, the more attractive. Like, it's almost like they have the, you know, and I think I think one of the other things that struck me was just like, I mean, I think that affects you in any country. It's just like just the dynamic between the countries. And so I think they, like U.S., being American. You're somehow put on a pedestal, but then you're not really a person either. So it's kind of a strange dynamic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:39:30", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:39:31", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And just, yeah. And you know, I mean, even the fact that like some of the placement, you know. I was pretty much straight out of college and I'm, you know, being placed fairly high, you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:39:42", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. As a, you know, again, coming back to like kind of the macho society. Was, you know, did you run into gender issues? Or was it because you were an American you were kind of granted a little bit of a different status?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:39:56", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, so I mean, one of the things, I mean, I think, when like. I don't think I'm very, okay, so I don't think I'm necessarily the type to be just, especially at that time, to really want to take the leadership role over, like dominating. So not really. I would say though that, you know, as a white American, or as I mean, as a woman just walking down the street sometimes you get the catcalls, you get certain comments, you know, and but I think some of that's also cultural. So it's like, you know, and it's just going to be bad. It sound bad, but it's like I'd get used to it. So like all of a sudden I'd be walking down and no one would say anything and I'm like, wait, do I look really bad today? You know, I mean.\n\nBut, but so but yeah. And I think and I mean more, I think, I mean, just inequality, even in relationships and stuff like that too. Um, so, but yeah, I mean, I think in any culture, um, like, or any society, there's going to be women who are going to dominate the men and dominate stuff. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I was thinking about, this is going to get way off topic, but when I went to South Africa. It was just interesting because we like one of my most interesting experiences there was we stayed with the chief's first wife and just the dynamics. And he had to have several wives. Yet the first wife was this very strong woman and then he kind of did what she said, but then like society told him he needed to have more wives. And so that's something that, anyway, that's way off topic. So probably should go back to, but yeah, it's interesting like, yeah, gender roles and like kind of the way society set up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:41:43", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Was there, what was the leadership in your town like? Was it kind of like a village chief structure or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:41:48", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, no, no, not Honduras. Honduras, um, there was like a, I think it was a mayor and there's a municipality and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:41:57", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Kind of that like Western." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:41:58", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:41:59", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Democratic style. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:42:00", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Except probably more corrupt. I mean, that's one thing too, is just like any time there'd be elections, pretty much anyone from the opposite party would like get fired. It just very much tied to politics. And I think people like had a long history of just voting for certain parties. I mean, just so much corruption." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:42:23", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Peace Corps left Honduras shortly after you were there because of the danger and the politics. What was your experience in that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:42:30", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, so, I mean, I never really, I mean, I was never a victim. I mean, I know other Hondurans. I mean, a friend, Honduran friend of mine, she was held up at gunpoint for her phone, you know, like in front of her house. Another friend was, Honduran friend was also, like a guy got on the bus. He had a gun, held up the gun to everyone, and again said cell phones. And I think he like, he freaked out. He had like panic attacks from it, you know, um, but, you know. And I remember too going again with this same friend who got held up in front of her house, but her little sister. And going to get something. And I think I needed like new headphones or something like that. And so we were going to buy that and like we were getting out of the cab in this little like, I don't know, five year old maybe, he runs up. She has a necklace on, grabs it, and runs away. Now, we didn't even see his face, you know, he was already gone, you know?\n\nI mean, I think there were other Peace Corps volunteers too who got, I mean, assaulted. The thing is, in the town where I was, it was really safe. Like everyone knew everyone's business, so like nothing happened in terms of violence. But you got to the bigger cities, and yeah, it was. And I don't know, right now, I mean, the political situation is really bad. I don't know. I mean, it just sounded like, based on what I've heard, that the leader who came into power just kind of, there was some, something sketchy going on in that election." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:44:03", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you said you were located near El Salvador?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:44:07", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:44:07", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there, what was the relationship between Hondurans and El Salvadorians?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:44:12", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, so actually my town in the eighties or like, you know, when there was the, um, there were, there was the war in El Salvador. They had refugees. They had a refugee camp like outside of the, um, the community. Um, yeah, there wasn't really much crossover. Yeah. And I think, I mean, yeah. So the relationship, I mean all I'm just thinking about is going to El Salvador and it's like as soon as you cross the border, the roads were paved. But I think, I mean, El Salvador, I think because of the war, there's something kind of eerie about some of those towns. Just, I don't know, not quite as pleasant I thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:44:54", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What did you do much traveling inside the country and outside the country while you were in service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:44:59", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did some. So I mean, like the. So the first year, we had just gotten to site in December. And so I remember going with other volunteers. We went up to the beach for New Year's. And so that was, I mean, kind of cool, that like you spend New Year's, which is usually so cold, like up in this beautiful beach and swimming and everything. And then another thing we did, I mean, I went. My mom came to visit me. We went to like some Mayan ruins in the Copán. And then we went up to Roatan as well. I think still one of my favorite experiences. I went to Antigua, Guatemala, for Semana Santa [Holy Week] and that was really cool. And it's during like a." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:45:42", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Holy week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:45:43", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Holy week, exactly. Yes. And they had all the alfrombras, the rugs is what they call them. But essentially what they do is they just use colored sand and they create these really intricate decorations on the streets. And they're all like, I mean, really old streets and old buildings like colonial style. And those decorations were only on the roads for like, the streets for a few hours. And then like pretty much, I mean, like at sunrise more or less, the processions come through and walk over them. But there's just so many people. And I mean, just to see that artwork was really amazing. Yeah.\n\nAnd then got to travel another time down to, for the second year Semana Santa, we traveled down to all the way to Costa Rica, did Central America." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:46:33", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:46:33", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So haven't gotten to go to Belize. Haven't gone to Panama, but covered all others." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:46:38", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Everything else. Who did you travel? You said your mom came. Who else did you travel with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:46:41", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Other volunteers. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:46:43", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What, um, what was what was your favorite part about Guatemala?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:46:51", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that experience or like, what do you mean by?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:46:54", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I meant Honduras." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:46:56", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Honduras." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:46:56", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sorry, I lost track." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "00:46:57", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, I mean, I actually I really like, I love the nature. There's, I like hills and mountains and that has lots of mountains. And so just the beauty of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:47:08", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:47:09", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, yeah, I think so. I mean, honestly, the buildings are really nothing special and yeah, I mean. Really, the nature is beautiful. And I think that a lot of Hondurans don't really realize what they have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:47:25", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Are there parks, are there kind of nationally organized parks or anything?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:47:28", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:47:28", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or is it just kind of everywhere?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:47:29", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it's everywhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:47:30", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:47:31", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And then again, they have rainy season and dry season. So they, pretty much it rains all the time for six months and then not at all. I mean, I think the weather there is pretty good, I mean especially where I was, I think it was pretty much 60 to 80 something year round. Like right around February, and so they also have a fair like once a year on February 14th, you know, for. And not necessarily for Valentine's Day, but it kind of coincides. But I remember too, right around that time it gets really cold. Really cold by like maybe high fifties, you know, and so, but there's no AC or heating. So it does make a difference, but people freak out and bundle up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:48:14", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have, your house, did you have electricity and plumbing and any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:48:18", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did, yeah. So I had electricity. Electricity goes out a lot in Honduras. Even just when the government is trying to save money, they'll turn it off. And then I had running water once a day. Yeah. So we just filled up our pilas and used that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "00:48:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's a pila?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "00:48:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it's like the basin. The concrete cistern." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:48:42", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What, did you have to make many life adjustments in terms of like kind of what your living situation was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:48:49", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What do you mean by that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:48:50", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like not having running water all the time? Or was that a?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:48:55", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kind of, yeah. I mean, you do, yeah, you do get used to it. And I mean, I think, again, I think the things I missed most were like food and hot water and like my, hot showers, I guess really. So that was really nice. But yeah, I mean, even though sometimes too you get used to it. I remember where I had the host family I had, they had running water all day but it was only cold, so I'd always take cold showers. And then when it got really cold, the town where I was actually a little cooler. They boiled the water for me and I had a hot bucket shower. But I remember going, we had our swearing-in at a hotel in Tegucigalpa and it was a really nice hotel. So we all had our hot showers. And I was like excited about it. But then afterwards I had to turn it on cold because I was so used to those cold showers. So yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:49:44", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How often did you regroup with the group for trainings or to just meet and hang out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:49:52", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, I was one of the site rats. We didn't really do, I think we had something like maybe it was like once, like halfway through service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:50:01", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mid service training or something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:50:02", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. But we didn't really do too many trainings and then I didn't, I mean, I saw like some people like again for Semana Santa for like a few like travels, but not too much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:50:12", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What, you've already mentioned that you missed food and things. What else were you excited about coming home to when you were getting towards the end of service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "00:50:24", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I really think food and hot water are like the biggest things I missed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "00:50:28", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Um, where is your, where are you from originally? Where's your family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:50:31", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Outside Dallas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "00:50:32", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "00:50:33", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Um, but I mean, I think the other thing is too, you realize what you can live without." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:50:38", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:50:39", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, um. Yeah. I don't, yeah, I don't think there was. You know, and obviously people, you know, stuff like that. But like in terms of like things, not really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "00:50:49", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "00:50:49", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And again, I think, you know, I'll go into my bigger philosophy, but I think so much of what we have, it's about how we compare to others. And so you want the nice clothes or the nice car or whatever. Almost to like show." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:51:02", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Keep up with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:51:02", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, being in a country like Honduras, I mean, I think there's more and more wealthy people, but, or there's more and more inequality. But I think it's overall, it's been a fairly poor country, so not many people have that much. And so and then the other thing is being a white person, it doesn't matter how you dress, your hair, your seam has a bump, which for better or for worse, I mean, just yeah overall it's sad. But yeah, I mean, you don't I mean, as a Peace Corps volunteer you don't. I mean, I had all my old clothes. I mean, they were in pretty bad shape afterwards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:51:34", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:51:34", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So yeah, I mean, that's one thing coming back, you don't have much money, so you have like hardly any clothes and it takes you a lot of to build them up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:51:41", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was your health?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:51:43", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I, um. So, yeah, I mean, I, I had stomach problems pretty much like that. I mean, that, that host family in Santa Lucia, they were really nice. But I think there was something with the food because I had a lot of, like, stomach issues there. I ended up having worms at the very end, which I don't know. Yeah. And I also I think I had some, a case of food poisoning somewhere in there. I had a cough that wouldn't go away until like I went home for like a visit and then all of a sudden it went away. But they gave me all these antibiotics.\n\nI know I had a filling done there. And I wanted one friend or one other girl from Peace Corps. She was also posting about her bad dental experience there. And I was like, yeah, I had a filling down there and now I have a crown on that one tooth. That's the only crown I have. So that was not necessarily like the best care and we were still going to one of the best dentists. I mean, that's the thing too, is that, I mean, a lot of people. Like that one girl, the older one I hung out with who worked for that family, the lady next door to me. She was 20 and she had some cavities. She was like, pull my tooth, don't, don't even bother filling it. Like, we were both like, no, fill it! You know, but I think also if you have such a bad dentist, I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:53:05", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:53:05", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I mean, the thing is too, I mean, the dentist we went to, I'm sure it was more expensive, but you can go to really cheap dentists and you can get really cheap health care, although I'm sure the quality's not that good either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "00:53:16", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. How did you, you mentioned that you went back to the States once." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "00:53:21", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "00:53:22", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How often did you visit? How did you communicate with your family back home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:53:25", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I went back actually twice. So I went back like towards the, I mean towards the very beginning. Again, like my two best friends from, or two of my best friends from college. One was, they were both from Hong Kong and the one was leaving to go back. So I was like, I want to see you before you leave. So I went to visit her, but I had just gotten to site, so kind of maybe it was a little too early. And then the second time I went back, I went back for holidays. And so I went back for Christmas and then I went back to Honduras for New Year's because like for them, New Year's is more like Christmas and Christmas, like it's reversed in terms of how they celebrate. So I spent. The family like. I spent Christmas with my family and then the whole family New Year thing in Honduras. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "00:54:10", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:54:11", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That type of celebration. Yeah. And I. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:54:16", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you, how did you communicate with people back home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:54:19", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I had a blog, I think, and then just internet. Again, there was an internet cafe. It was before smartphones. But, um, yeah, I would go and write people emails that way. But sometimes it was closed or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:54:34", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. And who came to visit you while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:54:38", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just my mom. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:54:39", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. That's great that she got to see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:54:41", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:54:41", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did she think about what you were doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:54:44", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think sheg liked it. And so I think, you know, when I first got or first got interested in Peace Corps, my dad was really excited for me. He was very like adventurous. And he also, I think he moved to the U.S. for adventure pretty much. And he would, you know, they had, my parents had their own business and he would travel to Asia also to buy the merchandise and stuff like that, and to Mexico and he spent a while in England as well. So he like, that's his, that was his nature. So he was excited about it. My mom was freaked out, like, you're leaving here and going so far. But yeah, she came and I think it really eased her. I mean, she came to visit me and she, you could tell she was really stressed out. And then also, like we, you know, I had already gotten used to certain things. So we got on a bus or a little minivan, you know, the, um, you know, just to to get somewhere. And it was like people leaning out of the van and, I mean, completely crammed. And I think that was just more than she." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:55:43", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Too much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "00:55:43", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. But when we went, I took her again to Copan to see the Mayan ruins and also to the beach. And by the end of it, she said, wow, this is more like a vacation than I thought. So, yeah. And I think it also eased her mind, you know, to kind of see where I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:55:58", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. That's good. What would you say you're most proud of from your service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:56:06", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I said, I think tutoring that one girl." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "00:56:08", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. And watching her, the one who had the, who ended up with a cake business and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "00:56:14", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:56:14", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:56:15", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. I mean I, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "00:56:17", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And her siblings graduated from high school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "00:56:19", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Because I think, you know, some of the students I had with Educatodos, they, they were self-motivated and so they, they did something with themselves. But I think I can't really take that much responsibility for that. I kind of, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:56:31", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:56:32", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Helped them, you know, maybe start." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:56:34", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. You have to have a spark somewhere." + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:56:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Versus I feel like, you know, with one girl, you know, she said like, I'm stupid. I'm like, yeah, you're stupid for not going to your exam, you know? And just like, I mean, we were friends, you know, and I think I really, I feel like I had a big part in that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:56:50", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:56:51", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Helping her and her family." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:56:53", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What advice would you have for Peace Corps volunteers that are going into service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:57:02", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's too broad. Um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "00:57:06", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Perhaps to make the most out of their service." + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "00:57:08", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say to do exactly make the most out of it. Just make the most out of it, really. I mean, enjoy what you have there. I mean, because it is really kind of a very unique, special situation. I mean, I know for me I regretted not doing more. So really kind of being self-motivated. You know, I think I know people too who kind of took Spanish classes before, really did some stuff to like kind of prepare themselves for it. I think it's great that there's a lot of people who do it later in life when they have more experience. I guess maybe also don't beat yourself up too much. I mean, one of the things I was thinking about too was I really did, I think, beat myself up for it a lot. But it's also like for me, it also changed my life.\n\nI think it, you know, I think a lot of the times people will make themselves into the victim, you know, like you want to say, oh, I was denied this or this. And when you're in a developing country, it's in your face. Look, you were given so much and, you know what I mean? And it is your responsibility to actually do something with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "00:58:19", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "00:58:19", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think, you know, a lot of times, too, it's like, yeah, I beat myself up for it. But I also have like quite a bit of my career, quite a bit of my life, to actually do something with it. And I think with also the social media now, you can stay in touch with people much more easily. Um, you know, and I think maintain that friendship too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "00:58:39", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So you said that it changed your life and your perspective on kind of what, what you can do, that you think that Peace Corps was kind of a spark for what you want to achieve and now that you're back in the States? Or how would you, how exactly would you say it affected the way that you see the world and how it changed you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "00:59:02", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm trying to think about that. Um. Yeah. I mean, I, I think, I mean, just what I said before that, you know, not seeing myself as a victim. I think kind of also it sparked an interest in different things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "00:59:17", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "00:59:20", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And really motivated me, I think. I mean, I think sometimes. Sometimes you have to go through some kind of uncomfortable situation or you have to feel somewhat bad to be motivated. I don't know if that makes any sense. Like if you're really happy and comfortable, there's no motivation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "00:59:37", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "00:59:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So maybe even in that sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "00:59:39", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "00:59:39", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like that, that feeling of failure was a motivator." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "00:59:43", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "00:59:44", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think the more and more that you realize, like you can do with yourself and in your situation, the more empowering, the more fun it is to actually do something." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "00:59:55", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "00:59:55", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like, you know. you know what I mean? Like, it just. I think sometimes too in life, like, maybe, like actually doing the work is not that much fun, but like actually like seeing yourself move forward is. And I think the more and more, I don't know, the more and more I live, the more I'm like, oh, I don't want to just sit in front of the TV and do nothing. You know, that's not, it's fun and relaxing sometimes, but if that's all you're doing. You know, like, I don't know, I, yeah, I think you're not as happy either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "01:00:25", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. So a major motivator from your service. That's really cool. What, um. How did you feel when you were leaving Peace Corps, when you were coming back to the States?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "01:00:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, I think I kind of even thought about extending. I didn't end up, um, I said maybe a little, like a few extra weeks or something, just to finish out some stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "01:00:47", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of things would you, did you have to finish out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "01:00:50", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um, just the classes and stuff like that. Um. And then I think I was kind of lost a little bit. And then, um, you know, I think, I mean, I think that's kind of normal, like, right? You're trying to figure out what to do, what's the next step? Yeah. And then I just kind of, it took a few, like it took me a few months and then finally I was like, oh, I'm going to go to grad school and then kind of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "01:01:17", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. So you came back, you went to grad school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "01:01:20", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like, I mean, I got back in December and went back to grad school the following fall. So I had a bit of time. I tutored a little bit, um, and kind of, yeah, didn't really do too much of anything. But yeah, I think it was pretty difficult." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "01:01:36", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Reacclimated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "01:01:37", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that the feeling of failure was still there. Um, and then, yeah. And that kind of being lost. And then I think also kind of reality hitting. I mean, I was like, I turned 26 a little bit afterwards and I feel like you get into your late twenties and, you know, you're kind of more and more like just in general, right? You're like, oh, wait, I need to actually do something with myself. What am I doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "01:02:03", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "01:02:04", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All of that was hitting me. And then, you know, it's also like I feel like every story you want to tell is like, oh, in Honduras, you know? And just like. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the questions was talking about culture shock. I don't know if I had too much culture shock. As I said before, I had traveled a lot before and I think actually being in Honduras helped me with that. Kind of finding my place and figuring out, like, again, myself and like, I don't know. Yeah. Just finding my place in the world." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "01:02:36", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. What, um, so where are you now? And how did you end up in the, in your current role and in Austin and?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "01:02:44", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I've been in Austin since fall 2008. I started in grad school and just stayed here. I work for TxDOT now. Um, we do travel surveys. I love the work. I mean, I think there's some frustrations at this time, but that's fine. Yeah, yeah. That's really where I am. I don't know. Still figuring out stuff in a sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "01:03:09", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah. And you said you still keep in touch with a few people from Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "01:03:13", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "01:03:13", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you're involved in the local returned Peace Corps group. So you're still." + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "01:03:16", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little bit, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "01:03:19", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "01:03:19", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I, I think it's partly I, yeah, when I start, I mean, I, I want to make sure I maintain that connection." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "01:03:24", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "01:03:25", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I would love to do more. I mean I really miss, I think that, yeah, where I'm right now, it's like, okay. So when I got back from Peace Corps, I was like, I do not want to live abroad again. Like just because you build, I mean, I think that's maybe one of the things too, is you build a connection to a place and then you leave it. And that, it was kind of missing, missing home. Like I did, I actually felt like a Honduran immigrant and like, I said that to someone and they're like, what are you talking about, you know? But, you know, just because there's so many memories attached to it. And so, um, but now I'm kind of itching to kind of. I wish I had a job that was more like international focused or where I got to travel a little bit more and stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "01:04:04", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "01:04:06", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "01:04:07", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. That leaves you with a lot of impressions and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "01:04:10", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the things too about Honduras. Sorry. Just one of the things I thought about was just like when we were there, it's like every day, especially at the beginning, every day there's some new experience there. You're learning something new and like that's so rare here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "01:04:27", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "01:04:28", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I think it's such a special, fun, amazing thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "01:04:31", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Is there something you want to say to wrap up, kind of a last thought on what you feel like your, you know, what did you, what was your overarching impression of what your service was? Is there a word or a feeling?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "01:04:47", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Life changing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "01:04:49", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. You've given us a lot of examples of how it affected you. Yeah, well, thank you so much for the interview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "01:04:56", + "speaker": "Christeen Pusch", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "01:04:57", + "speaker": "Sally Waley", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This was great. Yeah." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "nprc-oral-histories-00006", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Eric Voelz", + "description": "\"So it was incumbent upon us to do our best to try and get the basic information that you needed to prove you're a veteran.\"", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/nprc-fire/eric-voelz-nprc-oral-history-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/nprc-oral-histories", + "original_file_name": "eric-voelz-nprc-oral-history-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:07", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "May 25, 2023" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "nprc_oral_histories", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Jessie Kratz" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Eric Voelz" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for participating in the National Archives Oral History Project documenting the 1973 National Personnel Records Center Fire, its impact on the National Archives, and what it was like working at the NPRC. My name is Jessie Kratz, and I'm the Historian of the National Archives. Today is May 25, 2023, and I'm speaking with Eric Voelz. Thank you, Eric, for joining me today. And actually, can you start by giving me some of your background, where you're from, and how you ended up at the National Archives and the NPRC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I was born and raised in St. Louis, and I went to university at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, and majored in history. So it's kind of a natural tie-in. At some point after I graduated, I took the—and they still did this back then—I took the federal test for a government job. And that test, I guess they use that to send scores to different agencies that were hiring. The first job offer I got or interview offer I got was for an ammunition plant in Texarkana, Texas. Not moving to Texarkana, Texas. I'm sorry. So I did not apply. And the next one was for the Career Intern Development System training program at NPRC. And that was a two-year program during which you went through different training assignments with different organizations within the NPRC, the National Personnel Records Center, and learn about the different things that the organization did. The aim being that eventually you would become an archives specialist. It was called the Archives Specialist Training Program, and as an archive specialist, you would be able to be a supervisor of various different level units throughout the organization as they were anticipating a whole lot of retirements from our World War II veteran employees. So during this two-year program, you advanced from a GS-5 to a GS-7 to a GS-9, which was a special deal because usually you can only go one grade at a time. So it seemed like a really good thing. And as a history major, I was certainly interested in working with these records. So it was a perfect fit. So many of the initial assignments I had were where you went to a search section and saw how they pulled records, or you went to a correspondence section and you saw how they answered reference requests, or you went to our incoming mail operation and saw how they processed requests. And then later on, you had more advanced assignments, and those started fairly quickly and included filling in for supervisors that were on maternity leave or where there was a vacancy and they wanted to have somebody there while they filled that position. But it would also be a training opportunity for me, the trainee. So during that time period, I had several opportunities to work with the reconstruction operation, which is what we called trying to come back from the fire. I was not employed at the time of the fire. I started in March of 1977, and that was around three and a half years after the fire. So the fire was still very much on everyone's mind. No matter how well they had rehabbed the building, and it really was a mess after the fire, no matter how well they rehabbed it, you could still smell the fire at that time. Later on, that went away in areas where they kept the records that were recovered from the sixth floor, which was the floor where the fire occurred. You could smell a combination of the fire and whatever chemicals they sprayed on these to try and preserve them from mold, which in St. Louis in the summer, the humidity is high. It's a perfect place for mold to grow. Just like Washington, DC, would be. So that's kind of the background of me as a trainee." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. So what were your impressions of the agency when you began your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it was a lot of people that had a lot of knowledge and for the most part worked extremely hard to make sure that we answered the veterans requests with the records that we had. We were the central location for someone to write if they needed documents for the Veterans Administration, if they needed documents for a home loan, medical treatment, just various things. If they wanted to be buried at a cemetery, a national cemetery, they'd need to have a document. And it was sad because, in some ways, these veterans often got out of the service, and I don't know, they didn't maybe keep as good a track of their separation documents and other important things as they should. But, other than the burned records, we were able to replace those documents. And luckily, at that time, we were often working with the veterans themselves, except in the case of them being deceased and needing to be buried at a government cemetery. So they had intimate knowledge of what they did, where they were, the units they belonged to, and something as minor as their military service number. Because many of these things were very important. There were millions of different records in our holdings, and you can imagine, say for World War II, the Army had 8 or 10 million soldiers. How many similar or exactly the same names would occur? And you would need to have more information in order to determine which one of those records was the gentleman you were looking for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Well, you worked in several different branches over your career, and I was hoping you could go through them and explain to us what the different branches were responsible for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. First off, let me tell you how things are arranged at NPRC. We'll start with the military building. And there was also a civilian building. It's somewhat related to the fire experience, and I'll get into that. But at the military building, there was the headquarters with the director, and then each of the buildings had what was called an assistant director that was solely responsible for that building. Under them, there was a—they called it the management technical staff. And they did studies, wrote reference memos, instructions on how to handle different types of reference requests, and just handled all the day-to-day running of the organization. And they did that for both the buildings. And then at the military building—and it is not like that now—but at the military building, things were divided by branch of service. There was an Army Reference Branch that handled Army records, an Air Force Reference Branch that handled Air Force records after the Air Force became an independent branch of service. There was a Navy Reference Branch, which handled the records of the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard—the various sea services. And then there was an Operations Branch that handled getting records in because we also stored different types of records and personnel records, medical records, and different things like that from hospitals. And this Operations Branch also took care of the incoming mail where they took their requests. There was a very old, what we call a computer registry system, and I'm talking with a mainframe and only certain people had access to it. This was long before PCs, and they would check that system based on what was in the request and see if there was a match for a record. Some of the older records were not in this registry system. There were old Navy and Marine Corps records that were either filed by name or the veteran's service number. And the records that were involved in the fire had been in name order. But after the fire, there was a big project to put them into this system. Now we're talking a mainframe that took up an entire room, but probably most people's PCs or laptops now have that amount of computing power or close to it. So the data that was entered into this registry was very sparse: name, service number, and then a two-letter code that indicated what branch of service or what type of record. And when I say type of record, it's because the Navy and Marine Corps separated their personnel files from their medical files, so there had to be a code for each one. And then they gave each record a unique registry number. And that was simply the order in which these records went into a box. So each of these groupings of records had started at \"1\" and they used a prefix \"A\" for Army, \"F\" for Air Force, and \"N\" for the various Navy ones. And then once we had the fire, they painstakingly went through these burned records and tried to separate them into this pile of, maybe singed records belongs to this guy and so on down the line. And then they entered those into the registry system because the records had been filed alphabetically. There were cases where a new record might contain documents from one or two people with the same name, which until somebody opened it to reference it, they may not realize, but it was a very rudimentary system because that's all the system could handle. So, this Reconstruction Branch was set up. They had people that had worked with these other records we had—because you have to understand that at one time all these records and the building belonged to the various services. And they made this joint DoD record center in St. Louis, a central location, and records from the different services came in and were handled and referenced by personnel from those different military branches, whether military or civilian. I think it started out more military. This was in the early 1950s and became more civilian as time went on. And in the 60s, early 60s, we took it over. At that time, I'm talking about the National Archives and Records Service under GSA because that's where we fell organizationally and took over these things. But each of the services had different what we called organizational records—things like pay vouchers, morning reports, medical treatment records. Some of it was paper. Some of it was microfilm on rolls. And it required a certain amount of knowledge to dig down and find what you were looking for. So that's kind of where we started after the fire." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came and you were a trainee, did you get a particular assignment that you preferred or did they assign you at the end of your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, they assigned me at the end of my training. They saw what was available. As a trainee, we had quarterly progress meetings. We had to prepare a report, which of course back then there were no PCs. You had to prepare it and then turn it over to someone to be typed because they wanted it typed. And then a review panel of four or five people from the organization—someone from our office and different people from different organizations, depending upon what you had worked on. You're in this review panel and you spent a couple of hours answering questions and explaining why you wrote what you did and that allowed you to progress. During my training period, the two assignments I had, and I wish I had a better list of what those were, but I do not. Because of the way this training program worked they weren't documented with a personnel action. And unfortunately, at some point in my past I decided I no longer needed these quarterly reports. So I got rid of those. But one of the first ones I did was filling in as a unit supervisor with probably 15 people working for me in the Reconstruction Branch for a woman that was on maternity leave. And they weren't going to reassign somebody. So they thought, well, this is a training opportunity. So this was probably sometime in 1977 or early 1978. I'm not sure. So I was not only learning my way around supervision—part of the training was to take supervision courses that the government offered—but also learning about the work that Reconstruction Branch did. At that time, it was very complicated to try and reconstruct somebody's service. Luckily, as I said before, many of our requesters were the veterans themselves and they had a lot of knowledge about what when they went in, when they got out, what units they were with. And so these different organizational records, we could go in to review or find different things for this person. They were looking to get awards, and of course, the first thing we did to see if something survived the fire. And there were times nothing survived the fire or what survived the fire was so damaged or illegible that it was not very useful. So there was a desire to try and figure out how to make these different records that were not by particular people, how to make them more accessible. So that leads to the next assignment that I know one of my colleagues has already mentioned, we call them GAO pay vouchers. They were copies of payroll pay vouchers that the Army created during the war years. And this was the set that had gone to the then-Government Accounting Office to be reviewed and I guess balanced against appropriations or to make sure the math was right. I'm not really sure what GAO did, but for some reason the building at Winnebago, our civilian reference building, had a huge stack area full of these things and finding those was very complicated, and you had to have a lot of information from the individual. Hopefully he remembered where he was when he was separated from the military, when he was actually discharged from the military because that's where his final pay voucher would be, which would have some detailed information. Not a lot of it, but it had dates—we needed entry dates, separation dates, character, units, and so that was a very convoluted process to search, which involved two different sets of cards in like a library card catalog file. One was by the place. And then you went through these cards and found out who the payment officer was for that place, and they had a listing of who it was by particular dates and then based on the date that the individual veteran gave you. You went and looked for another set of cards for that payroll officer and found out each month, apparently, they had one number that all the things they paid were filed under. And then you took that number and went to the stack area and found it. It was very crude. They were bundles of paper records between two pieces of heavy cardboard with that number on it and the date and the name of the, I guess it was the disbursing officer, not the payment officer. And you pulled all those bundles because there may have been half a dozen to a dozen different bundles, depending upon how big this place was and how many people and how many other things were paid that month. And then somebody went through untying these bundles that were tied up with kind of like clothesline. And you flip through looking for the voucher number and somehow you determine the ones that said \"final\" were ones where people were being discharged. And this was actually a project that one of the prior trainees to me came up with. Did all the research. Put together a standard operating procedure. Had pictures of the different documents. But these bundles would contain, of course, the final pay vouchers for people being discharged, but it would be everything else that this guy paid that month and year at the particular place. So if they bought coal, food, paid rent on a building, bought gas for a truck, and just paid the regular people that were working there. There was a voucher for all of that. So it was very time-consuming. And so this project that I was part of along with Mr. Charles Pellegrini. He was actually my supervisor in that. We put together a team of college students. It ended up being during the summer; we had a very good team of students, probably 15 to 20 to start with. I think some left because it wasn't what they wanted to do. This was for World War II, and that was the only era we were talking about. And it was a big era because the people that served in World War II were becoming older. They needed documents for things. They needed verification of their service. So it was a very busy time, and the system was so hard to use. It just was terrible. So we set up this project and started with the year 1945 and just went through and pulled each one, and this team went through all the bundles and found all the documents that said final. And this other trainee, her name was Deborah Haverman, had samples of what the documents looked like, Xeroxes in these SOPs. And they used that to determine just the ones to pull that would help us in reconstruction. Everything else was disposed of. These records had been disposable for some time, but after the fire, there was a freeze on any disposal of any records that might possibly have to do with military service. So these were not destroyed before that. They were not permanent records. So after all these things were pulled, we put them in folders. As a trainee, I was kind of like the unit supervisor. So I was in the back of the stack area—we had long tables set up and went through this conveyor belt with boxes and we filled folders with these documents. And many times these were a list—everybody from a particular unit or place that was separated and got their final payments from the military. And there were just list after list or page after page, I should say, of these documents that had basic information about the person, entrance date, separation date, where they separated. There were indications of overseas service based on a particular payment they received in addition to their final pay or as part of their final pay. And those in these folders were then sent to, as I said before, there's an Operations Branch with the civilian building. There was one also that did data entry into this large computer system, and they entered certain pieces of information off these documents, usually a service number, a name, and code. We knew all these were \"AR\" for Army, and that gave it a particular registry number. Actually, I believe the code for those was \"QM\" and the prefix was \"P\" for pay. I don't know who came up with that, but it worked fine. So after this project began, the people in our Reconstruction Branch would not only get hits on something we recovered from the fire, but they'd also get a hit on this pay voucher and then send a request to have that pulled. So that was kind of the model for what we did from then on. If there was a collection of records that we could put into a registry, it made it so much easier. As primitive as these registry systems were, it made it so much easier to find the things that pertain to a particular soldier. Does that make sense?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It does make sense. And I have more questions, actually. So how much coordination was there between the military building on Page [Boulevard] and the Winnebago [Street] building for the civilian records with regard to reconstructing these veterans records, in addition to these pay vouchers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there was a lot because some of these organizational records over time had been stored at that building just because of space issues at the building that had the fire—military building at 9700 Page Boulevard. So because they all work under one director, they really were all part of the same organization. And in fact after the fire the building at 9700 Page was not habitable for people doing requests, so they moved a lot of people down to the civilian building. There was one large stack—and this was no longer like that when I started because by then they had rehabbed the old building, the building that had the fire. But there were people, and they had set up offices, and they were doing their requests out of there. So they were very familiar with the military part of it. The other thing is, and I think it's a question on the form, it's a Standard Form 180, which was—and I don't know if that's still the form—but at the time, Form 180 was a request for military records. They asked if you were a federal employee. Well, the main thing they stored at the civilian building was civilian personnel records that were part of OPM, Office of Personnel Management or the prior agency. And so if we had information that. This person was in the military. They'd also look for a civilian personnel record. Some of them were in a registry, but ones older than about mid-to-early 60s were filed by the agency in usually name order. And people in the Reconstruction Branch learned to request those records and look for documents. They usually look for a person's application for employment because, as most people working for the U.S. Government are aware, being a veteran gives you an assist in how you're rated to be hired. I can't think of the term right now, but if you were wounded, you get so many points. And if you were just a veteran, you get half that. It's like five points or ten points. And so it was very important that these former veterans applying for a job with a government agency would indicate that they had been a veteran. I think it also maybe if you got a bad discharge, a dishonorable discharge, you wouldn't be hired by the federal government. So there was nothing that was going to help us with those people. So they worked very closely together. There were constant requests going from the military building to the civilian building, looking for documentation. And what would happen is the people at the civilian building would search for the individual's civilian personnel record and go through, and they'd pull it and make copies of these application forms and especially the page that had the information about former military service. So all these things kind of then came into the Reconstruction Branch. But it took several years—and a lot of this was done before I started—several years of people that were familiar with all these records collections and blocks of records to come up with a game plan on how we are going to get this information. When this record is burned, and you still see this from time to time on the news, somebody couldn't get this because their record burned in the fire in St. Louis. It's not as much a problem for the former veteran because unfortunately, many of those are deceased. But it becomes a problem for people trying to do genealogy and family history. Because after the veterans are no longer with us, unless they find some things in their belongings they don't have the information that the veteran could give us about where they served, when they went in, when they got out, where they got out. So they have to pretty much go in just by name and hopefully they have a service number, which they don't always, and try to find a record on this individual. So in the decades since the fire, all the things that could be put into this computerized system help the people doing reference requests, pull a proper record, and answer to the best of their abilities. The Reconstruction Branch also deals with the Veterans Administration because if somewhere between their service in World War II—and this is just an example because we've dealt with burnt records up through about 1960—but if at some point between the veteran's separation from the military and when the fire occurred if they had already filed for the VA, which many of them had—they wanted a home loan or educational benefits or medical treatment or something for something that possibly was service related—they would have provided a lot of documents to the VA. So we then contacted the VA to check their, I believe they called them claim files or claim folders, and look for documents for this person. So in a way, it could often end up being kind of a circle. We'd get a request, we'd go to the VA and get documents, we'd provide them to the veteran of the family, and they may take those back to the VA. But in many cases they'd already checked with the VA, and the VA said, “we don't have anything.” So it was incumbent upon us to do our best to try and get the basic information that you needed to prove you're a veteran. And that was the name, personal identifier—it started as a service number, later on, it was all switched over to the Social Security Number—branch of service, entrance date, separation date, and what was called character of service. Honorable, under honorable conditions, general, dishonorable—there were different levels of separations from the military and most of them would allow people to get benefits. The dishonorable discharge level, I don't believe there's any benefits for the veteran that had that sort of discharge, and that's usually for a serious issue that someone is discharged that way and they're not then entitled to veterans benefits. Does that make sense?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It does make sense. And this is out of order but I'm curious about this. I know that you worked through, I guess, 2014 is that when you retired?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "2014. Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that some veterans were discharged dishonorably for reasons that later were decided were inaccurate or unfair. I'm thinking, you know, somebody who might have been discharged for being gay. Did you notice a change? And did people come back later and try to get their discharge changed? Have you experienced any of that? Can you talk a little bit about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we weren't really the agent of change for that. But once it was determined, and this mostly was in the 1950s and 1960s, individuals could be separated and usually didn't get a good discharge for being gay. So then they had that hanging over their head. They couldn't get federal employment. It often hurt them getting regular employment. So at some point, and I'm not really familiar with the time threshold of this, but at some point the laws were changed, and they were allowed to request an upgrade to their discharge, but those were not done by us. But many times the veterans would contact us to get documents because you can imagine if you had this bad discharge you weren't too interested in keeping the documents from when they pretty well kicked you out of the military. So they'd get documents from us, and then they would go to the review boards of the various military branches and they would then review them. And in many cases their separations were upgraded. And, you know, unfortunately, so many things dealing with the government, we live and learn in a world that has changed, and I think we're a better place for it. But it's not always easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Sorry about that diversion. Because you worked in various different branches, could you talk about after you were done with your training program, some of the more memorable assignments that you had, especially ones that may have dealt with the military records that were affected by the fire?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Actually, my first assignment was in the Navy Reference Branch. As I said, each branch of service had its own reference branch and I worked as a chief of a correspondence section. And most of the time people only realize that Army and some Air Force records were damaged or destroyed in the fire. But there actually were some World War II Navy records that were damaged because they were stored on the floor below where the fire occurred. And there—and I don't know if it was one end of the building or what it was—there was a particular portion of the building that a lot of water leaked down into the stack areas below the fire because they fought that fire for, I want to say it was at least four days before they got it under control, and they pumped a lot of water into that sixth floor of the 9700 Page building, and the water ended up having to go somewhere. Well, the floor below, of course, you've got records on shelves, but I have been told or had been told that in some of these stack areas, the water was maybe a foot deep. Well, that would pretty well stoke the bottom box on the shelves. And these were paper records stored in cardboard boxes. So there were occasionally Navy records that were involved in being in what we call the \"B files,\" elegant name for \"burned.\" But that was part of the registry system. Even with these Navy ones, if you came up with a negative search manually by name, you checked the registry system, you said, \"oh, look, it's a B file.\" And those records were generally stored in alphabetical order, so it was kind of an alphabetical run, but it was only, you know, the bottom shelf out of ten, say, on a shelving unit. So it skips names quite a bit. But that was, again, another advantage of having this computerized system, even though it was very basic compared to what we could do today. Very rudimentary. It allowed a way to find that there was a record. So we worked with all those records, answering requests, and in that branch you had to not only know about Navy records, but Marine Corps records and Coast Guard records. So that was my first experience actually supervising anybody who was in a permanent position. I had done that in training positions, but it was kind of different. When you're a trainee, you know you're not going to do that for more than a month or two at a time; you're filling-in. But this was interesting. So then from there my next few positions are all at the civilian building at 111 Winnebago. And as many people do in the federal government, you see an opportunity to maybe be promoted and you apply for a job. Or they say, \"Gee, we think you should work here, so why don't you apply for this?\" Even if it wasn't a promotion. So those positions were not as involved in anything fire related. Even the one position where I was a supervisor archivist in what we called our Appraisal and Disposition section, which was similar to the position I was in several years earlier. But it was considered the Accession and Disposal system office. So things changed a little bit in our recognition of these records. But that was that last position in '86 to '87, where I was a supervisory archivist; where I was really able to be an archivist and use a little bit more of my history background." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that's great. So I was wondering if you could talk about these branches, but then in around 2000, 2001, I think, there was a reorganization and they switched away from branches to using cores. Could you explain the cores and how they operate?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. They operate very well, kind of similarly to the way things were with the branches. But the idea with this reorganization was to streamline the handling of requests so you didn't have to then divide them by the naval services, the Army, the Air Force. There was a particular core that was more involved in the reconstruction of records. So that was very specialized knowledge of where to go for other things and reconstruct the records. But the routine branches, the service branches—the Army, the Air Force, the Navy—those were then made cores. And I don't know where they came up with the name core, but the core was to learn all the services and how to work with all the records. They did not want people to specialize in just what was in a Navy record or what was in a Marine Corps record or Air Force record. They wanted them to have a cross service knowledge. And then the searching operation was put into one search branch, which would search for all the records of any type that anybody needed to respond to a request from the public. So the idea was to streamline it and to make things better at the same time, because computers had advanced so much, we had much better computer systems and we could track the requests, we could enter the request into the system. Other than preliminarily checking the registry system to see if we had anything, it was a totally paper-based system and oh my God, we used a system of colored tags with letters and numbers on them to tell us when the request was received, and those paper requests were just kind of bunched together and in the old days were sent to the particular reference branch that would handle it. Well, along with this change of course they came up with a new computer system and they entered each request into the computer system. And the requests were then printed out at some point because the people from the search branch had to find a record and then it had to go to a core and be assigned. But it was all done with this much more detailed computer system. Because 30–40 years between developing these old registry systems and 2000, computer technology had advanced so much that it became much easier. We still had people that did data entry in our incoming mail operation. They reviewed each request, but besides just checking the register system, they actually put it into a tracking system, and the managers at the upper levels could check in there and see what is our oldest request, or how many requests we have. Whereas before it was all a manual count of paper on shelves. So it changed quite a bit. I never worked in one of the cores, but as an archivist from 1991 until the time I retired, I was in the archival line of work. We became subject matter experts for the different cores and for complicated or unusual requests. Things that needed somebody to do some research beyond what the staff in the cores could do. If that makes sense." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It does. And I was going to ask a little bit about your involvement or can you talk about the discussions that went on in the 90s and then I guess eventually in the 2000s where these records that belong to the Department of Defense were deemed permanent and transferred to the legal custody of the National Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was involved. Actually the person—and I know you mentioned talking to him—the person who was my supervisor much of the time I was an archivist, William Seibert. He was very involved in that process. But this is kind of the sad thing about the military personnel records—they were not deemed permanent. They were considered temporary records. And I want to say a 75-year disposal date. Well, that's—I don't want to say crazy, but that's just not right because interest in military service does not end. You have veterans' families and historians that would like to do research, and to just destroy those records? I want to say I think a similar thing was going on in the civilian side. Those civilian personnel records. But I wasn't really involved in any of that. But making these records permanent, which you have to consider the immense cost that the government is then going to incur, because then instead of storing these records for up to 75 years you're going to store them in perpetuity. And I know at the National Archives in the DC area, they have records from the Civil War, and it's a cost because along with the fact that you're going to keep them longer, you have to store them in better conditions. I want to say climate control; I will say air conditioning because St. Louis can be a hot, humid place. I know Washington can be a hot, humid place. You don't have these in buildings with open windows and no air conditioning or no humidity and temperature control. So again, an immense cost to do that. And I think it took a lot of wrangling between the National Archives and the services, and I'm assuming Congress and everyone else to do this and come up with the funds to pay for it. So it took many years. And the beauty of one of the archivists being involved in this project was we could talk about the famous records we had, you know, Charles Lindbergh or other people that were in the news. Unfortunately, many of those were destroyed in our fire. But at one point they tried to counter-propose that, well, we just go through and pull out the famous people and destroy everybody else. But, you know, that wasn't going to go with the historical and genealogical communities. I believe they got very involved in pushing for making these records permanent. So it was a complicated thing, but it had consequences for us because once these records were then made permanent, we couldn't stay in the buildings we were in because they were not, how would you put it? They were not ready to be storage areas for permanent records. They just could not be retrofitted with the machinery, technology, what have you, to control the temperature and humidity. So that's when we started, I guess, working to get a new building. And there was pushback saying, “well, can't you just scan all this and then get rid of the paper?” Well, they did a study. I was not involved in it, but I'm aware of it and what it would take to scan some of these records. They're old, they're folded, they're stapled. Sometimes they're glued together. There's all these different systems of record keeping that the services used. The cost of preparing these and scanning these—and then what people don't think about is once you scan it, it becomes a permanent system. So you have to migrate that system from computer system to computer system so that it continues to exist. Because if the record is permanent, the scanned images need to be permanent. So they determined this was way more expensive than getting us a new building. I think the only concession to cost was that we don't own the building, we lease it. But in a way that means somebody else has to take care of mechanical issues with the building and we no longer have to do that. It's kind of a double-edged sword because you don't own the building. But we pretty well directed exactly how it was to be built and what was to be in it. So. That's how we ended up at One Archives Drive in a brand-new building, well brand new as of late 2000s—I think we actually moved in in 2011, but it's a far cry from where we were in the other two buildings. The biggest difference is where we store the records that were involved in the fire that had been water damaged or singed, fire damaged, or water damaged. They used to be in a stack area at the building on 9700 Page that did have air conditioning. It was kind of okay. But then at some point GSA, the organization that maintains those buildings, ran a huge steam line through that stack area to get to a new building they built next door for the Army Reserve. Well, in the winter, if you were near that steam main and it wasn’t insulated, you couldn't hardly touch it. It was so hot. So it wasn't good for those records. So they're now in a stack area that I want to say is kept at a very comfortable, well, comfortable if you'd like to be in cool temperature, probably in the 60s with the humidity controlled even in the summer. I saw searchers go in there wearing a fleece jacket or something because it was chilly. But that's what you need to do to preserve these records that have been water and fire damaged. So, is that what you were getting with the change?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Yes, for sure. You mentioned the new building. So were you involved and what did moving to this new building entail?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, my. It was a lot because we were moving over a million boxes of records, and I'm talking cubic foot cartons. And at the same time, because there were records that were not deemed permanent, we then came up with another facility—not co-located with the building on One Archives Way—across the Mississippi River in Illinois, in a town called Valmeyer. They created a record center in a former underground quarry for the non-permanent records. And they opened up and they had people working there. And I've been there. It's very nice. There are certain places where the walls look like rock, but they've fitted it out. They've got ventilation systems, and sometimes it's just to keep the air moving because this underground quarry maintains a fairly constant temperature somewhere in the 60s. And so we weren't just sending everything to one place; we were going through and deciding which went which way. And as an archivist, there were projects at the civilian building to go through collections and determine exactly what was there and check it against the various systems that control those non-personnel type records and determine that at that building on Winnebago, there were all these civilian personnel records, which were also made permanent at some point, although I'm not as involved in the details of that. And they were moved to the building on Archives Drive in North St. Louis County. And then other things were moved to the underground facility in Illinois. And the same thing occurred at the building in 9700 Page—there were records moved to the archives facility on Archives Drive and other things moved to the underground facility in Illinois. So the archivists were involved in that at the time, at the military building, we had a security vault. Both buildings actually had a security vault. So those of us that had security clearances were involved in going through different things. I believe the new building is no longer going to have a security vault here in St. Louis. So anything that was actually classified was sent to the DC area. And I don't remember the particulars—there were things that were disposable that had to be disposed of as you would handle classified records. And then the vaults at each of the buildings was where we kept what we used to call our VIP collection of famous people. And it was the job of the archivist to go through our registry system. You'd see things in the news, you'd read history books, you'd find out that X movie star had been in the Army, and their movie star name was the name they served under. So in order to protect these records, you didn't want them out in the open stacks where somebody could go, \"Oh, I wonder if this is the guy that was in whatever movie.\" So we pulled those and put them into the security vault because it was just an easy way to do it. We didn't really have any other locations. But it required then if somebody was going to need a record of one of these people to answer a request, they had to work with the people who had clearances, and that was several of us archivists that we would then go to the vault, find the record, deliver it to the branch or, later on, the cores. And they would answer. They would respond to the request. We usually dealt with supervisors and said, \"Okay, now you've got this vault record. Let me know when you're finished with it. We'll come pick it up.” And then we'd put it back in the vault. So that took a certain amount of work. But actually getting rid of the classified records, and we're talking classified records from prior to the mid-60s. Nothing current. These were things that the military services, when they ran the joint records center in St. Louis, that they had or at our civilian building. There were a couple of, well, mainly one federal agency that created classified documents. They were what was called the Defense Mapping Agency. It's now a different name—the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, which still has a location here in St. Louis. But we had records from them. And so those had to go somewhere else. I believe the agency actually took them back for storage. And so that was also a part of what the archivist did with closing out the old buildings and moving to the new buildings. I hope that hasn't gone too astray, but that was all part of the process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is not. All the information you're providing is helpful. It doesn't have to be all fire related. I do know we're over an hour. Do you have plans, or could you stick around just for a little longer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can stick around as long as you would like. I don't really have any firm plans today. I made sure that once you set this up that I didn't do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, good. Well, these interviews were prompted by the fire, so I was going to ask a couple more fire questions, but then I also wanted to move on to maybe a couple of the other things that you worked on after. Did you have anything in particular you wanted to share about the fire that you think that people should know? I know you weren't there, but you definitely worked with the people who worked there during the fire. And then you were there very early—in the 70s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the thing I guess that amazed me the most is after the investigation into the cause of the fire, and it occurred on the night shift, as I understand it, because they used to work an evening shift and it occurred in the stack area on the sixth floor. There was reason to believe the cause involved something with smoking. Whether it was smoking in a stack area, which was not really allowed or some other reason, but for the immediate period when the building was re-inhabited after they had rehabbed it, torn off—this was terrible. They had bulldozed a whole floor off the building, cleaned that up, and turned what was the sixth floor into the roof of the new building. They had to redo piping or drainage and what have you. It was a mess. But all that was done before I started. But also what happened before I started is they allowed smoking in the building again. This was the 70s so it was just the beginning of the anti-smoking crusade in this country. But the employees, and I guess the employee unions, I don't really know the particulars. They went from no smoking in the building, and then you had to go to a smoking area, which was kind of in an open lobby on each floor near the escalators and freight elevators. And actually you were not supposed to bring lighters or matches into the building. They had some sort of electric lighters they had installed in these areas. By the time I started, people were allowed to smoke, and those electric lighters had been dismantled and removed. But it always amazed me that you have all this paper and you're going to allow people to smoke around it after you had this fire. It just seemed a real paradox or contradiction, but part of it had to do with the fact that these weren't considered permanent, so they didn't have the elevated storage conditions required of permanent records. So that was the thing that really got me. So I don't know. The sad thing is a couple years before I started this job my mom died of lung cancer from smoking. So I think, oh, my God, really? How important is it? But I understand it's a physiological need. People can't necessarily quit once they've started. And for that generation, smoking wasn't seen as a danger. It wasn't until later. So that was just really something that I found crazy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you were there in the 70s, what was the culture like in the facility?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well I think you had a whole lot of people that worked very hard and were very good at what they did. But unfortunately, it seemed like some of the younger people, I don't know, weren't as interested. I don't know if it was a countercultural thing or what it was but they still performed their work. They just maybe weren't always easy to deal with. So I don't know. As a trainee, my first couple of years there, I had a few people that were like, \"Oh, you're a big shot cause you're a college kid, right?\" I went, \"I just got this job. I’ve got to learn how to do this.\" But those were very few and far between. For the most part, I think people that work there saw the job as important and we were helping people. Whether it was the veteran or their relatives or somebody. So I think it was a pretty good culture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This may be a hard one, but what do you think the biggest impact of the fire was on the National Archives and NPRC?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think probably the biggest impact in my mind, and I've never had anybody tell me this officially, was that it was really one of the reasons that making these personnel records permanent actually was able to occur, because I think the decision to have better storage conditions was very important and that fire was always there as a warning. The building, this is just weird, I believe there were sections of the building that did not have sprinklers until after the fire. Because, and I'd been told that apparently the disasters in record storage facilities prior to 1973 had involved floods and water, so they were very leery about sprinkler systems. Well, let's say that changed and the building was retrofitted with sprinkler systems, which was again part of the rehab of the facility. So now I don't think you'd have any records facility that didn't have sophisticated fire prevention methods, sprinkler systems, even the new building. We have to divide it up into a particular size bay that cannot contain more than a certain number of cubic feet of records. And again, we're, for the most part, almost entirely dealing with paper records, because if there were a fire and automatic doors closed, then hopefully you can keep that fire in just one bay. And not that it wouldn't be disastrous, but between the various fire protection systems, you hope that it wouldn't turn into something like the fire in 1973." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hope not. No. So then you left the National Archives for a little bit, and then you came back and worked in the Office of Regional Records Service. Can you talk about your last, you know, I guess the work you did when you came back and then for the remainder of your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had left. I was actually looking for a promotion and there were some openings with a particular Department of Defense office in St. Louis, and I did get a promotion, but then they rearranged things and decided I was going to have to move to Chicago and for the same pay grade. And I decided that was not good. And simultaneously with that, because I kept in touch with several people that I had worked with at the National Personnel Records Center, and I was told there was an opening. So I applied. And so the remainder of my career from 1991 on to my retirement I was as an archivist or, for the final not quite three years, I was as a supervisory archivist because it was all part of the reorganization of how we did things in the archival branch. But yeah, there were organizational changes. The archivists at 9700 Page had been in what was called the Military Operations Branch, which lumped, as I said, maintenance and mail, and computer data entry, and the archivists together. And then as things changed we went to the cores, and then the archival staff was moved into the Office of Regional Records Services, and my position was in what was called Research Services, which involved responding to requests from individuals and organizations. And also requests that were conveyed to me by senior management in the cores or the record center itself that they had. And it would often involve dealing with a high-profile thing that came from Congress or the news media or whatever. They wanted to make sure that we would find every record that could pertain to a particular topic, burned or not. They didn't always involve burned records, but to me it was very interesting that there was another side of the archival program that dealt with pulling records of the records collections that we had administered. So there was a little of everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any particular aspect of your job that you enjoyed the most?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'd have to say I really enjoyed working with—and many of my requests would come to me in a phone call or start as a phone call. And we had veterans organizations, and we had authors writing different historical books that would come looking for things to provide background information for whatever they were doing. And I enjoyed these phone calls. I dealt with many military people. We dealt with the—it's changed its name several times, the Defense Prisoner of War Missing in Action Office. They were doing a lot of work with Korea, Korean War deaths and missing individuals. And we provided assistance in looking at these unit records that they could use to find things that happened during the Korean War or World War II. And then that research that we did was then translated into providing information to a team that may actually go to Korea and work with the Korean government to go to a battlefield and exhume remains or what have you. I know we did similar things with Vietnam. We provided records to verify something that maybe they found in an aircraft or helicopter crash site. So those were some of the most interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Over your entire career, do you have any memorable experiences that you want to share?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, how would I put it? We were involved in oh, it seemed like this one election where it was Bush and other people—we were verifying their military records. And probably the most humorous one was when Ross Perot was running for President and he had been in the Navy, and we had records and supposedly there were accusations of things being leaked and, you know, we had to verify that we pulled the records and then we immediately sent them to the branch of service, I think. And if anything happened after that, we can't control it. But these high-profile things, they kind of stick with you. So, like John Kerry and dealing with the boats and Vietnam and different things. It was just very interesting to work on something and do all this digging and then realize that, well, this ended up in the news." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So that's very cool. Yeah. I always love how Perot lent us his Magna Carta and we had it on display for a couple decades." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think the most humorous thing is at one point when he was upset about the supposed leaks, he personally called our director. And at the time, our director was named David Petree. And he also, like Perot, was from Texas, had a very similar twangy accent. So we often wondered what that phone conversation sounded like. Because, I don't know, it just tickled us to think that they'd be talking to each other and both have the same Texas ]accent and probably thinking, \"Are you making fun of me?\" I don't know. That seems silly, but it was a thing that stuck out." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. That's so funny. Wish I could hear that conversation too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did, too, because, you know, the director sat in his office with the door closed and had a phone call with Mr. Perot. But they have very similar to me, very similar kind of twangy Texas accents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just have a couple more questions. So you worked here for a significant amount of time and under several Archivists. Did you notice changes in how the NPRC was run or your daily work when we had a new Archivist come on board?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "To me, the biggest change was when the National Archives became independent. Because at that point it seemed like we were more closely aligned with the Archivist and what went on in DC, it sounds weird. When GSA was involved, the General Services Administration, they seemed like—especially because we were in a GSA run building and we had those people there—it just didn't seem like we spent as much time being directly connected to the Archivist. So I guess the biggest change was maybe under Dr. Warner, because I believe he was the Archivist when the National Archives became independent. And if I'm wrong, I apologize. I don't have any of those names or dates in front of me, but that's when I noticed a change. And then the next big change in especially dealing with the Archivist and all the archival staff in the Washington area is when these records are made permanent. In the 90s because, I don't know how to put this, but it was almost as if what we did at the National Personnel Records Center, military and civilian, didn't fit in with what the Archives did in Washington. So we were, I won't say a mystery, but it always took a little explaining when they'd go, \"Well, why don't you do this?\" And we'd go, \"Well, because whatever.\" And it always took a little, I guess, explanation, but I'd have to say at my level, I never worked directly—I do remember when David Ferriero came to visit, but he had been in the Navy. And I believe he actually visited us in the vault because by the time he visited, we had already pulled his record and had it stored in the vault. So it was protected. So he came and visited us and wanted to look at the record and we chatted about, I think he was a corpsman. Something to do with medical, I think. But that to me was kind of a highlight because most of the time if you saw one of the Archivists, you know, they came to St. Louis, you had an all-hands meeting. He was up on the podium and being introduced by the director and made a speech or gave a statement and that was about it. But Dr. Ferriero, I think he was a Dr., well, David Ferriero, the Archivist, he actually came to visit and because of his veteran status, you know, wanted to see his record. Kind of a natural thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, you guys scanned it because I've seen it. I've seen parts of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I guess we did. Or we made copies or whatever. I don't remember the details. I just remember, you know, we didn't just pull it and bring it to him. He wanted to come and see it. So he came and we met him in our vault. We were there. He came in. We called it this VIP file because they were records that we just wanted to make sure something untoward didn't happen to. And it could have just been something innocent that it got misfiled when it was being put back. So that was kind of I thought that was kind of a very interesting thing. So. And you have a new Archivist now. That's the first permanent female Archivist." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. And I believe she is going to NPRC soon, next week." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, boy. Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think there's a congressional open house happening. So I think she's visiting for that. So if you're around, she'll be there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I probably will not. I mean, I may. It may be on the news. I don't know. I will say I said first permanent Archivist because I know Debra Wall was Acting Archivist, and I had a few occasions when I was employed to deal with her. And I always found her really easy to deal with; a sharp person. So I couldn't think of a better person to handle some of that stuff in the interim. And I know filling these positions that have to be approved by the Senate and everything, they're just not easy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's an understatement." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Yeah, that is definitely an understatement. I haven't really kept up with all the particulars, but I just know it's never easy and it seems like those things have gotten harder." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So is there anything else you'd like to add to the interview? Do you have any additional anecdotes?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I actually have one that is kind of weird. I told you I was born and raised in St. Louis, and my dad was very active in the Marine Corps Reserve. So I had been a Cub Scout, but I really didn't want to be a Boy Scout. I don't know why. I think most of my friends weren't doing it. Well, he came to me and said, well, they have this Marine Corps League program, like a local Marine Corps veterans group. He said they have this group called the Young Marines. You could do that. So in 1967, I did that. And we had goofy-looking, little uniforms with a beret, but where we met every Saturday for spring and summer of 1967 when I was 13 was the National Personnel Records Center on 9700 Page." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kind of weird. And of the people that I still regularly see and we have a monthly group of retirees that get together, I think I was actually at the building before any of them, even Mrs. Bruno that I know you're going to talk to, because 1967, it was still a full six floors. And we actually met on Saturdays. And apparently Saturday work must have been common because that building was open, and we just met there and marched around and learned different things. But it's just a weird, sideline to the fact that I was there before the fire, but at the time I'm not even sure that I paid any attention to how many floors it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, then, when you were in the area during the fire, do you remember it happening?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember it being on the news. I guess I was a sophomore in college and it was summer, so I was not at the university, which distance-wise was not far from the National Personnel Records Center there on Page. But I lived quite a bit further south and I actually had a job even further away that I worked at. So other than seeing things on the news, I think my dad said, \"that's where you did that young Marine stuff.\" I went, “Oh, yeah, look at that. That's terrible.” It didn't really hit me too much at the time. More so when I went for my job interview at this building. And when I was hired, it was like, oh, yeah, right out there in that parking lot or, you know, there were offices underneath the cafeteria that still were used by the Navy and Marine Corps. And that's where we had meetings or different things, training sessions. I don't know, considering it was the period of the Vietnam War, it was kind of a weird thing to do. But it's a nationwide, or it was a nationwide program. But that's kind of my strange anecdote." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's very interesting. Well, if there isn't anything else, we will wrap up the interview. But I did want to explain what we're going to do with these interviews. Did you have anything else you wanted to add before I stop recording?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Eric Voelz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I think I've thrown out a lot because we've gone half an hour over our initial time. So I apologize if this is too wordy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Not at all." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00155", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/El-BazF/el-bazf.htm", + "original_file_name": "El-BazF_11-2-09.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/El-BazF/El-BazF_11-2-09.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Farouk El-Baz", + "location_date": "Boston, Massachusetts – 2 November 2009" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright", + "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Farouk El-Baz" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is November 2, 2009. This oral history interview is being conducted with Dr. Farouk El-Baz in Boston, Massachusetts, for the Johnson Space Center Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. We certainly would like to start by telling you thank you. We know you’re a very busy person with a very busy schedule, so thank you for finding time for us today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re welcome to come here, because this is part of the history of the United States. It’s important that we all chip in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’re glad to hear that. We know your work with NASA began as early as 1967 when you became employed by Bellcomm [Incorporated]. Could you share with us how you learned about that opportunity and how you made that transition into becoming an employee there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just the backdrop, I finished my PhD here in the US. First job offer was from Germany. It was in June 1964; I was teaching there [at the University of Heidelberg] until December 1965. I went to Egypt then, tried to get a job in geology. I was unable for a whole year, so I came back to the US as an immigrant in the end of 1966. For the first three months of 1967, I began to search for a job. When I arrived in the winter, most of the people that I knew were at universities, and most universities had hired the people that would teach during the year. I wasn’t getting much response, so I tried to apply to mining companies, oil companies, or whatever I could get.\\n\\n Very little was happening. I had been getting all kinds of professional magazines. One of them was Physics Today. In this Physics Today there was just a one quarter-page ad [advertisement] for Bellcomm. It said, “We need geologists to work on the Moon” from photographs that have been taken by Lunar Orbiter missions. So I thought I would apply there too. My wife was the one typing all the letters of applications. I had sent by then, by end of February, something like 120 letters of application. I was sending them as fast as I could, so this would have been the 121st letter. That evening my wife was beginning to feel tired, it was like 11:00. I told her, “Here is one more.”\\n\\n She said, “What’s this about? I’m tired now.”\\n\\n I told her, “Well, send out one more.”\\n\\n She said, “What’s that about?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, they said that they need geologists to look at the Moon.”\\n\\n She said, “And what do you know about the Moon?”\\n\\n I said, “Nothing, but I can learn.” She grudgingly typed the letter. There were two typos; I did not ask her to redo anything; I corrected them myself neatly. We sent the letter and that was the letter that I got the first response from.\\n\\n They said, “You’ll come and interview,” I think the first of March or something like that, so I went down for that interview. Two people stood out in my mind from these interviews. The first is Ed [Edward C.] Nixon, who was the brother of President [Richard M.] Nixon. He was a geologist with a master’s degree. He said, “Well, I tried to work in geology, I didn’t find anything, I couldn’t, so I moved out and now I’m a personnel guy.” He was the head of personnel at Bellcomm. “Geology, I suppose, trains you for all kinds of things, and here I am, I’m doing fine. I still remember geology. I read some books here and there, but it’s all gone.”\\n\\n Then the other guy that stood out in my recollections was a geologist from Germany. His name is Bruno [E.] Sabels. He said, “Well, this is a lousy job, it’s a paper-shuffling job. We get these reports from the US Geological Survey [USGS] geologists. None of the NASA people like to look at all these reports, so all our job is just to summarize these damned reports and give it to them. We know that nobody reads them anyway, so it’s a paper-shuffling job.”\\n\\n I said okay. When I went to work, I was right next to him after I accepted the job; my office was right next to Bruno Sabels. I told him, “When you get these reports from the geologists, give them to me. I’ll summarize them for you.” He said great; he liked the whole notion, so I did. He gets these reports, supposed to summarize them. He gives them to me, I summarize them in one paragraph and give it to him. That went on for a long while very nicely.\\n\\n Then there was another geologist who worked for NASA by the name of Donald [A.] Beattie. He reminded me of the story himself not long ago. He said, “When you came, you were green as anything. You came to my office, shook hands, introduced yourself, and you said you were going to be working for Bellcomm. You looked at this huge stack of filing tables in my office, you said, ‘What are these?’ The Moon. That’s the lunar pictures. There are too many of them.”\\n\\n He opened the drawers and showed me the pictures and I began to look at them with interest. He said, “Listen, if you want to take them, go ahead and take them, I don’t want them anymore.” I said sure, and took all the pictures. This was the beginning of the pictures that I began to look at. I was fascinated, and I thought I’d begin to study these, and began to do that for myself.\\n\\n Not long after, there was a meeting of the geologists in one of the NASA Centers in Virginia, Langley Research Center [Hampton, Virginia]. Don Beattie was going. He called me up, he said, “I’m going to Langley Research Center for a geology meeting. Want to come along?” I said absolutely, so we hopped in the car and he drove his Mustang—he was quite happy with it. We went down to Langley; I forget the town. The hotel was called Strawberry Banks. Norfolk, Virginia, I think.\\n\\n We went to these meetings inside the Langley Center. The geologists began to report on their findings. These were geologists mostly from the US Geological Survey. Some of them were seconded to NASA, some of them were completely supported by NASA in Flagstaff, Arizona. There was a branch of astrogeology in Flagstaff, Arizona, with a small component of the same branch in Menlo Park, California. These were the US Geological Survey geologists that were supported by money from NASA to work on the geology of the Moon. Many of these people would stand up and talk about Copernicus Crater and various hills, features one by one by one by one.\\n\\n This was the first meeting. Then the second meeting went on; the same thing happened. I began to realize that I really needed to get more familiar with all these pictures so I could communicate with my buddy geologists. I went to NASA Headquarters [Washington, D.C.] at the library and asked them, “Where are the lunar photographs?” They told me in such and such room. I went to that room, and there were piles of Lunar Orbiter pictures just like the ones with Don Beattie. Totally disorganized, and just shoved all over. I went to the librarian and said, “These need organization. Can we have some tables? We’ll fix them.”\\n\\n He said, “Sure, what do you need?”\\n\\n I said, “Nine tables.”\\n\\n He said, “Sure. They’re going to be ready 9:00 in the morning.” So he did. The following day I had nine tables ready to go. I had brought in clean sheets from the house to brush the dust off the papers and organize them. It took me three days to organize all the pictures that had been collected by Lunar Orbiter then and put them in stacks by the mission and by the numbers and all like that. I began to look at them.\\n\\n These [geology] meetings were very regular, so we went back down to Langley. Again everybody stands up for one hour and speaks about a lunar feature or another and would sit down, then somebody else speaks. Some questions or no questions, then it’s followed; every day, a single day. That third meeting I think, I realized that yes, we’re seeing details about these features, but there is nothing that connects all of these things together. What’s connecting all of these things? Why are we looking at these different things in different places on the Moon?\\n\\n There was one old gentleman sitting right next to me. He had a beard and beginning to get some gray hair, I thought he would be kind to me. I asked him whether there is a report or a paper or something that talks about all the different types of lunar surface features and their distribution on the Moon. He said, “What do you mean?”\\n\\n I said, “Just a list of the different types of features and their distribution.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, we know what they are and where they are.” I thought to myself, all right, they know where they are and what they are, I should begin to know what they are and where they are. So I went back to this library room with all of the Lunar Orbiter pictures. The librarian had actually given me the key and allocated the room to Bellcomm, because I was Bellcomm. Although we were all at NASA Headquarters, this room became kind of my play place. All the lunar pictures.\\n\\n I sat down, after I did my official work of summarizing the reports for my buddy, I would go to that room, sit down, take all the pictures one by one, see what’s in it, take one three-by-five card, we didn’t have computers and none of these other things that you guys are familiar with. But we had three-by-five cards we’d buy. I’d write the mission number, the frame number, and then write some notes on what that picture contained, what features, one by one.\\n\\n Went through them all, couple thousand of them, and organized them, and then when I finished I asked myself just a very simple question. Why does NASA need geologists? It is to select landing sites on the Moon, so if we want to go and land next to every single type of lunar surface feature, which means that we would sample every kind of lunar material or rock, if all of these features have different rocks, where do we go?\\n\\n I took my list, the card file, one by one, went through them all—this is here, this is here, this one here. I came up at the very end with a list of 16 places on the Moon. If we go to all these places we would see every single type of lunar surface feature and therefore we would have sampled every kind of lunar rock, if these features have different types of materials or rocks.\\n\\n I liked that whole notion, so we had a plan for the next meeting of this bunch of geologists. I asked who’s organizing the next meeting. They told me who, and I found his phone number. There was no Internet to find that phone number. It took me three days to find the phone number of that guy in Flagstaff, Arizona. I called him up, and I said, “At the next meeting I would like you to give me a chance for one hour just like the other guys.”\\n\\n He actually said, “Who are you?”\\n\\n I said, “My name is Farouk El-Baz.”\\n\\n “Where do you work?”\\n\\n “At Bellcomm.”\\n\\n “What are you going to talk about?”\\n\\n “About 16 sites on the lunar surface.”\\n\\n “16 sites. What sites?”\\n\\n I said, “Well, these are features—”\\n\\n “Give me an example.” So I gave him one. “Give me another example.” I gave him another one by telling him where we would go and what we would find. So he said, “How about that—another example,” so I gave him a third example. He said, “Well, that’s interesting. I’ll put you on the program.”\\n\\n So he did. He put me on the program. I prepared my viewgraphs. There was no [Microsoft] PowerPoint [software] then; we had viewgraphs, which are huge sheets like that. I’ll show you an example of it. We put it like this [demonstrates] and it projects it on the screen. I had my viewgraphs of this and what were the 16 sites, what they show, and how many of these features we’ll see, and this and this and that. I finished my presentation. All kinds of questions came up.\\n\\n During the question period, the same gentleman was sitting next to me; Bob [Robert P.] Bryson, who was from the Lunar Exploration Office. He stood up and he said, “I’ll have you all know that this young man—,” he didn’t know my name from Adam, “the last time we were here he asked me about the lunar surface features and their distribution. I told him we know what they are and where they are. I want to thank him publicly, because he just showed me that we didn’t know what they were and where they were.”\\n\\n That was it; that was the key. That statement made me among my own peer group, the geologists themselves. Upon return to my office after that meeting, I would get phone calls from Flagstaff, from Menlo Park, from Houston [Texas], from the guys, from many geologists. [They] would call me up and they said, “When you said that the various sites would be such and such and such, what was that based on?” I had all of my cards in gray metal canisters right on top of my desk.\\n\\n I’d flip over the Lunar Orbiter one and pick up the number and look at it and say, “Well, Lunar Orbiter I frame 82. If you look in the lower right corner—” because I wrote that in my card, “you’ll find such and such.”\\n\\n “Gee. Thank you,” from the other end. Somehow I became a source of information. This kind of got me into my peers as an equal. It took a lot of work to do, or a lot of thinking, because first I’m a foreigner. At the time there was no diplomatic relations between the US and Egypt. I had not been a citizen yet, I spoke funny, I look weird. My name—nobody could pronounce. All of these things combined are against me, so you had to have a lot to counteract all of this so that you can be accepted as one in the group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you used knowledge for your entrance." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was knowledge. And it was work like hell, figure out everything yourself before you open your mouth, then when you open your mouth make sure that you’re going to add something, because every single one of them is adding something. You’ve got to add a lot more than they do so that you as a weirdo can be accepted amongst them. That was it.\\n\\n So I became part of the geology group and slowly but surely I became the spokesman of geology at NASA Headquarters and with the NASA engineers in Houston. Wherever it was, I became the guy that speaks on behalf of the geology community." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Share about the relationship of Bellcomm and USGS and NASA scientists, NASA Headquarters. So much is going on, trying to get to the Moon by the end of the decade. How did everyone work well together? As you mentioned, we had no Internet, faxes, you even had to look up phone numbers. How were you able to exchange information so everyone could be up to date?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "First, Bellcomm as part of NASA. I consider it one of the strokes of genius of [NASA Administrator] Jim [James E.] Webb, who just conjured that we’re going to have problems in communicating with astronauts, and that takes a lot of engineering and a lot of communication expertise. Who has that kind of thing?\\n\\n At the time there was only AT&T. There was no Verizon and this and this and that. None of these existed, so AT&T was the main place for all of this high-caliber engineering, particularly at the research headquarters of AT&T, which was in Holmdel, New Jersey. So Jim Webb writes a letter to the chairman of AT&T requesting AT&T’s assistance in the nation’s quest, and asking that AT&T put together a team to work with NASA to resolve all the problems of communication that we’re going to encounter, not just with the astronauts, but from the Moon, behind the Moon, because we don’t know what we’re going to deal with.\\n\\n It seems that the chairman of AT&T took this to the board and the board loved it and they all voted absolutely, put all your best into this thing. They agreed to get all of the big minds of AT&T with their own support teams and move them lock, stock, and barrel to NASA Headquarters as part of NASA Headquarters to work for cost, because this is working for the nation. It was a national quest we’re working on, so there should be no profit in this. We’re doing it for the good of our country. So Bellcomm was then put as a component to support NASA Headquarters to work for cost plus $1 a year. That was in the contract." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Amazing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Genius. Now, what’s the real genius behind it? The real genius behind it is that these people in Washington, DC, were not NASA employees. We had a boss in New Jersey, so the immediate boss and so on is irrelevant, because the real boss is in New Jersey. None of these people have a boss right there, so when we’re asked something we answer it for the good of the program, regardless of whose idea it was, who in NASA Headquarters would like it, and who would not like it. It is irrelevant. It is for the good of the program, period. So at NASA Headquarters, we could say anything to the Apollo program director, to the NASA Administrator, to anybody in the group, to the engineers, to anyone, for the good of the program, because he has nothing on me. My boss is out there.\\n\\n Then, when we worked with the Centers, when we went to any of the Centers, we had a badge that said NASA Headquarters. We had a kind of one-upmanship with people at the Headquarters with the Centers, because we represented NASA Headquarters. We could get things done outside of the realm, within the structures at the Centers, because we were outside. We are Headquarters; we say we need this, and we need this by Friday. And we can say that, and it happens because we’re representing NASA Headquarters.\\n\\n It was unreal. I’ve never seen anything like it before. The way it worked is that Bellcomm offices were always in the same building, and in many cases on the same floor as the Apollo Program Director Rocco [A.] Petrone. Rocco Petrone was the dynamo behind the success of Apollo. Very little is written about that man; no books were ever written about him. He didn’t write a thing. I tried to push him like crazy when he retired. He wouldn’t. He was an Army officer, football player, big and bulky, as tough as nails. Smart as hell, because he had a PhD, even though he was a football player and in the Army.\\n\\n He became the director of the Redstone launch operations [Development Officer, Redstone Missile Development, Huntsville, Alabama (1952-1955)], then he put together all of the launch sites at the Cape [Canaveral, Florida]. He was launch operations director at the time of the first Apollo missions. After Apollo 11 he then became the Apollo program director. He replaced [Robert C.] Seamans, [Jr.], so he really was this incredible character that knew how to motivate people, knew how to push to the absolute limit, knew how to be cordial, laugh with the astronauts and do this and that, but push like crazy. He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was just a master of management.\\n\\n I’ll never forget my first interaction with him in a real-life situation where there was some problem at JSC [Johnson Space Center] in Houston and I knew about it. So he calls me up because he knew that I was there. Calls me up. “Farouk, what’s the story?” So I told him. He said, “Do you know what group in Houston is doing this?”\\n\\n I said, “Not clear.”\\n\\n He said, “Just get on a plane, go down to Houston, figure out exactly who is doing it. The small group, tiny, down in the bottom, that will do this job. Because from [JSC Director] Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft I get all kinds of smoke and mirrors. I want to find out who’s doing this because we need to finish this. We need to finish on time, so just find out who and where at NASA Houston is doing this.”\\n\\n So I go down to the small group that’s doing it. There’s one guy and six engineers. I get his [phone] number and name and this and that; I found out what the real story is. And, there are complications between him and layers above. So, I go to Rocco the following day and I said, “That’s it, I found out yesterday that this is the story.”\\n\\n He said, “You got his number?” I said sure; I gave it to him. He said, “Okay, give it to Virginia, please.” Virginia was his secretary. Said, “Virginia, call this number for me.” She takes it from me and calls the guy. This is the Apollo program director in Washington, D.C., and he calls this guy. “Hi, John,” he says, as if he knows him. “Farouk here tells me that he was with you yesterday and you’re doing a great job.” The other guy I’m sure is shaking like this [gestures]. This guy has never talked to Chris Kraft who’s directing NASA in Houston, and he’s never ever seen Rocco Petrone from NASA Headquarters.\\n\\n He tells him, “Listen, John, this is the problem that is standing in front on the road of that mission. You are the only man that can fix this problem now, and your group has the key to this mission. Do it and fix it; we’re going to have that mission successful. If you don’t, we ain’t going to, so John, I want you to go to your guys. Get all your guys together, and tell them. Tell them that the whole program depends on that one little thing.\\n\\n “I want it, and we need to accomplish that by next Thursday. We thought about Friday, but now it is next Thursday.” This was Tuesday. “So John, the whole thing is in your hands. I know that you can do it because Farouk tells me there is nobody like you. You’re a dedicated guy. John, if you need anything during this time you get your people and you get them together and tell them, ‘Hey we’re going to do this thing.’ If you need anything from me, here is my number.” He gives him his phone number. “Just in case you need anything at night or something, here is my home number.” He gives him his home number in [Arlington] Virginia. “Okay, John. Godspeed. I’ll wait to hear from you, John.”\\n\\n I’m sure the guy at the other end has fainted already. He collected all of his guys and pumped them up like crazy. They worked I’m sure 48 hours nonstop and they fixed the problem.\\n\\n How much more motivation can you do for anybody, that the topnotch guy in NASA Headquarters calls that little engineer and pumps him up and tells him you are great and the whole program depends on you and Farouk tells me that you’re the best, and you got to do it? He’s going to do this thing, no matter what it takes. That I think is motivation. That is the modus operandi of Rocco, the way he fixed things one by one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your 16 sites that you suggested to be considered for site selection—how did this progress over the next couple years as the Apollo missions, the lunar landing missions, began to move forward?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was not necessarily all the same thing, but it was the principle of it all that we need to sample different types of features. We need to sample different types of rocks. Most of the Apollo sites that we visited really fall within the same range of the 16 sites, not necessarily exactly the place, but within the range. It was more we had developed—after [Apollo] 11 and while we were doing 12, Houston had established the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning, GLEP.\\n\\n The Group for Lunar Exploration Planning was under Wilmot [N.] Hess. GLEP had to consider all of the scientific aspects of the Apollo missions: the chemistry, the rocks, the geology, looking at the Earth from the Moon, the solar/laser reflectors, the seismometers, all of the measurements, the heat flow measurements, all the experimentation, all the science that will be done on the Moon’s surface.\\n\\n This had all kinds of scientists from outside of NASA to suggest you should do this or shouldn’t do that or whatever, and the reasons for doing it. It included some NASA people. Then within that group, because they did not have the ability to think in detail about geology, they made a site selection committee from this GLEP. I was in this. Then the site selection committee included members from the NASA Headquarters, members from the US Geological Survey, myself, and Noel [W.] Hinners from Bellcomm. Noel was actually the chairman of the site selection group.\\n\\n NASA usually tried to do that when there was a committee that looked into something or other. They made the chairman of the committee from Bellcomm, so it’s not aligned, because we were kind of their boys. They could use us anywhere, so they get one like that, then there will be no jealousy from within NASA. Noel Hinners was the chairman of the site selection committee, and because of my connections with the geologists, which Noel didn’t have, I was the secretary-general of the site selection committee, so at our deliberations we would do the following.\\n\\n We would go—actually not Noel, but I would go with all the geologists of Headquarters and the geologists at Houston, because we still had a whole bunch of geologists in Houston even though most of them were preparing themselves for the lunar rocks only. Some had been training the astronauts for fieldwork and hammers and what do they do with the samples and this and that, then all of the geologists at Flagstaff, Arizona and Menlo Park, California, so there were geologists all over the place. There really were a few geologists also working with us that dealt with impacts and age-dating and all of that from [NASA Ames Research Center] Moffett Field [California].\\n\\n There were geologists all over the place, so that required in my real life my flying all over the place to be in communication with all the geologists, and their perceptions of what do we do where and so on, so I can prepare the arguments that will go from the site selection committee to the GLEP. GLEP was the mother organization, the Group for Lunar Exploration Planning. GLEP was to make the recommendations to NASA, so that’s how things developed.\\n\\n We would do all of our geological laundering, so to speak, and then I would sugarcoat it to present it, then it becomes a GLEP decision to NASA. That��s how the site selection kind of went. Once in a while we had a lot of people to say, “Oh that’s lousy, that’s a terrible thing.” We would reduce it down, then Rocco Petrone would be one that whenever he hears any misgivings about any of the sites that we recommended, he would call me up.\\n\\n He said, “Farouk, what’s this story? Okay, bring them up, bring them up here. Sit down and talk with them and see where you go, and state your arguments, so you want to see what’s there. I’m going to come along to listen to this.” So he wanted to see what the objections, and be shown the details—let me see what the story is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What an interesting man. Where were you for the first landing on the Moon?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, right in Mission Control." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you share with us the feeling of that moment, of being in the midst of that historical time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Like some of the astronauts themselves, we really did not either see or feel the incredible impact on history at the time. We just wanted to make it to the Moon before the Russians; it didn’t matter where or how.\\n\\n Everybody was charged with this race, because our view, it had a reflection on our ability as a nation. Whenever once in a while the argument would call for any discussion about let’s do this, let’s not do that, or we can do that, immediately you would hear somebody say, “Guys, listen, we’re not going to let the Russkies beat us. What the hell is this? We got to do this, we got to do it right, we got to do it on time.” They would say that with gumption, so this was certainly part of this whole thing.\\n\\n For us scientists, the issue was is it going to be right? Are we right in thinking that this dark area is made of basalt and volcanic rock, and this is the way it is and that was what it means about the history of the Moon or not? Is it going to be really safe for the guys to land or not? There were all kinds of people that told us that the Moon has been so bombarded, that there is a very thick layer, maybe up to 30 feet, of lunar dust. The spacecraft is going to go down like this, and will disappear in that. This was not a joke. It was a physicist with a PhD, the classmate of my boss’s boss. Dennis James of Bellcomm was the boss of Noel Hinners, and Noel Hinners was my boss; his buddy was that guy, so we had to deal with him at that level. It was Tommy [Thomas] Gold.\\n\\n Tommy Gold just shook the hell out of everybody’s thinking. He would come to us and say, “Well, Farouk, you say that this layering proves that this actually is rocky material from the outside and that it was deposited as rocks.”\\n\\n “Yes, look at these rocks in the walls of the crater.”\\n\\n He said, “Well, what if it is dust that was compacted by the impact into these layers that you think are rock layers?” You stop to think, that’s right, because if you smoosh it, it will look like this. It wasn’t just because he was a first-rate physicist, so we had to get together with all kinds of thoughts. That was the first mission. We just didn’t know.\\n\\n The thing that shook us to the root is the fact they did not land where we thought they would. We made every conceivable calculation that they will land in this place, and this is the first mission. We had the area swept for number of craters. That was supposed to be the flattest place on the Moon; that was the safest place on the Moon.\\n\\n Poom! They don’t land where we thought they would. That really shook us considerably at the time. That happened because of something that we had no idea; that something is the fact that all of the dark places on the Moon, the things that make the features of the “Man in the Moon,” the dark round things, are made of a rock that has a lot of iron and magnesium rather than silicon. Iron and magnesium are much heavier than silicon, with the other stuff that is in the other rocks.\\n\\n With iron and magnesium in great quantities in these types of dark rocks, they are heavier. Therefore, they have more of gravitational pull. So here is the Moon and there is the one round area that the astronauts are flying over. Their orbit is where we think they are, but in real life their orbit drops in like this. Just as it passes over one of these dark places, it dips down a little because it was attracted to this thing. It moved again and it dips down again; every time it dips down, it gets actually closer to the surface of the Moon, which means it will land farther out from the spot that we thought it would.\\n\\n Here they are and they don’t land right away. Neil [A.] Armstrong takes over and keeps on moving. We don’t know why he’s moving. We finally realize that he was moving because we were landing him in the middle of a very rough crater with house blocks where they would have been lost. They would be dead on the spot. He moved until he found a place that’s safe enough to land, because of this gravitational pull. We called it mass cons later, mass concentrations, so with this in mind, we were just completely and totally focused on the astronauts and the safety of the mission and the success of the mission. At the time, we never really thought about all of the repercussions.\\n\\n The astronauts themselves were of the same mental state. Many of the astronauts, after they came back, they said, “The only time I thought about the mission was after we finished and we were on the way back. Guys, you left us no time to think of where we were. We’re flipping something from the thing to pick up from this and that. We were on the Moon, but it felt like a simulation. We never had a minute to say, ‘Oh my God, I am on the Moon taking pictures, taking samples.’”\\n\\n It’s really true. Even during the time from mission to mission, we would concentrate so much on the mission, we never really reflected, especially the astronauts. We too, I’m one of them, we never reflected on the meaning of this and where this is going and what this means to the world and all of these things, until it was over.\\n\\n We were not taken by the enormity of the event at the time, because we were too heavily involved and too thoroughly obsessed by the details of how do we do it and how do we do it right, so we never really reflected at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about the moment that it happened, when they landed? Then of course when they began the exploration?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, at the time we were very focused on every word they say. Everything, because the words they say mean a lot to us. When they said, “Oh, there is a sparkle, these rocks are such and such, and sparkle.” Oh my God, so this means to us that something is crystalline and some of the crystal faces are shining so this was crystalline, so even one, so we’re so focused on what they say and what it might mean to us. We don’t want to miss that, because they are not going to remember to tell us these things [after they return].\\n\\n So that is living for the moment and completely focusing on the moment. We never really had the time to think about what did we do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When did it start to be discussed that the Command Module Pilot [CMP] could begin to do more and do your vis obs, your visual observations? Tell us how that evolved to where you began training the astronauts to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "From the outset we knew that while they are circling they’ve got to do something, because it’s very important to take all of these details from the landing sites that we will visit. Generalize what that means as far as the Moon is concerned, because you’re going to do lots of analyses of a tiny little area within walking distance or driving distance from the landing module, but how does that tie to the rest of the Moon? Is this representative or is it a unique thing? Is this such and such? How do we begin to figure that out?\\n\\n From the outset I knew that whatever they can tell us from around the Moon, the regional views, it’s going to be essential to putting these samples into context. Otherwise, it would have little samples from here and there, and they cannot relate them, so it would have to be related. Even these dark spots [maria], we have to relate them to each other. Did all of the dark material form at the same time? Different times? Did it come from the same source or from different levels within the Moon so they would be different compositionally, or what is the story here? So how do we tie all of this together?\\n\\n NASA accepted this notion of while the astronauts are circling the Moon they can photograph targets of opportunity. The targets of opportunity are places that we really shouldn’t leave it to them, because they don’t know about the geology of the Moon, so maybe we should label the targets of opportunity for them. But, it doesn’t work, the targets of opportunity—it worked against the thinking of the whole thing. However, it became the modus operandi. These guys are going to be there, they are pilots, they don��t know geology from Adam. Therefore we’re going to give them something to hold in their hands and figure out when. We can even tell them while they’re orbiting, “You’re coming up on target 16.” So they can look at the chart, [and think], “16 out of window three, so window three, I take the pictures.”\\n\\n From the Apollo 11 time, we didn’t know whether all three are going to be involved in this some way or another, because they will all be going around the Moon together for a while. With a little bit of emphasis on the Command Module, but it is best to get the commander involved, because the commander has a lot to say. We go and talk to the crew on these targets of opportunity, so we spread the sheet. It has targets of opportunity in color with the revolutions on it, and we just discuss about why some of these things are important, this and this and that. They would all be fine with it and so on. Maybe the other two would leave, then we’ll have an hour extra with the CMP and [discuss] this and that. That was okay for [Apollo] 11 because they didn’t have time to spare.\\n\\n With Apollo 12 we had a little more, only because Dick [Richard F.] Gordon was fascinated by the whole thing. He was also a Navy pilot or something, but he didn’t really give a damn about the geology of the Moon, but he thought the whole thing was interesting and fascinating. He was very spirited, so we worked with him and told him about some of the problems that Bill [William A.] Anders had with Apollo 8, because he didn’t know from nothing.\\n\\n If you know something, then you’re not going to do as Bill Anders did, who put color filters on black-and-white film, so what do you expect? Gordon would listen a little more. There was a lot more give-and-take with him, but they were still limited. They were not really still talking about the Moon as an object of study, and that they, themselves as human beings, their eyes can see all kinds of shades of color, and the brain can process some of this—it was not there yet.\\n\\n I realized that it is really not going to work to our advantage if we just let them be like this and continue like that. We’ve got to find somebody that will begin to learn something more tangible. It’s all in discussion with a colleague geologist from NASA in Houston, who was one of the people that was helping in geology, with the Branch of Mapping Sciences, the ones that actually made the original maps or selected the targets with my presence to send maps to the Army Map Service to make us the maps to send with the Apollo astronauts. He was the middleman, so I was talking to him. He said, “Well, the only guy that you might want to talk to is Ken [Thomas Kenneth (T.K.)] Mattingly [III], Apollo 13, he might be the only one that would listen to you.”\\n\\n I told him, “Please go and ask him for one hour.” That’s when the story began. The connection with Mattingly giving me one hour, and did that one hour, and from there on it was a lifelong relationship." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You approached Ken Mattingly differently than other geologists had. Share with us how you were able to very visually show him how important it was for him to learn those concepts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was very clear to me that the vast majority of astronauts didn’t want to do a damn thing with geology, period. For their geological training, they were taught the way I was taught geology, and the people came, put them in a classroom, and told them about the chemical composition of rocks and this and that, and even showed them some microscope, and the different—and they were just, “What the hell?” and would get annoyed.\\n\\n They would say, “When I’ve seen a rock, I’ve seen them all, what the hell? We’re not going to have a microscope on the Moon to look at these things, why am I looking at that?” They had a point, so there was really no point in telling them this kind of geology. I knew that if I continued that approach or anybody continues this approach, we’re doomed. We’ll not be able to get to any of these people.\\n\\n I now began to think about them as pilots. What do pilots do? They fly aircraft. What do they use when they fly aircraft? They use charts. Where are these charts made? From the Aeronautical Chart Service. Give me one of those to look at. To look at where do the points between one place and the next they fly between these two places. They said, “The VORTAC” [Very High Frequency Omni-Directional Radio Range Tactical Air Navigation Aid].\\n\\n “What do you mean, VORTAC?”\\n\\n They said, “That’s what it is. A point in here that’s called VORTAC, and another VORTAC, which is given a number, and I fly straight between these VORTACs, which have communications with other airports.”\\n\\n So I said, “Fine, let’s live with this, and we’ll talk about VORTACs. What do they do at the VORTACs?” Well, to reach that VORTAC, they have to visually hone on someplace on the flying so that they can get to this and then fly to the next one. “Oh, so they use this as visual to get to the VORTAC.”\\n\\n “Yes.”\\n\\n “Then they communicate.”\\n\\n “Yes, and they fix the spacecraft attitude towards this, yes.”\\n\\n “Okay, so,” I said, “what if we are now in the spacecraft?” We had been giving the astronauts, or were planning to give the astronauts, locations on the surface of the Moon under the orbits that were called “landmarks.” They gave them something like seven; if they get three or four, they’re fine. The landmark is a place where the astronauts are familiar with looking through the sextant to see things in the stars and their locations relative to the stationary stars, so they look with the sextant, which they use, [gestures] up this way, towards the Moon. They wait until they see that little feature, then they say “mark,” as soon as that feature comes into the crosshair. When they say mark, we hear them in Houston, so we figure out exactly when did the orbit come on top of this landmark.\\n\\n Okay, good, so let’s work with landmarks. When I went to see Mattingly, I only wanted to talk to him about landmarks, nothing else, no geology, no features, no nothing. I put the pictures of the Moon around the table, the dining table in the crew quarters at the Cape, and marked the landmarks, and put their orbits, the first two orbits, because they are most critical as far as the location might be. [I] went to him to say, “We’re going to look at a setting of landmarks, particularly the approach to the landmarks, so when you look at the sextant you begin to see something that will alert you to the landmarks coming [up].”\\n\\n They miss many of the landmarks when they are not used—they look, they miss that, so they look at the other one, and so on, and they may get that one and miss that one, so I said, “Why don’t we get all landmarks? Let’s figure out how to. What is behind this one until we get to it, so it will alert you that that landmark three is coming up.” We looked at the shapes of things. That’s all, we looked at the shapes of things. Said, “Oh, look at this thing here. This looks like a cross, okay? Let’s call it cross. Snowman—a whole bunch of craters on top of each other, so let’s call it snowman. That one such and such.”\\n\\n One by one he went through all the landmarks. He described them, I thought what the lead to the landmark is, each and every one. He was very happy with that. We even stopped looking at the picture and said, “Now tell me what’s ahead of landmark three.”\\n\\n Said, “Landmark three is coming in. Oh, that’s the snowman.” I said yes, then he was delighted with this whole thing, and then it became his kind of thing. He’s the one that said, “When do you come next? When can you come back?” That was it. With coming back, he would bring in the rest of the crew, then I would sit down and have dinner with them and become just a member of the party and will get more. They would ask me, “How about can you get these guys to not write such and such on the chart?”\\n\\n “Yes, we’ll change it.”\\n\\n “How about such and such?”\\n\\n “Oh, that’s interesting. Here, why don’t we add such and such? We’ll do that.” They became participants in the whole process. It became very clear that Ken Mattingly became a different kind of an astronaut. He started showing off in Building 4, Astronaut Office on the second floor. He’d talk about it, and he’d get pictures of the Moon and put them up on this wall. He sat there. People would come and say, “This landmark such and such.” People began to talk about Ken’s stuff. That led to that scene that I sent to you with Stu [Stuart A.] Roosa. I was going to see Ken one more time; I was going into the astronaut building, two glass doors. One guy was coming out and I was coming in. He looked at me. Kind of military-looking guy.\\n\\n He said, “Hey, are you Farak El Baez?” I said yes, so he said, “Listen. My name is Stu Roosa, I think I’m going to be CMP on Apollo 14. Listen, I want you to make me as smart as Ken. Hell no, I want you to make me smarter than Ken.” This is really when that’s it, I said I knew then that I got them. The competition has begun in knowledge of the Moon rather than on flying the spacecraft. These guys are going to be competing about how much science they get, they bring back. That was it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "T.K. Mattingly says that you taught them how to approach a problem with curiosity." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. This is after he believed in this business of looking at this thing. He would say, “That’s going to be going fast enough that I will not be able to see that.”\\n\\n “Well, when you look at it, if you see a difference in color that’s enough for us. That’s going to tell us something. If you see there is a variation in the texture, that’s enough. That would tell us something else. If we see—”\\n\\n He said, “What do you mean texture?”\\n\\n “Okay, let’s look at this here is a different texture from here.”\\n\\n “Yes, I see what you mean.” They began to absorb slowly what are all these different variations that we build theories around. You would not get that unless he would tell you about peculiar things, and he would not tell you about peculiar things unless he was curious about the whole thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this a turning point for the whole visual observations part of it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think it was a turning point for the whole program, it really was. It was the initiation of competition in scientific knowledge about the Moon. That’s these two. Started it way back, then we saw it continuing to the very end, to the extent that we had a geologist land on the Moon. Jack [Harrison H.] Schmitt, but his commander would not want to make him look, sound, or feel that he knows more than Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan. Gene Cernan was competing with him head to head so that nobody can say that the geologist knows more than him at all, so it continued to the very end. The competition became fierce, because these are very competitive people. That was the initiation of competition in scientific knowledge of the Moon. That clicked right there, I knew it.\\n\\n I knew that I’m not going to have to fight the system anymore. These guys are going to come to me, and they did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The astronauts had the enthusiasm, but how did the management feel about their [astronaut] time for training being taken up with this whole new aspect?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In real life it didn’t matter, because their schedule did not include any of this at all. The astronauts would invite me to go have dinner; I go have dinner. We sit down until the mealtime. Nobody has a damn thing to do with their personal time. They will go to the Cape, run for an hour, take a shower, go to dinner 6:30, we sit down, finish by 7:30. I begin from 7:30 until whenever, until they are tired, and they want to go to have a beer, period. Most of it had nothing to do with the system, or it was done on their own time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mattingly didn’t get to fly on [Apollo] 13." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right. After all this, after starting this whole thing. It’s very clear that he was so focused on it. Jack [John L.] Swigert [Jr.] was totally unfocused, because this was the very beginning of the interest. That was a Mattingly thing. It wasn’t a crew thing really, except for the fact that Jim [James A.] Lovell [Jr.] actually supported this whole notion. He had curiosity of his own. When I began to explain things to the whole crew, he was the one that was most lively. You could see it in his eyes, his thinking. Calling things things, and calling them by name, and getting interested in it.\\n\\n The one guy that didn’t really want to even listen was Jack Swigert. Jack Swigert was the least trained of all of them. He would say, “Farouk, goddamn it, it’s 10:00, let’s go for a beer,” while we’re sitting and we’re in the middle of something tangible. Jack, God bless his soul, was not really well trained for this mission at all, but he did it, because he was a superb pilot. He was what they called a seat-of-the-pants pilot. He was very good in the machine, but we were always terrified during the Apollo 13 mission that he’d put his fingers in the wrong place, because the guy just didn’t know exactly what to do, and he didn’t care, because he knew how to fly, so all of these things were irrelevant to him.\\n\\n The one thing that he had to do for us he didn’t do that well either, with the picture of the Command Module, when the Command Module separated from the Service Module. We had to—and Rocco is a man that can think of things all at the same time and plan for them right. As soon as we learned about the disaster, Rocco called me up from the Mission Control Center at my position, because he sat in the upper level. He said, “Farouk, we’re going to need to take pictures of that Service Module. There was an explosion there and we don’t know what the hell it did. We want to find out whether there are pieces off of it. You’re the one that’s responsible for the photography. You go ahead and plan how to photograph that module upon separation, whatever it takes.”\\n\\n I knew immediately that’s a very damned important thing, and we have to do it, and Jack Swigert is not a photo man, and he was not well trained, and we’ve got to do something really tangible. I began to figure out what it is. It took me like two and a half days maybe, to figure out the details of what is this separation. I went to ask the flight engineers—while they’re busy with other things—and asked, what’s the speed at separation, when they separate like that, what’s the speed, and they told me, “Farouk, we’re not doing this now.”\\n\\n I said, “Yes I know but I need that data. Is there going to be a roll for the spacecraft when it separates or no roll?”\\n\\n “Goddamn it, Farouk, we’ll do it later.”\\n\\n “No I can’t. I have to do all of these things so that we can see where he is supposed to be inside, what window he should be looking out. [It’s only] going to be a few seconds. What window he should be looking out, what camera he should hold, which way is it, and what would he do so that he’ll be prepared so that when he gets this thing in view he’ll take a picture of the place that we want. If it rolls like this, then it’s going to be take a picture of a place that’s not affected, so we need a place of where the thing exploded.”\\n\\n So I’m working on that, and where is the Sun going to be? Is there going to be light at this angle, and on what side, what Sun angle it’s going to be, because that will control the exposure rate. If it’s in the shadow they have to use different film. If it is in sunlight completely, then it’s different. If it is partial sunlight—”\\n\\n All kinds of calculations that you don’t know until you really are certain that when they separate it will be such a speed and it will roll like this, how fast it rolls, and where is the Sun, and which is separating this way, and looking through what window, so I worked it out completely, and zipped all of that to Jack Swigert to write. These instructions, write it down one by one.\\n\\n We did it. He took the picture. It was just a little bit out of focus; his hands were not right, although it told us all what we needed. It could have been sharper, but it told us all we needed. That is the thought of Rocco Petrone at the time when he heard about there is a problem, then we need to photograph this to know what was the problem, because nobody knew." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a background in photography as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I was a very good photographer in general, because in geology we do this a lot. I liked it, and I was good at it, and I had my own camera and photo lab, enlargers, myself. I made my own prints with the slides from microscopes, so I was very interested in photography. I read about it a lot, I had all kinds of books, and I did a great deal. I did all of the pictures for my research myself as a geologist." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This became a very needed skill for you to be able to help them adjust." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very needed skill then yes, because of the film speed, film sensitivity and all of that. Yes, absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you work closely with the photo labs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. After the missions we did. We realized that all of the color film that we were using was not real color [film]. There is something better, there is something that is not working very well here. We communicated actually with the US Navy about color film. We were able to get them to cooperate with us, because they were working with things that were classified, but they cooperated with us only by the time of 1975 and the Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project] mission, then they gave us the color. They had paid [Eastman] Kodak [Company] to make a color-sensitive film, which we could have used, but they wouldn’t allow us. After some time I suppose when they developed a better film, they allowed us to use then the special color film that was from a batch that Kodak had developed for the Navy for a classified program, but they developed something better and they allowed us to use that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe you shared with me that the astronauts, the colors of the photos did not match the colors they remembered. How did you adjust for that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We didn’t know this at the beginning. We knew that there would be some differences, but the differences became so gross from the first mission. The television that the Apollo 8 crew took to the Moon was all black-and-white; there was no color television then. Actually throughout Apollo 11, we did not have color television. We didn’t have color, so throughout Apollo 11 we did not have color television.\\n\\n When the Apollo 8 crew conveyed to us or beamed to us shots of the Moon while in real time Frank Borman was talking about it with voice, and he would say the Moon is all one color. It’s all “Plaster of Paris,” it is “gunmetal gray,” it’s as if you’re looking at gunmetal gray patterns. I really think he was looking at the television monitor, the little thing that you shoot the picture so like this. They’re looking at it, because that was gray. There is no visual with all the things that he’s seeing on the Moon.\\n\\n Then Apollo 10 carried a color television on board. Here comes Tom [Thomas P.] Stafford. He talks about the browns of the maria and the corners of the maria, chocolate brown. Of the same places that Borman was talking about, so that became, “Huh? What is this story? Something is wrong.”\\n\\n In the meantime neither the gunmetal gray was exactly true nor the chocolate brown was really true. The gunmetal gray was due to the fact that what Borman was looking at was at the Moon at very high Sun angles, Sun is right on top. What Stafford was showing was a grazing angle, to very low Sun elevation, which adds to the color tints.\\n\\n We knew there was something wrong in here and we’ve got to do something. We need to have some color balance in the film and we need to have some color balance in the pictures. This is when we tried, I began to talk to the photo lab people, then we went to Kodak and we sat down and said, “What is this film that you’re giving us? It’s not doing the right thing.”\\n\\n They told us about, “Well, we can’t give you the color-sensitive film, because we have one for the Navy, which we can’t give you.”\\n\\n So we said, “What if we talk to the Navy?”\\n\\n Said, “You go ahead.”\\n\\n We talked to the Navy. “No, we can’t give you that.” So we knew that we had to wait. “We can improve the balance, and we can tell you a little more about how do you develop it. We’ll send a guy from Kodak to work with you in the photo lab in the processing.” He came and he helped with the photo processing, I would be standing there at the end with Noel [T.] Lamar, who was the head of the photo lab then, and Dick [Richard W.] Underwood was the photo man at NASA. He was from the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] but joined NASA.\\n\\n We all three would begin to look at the pictures after they are processed. Improved, but never really right on the mark, but improved. Then we realized that the Moon’s surface changes a lot to the perception of the eye as well as the color film. More so for the color film, with changing Sun angles, how high is the Sun, if it’s right on top of you or on the side, either side.\\n\\n We began to take that into consideration. I tried to make the visual observations tell us a little more about that. Many of the astronauts did a little better, but nobody would accept this whole notion of a “color wheel,” which we finally did for the Apollo-Soyuz mission. If we had that on the Moon, we could really tie down [the color] completely, because they did that with deserts and oceans and so on on the Apollo-Soyuz mission whereby they picked up the colors like that [gestures].\\n\\n You put the color wheel at the window of the spacecraft and just read the number, that’s all. You push it around and push it around, and just read the number that comes close; read the number of this here, A, B and C, and the number, and A or B, and that becomes as closest to the scene that you see by your eye, so the human eye is looking at both of them. The scene on the ground and the scene or the piece of the color wheel at the same time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now they did not want to use it because of the weight? Is that what they told you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they said, “Well, the wheel is going to be of metal. The metal will be such and such and will add weight. Who asked for that?” Just me, so forget it, guy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You assisted the CMPs in creating their list of tasks for what they were to do while they were there. What led you to determine what the priorities were; what was the most important for each mission? Tell us that process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had emphasized like two or three different things. Number one, what is the relationship between what your buddies are going to collect on the ground to the big picture. That was an important component of all of them. Look at that site, tell me that it represents what? Does it represent the whole section of the Moon going like this, or it’s a weirdo that is a unique setting that we cannot generalize from it around? So what’s the relationship between where the crew members landed and the regional setting? What’s the big picture here? Whatever they collect, can we generalize about that? That became the relationship between the landing site where the lander is going to be and the rest of the Moon.\\n\\n Number two, we have questions about the area that you’re going to fly over, and we need you to answer these questions. We will tell you what they are. We’ll train you to some of this and tell you what is it that we need to get out of here.\\n\\n Number three, you are not an instrument. You are a human being with a brain that can do us a lot of good. There are many things in the places where you’re going to fly that we have no idea. None of us flew there, we have no idea what they are. If you really look with enough curiosity and enough intelligent vision, you can add a hell of a lot to our knowledge of the Moon. These were three different components that all of them had to be put together in the mission time for the plan.\\n\\n The places, the thing that we worked on before the mission—and we planned it right—are what are the things that we know that we want him to do, then let’s look at that landing site with great care, then you can tell us the relationship between the landing site and the rest of it. Three, you’re on your own, man. You can do us a lot of good or you can add zilch. It’s up to you. It depends on how you look, whether you just look, or you really see and tell us what you see. Tell us in useful words." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you were teaching them, did you train them in specific terms as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. How to say it, yes, so we said, “Here I am. I’m a geologist. I’m going to look at this. What is it? How am I going to explain this to a guy in the next room that’s not looking at it? What I would say about that.” Yes, he would know the meaning of the words. When I say, striated, that I mean something. Does this really mean fractures in it? When I say, layered, there is some huge communication that goes in the mind of the guy that’s not there if you say layered. So is it striations or layers or lines or cracks? There is a difference between. There is a pattern in there, what you say about this pattern will mean a lot of things to a lot of different people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s quite a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "They were zipping through there pretty fast." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That did not come easy with just looking at the Moon. That came only through the flyover exercises." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You charted out places for them to go in the—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we just asked them where��before you fly anywhere, let me know. Going to fly? Instead of flying blind, I’ll give you something to look at. That’s it, that’s the only difference. That also took some doing, because they usually fly blind. He wants to fly, and he’s sitting there and thinking about life, and looking at the open air, and flying from one point until we get from one VORTAC to the next, and he will talk to somebody who’s manning the control center there. That’s it, then move on to the next and so on. They don’t really give attention to what happens between these two VORTACs, so here I come with very specific things to look at between this point and that point.\\n\\n That was really the only way to get these flying creatures to have a real feeling of: what do you mean that I can tell you a lot; what do you mean, I didn’t see it; what was there that I could see? Well, there’s a little wiggle in the ground, what does that mean, so what are you excited about, because to him it’s land. When you begin to make him look for the land, and when you see it, and you see one piece is higher than the other, and that’s a plateau and that’s actually a fracture where this happened this way, and that happened in such and such time, and the piece that’s higher is going to get different amount of water and would have different kind of this and this one such and such, this would be exposed more to wind erosion, and so the soil will differ, and therefore—then there is a whole process of thinking about things that they become astute at identifying what is it that they fly over.\\n\\n That then translated in their ability to verbalize what they are seeing on the Moon. Only because they were able to verbalize what they see on Earth through these flyovers with the book, which was identical to the flight book. I did it exactly the same way, I actually got a pilot to give me one of his books to put these things together.\\n\\n It’s like a stenographer book—flip one page after the page with metal backing. One page after the other, because from VORTAC this to that VORTAC, that’s flipped, then instead of just the VORTACs—I put the VORTACs on, so that he doesn’t need the aeronautical chart. I took the aeronautical charts, based my points on the distances between VORTACs and then put the VORTAC number here, but then instead of in the aeronautical charts, this area between the two VORTACs is blank. I then put either questions or a little picture or a map of the stuff that he’s going to get after 22 miles from here. He will look at this and tell me one, two, three; answer these three questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You learned how to think like a pilot, didn’t you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had to. I had to think of what the pilot was going to be. It has to be along with the way a pilot does it. Or else if I give it to him in something different that we geologists do or give him a geological map that he has to unfold like this, what the hell. He’s not going to do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In the Apollo 16 Science Report, one of the statements that you included was the “accuracy of the interpretation is less important than the fact that something was observed.” You just wanted them to report back what they were seeing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right, because when they report back what they’re seeing, they would report—maybe it’s not the proper language and maybe not the proper terminology—but he saw it and he verbalized about it, and it’s up to us to figure out what it is. Which means that he was prepared and he did it right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were named a principal investigator [PI] for the orbital visual observations and photography experiment for Apollo 15 and 17. Did that change your role, or did that just give you more of a title?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, actually, I was doing that informally without NASA making me—because anybody that required time on the Apollo missions was a PI, a principal investigator, or else why NASA would allow time to do such and such? It was principal investigators that applied with a proposal and the proposal accepted and NASA gave the money to make whatever he needed, then it becomes part of the mission and therefore the flight planners would allow the time for the mission. Here I was, a little guy, taking time from the mission and putting things in the flight plan, and I had no official position. It was when [M.] Gene Simmons was the chief scientist at JSC and they were looking through all of the principal investigators. He said, “Goddamn it. What is Farouk? What’s he been doing? You can’t have him doing this on his own like that. He’s got to be a principal investigator or something.”\\n\\n So they said, “Well, we can make him principal investigator of visual observations and photography.” They made it official because I was functioning without a mandate. The flight planners were responding to me without mandates. I was supposed to be just a geologist at Bellcomm at NASA Headquarters doing what NASA Headquarters needs. I had no role at JSC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you started, you were not even allowed to talk to the astronauts or the press, is that correct?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. We were prohibited, from Bellcomm. We were told not to talk to astronauts and never to talk to the press of any sort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That changed in more than one route. Tell us about your dealings with the press." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The press started only really in preparation for Apollo 14. When the accident, disaster of Apollo 13 happened, we had plenty of time to prepare for the next mission, which was Apollo 14. During this time, we were thinking about a landing site in the lunar highlands. We said that the lunar highlands are not really photographed well. We need a good high-resolution camera.\\n\\n Rocco Petrone said, “Sure. We have the time to add it up. Go ahead, announce.” We said we were going to do that, so we pushed and we selected a company called Hycon that made high-resolution cameras that were not too enormous [Hycon Lunar Topographic Camera]. Big enough, but not really huge, so that Hycon camera was to be placed on Apollo 14.\\n\\n At the time I was also a member of the Apollo Photographic Team that was headed by Frederick J. Doyle, the head of mapping of the US Geological Survey. The US Geological Survey team of the mapmakers from the Geological Survey, the US Army Map Service, and the unnamed agencies—they included me in this photo team. I was heavily involved, so everybody else was really helping in the selection of the camera. I was the only one that really knew about the uses of the camera.\\n\\n Why do we need that for the central highlands— a camera is a camera. The Washington Post got wind of the fact that NASA is putting a high-resolution camera to photograph things on the Moon, so they called NASA. The guy, George Lardner, the first reporter to ever interview me, called NASA Headquarters to get information on this camera and what it’s used for. They said, “We can give you a pamphlet.”\\n\\n He said, “I don’t want a pamphlet on the camera. I want, what is this camera going to do?”\\n\\n “You can go and talk to the guy, Farouk El-Baz. He works for Bellcomm across the street,” because our office was then moved from downtown to L’Enfant Plaza in Washington, so he calls me up.\\n\\n “My name is such and such, I want to talk about that.”\\n\\n I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you.”\\n\\n He said, “What do you mean, you can’t talk to me?”\\n\\n I said, “I’m working for a company called Bellcomm and we don’t talk to you. Talk to NASA Headquarters.”\\n\\n Said, “NASA Headquarters is the one that told me talk to you.” Hands up, not going to do something illegal here. Said, “Who’s your boss?”\\n\\n I said, “Dennis [James]. You call him. Here it [phone number] is.”\\n\\n So he called my boss. My boss said, “We’re not supposed to by contract talk to the press.”\\n\\n So he said, “By whom?”\\n\\n He said, “By NASA Headquarters.”\\n\\n Said, “NASA Headquarters?” Said, “Well, you talk to NASA Headquarters and let them see what they say.”\\n\\n My boss told them, “No, you talk to NASA Headquarters. Tell them to tell us to talk to you.”\\n\\n He did, so the Washington Post called NASA Headquarters saying, “What the hell is this? We need somebody. Nobody can tell us except that one guy. You told him not to talk to the press. What do you mean?” So NASA has to call the boss and clear this, and says let him talk to the press. So I did; I talked about the humongous camera to be carried on Apollo 14 to do this and this and that, to take pictures of the highlands, of the highly grooved terra in the central highlands of terra, and that we have the different kind of volcanism. It made a big story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then the camera didn’t do as well as you thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The camera started to whiz, and stopped, and could not—Stu Roosa would hold it. We’d tell him take that out. He’d say, “I did, nothing happened.” Put it back, put it back. “Nothing happened.” Back and forth. It ruined many sites for us, trying to fix that camera, because we were taking time from him by suggesting to him to do things, then we had the guy from Hycon sitting right next to us, [and we’d ask him,] what the heck is wrong with this thing?\\n\\n Said, “Well, it might be such and such.” We fix it and we tell Stu and he tries to fix it and nothing happens. It just died, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did that affect what you decided to send up as part of the tools in the future, or what type of cameras for the observations?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We went to a higher level of cameras, much higher. That necessitated to go into the wall of the spacecraft, because we cannot take this high camera in the Command Module. The Hycon, we could squeeze in the Command Module, even though it was big and cumbersome, but we could squeeze it with the guys, but to go to a higher class camera we can’t, so we have to go out. That’s why we went into one side of the Service Module. Removed a wall, inserted these cameras and the electrical systems and the controls for the temperatures and all of these things. There was one side of the Service Module that had two enormous cameras—one a metric camera and one a panoramic camera for [Apollo] 15, 16 and 17." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were pleased with the results of those?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very much so, yes. That required—they were loaded before the mission and ascent. That Service Module is something that we throw away anyway. That required the astronaut to open up, go out, walk outside of the wall of the Service Module, open it up, take the [film] magazines one by one and put them back into the Command Module, lock it up, and get off. So that required an EVA [extravehicular activity] in space. The guys actually enjoyed that a lot, because they would go out, and they are between the Earth and the Moon after they finish the Moon mission.\\n\\n On the way back and then they have to go out by themselves out in the open, and climb outside of the module and go into the Service Module and clear it up to open to get the stuff and make sure that it’s locked up because somebody’s holding you with a tether, like a dog, because if you let it loose, he’s gone.\\n\\n Then they, all of them, just looked up and saw this incredible blackness. They tell you, “It is jet black, I don’t know what jet black is. You just don’t know what jet black is until you see this thing. Jet. Jet black, with these stars as tiny little dots. Tiny little dots you don’t see, because they don’t twinkle. It’s just absolute tiny sources of light. Some are brighter than others, but in this absolutely black vastness.” They said that’s when you really look at the whole universe, like that. When you know, not just feel, that it’s not just human beings are an atom in this whole big universe, but the whole Earth, and maybe the whole solar system, is nothing but a little atom in this vast universe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe [Alfred M.] Worden talked about being in that wonderful position of being able to see the Earth and the Moon, which you could not do—." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You could not, yes. It is interesting that in most cases it’s on the way back from the Moon that any of them thought of what they just did. None of them would actually think about it, because they’re too busy. From the Earth to the Moon they’re really getting prepared, and they’re anxious—“we got to do it and do it right; everything is going to work out.” All of that is still on their minds.\\n\\n After they did it, on the way back, they have the very first time to reflect on the fact that they actually did that, and what does that mean. It’s fascination. Look at the beautiful Earth. Look at the sky. Or look at the Moon. The whole Moon is like this, so the only time when they just realized what they just did, yes.\\n\\n To the extent that Jim [James B.] Irwin, God bless his soul, once told me, “Farouk, when we were coming back, I looked through the window, and slowly but surely the whole Earth full globe just came very gently like this, as if it stopped in the middle of the window. I was looking at it, I thought, how beautiful, look at that, beautiful, fragile-looking glassy blue thing. You know what I thought?”\\n\\n “What?”\\n\\n He said, “I thought, so beautiful, I wanted to open the spacecraft window and hold it in my hands. Then I thought, my God, it looks so fragile, I don’t want to break it. I stopped. Isn’t this weird?”\\n\\n I said, “Yes.” [laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Share with us about the debriefings, the formal and the informal ones, when the astronauts came back, and what you were able to learn from them to help prepare for the next mission, and then just some of what you reflect on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The debriefings were really very important. We would learn then whether or not all of the things that we prepared for them were the right preparations or not. We were all like buddies, and they withheld nothing, for the good of the program again. They tell you that you really messed this up because of such and such, shouldn’t do this again. Whatever they say, it is right with us. Whatever we tell them at the time also is okay with them.\\n\\n Because it’s good for the program, they were quite open with no chocolate coating of anything. Would say what they felt was right and what they felt didn’t go as well as it could. They sometimes would say things about the fact that the comments that came back from the CapCom [Capsule Communicator], they knew that Flight [Flight Director] was the one that told them that, and that is was uncalled for—when we’re too busy, keep interrupting. [The crew would say,] “We’re telling you that we’re busy doing this and that, and you interrupted; interrupted our thought processes,” which is true. So, it was really very good to have these debriefings. This is one of NASA’s best things.\\n\\n Before the mission, they sit down and talk about nearly all aspects of the mission and how do they feel prepared for it and how do they think, what was missing in the preparation. These were sessions that the whole crew lived with, with the prime crew, the backup crew, the mission scientists and Deke [Donald K.] Slayton. That was a huge important thing that Deke, God bless his soul, Deke Slayton did. Deke Slayton was one of these people that held us back by force of arms kind of, away from the astronauts. He would say, “My boys are not going to spend the time in this nonsense.”\\n\\n “Okay, Deke.” He had a huge job, because he was the only one of the magnificent seven that did not fly, the only one that didn’t fly. He became the head of the Astronaut Office, and he assigned the crews. If you are on the wrong side of Deke, you’re doomed, so you need to gingerly go around. When he’s mad, you just let it be. One of the best things he did was to sit with the crew and the mission scientists and discuss all aspects of the whole mission. What did they think was done well? What did they think was not done that well? What did they think was missing? That was translated to the rest, mostly through the mission scientists.\\n\\n Then after the mission—and that is even more important, the debriefing. NASA was very clever in dividing these debriefings into levels. Deke Slayton and the crew talked about how the crew worked together. If there were any problems between the commander and any one of them, what was that? How did it develop? Where did it end? How could we have avoided them?\\n\\n Then the management debriefing. The three astronauts sit like that and the whole management slew of NASA Headquarters and JSC and you name it, whatever management is, sits and the crew explains the mission and tells the management what they think. The management asks questions and they would answer. That ends. This is one session.\\n\\n Then we have several days. That was a concession from Deke, that we have the crew and the scientists. We can go over step by step on everything. You said this was finer, what do you mean finer? Was it the fine-grained or maybe it was covered by—exactly what finer-grained means to you. Asking, “Finer-grained than what?” so they can get every conceivable squeeze out of their observations. That could last like three days. It’s a little more informal, which is fine.\\n\\n None of that went out of the system, except maybe within the management debriefings that things that needed changing or something may come out. With the crew and Deke Slayton, none of us knew exactly what happened, because there would be problems naturally—three guys stuck together 12 days.\\n\\n That just was always crew business that none of us knew anything about, because it’s about personal interactions between them. Then the science, nobody really cared about it outside of the scientists. It’s in the management debriefing that things that had to do with the interaction between divisions within JSC and Astronaut Office and this and that, that things became talked about—happened within the management debriefings. Some of these debriefings, it was just a nice talking and nice atmosphere, about the positiveness of the mission.\\n\\n Ken Mattingly—after Apollo 16, in his management debriefing, Rocco Petrone came out from a management debriefing with him. “Farouk, you should be happy about that.”\\n\\n I said, “What?”\\n\\n He said, “Ken said you were the most essential man in the Apollo program.”\\n\\n I said, “What do you mean?” I laughed. I knew what he meant really, then somebody asked somebody and showed me the script [transcript].\\n\\n Ken Mattingly told them, “In the Apollo program we have a backup for everything, but the single point failure in the Apollo program is a guy by the name of Farouk El-Baz. For everybody and everything we have a replacement, except for Farouk.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were a team of one, weren’t you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Team of one, yes, so he can say things like that in front of the big managers, what he feels. Anything that comes to his mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, being a team of one, at least it gave you full control over what you wanted to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What do I say and what do I do, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us about your position in Mission Control and what that was like, having a console. Then also if you’ll talk too about the interaction with the CapCom and how important that was that the CapCom also understood what the astronauts were observing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very good question because you can tell the CapCom something, and then by the time it’s translated, it’s wishy-washy. We were very lucky that the CapComs were either backup Command Module pilots on the last three missions or mission scientists. The mission scientists in general were really very into the training aspects. Many of them are geo-related or science-related, but they would understand that geology is important and is good. We had the mission scientists began with [Apollo] 13 with Tony [Anthony W.] England. He was himself an Earth scientist, then the mission scientist that played a huge role in the mission was Joe [Joseph P.] Allen, Apollo 15. He played a very considerable role.\\n\\n Then we had Karl [G.] Henize, who was also an astronaut and an astronomer; Bob [Robert A. R.] Parker. Had Karl for 16 and Bob Parker for 17. All of these would attend nearly all of my briefings with the Command Module pilots, and participate and really ask questions, so they were very easy to communicate with.\\n\\n Mission Control. I don’t know how it happened, but I was able to slip in, because you had to have a special MC kind of notation on your badge to be allowed in Mission Control. A big M, Mission Control. MC, big ones. That’s added to your badge, to allow you to do that. I honestly don’t recall how did I get that for the first mission, but I had no place. I had no job, because as I said I had no mandate, so I would be roaming around.\\n\\n The guy that would kind of call me to sit with him or on his console a lot was Doug [Douglas K.] Ward, he was a Public [Affairs Office (PAO)] man. Very pleasant guy. He would just see me and he would go like this [gestures] and I would go up on the upper left in the Mission Control and sit with him. He would just bug me about the details of what this is and what it means, because he’s the one that usually goes to talk to the press. I said, “Fine, let me help him, what the hell? He is a nice guy.”\\n\\n Whenever he had an opportunity, he would call me, and I’d go sit next to him. Otherwise I would be roaming around. Something happened, and we need to do something about it. Or go in the back room to see what the people are looking, like Apollo 11, where did we land, it was mostly outside. Looking at the people that are looking at the things. Or with Apollo 13 roaming around between the flight controllers and this and that. Some even outside of the Center to get some information and whatnot.\\n\\n Until, when they called me principal investigator, this would allow me then to have a place, so I can have my own plug-in, because I used to plug in on anybody’s position. There are usually many plugs you can put your plug-in so you can hear what’s happening. Now I had my own sitting place." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you share with us any of the memorable comments that came through? I’m curious about the things that might have happened that were unexpected. The astronauts have said that you trained them so well that as they traveled around the Moon they felt like they’d been there before, but I know reading through some of the reports there were some observations that just weren’t expected. For instance the orange dirt." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Totally. Absolutely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I believe the cinder cones. Al Worden. Could you share with us about those or any others that you can remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. The things that were totally unexpected started with [Apollo] 14 with a feature that looked just like an honest to God caldera. We had not seen any of them before. Identical to the calderas on Earth, the volcanic calderas. Not seen any of that, because most of the volcanic rock on the Moon came through fractures and not through volcanic vents.\\n\\n It was Stu Roosa that started describing that. This was totally unexpected and totally unknown. It was very interesting, because from there on we used it as something peculiar, that’s what did it. He is the one that told us that this exists like that, so they all became attuned to the fact that they can add to the knowledge. That became a very important and very significant driving force for them.\\n\\n Then came the shaker of all time, which is, “I see a whole field of cinder cones, all of them having dark halos, and a summit pit on top. This is a whole field, I’m telling you.” This was a stunner, a whole field of volcanic cinder cones on the Moon in any one place. What is this? We had a big thing with one caldera-looking thing, and this is a whole bunch of them? We know about cinder cones, the way he said it. Made them similar to volcanic vents near Flagstaff, Arizona, because I had him fly over there like three times. That’s the only place where he really looked at cinder cones, so he’s talking about a whole field of the ones that he saw around Arizona. My God, where is that? How in hell did we miss all of this?\\n\\n This became like a topic of discussion throughout the command center, Mission Control, to the extent that it was I think Jack Schmitt that came out from the back room where the geologists are to sit right next to him. “What the hell does that mean? Is this such and such? What is that going to figure?”\\n\\n Then Rocco Petrone himself came down from his seat and came over to me. Said, “Hey, Farouk, I think Al might have picked out a landing site for you.” Then we continued with this, and it certainly made a huge impact on site selection for Apollo 17.\\n\\n Then Ken Mattingly made an observation of some dark flow coming from the middle of a crater on the far side. This was to us—the only way to explain this will be what we call an igneous intrusion, meaning some molten material that was intruded into a solid rock. That would have not been part of our thinking of lunar geology, but here it is, and there is no other explanation to it.\\n\\n Then Apollo 17, because these are different missions. Apollo 17, when Jack Schmitt mentioned orange soil at the site. “What do you mean, orange soil?” He talked about this might be fumarolic activity. “Fumarolic.” Fumarolic activity is mostly at the very end of volcanic eruptions, meaning that it is rather recent, last million years or something. We had no idea that the Moon could have been surviving [alive] that long. Everything has died on the Moon three billion years ago we thought. Actually there is oxidation of the material, because this red-orange color can come with oxidation of iron. Does this mean that there is water vapor that is hot that oxidizes things on the Moon? This is another Moon altogether, what is this?\\n\\n This is when I communicated to Ron [Ronald E.] Evans through the CapCom to see whether he can see that thing, orange soil. It is at Shorty Crater; he knows where Shorty is.\\n\\n “Look at Shorty Crater, look at the northwest corner of Shorty Crater. See whether you see some orange color.”\\n\\n He said, “Yes, I can see, I can actually. There is some orange coloration on the rim.”\\n\\n “That’s great. Now look any other place. Especially at the other edge of Serenitatis. Do you see any other, any similar color to that?”\\n\\n He comes in. “Yes, I see a whole lot of them.” So we thought that it’s not a unique thing, it’s not part of this, and it doesn’t have to be fumarolic activity or oxidation. It is something that maybe impacted, so these were three or four individual observations that had an impact on our thinking about the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For a different communication, Al Worden asked you to help him. He wanted to send greetings to the Earth. Tell us about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Al and I became—Al has just a delightful personality. You met with him?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He is just one of these people that grows on you. He is just a terrific guy. He was at the time divorcing and he had nobody, and every time I’d go with him. We’d spend the evening together, go to his favorite place to eat, the Rustler Steak House. We went to a bar after a training session. He asked the bartender to give him a White Russian, [and tells him], “I want to see what a White Russian does to an Egyptian.” Al was just a delightful personality, whom I became very good friends with from far back. When he came to Washington, he stayed in my house, and he slept on the couch.\\n\\n We became kind of like brothers. We talked a great deal about our background and where we are and this and that. I taught him some words in Arabic, and I was thinking that maybe I will give him a copy of the first page of the Koran to protect them, because we knew that Apollo 15 was going to be changed dramatically. Everything was going to change. We need protection, so I’ll give it to him. They all said, “Yes, we need all the protection we can get, so let’s take it,” and they did.\\n\\n Then he asked me to try to figure out what do we name that spacecraft, because every spacecraft has a name. So well, let’s talk about that, because we need to get something really super fantastic. I came home and asked my wife, and we had these three names, chewed them over and this and that and put them in order and took it to him and discussed it.\\n\\n He said, “Absolutely, I love it, this Endeavour.” I told him the story about Endeavour and the ship and the whole bit, so we got very heavily involved personalwise. He said, “Now I’m not going to say just one greeting. Why don’t you teach me how to say the whole greeting in Arabic?”\\n\\n So I said sure. Wrote it down, I said, “Say that.” He said it and he did it beautifully. Said, “What if we give it to you in different languages and you just shake the hell out of everybody and say it in many languages? In Spanish and Italian and why not all of the languages? Except Russian of course, it’s very awkward.” So we did, and we gave it to him in a whole bunch of languages.\\n\\n He didn’t have time to say them all, but he said at least Arabic, and he said, “Marhaba ahle el-ard, min Endeavour aleykum salam,” which is “Hello, people of the Earth, from Endeavour,” name of the spacecraft, “greetings from Endeavour.” That became the title of his book, Greetings from Endeavour." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Such a nice story of international communication. Tell us your thoughts when you learned that the decision had been made to start to close the Apollo program down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had wind of it before the other guys in the Centers, because we were at Headquarters. There were all kinds of feelers from the Congress, why don’t we shut this program. We don’t want another dangerous event; see what could have happened with [Apollo] 13, then other people saying, “Yes, I think the idea of shutting down after the first mission was a good one, why don’t we think about that?”\\n\\n Then there were all kinds of other things, so NASA Headquarters began to hear about these things, but to plan better than just shut it down, plan to think of what could we do instead. Right at the time we were very heavily involved in the planning with NASA Headquarters of the AAP, which is the Apollo Applications Program, so got down, including Rocco and everybody, that we think, “Okay, now when we finish Apollo, whenever it may be, what is it that we should do? We should apply the knowledge that we gained from the Moon to doing something else. What should be done next?”\\n\\n Most of our feelings were, well, we have learned so much, we have better maps of the Moon than the maps of the US because of the cameras that we carried. We need to take this knowledge that we have learned from the Moon to apply to at least the Earth and look at the Earth and make the map, topographic maps, to get for the resources, get the environment, get this, so we began to think about how do we [transition] from the Moon to Earth.\\n\\n This is as an application to what we learned in here, because we applied things to the Moon that we’d never done on Earth. We learned a hell of a lot about photography, mapmaking, you name it, and satellite imaging, remote sensing, all of that. This is where remote sensing came from.\\n\\n So how do we apply all of that to the Earth studies? Here came the notion of using the Saturn V as a housing for astronauts if astronauts stay in orbit rather than go to the Moon. That was Skylab, so we knew that at least two of these things that we’ve already produced and paid for, Saturn Vs, can be used for an Earth orbital mission. Before it was called Skylab it was called the AAP, Apollo Applications Program.\\n\\n We had known that this was going to happen like that, and we thought we had up to [Apollo] 18, so 18, we had actually planned in our minds for a landing on the far side of the Moon, so this was the only contention, that 18 is going to have Jack Schmitt, the geologist. [Apollo] 18 is going to land on the far side; 18 will have all kinds of communications satellites. We’ll not be able to see the astronauts, and the communications satellites are going to, because we had learned a great deal about communications by then. Not as much as now, but by then, that was huge. To have to make three communications satellites to go around the Moon, and who can actually keep us in constant touch with the astronauts while they are on the far side, the side that we don’t see.\\n\\n There were a lot of people that were against this from the safety point of view, but we worked up the plan for it, then that too got cut, out of fear that we might actually win and make it to the far side of the Moon. A lot of people were shaken by the whole notion that we can actually land them where we don’t see or hear; they would land on their own without us hearing or seeing or doing anything.\\n\\n So that was cut. This is when we realized that now the Apollo program will end without a geologist on the Moon. We have the geologist ready. He devoted two years of his life to learn how to pilot. Jack Schmitt spent two years at Edwards [Air Force Base] just being a pilot, all of that, and he’s the geologist, and we don’t send him? We have a geologist like that and we don’t send him to the Moon? That’s ridiculous, so a push began to replace Joe [H.] Engle and put Jack Schmitt on Apollo 17 and it succeeded." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell about how your work started to change at Bellcomm. Or how did Bellcomm start to adapt to the change in the mission schedule?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The mission schedule meaning what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Canceling 18." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The deal between NASA and AT&T was, “I’m going to give you all those people that you need for as long as the Apollo program is on. The day Apollo ends, goodbye, because these are my own people, I want them back in New Jersey.” This was the deal, so we knew by Apollo 17 time when came the splashdown of Apollo 17, Bellcomm will fold. Everybody’s moving, so people began to look for houses back in Holmdel, New Jersey." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you choose to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At the time absolutely nothing, I wasn’t even prepared to think about it. That same year Michael Collins of Apollo 11 was brought in by the Smithsonian Institution to head the [National] Air and Space Museum. There was a function where Stu Roosa and Michael Collins were together, and Michael Collins was telling Stu Roosa that he’s just accepted to be director of the Air and Space Museum. “They even want me to do scientific research there, and I don’t know what the hell do they mean by that.”\\n\\n So Stu Roosa said, “Well, call Farouk.”\\n\\n Michael Collins calls me up, and he said, “I’m going to be the director of the Air and Space Museum, and they said that they want me to start [research]. I think that you should come and do this thing for me. I know I’m not going to understand half of what you say, but I know that you’re going to do a good job. Why don’t you come and do whatever the hell you want to do?”\\n\\n I left Bellcomm in December 1972. I moved across the street to the Smithsonian on January 1, to start something that we called the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies as part of the National Air and Space Museum as part of the Smithsonian. I was there for ten years. This was a fascinating thing. It was one of the most fascinating jobs in my life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Please tell us about your first days and how they evolved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At that time, that’s three years before the building was built. We were in the tower of the Arts and Industries Building of the Smithsonian, the one next to the Castle [Smithsonian Institution Building], the old fancy one. Mike comes in and he says, “Now we’re going to have an Air and Space Museum. We have no problem about all of the spacecraft, because we’re going to own them.”\\n\\n I don’t know whether you know that all of the spacecraft that NASA uses, the day they end their mission, that day a spacecraft belongs to the Smithsonian Institution, not NASA, immediately by law, so NASA has nothing to do with it. When it’s finished this thing is not mine, it’s the Smithsonian’s by law. It’s a very interesting thing. When NASA wants to exhibit one of the Apollo, Spacelab, they have to request it in writing from the Smithsonian. It’s not NASA’s. It’s the Smithsonian’s, because it’s part of the nation. This is the nation’s attic.\\n\\n “So we’re going to have all of the spacecraft, coming out of the roof, but what do we talk about? Other things? Apollo? Yes, we can show something, something, but what do we say? What went on, or what was about the Moon and this and that? You guys begin to think about that. You go ahead and do whatever you want to do.”\\n\\n We begin to figure out what is an exhibit; so we talk to the exhibits people, and then the historians, and then the artists, so it becomes a whole different ballgame. I’ve been dealing with engineers and pilots for six years consistently, nonstop. Here comes this totally different kind of people. Painters, artists, exhibits people, historians.\\n\\n So, what is an exhibit? We go through circles of first my education on what is this new business and how to deal with it. You pick it up, and you realize that it’s really interesting to deal with these different kinds of people. We begin thinking about the Apollo exhibit. We thought that we will have an exhibit that would change maybe every three years. As you’ve seen it, the Apollo exhibit hasn’t changed one bit for a thirty-five years now. We worked on it in 1973, the design, I remember this, I signed on my thing for it in the end of ’73. It is still functioning to this day without a single change. They don’t want to change a thing.\\n\\n It was really very interesting to see this. Then, we began to think about a theme of looking around the Earth, then the thing about the cameras and the photography. We have one of the cameras that flew on the Apollo three last missions in there. A seven-foot camera, a big beast, yes. The panoramic camera from Itek [Corporation], because I worked at Itek after the Smithsonian and was able to make sure that one of the Itek cameras was given to the Smithsonian for that exhibit.\\n\\n An interesting side issue, because of the link to photography. You probably don’t know the fact that I was very central to the IMAX movie system. We opened the Air and Space Museum on the 4th of July, 1976. It was the nation’s bicentennial anniversary. We had President [Gerald R.] Ford [Jr.] come. We established the whole event in front of the museum, hoping that it will not rain. We had the ribbon and we planned the ribbon cutting by a signal from the Viking I mission from Mars, so there was a ribbon like this, and the metal thing like this [gestures]. The Viking mission from Mars would send a signal to this to heat the ribbon to cut it, at the time when we wanted, while the President is saying, “And now we’re going to cut the ribbon from a signal from Mars.”\\n\\n Then he’ll stop like this and look at it, and the whole world is looking at it, and we’re waiting like this. It only took like three seconds. It fell. This is an event, it’s not a small potato. No.\\n\\n Okay, now, we then had plans for the Space Shuttle. Walked into my office was a guy from Canada by the name of Graeme Ferguson. He said, “I just came from NASA Headquarters, I was telling them about a camera that we produced. It’s a very large format that we want to fly in the NASA missions. They told me you’re the only one that can talk about it. The negative is 70-millimeter.”\\n\\n I said, “What do you mean, 70-millimeter.”\\n\\n He said, “70-millimeter negative, it’s like this.” He opened his briefcase and showed me a negative. Oh my God, this is the negative, so the resolution would be so fantastic. Like that [it was on] my light table and looked at enlarging, and I was so enthralled with the resolution of this negative.\\n\\n “How big is this camera?”\\n\\n Said, “Well, it’s big.” Told me about it.\\n\\n “How big is the roll of film?”\\n\\n “Well, it’s like that.”\\n\\n Said, “Yes, NASA is not going to fly that anywhere. Why don’t we think about making something out of it first to show the quality before NASA can fly something like that?”\\n\\n He said, “Why don’t you guys do something, since you’re an Air and Space Museum? Do something with it.”\\n\\n Said, “Okay, leave the negative with me. We’ll talk about it.” I went to my boss, Michael Collins. I said, “Mike, this is a negative that is 70-millimeter that we can make movies with this thing that will blow the mind of people.”\\n\\n He said, “What kind of projector and when?”\\n\\n I said, “I will look into the projection.” Because I had asked the guy how large can you project this.\\n\\n He said, “Anywhere you want. I would say five stories high by eight stories wide you can project this thing, and it will still be sharp.”\\n\\n We were planning on a movie theater in the museum, so I called the engineer that is designing the museum. He was Japanese. I befriended him when we talked about the exhibit areas and design. Nice guy, kind of my age, so I called him. He was named Gyo Obata. “Gyo, we’re going to talk about the size of the theater. How big can the building code take the screen?”\\n\\n He said, “Screens, you can make it any “big,” because it’s going to be in this little room. It will go up to the ceiling for as long as you want.”\\n\\n I said, “What if we have a potential for a screen that is five stories high by eight stories wide?”\\n\\n Says, “Well, let me look at it.” He worked on the details of the drawings. He called me up. “Hey, Farouk, actually it is good, better for my structure.”\\n\\n Said, “What do you mean?”\\n\\n Said, “Because I can take that wall and put it right to the ceiling, and you’re going to use almost all of it. This is totally irrelevant, but if I put the wall all the way to the ceiling, then it’s actually better for my structure.”\\n\\n I said, “Better? Good.” I run to Michael Collins and say, ‘Listen, [the screen, it’s] better for the structure.”\\n\\n Said, “Well, okay, ask this guy how much it will cost to make a movie.”\\n\\n So I called the guy from Canada. “Graeme, we’re fine with it. We can do it. We can build the screen big enough in the museum. You sit down and tell me a figure. Be careful and make it small, as much as we can possibly do, cut corners. Tell me how much it will cost us. We’re government. We can’t give you such and such. Tell me how much it will cost. Make it exactly 30 minutes. Make a movie of 30 minutes.”\\n\\n He said, “About what?”\\n\\n I said, “About aviation. We’re an Air and Space Museum, so aviation and maybe some space.” He came back and he said $750,000, so I said, “It’s a deal.” I went to Mike, and tried to put it positive, “Mike, it’s only $750,000.”\\n\\n He said, “Jesus Christ, what the hell? There’s no more money in the building plans. I can’t give you this money. The only way we’ll do it, if we can get additions to the budget from the Smithsonian. I’ll arrange a meeting between us and [Sidney Dillon] Ripley.” Dillon Ripley was the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. I had just befriended him the year before. He was going to Egypt; I went with him and I had him meet with the heads of the universities and Sheikh Al-Azhar and this and that. He had a fantastic trip, so he liked me. We go to Dillon Ripley.\\n\\n We sit down and tell him we have an opportunity to start something that’s unique in the museum and we will have to do this and that. He said, “And how much does it cost?” Mike looked at me; I said $750,000. He looked at Mike Collins and he said, “And how long would it take you pay us this money back?” Because it’s an additional allocation because he gets money from Congress and this is it, we have to pay it back. Mike looked at me. I said four years, out of thin air.\\n\\n So Ripley, he’s a fantastic scientist, a great man. He said, “Well, four or five years, it’s okay.” He even gave us a year in addition, “Four or five years is okay.” We went out delighted with the whole thing. We called the guy and I said, “Okay, we’re going to give you the script. Have to stick to our script. We’ll sign a contract for you to give you $750,000 to make that movie for exactly 30 minutes.” We worked on the script, got the historians and exhibits people to work on the script of the film “To Fly!” Have you seen it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You should go see it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I’ll go see that one." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It starts with a balloon and ends up with the rocket to the Moon. Fabulous history of aviation with fantastic resolution and magnificent scenery. The Museum cannot take it off. People in Washington request it.\\n\\n So we did it; we started it. We thought we’re going to charge $1 so that we can get that money back. We made $2 million in the first year. Since we are a government agency, we cannot make profit, so what we decided—we’ll call Graeme Ferguson of Canada and tell him, “You make the second movie for $1,250,000.” We did. There, IMAX movies were born. Or else no one would have ever seen it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Amazing. What a great story. Thanks for sharing that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Now IMAX would have died had it not been for this, “To Fly!” and the vision of both Michael Collins, as the director of the Air and Space Museum, and the Smithsonian boss Dillon Ripley for saying, “That’s not too bad, and if you get the money in four, five years—” I told him four years. He said, “Four or five years is okay.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now the second movie. Did you provide the script or did you give them—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, they actually came prepared with something about Planet Earth. Flying to different places, going to Egypt and photographing the pyramids, going to India, photographing it. They did it for the $1,250,000. That bombed. Nobody wanted to see it, so we put it on a little bit and then put it with “To Fly!” and then cut it off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually going forward in your career, you worked with more of this Large Format Camera, is that correct? When you went to Itek?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. It is in 1982 that I moved to Itek. This was basically because I had been promoted in the Smithsonian very swiftly and I reached a [pay] grade 16 [General Schedule (GS)-16]. It’s government, I don’t know whether they still have these grades or not, I got to grade 16. For five years I didn’t move. There was no movement above grade 16, which was called [Senior Executive Service (SES)], whereby there is no more beyond that. For five years my salary was not moving up.\\n\\n I think we were ceiled at $54,000. We were ceiled at $54,000, no more. For five years it stayed like this. This is when my four daughters began college. The tuition was like $12,000 then, a head. Where am I going to get that money? So it was right at that time, I got that offer from Itek Optical Systems to work as vice president for science and technology. It was enticing, because the president of the company came and he said, “You gave us hell when you were procuring,” because I was the head of the committee that procured the cameras for NASA. I wanted naturally to get the best possible product from every engineer there the way we did it in NASA, so I would go to Lexington [Massachusetts] and then sit down with their optics people and push them to the hilt as far as the resolution and the quality, et cetera.\\n\\n He said, “You gave us so much hell when you were procuring the camera for the Apollo missions, why don’t you come and sit with me and do this yourself and manage the production of these cameras yourself? We’ll give you $100,000 as a signing bonus just to say yes.”\\n\\n So, what do you say? What do you think I said? That was it, so I was there. It was fascinating to get into the guts of cameras and how do you actually work on the glass chunks, to polish them, and to maneuver so that the glass side with the curvature will be just exactly right without a wiggle anywhere, and to assure that the movement of film doesn’t shake one iota, so that the film itself, when it is stabilized to take exposure, becomes to get these very crisp, very high-resolution images. It was a very good thing. We flew that on the Space Shuttle to take fantastic pictures. We’re still using them to this day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Please share with us how that impacted the space agency. You were there with Apollo, then although you were not working with NASA anymore, but yet you were still involved with the space agency, because you were on the other side, so you were able to set those standards for the Shuttle and then also use of the data that came from it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never really left NASA science so to speak. When I moved into the Smithsonian, my office was just across the street from your building, NASA Headquarters now, on 4th Street, 4th, 6th. They had begun to plan for the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Since I was working for the government as a Smithsonian employee, even when the US government wanted to speak to the Soviet Union about joint programs, I was selected a member of the US commission to go. We were six people that went to Moscow to speak on behalf of the US government on a joint map of the Moon. We were going to get together our maps of the Moon that we had from Apollo. They would get all their pictures of the Moon. We’d make together a map of the Moon jointly by the US and USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] so that it will be the standard internationally. Actually this didn’t work. We just wanted to cut out, because they were hiding things from us, and it just didn’t work right.\\n\\n However, during the same time or right afterwards, President Nixon had the detente with the Soviet Union. One of the things that he talked with them about was the Apollo-Soyuz mission. Americans would send a spacecraft, and the Russians send a spacecraft, and the two link in orbit. They work together for several days and then separate and go down, and everything was hunky-dory. The director of the Apollo-Soyuz mission was the deputy director of the Apollo program. Captain Lee [R.] Scherer of the Navy was second in command to Rocco Petrone.\\n\\n When Rocco left NASA, he became the director of the Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project] mission. Naturally he knew me, and he knew I am the photo man and this and that, so he called me up and he said, “Okay, do you want to get a team like the Apollo guys and work on observations and photography from the Apollo-Soyuz mission? That’s your baby, the geology. We have that much money, and we’ll give you that much money, $250,000, to put a team together and plan it.” I said fine, and we did that, so I was very heavily involved with the crew, because I knew the crew members anyway. It was Deke Slayton, Tom Stafford and Vance [D.] Brand. All of them I worked with before.\\n\\n We trained them well. We did that. We got lots of very good pictures and so on. We continued; I began to look at the pictures. I became interested in desert photography. By then we had images of Landsat [Program, Earth observing satellite missions]. The guys that ran Landsat are also colleagues that I knew from old days, so I continued with Landsat applications of what do we do, then that continued all the way through the time when I moved to Itek, which made the Large Format Camera for the Space Shuttle.\\n\\n In real life when Skylab began, Al [Alan L.] Bean was the chairman of the astronaut training for the Skylab astronauts. He still would call me to go and give lectures about training of the astronauts and what you see from space of the Earth rather than the Moon, so I never really left the NASA science activities at all.\\n\\n I’ve been related to NASA science ever since, whether it is at [NASA] Goddard [Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland] or Houston. For instance, when we realized that there are different colors of sands in the desert, I knew that this may be due to some coating on the sand grains, so we need someone to look at them and tell us what is that. The only group that could do this is the Lunar Receiving Laboratory people, so they did. They would enlarge the sand grains for me 60,000 times. We’ll find out what it is. We write about it and so on.\\n\\n The guys at [NASA] JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California], a lot younger than I. People were working on the radar missions and I would call them up to tell them we need to take some radar images of the part of the Western Desert of Egypt that I’m working on. They would run it through, then we see the very first images of radar images where they penetrate the sand and reveal the buried ancient rivers. There’s still a connection there I still have, I just was there two months ago with these guys for additional stuff. There has always been some relation or another within the science community of NASA, nothing formal, but informally I never left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Kind of how you started, wasn’t it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just wanted to ask you a couple unrelated questions before we close this afternoon. What do you believe to be the lessons learned from what originally was called the vis obs effort, which is now of course remote sensing? What do you believe to be the lessons that you learned back in the Apollo program that are so valuable to today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The key to success is motivating people to go even beyond what they think is possible. That I heard as a lesson from Rocco Petrone that he got from Jim Webb. I think I told you once, which was the statement from Webb was: “If each one of you can get from each one that works for you—,” he said every man, “if you can get from every man that works for you—,” we had no women then, “all what they think they are capable of doing, then we will surely fail, but if you can get from every man that works for you more than what they think they are capable of doing, then we’ll succeed and we’ll make it to the Moon.”\\n\\n That statement, when you read it, you really read between the lines a hell of a lot. That the manager’s job is to highly motivate every individual and push them to the hilt so that they can do more than what they think they are capable of. That is really the pinnacle of success, because collectively you add these things together. You will get to the best possible position. I’ve noticed that wherever I went. Wherever it happened, that kind of result was reached." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back on your years of contributions to the space agency, what do you feel, if you had to sum it up, is your most significant contribution?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My interjecting scientific questions, and the importance of science, into the program, by planting it in the minds of people that know how to do it. I really felt that that was my contribution that I did—I was able to just allow science to get in under the skin of Apollo. Gently and nicely, and by total acceptance in the places where they really can do something about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you originally started, you began your career by going through series of thousands of photos. Did you put yourself back in that position before you left? Did you review all those photos that came back from your CMP students and was able to absorb all the knowledge or all the lessons that came out of those photos as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Absolutely. We always continued to pore over these photographs, then also I helped put together the team that NASA wanted to pay for to archive all the Apollo photography. That’s an important thing, because also we made real honest to God archives. There was one archive that I made personally with all the Apollo-Soyuz photographs, a real honest to God archive that has the numbers, has descriptions, has every single picture that was taken, because this was the beginning of looking at the Earth from space.\\n\\n We had a whole slew of people, 12 people, doing nothing but archiving all of the Apollo acquired images, because this is part of the history of science, and part of our understanding of the Moon, and part of the whole astronomy field. Definitely. That’s very essential to keep at it and make absolutely certain that you say what you know and organize it in such a way that can be used by the newer generation or the next generation, whoever goes back to the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You are teaching many of the new generation [here at Boston University]." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That’s right. Many of my students are running programs now. Many of the people that work—the guys that are running the Smithsonian now are the students of my students. The Center for Earth—the guy that is going to be the editor of the book I wrote a chapter for is a student of a guy that I served on his PhD committee for and I hired at the Smithsonian. Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That must be very rewarding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wonderful to see the students of your students doing something tangible. Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we’ve learned so much this afternoon. Are there any topics that you feel we need to touch on before we close today? Jennifer, is there anything that came to your mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The only question I had for you is, as I sit here, I see Joe Allen’s Entering Space [on the bookshelf]. I see the photo of STS-5 [on your wall]. Joe Allen had told us that he was very interested in photography and cameras. On STS-5 they took the first full crew photograph. Can you tell us about your work on STS-5 with Joe Allen?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never really worked on STS-5 personally, as a Shuttle program specifically for photography, but Joe Allen was the science astronaut on Apollo mission 15. He attended every single briefing that I had with the crew of Apollo 15. By the time we finished with the Apollo 15 mission, he was as knowledgeable, as versed in Apollo photography, like any one of them or anyone. He continued that throughout his Shuttle work. He took many pictures. He showed me many of these pictures from his missions, not just one. In Houston, he would call me and he’d say, “I’m going to go through—I want you to come and see, to look at these pictures.”\\n\\n Said, “Great, I will go down.” We’d look at rolls of films, so he became as astute in photography as any one of the other guys. He’s also a scientist, a PhD in physics. He was very good at it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Ross-Nazzal", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He is a Renaissance man, that’s for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Very much so. Very much so. I take him to the Arab world; I take him to Oman and the southern part of Arabia to speak about space and to speak about his mission. He just gets them floored. He’s fabulous in the way he deals with them and the way he talks to them. The way he talks with ease. Bonnie, his wife, is just as fabulous. They’re wonderful people, but Joe Allen is in a higher level than a lot of the astronauts or engineers or physicists or anything like that. He’s just a super-duper guy, a delightful character and has very thorough knowledge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That is one thing you can say about your life. You have met quite a cast of interesting people, haven’t you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Quite a cast, yes. Joe Allen is the one that was fascinated by my beginning. [He would ask,] “When did you come out of Egypt? Why did you do such and such? What did you study in Egypt? What was that like?”\\n\\n Once we were having—Apollo 15—we were having a briefing, but during the day they were off for something. It was a holiday, but we never took holidays, but it was a holiday. We decided okay, let’s take an afternoon and go cook some hamburgers and have a cookout and some beer, and we’ll come back. We did. So he and I were sitting next to the fire that we built to cook the hamburgers. The other guys were standing with some beers out in the distance. He said, “Farouk, who was your advisor?”\\n\\n I said, “What do you mean?”\\n\\n He said, “Your thesis advisor.”\\n\\n I said, “Oh, you wouldn’t know him.”\\n\\n He said, “Why? He’s got to be one of these guys,” [Gerard P.] Kuiper or big names in astronomy.\\n\\n I said, “No, no, you wouldn’t know him.”\\n\\n He said, “What do you mean, you wouldn’t know him? What do you mean? Where did you get your PhD?”\\n\\n I said, “In something called the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy.”\\n\\n He said, “School of Mines and Metallurgy?” He assumed that I had it in some astronomical thing that relates to the Moon, because I’m the Moon man as far as he’s concerned. He said, “What was your PhD on?” No, he said, “What was your adviser’s name?”\\n\\n I said, “His name was Chris [Christian] Amstutz. You wouldn’t know him.”\\n\\n He said, “What was your thesis topic on, the PhD?”\\n\\n I said, “It was about the lead and zinc deposits in southeast Missouri.”\\n\\n He said, “You’re kidding.”\\n\\n I said, “Honest to God.”\\n\\n He said, “Lead and zinc deposits in southeast Missouri? That was your PhD?” I said yes. He said, “Hey guys! Come hear this. You’re putting your lives in [the hands of] a guy who’s an expert on lead and zinc.”" + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Stirring it up, wasn’t he?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He’s right. What the hell is a guy who’s an expert on lead and zinc doing teaching astronauts about the Moon? He’s the one that would later say that, “The only man on Earth that I’ve ever met that knows the Moon like the palm of his hand is Farouk El-Baz.” Joe Allen himself, [said this] in one of the debriefings." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It must be very interesting for you to think back where you were in Egypt working with the petroleum companies studying under the ground, and then you go to the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then go to the Moon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It’s quite an expansive career." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The only reason for success is really zeroing in on what is significant here, yes. What’s the issue? What’s the problem? What is it you have to do, and why? Then okay, if that’s the case, then how do we do it best?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You shared such great lessons with us, so we appreciate you for giving us your afternoon." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Farouk El-Baz", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You’re very welcome." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you so much." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00007", + "metadata": { + "category": "JSC Oral History Project", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/AldrichAD/aldrichad.htm", + "original_file_name": "AldrichAD_4-28-08.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/AldrichAD/AldrichAD_4-28-08.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "location_date": "Springfield, Virginia – 28 April 2008" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Arnold D. Aldrich" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 28th, 2008. We are in Springfield, Virginia to speak with Arnold Aldrich, who retired after 35 years with NASA and after 13 years with Lockheed Martin where he served as a vice president and director of program management for the corporation. The interview is being conducted for the JSC Tacit Knowledge Capture Project for the Space Shuttle Program. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Sandra Johnson. Thanks again for coming in to see us this morning. You first joined NASA in 1959 when the space program was first beginning. Your firsthand experiences range through the programs that led to Shuttle, where you first served as the manager of the Program Assessment Office that Bob [Robert F.] Thompson asked you to begin. Tell us how you transitioned into this position from Apollo and about those duties, and then just lead us into where you'd like for us to know about the Shuttle Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Your interest today is about program management and how you prepare for it and what attributes are strong attributes or things you ought to have. One of the things I will mention a couple times, and I believe in a lot, is that in the programs that we do in NASA and particularly at the Johnson Space Center [Houston, Texas] really require a pretty in-depth understanding technically of the program and the systems that are involved in the program. In order to arrive at the point I was at when I went into program management, I had quite an extensive background of spacecraft systems in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo and Apollo-Soyuz [Test Project, ASTP] Programs, the Skylab Program. I did move into program management midway in the Skylab Program. Then on with the CSMs [Command Service Modules] for Apollo-Soyuz. But prior to that, the first third of my 35 years at NASA I worked in the flight operations organization and in the development of the Mission Control Center and the remote sites and the flight procedures.\\n\\n All of that gave me a pretty strong background in the details of those programs, and I evolved into becoming one of the senior spacecraft systems console operators for Mercury. Then for Gemini and Apollo I was the leader of the organization that trained and used and applied the spacecraft system monitors for the Gemini spacecraft and for the Command Service Module on Apollo. Through all of that, learning the operations and the management and then the spacecraft systems in quite a bit of detail, provided a breadth of background that I thought was a very strong asset when I first moved into program management. I knew the program so well, and I knew in-depth the technical aspects of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The Shuttle, of course, was a brand-new spacecraft. When I was reading back through a transcript that you had done with us before, for instance, and you mentioned that Bob Thompson asked you to start this Program Assessment Office, which was a new office, and you had a chance to look at issues. Tell us how important that was at the beginning of this new time period for NASA as it moved into a new spacecraft era." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "During the time of Apollo 15, I transitioned out of Mission Control and spacecraft systems management, and I went to work for Kenny [Kenneth S.] Kleinknecht as a deputy program manager in Skylab. Then not long after that, we were using the Apollo Command Service Modules also to go to Skylab and to do the Apollo-Soyuz with the Russians, and I went to the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office, and I was deputy program manager to Glynn [S.] Lunney for the Command Service Modules. I was back in the same programs I'd been doing mission control for in the early phases of program management.\\n\\n During that time period of the Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz, the Space Shuttle Program started up and actually became very real, and hardware became developed, and it was a strong program underway. When Apollo-Soyuz ended, that was the end of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo sequence for all of Johnson and NASA. It was at that time that they were beginning to see some need for a Program Assessment Office. Some people called it the “devil's advocate” office, to assess what the program was doing in the Space Shuttle and identify issues that if you looked at it independently of the program perhaps ought to be addressed. I know Bob Thompson was very interested in that, and I'm certain he felt he was doing his best to run the program the best way it could be, but it was an opportunity to look at things. And I was asked to run this office.\\n\\n Most of the rest of the Apollo people that had finally finished doing ASTP went into a new office that dealt with payloads for Space Shuttle. It was called SPIDPO [Shuttle Payload Integration and Development Program Office], and it was the procedures and what they'd be and how you'd handle them and how you'd deal with the people that brought payloads. I was pulled off because of my background in spacecraft systems to lead this separate assessment with people who hadn't been tied into the Shuttle Program at that time and look at what was there.\\n\\n I carefully went through the Center and selected a group of about half a dozen people to work for me and had to go negotiate getting them assigned to me with whoever their manager was at the Center. I remember a couple of them that I asked for were pretty strong in the Engineering Directorate, and I had to go talk to Max [Dr. Maxime A.] Faget. Max thought the Program Assessment Office was great, but—“Not taking my people to do it.” In the end I got a pretty good team, and we looked at the mechanical aspects of the Shuttle and the avionics and the missions and the whole suite of what the Shuttle Program was planning to do and provided a series of reports on what we thought. It was interesting. Because of my background partly, because I'm an electrical engineer, but partly also because I think it was one of the needs—we were particularly critical of how the avionics and the software was developing. There were some questions about the adequacy of the size of the computers and the actual architecture of the avionics multiredundant computer system that's on the Shuttle. We criticized that pretty strongly. I'll come back to that in a minute.\\n\\n Another thing we were pretty concerned about was the fact that the solid rocket boosters were single point failures, and once you lit them they had to burn for the first two minutes. There was no way to get off. There was no escape. They would take you two minutes downstream in the direction they wanted to go. Our group had been used to the prior three programs where we always had a launch escape system on board. We presented that to the Shuttle Program and to the Center management, and they felt the rationale for doing that had been looked at a number of times and that didn't result in any change, even though it's something we played back to them.\\n\\n The avionics thing—what really happened there was that they said, “Well, Arnie, you're so smart, I think you ought to come to the Orbiter and be the head of the Orbiter Avionics Systems Office,” which is doing the avionics and the software for the Space Shuttle, even though it's called Orbiter. All of the avionics that controls the total vehicle and most of the flight and the mission is all in the Orbiter. It was in the Orbiter Project Office under Aaron Cohen, but closely tied to Bob Thompson's Shuttle. They didn't have an avionics office in the Shuttle Program.\\n\\n The result of my work in the Program Assessment Office led to me being put in charge of the avionics for Shuttle for the Orbiter, but also for the whole Shuttle vehicle. That was a very interesting part of my career, and I worked it for the next three and a half or four years. Quite proud of what was accomplished there. We made some of the changes that were the direct result of the areas we were worried about in the Program Assessment Office. For a number of those years I ran the Orbiter Software Avionics Control Board every week with eight or ten hours of change and adjustment traffic with IBM, who was building the software, and Rockwell International [Corporation] building the avionics. That was my introduction into serious program management. I was the deputy in the two prior programs and contributed, but this was one where I was in charge of a major element of a program, and it was the Space Shuttle Orbiter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Each of the positions you described had its own level of responsibilities and details of discovery. Share with us some of the most memorable lessons during that time period, working with those challenges that you encountered during those different transitions of positions up in the Shuttle. Did it become easier as you moved up the line of management?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One of the lessons is needing to understand in detail the systems that you're the program manager for. I had done that as a matter of course during my time in flight operations. So it was natural to be pretty detail-involved in the engineering and the technical aspects of the programs. In each of these programs during this time and for the rest of my time in program management in NASA I ran a significant change board, had to deal with very detailed technical people, both at Johnson and the contractors involved. I was comfortable with that and I liked it. If I was going to recommend an attribute that is important in program management the way it's done at Johnson, and what the programs at Johnson demand, I think that's a necessary aspect and trait that program managers need to develop.\\n\\n At Lockheed Martin [Corporation] I could see some different things as we talked about program management. I was in the corporate office in Bethesda [Maryland], and on any given day at Lockheed Martin there are about 3,200 programs, and they're all in some phase of executing. They need to use adequate procedures and have adequate training and be prepared for the things they're going to deal with. They're working on programs, some of which are quite like the ones we did at Johnson, but some are quite a bit different. They're managing people services, they're managing information technology. There's a broader suite of programs than just what Johnson does. My experience was almost all with Johnson.\\n\\n At Lockheed, one of the things we talked about a lot was whether you had to be an engineer and a technical person to be a program manager. Philosophically, I agree with the general consensus that you don't have to be. Someone who comes from a business background or someone comes from some other scientific discipline could well be a program manager, if they have the right exposure and training and they're brought in the right way and then they have the adequate set of processes and procedures to follow. I agree with that philosophically, but at Johnson when you're flying these very technical human spacecraft, it would be hard to picture a program manager that doesn't have a strong—and maybe not an engineering degree—but a strong technical focus on what they're doing. Because otherwise you don't get quite deep enough to understand the decisions you're making." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You talked about the details of the technical side for overall program management. What about program efficiency? What are some of the attributes or the lessons that you learned in how to run programs as efficiently as they need to be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In some sense I think I was spoiled in how I was brought up at the Johnson Space Center. I was brought up where every job I had, I worked for some of the people that were already doing the job, that were as capable and talented and knew how to execute programs as I've ever known. When I worked for Kenny Kleinknecht in Skylab, he had a tremendously effective well-balanced program going. I learned how to do it by just joining the program and doing it with him and doing some of it myself. It was true with Glynn Lunney. Then I worked for Aaron Cohen, it was true with Aaron Cohen. Then I worked for Bob Thompson. Every one of them, when I got there, already had a program that was balanced, was well-planned, was executing efficiently and effectively. So I learned how to do those things just because I started doing them.\\n\\n Now, you go to Lockheed where you have all these programs, 3,200 programs. It means that every day some program manager's leaving that program or leaving the company. New ones are coming in, and how do they plug in? So you talk about, “How do we assure these people are trained and what do they need to know and how do they get it?” I still think that on-the-job training is by far the most necessary and most beneficial part of learning program management. But, many times I don't think people have the opportunity to work for people like the program managers I've mentioned, and Chris [Christopher C.] Kraft [Jr.]. These people were strong and competent and were already doing the things that I think are the best in executing programs. I learned by doing it with them.\\n\\n The kind of program you need, though, if you have to start and you don't have that opportunity—you still need some on-the-job training because being a program manager takes experience and understanding of dealing with people, but you also need some classroom training. It's probably classroom and beyond the classroom in terms of exposure to program management processes, program management aspects that people in this era and in prior eras thought were the best practices to be used. You've got to know that. You don't have to be an expert in all of them, but you have to be exposed to all of them. You also need mentors. You need people that you can go to when you seem stumped and you say, “Well, am I doing it right? What am I missing here?” or “Can you help me?” That's also an important characteristic.\\n\\n I guess I had mentors all the time, because they were right there, but my program management training was on-the-job training to an extent that I think is unique. If you're providing new program managers for new programs and new timeframes, you've got to be sure these other things are part of what they learn and what they do. Right now I'm on an advisory council that supports an initiative that Mike [Michael L.] Coats started last year on developing program managers at Johnson. There's some colleagues of mine on that advisory council that I think a lot of, and we've met regularly during the last year to first plan this program and then help put it together and then help the phases of execution through the first—there's a class of about 30 program managers at Johnson now that are halfway through an 18-month program management training.\\n\\n We built the concept of, “You've got to have on-the-job training, and if you want these people to evolve, you've got to today put them in some job where they'll start to get the experience they're going to need.” Then you also have to have the training and exposure so that you understand the breadth of program management and all the little areas that you're going to have somebody else do for you. But you better know enough about it to be sure it's being done the way it ought to be done, and maybe if it's not, what the right additional steps are. And mentors so that you can talk about it standing back a little further, not on-the-job training, but somebody who's been there and has other views or other timeframes.\\n\\n Johnson’s put together a program like that over the last year, and frankly I think it is excellent. We had a review of it just about a month ago where they gave a summary of the success so far, and it's a very excellent program. In fact, I mentioned to them that you were going to be doing these interviews and that the things people like me tell you could be good inputs to their program, too. Because they're looking certainly to finish this class and be very successful, which they feel they have been so far, but then there's going to be more classes and their program will evolve. So best practices in program management are the ones I've talked about here, and they're all very important. A program manager needs to know some amount of each of those things will make the blend of background that's really important." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you were putting together a class of the new generation of leaders for NASA, what would you be looking for, and what are the attributes that you'd like to identify in these up-and-coming managers? What do they need to have in order to take that next step or take NASA to the next step? What are you looking for in people that will be developed as part of that program management plan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They need to be energetic and interested in things, not just maybe in some program they're not quite assigned to yet, but any program would be of interest to them. I pointed out they've got to be interested in the technical aspects of it as well as the “I'm going to manage the schedule and the budget and assign things to people.” There's some people that are part of these groups I've worked with, particularly at Lockheed because it was a bigger operation, that view this as what we need to do: find the perfect set of procedures to execute program management. And if we have a perfect set it's like a cookbook recipe for doing program management, and if we do a good enough job putting that together, anybody can be a program manager.\\n\\n It's very important to work towards a goal like that. But that in itself is not enough. There's unique and different things that come up daily in program management. There's no recipe that's going to take you through it. You've got to have intuition and insight and understanding and ability to communicate with people, to understand people, understand how much trust to give them or confidence to put in what they tell you, how many times you ask a breadth of people. It's pretty complicated. Your question was, “What do new fresh younger people need to move into that and what do you look for?” You look for strength and interest and intelligence, hardworking, but the drive to want to do it. If they want to do it and they have some of these attributes. It's always a learning experience. Whatever degree of program management you've done up to now, if you do more you'll learn more and your experience base will expand." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think the hardest lesson you learned through all those years that you've worked in the space-related industry? What's the best lesson you learned?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The best lesson—it's to have your technical basis and be interested in it. It's an important part. One of the things I learned going along, but was even more reinforced when I became the Shuttle Program Manager at Johnson, after the Orbiter avionics timeframe. I became the Deputy Program Manager in Space Shuttle under Bob Thompson briefly, but then I was asked to become the Manager of the Orbiter following Aaron Cohen. That was a great job. But it was also a program that was up and running and humming, and I just had to step in and be sure I kept all the knobs turned the right way and get deeply involved in it. One of the things I started to learn there, and I really learned when I took over as Program Manager after Bob Thompson in the Space Shuttle, is the importance of rigorous configuration management control.\\n\\n The Space Shuttle Program at Johnson had, and I think probably still has, the best configuration control process I've seen anywhere. It is very meticulous. It's very well-documented. It's very well-communicated. At that time, when I became the Program Manager for Space Shuttle, I also became the Chairman of the PRCB, Program Requirements Change Board. I got to see this process that Bob Thompson put in place. I don't know where he came upon this. Maybe he'd done it before. It was really a strong process, and it controlled everything in the Shuttle Program in terms of rigorous definition of configurations and of changes and rigorous documentation. The overall spec [specification] for the Space Shuttle Program is NSTS [National Space Transportation System] 07700. It's a very extensive set of documentation that defines everything about the Shuttle, both in the big picture and in the details, and everything in there was controlled rigorously by this office.\\n\\n There was a fellow that worked for Bob that had a lot to do with setting that up named Bert [James B.] Jackson [Jr.]. After I became the chairman, Bert ran that for me, and I felt that, more than anything else, gave me the feeling that I had control and ultimate knowledge of what was going on in the program. I had everybody connected. Nobody's off doing some other kind of stuff that they thought was what they were supposed to do that the program wasn't connected with. I'd say that's a very important lesson. I appreciate it a lot, and if I was to ever be a program manager again, rigorous configuration control is a very strong part of it. A lot of people don't like that much configuration rigor and documentation and formality. But to me it's worth the effort it takes. It makes for a lot of long days in meetings and reviewing things, but it makes it work.\\n\\n Another thing I would say is—bouncing back to the prior time when I was doing the Software Change Board for the avionics software for the Shuttle—that was an era in aerospace evolution where the processes for developing software weren't as rigorous and widespread across different organizations as they are now. Now they're quite rigorous. It's understood formal processes of developing software. They're commonly used by lots of people that do that. But back then that all hadn't become such a well-integrated understood way. Software was still pretty new, and the Shuttle had some complicated software.\\n\\n I think one of the strengths that caused the avionics and the software to come out so well is that we insisted on writing the requirements for the software, the detailed requirements, specifically, exactly, what's going to happen in every little technical area. Writing it in English so that you and I could understand exactly what was going to happen. Then someone would go away and code the software to do exactly that, and someone else would write the test procedures that would test that software to see if it matched. In that era many different areas that were developing software would write requirements in general. Broad requirements—“What it's supposed to do: supposed to do this, supposed to do that.” But then, when they got down to the details, they'd write it in software machine language so that the engineers and you and I hoped they got it, and we're going to test it to see if we like what it does, but there was no communication.\\n\\n There was an office in the Mission Planning and Analysis Division that was responsible for the contract with IBM to develop the software. When I got there the plan was to do it in English, and these are big books. Flight software requirements, these are big books, too. Once they're baselined, we control every little word in English in there that controls every little set of coding in the software. I think that was an awesome strength. By the way, the Space Shuttle avionics and software has performed admirably for many years, and it is one of the evolving technologies that made the Space Shuttle possible. So I think it was very important.\\n\\n Another thing I learned about program management—and this again came out of this mission control time phase—in running these change boards and dealing with all these technical subjects, you had to listen carefully to people who would present. “We need to do this because we're going to change this or that or add to this or something, we need money for it.” But it wasn't just, “They need money for it and what's the schedule?�� it was also, “Is it really the right thing to do?”\\n\\n I tried to develop the habit, and I did develop the habit, of listening in-depth to everything they presented to the level of detail they presented it. The purpose of that is to fully understand why they want to make these changes and what they are. If they couldn't explain it to me so I could understand it, I had a strong suspicion they didn't understand it either—so that's another ground rule of mine. If people can't explain it to you in a way that's simple enough you can understand it—in technical depth—but, sometimes these are in areas you haven't spent much time in. You’ve got to understand it.\\n\\n There's another thing I wanted to comment on in this discussion—the management style of the people you worked for—every program manager works for somebody that's higher up. Over the years, in all three of my areas—the flight control, mission control, flight operations—then in all these program management jobs at Johnson, and then in the jobs I worked in in Lockheed, I always had a more senior guy who I worked for. So I got to see a lot of management styles. Some people would be very much engaged with you and into what you were doing. Even though you were the program manager, you're responsible, you're accountable, they'd be in there with you. Some people—unless you fall flat on your face and have some terrible problem—wouldn't talk to you.\\n\\n The reason I brought this up is that one of the most important parts of my development during these years is working for Chris Kraft. In all of the years I had in aerospace, 48 years, the best management style for a senior person I worked for is the one that Chris has. He would clearly assign you a job because he had confidence you would do it. Then he'd leave you to do it and be accountable, and he wouldn't come down and muck with day-to-day. But what he would do is once a week, faithfully, you'd have an hour with him. It'd be your meeting. You'd go in and you'd talk to him about what you thought was most important, what you were having trouble with, what things maybe we should be doing we weren't. He was always up to speed on anything that was going on, so he would be prepared to talk about any of that. If someone had some problem they brought to him that they were concerned about, during that he'd ask you about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Bet that could be an interesting conversation, couldn't it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, but it was wonderful. You never felt like he was stepping in and directing you this way or that way. He was paying close attention, but he wasn't on top of you every day. Yet he was letting you go away and solve your problem. It's a very excellent way also to bring people up and improve. Whatever they can do now with that kind of treatment, they can grow." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It seemed to incorporate a lot of the aspects that you talked about. He served as a mentor at the same time he was a teacher and a confidant and an encourager, but still taskmaster. He knew what you were doing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And he's watching you. But he's not meddling. It was very, very fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great way to learn." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Through all of that, if I come back to where we started, still the most important part of becoming a good program manager is on-the-job training. If you don't bring people up through an on-the-job process to some degree, it's going to be hard to get them to where you need them to start a program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When I was listening to you going through these different areas, there was a lot of planning involved in how things were done. Share with me why that's so important, and if you saw anything through your career that proved that good planning really is worth the time that it takes for a good result." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "These programs are incredibly complicated, complex interactions of different systems elements and different companies, different people involved in the government side. There's no way you can have a successful evolution of development and of the business aspects of a program, the schedules and the finances, and then in Shuttle after you get to fly, these manifests and the sequencings of vehicles and the capabilities of the facilities you're going to use. It is so complicated that planning is a huge aspect of the program management job. You have to be watching what's going on and taking care of problems, but you also have to be focusing on all of the things that are going on simultaneously: how they converge and how they keep you moving towards the goals you want to achieve. Planning is just one of the biggest parts of program management." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Underlying everything that you've done these last almost 50 years there's been a level of risk that has been attached to all the decisions and planning, scheduling. If we could spend some time talking about risk and risk mitigation activities and assessments—talk to us about those aspects and how you plan. What’re the lessons and the knowledge that we need to make sure that we are adhering to the right level of risk?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You asked about risk management, and I'm glad, because right now the subject of risk management is a very topical subject in the program management community. It’s like people are looking for a solution that can solve problems that we weren't dealing with before. I have a little different perspective on risk management than some of the very extensive activity that goes into finding ways “to do” risk management. In my opinion now, but also in my opinion in the past, program management is risk management. It's always been risk management, and years ago there was no doubt in the way I operated day to day, every day, on a risk management perspective of the program. “What are the risks in my critical systems that are going on right now? What are the risks in my schedule? What are the risks in my budget? What are the risks that my people are adequate or not adequate, or maybe about to change and I have to do something about that?” What did we say a minute ago? Program management is planning. Well, program management is planning, but program management is also risk management. I think years ago before it was such a common talked-about aspect of program management, it was nevertheless, at least at Johnson, alive and well, and that's what we were doing, and we knew we were doing it.\\n\\n Now that said, the new emphasis on program management and the new tools and processes that people talk about for risk management are very good. They're great additions to the fact that the program manager needs to be conscious of risk management at all times, for a couple of reasons. One is that these new processes and some of the capabilities that are now software tools and capabilities to organize it in computers or in documentation in an effective way—they're very useful because part of the aspect of that is that it really gets everyone in the program, and maybe even beyond the program, involved in participating in risk management and thinking about it. So it provides a flow of information to the program manager that is very useful, and it sensitizes aspects of the program that might not be thinking about risk management to know always that that is, in fact, important. I think it's very important. I don't think it's new that people are starting to do risk management. But it's made better by these things.\\n\\n If you do have a risk management process for your program, the program manager himself or herself needs to be the one that runs it. You can't delegate somebody to go away and run my risk management for me and then look at it every other month. People that would do that are sidestepping the issue of risk management, and they're filling the square by having a staff that's off doing something. I've seen all these tendencies I've talked about. I think that risk management is good. I think the processes are good. There's many choices now of software and books about ways to do it in the program. As long as the program manager does it, it adds to the benefit of something he or she should have been doing all along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were there during [Space Shuttle] Challenger [STS 51-L accident], and of course you were closely related during [Space Shuttle] Columbia [STS-107 accident]. What improvements do you feel like need to be done in some of the management processes that are associated with risk, other than the one that you just mentioned? If the program manager is the person that's responsible for risk management, what processes can that person put in place that they're doing that job well, as well as doing all the rest of the aspects of program management well? How do they do it all?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's the art of program management. I don't know as much about Columbia, because I've only read about how those things transpired. But in the Challenger that I was heavily involved with, I think the risk management processes were there. In fact, one of the things I ask myself regularly about the Challenger is, “What could we have done to prevent what happened?” The facts of what happened have been well developed by the Rogers Commission and documented, and I think they're complete. I don't think there's any hidden thing that isn't lined out. We know what happened. But then you say, “How did the management of that launch allow it to happen? Why did it happen?” We had the right series of reviews, we had the right series of people, we had the right trust, I think, between the people involved.\\n\\n But, over a period of time, too many things converged right at that time that the right processes let something get through. Because none of us, if we could take everything we knew after the fact and looked at it again, none of us would have allowed it to happen. When I ask myself what might I have done that could have made a difference—the big issue with the Challenger accident was of course the temperature and some residual weaknesses in the solid rocket motor segment joints that hadn't really received a lot of attention, and maybe we could have found a way to know more about that. But it was really the temperature.\\n\\n After we did not launch on the day before Challenger for a wind-related problem, for return-to-launch-site aborts, we had a management review at the Kennedy Space Center [Florida]. It was called an L-1 day review, and we had all of the senior management related to the program, Center directors and all of the project and program managers and all of the technical support to talk about if we'd be able to launch the following day. The issue was the fact that it was going to be so cold that night. The weatherman brought in the fact that it was going to be 22 degrees [Fahrenheit] overnight. None of us had experienced anything like that before, but we didn't know. We knew that the launch mission rule was 31 degrees, and we talked about that on prior missions, and it was pretty widely understood that was what it was. It was projected that even though it'd be in the 20s overnight, that it would be above 31 degrees at launch time. There wasn't an immediate feeling that that was going to be unacceptable.\\n\\n The action of the L-1 meeting was to have each project go away and look at all aspects of their technical project—the Space Shuttle main engines, the Orbiter, the solid rocket motors, and of course the launch facilities—and come back and tell us if you have constraints, if you have risks, if you have threats. I think the question was well-asked and understood, and we reconvened a few hours later and they came back. Each of the projects felt that their part of the system would be okay if we were above the 31 degrees for launch again. There was a minor issue on the solid rocket motors. Nothing to do with the joints, something down in the systems in the aft skirt. But they felt it was not going to be a critical problem. There was one instrumentation thing in the Orbiter that would be below its limits. But they didn't feel that that would be a problem either. It wasn't a critical problem. The whole team felt like it was all right to tank and all right to plan to launch the next day.\\n\\n Overnight things changed, and things changed that were not addressed frankly. As you know from the details that are well known about the Challenger, the solid rocket motor technical community in Utah became wildly concerned when they heard about it, because they were concerned about the joints, where there had been some problems in the past. So the [NASA] Marshall [Spaceflight] Center [Huntsville, Alabama] had a long series of meetings overnight to deal with that, and in the end decided it was going to be acceptable. Even though the technical community never agreed, the management decided it would be acceptable.\\n\\n At the same time, there was water all over the launchpad for spraying things down. Of course there's water for the launch time that goes under, but water runs all up and down the gantry. The concern with the Kennedy people was that the pipes would freeze and break and you'd have just water spew out. So the Kennedy team dealt with that problem by turning the faucets on slightly to trickle the water all over the launchpad. Both of those things happened after our L-1 day when everybody said there really aren't big issues and we're ready to go. The next day when we convened, everybody went to their position in the Control Center because we're now three, four, five hours before the count is going to start, and everybody has a place to be and a job to do. The senior management sits in a little place in the firing room and everybody felt still ready to go.\\n\\n These two big issues had been dealt with at a lower level overnight, and they were not raised in the firing room or to the management team or injected into the launch countdown process. The water was worked by Kennedy, but it was worked at the Kennedy support level. Both of those turned out to be bigger problems than we realized after the fact. The trickle water caused a lot of ice on the launch pad—we did have a review. I called a separate review and we reviewed the ice on the gantry and whether it would have an effect on the launch, particularly whether any falling ice would hit the Orbiter, which would be terrible. We had buyoff from the technical community.\\n\\n But it wasn't the senior management, it was the engineering at the Mission Evaluation Room in Houston, and it was the Kennedy project management at the Kennedy Space Center. In fact, Rockwell raised a concern and said they felt we were adding some amount of risk. But they also didn't call for a no-go. We thought this ice is more than we realized was going to happen, but we accepted it. So that was done. But we never talked about the concern that Thiokol [Morton Thiokol Incorporated] had with the boosters. It was not known. It's really hard to believe that, but it was not known.\\n\\n We did, as we marched to launch, we called at least two delays to let the day get warmer and warmer. We were originally going to launch around 9:00 [a.m.], and we slipped it up almost to noontime, and things were warmer and melting and so we launched. And of course we had the accident. When I think about that and what could I have done, I sat there in the firing room with Bill [William R.] Lucas, who's the head of the Marshall Space Flight Center, and Stan [Stanley R.] Reinartz, who's the head of the Shuttle Program at Marshall, and Jess [Jesse W.] Moore, who was the Associate Administrator, beside me. We sat there through the whole count and never once talked about the solid rocket boosters being a concern. Everybody was still “to go.”\\n\\n These are all people I'd worked with for years and had huge confidence in. I felt like we were a well-integrated, understanding team working together. These issues were not worked as maybe they should be. I don't think we had enough information the day before at the L-1 day meeting to not tank and count. I think we were right saying, “Well okay, we ought to proceed.” I now wish that we had called a management meeting in the next morning. It would have been disruptive because everybody has a place that they go to and job to do, and the countdown goes fairly quickly even though it's quite a few hours. But we should have called that whole team together and talked about the solid rocket motor, talked about if everybody was still “go.” I think the discussion of the solid rocket motor would have come out, and I think the discussion of the ice would come out, and people would have seen it actually was a bigger problem.\\n\\n I think the Kennedy guys found a way to think it would be okay to go. It was okay. But the Rogers Commission assessment of that was that it was more unknown and risk than we should have accepted. That feeling really didn't permeate. If we'd had such a meeting—and it would have required the Center directors and the Associate Administrator and the various other very senior people to come. I wish I had made such a meeting happen. But I didn't. It was not standard. You don't do that during a countdown. But that time it certainly was necessary if we were going to proceed.\\n\\n The other thing I would do about the ice—I actually made the decision to go with the Kennedy people on the ice, because I felt it had been analyzed and it was going to be acceptable—which it was, no ice hit the Orbiter. But there are other issues with the crew access—to get in the vehicle, which sounded like that would be all right, then also over to the escape buckets that would get them away in the event of an emergency, and that side of the gantry was quite covered with ice. That's something that was never brought out. What I think about all of that is that since that was a known problem that I was working, I should have insisted that I go out and see it for myself if I was going to make a decision on it. That would have been disruptive and nonstandard. But I could have done that, and I wish I had." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You've had a lot of years to think about what you could have done. Unfortunately, in program management life, schedules and budgets and structures of how things are only permit you a small amount of time to make those decisions. Like you mentioned, you rely on people. Which leads me to my other question: you worked so closely when you were at NASA with those teams of people, and then after three and a half decades you moved to the contractor side. Could you share with us the differences of working for the success of a space agency, but where on one side you were the NASA person and on another side you were a contractor? Share with us those differences and what different lessons you learned from being on the contractor side than when you were working on the NASA side." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Let me finish one more thing about the Challenger, because you correctly said I had a lot of time to think about that, a lot of years. It's still hard for me to believe that the people we knew and trusted that were part of our team from Marshall didn't talk about it. They could have said, “We've reviewed it, there were concerns, here's what they were, we think it's all right.” They didn't say a word. I think if any of us from Johnson had heard that we'd have said there's no way.\\n\\n In the contractor, I never did the program management. One of my lessons about contractors that I would talk about still from the NASA experience is that one of the other things you need to do as a program manager is to team with your contractor: don't treat your contractor like an employee or someone you've hired to do something for you. Treat your contractor like a partner. Work with them, communicate with them. Because they actually want to succeed just as much as you do, and they want to contribute everything they can. It's a very important aspect of good program management. I've seen programs where there's a huge tension and distance between the contractor and the program manager, and it's very hard to have a successful outcome, at least in the schedule and timeframe you're hoping to achieve it. Maybe in the end you finally hammer something out. I was lucky here again to work with—I worked with Rockwell, I worked with McDonnell Douglas, I worked with IBM. It was all just marvelous. They were just as much a part of the team as anybody on the NASA side and worked at least as hard." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When we were talking earlier about all the different projects that Lockheed had, the 3,200, and you were mentioning that people within those projects and programs changed or they left the company. I know that a lot of your colleagues that you started with were with you a long time before they all moved on. What would you tell someone that is trying to build a team with good program managers? How do you improve issues or aspects that will improve management performance where these people that are coming up as young and upcoming managers will stay and spend long tenures with the space agency?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The kind of work we did and still do is very motivating to people. I don't know many people who have been heavily involved in the programs at Johnson on space vehicles and space missions that haven't been so involved and so in love with what they do that they just want to stay. They may want to work in a little different aspect of it, or they want to find some way to learn some more. But they certainly don't want to just drift off and go somewhere else. The people that I knew that left mostly left because they'd done a pretty long career, and they felt now it was time to step aside." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you tell the people that want to move into the space exploration business? Why would you encourage them to do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There's a lot of different aspects of space exploration. What I've been talking about are manned programs, but you can work in space exploration, and you don't have to be a manned enthusiast. We do so much with robotic missions now that are so good for science and so good for technology that if you're an engineer and you want to work on something meaningful and something that's at the forefront, it's just one of the best places I can think of to work on it. I think there's still many engineers that want to do that and will do that. The pipeline people talk about maybe not being as strong as it was, but I think it's full of excellent people. They're motivated just like the ones that I've talked about here that I worked with in the past." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I know that you brought some papers with you. I was going to ask if we wanted to look through some things or some other comments and aspects that we haven't talked about yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly I was making notes on what you asked me. The first question was, “What are the best practices and processes as I see in program management?” I think I ticked those off. One is needing and wanting to be engaged in detail in the technical aspects of the program. Doing rigorous configuration control. Doing the software requirements in English so the broader community can understand in detail what's going to be put together. Listen carefully to presenters and make sure they're telling you a story that you can buy into. I talked about Chris Kraft's management style, because I think from my experience it's pretty unique. I'm sure he's not the only person in the world that ever did that, but it was well done. In the end you have to do all these things on the job if you're going to get good at it. You can learn them in the classroom or talking to people, but you have to go do it before you're going to be ready to really do it.\\n\\n One of your questions is about memorable days. We talked about the launch of Challenger, and that was one of my most memorable days. But there was another very memorable day for me, and that was the launch of the next flight two and a half years later in Discovery. That mission was STS-26. During the time that we went from all the things that we felt so terrible about with Challenger to the time we launched Discovery—during the Challenger launch I had been the Program Manager for Shuttle at the Johnson Space Center and Jess Moore was the Associate Administrator in Washington, that was the overall Shuttle person.\\n\\n After the Challenger I was asked to come to Washington [NASA Headquarters, Washington D.C.] and be the Director of the Program, which was a job that didn't exist during the Challenger. Moved some of the things that were centered at one of the Centers, at Johnson, to Headquarters, so it would have more comprehensive authority over all of the NASA Centers involved. I was the Director of the Space Shuttle Program. Really I was the Director of the National Space Transportation System, which is the name that the Shuttle was called in those days.\\n\\n After we finally got through the failure analysis and sorting out what really happened with Challenger and where we had to take care of those problems, I realized that was not, maybe, the only weak system in the Space Shuttle. I set up a series of formal reviews looking at all aspects of the Space Shuttle for risk management, for weaknesses. In fact, for a lot of known weaknesses that we'd agreed to live with up to that time.\\n\\n There were a number of things that people knew ought to be improved prior to the first flight of the Shuttle on Columbia, but because the first flight was important to get off, the program had reviewed various things and said, “Well, we're going to have to fix this downstream, but we can go, the first flight, and we'll get it later.” Almost every subsystem area in the Space Shuttle had little things tucked away that they knew ought to be improved. But once the first flight went, then the second one, then the third one, and there was never a time or the budget to step up and say, “Well, we got to go back and stop and fix all these things that actually we ought to do to make the Shuttle completely right.”\\n\\n So after the Challenger I set up this series of reviews out of the PRCB meeting that I ran to look at everything and bring those things in and talk about them and prioritize them. That wasn't just my idea alone. That is exactly what I witnessed George [M.] Low doing after the Apollo fire. George Low did exactly the same thing with the total Command Service Module and Lunar Module during the time we were recovering from the fire and made extensive changes to those two vehicles that made them better. Didn't have anything to do with the fire in particular, but it had to do with risks and weaknesses.\\n\\n We did that on the Space Shuttle after the Challenger, and we made over 250 changes to the different elements of the Space Shuttle, including software. Some of them were software changes. Some of them were different changes for emergency landings, but most of them were different hardware things that the subsystem managers already had in their little notebooks that really ought to get worked on. We approved those changes, and most of them were for first flight after, for STS-26, but some of them were too big for that. We approved them but gave them license to come in later downstream, like the new turbopumps on the Space Shuttle main engines that came into play [six] years ago. They were Pratt & Whitney turbopumps for the Rocketdyne engine that were more robust. They were approved by this process after Challenger, but it took a number of years of development and testing to get them ready. This is the timeframe they were set in place. Of all those changes, only about five of them dealt with the solid rocket motors. They were big changes, but the cause of the Challenger that we had to fix—only about five of them.\\n\\n There are a couple of other things that were memorable. During the time I was the Orbiter Project Manager, we completed the fabrication of Discovery and of Atlantis. I had the opportunity go out and give the acceptance speech at the rollout for NASA. It was quite a thrill, particularly for Atlantis, because at that time Atlantis was thought to be the last Orbiter and the workforce there finished their job. It was good. In fact, I'm told that the speech I gave that day was used in the Rockwell program training and inspirational material that they used for their employees downstream for some number of years after that, because it said so many right things about what they did. Palmdale [California] continued as a repair and refurb site for the Orbiter, but at the time of that speech it was thought to be the last construction. Then Endeavor was approved and it came along later.\\n\\n Two other memorable days early on. The first flight, STS-1, had been delayed several years by the time we got to it, for a variety of problems. Mostly the TPS [Thermal Protection System] on the Orbiter. But we got to the countdown finally, and it counted down, and that timeframe I was still in charge of the avionics and the software. We got to T-20 minutes, which is the point where the backup flight system that supports the primary avionics comes online, and it didn't come online. It didn't initialize. It's a system that was made by Rockwell and the primary system, with its four redundant strings of computers, is all by IBM, and so everyone was saying, “Well, these Rockwell people, backup software is not good.” It turned out that actually the initialization of that came from the primary system, and it was an IBM problem. It was fixed overnight and we launched, but it was quite a thing to get to that point.\\n\\n One of the early flights we had—with the four computers on board, there's two-fault redundancy: you can have one fault and continue the mission, you have another fault and it's fail-safe—you've got what you need to come home. But we had two computers fail in the middle of that flight. It's the only time it ever happened on the Space Shuttle, that I know of. That was some amount of concern because they weren't too far apart. They were a little different scenarios, but there again we got to bring one back on and things went on and it was good. There's a lot of memories that you could talk about that probably aren't written very extensively anywhere anymore, just some people remember them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Those are good ones." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Coming in that same first flight, STS-1, the big thing for me with the avionics was—in those days I hadn't done much with the ascent. The software that controls the main engines was a Marshall product, and it was part of the engines, and I hadn't spent a lot of time being engaged in ascent. We'd spent a lot on reentry, because when the Shuttle comes in, it starts in after it deorbits, and there's no air yet, and so its attitude to keep it going right is controlled by the little thrusters. Then it starts to pick up atmosphere and the thrusters don't have as much control because the atmospheric pressures are quite strong, and you start using the aerodynamics.\\n\\n But there's a point there where the two have to be blended, and there was no way to test that except fly it. It had been analyzed to death and tested in models and things, but I had never been quite confident. We knew how much margin we had and how risky that was. We did the very best that could be done without flying it, but now we were flying it, and we had John [W.] Young and Bob [Robert L.] Crippen on board. So another memorable time was when I was sitting there in the Control Center, in my avionics little job, and that came out of blackout. It turns out that the margin was there. There was good margin. It had been well-analyzed, but we couldn't prove it to ourselves very well until we flew it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That was another good day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Another good day. The other two things about program management I meant to mention: One—the program manager needs to know that he or she is in charge and they are accountable and responsible for the program. Program is not a democracy. There's some feeling that you get everybody together and vote, and that's not the way it is. In the end, the program manager needs to hear everybody, give everybody their say, weigh all of the things with the people that they respect, but then in the end they have to make the decision. It's not a democracy.\\n\\n We've been through a period, some within NASA, but to a great extent in the Department of Defense [DoD], about managing programs with integrated management teams. What you really do is you break the program down into all these little product centers that each manage an aspect of the program, and they have their own schedule and budget. That's a pretty good concept. The thing I always thought about it when it came online is that that's what we always did at the Johnson Center. We always had people that were in the program, but we had the technical disciplines, we had the flight disciplines, we had the budget people all together. I think we did it.\\n\\n When they changed the Space Station Program from Freedom to the International Space Station, they had an independent panel review [on] Freedom and why its schedule and its budget had the issues it had. They criticized Freedom quite strongly because we didn't use integrated program management teams in the way our processes were set up. That was a time when that was coming on to be a big way of doing business in DoD. It was the new thinking in how to do programs. We just didn't call them that—that is the way we did program management. But to their language and what they could tease out of what people told them, they didn't sense we had—integrated product team is what they called them—they didn't sense that we had it. It was a big criticism, and then they started it. There's a couple of risks if you use that management style. It's a good style. DoD has used it a lot. I think it's not used as broadly now maybe as it was at one point in time, but it's still extensively used.\\n\\n You've got to be careful on those integrated product teams, also, that someone is in charge of that team and is accountable and responsible. If you make it just a collection of people who all have inputs and you try to run those as democracies, it sounds like what you were trying to do, everybody gets a voice, but in the end somebody has to be in charge. You do that across the integrated product team structure so that each one really has a responsible accountable person, and it's a good way to operate. But then you also need to have one integrated product team at the top of that. Someone needs to be in charge of that. Because otherwise they won't fit together and dovetail. That's an aspect of program management that gets a lot of attention, and I don't know that everybody would think about what I just talked about, but I think it's important.\\n\\n Two other things about doing program management: I talked about being in charge and being accountable. But, also, the program manager can't do everything. You have to have good people that you trust and have confidence in run the key aspects of the program for you. You have to stay in close contact with them and know what they're doing. You have to have people you can count on. Let them do their job, just like I was talking about Chris Kraft with the program manager. That's important. Again, that's something that was rich in the programs I did. I always had good people working for me that I could count on, and they did great things.\\n\\n One final thing—it's a little like the mentoring. The other thing you ought to do is regularly seek the advice of people outside the program that you have respect for and you think could give you help. There are senior people in your organization. There are other people that have like responsibilities and jobs. You ought to contact them and be in touch with them and use what they tell you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good idea. A lot of good information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You asked, also, about other people you should talk to. Two of the best that I ever worked with, you can't talk to anymore. George Low and Sy [Seymour] Rubenstein with Rockwell were two of the very best. Also Bill [Howard W.] Tindall [Jr.]. Bill probably isn't categorized as a program manager, but he was one. Then the other people—you must have a list that probably is most of this or better, but you must talk to Chris Kraft about this. He was in charge of most of the things at the Center that came to be and were successful. Aaron Cohen is not well, but he's a very knowledgeable person in this, and he would tell you things about doing it that are important. Bob Thompson also.\\n\\n A fellow I worked with a lot: Dick [Richard H.] Kohrs. From that same organization and era: Owen [G.] Morris. In this software area: John [W.] Aaron. Ron Dittemore. You also ought to talk to Bob Crippen. There're a lot of astronauts who've done a lot of great things. When I think about program management though, Bob is the one I think most broadly has a real handle on what it takes, what's important. There're a lot of people at Marshall, and I could give you a list of names, but I couldn't prioritize them for you well. But one I think would be good to talk to is Bob [Robert] Lindstrom. And J. R. [James R.] Thompson [Jr.], who now is with Orbital Sciences. Lives in Huntsville, but he works for Orbital up here in the DC area. That's the list I had. I'm sure there's more." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thank you for all your information, and I'm sure we'll be talking in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You asked about notes and things, and I'm not sure what you're looking for there exactly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We do have a JSC History Collection, and that is used quite often, especially the last couple of years as Constellation has been up and going. One of the goals of the Chief Knowledge Officer is to try to make sure lots of papers, documents—whatever information that might have been important to someone along the way of programs—makes it into that archive. Sometimes people left their files at the Center, and they made it where they needed to go. A lot of that's, of course, at the National Archives. But she's wanting to see if there are people that might have personal papers. There are some that have taken their papers. Mr. Bond, Aleck [C.] Bond, has given his, and Carl [R.] Huss's papers are there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know that my papers are that organized. I don't have a diary kind of thing on the programs I managed, which almost sounds like that might be what it would be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It could be. The archivist that's there is Shelly Henley Kelly, and she's gotten boxes—I don't know if you remember a gentleman named Mr. [Louis] Leopold." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, Lou." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We've talked to him. Last time we were there, we put about seven or eight boxes in the back of the vehicle and brought them down to the archives for him. They're just papers that have been put in a box, and they may not get to right away, but at some point Shelly will go through them and organize them and label them and be able to put stuff into the database of what's there. But in the meantime they're kept someplace. Bobby [Robert A.R.] Parker—when he left JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California], he sent his stuff down to the history archive here in Houston. Same thing. Took her a while to go through all those papers. She's trying to at least collect them so that they can be there, and people can at least go through and start making use of them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I might look through my boxes, because like I say, it's not very well-organized, and some of it's not connected very well. I did come up with one thing, though, I thought of right away. The Challenger was not the only launch in January of 1986. The STS-61C launched earlier in January, and some of the problems we had with the launch attempts that ended up so badly with Challenger, we had in spades with STS-61C. You don't probably read much about these things anymore. The thing you'll read is that we scrubbed six times before we launched on the seventh attempt. I wrote a memo after that happened, and this was to the Shuttle team about the characteristics of all of those scrubs and how avoidable they would have been if we'd just had things synched better some way. So I brought that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because if I was a program manager and going to be into that kind of thing, that might be a series of thought-provoking things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is it all right if we scan this in and attach it to your transcript as part of this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. You can have it too. You can keep it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You started off asking about Columbia and Challenger. This is something I just collected around 2003. This is a little article by a man that was working on the O-ring analysis at Thiokol back then. It talks about a common cause of the Challenger and the Columbia accidents. It's not talking about flaws in management style as a common cause, which has been pretty well talked about. This is talking about Max Q [Mazimum Dynamic Pressure] and upper-level winds and how they also played into both of these, or potentially did. It's interesting reading, and I haven't seen anybody reference it. But that was in the AIAA [American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics] magazine, Aerospace America, and I think it was in 2003, which is not long after the Columbia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well good. This'll be great information to add as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know if you want my resume. This is the detailed one. It's so I can keep track of it. No one would read it, but it's complete, which is nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'd love to have it. Thank you. Because the one I have, as you know, stopped a few years ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had to have one that was about that long for Lockheed, because no one would do anything with something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It gives us a lot of good background information, so I thank you for bringing all of these things and for spending the morning with us with such great information." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two more. There's a lot of books that were written about Challenger, and many of them were written pretty early. There was still a tremendous amount of emotion flowing around and facts not well sorted. I think some of them are just off track, but there's a couple that I think if you were a program manager and you wanted to read about some of that. There's a book written by a guy in Scandinavia. The title is No Downlink. Do you know about that book?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No Downlink is the title. It was written by Claus Jensen in 1993. It was translated by Barbara Haveland in 1996. His accounts in there are very factual. He doesn't draw a lot of conclusions, but occasionally he does. I won't say all of his conclusions are exactly what I conclude, but it's pretty accurate. It's probably more readable than the Rogers Commission stack of books.\\n\\n Then the other one that has seen a lot of popularity is Challenger Launch Decision [The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA ] by Diane Vaughan. It deals extensively with the psychological aspects of management and Challenger. Again, I don't know that her conclusions throughout would synch with what I conclude, but it's a very thought-provoking analysis and a good book to maybe spend some time with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Thank you so much for coming in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Arnold D. Aldrich", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was my pleasure." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00246", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-003.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Lofton, Paul (1962-1964): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-MR-2011-002-003", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-003", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Paul S. Lofton Jr. served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1962 to 1964 as a milk tester on an agriculture project. He was enrolled in Duke University's Divinity School when he heard about the Peace Corps. After requesting a Spanish-speaking country, he was invited to join the Heifer Project in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Working for the Planta Industriale de Lieche (PIL), Lofton helped set up a milk testing program. He also taught an English class where he inadvertently caused the Bolivians imitate his southern accent. Lofton lived with two different families and notes that everyone had health problems. He played basketball on a team organized by Claude Wolfe, the Heifer Project representative, and traveled during his vacation times to Ecuador and Brazil. Lofton states that the Peace Corps was a good learning experience but he is not sure how much the volunteers actually helped the Bolivians. However, his service did change his life goals and he went on to become a university history professor. Interviewed and recorded by Sharleen Hirschi Simpson, June 23, 2009. 1 tape (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "23 June 2009", + "extent": "1 audio cassette (mono; 37 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "009. Bolivia.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Bolivia. Lofton, Paul (1962-1964): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Bolivia", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "MR-2011-002", + "transcript": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-003-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/4c077w0yr4suc5l32423pnbk66t4t2j6.pdf?odc=20231115173840-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/61957cbf-1965-4f62-a821-41346320c235/ede3db8b-50aa-4a49-9e22-3c6903565658/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzIxM2NfYjgwYWIyZjM4MjBiNmEwZjU2MTg0ZDVhYjliZDIyNmE4MmIwODk5ODAxMjdiODMwM2RkM2Y4MTQ1NmUwYmFlM18vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS82MTk1N2NiZi0xOTY1LTRmNjItYTgyMS00MTM0NjMyMGMyMzUvZWRlM2RiOGItNTBhYS00YTQ5LTllMjItM2M2OTAzNTY1NjU4L21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Branson, Missouri", + "length": "18 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed November 30, 2010, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Paul Lofton Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Paul S. Lofton Jr." + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:04", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, this is June 23, 2009, and this is Sharleen Hirschi Simpson interviewing Paul Lofton. And first Paul, could you just tell us a little something about what's going on with you today, what you're doing today?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:29", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I recently retired. I taught for 30 years. I was professor of history at Spartanburg Methodist College. And then I had a wreck, a teenager ran into me, to the driver's side. And I was driving which means he hit me. I was three months in the hospital and it forced me to retire. I was ready to get Social Security anyway, so I retired." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:53", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, now let's just think back about before you went into the Peace Corps. How did you hear about Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:07", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess, how did I hear about it? In the newspaper, on the news. It was impossible not to hear about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:01:18", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:01:21", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As soon as Kennedy announced it, I wrote off and got all the information, the application form and things like that. I applied soon after it was announced. In ’61 I guess, summer of ’61." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:41", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok. So then what made you decide at that time to join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:50", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It sounded like a great adventure, a chance to get away from school. I've been in school for all these many years. Here’s a chance to go do something, have an adventure, to learn another language, that sort of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so then we what? Did you have a specific area or country where you wanted to go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:15", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. I remember I was one of the questions on the application form. I thought if I want to learn a language how to learn a language that is standard language, not some remote thing. So I said a Spanish speaking country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:02:31", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so you did say that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:02:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:02:39", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did your family and your friends think about you going into the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:02:45", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They were supportive. My parents especially they were a little nervous at first by going off to go for two years and be gone. But I think they were they were supportive." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:03:03", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, now what project were you invited to join?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:03:12", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was invited to join the Heifer Project dairy project in Cochabamba, Bolivia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:03:22", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, and how did you when you when you were getting ready to go the Peace Corps, did you do any special preparation before you left that you were going to be gone for a while?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:03:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not not really. I remember we had to take a test in those days. We don’t have to do that anymore. We had to take a Peace Corps test and somewhere around there it said, what farm experience have you had? And I said, I can milk a cow. I grew up on a dairy farm. I know about having dairy cows. I wrote about that. And sure enough, I was invited to join a dairy project group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:04:03", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, that's great. Ok, when you tell me a little bit about the, what happened after you got your invitation? Did you go to work or training or what happened?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:04:18", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I got it in the spring, sometime spring of ‘62 and we went to training in June of ’62, I think. We're there by the Fourth of July, I know. I was in school at Duke University at the time. I got a leave of absence from there and then with the idea of coming back, but I would be gone for two years. I don't think I'd use the other special training that I remember. This was forty five years ago." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:05:00", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, well, we're. What can you tell me about the training or the Peace Corps training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:05:05", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I thought the training was really good. Was a good experience. We learned about Bolivian history, Bolivian culture. We learned about Spanish. We also had a good crash course in American history about communism. I remember we talked about that and American culture versus communism, that kind of thing. I also had a lot of first aid I remember. All that was good training. I thought they purposely made the training experience as frustrating as it could be, because the training period was also a selection process, to see who could put up with all the frustration. And so that was kind of a challenge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:05:54", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So what happened when you were in training there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:06:00", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we were at Arizona State University, on the campus of Arizona State. I had an aunt who lived in Tempe of Phoenix at the time. I went to see her one weekend. Somebody that I knew at Duke had a sister or something that would live in that area and insisted that I call them up to go see them while I was there. I did that. It was never on the reservation. Maricopa Prema Pima Reservation for half of training. Ira Hayes, his mother was there. Ira Hayes was one of those Marines who put the flag up on Iwo Jima and his mother was there. Somebody pointing her out. That was a good experience, living on the reservation with the Indian people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:06:56", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you remember most about that experience out there, about the things you did?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:07:02", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were living in a trailer. We had to fix our own food, fix our own meals, or at least what today we part of the frustration to see if we could get along doing that. I think after six hours in the trailer, only two of us went I think. The other four psyched themselves out or decided not to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:07:26", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wow. So was there anything about that training that surprised you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:07:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess I was surprised at how frustrating it was, I thought they would be more encouraging, I suppose. There was a challenge to see who would put up with all of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:07:45", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so after the training in Arizona, then what happened?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:07:50", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We went home. I think a week and then we were all gathered in Miami. We would go to Bolivia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:07:58", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wait before before we went to Miami. Where did we go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:08:03", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's what I'm going to say. In Miami, ready to go to Bolivia. We were eating supper and Kennedy came on TV and said we are blockading Cuba and we may go to war any minute. And meanwhile, there was some trouble in La Paz, so they decided we could not go to La Paz at that time. They took us to Vermont where they had a Peace Corps training house, and we stayed there for two weeks, three weeks in November before we went to Bolivia. So things kind of calmed down. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, we went to Vermont." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:08:42", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, what do you remember about that was Brattleboro, Vermont?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:08:48", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Brattleboro, Vermont. That was very nice experience. Fall time of the year, the birch trees were changing, very beautiful. And we knew we were not going to be selected out, we’d been selected. That was a good time there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:09:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So what do you recall about what you recall anything special about being in Vermont?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:09:09", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We sat around a lot, played bridge, read books. We tried having Spanish classes, and they took us all into Boston one weekend. I visited my cousin at Harvard and he was surprised to see me there. Thought I was in Bolivia. But yeah, I was in Boston. George and I went together around the harbor to see him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:09:35", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so when you finally got to Bolivia, what were your impressions when you were first coming?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:09:45", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When we got to the airport, I left my camera on the airplane and I ran back to get it and I got all exhausted. I was sick the rest of the day because of the altitude. They had to have oxygen available in the airport, at 13,000 feet. And at that time, the airport would not pay. Our guests would come up when the plane landed. I was I was kind of sick for the first few days in La Paz." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:10:17", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when. Well, tell me a little bit about what happened while you were in La Paz at the beginning." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:10:26", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can’t remember. We had lots of lectures. We met various people. I think we met the president. I guess the ambassador. I don't remember. It was cold. We were glad to get Cochabamba. Cochabamba was much nicer than La Paz. It was cold, you couldn’t walk fast because of the altitude, that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:10:51", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what do you remember anything about the trip from La Paz to Cochabamba?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:10:56", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were in a jeep. There were about ten or twelve jeeps that were driving along a very narrow road, cars and trucks couldn’t pass each other. They had to stop and one would back at to get the a wide place of the road, to let the other one go by. It took all day to get from La Paz to Cochabamba. l was glad to see green trees, grass growing, at Cochabamba, which we did not see in La Paz." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:11:28", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's true. OK, when you first got there, what were your impressions of the local people, the Peace Corps staff and all that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:11:40", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, for about a week we live in a hotel in downtown Cochabamba. We continue to have orientation observers around the city and around the countryside. I was very impressed. It was so much better than La Paz. I liked it better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:11:59", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, did you, um." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:12:03", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I discovered right away the central Boliviano Americano. That was a library and had books in English there. And right away I got some books." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:12:16", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Can you talk about what you actually did down there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:12:22", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I worked with the milk plant there and in Bolivia they had one milk pasteurizing plant there would use that money and I worked at the mill grant. I was extremely lucky in where I was, the people I work with, the kind of work that I did, there are a lot of people in the Peace Corps I kind of lost. I think they have a lot of liberal arts type people in the Peace Corps, elite major thing, and they’d put them out of the community and tell them to find something to do, develop the communities, something like that. And they just kind of sit around for two years. It happened to my daughter. She was in the Peace Corps in Guinea, in West Africa, and they put her in a village. She was the only one there, by herself. And she got malaria, among other things. Had to come home early. But they kind of left her there and told her to find something to do. But that did not happen to me. I was very lucky in working with Mr. Wolf, Bob Wolf, who was the Heifer Project representative, who was a minister in the Church of the Brethren, who was also a basketball coach at a little college in Indiana.\n\nWe had a basketball team in the Cochabamba city league. We were called AG Extension Service. And we played basketball. I worked in the milk plan and I was a milk tester. I knew about that because I grew up on a dairy farm, and the milk tester would come around, you know, somebody from Clemson and working through Clemson. And so I knew about the kind of work I was going to do. I had a specific job and a jeep that was my jeep and certain number of farms that I had to visit every month. I would get up early in the morning and go to the farm and weigh every cow’s, take a milk sample of every cow’s milk, and then there’s a test to run in the lab on the percentage of butterfat in the milk. In the recordkeeping system there's a way to find out which cows were making money for them and which ones were losing money. It’s a complicated way of figuring out how much each cow is making above feed cows for that farmer. To know which cows to keep, which offspring to keep, which ones to cull, that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:14:55", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you enjoy that work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:14:57", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I knew what I was doing. Sam came back and he and I together had a jeep. I kept the jeep at my house. Sam and I worked together and he would go to a farm and then I would go to a farm and I would pick him up or vice versa. Usually the man would want me to stay and eat breakfast and I would like to try to get out of it if I could, but I’d often would have to think so. If you were used it hot it was okay. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:15:30", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So is that pretty much the majority of what you did then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:15:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The majority of what I did, I was a milk tester." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:15:38", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about when you weren't working? What kinds of things that you do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:15:43", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ok, right. Our basketball team. Mr. Wolf organized us into a team and we were just sitting there playing basketball. I started playing softball with some of them were our softball. We went to the movies. No television in Bolivia at that time, there were no televisions. So movies were a thing. Movies were about two or three years old. So movies that I had missed couple of years earlier were now coming around current in Bolivia. I went to movies a lot. I read books from the English-speaking library. There was an English speaking school in Cochabamba and for six weeks or so I taught at school while somebody was sick or something. But I remember I taught, I think, geography and American history." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:16:45", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that was kind of fun, I guess." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:16:47", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was kind of fun." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:16:48", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:16:51", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I also taught an English class for a while. Bolivians wanted to learn English, so I taught an English class. I realized they were all speaking with a Southern accent and because they were trying to imitate me, and I was teaching them a drawl with a southern accent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:17:11", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. OK, so over the time that you were there, how did you your life and your work changed? Did you adapt pretty easily or what? How did that go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:17:22", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember at the end of our two years we had a conference and why the question that came back was how did this experience change you. And my answer was, I had a new appreciation for agriculture. I learned that you can work with cows, work with people, working with cows, and not getting all mad and frustrated which was my case at home. And I decided not to go back to divinity school, but to get some kind of master's degree. And I didn't want to go back to the farm where I grew up and take over the farm. But if I could have a master’s degree to get into one of the local colleges somewhere around there. And I have a hand in the college community where they always need English teachers, so I decided to go back in English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:18:20", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. Let's talk about the end of the first year, midway between over midway through your experience. Do you remember any kind of special events or how you were feeling at that point in time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:18:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "By halfway through, I guess looking forward to it all being over. I kept thinking, you know, six months to go, four months to go, things like that. But by the time it got to the end, the less I wanted to leave. I did not consider extending though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:18:53", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was hard to leave them at the end, I guess. So what did you live with a family like some of the other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:19:02", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "At first, Ed Dennison and I lived with a family out near Sicavo, way out in the country. That was not satisfactory about three or four months after we had been there, we moved into town with a family where he had right there in my home. We already were living I was living with this family in downtown Cochabamba, right near the post office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:19:32", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did that work out better?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:19:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That worked out much better. You were closer to the people, also close to the beach office and all that kind of thing." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:19:43", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right. Did you have any health problems or anything like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:19:47", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Everybody had health problems. I guess I had diarrhea some. I wasn’t really bad sick, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:20:00", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about did you do any good? Get to do any traveling?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:20:04", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I do vacation. And I went to Ecuador and also in the Foreign Service in Quito. My parents came down and stayed about two weeks in Quito. I went to Quito. Another time I went to Brazil. In Rio. One day to Brasilia and Sao Paolo, about a week over there. Also traveled all around in Bolivia, went to Sucre, Santa Cruz, Trinidad. I never went to Potosi and I regret that. I never went to see Potosi. Went to La Paz a couple of times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:20:50", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Sucre." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Sucre." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And Oruro." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oruro for carnival." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oruro for carnival." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:21:00", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so overall, when you finished your tour there, you said you were not you were not looking forward to leaving at the end, but you didn't extend. How did you feel about what you had done there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:21:19", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we set up this milk testing program. There were two Bolivian boys with us and we taught them how to do it. They were supposed to take it over from us what we finished and they did. I don't think it continued. I think actually that the farmers had to pay to be a part of the program. And I don't know how many of them did that. I think it ended soon after we left. You have to remember, because the Bolivians who had had and I don't know if the people gave them our Jeep or told them or what, but I don't think it lasted. I don't know how much good we actually did in Bolivia. We had a big time with a good learning experience for us, but I'm not sure how much we actually helped Bolivians." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:22:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so how did that make you feel at the end?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:22:20", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I came home I was kind of a celebrity. Everybody wanted me to come to talk to book clubs, school classes, that kind of thing. I had lots of slides, so I was ready. I put my, developed a standard talk that lasted about 45 minutes ago, showing the slides. And so when I got out, I had a good experience, I said, I learned a lot. I had a big adventure, had a good time. I'm not sure how much good we actually did, though, in the long run." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:22:56", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hard to measure that kind of stuff." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:22:59", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, hard to measure that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:23:01", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If you had it to do over again, would you do anything differently?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:23:06", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I don't know. I guess not. As I said, I was very lucky in the place that I went, Cochabamba is eternal spring time. Not too hot, not to cold. With who I worked with, with Heifer Project and Mr. Wolf, with Luis Barrone at the milk plant, he’d been to Cornell, knew how to run a milk plant, about the kind of work I did. I had something specific to do every day, which I could do. And I was very lucky in what I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:23:42", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. So overall, how would you evaluate the service that you did? And of course, you know, the goals, they talk about providing technical assistance and a better understanding of the U.S. and then for Americans to better understand other countries." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:24:02", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the last two, I think we did very good. Certainly helped me. I think we helped a lot of Bolivians understand about Americans. I'm not sure how much we taught Bolivians, though, not sure how much we helped them. Yeah, but certainly they got to understand us, they learned about softball, they learned some English. A good number of Bolivians came to the States because of us. Came to go to school, came to live, whatever, but because of us a good number of Bolivians came. A good number of our group married Bolivians, if I remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:24:56", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there was there are quite a lot of dating and things like that in Cochabamba?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:25:05", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were invited to a lots of parties. We had to go eat with people around a lot. A lot of the young men, males our age, were away in the States, in Spain, in Lima, Buenos Aires or some place. And that left a lot girls who were our age who were sort of there looking for somebody. So we were invited to lots of dances, lots of parties." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:25:34", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's great. Have you continued any kind of involvement with Bolivia over the years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:25:45", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really. I've been back twice. I went in the summer of ‘66 with George Wright and his friends and Marybeth and I went in the summer of ‘73, it was November, December by the time we got there. I haven't been back since. I read about them in the paper, but I haven't really kept up much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:26:12", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So can we talk a little bit about what how this changed your life? You mentioned some about that in the beginning. How did the Peace Corps? Are you doing different things than you would have done had you not gone into the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:26:31", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm sure I'm sure I have, but I don't know what." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:26:37", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you decided not to do divinity school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:26:40", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I got a master's degree in English and they called me back my undergraduate school. And old man died, they need an English teacher, so I went three years of teaching English. I’m not an English teach, I found that out. I found out, though, I like being in the college community. And if I was going to stay in it, I needed a PhD. So I went back to graduate school in history this time because a good friend of mine was doing Latin American history and I was sitting in her bed and being a resource for her. And I liked something about Bolivia, about Latin America geography. So I went to the University of Texas and got a PhD in history. I say I went to Texas and got two degrees and a wife." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:27:41", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that’s a pretty significant change, you go from divinity school to English and then history." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:27:48", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’ve done a lot of things, probably fooled around too much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:27:53", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But how do you think the Peace Corps experience affected you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:28:00", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A more international outlook, more tolerant of people who are not just like me? I don't know. There are all kinds of ways that I can’t think of or mention specifically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:28:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you think of any kind of specific things that happened that will really stick out in your mind while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:28:23", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I went there and they were kind of humiliating and the farm where I was to get the cow’s milk and it was across the river and one night it rained and rained and rained. And I went out there in the dark in the morning and crossed the river ok. I stayed at the man’s place and when I came back, the river was as high as I had ever seen it. I thought about all the Peace Corps training, about how they said always try. So I started across the river, three deep channels in the river. I got across two of them. On the third one, the water was coming up over the hood of the jeep and the motor conked out. The car began floating down the river, turned over its the side. I got the milk samples, I climbed out, got on top of the thing, it turned over. People lined up all the way along the banks to watch what I was going to do. I finally got out, waited another hour or so for the water to go down, but very embarrassing. I had to come pull the Jeep out, and it didn’t cause all that too much damage, just labor, not replace any parts. But the Jeep was out of commission for a week or so while they cleaned it out. That's very embarrassing, floated down the river in a Jeep." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:30:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well that’s pretty, pretty interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:30:05", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I saved the milk samples." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:30:08", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well. That's good. Tell me, can you think of any other experiences that were especially memorable?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:30:18", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "National Geographic photographer came down and wrote a story about us and Peace Corps in Bolivia and it was in the October ’64 issue. And Ed Dennsion was his contact. I lived with Ed so I went around with him. He took thousands of pictures and I was in maybe nine hundred of those pictures, but none of them got in the National Geographic, none of them with me in them. He had about fifteen pictures in the National Geographic. I was in Bolivia. Well, I think it was October ‘64 was that issue I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:31:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So. And anything that was not funny or not pleasant that happened that you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:31:13", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You have the routine work that can be pretty frustrating at times. I’d always lock the Jeep, but things would get stolen out of the Jeep. Anything left unattended would get stolen. Once a man picked my pocket, tried to get my watch out of my pocket. I grabbed him in time and got the watch back. All of that was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:31:46", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Assassinated?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:31:47", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was in the early afternoon, we were taking a siesta and Ed Dennison came in and said there’s something on the radio about Kennedy being shot. We walked up, Larry Oglesby and I, to the, I guess, American consulate. And sure enough the news coming in there and Kennedy had been shot and everybody in Bolivia was just devastated. Flags were at half staff. We went to mass on Sunday, which was a special mass for Kennedy. I remember seeing a Bolivian woman, an Indian woman, sitting on the floor nursing a baby in the mass." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:32:42", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What do you think it affected people so much in Bolivia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:32:46", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Kennedy was extremely popular, partly because he was Catholic, partly because of the Alliance for Progress that was going on there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:33:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that was pretty impressive. What was traveling around Bolivia, like you said, you had traveled around in Bolivia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:33:09", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Again, I remember I went to Santa Cruz, five or six of us on a bus. The bus caught on fire, the Bolivians guys panicked and screamed and ran to the door. And I noticed all the Peace Corps people sat calmly and everybody else piled off the bus and we kindly got up and walked out the bus." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:33:35", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what happened to the fire?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:33:38", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That put out, got the bus fixed, we went on to Santa Cruz. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:33:46", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about that? Is that typical of the bus trips?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:33:49", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. When I went to Ecuador, I flew from La Paz and I rode the milk truck up to La Paz. Every night the milk plant rode from the leche plant, the milk plant to Laz Paz. And I rode with them to take it to La Paz. And that would go over those very narrow roads, dirt everywhere, coal. But it was free." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:34:18", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That had to be an adventure in and of itself. Did you ever get down to the tropical areas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:34:25", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Once Bill Barnell and George Wright and I, I forgot how we went, it wasn’t a bus, some car, going into the Chicari, over the mountains into the east. We went as far as the road went, I forget the name of the place, but we got on a boat, and went three days on the boat going down the river, a tributary of the Amazon, the Mamoré or something like that, all the way to Trinidad and then we stayed in Trinidad a couple days and flew home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:35:00", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how did you like the trip?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:35:03", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. That was quite an adventure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:35:05", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:35:06", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In eastern Bolivia just a generation or so ago the people were headhunters and just lived like primitive man." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:35:20", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So anything else you can think of about your travels and tribulations around Bolivia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:35:28", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We got to know a number of the Methodist missionaries there, especially around Santa Cruz. They were down that way. What was this name of the school at Montero?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:35:41", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think it was a Methodist school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:35:43", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. But anyway, I got to know some of those people. And I was we went back in ‘66 and we're with George Wright. We stayed with some of them in Cochabamba and in Montero." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:36:01", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So do you have any last thoughts about the Peace Corps and its effect?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:36:08", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When it was a great experience for me. Almost 50 years later, we're still getting together. Numerous people have been able to stay with us in our community, in Auston and in ‘96 and in Spartanburg. And then we've stayed with various ones around over the country when we travel around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:36:31", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So there was a certain amount of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:36:34", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Camaraderie. Somebody in the Peace Corps came down to evaluate us. And said he liked our group, there was kind of a esprit de corps about the Bolivia II group that you didn't find in other groups." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:36:49", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Why do you think that was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:36:51", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe because we'd had an extended training period. Remember in Puerto Rico they extended us because we didn't know enough Spanish and we spent another week on the beach learning Spanish, then we went to Vermont and all that. It was November before we finally got to Bolivia. That was a good experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:37:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, well, thank you, Paul. I think that probably takes care of this." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Paul S. Lofton Jr.", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "OK, good." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00623", + "metadata": { + "category": "International Space Station Program Oral History Project 2015", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/ISS/LundquistCM/lundquistcm.htm", + "original_file_name": "LundquistCM_7-28-16.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/Orion/LundquistCM/LundquistCM_7-28-16.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Orion Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Charles M Lundquist", + "location_date": "Houston, TX – 28 July 2016" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Sandra Johnson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Charles M. Lundquist" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is July 28th, 2016. This oral history interview with Charles Lundquist is being conducted for the Johnson Space Center Orion Oral History Project in Houston, Texas. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson, assisted by Jennifer Ross-Nazzal. I want to thank you for joining us today. You’d mentioned in a previous interview for ISS [International Space Station] that you were—and this is a quote—pulled back into the flight programs when Constellation kicked off. I believe if I’m not mistaken you were the Division Chief working in the Human Adaptation and Countermeasures Office." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So if you want to talk about how you got pulled back into Constellation and then that progression of your responsibilities." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I had heard about Constellation. The ESAS [Exploration Systems Architecture Study] Report was going on and we were supporting that to a certain extent insofar as contributing dollars. The new Constellation Program was standing up and it required a significant amount of funding. Actually NASA was descoping a lot of its R&D [Research and Development] programs to cover it. At that point I was in the donation organization who was relooking at all of our content and prioritizing it so that dollars that had been allocated for applied research could be freed up for Constellation.\\n\\n Mark [S.] Geyer, he was Deputy Program Manager for Constellation, called me and asked me to come over to support Constellation in the Test and Verification Office [T&V] at the time. I had worked with Mark on Space Station before, and he actually worked for me at that time. Now I was working for him. I guess you never know who you’re going to work for here at NASA. Sometimes they work for you and later you work for them. Just make sure you don’t get people mad at you.\\n\\n I came over to Constellation and worked there for about two years in the Test and Verification Office. Ultimately it merged with the SE&I [Systems Engineering and Integration] Office, so I moved and became the Deputy for that combined office where Chris Hardcastle was the lead of that. I don’t know how much more of Constellation you want to talk about here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We can talk about it. But I wanted to ask you. In between that time though I believe is when you were at [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] for a few months. You were working the Human Architecture Team? When was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was after I moved to Orion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We can talk about that in a few minutes then. But yes, talk more about Constellation and what you were doing before that was canceled." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Constellation was in the formulation phase, so initially there was a lot of requirements writing going on for the integrated end-to-end exploration architecture. Remember, at the time, we were writing requirements for the integrated architecture that included lunar surface systems. We had to have the requirements in place so that all the parts, even the parts that were designed and built early, would match and sync up with the parts that were built and designed and funded for later.\\n\\n The other part that was going on in Constellation early on was reformulating its workforce into multi-center teams. We were asked to support the 10 Healthy Centers concept. Constellation’s workforce was built up upon the contributions from all 10 NASA Centers, who might have at one time had a specialty in aero [aeronautics] or rocketry or launch processing. Everybody was engaged in building up this program team, using the skill sets from all the various Centers. We built a very distributed virtual team on Constellation. It was not just all JSC or all [NASA] Marshall [Space Center, Huntsville, Alabama]. On Constellation we had all 10 Centers represented in the management team.\\n\\n That was actually probably one of the great legacies of Constellation in that it really was a forcing function to get the Centers to work together better. I see that now much more these days than I saw it in the past. We retained that all the way through to Orion now. We’re a very badgeless team. Some of it is based on the technology that we have today. We have such wonderful tools with the WebEx [video conferencing] and the telecons and the handhelds. We can stay in touch so much better than we could in times past.\\n\\n Geographical location hasn’t been the impediment to teaming that it once was, and so probably one of the key takeaways from Constellation going forward was ability for NASA to really utilize its skill sets across the Agency and apply those to the Agency’s priorities.\\n\\n Constellation work that I did was supporting the Test and Verification Office. We were generating the T&V requirements which included the facilities and infrastructure necessary to test these integrated systems as the architecture came together. Then we were supporting the various reviews as the Constellation Program was maturing. I need to look back at the time line, but at some point Mark Geyer left Constellation, and he became the Program Manager for Orion, and that’s when he called me again, my second phone call from Mark, and asked me to come over and work for Orion as the Crew Module lead. That was in 2008." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about that time period, the cancelation of Constellation. Did you know that that was coming? Or did you have any inkling that you were going to hear that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The cancelation occurred in 2010, February 10. It’s one of those dates that you always remember because we didn’t see it coming. I remember where I was when we heard the news that the program was going to be canceled. It really was an eye-opener. Obviously a depressing event. But the team came together. It’s complicated. We were canceled by the President [Barack Obama] but Congress still had authorized funding for us, so there was this very difficult time while that legislative process was ongoing and the debates occurring at the high level over what our ultimate fate was. In the meantime, rather than bemoaning our fate, the Orion team continued to press ahead with building hardware and testing hardware, making progress, figuring that that was the best antidote against cancelation is to continue to make progress. The farther you are along, the more progress you show, the more results you show, the less likely you are ultimately to get canceled.\\n\\n My particular situation changed after we received word of the cancelation, as I was able to secure a detail at NASA Headquarters during the ensuing transition period. While the Orion team continued to work on their progress with the funding that we had for the remainder of the fiscal year, I went up in support of the transition team. That was a very valuable experience. I was there about six months. The new plan that had been introduced by the NASA Administrator [Charles F. Bolden] at the request of the President had a much heavier research and development focus to NASA’s budget. That’s why the Constellation Program was canceled – redirecting those funds towards R&D. We started looking at the detailed ramifications and implications of that.\\n\\n There’s basically two possible paths the Agency could have gone. One was the path we had been on with utilizing existing technology and modifying it. NASA does this a lot. We design a rocket. The Shuttle rockets are a derivation of the Apollo rockets, and the Constellation rockets were a derivation of the Shuttle rockets, and Orion’s are a derivation too. You don’t start from scratch. You build upon what you have developed in the past, so it’s incremental technology development. That was the path we were on.\\n\\n There was another path. You might have heard the term game-changing. Very innovative approaches to rocket propulsion and space travel that required significant leaps in technology. Those are much more difficult to predict and schedule. It’s like trying to put a schedule or budget on curing cancer. It’s a large leap. I think NASA had a choice between investing in these game-changing technologies that could have had huge payback, but they were also lower probability of success, versus a higher probability of success using what you call the tried and true evolutionary approach of technology development.\\n\\n Of course ultimately the path NASA eventually wound up on was, as you’d expect, the best path forward is to have a portfolio of both. You want to have the evolutionary approach because you are making commitments to Congress and the [Presidential] administration on your capabilities and ability to meet certain milestones by certain dates. You need to have a higher confidence in order to do this. But if you really want to make those significant advances and leaps in technology that ultimately we’ll need to explore the solar system, you need to be investing also in the advanced technology areas as well. NASA’s dollars now covers both of those types of areas in its current portfolio.\\n\\n I supported that effort at Headquarters where we formulated the new Exploration Program, which ultimately wound up with the Orion, Space Launch System [SLS], and Ground Systems Development [and Operations] organizations, which is currently the exploration enterprise that we’re on today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "After that you came back into the Orion Program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I was a Crew Module lead, and my deputy, Kathy Schubert, was acting for me when I was on detail, and then I came back and thankfully was allowed to return to my former position. At that point we were well on the way to getting agreement that we were not going to be canceled and that we would be able to continue the program. Around that time when I came back we were trying to determine our best way forward in a new paradigm. It was becoming obvious as the transition occurred that our budgets were going to be significantly less than what we had hoped for and planned for.\\n\\n Typically with a development program you have a bell curve funding distribution. You have a higher funding need in the time of the program where you’re doing the detailed design and the production and build and test. Whereas our funding was looking like a lower level and a flat budget profile.\\n\\n Looking at what that budget profile did to us, and trying to consider various options, we could have continued on the path we were, which was build the human-rated vehicle. It would have taken a really long time to do that. Or we could build a little, test a little, learn a lot, and apply that forward. We chose the latter, so that was the timeframe that the Exploration Flight Test 1 [EFT-1] concept was developed. We basically revectored the team to focus on a flight test. We would learn an incredible amount by going through and building an Orion that would fly a couple times around the Earth, about a four-hour mission. We would validate a lot of our critical flight systems, in particular our structural mechanical assembly, critical flight separations, on-orbit control systems, thermal protection systems, and our landing and recovery systems.\\n\\n It was about the late 2010, 2011 timeframe when we changed paths to go with this flight test. Obviously because of the fact that we weren’t building a human-rated spacecraft, it was a key enabler in fitting within our budget constraints. We were able to cut corners if you will, building a spacecraft on a shoestring budget type of thing. Ultimately we were successful and the team had a great flight test back in December 2014.\\n\\n It really proved out a lot of our flight systems; not only the flight itself, but all the lessons we learned on the ground just building EFT-1. We learned about our drawing system, our supply chain, all the manufacturers. It was like a practice session, a dry run if you will. I don’t know about you, but every time I do a project like tile the floor or put a roof on the house, after I’ve done it once I’m going to be a lot better the second time. That’s how we are. We’ve been through this now once before. We’ve built something. We’ve flown something, and we learned a tremendous amount. All those lessons we’re applying now on our next flight test, and so we’re going to get better and better at this. That was really the value, the beauty of Exploration Flight Test 1." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s go back to that time. During that time also you had a pad abort test in 2010. Then as you said the decision was made to work on the EFT-1. Can you talk about that decision to go ahead with that when there were so many unknowns, whether you were going to have funding, but you were still working toward this test?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was a gutsy call because we didn’t know what our future was. I remember the meetings the next day after we heard the bombshell news that we were canceled. The options were, do you gracefully shut things down? Do you try to salvage pieces of your program? Like our heat shield development. Obviously any future human-rated program is going to need a heat shield. Would we try to salvage that as a technology development program? There were various options that were floated around as to how we would move forward.\\n\\n It just seemed like the best strategy was the proposal to use the resources that we had on a flight test article that would demonstrate as many systems as possible. We had our budget constraints, so we had to design to cost, if you will, the EFT-1 mission. Of course you’re cost-constrained and you’re schedule-constrained. What maximum amount of return can you do within that box that you’re in?\\n\\n There were several months where the configuration and the mission objectives of that flight test were fleshed out so we could sync all those aspects up and get the team off moving in a consistent path. You were turning the ship on a dime, and efforts of thousands of people had to be changed. We had to get everybody on board with that. Everybody’s coming at this from a different place. Some people despaired, “Oh, we’re canceled.” Some people were enabled by it.\\n\\n In many cases we had people that were much more willing to take risks. When you’re canceled, that does wake you up, and it allows people to think outside the box. NASA is a very risk-averse culture. Since we were doing an unmanned flight test on a canceled program, we don’t have to do all those tests, or we don’t have to do all those analyses, we’re willing to take a higher level of risk.\\n\\n Part of that is if we’re going to try to do space travel cheaper, less expensive, we do need to address our risk aversion. We do need to talk about NASA’s risk culture. It really boils down to getting the most bang for the buck with the safest mission we can with the dollars that we have and trying to reconcile those two.\\n\\n EFT-1 was really the first exercise in that. Those first several months were hard getting the entire team, with it’s engrained culture, onboard. Sounds easy now, let’s go fly EFT-1, but we had to figure out what was in it, what was on it, what was the timeline, what were the requirements, what were the flight test objectives. All those precursors to getting a 1,000-person team off and moving had to be pulled together pretty quickly, because when you’re changing direction you need to give people a new plan to change direction to. Mark Geyer did a super job leading the team through that transition period. He really exemplified great leadership in that time period." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You talked a little bit about that in the ISS interview. You talked about being on the shoestring budget and how it limits management’s flexibility to react and respond to problems. You talked about the affordability initiative. Like you said, it forces you to be more frugal and you can take more risks, but are there any downsides? Obviously safety would be a downside. But would you talk about some of those things that you considered during that time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. We live in the real world, and the real world has financial constraints. As much as we can hope for more funding, what we’re going to get is a different matter. Just like you and I, we have to live within our means, our personal finances, NASA needs to live within its allocated budgets from Congress. We have to match our program to the dollars. When I used to go out to eat when I was a kid, my dad said my eyes were bigger than my stomach, because I would load up all these things I wanted to eat, and wound up I couldn’t eat it.\\n\\n A lot of us want maybe a Rolls-Royce space program, but we can only afford a Volkswagen space program. So part of it is trying to tailor your program to live within the means. But of course we want to explore. There’s knobs you can turn, and one of those knobs is the level of risk. You can spend a tremendous amount of money just making a tiny risk improvement. It’s trying to figure out how to use those dollars to give you the most risk reduction value." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any involvement with the Exploration Systems Development Division and that cross-program system integration? I know part of that was they were pushing decisions down to the integrated products teams, the sublevel teams, to get the decisions down to that, so that things could be done quicker and more efficiently." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I have some observations for that. My job assignment during that period was primarily as the Crew and Service Module lead and hardware development. Most of what you’re referring to is the cross-program integration activities. I think that’s one of the things this program has done a fantastic job with, because having lived through Space Station Freedom and ISS and then Constellation, you had very large program offices. Frankly, that adds another level of bureaucracy and inefficiencies. Whereas the concept here that exploration has adopted and implemented has basically been to utilize the expertise residing within the programs and use that skill set to self-integrate. Although there is a thin veneer which we’ll call level two management provided by Headquarters, they’re really relying largely on the expertise and resources within the three programs, and they are stepping up and they’re doing a great job, and they’re doing it with a fraction of the resources that it’s taken in past programs, where you had a large dedicated cross-program integration teams. I’m really sold on this concept because I’ve seen both ways of doing this business—I wish I had developed it, but it was really good idea and my hat is off to the ESD management team for coming up with it, and I think it’s shown a high degree of effectiveness because the programs are integrating very well together, and it’s being done with a relatively very small amount of resources." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about some of the technological advances with Orion. You read articles or you see when people talk about, “Well, it just looks like Apollo.” But obviously there are so many things that are much more advanced. Talk about that and some of the heritage hardware or historical hardware that has been used or reused or redesigned with this program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I give people tours and show them what Orion is, the most frequent question I get is, “It looks like Apollo.” I tell them, “Well, okay. Apollo was 50 years ago, but the laws of physics haven’t changed in 50 years. The blunt body shape of a capsule is the most efficient shape to go through the atmosphere, just like a dolphin and a shark are very different, but they both glide through the ocean, and so the external shape is driven by the environment that you’re in.”\\n\\n Obviously though there are external similarities, the guts inside are very very different. This vehicle has a tremendous amount of capability as you can well imagine, because materials technology, computers, metallurgical engineering, manufacturing techniques and strategies have progressed tremendously in the decades since Apollo. It’s a very capable spacecraft that we’re quite proud of.\\n\\n As far as technology development is concerned, we went through a phase early in the program where we were developing the technologies needed to perform our mission. Where did we need to push the state of the art? We needed to push the state of the art in heat shield, thermal protection systems. You’re talking 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit heat of reentry. There’s no known material that can survive that and have the mass characteristics that we needed. We needed technology development in landing and recovery systems.\\n\\n We allocated resources early on in Orion to go tackle those, and actually NASA had a lot of skills, more so in those systems than industry. We had a very heavy NASA involvement in those technology development phases. At a certain point though you need to stop researching and you’ve got to start building. Those technology development programs phased out, probably about five or six years ago, as they then were turned over to the prime contractor or whoever was providing the hardware and said, “Okay, we’ve developed the technology. Now you need to convert it into producible, machinable product. Get a contractor with cost and schedule and get it built.”\\n\\n I would say that our technology development pieces of Orion are largely in the past, and now it’s a matter of implementing, building, testing. Of course there are other elements of the exploration architecture that we’re going to need downstream once Orion and SLS are in the field, like surface systems to the Moon or Mars. Those technology development efforts are under way today as we speak. So you’ve got this rolling wave of technology development at one time supporting Orion, but now supporting the downstream architecture elements of exploration." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about EFT-1 itself. Were there any memorable moments that you can recall, or events, working towards that launch? And did you get to see the launch?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did get to see the launch. Always very satisfying and fulfilling to spend years working so hard, diligently on something, and then to see it successfully happen. Memorable moments. I certainly have some memorable moments during the mission itself. I was with my team. We had watched the launch. Then we came back to the big conference room in the hotel to watch the landing, which was going to occur several hours later. I was surrounded by hundreds of folks that I had worked with for years together sweating, toiling to get this to happen. Then we’re all together watching this wonderful reentry. When it landed everybody was cheering and slapping each other on the back.\\n\\n The one thing I do remember was turning around and looking at all the happy faces, and there was one very sad face in the crowd because when we landed the uprighting bags did not deploy properly. That was the one very unsmiling, panicked-looking face in the crowd, the one guy who was responsible for that system, because he was seeing real-time that his baby had not worked the way it was supposed to. But that was about the only thing that didn’t work as it was supposed to on that flight." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned that there were a lot of lessons learned from EFT-1 that you can apply now to EM-1 [Exploration Mission 1]. The uprighting system, obviously fixing that. Right before the launch a problem was found with the heat shield. Are there some other things specifically that you want to talk about? Maybe some of those lessons learned between that you’ll be applying to EM-1." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. There’s been a lot of talk about the Orion heat shield. It’s one of those technologically demanding aspects. It’s the largest heat shield ever produced. During the manufacturing phase of EFT-1, we did encounter difficulties. We had some cracks that occurred in the ablative material. Those were all repaired, all fixed. We had positive margins of safety. So we launched that feeling pretty comfortable that we had solved the problem, and it worked. It worked fine.\\n\\n But just building it, we learned that this is a pretty intensive manufacturing effort. It was a very manually intensive build. We had literally dozens of people working around the clock for about six months. Highly trained, very skilled labor force doing this work. Unless you have another heat shield right behind that one, that highly skilled workforce then has to sit around waiting another year for the next heat shield to come through, so it’s a very inefficient cost model. You train people, highly skilled. They’re going to go off and work somewhere else if you’re not using them. They’re going to leave. So it was an unsustainable manufacturing model too. In addition to the cracks that we saw.\\n\\n Taking the cost model inefficiencies, the manufacturing inefficiencies, and the lessons learned through the manufacturing process, all those factors conspired to make us think about the different ways of doing things. So we have modified our heat shield from a monolithic structure that’s all built at once, with a block-like tiles that you can build offline, stack them up in a warehouse, and install later. Therefore you can have a low level of production that feeds your flight production. It’s much more efficient. We had to solve a few technical issues to get there, but those have been licked now. We’re pretty confident that this system is going to be superior technically by not being prone to cracking, as well as in the manufacturing and cost areas to the heat shield that we flew on EFT-1.\\n\\n I mentioned some of the intangible areas. Step away from the actual spacecraft itself, but just exercising all of the people and processes and companies. We have literally hundreds of companies that build parts of Orion. Many of these companies don’t even know how they’re contributing. I’m building this part, but they don’t know where it fits or what it does. You just give them a spec [specification].\\n\\n We had growing pains obviously. When you engage thousands of people across hundreds of companies, you’re going to experience difficulties along the way. All those lessons learned, all the scar tissue, you would find a vendor who had a problem with this material, or this part. Literally thousands of lessons learned that now are factored into the hearts and minds of people that are building EM-1. It’s going a lot more smoothly this time because we’ve done those things before.\\n\\n Ultimately that’s where we’re going to go – a well-oiled machine. We want to get this to be a very cost-efficient production so we can lower our costs and have Orion’s being built for a low production cost and free up dollars so NASA can go spend money on things like an outpost or Asteroid Retrieval Mission or solar power platform, other pieces of exploration architecture that we need to do more ambitious missions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You talk about integrating all these companies, but now also we have an international partner. You have experience working with international partners. You worked in the ISS Element Integration Office previously, and now that you have an international partner with this, what are some of the pros and cons of working with those partnerships?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. NASA uses international partners for a number of reasons. For one, space travel and exploration is very expensive. You get other countries aligned with your exploration objectives, and they work together and pitch in resources towards a common goal. Certainly there’s that advantage. Another advantage is sustainability. Having an international partner involves commitments. Our country makes a commitment to work with other countries, and so it becomes more difficult for us to unilaterally just say, “Well, we’re going to slow this down, or we’re not going to do that anymore.” Heck, we’ve engaged in bilateral agreements or trilateral, whatever international party agreements, and those countries have committed their resources. So now you’re affecting other countries. You don’t want to be seen as someone who steps back from your national promises and commitments. It actually helps us in that area too.\\n\\n It helps us also in bringing in additional expertise and skill sets. Of course this country has a tremendous skills and knowledge infrastructure. The Russians have a tremendous space program. The Europeans do as well. Bringing those expertise into the fold and trying to solve your problems is yet a third reason why we benefit from these partnerships.\\n\\n Now with anything there’s pros and there’s cons. You add the element of increased interfaces. Now you have to negotiate these interfaces. You’re going to have increased complexity because now that you’ve got interfaces spanning the ocean you’ve got to document all these agreements. You have increased cost for integration. You have to have all these meetings and reviews. It’s one thing when people are down the hall or in another state. Now they’re in a different country, and they’re going to be speaking a different language, and they’re using metric system, we’re usually using English. So you add organizational complexity to the program.\\n\\n Then you have issues associated with aligning your various priorities and schedules. While we might think Orion is the number one priority, the European Space Agency [ESA] may have other different priorities. We have to work together to stay aligned with those; building a spaceship is a tightly choreographed effort. All the parts have to show up at the right time for it to all come together to support a mission. Those are all cons, but when you weigh those, obviously the pros outweigh. It’s in NASA’s best interest to engage with international partners going forward. Orion initiated that relationship with ESA for the Service Module, and I know we value that relationship, even though there are some of those organizational headaches and complexities that go along with it. To the most extent, we’re getting a lot more out of this than we’re putting into it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you see the Orion Program working with any other international partners in the future or the possibility of that happening?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m not aware of any other international partner discussions at the moment, no." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk about some of the most significant challenges that you’ve had, beginning with Constellation, working with Orion, getting that EFT flight going. Anything that we haven’t talked about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Certainly one of the wonderful things about working on Orion and at NASA, you’re here to solve problems. There are no boring days here. Designing, building, testing spaceships that are going to the Moon and Mars is hard, it’s challenging. I’m surrounded by thousands of some of the brightest people in the country here. It’s tremendously satisfying to be working amidst that brain talent, somewhat humbling. That piece is great. The challenging parts, we wish we had more money, we wish we had more resources. We have to be innovative and think outside the box, outside our comfort zone. We’d love to be able to have this design or do these tests, and when you’re forced to live within constrained resources, you have to think harder about what you have to do versus what you’d like to do.\\n\\n Probably the hardest part of this job is balancing the risks across our entire portfolio. If you look at any individual thing, you can think well, I really need to do more for that. But it’s a zero-sum game. If I do more there I’m going to have to take something else away from somewhere else to pay for it. You really have to think hard about balancing the risk. It’s always changing, the landscape is never the same. As you mature your design or you complete a test, you’ll find problem areas. You’re constantly having to potentially shift resources from one area to another as your risk landscape changes not only during time but also during the life cycle of the program. During design, during build, during test, during flight, during operations the landscape changes then too.\\n\\n It’s a very dynamic environment. You never can just rest on your laurels. You always have to think about how to do the job better every day you come in the job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You have a unique background probably within the group you work with because you have that biomedical science degree. Do you look at things, and especially with risk and going from EFT-1 going to EM-1 and then the EM-2 human-rated? Are there any risks or anything about that that coming from your background you’re more concerned about? Or do you feel like it’s right on track working towards carrying humans?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wish I had a crystal ball, and I knew what the problems are that are going to bite us, because it is a complex spacecraft, it’s a complex enterprise. Despite the brilliance of the team and the workforce, we will have problems, and so we need to be brave and keep going forward, and try to live within the resources that we have. The safest spacecraft is going to be the one that never gets off the ground – so we need to accept risk. I would like to expand humankind’s presence out beyond low-Earth orbit, and I think I work among a team that everybody’s dedicated to the same end. Where there are differences is everybody has their own risk acceptance levels, and people come from, like you said, different backgrounds, different perspectives.\\n\\n If I were to talk to my thermal protection guy, they’d want a heat shield that’s a foot thick. Or if you talk to your structures guys, they’d want to have great big beefy plates of metal in the structure. So everybody has their own areas. If you were to design a spacecraft based on those desirements, you’d have something so big and so heavy it would never get off the ground. The saying is, you’re doing your job right when everyone is screaming equally loud.\\n\\n You asked me about my unique background. In some ways I view the spaceship almost as a human body. It’s very complicated, and if you were to envision a human body designed by doctors, a cardiovascular surgeon might want a really big heart, and an orthopedic surgeon might want very large bones. You can see what this person would look like, and they probably wouldn’t be good at surviving, because we are maybe not optimal in any one thing but as an integrated system human beings are pretty darn successful.\\n\\n I look at the spacecraft the same way. I’m trying to optimize the integrated system, and I may have to suboptimize the parts in order to make the integrated whole work together better. That to me is how I tie that biological aspect of my training to a spaceship." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s very interesting. What would you consider to be your most significant contribution to EFT-1?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think my most significant contribution to Orion was probably when I went to Headquarters. The program was very vulnerable at that point in time, and nobody knew whether we were going to live or die. As part of that transition team, I was the one person supporting that who knew what Orion’s capabilities were. Bringing that crew vehicle expertise into that team, which ultimately shaped the direction the Agency was going, I feel like I was able to help influence it. It’s like maybe a drop at the top of the hill. It could go a lot of different ways. During that transition phase there were a lot of different ways the Agency could have gone. Even though I was just a little person helping, I think I was able to help push it the way that’s close to where we wound up, and so I feel like I was the right person at the right place at the right time to help with that.\\n\\n Insofar as the rest of what’s going on here, I can’t take credit for it. It’s more the efforts of the hundreds of people that are doing great work every day. I’m just helping to keep the wheels moving along as smoothly as possible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Are there any decisions that you feel greatly impacted the program itself, the development, the policy, operations, costs, or anything, that we haven’t talked about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There are future decisions that are going to be hard. We are resource-constrained. We have a schedule urgency to get this thing built on time, and we have technical issues and hurdles ahead of us. There will constantly be trades moving ahead where we try to balance all those various factors and come up with the best path forward. Those decisions happen quite regularly now, and the decisions seem to be getting harder and harder and harder. Once you get closer and closer to launch, those decisions become more and more meaningful and more and more difficult. I’m just looking forward to the ride ahead because we’re going to have our hands full pulling this off." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mark Geyer has said that the Orion Program learned to persevere. Do you agree with that statement?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Absolutely. Having the team go through a trial by fire together, being canceled, the hard work and effort to fly a successful flight test, that is a bond that gets the team—it’s like maybe a platoon that’s gone through a couple of battles together becomes much more effective as a team by that common shared experience and overcoming difficulties. I think that’s where the Orion team is today. We’ve overcome difficulties successfully together as a team. That’s why I feel much more confident going forward because of that demonstrated teamwork." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you want to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we talked about more than I even thought we’d talk about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sandra Johnson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. If there’s not anything else, then I certainly appreciate you talking to us. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Charles M. Lundquist", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00218", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-MR-2007-018-002.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Mason, Wilson K. (1966-1968): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-MR-2007-018-002", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-MR-2007-018-002", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Wilson K. Mason served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil from 1966 to 1968 in an urban community development project. He served alongside his wife Gwen. The couple trained at Experiment in International Living in Vermont, including a three week field experience in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They were assigned to a small rural town in northeast Brazil and worked through the local schools on a variety of projects. Wilson was also involved with development of small scale garden farms. After some local conflict, the Masons were reassigned in the second year to a larger city and continued their teaching and small scale agriculture projects. Interviewed and recorded by Robert Klein, December 7, 2006. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "7 December 2006", + "extent": "2 audio cassettes (mono; 78 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "012. Brazil.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Brazil. Mason, Wilson K. (1966-1968): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Brazil", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "MR-2007-018", + "transcript": "RPCV-MR-2007-018-002-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/4actg2334k0ycp1c76x3a1q1qbi886a1.pdf?odc=20231115173921-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/ed876f3d-c614-4bf4-b6a7-929b9b7361f8/ccd01fc4-179f-48f1-bb47-3d789dc1297d/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzJjN2ZfNWU2YTlhYjVhMzc3NGU0NDMyYjllNmU0MDczMmMzYTk4NjU0OGY0MzI2MDM1NDVhMGI3MzM5ODg1NTNmODkzOF8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS9lZDg3NmYzZC1jNjE0LTRiZjQtYjZhNy05MjliOWI3MzYxZjgvY2NkMDFmYzQtMTc5Zi00OGYxLWJiNDctM2Q3ODlkYzEyOTdkL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Dallas, Texas", + "length": "36 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed January 25, 2007, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Wilson K. Mason Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Robert Klein" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Wilson K. Mason" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:03", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is Bob Klein. Today is December 7, 2006. I'm interviewing Wilson Mason, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil, 1966 to '68, in a community development project. So let's go back maybe a year before you joined." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:19", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. What was I doing, you know? I graduated from the University of Texas in Austin. My wife and I were married in November ‘64. I graduated in May of ‘65." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:42", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. What was your subject?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was finance with interest on real estate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And at that point, what was your career goal? Did you have one?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:00:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I planned to get into real estate. I'd interned with a real estate commercial plan in Houston, Texas, on and off the various summers during college. KLEIN; Where had you grown up?\n\nIn Beaumont, Texas, which is east." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:01:15", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During high school years, did you travel, any extracurricular activities?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:01:16", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not that much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:01:21", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you went in from Beaumont to Austin. During your college years, again, any travel?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:01:30", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, nothing extraordinary." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:01:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you learned a second language or not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:01:34", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Had not. My wife had traveled quite a bit, right, but I did not. After graduation, we went with this firm in Houston to return to get started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you both working at that point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She was. She'd been working while I was in college. When got Houston, I just started out on a commission basis, which was not a wise decision for a greenhorn. And so I began supplementing work with newspaper wrap, which was not a strong supplementary secondary form of employment, but right, anyway, the career in real estate was the real life question anyway. But I was able to close a few commercial leases that it was difficult to make ends meet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:02:35", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now during your college years, do you recall when you first heard of the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:02:39", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, other than I had heard of it. But no, I didn't follow it closely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:02:51", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok. But you knew it existed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:02:53", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes, sure. Yeah, it was definitely an attractive exciting adventure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Even though you hadn't done much travel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. That's right. And maybe, maybe because I had not done a lot of travel. I don't know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:03:14", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s see, ’65, ’66. The draft wasn't a concern." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:03:14", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The draft was a concern. In fact, that was that was a strong motivation. My wife was enthused about this whole idea, but in all honesty, that precipitated serious consideration of my alternatives because I was not an enthusiastic supporter of our involvement in Vietnam. And if drafted, I would have gone. I wasn't going to object, I just objected to our involvement in it. So I wanted an alternative. The Peace Corps seemed like an exciting alternative for the two of us. And as it ended up, I don't know what it was, but our draft board or maybe all universal condition with all of the draft boards, was that you could still be drafted out of the Peace Corps. But so we decided as it increasingly became evident that I could be drafted, we’d small steps and some other pursuit, and that's when the Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is ’65 or ’66?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "1966. Well, it may have been late ’65. I mean, obviously as the war right worsened as the draft increased." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:04:45", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And do you recall the application process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:04:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Somewhat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:04:51", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, a couple of things. One is you're asked whether you are familiar with a foreign language. And I guess that applies to both you and your wife or either of you. Do you recall, if you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:05:05", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, we had some broken familiarity with Spanish because we live in Texas. But no, I would not say that we would have a strong second language. And my wife had some study in French, maybe. That was not, it wasn't a speaking level knowledge, but if she had had some foreign language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:05:33", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did your wife have a college degree?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:05:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "She did, in English and philosophy." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the other things in the application is you can indicate a preference, sometimes the type of project or area. Do you recall?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think we thought India would be neat. You see, we got pretty close." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:06:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And in talking about joining the Peace Corps, what was the reaction of your peers, your family?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:06:11", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, I think they were somewhat dismayed, but I think everyone was dismayed at the volatility of the times. Exactly. Particularly for draft age guys, kids, whatever." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:06:27", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And many people accepted it as a reasonable alternative to going to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:06:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, somewhat. Yes, I think some of our friends may have thought it was kind of a wild haired. But everybody was kind of troubled by the pressures of the draft and some involvement with service. I'm sure, as I recall, seeing a lot of people raised eyebrows, but then, you know, the alternatives were not very acceptable either. But it was not, it wasn't as though a lot of people suggested that option to us or suggested, as you know, a form of service either. That was not something familiar with a lot of our peers or friends." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:07:23", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you filled out the application. Both you and your wife, you were both pretty much committed to going if you were accepted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:07:34", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were. We were fully aware that this might not pan out and then I could be drafted. And if so, then I would follow the route of being drafted into the service. So that certainly was, it was not clear that the Peace Corps would be acceptable and that they would accept us or that we would, you know, finish the training program. But we made it, so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:08:05", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So do you recall what happened after the application?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:08:08", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't. Other than I heard subsequently, you know, there was a lot of background interviews and FBI. Yeah, and that was intriguing. Actually I was glad to know that they did a thorough background check. So, no, I don't recall much more of the process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what, did you finally get a phone call or telegram a letter?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't recall. It must've been a letter. I would think it would be a letter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:08:42", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What did you become aware of your assignment and what was going to be?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:08:48", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think first of all, I knew you didn't spell India B-R-A-Z-I-L. So I knew right away that our first option didn't get through, and I don't recall if our second option was a Latin American country or not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:09:05", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you did get an invitation here to go to Brazil." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:09:10", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's true, and I think it may have said community development. I had no earthly idea what all that meant, but what was specific and in fact, it wasn't specific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:09:23", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But at that point, was it the assumption that both you and your wife were going to be volunteers, had volunteer roles?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:09:28", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's true. That's the way we applied now, you know, had they accepted only one and not the other? I don't know what we’d do about that. But that's the way we applied, and I think there was another adjunct to that to the job. And maybe that was also educational or secondary education working with, working with teachers. That was part of the program as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:10:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so. You applied for a deferment, and I guess you got your board to indicate that would receive it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:10:11", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I suppose so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:10:12", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. Where did you go? Where were you assigned to go for training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Brattleboro, Vermont." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At the Experiment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. Experiment in International Living." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:10:28", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And in going up to Vermont, then you think the next stop would be Brazil?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:10:34", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:10:36", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so you recall the farewell when you're leaving Texas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:10:41", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I remember packing up our goods and leaving the cute little duplex that we had rented. We were kind of beginning our own nesting, you know? And everything was just great. And we found that disruptive, but we found it exciting too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And your wife's family was OK with it also?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, if they weren't, they didn't rattle the cage. And I guess I should say I appreciated that. We didn't feel as though we had many options. As I remember, they were pretty supportive and I think I remember my first two, I think there was there was a risk. It probably admiration and support by all the parents." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:11:33", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, certainly in those days, Peace Corps had a fairly good reputation. It was an honorable thing to do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:11:36", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Exactly. And I think people used that. I don't think I don't remember any negative responses from, you know, overt or subtle." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:11:53", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you reported up to Brattleboro. Was that your first time on the jets?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:12:00", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, no. But I was not a worldly traveler either. But no, that wasn't the first time I flew. That was a new experience for myself, and in the springtime cold Vermont weather and coming from sunny Texas. I mean, it's cold in the wintertime, is it not like it is here in the spring." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what time of year do you start training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think it was around April." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was in the spring." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe March, could have been March." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And do you recall reporting? And now you're in the middle of a group of others who've joined the team. You recall your initial impression of the group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Yeah, I do. Well, motley kind of a crew. We were all, you know, kind of starry eyed and wondering what it was about, but full of a lot of piss and vinegar and was eager to prove ourselves and do something you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:13:13", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many in the group do you recall approximately? On the order of 50 or 100?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:13:21", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think between 50 and. I really don't recall because I know a lot were deselected and didn't make it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:13:29", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were there other married couples?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:13:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, they were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:13:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the group was generally coed. It wasn't married couples plus men and married couples plus women." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:13:38", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. No. Yes. That's correct." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:13:41", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay. And now let's talk about the training itself. Generally, the components are area studies. You learn about your technical studies, depending on where you're going to go, so there can be some level of language training. Let's talk about those elements in training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:14:08", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Well, I thought they had a good program. I fault myself on the language only because that was a struggle for me. As I thought, the technical side of the training was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:14:26", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were they training in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:14:36", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Any eventuality of any possible thing which was covered. It was difficult to train in everything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it's kind of generic area development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the community development thing that was a, in fact, that was a criticism we had at the end of our service, that it was too generic for young kids to sometimes get their hands around. And yet I love flexibility, I love not being tied down, but there is such a lack of structure that it was frustrating when I was in training, but in reality in Peace Corps. What I what I think would have been better with would have been to have some structured activity that was required, but then to have some time to allow for flexibility such that if you envisioned a need in some area that's being unmet, that could be met and there would be a demand for it, then you could apply energies in that area to the country. But in the meantime, you would have there would be structure to your life too. That would give you some sense of, you know, anchor, that's what we didn't have. And that's what caused so much frustration throughout." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:16:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When do you recall any outstanding speakers or trainers at training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:16:17", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember a doctor that we had. He did seem to have a warm personality and did seem to relate to people very well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that was the medical training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was in Brattleboro, Vermont. And he was from the area. I don't know where he was from the state of or not from other states in the northeast part, but really nice guy. Seems like Bob George may have been the head of training there, and I thought he was effective. In fact, I remember most of the staffers being effective and helpful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:17:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was the language organized, did you break into small groups?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:17:04", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I believe that's true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:17:06", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you recall if you had any sense that if you didn't get up to a certain level in Portuguese that you weren't going to go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:17:12", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't recall that. I wouldn't, you know, I wouldn't be surprised that that might have been asked." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any field studies, going out to study community?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How was that organized?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they dropped you off in a little outlying towns. Now that, it was fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:17:33", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was the two of you, though." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:17:36", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Definitely a challenge. And they’d give you like 25 dollars for the weekend or so. It's kind of interesting, but it required such an indulgence on the community for families that, you know, kids roaming around trying to do things. I think the objective is to understand that [inaudible], which were an acronym for, you know, movers and shakers of the community and what the community did. To take matters and cameras or something with acronyms for learning about the movers, shakers and what the community does or how it gets things done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:18:21", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In two and a half days." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:18:23", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah. And by the way, figure out how to stretch $25 over a weekend." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:18:28", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had to find a place to stay?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:18:30", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And find a place to stay and eat. And so we ended up, I don't remember, barging in on a Congregationalist minister and his family in, I can't remember this town in Massachusetts. Oh, North Adams, Massachusetts. Nice, nice people. Took us in. Anyway, it was just it was surprising and we were chatting away. But they were nice to us. And so we went through the exercise and it was it was a mental training of just learning how to evaluate size up a situation and see what I could be use of what's needed and how it operates and how to effectively work with the people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:19:29", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When you came back from that weekend, did you have a chance to process with the group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:19:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And to share the experiences." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right, so that we'd learn how other people, what stumbling blocks they encountered or what successes they encountered." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:19:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did anyone stand up and say, well, these skills are what you might be using when you get to Brazil?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there anyone from any former volunteers or any Brazils staff members who provided training there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:19:58", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There some former volunteers in Brazil that had returned." + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:20:05", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how were they used in training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:20:11", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I guess more in the cultural side of training and trying to relate what to expect, how to cope with, you know, the challenges and the cultural differences and what life is like for a volunteer there. The do's and don'ts, to avoid pitfalls." + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:20:35", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was anyone saying that this is what you likely to be doing once you get to Brazil with any specificity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:20:42", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no, not specifically. But yeah, they did attempt to say, here are ideas of community development. Have a water project, maybe a sanitation project, maybe help with a garden." + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:21:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the implication was that whatever assignment you had, it would be the both of you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:21:07", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. The community development is so flexible. [cough] I'm getting over a cold. Let me stop." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:21:20", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you knew you'd be assigned with your wife. But it was open ended enough that she might end up teaching and you might end up digging latrines." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:21:32", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that's exactly what happened. Because, you know, because of the kind of the. It's still culturally Victorian and men didn't work that well with women. Women work better with women, and most of the teachers are women. Therefore, I just wasn't able to develop the rapport that I thought was necessary to be effective with the women teachers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:22:03", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you knew you knew that going in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:22:07", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn't. I didn't know that. Maybe I should have picked up on it. Maybe they told me, but I didn't do it, too. I was surprised about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Two other things about training. The Experiment had been associated with the kind of Outward Bound type of training. And I gather that's where you, you know, jump tall buildings, go up cliffs." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:22:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I guess so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:22:33", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you didn't have any. The other part of training is the selection process. And how did that play out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:22:43", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fine. I mean, as I recall, several psychologists, maybe psychiatrists, but I remember having various interviews. I thought that was fine. I was comfortable about it. Other people were not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Together or separately?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know what, I think separately, but I would think that it would have been wise to interview us jointly as well. I don't know if they did that. I don't recall. I would guess that they may have been a good idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:23:20", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then very often there's a lot of tension about selection, mid selection and then there's a final." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:23:25", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There is. That's right. And I remember a lot of people. Some teeth gnashing over some of that and some disappointments, I think, in some who will be deselected." + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:23:41", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the group coalesce at all in trying to oppose some of the deselectees?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:23:46", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, a little bit. Sure. You do really build some strong bonds within a short, intense training time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's true. So a final selection comes and the group has been pared down." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We actually, we had two different training areas. We trained in Brattleboro, Vermont, came home briefly, went back and trained for, let's say, two to three weeks in Scranton, Pennsylvania." + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:24:22", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was this to be all field work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:24:24", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, sort of." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:24:27", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the whole group go there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, the whole group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did you spend your time? Did language continue?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, language continued." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:24:35", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All of that. Is there a large Portuguese population in Scranton?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:24:43", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not to my knowledge." + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:24:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what did you do? How would you spend your three weeks?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:24:52", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Going to the local health department going with them out to see health conditions in the poor areas. I know they had that problems in the city. They want to show us how they were eradicating rats and I remember that. I remember the eternal coal mine fires that were burning all the time. I don't recall why they decided to make such a logistical right from Brattleboro to Scranton. Maybe it could have been something just as simple as they had another group coming back into Brattleboro, Vermont, and couldn't give us any more time. I never knew the reason. Maybe it was that Scranton had something that was vital for us to learn. Afraid I may have missed that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you get through the Scranton phase." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Come home, wrap up things." + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:26:03", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No second thoughts on your little bit of home leave?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:26:05", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. In fact, we were pretty excited. We were really eager to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had you developed any close friends within the group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had developed friends. Yeah, well, I wouldn't say close enough yet. You know, we were still we were still trying to. We were enthused. But you know, still, there's trepidation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:26:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure, sure. And you had no idea of where in Brazil you were going to be going. I mean, it's a huge country." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:26:41", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is a huge country. Yeah. And it's like you're going to Canada or the U.S., India and China. That's a huge country. But we didn't get an inkling of where we were going right until we got into Rio, which is what we flew in. People began asking us for where we were going to be stationed. It's [inaudible]. Oh. And you knew there was more there was something that you thought they weren't listening when they talked in training. So we heard our book here now to find out more about the state of [inaudible]. It's just a poor country in the northeast part of Brazil. Beautiful area, but it's not a Rio or a Sao Paolo." + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it coastal?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the state is coastal, and the city we were in was inland a ways." + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:27:46", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now when you got to Rio, did the group stay together very long?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:27:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I would guess for maybe a week, but it was orientation, Peace Corps kind of orientation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:27:58", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And at any point did anyone ask you if you had a preference for where you were assigned or did you sense was that you going to go where they sent you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:28:10", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, we were just going to go where they sent us. There were some there were some people that I think they were just a little more savvy than we were, who found out a little more information. And they began kind of, not politicking, but they decided to do a little promoting of maybe some areas that they thought might work better for them because of their expertise. And as it ended up, one of them did a pretty good job in order to get there. No, we were just going to go along." + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:28:51", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you might assume that Peace Corps saw a married couple as stable and more possibly better able to handle an isolated society." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:29:01", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's true. But that is true. And I assume they might have looked on it that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:29:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "At what point did you begin dealing with Brazilians?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:29:15", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As soon as we, well, we left flew out of New York to Rio, and as I say, it was a brief orientation period, maybe up as long as a week. From there, we then flew out from there. In our case, you know, our group was primarily in the northeast part of Brazil in the states of Alagoas, Ceará. I don't remember all of the states." + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was like a regional outpost." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:29:49", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were in the northeast, part northeast, part Brazil is. Well, the whole country of South America is like that. Brazil is kind of like this much and the northeast is up here. Largest town is Recife in the state of Pernambuco. Alagoas is just a small state here and its capital is Maceió. Rio, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Salvador. Some of the better exciting communities. But anyway, you fly in here and we just flew back up here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is the area tropical?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It is. Yeah. Sugarcane region." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So now you really you're getting down to it, I mean." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we come into Maceió and we have another orientation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, who's running it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Peace Corps. And they designed an orientation for, first of all, in the city of Maceió just to get people from the host country again, kind of learning relating with the Brazilians. But they're in a controlled environment with all your buddies are still now. Not totally, you know, out of wack, but their orientation is within the city of the capital of Maceió.\n\nAt this point, then they designed an orientation program where all of volunteers would go out and visit other in-country volunteers at their homes. You know, and in fact, it may be a group that split up a group of five or 10 go to one small little town, learn what that volunteer has been working on. Meet the people he works with. Just get a taste of daily life they live through, and then you rotate. From there, then go to see another volunteer. People there went back here and kind of rode around. So you get a nice smattering of experience from other people in the field. That was smart and helpful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:32:19", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But was anyone saying, you know, in which setting you feel more comfortable?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:32:24", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I'm not following." + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:32:25", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, if you've seen four or five different sites, were they trying to get some impression from you where you might fit in? What kind of situation?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:32:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Probably, probably. But it wasn't explicit. No, probably community development still so all-encompassing so anything goes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:32:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did any of the existing volunteers you dealt with say, this is a disaster, you're wasting your time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:32:52", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, some of them, sure. I think all volunteers have gone through some of that, at least for these type programs, because it really taps the frustration of people. I don't know how you found your experience, but yours sounds very structured to me. There’s something new that needed to be done. And you could do it and feel you can feel some sense of satisfaction. What was expected of us was pretty nebulous. What resulted was pretty nebulous. The sense of satisfaction was illusive. So it was, that foments frustration, and we felt that from the people that had been in the field." + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:33:38", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so they articulated, they weren’t just being nice?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:33:42", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They weren't necessarily saying it's because of the way the program was. But add to that just the idealistic desire of accomplishing something and realizing you can’t accomplish what you were supposed to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:34:00", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, no one turned to the Peace Corps staff and said, you brought me all these thousands of miles just to do this? I mean, doesn't the Peace Corps staff have some obligation to structure?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:34:15", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure that frustration was taken out on staff. I don't know if it’s taken out in those words, but definitely it was taken out on staff because everybody looks for a scapegoat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:34:29", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there any point in these first couple of weeks when you and your wife said, oh my God, we're in Brazil on a mistake?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:34:37", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not. Well, that may be." + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But did you? You must have had some hesitation at that point about what are we doing here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Yeah, we were wondering all the time. Did we make the right decision? Just like most of us, we are respected by the service. You know, although I don't think that that really was not something set in deeply with us. We felt we felt pretty good about this. We weren't comfortable with how things were working out because they weren't working out yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:35:25", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, well, let's get you to this in-country training now finally comes to an end. And now you're going to be assigned as a volunteer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. Now there were some input. We, you know, we talked about, what we might be more comfortable with. Some people were in little interior towns have had, you know, 100 people, some in towns that might have been 30,000 people. We ended up being placed on a town of, I would guess is 2,800, 3,000. That was just I was fine with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:36:07", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were you the only volunteers there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:36:08", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were the only Americans." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were the first volunteers there. There hadn't been any." + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's correct. So first and only volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "00:36:18", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So there's no place to go but up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "00:36:20", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's true. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "00:36:22", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, talk about arriving in the town and settling in. You have to have a house, a place to live." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "00:36:39", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, sure, it finally came down to dropping us off in the first town and it was Atalaia, Alagoas, sugarcane region town, about two hours, maybe from the capital by bus. We are scared little rabbits, you know? But there really wasn't need. Everybody was gracious, warm. We had all kinds of exuberance, welcome, welcoming, by all the local people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "00:37:30", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How are you doing with the Portuguese at this point?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "00:37:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, we were stumbling, but people were generous in their understanding of our broken language." + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "00:37:43", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You couldn't fall back on English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "00:37:46", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, because. Oh, I'll take it back. There was there were there were a few people in town who knew a little bit of English, who were eager to, you know, improve on their English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "00:38:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Coming into the town, was there any counterpart or mentor or structure that against which you were going to work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "00:38:09", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there had been communication with the mayor of the city and with the educational director for the city school, who knew that we'd be working with them. They worked with the teachers. And that we were both kind of in that area. So there was some structure awaiting us to work with teachers and we began that, you know, that process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Talk about finding a place to live and again, and then we'll talk about the work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well as it ended up. I don't recall now how this worked out. It was a nice little, this common wall unit along the main street there, where we lived and a little living area, a bedroom. And you know a [inaudible] you conduct yourself with. And nice, clean little abode that we fixed that, and they made our own little house." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "00:39:38", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And who was doing the cooking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "00:39:39", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Gwen was. Seems like I might have pitched in on that, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "00:39:49", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a steward or a houseboy or someone helping you run the house?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "00:39:52", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no. Nobody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "00:39:54", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Just the two of you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "00:39:55", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Just two of us. We had a well, we had a charcoal stove over, just a couple of holes and put charcoal in light it and put your pot on top of this opening. Yeah, but we eventually got a kerosene cooktop and worked out great, it's amazing what we could do. No refrigeration. It wasn't part of the family content. It was just a little unit by itself. I don't know whether the mayor provided that. I don't recall. I don't remember writing a rent check to anybody, so it must have been just provided for us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "00:40:42", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you have a place to stay. Talk about the first few weeks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "00:40:47", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I got sick as a dog. One of the local fellows have not heard, he was just charmed by Americans, and so overly enthusiastic for our presence it was embarrassing. We kind of wanted to avoid him because he was stumbling over himself to be so nice. Well, he was just, poor guy, he was real concerned that I was so sick. Actually, Gwen and I were both concerned that I was so sick. My system just hadn’t adjusted. But anyway, he thought of himself as an untrained medical doctor for the area, which he was not. Anyway, he pulled out the syringe, he was going to give it a shot of something that was kind of half powder and that was kind of a frightening experience for my wife. She halted that, but there was that probably the first month, two months before we could kind of get oriented to life in the city with the people, the food, and get acclimated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "00:42:28", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had Peace Corps given you a medical kit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah, yeah, and they had a medic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a process for medical emergency?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "00:42:36", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure, sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Which was what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't recall, but we had all kinds of pills and everything. It just they just weren't working at the time. And I was not delirious, but I was having a hard time. That was just [inaudible], you know, a severe case of it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "00:43:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So once you realized you weren't going to die, you recovered." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "00:43:06", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. And we embarked on what was supposed to be our job responsibility, working with the teachers. And we went out and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who decided that your job responsibility was working with teachers?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was part of our job description because it was education and community development, and we did do that. We did meet with teachers. We’d go out into the rural areas and talk with the teachers. And it just was evident that Gwen was more effective at responding with the teachers than I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "00:43:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But Gwen was not an experienced teacher, was she?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "00:43:47", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, she had taught. Dyslexia. She'd been trained to work with kids with dyslexia. So she had that training. Anyway, as it ended up, we continued along that route, but it wasn't satisfying. So I began working with kids in the school programs, recreational programs. Just kind of school projects. These were young kids, like summer activity programs, you know, public posters. Learning about some nutrition, sports activities, just working with kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "00:44:52", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you teaching soccer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "00:44:54", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, because I didn't really know soccer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "00:44:57", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Brazil, you need to know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "00:44:59", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I try to learn, but I didn't. I didn't have anything to teach anybody." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "00:45:04", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh my goodness. Could have been a major embarrassment to the U.S. government." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "00:45:09", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It could have been. I got very involved in vegetable gardens." + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the base to this was an elementary school, a K to 8 school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're talking about the working with teachers or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, with the kids." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "00:45:32", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Yeah, that's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And it was the same school where Gwen was working as well?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "00:45:36", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were several schools. She had to go out to several schools, but this was just kids in the city of Atalaia. So it was just it was just that that was not a big enough project to carry on. That was just something that I did when I saw that the other wasn't panning out to me. So from there, I decided to. I realize their diet was almost exclusively just rice and beans, you know, a little bit of meat, a little bit of vegetables. And so my objective was to encourage vegetable gardens by distributing seeds that USAID had available. And to that end, I asked the mayor to contribute some land that we could put on an experimental garden on. And it was like a couple of acres maybe an ace and a half." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "00:46:55", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, were you reporting all this back to your regional Peace Corps office?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 231, + "timestamp": "00:46:59", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes. Oh yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 232, + "timestamp": "00:46:59", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And were they approving or they were just listening?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 233, + "timestamp": "00:47:04", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 234, + "timestamp": "00:47:05", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did anyone come out from USAID?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 235, + "timestamp": "00:47:07", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. Yeah, they did, but it ended up being a pretty good project because it was a real promotional plus for USAID." + }, + { + "turn_id": 236, + "timestamp": "00:47:17", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had no background in small agriculture?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 237, + "timestamp": "00:47:21", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, nothing other than where I grew up. I mean, I have my grandmother in the garden and I worked in the garden and my mother than they had. My grandfather did some gardening, but that was not their location and we weren't farmers. No, I didn't have real experience, and I just read up about it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 238, + "timestamp": "00:47:39", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But there must have been some sophistication to it because if it's a tropical area, I mean, not everything's going to grow and you need to know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 239, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[00:47:47]. Well, I was just lucky. I don't know. We end up having a heck of a knockout garden. We had all kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, squash." + }, + { + "turn_id": 240, + "timestamp": "00:48:07", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many of those foods were people in the town willing to bring into their diet?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 241, + "timestamp": "00:48:16", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. But they these were all foods that were available at the market in Maceió, but frequently what people would have to do. Someone would drive to Maceió, buy the produce there, bring it back out to the market and sell it. Yeah, and that's a lot. What I was trying to do to encourage people, show them it could be grown there. And they within a very small pocket garden there, you can generally produce quite a good yield of different vegetables." + }, + { + "turn_id": 242, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Who were the agricultural workers in that community, the men or women or both?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 243, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mostly men. There was sugar cane. So that that was their primary agriculture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 244, + "timestamp": "00:49:06", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any structure other than the school that you could work off, work against in developing this? Two acres is going to be substantial." + }, + { + "turn_id": 245, + "timestamp": "00:49:16", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Well, I have one guy that I worked with who assigned by, I guess the mayor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 246, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So the town, in the sense was willing to endorse what you did and support it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 247, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 248, + "timestamp": "00:49:28", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And AID came in. Did they provide anything other than the seed?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 249, + "timestamp": "00:49:34", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, no. We did it all with a hoe." + }, + { + "turn_id": 250, + "timestamp": "00:49:39", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was it what, three months, six months into your being in this site that you finally came to the garden?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 251, + "timestamp": "00:49:48", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm not sure. I would guess, I don't know, three to six months. I don't know. I would guess somewhere in between." + }, + { + "turn_id": 252, + "timestamp": "00:50:00", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During the first year, a couple of questions. How long would you be in the village without going out to the capital?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 253, + "timestamp": "00:50:09", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, maybe three or four weeks." + }, + { + "turn_id": 254, + "timestamp": "00:50:17", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a circuit of other volunteers from the group where you could go on weekend or get together?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 255, + "timestamp": "00:50:25", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, usually we were close enough to the capital. Capital seem to be kind of the magnet. It everybody would come into the capital. Because there was more to do in the capital. We did have another couple of friends that that resided to the north of us, John and Jan Wunderlich. And we would go up and visit them. We had another friend who was down in another larger city, by the name of Bob Cook, and we would go and visit him. But that was rare. Yeah, usually it was people would just go to the capital." + }, + { + "turn_id": 256, + "timestamp": "00:51:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get around us?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 257, + "timestamp": "00:51:05", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bus. Bum a ride." + }, + { + "turn_id": 258, + "timestamp": "00:51:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Related question. Do you recall your first Christmas in Brazil?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 259, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 260, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Because sometimes it's the very hardest time, a traditional time back home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 261, + "timestamp": "00:51:21", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, but my wife might." + }, + { + "turn_id": 262, + "timestamp": "00:51:35", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So by the end of the first year, how would you assess, what was your feeling about what you were doing, what you were doing there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 263, + "timestamp": "00:51:47", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Generally I was feeling good about things because I had finally taken something that was so totally frustrating to me and turned it into something that I felt I was beginning to get some sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Which I have not experienced until now. And before that, I was reading a lot in my footlocker and going around seeing people, working with kids and stuff, but I really want to accomplish so much. So once I began this gardening project, it really ended up being very successful. It was quite a show for us. A lot of people came from all around to look at it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 264, + "timestamp": "00:52:35", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have visits from a Peace Corps staff?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 265, + "timestamp": "00:52:38", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 266, + "timestamp": "00:52:39", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the visit like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 267, + "timestamp": "00:52:43", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they just saw what I was doing. And the interesting political problem we encountered is that by producing all of these vegetables, and you can produce a lot of vegetables on an acre and a half. We took it to the market to sell. Well, I don't know that I was squeezing the livelihood of this other guy who would drive to Maceió and bring it back and sell it at a high price or something. Ours was at a cheap price. Well, all of a sudden we had a problem, and so we had a voodoo hex put on our garden." + }, + { + "turn_id": 268, + "timestamp": "00:53:22", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "When was this? Still during the first year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 269, + "timestamp": "00:53:32", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. One day we found a skull on the fence post, you know, and something dripping off of it, I don't know. And my helper said, hey, we've got to counteract this by doing this counter stuff. So he sprinkled some stuff and then we took it to the market. He sprinkled it around the stand and hopefully. So it was it was an interesting little twist that I hadn't anticipated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 270, + "timestamp": "00:53:59", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. So you were actually, you and your assistant, or the guy you working with, you were sitting at a stall in the market and selling?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 271, + "timestamp": "00:54:09", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. Yeah. And it was intended to be a showplace that would be something that people could see what can be done. And then I would go meet with people and distribute seeds for free. And ask them to come out if they wanted. And I would show them how to plant a garden, how to mix it in there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 272, + "timestamp": "00:54:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would you make contact with those people?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 273, + "timestamp": "00:54:35", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Up and down the street or whatever." + }, + { + "turn_id": 274, + "timestamp": "00:54:37", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you were you were comfortable enough and you were familiar enough in the town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 275, + "timestamp": "00:54:42", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I would talk to my neighbors and they would show a lot of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 276, + "timestamp": "00:54:45", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, but there was no farmers co-op or Ministry of Agriculture or Future Farmers of America or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 277, + "timestamp": "00:54:54", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, none of that that was available. But it was a twofold, multiple, two for one thing. One was to encourage people to have their own gardens and secondly to supplement their food, you know, to improve their diet. So to that end, we were moderately successful, but then we had some frustration because of this political issue that had we hadn’t anticipated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 278, + "timestamp": "00:55:36", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You know, during the first year, did you and Gwen have a chance to socialize with Brazilians? Yeah, I mean, how does that that work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 279, + "timestamp": "00:55:51", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Fine, probably as a married couple as well, it turned out fine. But we also had one another too. So we weren't as forced to be out and socializing as much. But yeah, that ended up being that ended up fine." + }, + { + "turn_id": 280, + "timestamp": "00:56:15", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sometimes people in a living in another culture find kind of like a mentor or an informant who sort of helps them to understand the rituals, customs that they see. Was there anything like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 281, + "timestamp": "00:56:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, this this one fellow was hopeful, but he was so overly eager that you had to distance ourselves a little bit otherwise because he had a way of antagonizing some of the other locals too. Even with his good intentions. But sure, we seem to get along pretty well with all of our neighbors." + }, + { + "turn_id": 282, + "timestamp": "00:57:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you was your Portuguese improving?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 283, + "timestamp": "00:57:11", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was. Uh-huh. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 284, + "timestamp": "00:57:14", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there any point that you felt comfortable?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 285, + "timestamp": "00:57:18", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah. But then but then I'm not too embarrassed to be, to make a fool of myself and communication with gestures. No, no, I felt fine about it, I mean, I knew certainly that I didn't have the command of the language that I would have liked, but I felt comfortable enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 286, + "timestamp": "00:57:56", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But we're coming to the end of the first year. So coming toward the end of the first year. Did you have any vacation breaks in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 287, + "timestamp": "00:58:13", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure, we would. We would leave on an extended weekend breaks periodically and go to, if not the capital, is not Maceió, the we would go to what they call the capital of the northeast, which was Recife, which was further north from us. Four-hour bus ride. Much bigger city." + }, + { + "turn_id": 288, + "timestamp": "00:58:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were being paid by Peace Corps, plus a leave allowance I think?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 289, + "timestamp": "00:58:49", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some time and I don't recall if it was a leave allowance or not. I mean, we certainly had time off to take a vacation once a year. And for those, we would probably go to Rio de Janeiro or Salvador. For extended weekends we’d go to Recife." + }, + { + "turn_id": 290, + "timestamp": "00:59:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And where did you go for Mardi Gras?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 291, + "timestamp": "00:59:13", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, one Mardi Gras we spent in Atalaia, and we didn't try to do Rio on Mardi Gras. It was just too much. We probably didn't have that much money saved up for that anyway. But yeah, Mardi Gras in Brazil is big, big deal." + }, + { + "turn_id": 292, + "timestamp": "00:59:37", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Through the year, were you kind of writing back to the families?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 293, + "timestamp": "00:59:46", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, just that we missed them a lot. A lot was going on in the United States then too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 294, + "timestamp": "00:59:55", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Be able to stay in touch with what was going on?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 295, + "timestamp": "00:59:57", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, because I'd have, I've read Time magazine from cover to cover. I mean, all of the letters to the editor, everything little ad in there, just devour the magazine. That became a kind of a real bonding time for me and the Time magazine. And then I read an awful lot out of the foot locker that they would still have the foot lockers. That was great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 296, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All the books you always intended to read, there they were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 297, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I mean, speaking of my language proficiency or lack thereof. Some of the other volunteers, some of the singles, would even read the Brazilian magazines. Now I never, I read a Brazilian magazine just the way I would look at LIFE. Just look at the photos. And I've read a few of the words, but I didn't get into the stories as much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 298, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did the group get together at any point, usually between first and second year." + }, + { + "turn_id": 299, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did. We did. And in fact." + }, + { + "turn_id": 300, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it the whole training group from Brattleboro or just your regional?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 301, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, just our region. And I recall one of the group meetings was held at some regional school building. And they brought in some people with U.S. AID who were going to talk about gardening. And see, all of a sudden, at that time, that's one of the things that precipitated, really jump-started doing stuff that I thought really might make sense. Then they brought someone in to talk about sanitation, water, some other. I must say that they made valiant stabs at attempting to give us ideas. Little seeds of interest that might, you know, might grow into something. And that was helpful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 302, + "timestamp": "01:02:21", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But they weren't out there doing it. They were sort of relying on you to be on the front line." + }, + { + "turn_id": 303, + "timestamp": "01:02:29", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's right. That's right. Here are some ideas, if it fits with your community, take it and run with it. Call us if you need some help." + }, + { + "turn_id": 304, + "timestamp": "01:02:37", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. You were mentioning AID people. Do you recall sharing your experiences with others in your group and how did it match up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 305, + "timestamp": "01:02:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. In fact, some of them came by to see what I have done and how I had done it. But I was trying to share all of that information too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 306, + "timestamp": "01:03:01", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But your sense of frustration was not unique and I mean, when you talk to the other volunteers in the group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 307, + "timestamp": "01:03:06", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that's right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 308, + "timestamp": "01:03:07", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Had many of the group going home?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 309, + "timestamp": "01:03:11", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not many." + }, + { + "turn_id": 310, + "timestamp": "01:03:17", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you take a major vacation break between the first and second year?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 311, + "timestamp": "01:03:23", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we did. We went to Rio and from Rio we went to Brasilia, Sao Paolo. We made all of the rounds of the large cities there and then back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 312, + "timestamp": "01:03:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, now returning back to the second year, it sometimes happens with people. They now sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel. We're talking about going into the second year, whether you know that your tour was going to be over within a year and sometimes people say, well before I go, I'd like to achieve this much. Don't let me put words in your mouth. Was there any sense of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 313, + "timestamp": "01:04:19", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. We were just hopeful that we would be able to cope with it with the frustration. As it ended up, we did make a move from the town of Atalaia to a larger town of Panehu, and that was probably for the last nine months or six to nine months of our stay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 314, + "timestamp": "01:04:49", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did that come about?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 315, + "timestamp": "01:04:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was just over some political pressures in the city. There was some, some strife and discontent over the garden issue. And as it ended up, we were not getting quite the support we thought we needed. There were some personality issues involved too as it ended up. It was just kind of resolved that it's probably better if we relocated to this other city." + }, + { + "turn_id": 316, + "timestamp": "01:05:25", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now you, you initiated this in talks with the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 317, + "timestamp": "01:05:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, with staff. And everybody kind of decided that was probably better." + }, + { + "turn_id": 318, + "timestamp": "01:05:36", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Gwen was pretty much content with it as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 319, + "timestamp": "01:05:42", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, we were all. We'd all kind of tried to evaluate what we thought." + }, + { + "turn_id": 320, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So was the feeling that staying another six eight months there was not going to really accomplish anything." + }, + { + "turn_id": 321, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not any more than what we had done, we didn't think. And in fact, we were encountering resistance from some of the leadership there. So we had apparently, as I say, I was unaware that I maybe had stepped on some toes in doing what we did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 322, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But obviously, I mean, on one level, you successful in having introduced change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 323, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I felt so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 324, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the fact that the resistance occurred is the proof, you know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 325, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, maybe, maybe. But regardless of the circumstances were such that it just needed, it deserved a change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 326, + "timestamp": "01:06:33", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was your new the new assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 327, + "timestamp": "01:06:38", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we went to Panehu, which was a much larger city, about 30,000, and that we located in a small, smaller little house on kind of a farm outside of town. A bigger, bigger city, but in a more remote location." + }, + { + "turn_id": 328, + "timestamp": "01:07:09", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Other volunteers in the town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 329, + "timestamp": "01:07:12", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "One other volunteer. One other volunteer, who lived in the city." + }, + { + "turn_id": 330, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Doing what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 331, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He was working with teachers, but at a higher level. I mean, this was a, I don't know what, I guess would be the sort of high school type teachers. You know, so I continued my gardening there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 332, + "timestamp": "01:07:39", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was the base against which you worked in the second location?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 333, + "timestamp": "01:07:44", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The base?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 334, + "timestamp": "01:07:49", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I mean, the school? You didn't just start a garden" + }, + { + "turn_id": 335, + "timestamp": "01:07:51", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, actually, at that point, I think I just kind of. I remember I had gotten much more frustrated by now, and I did gardening, but I didn't have a project. I tried to just go around and work with the locals in trying to, you know, I didn't try to put on a big garden project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 336, + "timestamp": "01:08:25", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Got it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 337, + "timestamp": "01:08:26", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I just tried to work with the local people and try and encourage them to plant gardens and help them with it and then distribute seeds as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 338, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was what was the source of the frustration then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 339, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think because I had I thought I had started a pretty good project. Thought it was reasonably well pursued. But then out of it came these political problems. And it wasn't something I could cope with when I didn't have political power. And I didn't feel like trying to start another type of project. Frankly, I wasn't sure what else start at the time. At that time I was just beginning to get frustrated with the whole program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 340, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But not willing to say, let's go home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 341, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no, I wouldn't have said that. And but as it ends up, I didn't find another substitute project that was a good alternative." + }, + { + "turn_id": 342, + "timestamp": "01:09:48", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And Gwen, in the second assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 343, + "timestamp": "01:09:50", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Still working with teachers, still found teachers to work with. But this other guy did have high school teachers that he was working with. And she was able to work with some of the other teachers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 344, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "On a side topic, do you recall any point in the two years encountering much anti-American feelings against you personally?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 345, + "timestamp": "01:10:15", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, somewhat. I mean, we were from Texas. We had lived in Houston. My wife's from Dallas, but it was still fresh on everybody's mind. The assassination of Kennedy. Kennedy was a beloved figure because he was Catholic, but also because of his real pro-Latin relationships. And so there was there was some. Not really resentment, but they were leery of us, whether we were CIA operatives or what, but being from Texas, that added an element to it to them. They didn't, there wasn't out antagonism, but they questioned that. As far as anti-Americanism, just because we were Americans, yes, there was there was some skepticism as to whether we really were legitimate Peace Corps volunteers or something in the guise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 346, + "timestamp": "01:11:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that would reinforce the, you know, people opposing the farm project that you had worked on" + }, + { + "turn_id": 347, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Could have." + }, + { + "turn_id": 348, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you don’t know for sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 349, + "timestamp": "01:11:43", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't. Some of that just could have been somewhat some jealousy also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 350, + "timestamp": "01:11:55", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So as you come into the end of the second year and your tour’s over. What’s your sense of, was it worth the two of you being there and, you know, could you match up some feeling of accomplishment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 351, + "timestamp": "01:12:12", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, we could. I was, I had mixed feelings, anger and frustration. By then, I had gotten angry about the war, even more so. Angry about, but I don't actually bother chronologically put it together as to whether Martin Luther King had been assassinated. There was a series of excruciating events. Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, of course John Kennedy. I mean, the deaths in Vietnam, at that point were just increasingly horrible." + }, + { + "turn_id": 352, + "timestamp": "01:13:05", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So leaving then what was your plan?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 353, + "timestamp": "01:13:08", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Leaving Brazil? Well, we missed the States and were eager to get back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 354, + "timestamp": "01:13:22", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you didn't backpack it up the peninsula." + }, + { + "turn_id": 355, + "timestamp": "01:13:30", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "In fact, we when we left, we flew down to Uruguay, Montevideo, then on to Buenos Aires and then flew on back. Almost, we debated about stopping in Mexico City but we didn’t. Yeah, but we were kind of eager to get that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 356, + "timestamp": "01:13:53", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You recall your reaction coming back together. You came back to Houston or Dallas?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 357, + "timestamp": "01:13:56", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. We came back to Dallas. We decided to try Dallas. I was going to shift gears. I had gotten my business administration degree. I really wanted to get into something more liberal arts. I took some philosophy courses and took a political science course and I envisioned maybe getting involved with science." + }, + { + "turn_id": 358, + "timestamp": "01:14:27", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is when you after you came back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 359, + "timestamp": "01:14:31", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. You know, I just knew I wanted to do something different, I thought. Well, we found out that Gwen was pregnant with our twins. I immediately altered that course, I mean, I finished those courses as well, yeah, but they weren't going to lead to any gainful employment, so I took a job. But anyway, coming back here, we both felt really disjointed, disconnected with our peers, the ones that we left behind. We came back radically different people. We've never been radicals, but it had a significant altering effect on our outlook and who we what I think the kind of people we are and we found it difficult to adjust and slow for us to adjust. This was fortunate to had one. We slowly got back involved in some of the activities we've been involved in before, but uh, with a totally different outlook. We're grateful for that. But it certainly keeps you, well the lifeline. The people that we do have as friends. We just think it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 360, + "timestamp": "01:16:26", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But I'm not sure this is something you want to get into, but have you stayed in touch with others in the group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 361, + "timestamp": "01:16:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, we've served with what is through reunions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 362, + "timestamp": "01:16:38", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Have you traveled back to Brazil?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 363, + "timestamp": "01:16:41", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We have not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 364, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I wouldn't see any high motivation to do so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 365, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We did not, we have not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 366, + "timestamp": "01:16:52", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "One of the third purposes of the Peace Corps is that in coming back, you inform others about the Third World by your experience. Have you been able to do much of that? It can be very tough at times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 367, + "timestamp": "01:17:04", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, no, I think that is expressed through our thoughts and our conversations with people. Just because I think that now colors our whole outlook on things. And I think it's I think it's communicated in very subtle but strong ways just in our thought process." + }, + { + "turn_id": 368, + "timestamp": "01:17:32", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. Your whole life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 369, + "timestamp": "01:17:33", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But I don't go around doing speeches or talking to the Kiwanis or anything about it. I thought about it, but I haven't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 370, + "timestamp": "01:17:44", + "speaker": "Robert Klein", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Anything else about the experience you'd like to mention?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 371, + "timestamp": "01:17:48", + "speaker": "Wilson K. Mason", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I'm grateful for it. Despite the intense criticism I had. But no, I'm very grateful for the experience. We didn't have. We’ve even had thoughts of wondering whether we should reconsider, fleeting, but we've had those thoughts. We can discuss it." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00250", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-008.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Schnek, William (1962-1964): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-MR-2011-002-008", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-008", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "William (Bill) Schnek served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia from 1962 to 1964 on a rural development project (Bolivia II). He had completed one year of college when he took the exam. He was assigned to work with the Heifer Project based in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Schnek describes how the Heifer Project was introducing new animals into Bolivia. He states that the experience fundamentally changed his life, especially because he ended up marrying a Bolivian woman who was raised in Argentina. They have maintained contact with many people in Cochabamba. Schnek feels that he got more out of the Peace Corps experience than he gave, particularly from working with the youth. Interviewed and recorded by Sharleen Hirschi Simpson, June 23, 2009. 1 tape (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "23 June 2009", + "extent": "1 audio cassette (mono; 43 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "009. Bolivia.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Bolivia. Schnek, William (1962-1964): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Bolivia", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "MR-2011-002", + "transcript": "RPCV-MR-2011-002-008-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/r1a2424315vnwhu1u65c36317j02h27w.pdf?odc=20231115173834-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/bf456fdb-da10-4a1b-a4ca-f3bce88c13ae/9e8d975f-dbf1-4440-9670-63a49351b077/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzIyYmJfNTQxZDFjY2M0YTg3NDgxZTVlZmNmYmI5MWEyZDU5YzQ5NTY0YzRmYzE0YWJhOTNiOGE2NjhhYjNlNDE2OWI2ZV8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS9iZjQ1NmZkYi1kYTEwLTRhMWItYTRjYS1mM2JjZTg4YzEzYWUvOWU4ZDk3NWYtZGJmMS00NDQwLTk2NzAtNjNhNDkzNTFiMDc3L21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Branson, Missouri", + "length": "19 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed November 30, 2010, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "William Schnek Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson" + ], + "respondents": [ + "William Schnek" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "This is June 23, 2009, and I'm Sharleen Hirschi Simpson interviewing Bill Schnek from the Bolivia II group. OK, Bill, first, I'm just going to ask you to think back about before you went in the Peace Corps and to think about what happened and why you decided to go into it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:29", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I had went to college at Fenn College, which is today, Cleveland State University in Cleveland. And I spent, I was in my first year fresh off the farm and with the idea of going into premed or some scientific program. And I was having a tough time of it because I came from a very small school high school and there's only 16 others in our class. 17 actually. And this program was announced by John Fitzgerald Kennedy. So over Easter, I walked down to the federal building and took the exams for admittance to the Peace Corps and didn't give it a lot of thought. After that, after the quarter was over, my problem was, this was a co-op school and it was very that time was very difficult for me to find a job. So that was one of the reasons I applied. I went home in June. My parents were away on vacation. And lo and behold, a few days after they had left, there was a telegram that came and said, you are accepted. And then all of these forms and permissions began arriving. And when my mother came home and found out that I had an airplane ticket to go to Arizona, she started crying. I was the oldest. And that's how it came about." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:02:09", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, I don't need to ask you how your parents reacted because you just told me. OK, so how did you hear about that announcement? Was it in the papers or at school or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:02:23", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I actually don't remember where I first heard of it. I mean, it was a popular program, was one of John Fitzgerald’s early initiatives. He made this promise and carried it out approximately on the first of the year in 2000, excuse me, 1962 it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:02:51", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK. And what project were you invited to join? Can you tell us something about that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:02:56", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We were, I was asked. I was with the Heifer Project. Our administrator was the Heifer Project and it was suggested that this would be an appropriate vehicle for me because of my agricultural background. I had been raised on a farm, my parents and grandparents on both sides of my family were farmers and had much practical experience. I've been through the FFA Future Farmers of America program for each program, and my whole life revolved around agriculture at that point. So this is what they believed they needed for Bolivia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:03:44", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have a specific country in mind when you applied?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:03:47", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I took the Spanish exam because I had a few months introductory Spanish in college and I think that was probably the reason I was selected for Bolivia. They just said, well, he’s had a little bit of Spanish, we’ll send him there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:04:07", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, OK. And did you do anything special once you found out you were going to go in the Peace Corps to get ready to go?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:04:16", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they set oodles of instructions, you know. Packed so many blue jeans and packed chambray shirts and work boots and the list went on and on. So we were well, we were purportedly at least well prepared." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:04:35", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, now let's talk about the training a little bit. Where did you do your training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:04:42", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, first they took us to Tempe, Arizona, and Dr. Maynard Parker was the coordinator with the university for us. And again, this was the year that we were in a brand new scenario and nobody really knew what worked and what didn't. So Dr. Parker confessed to us that he was just sort of winging it. But he set up a program of instruction and they brought in many experts on Bolivia to talk to us in the lecture hall. And we got our series of shots and hard physical training right in the Arizona State University coach. And he trained us and emphasized that it was very strict, very, very tough physical training. And then after approximately a month, they took us out to the Maricopa Indian Reservation and we lived in trailers on the reservation and continued our physical training in the early in the morning and intensive Spanish courses. And they brought up professors from the university. I remember, Dr. Erts Parker was the poultry specialist at that time and they had a chicken coop out there. And he just gave us very practical advice for raising chickens. And we did some engineering. We actually had a couple civil engineers with us in our group. They didn't go to Bolivia with us, but they we set up transoms and did a land leveling. In Arizona at that time this was an important agricultural operation. They took desert and it was slightly rolling. And they would you take a big landscaping machine, cut off the tops of the and fill in the low spots and grade it to a level so that it could be irrigated. You had to have a slope to a low corner and then you'd either dig dirt ditches or concrete ditches. The fields we worked in actually had a concrete ditch, irrigation ditch on two sides of it, or at least one side of it. I remember the concrete because one of our group caught a rattlesnake from underneath it, put it in a gunnysack, took it back to the university." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:06:56", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Um, so is that the only place you trained?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:07:01", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. After we were finished in Arizona, they we got an airplane. This is a big adventure for me. This is actually we were just on the verge of the jet age. Everything we did was in prop planes. They flew us to Puerto Rico and that was a big adventure in itself. We landed in Fort Worth or Dallas and everything was closed down because it was Sunday. So we didn't get to do anything. Then the next stage was one of the other places we landed was in New Orleans. We were we had a little bit more time. So all of us headed right down to the French Quarter. And, you know, this was a lot of our group were still teenagers and it was a big adventure. But it was just a few hours that we landed in Puerto Rico. We were trained again at the University of Mayaguez in tropical agriculture, for the most part, an intensive. Excuse me, I'm getting it mixed up. First of all, we went to one of the old CCC camps up in the hills and we had very tough physical training the entire day. We spent approximately three weeks, something like that, four weeks, rappelling, life saving in the pool learn to swim, endurance tests we went through. One of our group stated that he had been in the army and this training was tougher than his basic training. And for example, we had to swim out to a buoy about a half mile out in the ocean and come back. And we were taught how to float in the water. We could encourage that if you follow these techniques, you can either stay afloat for eight hours a day with no external help. It was to build our self-esteem. But after we got to Bolivia, it was became very, very, very useful because we were in good shape and at the altitude of La Paz is 12,000 feet, the oxygen is very limited and we needed to be in good shape." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:09:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So do you remember anything about the time in Mayagüez with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:09:18", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That we spent about a month at the University of Mayaguez. It was actually a pleasant time. And again, it was mostly to acclimate us to speaking Spanish. And I must say that I didn't really conquer Spanish until after I got married. And, you know, Puerto Rico, everybody speaks English anyway, for the most part, and their variety of what I was going to say is once we got to Bolivia, they sent me to an area where no one spoke Spanish. So excellent government planning again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:09:58", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So after Puerto Rico, then did you go to Bolivia or what happened?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:10:02", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So we, they gave us. This is October. I was home for my birthday, which is October 12. We had two weeks leave to spend with our families before they shipped this overseas. And then we had airplane tickets. I know they should be through New York, but I had a short helicopter ride out to Newark to fly home, which I've never been in a helicopter before. That was a big adventure. And we reunited in Miami at the airport. And while we were waiting there, we got some mysterious notice that we were supposed to be in our room at a certain time on that night, and they turned the television on. Well lo and behold, it was President Kennedy announcing the Cuban Missile Crisis. So we had no idea what was happening. They sent somebody, an emissary, down from Washington to talk to our group. And he said, we are not going to send you overseas. We're going to take you someplace else because you are for the most part of conscription age. And we might need you to fight a war. This is what we were told. And they shipped it off to Brattleboro, Vermont, and we were there for approximately a month and the crisis subsided. Then we went to Bolivia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:11:18", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how was it being in Brattleboro, Vermont?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:11:21", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For the most part, boring. This was our plan. We had no program as such." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:11:28", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. So, all right. When you first got to Bolivia, what did you think when you were coming into Bolivia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:11:39", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, when you come off to the Altiplano. At that time the Alto was not populated. There was maybe a mud hut here and there. And you as you come through the gates at the top of the plain and go into the valley, there was a big gatepost, as it were. You go underneath that, it’s painted in Coca-Cola, little advertisement there. You come over the top of that rise and there is a city laid out below you. And it's very deep, very steep. And oftentimes there are mudslides and part of the city will give way. But the wind back and forth and back and forth until you get down to the depths. But we stayed for the most part of the upper city. At a hotel." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:12:31", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so did you how long did you stay in the place? Where did you end up? SCHNEK:` If I remember correctly, it was approximately two weeks that we went through a little orientation. It was, again, to allow us a little time for our bodies to adapt. I believe in part because if you need it, you need to generally speaking, you need to rest for three days or so when you arrive at an altitude like that to acclimatize yourself slightly because it takes about a year before you're truly acclimatize. Then we had blue jeeps that were given to our group and we formed a caravan and traveled down to Cochabamba. At that time, it took about 12 hours. The trip was normally about 12 hours. Very unpaved roads, very dangerous in spots on the road to vehicles could not pass. And if you came upon someone coming from the opposite direction, sometimes you'd have to back up. You got to a little wider spot or they would have to back up until you could pass each other. And there were many accidents at a time. And even though there were other people, they understand there's still many, many accidents. You'd be driving right over the edge and maybe there will be a drop off at three thousand feet. It was dizzying.\n\nOk, now, when you got to Cochabamba, what did you end up doing, what was what were you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:14:09", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Mel Zelinksi and myself were assigned to the 4H program, equivalent of the 4H program, because of our experience. And so I, for the most part, worked out of the central agricultural office in Cochabamba. And Mr. Wolf, Claude Wolfe, who was our Heifer Project monitor, you know, he was our director, the person we were responsible to, kept a close watch on us because there's four of us that were barely 19 at the time. And he gives a little special. Actually Mel Zelinski and I lived very close to Claude and June and Claude had his family there, all three of his children at the time also. And after a while we start getting bored. So when are we going to do something? And I start questioning around and decided, I was decided by the agriculture people there and our counterparts in Cochabamba that I could go out to a village called Arani. Now the Cochabamba Valley consists of seven valleys, seven major valleys, and Arani is one of the farthest away. You know, it took about an hour to drive out there. And I pretty much spent the rest of my time in that village. But Claude would call us back for a weekly, I mean, a monthly meeting at his house. He wanted to keep us in contact and make certain that we went to church in the morning on Sunday and so forth." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:15:53", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was your impression of the local people out there that day?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:16:02", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, you have to remember their history. 1952, the Indians, the population, the native population, rebelled against this very thin veneer of the old line oligarchy. And they took their lands back because it was a feudal society before that. And the oligarchy at this point that, this was this was a mere 10 years later. And the Indians, they made it, the Bolivians made a bad mistake in the Chaco War. They armed the Indians to fight the war because the Bolivians just simply didn't have enough people that they could trust to fight the Uruguayans. And that, excuse me, the Paraguayans. And the Paraguayans won that war, doubled their territory. But the Indians, when they came back and I you know, I don't know what the proper term is, we always call them Indians because they're the natives there. And they hid their arms when they came back from the war. And in 1952, they pulled those arms out and they slaughtered any of the oligarchy that they found out on their haciendas. And those people who could escape went to the major cities. They just abandoned their holdings and the Indians took over operating these landholdings.\n\nSo what we have there is a patchwork of small holdings, none of it surveyed. And oftentimes it's just far. I remember at one point I was asked to calculate the area of a small piece of triangular land because there wasn't, the my counterpart, who is an agricultural engineer, that is not an agricultural engineer, doesn't translate the same as it would be here in the United States. It's more of a general agronomist. And he asked me to calculate the area. And I did it slightly different than he did. My basis of math was apparently better than his. And so we avoided a fight among two groups that way. But it was a very impressive. When the Indians wanted to show their force, for whatever reason, they could assemble many thousands of people, get them out on these big trucks. They all get their rifles out and then go to Cochabamba and just show that they could do what they wanted and the authorities could do nothing. The militia, I mean, it wasn't militia. It was the syndicate, los sindicatos." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:18:51", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, now tell me a little bit about the job that you did and where you lived. Did you still keep living in Cochabamba?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:19:01", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had a room, Claude said. He said, when you come to Cochabamba, we're going to get you a room. And I actually roomed with the agricultural director there, Oscar Rocha and his wife. They're very nice people, Oscar. He was actually raised on the estancia in Argentina, but he and he had a degree. He was an agricultural engineer, also agronomist. And so he wasn't typically Bolivian. And it was very nice, very nice family. But so I would come in maybe once a week on the train. They had a little something called baracareles or altocareles, which were a gasoline driven engine that ran on the rails. And I would ride that into Cochabamba for our monthly meeting with the Wolfs and generally come in once a week. We'd have, meetings we'd have to attend here, there and so forth. But mostly I worked with the 4H kids out in the province. They had no one to work with this group. We actually organized 4H, Quattro Essay [4S], in that village. I worked with the kids my age or younger for the most part. Now, later on the Heifer Project. For those who might not know what the Heifer Project is, basically it was formed for the more developed countries to donate animals to areas which didn't have the animal genetics that we did in more developed countries. For example, a cow down there might give three or four quarts of milk a day, whereas here in the States, you might get as much as 100 pounds a day or thereabouts. I mean, so the premise was to bring in animals.\n\nWe would select, we as the operating arm on the spot there, would select people to donate these animals to. When the animals had offspring, those animals came back to the Heifer Project and other participants were selected. And in theory, it would form an unbroken chain continuing on this process. And the original animals after the first offspring were given were there was no further requirement. They just became the property of the people who were taking care of them. And it's very, very effective program. And the first planeloads of animals that came in, Claude asked me to go down from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz. They flew them into Santa Cruz. And I ran the quarantine of these animals, was down there and babysit an animal for approximately a month and lived right with the animals, took their temperature daily, gave them injections and vaccinations as needed, under the direction of the other representatives in Santa Cruz. He'd come out once every two or three days, take a look at me and see how things going. But we brought in some brown Swiss cows, brought in some pigs, brought in some sheep and chickens and rabbits. And when I went back to my village, I arranged so we could take some of the sheep out, rams, because the wool was the yield was much, much better. And goats, goats. That was popular also because the goats that I introduced in my village would actually give as much milk as their cows. And of course the goat would consume much less food." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:22:54", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Great. OK, so talking about you said that where you went, they didn't speak Spanish. What did they speak?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:23:03", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Quechua." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Quechua?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:23:05", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So were you able to learn to communicate in there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:23:08", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No. I mean, that's one of the reasons my Spanish didn't get very good while I was there. My counterpart pretty much translated everything. And he wasn't a native speaker either." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:23:23", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had work time, you talked something about that. What did you do in your free time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:23:31", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, of course, the big thing was go on every weekend or every other weekend back to Cochabamba. Look up my buddies. We’d go down to the local shop, have an ice cream sundae or something like that. And that was pretty much rhetoric, recreation. But I did take a vacation. Three of us went to Lima, Peru. We traveled up to La Paz and took the steamer across Lake Titicaca to Juliaca in Peru. And from there, we took the train to Cusco. From Cusco, after we toured Cusco. I have many pretty pictures of that. I took many, many slides. We flew from there to Lima. Now this time, the airplanes were again, they were still prop planes. And the cabins were unpressurized. So we were we were flying probably 8,000 feet or higher and our oxygen consisted, they dropped these masks down out of the overhead compartment. We would place them on so we wouldn't be oxygen deprived. And that was that's the way we traveled back there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:24:54", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, OK. When you got to the end of the first year, was there any, were any notable events or anything that that happened, particularly that you remember? After you’ve been there a year and gotten adjusted and all that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:25:15", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Bolivia, there's nothing certain except that it's constantly in revolt. Governments constantly change. And in my experience with Bolivia, I remember there was one day they had three different presidents. Not during my term, when I served there, but I married a girl from, her family was from Cochabamba, her father’s side of the family was from Cochabamba, and her mother was from a small village in the south of Bolivia, mining community, but she was actually born in Argentina and raised in Argentina. So I had many opportunities go back in Bolivia and I kept close track of things that are happening even now." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:26:06", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So if you think back on your Peace Corps experience, tell me about some of the events or the things that happened that you remember most?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:26:20", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, Claude threatened to send me home at one point. Because I flew into Trinidad, which is in the, in the headwaters of the Amazon, very flat country, you know, a big swamp. And I wanted to go upriver to the head, to Chapare, which is a day's travel from Cochabamba. And I went down to the waterfront and talked to somebody. I had missed the ferry, the riverboat. There's a riverboat coming and going all the time. And for some reason I got the time wrong or they said, oh, it just left. And I was talking to him and he said, we're going to go up and cut timber and you can take the canoe with us. He said, we'll catch up with them in two or three hours, but it was two weeks and we never did catch up with him." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were lost." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They knew where they were. I didn't know where I was. But we had, our diet consist mostly of bananas and dried, it’s a yam or a cassava root. We had powdered cassava that you’d scoop some water out of the river and make a little paste out of it and eat that. But my diet mostly consisted of bananas. We got up there, we stopped at a banana plantation, and the owner there was actually hiding out. He was an ex-Nazi. And again, this is 1963. And he was happy to have somebody to talk to and he was very friendly and he said, you've been, you've been having, your diet hasn't been very good. He said we’ll get some the fish and you can come with us. So you know, the river's wind back and forth and cut new channels and they'll leave like a small pond or a large lake cut off from the main river flow. And these are filled with fish. So we went out there in the boats and this guy reached down, got something out of a canoe. It was dynamite. He threw it out there and boom! And the fish would float to the top of the water. Some were large, as large as I was. And but they tasted very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:28:58", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's quite an interesting, um. OK, did you have any." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:29:07", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "But anyway, Claude was very worried about me because nobody knew where I was. It took me much longer than I expected and I ended up at the same place I started from back in Trinidad because there was a ferry boat there, riverboat, didn't have any motor, not a working motor. So we just sort of loaded a couple rafts with bananas and floated back down to Trinidad. And Claude called me into his office and said, Bill, he said, if you ever do anything like this, he said, I said, I'm going to send you home. OK. And of course, I never did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:29:46", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, well, what about, uh, did you have any health problems when you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Constant diarrhea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, that's I mean, for a lot of people that was a problem, I know." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:29:59", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nothing major other than that constant. I went down to, when I left, I was weighing about 178, something like that. And I went down to 140 pounds within a year. I did go up the Sucre to participate in the United States building project up there. They had a project going on. I was sent up there for a month. I wasn't much help at all to be honest." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:30:26", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you talked about the taking the trip to Lima. Was that the only time that you took, like a vacation or anything like that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How about did you have a relationship with the family that you were living with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:30:42", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I stayed with my counterparts, the title was counterparts. He had a degree and was working as an agricultural extension agent in the village of Arani. And I participated with him and worked as a sort of a junior. I mean, they did label me as an agricultural extension agent. So I speak, you know, I talk about the animals, but we did a lot of demonstrations on cultivating what we would call crops here. Of course, this is the home of the potato. And we would go out and look at crops and give advice, spray chemicals, how to keep disease under control. I work with kids on planters, you know, planting vegetables, onions. I remember we had very good success with this one kid. He raised a very good crop and then he would bundle them up and get on a train or the trucks. The major transport was trucks, you’d crawl in the back of the truck. And for a few pesos, you could ride to the village and I traveled that way many times to and there was busses, bus services again. The only difference between that and the truck was you got to sit down maybe. Yes. But he would bundle in big bundles and put it on top of the truck or the bus and take it to the open air market in Cochabamba. He sold them and for him was very huge success. But other crops also." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:32:25", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you ever able to follow any of those kids that you worked with?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:32:29", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I went back approximately four years later. I went out to the village, and at that time there was an American construction crew building a pipeline, oil pipeline, from Santa Cruz up across the Andes. And I talked to a couple of them, but everything had been disrupted." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:32:55", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Ok, so when you got to the end of your tour, what did you think about what you had done there? Did you feel like it was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:33:09", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the honest truth is, of course, in many of these situations, particularly in mine, I just felt that I had received much more out of the experience than I was able to give yet. I look back and add up all the things that I did do, and I think I did a considerable amount of good also. Improved agricultural practice and working with youth. The population, the native population, is very insular. It's very hard to break through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:33:42", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you feel like you were able to break through that, after time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:33:49", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, somewhat." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:33:50", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes, it's kind of difficult trying to be an insider when you're really an outsider." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:33:58", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. In Queche, you know, being in a situation like that, you do pick up some of the language a little bit. And I found out my nickname was the Red Man because I would tend to blush easily." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:34:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And they probably enjoyed making you do that. So if you had it to do over again, would you have done anything differently?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:34:24", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, but it fundamentally changed my life, that experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:34:29", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did it change your life?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:34:33", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, for one thing, I found Martha and I will be celebrating our forty-fifth wedding anniversary this October." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:34:40", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you met her while you were in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:34:41", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's one fundamental change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:34:45", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well that’s pretty significant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:34:46", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If I came back and completed my agricultural degree. I actually received a degree I once spent went back to our training site in Arizona, the Arizona State University, went there a couple of years. That was very pleasant being out there. And then I got a lot of pressure to come back to Ohio. So I went back and actually got my degree at Ohio State University and 21 years later, I got another degree in accounting. I am a CPA today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:35:19", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I was going to say, I forgot to ask you in the beginning what you were doing today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:35:23", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, actually, I'm working for human services in our county as the accountant, and a job in family services is the proper name." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:35:37", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, do you think?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:35:38", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's just a sideline. My major occupation is still the farm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:35:41", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah. Do you think that, um, that well, the goals that they had listed or was the technical assistance and to promote better understanding of the U.S. and also better understanding of other people by Americans, how do you think all those goals, you ended up with all those goals?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:36:06", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:36:11", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You did all of them. Have you continued any kind of involvement with Bolivia since you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:36:17", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes. I mean, my sister in law lives in Bolivia. My wife has one sister. There's five of those children. Her mother had five children. Only two have lived. My wife and her sister. And I have very strong contacts yet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:36:35", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think, well, that really was a major change for you, because that's never changed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's true." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Big time. Yeah. Uh, have you or you said that you're, the effect of the Peace Corps service was a change of career. What were you going to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:36:56", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I didn't say that. I came back and I mean, I was." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:36:58", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You just came back and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:36:59", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I completed my agricultural degree. Well, yes. I mean, initially I started out, but the first year of college is just general anyway. And it oriented me. I said, well, you know, why be unnatural about this? My training, my inclination is agricultural. I'll stay with that. Went and got my agricultural degree at Hofsted University, entered graduate school for two quarters, dropped out, went to Argentina. We actually ranched in Argentina for three years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:37:28", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, in Argentina." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:37:29", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, how was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, Argentina's pleasant." + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:37:35", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you think that being in the Peace Corps helped you in later years to do the things that you ended up doing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:37:42", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:37:44", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How particularly what did you gain from that experience? That seems to be useful." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:37:57", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What did I gain? Yeah, it's such a big question. I don't know where to start." + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:38:03", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You start little." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:38:11", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Today, for example, in the grain markets that we have. People come and ask me, what is the situation in Argentina? Last year, they had a heavy drought, I mean, a very severe drought, and as a result, our soybean prices have increased considerably. And I'm still asked my opinion on conditions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:38:38", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In Bolivia?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Bolivia is not an agricultural and a large agricultural producer. I mean, it's so isolated with the mountains along the Andean mountains on the west side of the country. And the big swamp headquarters headlands of the Amazon on the other. It's still a very insular country there. For the most part, they are self-sufficient today. That's not true when we went. They had to import a lot of food. But today they actually do have a slight exportable agricultural surplus. But that could change." + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:39:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, that's. Is there anything else that you think of that we haven't talked about that, that you would like to add about the experience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:39:26", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the time that we allotted is nearly up, and I probably talked enough." + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:39:32", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "No, if you like to say anything more that’s fine. Whatever, otherwise." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:39:40", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I follow the situation right now, and as you know, the present president is the first Native American president ever elected and he won with a plurality. That is something. I remember when I was out Arizona State University, one of my professors asking me, because at that time when I left Bolivia, approximately 90 percent of the population was pureblood Incan, Quecha, Aymara. And only and maybe two or three percent of the population, maybe as high as seven percent, was what you would call European. And the rest was a mixed blood. And I responded to him, what's the future of Bolivia? And I responded to him, I said at that time, I believe the native culture will take over. And this is what we're seeing today. I mean, they have elected a bicameral legislature, which is for the most part, Native American. They have a Native American president who until very recently was head of the Coca Growers Association. I have some views on that also. You will never stop, you will never stop coca cultivation in Bolivia. And the State Department officials that try to do this are just wasting our money. I mean, that's the home of coca." + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:41:09", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Part of their culture." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Part of their culture. They have raised it since they've been populating that area of the globe. They used to have these big bales of coca leaves in the market. I mean, it's just something that is part of their culture. They do not use cocaine like we do. They chew the leaves. It gives a slow release with the alkali substance. You get a slow release. It helps, it's sort of like taking aspirin and it's just a way to cope with the trials that they go through in their daily living. And of course, lately we've mechanized that, or somebody has mechanized it. The drug lords and made a very high income cash crop work, and what other alternatives do the farmers there have? Not many, none that will match that income. I mean, the U.S. State Department is not. It will run into resistance in any endeavor they have tried to eradicate that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:42:14", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Too strong of a cultural tradition." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:42:16", + "speaker": "William Schnek", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, it is. And I have, I remember we had back talked about some of my professors at Ohio State University and they were working with the State Department in this problem, and that was his opinion also. He said the only way we're going to eradicate this is to stop the use here in the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:42:36", + "speaker": "Sharleen Hirschi Simpson", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I think so too yeah. OK, well thank you, Bill." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00201", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-MR-2005-025-022.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Stevenson, William (1963-1965): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-MR-2005-025-022", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-MR-2005-025-022", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "William (Sandy) Stevenson served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Colombia from 1963 to 1965 as an architect. He trained at the University of New Mexico with an emphasis on language. He assisted in organizing farmers into co-ops to better market produce. He also designed libraries and schools based on the function and need of individual towns. His goal was to let the townspeople realize that Americans are real people. Interviewed and recorded by Ernest Zaremba, August 21, 2004. 2 tapes (web streaming files combined into 1 file).", + "dates_of_materials": "21 August 2004", + "extent": "2 audio cassettes (stereo; 85 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "020. Colombia.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Colombia. Stevenson, William (1963-1965): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Colombia", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "MR-2005-025", + "transcript": "RPCV-MR-2005-025-022-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/10d6s0rsp5227ricwx5e73e46ul3b4yy.pdf?odc=20231115173941-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/5b1a788f-8134-452e-b6f6-5c48c9b7f98a/11d713e6-414d-44d7-90fd-77b3655a6781/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzJlNzVfMDE5YjZhZDU3MDllMGZiMTEwMmRhNDc0OGZhOWY1MDExZDQ4YjI2OTgwODhlZGYxMTYyZTc0ZTUzOGY2ZjEwM18vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS81YjFhNzg4Zi04MTM0LTQ1MmUtYjZmNi01YzQ4YzliN2Y5OGEvMTFkNzEzZTYtNDE0ZC00NGQ3LTkwZmQtNzdiMzY1NWE2NzgxL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Grand Rapids, Michigan", + "length": "42 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed February 15, 2005, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "William Stevenson Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Ernest Zaremba" + ], + "respondents": [ + "William Stevenson" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:01", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't remember which project number it was. I was an architect there from roughly basically 1964 and 1965. I was in training in 1963." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:12", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, let's start off going back to a year before you were in the Peace Corps. How did you decide? Why did you sign up?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:00:19", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was at architecture school at Cornell, and Cornell is a five- year program, so I was in my fifth year and I'm trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I can't recall whether the 1963 was a good year for architects to get jobs or not, but I decided that Peace Corps really sounded like an exciting way to learn about the world and to see if I could give something back. But I think mostly it was the adventure that kind of got me excited. And at first, when I signed up, I signed up for a program in Nigeria, which had was supposed to have seven or eight architects. And we got partway through training at Columbia University and the Nigerian government decided they didn't really need architects after all, they just wanted teachers. So there were seven of us and I stuck it out to the end of training, but I concluded that I was not a teacher. My wife is today, but I wasn't very good at it.\n\nSo they kind of threw me back in the mix and I went down to Washington to kind of see if there was another training program they could put me in. And that whole room with the Peace Corps where they were deciding where people went. I've heard sort of like the trading pit in the Chicago Mercantile Exchange where they were, you know, I've got somebody here, there's anybody have any openings in for an architect in South America. And it was like they were trading shares and assigning people to where they want to go. It was really kind of enlightening. Well, anyway, I came out with, I guess, an invitation or whatever, however they phrased it, to go into the training for architecture in Colombia. And went out to the University of New Mexico. And everyone knows where they were when Kennedy was shot. Well that's where I was, at the University of New Mexico Peace Corps training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:02:10", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Describe that moment. When did you first hear?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:02:14", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was in the morning. I remember we were getting up, getting ready to go to training. In the Peace Corps, we always had to run a mile every morning at training before we started, at least out in Albuquerque. So we just got done with that. We're coming in to get breakfast and I can't remember the timing, but it was all over the news that Kennedy had been shot. And so everything kind of went on hold for the morning. And I can't remember all the time exactly when we heard he died. But we were in the student union area there at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:02:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I'm curious, going back a minute. Initially, you were in this program for Nigeria that turned out to be teachers. Then when you were accepted to this one with architects in Colombia, was there any hesitation or elation? What was your reaction?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:03:00", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Colombia sounded fine. Actually, I figured that I'd get to learn Spanish, which was a lot more useful in the United States than the languages in Nigeria. I can't remember what they're called, but they were three different languages there. And I think I came out with about four words at one point that I can remember. I can't remember any of them now. So I was excited about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:03:22", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the reaction of your family and friends?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:03:25", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think my parents, my father and stepfather said, well, I guess that's what you want to do, that's OK. Kind of stayed out. He didn't really give me much of an opinion one way or the other. I think he was just kind of thrilled that his son was out of college and the tuition bills had stopped. He was finally paying his own way. So I didn't get much reaction from that at all. I just was glad I had an assignment and some place to go, and it looked like it was going to move ahead." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:03:58", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How large was your group?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:04:01", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that we were 60 or 70 people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:04:04", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the mix? There were seven architects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:04:06", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. There were seven architects in the Nigeria program. I can't recall how many architects, if any. I may have been the only architect that we had in the program. Most of it was community development types of folks that ended up being scattered all over Colombia. As I remember, about two-thirds of us ended up going there from the number that started." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:04:31", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was a typical training day like? You mentioned starting off with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:04:34", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We started off with a mile run around this track and then most of, I'd say two-thirds of the day was spent with Spanish, as I recall. They had classes with about 10 or 12 guys and gals in it and we were just. And you got four to six hours a day of Spanish so you could learn the language. And I still know some of it. And then a series of classes on community development types of skills, and I remember the one that was how to how to buy horses. Evidently, a Peace Corps volunteers had a terrible track record of overpaying for horses and buying nags. And I never had to buy a horse when I was in the Peace Corps, but I guess some people did. And we had a poor track record, so they were trying to tell us how to recognize a good horse.\n\nAnd we had to go, um. They had a series of sort of Outward Bound kinds of team building exercises. I remember taking a bareback riding thing out of New Mexico, out across someplace outside of Albuquerque. And I must have gotten the widest horse that they could possibly find. I didn't think I was, it was about four or five hours bareback on the horse and I was so sore, it just. And I didn't think I'd ever get my knees together for at least a couple of days. That was a painful experience. And we also, they took us out on an overnight trip and it got pretty cold, so we decided we would. We found this mineshaft that went down and we would climb down inside. It was pretty warm down inside it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:06:22", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now how many were you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:06:23", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was about four of us, four or five of us. But the mine shaft went down about 60 or 80 feet, then just stopped. I don't know quite what happened to it, but I think we realized later the ladder going down there was not particularly, uh. It had rungs that were broken off, it was probably 70 or 80 years old. And we got down to the bottom and we're all sleeping down at the bottom, but every time the wind would blow, it would blow over the grains of sand off and they would go bop, bop, bop, and then come and land on you. Which means none of us really got a whole lot of sleep that way. So I was pretty glad to see the sun come up and we could get out of there. It actually never got to us, we had to look up and see the sky up above.\n\nUm, but the thing I remember most about the training program, they took us up to Taos for, I don't know, a week or so. And we had a little hotel that we stayed at, it was right on the town square in the center of Taos. And I think Taos was starting to become a ski capital, but it wasn't yet. This was in the wintertime. But they took us over to a town called Chama, which is west of Taos, and its claim to fame, one of its claims to fame, is that it has one of that narrow-gauge railroad that runs through it. It's something and Durango railroads. It has big steam engines.\n\nBut we were trying to build some community, it was a community. How do you build community relations with a town? So our idea was to play a basketball game with them. So we ended up playing a basketball game in their gym. A couple of our guys could play basketball, the rest of us were just pure amateurs. And we lost. We started out trying to win, and we realized that was probably not appropriate, so we probably ought to politically correct itself. I don't think it would have made a difference. I think the Chamans or how you pronounce that would have done us in anyway. That was the one thing I really remember about that part of whole trip, or that part of the training program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:08:21", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it mainly Hispanic in Chama?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:08:23", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It's mostly Native Americans, a lot of Native Americans. I think it's on the edge of one of the reservations, I can't recall. I haven't been, I've been back through there once about five or six years ago. To get from one part of Colorado to the other, the only way you can get there is to go down into New Mexico and Chama and come back up, which I guess is why the railroad went that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:08:44", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any particular friendships that formed in the training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:08:50", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the only one I've really, it actually wasn't from training, was Dominick Bresage, and I was best man at his wedding. There was one guy that actually dropped out of training that lives here in Grand Rapids that I met with once. I've never been able to keep that connection going." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:09:11", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now was the selection process an issue for yourself? Were you nervous about being selected out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:09:20", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think we're all nervous about that. I mean, it was probably like the selection Sunday for the NCAA tournament. You know, you kind of see it. Because if they called your name, that was bad news, as I recall. And I got that call when I was with the end of the Nigeria program because they concluded that being a school teacher was not one, that was not my calling. So I had to go down and didn't go. And obviously it was a huge disappointment, but I think in hindsight, they did me a real favor. I would not have done a very good job of teaching." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:09:57", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So then after training, you went back home and?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:10:00", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Went back home and sort of waited for a call, which they never call. I started, graduated from college in June and started almost immediately in the Peace Corps training program at Barnard College in Columbia, in New York. And then about the first part of September, they concluded that I wasn't, that they didn't have any architects or architectural slots in Nigeria, and they were going to put me back in the hopper to get reselected. But I pretty much had an idea that, assuming that some program came up that had some reasonable opportunity for an architect, that I was going to get a chance. And that started training in, oh it was probably November or early December, and we finished up in February. Went to Colombia in, if I remember the dates correctly, in February, and that would be of '64." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:10:54", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, how long were you in the training program for Nigeria would you say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:10:58", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say two and a half months. It was right up to close to the end." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:11:01", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were some similarities or differences between those two training programs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:11:05", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, first of all, it's a whole. They didn't really, you know, a lot of the folks in Nigeria were teaching English. That was primarily what they were doing. And they gave you a little smattering of Igbo and Yoruba and all the rest of the languages, but they didn't really try to teach you those languages. They're extremely difficult. They're tonal languages and have no relationship at all to anything we hear here in the United States. For Colombia, it was essential that you speak at least some Spanish or you were not going to be able to do anything. So that was probably the critical skill that they wanted to make sure you left with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:11:40", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have the Outward Bound kind of thing in the Nigerian?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:11:44", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, not in Nigeria. We did it for Colombia. They had the rope courses and the other things that are. Actually, I went in the Army after I went in the Peace Corps and the Peace Corps training was physically more rigorous than the Army training." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:12:02", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Say a little bit more about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:12:03", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, after I came back from Colombia, that was December of 1965, and I was 1A in the draft. And most folks thought that if you were in the Peace Corps that got you out of the Army and that is not true. It was just a deferment. And I was 25 years old, so I ended up enlisting for OCS. If I was going to be drafted, I wasn't going to do KP for the rest of my life. And then as it turned out, after I got in the Army, they got rid of KP. I thought that was one of the big reasons I decided I was going to go to Officer Candidate School was to get out of KP. But I went through basic training at Fort Leonard, where they went through Officer Candidate School in Fort Belvoir. Ended up spending a year in Vietnam and coming back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:12:50", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, back to how was the training more rigorous, you said, for the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:12:54", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Because the Army didn't really give you that one mile run every morning. You didn't have a whole series of rigorous things. They didn't have, in fact, I had. By the time I got to the. The Army did put me through some of the Outward Bound stuff in the Officer Candidate School, but basic training is. Training in the Peace Corps was physically a little more rigorous than basic training in the Army. At least that's the way I remember it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:13:18", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Then when you went to Colombia, what's your first impression as you got off the plane?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:13:22", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We flew into Bogota and it was cold as I recall. I was surprised because it was kind of. Bogota, as I remember, was cloudy and damp. In fact, the weather was similar to Ithaca, New York, which I felt was odd. This was supposed to be near the equator. What's going on? But it was, we stayed there for a couple of days and then they shipped us out to the various parts of the country we're going to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:13:48", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, so you didn't have in-country training for any span of time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:13:53", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not that I remember. And I was assigned to be initially to a little small town outside of Cali called Pradera." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:14:01", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "About how far of a trip was that from Bogota?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:14:03", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, we had to fly I think to Cali as I remember and then took a. Because Cali, that's a couple of mountain valleys away. And there were still in the mountains in the, when I was in Colombia, the bandits in the mountains were financed by Fidel. And so Colombia had been having a civil war since 1948, and they'd killed like 300,000 people in Colombia. And they'd finally come to a sort of a semi truce where they alternated the presidency between the liberals and conservatives. Every four years they would switch back regardless of what the vote was, they could switch back, because that was their way of keeping each other from shooting each other. Obviously, that's broken down on the simple thing. But so going up to the mountains wasn't always all that safe, so people would tend to fly over and then take busses. And I can't recall how I got there. I had to go through another town I remember. And I can't remember if anybody met me at the airport or not and I got a ride, that I don't recall. But I worked initially with a couple of community development volunteers, Dominick Bresage, I was best man at his wedding, was one. And a guy named Steve Chestnut was the other. He was from Boston I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:15:28", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now you flew into this town and then you somehow got to your site. About how far from the major town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:15:36", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe 30 or 40 miles. My guess is that now Pradera is almost part of Cali, because Cali's grown. When I was there, was about three or four hundred thousand people and now it's two million. It's grown dramatically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:15:49", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And the town that you were assigned to, about how big was that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:15:52", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, that's maybe three or four thousand people, something like that. They had a town square, Catholic Church, movie theater, a couple of stores, marketplace. And then there's a series of houses. The agricultural elements as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:16:09", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now I'm trying to get a picture of the size that would be. Would that be about the size of Taos proper in a sense?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:16:16", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, probably physically, yes, my guess is that Taos may have had. Oh, maybe about the same size. I've never thought about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:16:24", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And where did you live then when you were in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:16:26", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We lived in a house that I shared with the other two Peace Corps volunteers." + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:16:30", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So there were the three of you in that area that were volunteers. Any other Americans or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:16:36", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, there weren't any other Americans in Pradera that I remember. We had a cooperative volunteer. They were trained to go down and try and set up fishing and agricultural cooperatives among the Colombians so that they could sell their products and market their products. How do we get the campesinos to make some money out of this? And that guy's name was Steve Diplo, and he would come in, oh, about every other week. And the goal was to try and organize the farmers into a cooperative so that they could market their products more effectively, either agricultural products in Cali and the larger cities or handicraft products in the United States. And they got into some of these carved, uh, elements that they would bundle up together and arrange for an agent to ship it to the United States." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:17:39", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Describe the house." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:17:42", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As I remember it was a single story, had three or four bedrooms, so you'd walk right into a main living area was kind of L- shaped as I remember. There was a courtyard in the back and the outhouse was out at the far end with, I seem to recall there was a shower in there. I don't remember the rest of it. I do remember that we must have had a colony of rats living in the attic because at night they would run across the ceiling. Now they may have sounded louder than they really were, I don't know. This could have been the mouse that roared, could have been small animals, but I think they were pretty big. Because one time we saw this tail hanging out of the gutter and the tail is about that long. I said, if that's how long the tail is, the rat's got to be huge. So needless to say, we never went up in the attic. That was, we just let them stay there. We were like, we were renting that house. I can't recall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:18:40", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any cats or anything to deal with the rats?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:18:42", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't think so. I don't recall sort of having any pets." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:18:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you had a shower in the outhouse. Did you have running water?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:18:52", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had running water. But we had a saying in Pradera that I think if whatever happened. When it rained really hard, it would turn the water brown because it would be coming out of the mountains, so all the erosion was going to the water supply. And it would overwhelm the little generator they had in the town which was running off of water from the stream, and it would overrun it until the lights would go out. Well, they had a saying that if a cow pisses in the mountains, the water turns brown and the lights go out. It was not that quite that extreme, but electricity was a little bit of a mess, but both basically worked pretty closely." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:19:39", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it typically like a particular time in the evening from 6:00 to 9:00 or any time of day you had electricity?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:19:46", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't remember it going off at particular times, it may have, I just don't remember. It was on most evenings, I know that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:19:53", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you had electric lights?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:19:55", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, we had electric lights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:19:58", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kind of kitchen facilities were there? Wood stove or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:20:08", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm trying to recall. I don't remember if it was wood fired or electric stove. I don't think it was gas." + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:20:13", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now did you have somebody come in and cook and do laundry or how did you work that out?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:20:19", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't remember. I know we had, I suspect we had somebody come in and we had the laundry taken care of, but I think we did most of our own cooking. At least that's what I recall. Cooking, it obviously wasn't memorable enough for me to remember what that was. I think we also ate out a lot. There was always this, you know, usually as a Peace Corps volunteer, you tended to get invited to a lot of people's homes for dinner. And then I think they also tried to every once in a while, or a lot of times, to play get the gringo. So let's see if we can serve some exotic Colombian thing to see if we see, you know, how well, how macho they are. Will they eat it? You know, you stirred the chicken soup and the feet would float past. Is that going to turn you off or are you going to go ahead with this? So it was. And maybe they did it inadvertently, but it was the truth. We sure all felt like they were playing get the gringo.\n\nAnd I stayed in there about two to three months, and then they got a job for me with the Department of Public Works in Cali, where I was essentially their free architect, and they could put me on any project they wanted. I'd draw plans up for schools and this library, a library up in Tuluá, which is about 16 miles north of Cali." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:21:40", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So now you were in this town with the three of you, the other two were community development did you say?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:21:45", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Community development." + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:21:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "OK, and you were there for two or three months?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:21:49", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much as I remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:21:50", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And there was no particular assignment then at that time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:21:53", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was just supporting their community development. The idea was, first of all, to help me get my language skills improved a little bit. Plus just getting to know how things worked in Colombia. And I don't think there was, they hadn't quite arranged for an opening yet. I may have been there longer than two or three months." + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:22:09", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what kinds of projects might you've got involved with initially with these? Or were they still kind of getting their sea legs?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:22:15", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, they'd been there a while. They'd been there probably almost a year by the time I got there. They were one of the first Colombian groups to come in. So they've been there and maybe it was six months, I can't recall, but they'd been there long enough that they knew all the folks in town and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:22:33", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they did a lot to help you get integrated into the community." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:22:35", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, so I got introduced to a lot of folks. But I do remember we did put on a, uh, that was right when the Beatles came in. They had a talent night at the local movie theater, and so we put on a talent show. Dominick plays, he was the only musician. He could play the accordion, and he had his accordion. So we put on his imitation of the Beatles numbers with mops on our heads. And I think we scared the Colombians. They thought that some banditos were coming and taking over the talent show. Steve Chestnut could play the guitar and I could shout, about my only talent. But that lasted about three or four months with a lot of runs up into the surrounding hills on jeeps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:23:34", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it like a rainforest area?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:23:36", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really. It was, well, as you got more up into the mountains, it got to the bottom. The real rainforest was down near on the way to Buenaventura where it rains 300 inches a year. And if you don't put a light bulb in your closet, your shoes will turn green overnight. Just really it just rains every day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:24:00", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now you were more up in the mountains. Was it a bit cooler?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:24:03", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, Cali is in the Cauca River Valley, which is probably, you know, 2,000 feet or something like that. But it's only four degrees north of the equator, but it's 85 degrees all year round. Nice little breeze comes up at 4:30 in the afternoon. So you got done with whatever you're doing and go sit down at a sidewalk cafe and have a beer. We got to know a lot of guys from the Bank of London and Montreal and we convinced them that Peace Corps guys didn't make any money, so they should pay for most of the beer and that worked out pretty well. And so we really had a, it's an almost climate." + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:24:39", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And now this was Cali, this wasn't your little village?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "00:24:43", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That was Cali, but you commuted back and forth, so we would go into Cali." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "00:24:46", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would you get back and forth to Cali?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:24:49", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You'd pay for one of the little busses that would come by. Or you find one of the fathers of one of your friends, or friends or people you're working with, who would drive in that day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "00:25:01", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what were the busses, like vans or big ones with chickens?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "00:25:04", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, they had all the sorts of stuff and it was, I thought it was kind of humorous because Colombians always would fight to see who can get on the bus first. The bus would pull up and people were fighting their way on. But people would take their chickens on there. And I can't remember what it probably cost. 15 centavos or some? I think it was to ride the bus." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:25:31", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, if they all fought to get on, I assume you ended up standing most of the time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 86, + "timestamp": "00:25:34", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, usually you could find a seat. There were, uh, I remember the busses, they just had long benches and you kind of got in from the side, sort of like one of those trams at Disneyworld or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 87, + "timestamp": "00:25:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Open sides so you come in." + }, + { + "turn_id": 88, + "timestamp": "00:25:46", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, you come in on the sides. And some of them where you walked in the door and walked down an aisle like a traditional bus. I don't remember standing all that much. We did go to a sort of a town that was between Pradera and Cali. It was called Palmira if I remember correctly, where they had exchange students that these guys had gotten to know that were getting ready to go to the United States. So we'd go have lunch with the families of these kids that were getting sent up to Chillicothe, Ohio. I don't know why I remember that. Chillicothe was the name I remember. And so they wanted to make sure that their kids learned English. And so they would invite the Peace Corps volunteers so their sons could practice before they got to Chillicothe, Ohio.\n\nAnd it was kind of like a triangle. There was a back road that went into straight from Pradera into Cali with the sugar cane fields, and then there was the main road that went to Palmira. So we took the bus, we went the main road to Palmira and then back into Cali. Or if you got a ride from somebody, you took this little two-lane road." + }, + { + "turn_id": 89, + "timestamp": "00:26:57", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it like, was it curvy driving up and down hills?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 90, + "timestamp": "00:27:00", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was pretty flat. Cauca River Valley is pretty flat. It's all sugar cane. If you went off of the valley floor, then it got pretty hilly. But the mountains in Colombia, you know, they go from 12 to 15,000 feet and green right over the top. I think the tree line's at 15,000 feet." + }, + { + "turn_id": 91, + "timestamp": "00:27:24", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And was there a lot of traffic on the roads or just the busses?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 92, + "timestamp": "00:27:28", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, there was quite a bit of traffic. I don't remember the traffic that much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 93, + "timestamp": "00:27:34", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what about the drivers and driving, any harrowing stories?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 94, + "timestamp": "00:27:37", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, well, we have. One of the fathers, and it may have been Dominick's future father-in-law, I can't recall, took us to the cockfights one night and that was in the outskirts of Cali. So we went to the cockfights and all those betting's going on. I couldn't figure out how they were betting. They'd put little money in these little rubber balls and split it up and throw it around. Somehow, if you caught the thing and there was a way of betting that you would put your money in the ball and threw it back and the bookie would take your money and write it all down. And it was all depending on, you know, until one of the roosters died. That was the. And I'm not sure whether cockfighting was legal in Colombia or not. Obviously, it's not legal here. But the ride home was, their sort of tradition is that the ride home was that you stopped at every bar on the way to get a shot of aguardiente, which was their licorice flavored liquor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 95, + "timestamp": "00:28:38", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It's really potent?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 96, + "timestamp": "00:28:39", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was like a cognac. Well, it was made out of sugar cane, and it obviously wasn't anywhere near as nice as cognac. And so we were stopping at one of theme, and I think he was just blitzed and we were driving back and he was driving a jeep and we were driving on the wrong side of the road, going about 60 miles an hour. And there were these two headlights coming in front of us, and I was about ready to jump out of jeep. And two headlights came toward us and they happened to be two motorcycles and they split and then went around on each side. And I about had to clean off my shorts. Fortunately, I was probably a little bit wrong because I didn't, it didn't occur to me that we were really in danger until the last minute. I'll never forget that ride, but fortunately it turned out OK." + }, + { + "turn_id": 97, + "timestamp": "00:29:26", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now from the little town, how did you get transferred to Cali?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 98, + "timestamp": "00:29:30", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that was always kind of been, the Peace Corps was trying to make that happen. They just didn't have the logistics arranged with the Department of Public Works. And so I can't remember the sequence of events. Because I lived for three or four months up in Tuluá, which is about an hour's drive north up the Cauca River Valley. The Cauca River runs across north to south." + }, + { + "turn_id": 99, + "timestamp": "00:29:57", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And this was different than the little town with the two community development volunteers. Now you moved someplace else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 100, + "timestamp": "00:30:01", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I moved up to Tuluá, which was to work on this library project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 101, + "timestamp": "00:30:08", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get involved with that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 102, + "timestamp": "00:30:13", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 103, + "timestamp": "00:30:14", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Actually, no, you were the architect." + }, + { + "turn_id": 104, + "timestamp": "00:30:16", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't remember if I went to the. I think what happened was I went to the Department of Public Works first and then they said, well, we've got this project with this architect, you know, up in Tuluá. There was this old building that was in the center of town that they'd gotten partway done, and I don't know if it was part of a hotel or something else. And then the project had been abandoned. So it was this thing was just sitting there and it was essentially was two brick walls and a concrete roof over the front and a couple of columns on the back. And they wanted to build an intermediate floor and put glass on each end and make it a library, because it was right on the town square. And so they sent me up there to get that project going, which I think was finally built, although it was built after I left." + }, + { + "turn_id": 105, + "timestamp": "00:31:00", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The town wanted that library?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 106, + "timestamp": "00:31:02", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, kind of. Excuse me, the state of Valle del Cauca. Because I have the sign that says my name on it, that was the sign they put on the public library." + }, + { + "turn_id": 107, + "timestamp": "00:31:14", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you got a little plaque there with your name on it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 108, + "timestamp": "00:31:17", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that was the. Well, they had this building and I'm sure that as the local politicians were lobbying to the governor's office in Cali. Colombia's divided up into a series of states or provinces and the Cauca River Valley is one of them. Cali is the capital, but Tuluá was one of the cities. In fact Tuluá was where that American Airlines plane crashed on its way to Cali in the early '70s. It was coming into the airport in Cali and lost power or whatever and crashed. But it was, hopefully it didn't knock out my library, but unfortunately that's less important and unfortunately for folks that were on the plane.\n\nUm, but I lived up there for three or four months and worked on this project." + }, + { + "turn_id": 109, + "timestamp": "00:32:10", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were you the only Peace Corps volunteer?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 110, + "timestamp": "00:32:12", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was the only one in, in fact, there were a couple of other volunteers up there that were teaching English." + }, + { + "turn_id": 111, + "timestamp": "00:32:19", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what were your living accommodations there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 112, + "timestamp": "00:32:21", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had an apartment. Just a one room apartment that I went out and built my own furniture for." + }, + { + "turn_id": 113, + "timestamp": "00:32:28", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Oh, tell that story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 114, + "timestamp": "00:32:30", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I drew it up and went to the lumber yard and bought a bunch of wood. With hand tools, cut it up and made a bed and a series of tables and some other things. It was, I think it was on the second or third floor, third floor over the top of a bunch of shops. But it was, you know, it was austere, but okay. And the architect, his name was Carlos Potes, P-O-T-E-S. He was Colombian, but he'd studied architecture at the University of Miami in Miami, Florida. And his wife was an American. He'd met her in college and she was living, she'd gone back with him to Colombia. So he was. And they had three or four kids, but I was over their house a lot getting dinner and he was taking me around and showing me all the things to do. And his name is on that sign too. And that was probably the project that I'm really sure did get built. One of the challenges of being an architect is it always takes two or three years for your project. It takes you a year to design it, a year to build it. You're only there for 18 months. I was there for actually 22 months because I extended for a few months at the end. But things get built after you left, and I haven't been back since then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 115, + "timestamp": "00:34:08", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So they had a good work crew to get this done and no problems with bureaucracy to speak of then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 116, + "timestamp": "00:34:13", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not really that I recall. They, and there probably was, but they weren't telling me about them. I just do the drawings and they figured out how to get the, get everything built. It wasn't like here where we'd go out and watch construction, make sure they're doing it correctly. They had me off on another project by that time. Um, but I had to do everything in the metric system and in Spanish. So I, which, you know, I had my technical dictionary out there to, you know, what's this called? And the metric system is, once you get used to, isn't too tough. But I actually did it in both feet and inches and the metric system, because almost all of the building materials either were made in the United States, or a lot of them, or they were made with dies and tools that were made in the United States. So you'd have four meters of six inch pipe because the pipe, it all came from the United States. That's probably not true anymore, but it was certainly true back then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 117, + "timestamp": "00:35:21", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You know, this is still all in your first year there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 118, + "timestamp": "00:35:24", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 119, + "timestamp": "00:35:25", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, so then after the library project, what's um?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 120, + "timestamp": "00:35:28", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When that started getting under construction then they moved me back and put me in the Department of Public Works in Cali. And I designed a couple of schools as I recall. I think I may have the plans someplace here. I haven't been able to find them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 121, + "timestamp": "00:35:46", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now did you work with a number of architects in the public works department? Or were you it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 122, + "timestamp": "00:35:51", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was sort of their free architect. So if they had a job that, you know, that they needed an architect for, then I was the guy that could go out with them to go out to a community, look at the site, take some pictures, talk to folks to find out what they wanted. Draw up a sort of plan so that they could then figure out whether they could fit it in the budget. And so I was, I could essentially give them a little political cover. I could go out and I could talk to the community. And so that the politicians say, well, see, we were responding to your request. You know, we've got the plans started. And it could have taken four or five years after that before there was anything, I have no idea. I think they did build a couple of things that I designed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 123, + "timestamp": "00:36:36", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did they have other architects there in training?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 124, + "timestamp": "00:36:38", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had a couple of other architects, but a lot of the projects were done by architects in private practice as opposed to working directly for the firm. Most of the other folks in the department I was in were engineers, I think. I don't recall another architect. Memory's getting kind of fuzzy. I remember we did everything in ink on linen paper, as opposed to the computers we use today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 125, + "timestamp": "00:37:10", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it a regular eight to five job?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 126, + "timestamp": "00:37:12", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Pretty much." + }, + { + "turn_id": 127, + "timestamp": "00:37:14", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you have to dress in a suit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 128, + "timestamp": "00:37:17", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, it was mostly. Cali was, there were some a lot of, you know, the politicians are all dressed in suits. Everybody else dressed in a shirt similar to what you have on, or what I've got on. It was, uh, we didn't have to put on a coat and tie, at least not that I remember. I'm sure I had one because I had one for the wedding, but I don't remember anything else." + }, + { + "turn_id": 129, + "timestamp": "00:37:43", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now how is it similar or different from working in an architect's office here in the States at the time, would you guess?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 130, + "timestamp": "00:37:50", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think you have a lot more responsibility when you're a Peace Corps volunteer. I mean, you got, they just said, you know, it's a school, go design it. And you got a chance to do everything. I'd do the lighting plan, I'd do the structure, had to do everything else. And you just kind of keep your fingers crossed that you've made it strong enough. But it was just a phenomenal opportunity to get a chance. You had to, you know, get to know clients, you had to keep them happy, had to work with my boss, who was the director of engineering. His last name was Soha, I remember. I think it was Henry. And he was the one that, you know, decided, you know, what kind of jobs he wanted me to work on and everything else. Looked over what I drew and said, no, we don't do it that way here, we do it this way.\n\nBut you just get a lot more opportunity and at least at that time, the Colombians, of course, thought Peace Corps volunteers were like gods. You were pretty, they treated you very special. They always got invited into their house. I understand a lot of volunteers had trouble when they came back to the United States because when they came back here, yeah, we're just Joe Schmo. What's so special about you? Well, if you're the only American in town, it's a huge deal. And I always remember you'd go into every bar and there was, at least at that time, there was always a picture of Jack Kennedy behind the bar. They had no clue who their own president was, but they knew who Kennedy was. And that's because the priests. He's Catholic, you know. And so they really promoted him. Most of the priests were all Spaniards." + }, + { + "turn_id": 131, + "timestamp": "00:39:38", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's interesting, so it wasn't so much necessarily that Kennedy was the great visionary in the States, but because he was Catholic." + }, + { + "turn_id": 132, + "timestamp": "00:39:43", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He's Catholic. They thought he, and they knew there was a connection with the Peace Corps. But the pictures of Kennedy were in the bars before we ever got there. There was no picture of the Colombian president. There was a picture of Jack Kennedy behind the bar. I'm not sure that's where he would have wanted all his pictures to be, but it was a. That was the real link in the community. It was obvious that he was extremely well received in South America." + }, + { + "turn_id": 133, + "timestamp": "00:40:12", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, you lived first with the two community development in a house, then you had the apartment by the library. Now when you moved." + }, + { + "turn_id": 134, + "timestamp": "00:40:21", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Then I took over, there were a series of these business development or cooperative volunteers that were in Cali that we're working with a variety of different cooperative groups trying to develop things. And they had, one of the guys had an apartment in Cali that was, it was I think, a one bedroom apartment in this little, in the whole group of these are kind of built up on like. They're all white stucco and you walk up a couple steps. It's almost like in a, you know, you see them in the Greek pictures, you know, in the Olympics or an Italian hill town. Really kind of a neat little thing, have windows on the courtyard. And really, we're just kind of passing that off from one volunteer to the other so we didn't have to renegotiate our lease. And it was about a 10 block walk to my office, so it was really quite nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 135, + "timestamp": "00:41:18", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so you lived by yourself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 136, + "timestamp": "00:41:20", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I lived by myself." + }, + { + "turn_id": 137, + "timestamp": "00:41:22", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have somebody to help you to cook or do laundry?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 138, + "timestamp": "00:41:25", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nah, I did that myself. Well, laundry, I gave that to somebody else to do, I don't remember. I don't remember going to a laundromat or anything like that, but I didn't have, there was no servants or anything like that. Of course, the people want me to, and I know the other volunteers in other parts of the world had them." + }, + { + "turn_id": 139, + "timestamp": "00:41:46", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now you walk to work, did you have a bicycle too? Or was walking?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 140, + "timestamp": "00:41:50", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Primarily walking. I don't remember having, um, I know some guys had motor scooters and things like that, but I don't remember." + }, + { + "turn_id": 141, + "timestamp": "00:42:03", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was it like walking through town? How would you describe that experience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 142, + "timestamp": "00:42:12", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I remember you walked out of this little neighborhood and you got on this tree-lined street that was like a boulevard. And there were all these sidewalk cafes on it and you walk along and you got to a little river tributary and right that was where the post office. It wasn't really the post office, it was the airmail post office run by the airline. Colombia's normal postal delivery system was, uh, suspect. If they sensed there was anything in your letter or package, it's probably got opened and something got taken out of it. But the air mail worked, that was done by the airline. And so everybody sending everything by air mail. And so you had to go down there and stand in line and check to see if you've gotten any mail. And that was right on the way.\n\nYou'd cross this little river and then you were into the town square and the building I worked in was on the town square. It was on the far side of the town square. It's the sort of traditional, you'd see there, like a Mexican town square with, you know, 10 or 15 big palm trees in the center of it. And there were all I'd say eight to nine story buildings around it. Pretty good size. Colombia's got, their cities are really quite well developed. There's the University of, uh, Universidad del Valle, which was I think founded by the Rockefellers in Cali, was the university that we had also some volunteers that taught at the university. Taught primarily English if I recall correctly. And so we would get together with that group periodically for the soccer games or the bullfights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 143, + "timestamp": "00:43:59", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I was just thinking of that. You described your work a bit. How about your leisure time, what were some things?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 144, + "timestamp": "00:44:03", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I really got into watching soccer because they had professional soccer teams there and most of the, a lot of the really good players were from Argentina. The Colombians are rabid sports fans, especially for football or soccer. And they're just continually yelling the whole game, I don't know how they come out with any voice at all. But they had some really good players and it was a professional league, just like baseball or football is here in United States. Colombia probably had 10 or 15 teams. Every town had a team. In fact, Cali had two teams. Bogota probably had a couple, and I'm sure Medellin had a couple too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 145, + "timestamp": "00:44:49", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You say that brings back memories of me in my training. They taught us how to play soccer. Did you have that too?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 146, + "timestamp": "00:44:54", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah. Back when I was in the Army, I came back from Vietnam and I was a tack officer at Officer Candidate School. I used soccer as a fitness thing in the Army." + }, + { + "turn_id": 147, + "timestamp": "00:45:06", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you play soccer in Colombia then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 148, + "timestamp": "00:45:09", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, a little bit, not very much. I mean, they could just run circles around me every day. Forget it, I was a post standing there and they were like. I could maybe slow them down a little bit but." + }, + { + "turn_id": 149, + "timestamp": "00:45:19", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So you'd occasionally do a game or something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 150, + "timestamp": "00:45:21", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We'd occasionally get into a game. I do remember that the, I think it's in the summer that the Spanish, the really good Spanish bullfighters would come to South America. I think their season is in the winter or it's the other way around. I can't remember. It may have been in the winter because their seasons. But we had El Portales, who was the rock star of bullfighters in the early '60s." + }, + { + "turn_id": 151, + "timestamp": "00:45:49", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was that your first bullfight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 152, + "timestamp": "00:45:50", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 153, + "timestamp": "00:45:51", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was that like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 154, + "timestamp": "00:45:55", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I actually found it really interesting, I mean, it's a phenomenal pageant. I'm sure many people feel it's too bloody and everything else, but it was a phenomenal pageant. I did see one bull spared, which is really unusual. There's a great movie about a bull and a little boy that takes place in Mexico. Anyway. But we saw all of the really good bullfighters from Spain who come through Colombia sort of on their off season and they would stay for a couple of weeks. But bullfights were always packed. You've got to learn why the shade seats were really a lot better than sun seats because it gets pretty hot. We'd always go and, you know, you fill the bag full of wine. We had a good time. Between that and the soccer matches, it was uh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 155, + "timestamp": "00:46:50", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were they as rabid at the bullfights with, like the soccer where everybody's screaming all time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 156, + "timestamp": "00:46:55", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not quite as rabid. But they would really get into it if the bullfighter and the bull was aggressive and the bullfighter was really good. I mean, it's really a, you know, sort of ad hoc choreography the way they do those things. It's actually a beautiful way they do the passes. Like a ballet, a very dangerous ballet. I think we saw one guy get gored, although not that badly. The fight is definitely to the advantage of the matador. I mean, there's definitely. But it was, the Colombians really got into it. They'd get into that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 157, + "timestamp": "00:47:37", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have any particular friends you'd go to these, either Peace Corps or Colombian?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 158, + "timestamp": "00:47:41", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Usually there were these guys from the Bank of London and Montreal that we got to know quite well. And there were some other Americans that, this one guy who was a mutual fund salesman ended up running into us at this bar where we'd have beer in the afternoon. And he would go around Colombia and he was trying to sell mutual fund, United States mutual funds. And he'd go into, part of Colombia has the Rio Atrato is one of the deepest rivers in the world and it runs through Colombia's Pacific jungle called the Chocó. They have these guys out there, it's right out of Lord Jim. They have these gold miners, American gold miners, that have a dredge out on this river parked in the middle of the jungle. I could see Humphrey Bogart step around the corner. And they're dredging for gold, and they run the generator on their boat. It not only runs their dredging operation, but it runs the electricity for a town.\n\nAnd so this guy would go in there and try and sell them mutual funds. And he was selling, which I think was ultimately deemed to be corrupt, which is this fund of funds by some guy named Bernie Cornfeld of Switzerland that eventually, I think, either went to jail or disappeared into the Bahamas or someplace like that. Well, he was selling funds for this guy and he was in there trying to sell him to these coal miners, American gold miners, excuse me, in the Chocó. And he said he would go into the bars there in this little town. And everybody has a machete and they'd get into fights and the guy would pull his machete and chop the other guy's arm off right there in the bar. Ugh! I never saw anything like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 159, + "timestamp": "00:49:24", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you ever meet any of these gold miners coming to your town?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 160, + "timestamp": "00:49:26", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I never saw them. But these guys were total loners. Two American gold miners on a dredge up in the middle of some river in, it wasn't the Amazon, but it was the equivalent on the Pacific side. Middle of the jungle, you know, sitting on a boat, dredging up gold. So we'd meet that series of those kinds of folks, and it was a, I had a really good time. I hope I did enough good buildings I designed, but I think I got a lot more out of it than the Colombians did. I think a lot of people, of volunteers feel that way. They got more out of it than the host country's nationals." + }, + { + "turn_id": 161, + "timestamp": "00:50:11", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any other anecdotes about either the leisure or travel or you mentioned the jungle in that area." + }, + { + "turn_id": 162, + "timestamp": "00:50:17", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, we had one of these cooperative volunteers had a fishing cooperative he was trying to set up in Buenaventura, which is the town, it's about 60 or 60 miles or so west of Cali, right on the Pacific. And it's that part of Colombia that rains 300 inches a year. So it's raining all the time. And they had a fishing village that was out and a priest was down there, was trying to organize the fishermen into a cooperative so they could sell their fish and make some money. And so he brought in our volunteers to help him organize the fishermen. Or more importantly, he could organize the fishermen but help them organize the delivery system. How do you bring your fish in? How do you organize it? How do you sell it? Because they were, you know, they'd just come in with three fish and go into the market and try to sell it, as opposed to getting organized and having an approach.\n\nSo they brought me down there to help them go out and look at this fishing village to see what we could do to help improve their life out of it. And they were on this island about three miles out into the estuary outside the port of Buenaventura. It was an island that I think the top highest spot was six feet above the ocean. It was like a sandbar and all the houses were on stilts because the tide would go up and down. And one of the projects they wanted me to do was to put in a sewer system right there because they would just go out and use the beach as a bathroom and come back in, but the tide would come in and wash everything out. You know, I'm sure you could, there was a system you could come up with today that would deal with that issue, but I didn't know. I mean, I was architect, I wasn't a civil engineer. So my conclusion was that they developed an ecologically very friendly system and they should stick with it. I didn't have any better idea.\n\nWe did through AID get a generator for them that we brought out to this island and set it up so they could have electricity and lights in there. I have no idea whether we got any spare parts for them because it was a big diesel generator, so they had to load the diesel oil out there and it was a. But we had lights strung between all the little grass huts with the electric lights, and it at least worked for one night. But then we go out fishing with them a couple of times." + }, + { + "turn_id": 163, + "timestamp": "00:52:41", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "With nets type of thing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 164, + "timestamp": "00:52:42", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nets, they did some nets. Some spearfishing. They had these little watches that they go out and they make them. The guy we went out with at one time and we asked him what he was going out for and he was going out for a fish or shark. We landed a small shark and got it in the boat, it's thrashing around. And we got one of our guys, he's got a machete and he's whacking away at the top of the shark and it's not making any difference at all. And finally, this Colombian guy comes up and he does like a judo chop in the right place. A machete wasn't such a. And then they, blood off on the side, and I think they kind of were, you know, they weren't, they did the real fishing when they when the Peace Corps volunteers weren't around giving them, you know, distracting them from their work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 165, + "timestamp": "00:53:33", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now was it a boat the size of a shrimp boat or an American fishing boat or?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 166, + "timestamp": "00:53:37", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it was probably maybe 20, 25 feet long at the most." + }, + { + "turn_id": 167, + "timestamp": "00:53:42", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I assume motor powered?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 168, + "timestamp": "00:53:44", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They had an outboard motor on the back." + }, + { + "turn_id": 169, + "timestamp": "00:53:49", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many of you would be in this boat?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 170, + "timestamp": "00:53:51", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had four of us in the boat when we were going out. It was relatively small, as I remember, it had a little cabin on it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 171, + "timestamp": "00:53:58", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was this out in the Pacific?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 172, + "timestamp": "00:54:00", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Most of what we were fishing with within the estuaries, in these islands off the point of Buenaventura. We weren't really out in the Pacific and it was relatively calm, excuse me, as I recall. We weren't out there with, you know, four- or six-foot swells going up and down. It was actually the most, I guess, most primitive part of life in Colombia because when we got into the cities of Colombia, it was really quite like going to Spain. I mean, it was really quite, very nice lifestyle. It was very southern, almost like being on the southern coast of Spain or something like that. But when you got out in the jungle and it's probably still true today, it's extremely different, like being in the Amazon River basin." + }, + { + "turn_id": 173, + "timestamp": "00:54:50", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, interesting variety of experiences, both work and leisure. I'm thinking of that sewer system for the island versus a library versus schools. Any other kinds of work projects that you were involved in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 174, + "timestamp": "00:55:06", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I've been trying to remember when, after you called us. Those are the main ones that I remember. I'm sure I worked on a lot of other things and they brought me in on, you know, we'd go out and we'd look at stuff and make conclusions. A lot of times they kind of brought Peace Corps volunteers along because they could, you know, you were their, well, here's my architect. We served that role because it helped out their prestige. You also learn in Colombia that if you wear sunglasses, they always call you doctor, regardless of whether you have any medical background or academic training. So we always would wear sunglasses because that gets you extra respect. Most Americans, Peace Corps volunteers, they'd call doctor just as a respect thing, regardless of whether they deserved it. It's a gorgeous country, it's a shame that it's torn up today." + }, + { + "turn_id": 175, + "timestamp": "00:56:00", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a drug issue back then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 176, + "timestamp": "00:56:01", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "This was all pre cocaine in Colombia. That all happened, I think, in the '70s when that got going. The bandits who up in the mountains were this vestige from the civil war that had been going on in Colombia. By the time we got there, this war was almost probably into its 20, 25 years. So there were young teenagers that have been born up in the mountains and knew nothing else. And Fidel was sending them money to try and disrupt the Colombian government. At least that's what I understood." + }, + { + "turn_id": 177, + "timestamp": "00:56:39", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "If they're trying to disrupt, they might have a reaction to the Peace Corps. Did you get into any of that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 178, + "timestamp": "00:56:44", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We're didn't get to it. Some of the college students, you know, were convinced we all CIA agents. That's what they would accuse us of being. You know, you can't argue against that. I mean, how are you going to prove you're not a CIA agent? You doth protest too much. So that was, a lot of the college students there were communists. So they were sort of sympathetic to the guys up in the mountains, but then Fidel ran out of money and they found a better source. I think originally the coca leaves came up from Peru and Ecuador, and they processed them in Colombia and shipped them over. But now I guess they grow them in Colombia.\n\nWe made a couple of trips, made a trip down to Machu Picchu, to Cusco in Peru. There I saw that all the Indians have no teeth. They chew coca leaves. And to get the effect of the coca leaves, you have to chew it with a catalyst, which is limestone. They'd chew these stone tablets, and ultimately, it just grinds their teeth down. And, you know, so they'll smile at you and you can just see little, like they have little baby teeth there. That was a really interesting trip. We went to Lima, down to Cusco. And 12,000 feet is a long way in the air, I'm sucking wind. But that's where they have all of the houses and the buildings built out of these huge stones that were put together without mortar. And they somehow shaped the stones that they all stick together, just like that stone wall." + }, + { + "turn_id": 179, + "timestamp": "00:58:28", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That's up 12,000 feet?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 180, + "timestamp": "00:58:29", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 181, + "timestamp": "00:58:30", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you get up there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 182, + "timestamp": "00:58:31", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You flew, I mean, we flew to Cusco. Then you'd take a train to Machu Picchu, which is 14,000 feet. Going back to Cusco, took another train over to Lake Titicaca, which is between Peru and Bolivia. And you can take a boat that goes across, a night boat, you get in at six o'clock and get on the boat. Six in the morning it arrives on the Bolivian side. Then you'd take a bus down to the train. First, take the train down to the La Paz, but we got there and the boat guys were on strike, so we had to stay in a hotel. We would be inside for a night and then take the boat the next day cause they settled the strike, but by that time, a train had already left on the other side so we had to take a bus which broke down. And we had some other Peace Corps volunteers on the bus and they had their parents with them. The guy, fortunately, one of them, the father of one of the Peace Corps volunteers, was a mechanic in the United States so he could fix the bus. The rest of us were." + }, + { + "turn_id": 183, + "timestamp": "00:59:38", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned the buildings with the high tolerances." + }, + { + "turn_id": 184, + "timestamp": "00:59:42", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, well, that's the, that was sort of a hallmark of a lot of Inca architecture, was their ability to. And I'm not sure how they did it, with water or sand or pools or whatever. The rocks don't appear that they chiseled away at them, but they figured out how to fit them all together. You know, with like maybe a 32nd of an inch between them all the way around. No mortar. It's just phenomenal. And of course, that's who, what was the guy that wrote that book The Chariots of the Gods?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 185, + "timestamp": "01:00:16", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Von Daniken?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 186, + "timestamp": "01:00:17", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, whatever his name was. Of course, he was convinced they must have had help from outer space, which I thought was what an arrogant attitude. That was obviously one of the big advantages of being a Peace Corps volunteer, you got to get a good amount of vacation. Go see some part of the world you'd never have a chance to see." + }, + { + "turn_id": 187, + "timestamp": "01:00:37", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I remember you started out saying that part of joining was a sense of adventure. So you had, any other adventures that you went on? Whether it was soccer or bullfights or Machu Picchu." + }, + { + "turn_id": 188, + "timestamp": "01:00:50", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Um. Just trying to." + }, + { + "turn_id": 189, + "timestamp": "01:00:55", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Two motorcycles coming at you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 190, + "timestamp": "01:00:56", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Two motorcycles was a, um. I do recall one, we had a going away party for this guy that was the mutual fund salesman. He and his British wife were heading back to someplace, so we had this going away party for him and ended up in a. We had this American kid who was tagging along with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 191, + "timestamp": "01:01:20", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "He wasn't Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 192, + "timestamp": "01:01:22", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "He wasn't Peace Corps, he was the son of a military guy or something. Anyway, he was belligerent, got drunk. The first time I've ever seen somebody try and hit another guy over the head with a beer bottle. It went kaboom and it just bounced right back and this kid was, didn't even faze him. Then he broke a chair and chairs got broken. All of a sudden in this bar we were in, all of the police come in. And the police all have Uzis or some machine guns, and we're all lined up against the wall. And I've just trying not to spill my drink. These are valuable things, I can't afford to let this get away. So we had to go down, we had to pay a fine, pay for the damage to the bar and do all this kind of stuff. And take one guy who got cut a little bit, get his ticket, taken to the hospital and get his stitches and stuff. It's a memorable evening. Everybody got sober in a hurry." + }, + { + "turn_id": 193, + "timestamp": "01:02:21", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned stitches. Now did you ever run into any health problems when you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 194, + "timestamp": "01:02:24", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had a little dysentery, which like everybody gets. I didn't have any other problems, at least not that I remember. And they gave you those pills and those worked reasonably well.\n\nThey took us horseback riding. My boss, the director of public works, took us up to this town called El Aguila, which means eagle in Spanish. And the only way to get there was on horseback, so we had to get a horse and that's also when I saw that he had a 38 special stuck in the waistband behind his back. Well, so they get this horse and I think they were playing get the gringo. They go, let's get this really lively horse. And it had an English saddle, which I didn't know, I'm used to the Westerner saddle. So I go up and I grab for the saddle horn and there's none there. I almost, I kind of went right over the top and on the other side. Got on the horse and I finally survived, made it up to the town. I'm not much of a horseman, but it was. If you saw that movie Romancing the Stone? I'm sure those pictures weren't taken in Colombia, but it was a village very similar to those kinds of things. I don't think there was any warlords there. It was just a poor mountain village with, uh, I can't remember what we were up there for. We were up there to look at some potential project, but I probably drew something up afterwards. I thought the Peace Corps would be a phenomenal experience for me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 195, + "timestamp": "01:03:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it fulfilled your hope for some adventures. And now at the end of your tour, what sense of achievement, failures, satisfaction, regrets?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 196, + "timestamp": "01:03:59", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it's kind of, it was kind of. You're getting ready to leave, it's always a little bittersweet because, you know, you feel like you really haven't been there long enough to do what you wanted to do, but you're also ready to go home." + }, + { + "turn_id": 197, + "timestamp": "01:04:11", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 198, + "timestamp": "01:04:11", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So, you know, I stayed extra two months because we just from. I was normally supposed to have gotten out in like September, and I stayed on. I asked to extend on to December and I think was primarily to finish one of the plans for one of my projects. And since I figured, well, if I'm going to be 1A for the draft, I'd rather show up in December and spend Christmas at home, and then I'll worry about that later. So I stayed home for a couple of months. But by the time I got to December, I was ready to leave. It was about time to move on or do something else. But I think we, at least I felt that I wasn't there long enough to have the impact that I would have liked to have. I think I accomplished some things, but I don't know that I accomplished as much as I could have. I mean, I think if you were given the opportunity to do it over, so to speak, like do it today, with what I know today, I'd obviously get a lot more, I could accomplish a lot more. Maybe, maybe not." + }, + { + "turn_id": 199, + "timestamp": "01:05:16", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What kinds of after thoughts or what might you have changed in hindsight?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 200, + "timestamp": "01:05:25", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think, you know, sort of had a little better understanding of what the objective is, you know, which was to try and help them. The objective in architecture is not to do plans, it's to help people figure out what they need and to help provide some visual documentation of what their goal or their dream is. So it's a lot of collaborative working with folks, that I probably didn't have the language skills to do. But it's not just doing the plans. The plans are not as important as the collaborative effort. That's something I've learned later that looking back on it that I would have done it a bit differently. I think by and large, I think it all worked out really well.\n\nI had sort of three phases to my two year career down there. I had both been out in a rural village, sort of intermediate town, and then a big city. And being in a big city, big city was relative. It was about four or five hundred thousand people. It wasn't being in New York or someplace like that. And Cali at least at that time, was a big city, but it was relatively clean. I do remember sitting there for some festival that they had fireworks looking out and they had this big slum called Circo or something like that, it was on the mountains. Just all mud shacks and stuff made out of tin cans and things like that, just thousands of people up on this hillside.\n\nAnd every time it would rain, some of them would be washed down. Sort of like the houses around Hong Kong where they would have mudslides. But there is just a whole group of people in Colombia, that just weren't even a part of any economy, they were just left out altogether. I'm not sure we were responding to that at all. Maybe you couldn't do much for that. Maybe there were some nurses, there were some nurses there that were working in the hospital that may have been able to do something in the clinics. Certainly, I don't think the community development volunteers or the cooperatives or myself as an architect were having any impact on that sort of have-not population." + }, + { + "turn_id": 201, + "timestamp": "01:07:40", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did some of those kind of mudslides happen while you were there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 202, + "timestamp": "01:07:43", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't recall any, but they always had some disaster going on. And you'd read it in the paper. There were some problems. Of course, there was no plumbing there, there is no. So who knows what the disease, I'm sure was rampant. I don't know how many people were out there, but it was a significant slum on the hillside going up into the mountains on the west side of Cali." + }, + { + "turn_id": 203, + "timestamp": "01:08:12", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How much of your project was sort of you defining as you went along? So we can get a sense of that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 204, + "timestamp": "01:08:19", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "A little bit. It was like, you know, going to work for the Department of Public Works and then I had to sit down and kind of figure out with the director, well, what do you want me to do? And between us, we'd come up with these projects. So there's a lot of them for Department of Public Works were ones that somebody had said, we'd like a school in our town. Well, I think what happened, really happened, was that the politicians go, we don't have any money for that, but we'll get somebody to draw it up. Well, none of the architecture or private practice want to draw it up because this town didn't have any money. Oh, well, we'll get the Peace Corps guy to draw it up. That at least got it on there, got it in the schedule, or got it in the system to say, well, here's a set of plans. This is the school we want. And it got it into their political system so they could only get funding. And I think a couple of schools actually got built. No idea where they are. Just got my plans.\n\nWhen you come back, all of a sudden, you're not a big deal. At least in most of the towns, if you're the Peace Corps volunteer, you were a big deal. People sort of came out to see you. So if you asked somebody to come to a meeting, they'd do it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 205, + "timestamp": "01:09:37", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Speaking of coming back home, did you come straight back home or did you travel back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 206, + "timestamp": "01:09:43", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I pretty much came back, straight back. I came through Miami because I recall I rented a car in Miami and drove back up to Chicago. I can't remember why I did it that way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 207, + "timestamp": "01:09:56", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there much of a culture shock when you came back?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 208, + "timestamp": "01:09:58", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I didn't have that. My guess is if you were living out in the sticks in some place. And most of the culture shock that I heard about was this all of a sudden, you're not very important anymore. Whereas if you were in a real small town and you were the Peace Corps volunteer, you know, the mayor knew who you were and would, you know, introduce you to folks and the priest would know who you were. And all the people in town would go, oh, there goes the Peace Corps volunteers. They'd know who they were. They may not know what we were trying to do, but we were sort of a celebrity. You come back, you're not, you know, you just disappear. I think that's where some people had trouble especially. We had a couple, one guy that was a basketball coach that was really successful with coaching some of the local high school teams down in Colombia. And he became a real celebrity because his teams would win a lot. Back here, he's probably in high school and got a job as a coach.\n\nSo, but I didn't have that much culture shock. I was more worried about the Army and." + }, + { + "turn_id": 209, + "timestamp": "01:11:13", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You were worried about. Did you have any hints when you were in Colombia that that might be an issue? You were getting letters from the draft board?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 210, + "timestamp": "01:11:19", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, no. I was just 25 years old, I, you know, if I could extend for a whole year until I was 26, which was at that time the upper limit cut off where if you were over 26 and hadn't been drafted yet, you were. They had to draft everybody below 26 before they get to you. So this was before the lottery and all that stuff. So I got back and I had to report to the Selective Service, tell them I wasn't in the Peace Corps anymore. Oh, yeah, we're waiting for you. So that's when I enlisted in the Army, and the Army figured they had a PR bonanza with this Peace Corps volunteer. So they followed me through training with a photographer." + }, + { + "turn_id": 211, + "timestamp": "01:12:04", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Really? Interesting." + }, + { + "turn_id": 212, + "timestamp": "01:12:05", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Someplace I have pictures. And they did this in Vietnam too, followed me around Vietnam. Every once in a while, this photographer would show up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 213, + "timestamp": "01:12:13", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what was their particular aim with this?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 214, + "timestamp": "01:12:14", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it was just, you know, I think it was part of the PR. See, the Army guys, you know, come from all walks of life, you know, which one of those. We've got this person who's serving their country twice. You know, the Army, military is pretty good at the promoting the PR side of it. At least they were there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 215, + "timestamp": "01:12:34", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Now, an item here, they talk about evaluating your service in light of the three goals of the Peace Corps. The first one is providing technical assistance where requested. Spend a bit of time on that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 216, + "timestamp": "01:12:46", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think that I did a pretty good job of that, I mean, I mean, obviously when you're right out of architecture school, you know how to draw and you know what buildings are supposed to look like, but you have no clue how they really go together. Architecture is an empirical profession. We learn by doing. You have to go out and you have to design things, you have to go out and watch a contractor build them, and you find out, gee, they can't build it the way I drew it. Because how are you going to put the form work around it? How are you going to do that? So I didn't know any of that. So probably a lot of the stuff I drew, then the contractor would take a lot of license of how to build it. So if you do it later and you've got actually some more talent, I suspect that an architect or someone with construction skills, that is essentially in their sixties and retiring is probably a better Peace Corps volunteer than some kid right out of school. You know, I just didn't know much at all. So for me, there was a huge opportunity just to begin to learn my profession." + }, + { + "turn_id": 217, + "timestamp": "01:13:45", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It was fascinating earlier you mentioned that about how you could come into all aspects of this project, the electricity and all that. And when you talk about drawing in the office, but then would you get to go and see, OK, I thought that this should go this way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 218, + "timestamp": "01:13:59", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the part of the challenge was that by the time I got the things drawn and they would put it in their political process to try and get funding to build it. I was probably out of the country by the time they got around to it. So I, you know, I did the plans. I have no idea whether that's really the way they did it. I mean, I was doing, you know, classrooms in the schools with, you know, these are all traditionally had two light bulbs up there in the ceiling. It didn't have any fluorescent tubes or anything else. It was pretty rudimentary and it was all built with concrete block and stucco on the sides and a couple of windows and probably some of the tile work that the air can come through, and you know, the outdoor corridor. It was pretty rudimentary. Can we take a break for a second?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 219, + "timestamp": "01:14:47", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sure.\n\nOK, another goal was to promote better understanding of Americans by people served." + }, + { + "turn_id": 220, + "timestamp": "01:15:01", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think it, I think I suspect that was probably the real thing that the Peace Corps accomplished was that these Americans are real people, they come over, actually you can get along with us, we can tell jokes, we do all the other kinds of, as human as anyone else. We've been more blessed than many, but we're, you know, we're not ogres or we're not kings. We're not either end of the spectrum. We're just the same thing. I think that's probably the big, biggest thing that the Peace Corps could accomplish. I think it's a little. I think it's a great goal, but it's a little presumptuous to say that we're going to come over and give all this technological knowledge in a two-year span and have a big impact.\n\nBut the impact of having people just get to know people. Because I don't like America, but there was one American I really did like. It was this guy that came down here from Grand Rapids or whatever and was with us for a couple of years, and he was really a neat guy or neat gal. That's probably, that's worth a lot. This is kind of balance about that. And we do have people in this country that, you know, are not in it just for the money. They want to do something that they thought was the right thing to do. And I don't know how the Peace Corps has evolved since then. I think it's become, I think, a little better than when I was in. It was a little bit of an amateur hour to this day. I mean, they had, you know, nobody had really any experience. We were all. Most of us were, you know, in our 20s, we're just right out of college, which one time was the right thing to do. We didn't know we couldn't do it. So it was the training school.\n\nI did have one gal when I was training for the Peace Corps in Nigeria in New York. Her name was Elsie, I can't remember. But she was 72 years old, and she was from Vermont. She was a retired schoolteacher. She was going to Nigeria. And she was like typical New Englander. I don't know if she was a spinster or not. I can't recall. But the only thing that bothered her about the Peace Corps training was the field hockey. Because she said, these people are hitting me in the shins and that hurt. Other than that, she could outrun most of us. She was a neat gal. Of course, she's not alive anymore because that was 30 years ago, but she was. I'm sure she went over, she made it through the training program and went over to Nigeria, and I'm sure she did a terrific job." + }, + { + "turn_id": 221, + "timestamp": "01:17:38", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And then third goal I'll mention is to help promote better understandings of other peoples by Americans." + }, + { + "turn_id": 222, + "timestamp": "01:17:48", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think that, you know, I got to understand a little bit more about certainly Latin America and Colombia just by having lived there for a while. I haven't just been sitting in this cocoon in the United States. Europeans have a big advantage because all they have to do is drive, you know, a hundred miles and they're in another country with the culture and they have to learn other languages when they go to school just to do business and everything else. And we really don't have to. I mean, all you learn is English and you learn it really well, that's more than enough. Through CNN, I suspect that in the future, it's going to become even less important. But I think the idea that we learned a lot about other cultures. I think you also value what's really important about our own. I think it's like if you want to really learn English, try to teach in another language because you don't learn the language, because the grammar really comes through. Do you understand my point? They understand English grammar better because you're looking at it through another language. I think you understand what is it that makes our system really work.\n\nI think you also get to realize that it's probably you can't always export it to other placed. It's something very unique about the United States. Like we always used to sit there at night. How come the United States turned out the way it did and Colombia turned out the way it did? And Colombia, at least then, I think still is, there's almost a feudal society, where two percent of the people have 85 percent of the wealth. And our conclusion was that the failures of Europe with the successive. So when they had their revolution, it was only where the money went. They just didn't want to send their money back to Spain and Portugal, and they wanted to keep it for themselves. We had the opportunity to have a blank slate. You make this.\n\nAnd we probably had just as many people that were landed gentry that were deciding things, but we weren't. It wasn't just we don't send the money back to England. We want to do something with it. And we changed the mindset. And obviously, it's evolved more successful since then, it probably wasn't that much different back in colonial times. But today it's evolved in a way that you really can do almost anything you want to if you really decide that's what you want to do. And there aren't too many other countries where you can do that. I think it's good that, you know, essentially the future cached for you.\n\nThe country that I think, it's kind of interesting. Amway is a big company here in Michigan. And their biggest country in success right now is China. So they're making almost all their money, not all the money, but a big significant part of it. And I think it's because they offer this dream of you don't have to deal with the parent company. You can have your own company with your own name on the door. And it's that American, you know, you could be a success on your own, make your own way in the world, you don't have to do the same thing that your parents did and your grandparents did, unless you want to. It's a phenomenal thing, and it's probably not, we probably can't replicate it in other places." + }, + { + "turn_id": 223, + "timestamp": "01:21:12", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The last question we have is the effect on you of your Peace Corps service. Was there any kind of immediate effect as far as changing soft career plans, whatever?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 224, + "timestamp": "01:21:21", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah. The Army sent a photographer around with me through basic training and everything else. In fact, they also did it afterwards because I came back and I was a tack officer, one of those guys with the black baseball caps that yell at people at Fort Belvoir. And they had a photographer out following me around that. I was considered one of their positive images that they could give, so it had an impact. You know, after you after you got your first job, where you went to school and what you did doesn't really count anymore. So what are you going to do? So what do you to do with yourself as opposed to what you did before. I don't know that Peace Corps has had much weight, although it has.\n\nFrank and I were talking, Frank Grove and I were talking about this earlier. We've gotten into a lot of foreign work in the, both in the early '80s, when I was over and I managed our office in Saudi Arabia. The fact that I'd been overseas and that wasn't a big deal, you know. I feel like if I can go to Colombia and be in a country where I have to speak Spanish and do all those other things, well, I can go to Saudi Arabia and help negotiate a deal to get us to work there. Frank and I went over to China and designed an airport. He made a lot more trips than I did. I made of two of them, he made about 12 or 13 because the airport managing. How do you get along in one of these, you know, foreign culture where things are. The criteria and everything else are different, you have to adapt to them and they have to adapt to you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 225, + "timestamp": "01:22:57", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So kind of a long-term effect on you in that ability." + }, + { + "turn_id": 226, + "timestamp": "01:22:59", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I think it's a, uh, my company sent me over to England. We bought a company in the United Kingdom and I had to go over there and look at their plans to see if they were competent. I'm not quite sure I could tell whether they were competent or not. But just the ability to, well, appreciate and adapt to a different culture. Also recognize what the differences are, I think, is a skill you kind of learn in the Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 227, + "timestamp": "01:23:26", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Bringing that up to the present, what are you doing now?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 228, + "timestamp": "01:23:37", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, my wife, Bobbie, and I met when I was on my way to Vietnam and I was in the Army. We met in the original Friday's in New York, which is a bar. So not all bar romances go bad. We've been married for 35 years. As I said, I was in the Army. We've got two sons, both of them out on the West Coast. The older one is married. He lives in Seattle and his corporate bankruptcy consultant for a division of Ernest and Young, which will probably be spun off. The younger one works for Baxter Laboratories and is a biologist by training, but he manages a lab for a living there in Los Angeles. And I'm the director of architecture for URS, and we're the largest design firm in the United States. So things have worked out pretty well. I thought when we moved to Grand Rapids, we'd be here two to three years tops. Still here 35 years later. It's a really nice place to live. Drive to Detroit or Chicago or fly to New York. Bobbie is originally from New York, so we go back there almost every year to visit a place that they have up in the Cascade mountains. Gorgeous. I'd like to visit more. But I'm sure that they like to visit Grand Rapids when we are there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 229, + "timestamp": "01:24:59", + "speaker": "Ernest Zaremba", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 230, + "timestamp": "01:25:00", + "speaker": "William Stevenson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, thank you. I've been kind of interested." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00101", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2019-096.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Roman, Michael (2000-2002): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2019-096", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2019-096", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Michael (Mike) Roman served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kiribati from November 2000 to June 2002 in an education program. Stationed on the island of Tamana, he spent his time teaching students that were having difficulty in learning English. In addition, he also organized after-school activities that allowed the youth of his village, Bakaka, to get involved in running and table tennis. Roman discusses his living situation and life in Kiribati. After the Peace Corps, he completed his Ph.D. and now partners with international organizations to raise global consciousness of climate change. Interviewed and recorded by Edwin Blanton, June 21, 2019. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "21 June 2019", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 54 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "046a. Kiribati.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Kiribati. Roman, Michael (2000-2002): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Kiribati", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2019-096", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2019-096-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/v72ul2ix00jhb88u73nrvvu13121448p.pdf?odc=20231115173742-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/3d65e9c5-9d9a-4794-b7c8-d6fe3b733088/9b551867-cb71-47a5-a651-e21a1b43d4c3/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI3MjhfZGIyMzkzZmE3YzYzMTU5MWZjYzZlMDZmMjVhMzYxNTNlNTA4Njk4YjNjMmNjNzI0NjI0NDY5ZGRhNWVhODE5ZF8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS8zZDY1ZTljNS05ZDlhLTQ3OTQtYjdjOC1kNmZlM2I3MzMwODgvOWI1NTE4NjctY2I3MS00N2E1LWE2NTEtZTIxYTFiNDNkNGMzL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Austin, Texas", + "length": "19 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed July 17, 2019, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Michael Roman Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Edwin Blanton" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Michael Roman" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:02", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is June 21st, 2019. This is Edwin Blanton. I am interviewing Michael Roman, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Kiribati from November 2000 to June 2002 working in the education sector. Michael, I first want to ask what, uh, what interested you in joining the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:28", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was, uh. Volunteerism has always been something a part of me and my dad instilled into me when I was young, delivering baskets in the middle of winter in Rochester, New York, to needy families during Thanksgiving, during Christmas. So I always knew that I wanted to volunteer. In college, I led the Catholic Church youth group to do soup kitchen volunteer work. I was an RA in the service line corridor and service was always a part of me. So I guess the big draw for me was, hey, I can do spend two years of my life serving. And that was the big draw.\n\nI went to an intercultural festival in Hamilton, Ohio. I went to Miami University in Ohio and my friend took me to an intercultural festival and there was a Peace Corps table there. And some old returned Peace Corps volunteer was telling me stories about what he did in Africa with snakes. And I was like, that sounds awesome. I picked up a brochure and next thing you know, I'm interviewing for Peace Corps. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:01:44", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you have a specific country or a project in mind?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:49", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh uh. My degree was in elementary education. And so being a minority, number one, being a male, number two, I have people throwing job offers at me because I wanted to work in the inner city and, uh, so that kind of led to my Peace Corps assignment. I wanted to be in education. That was what my degree was in, and I didn't have any. I don't even know that you could prefer at that time where you would go. And I, I told my Peace Corps recruiter that I was allergic to fish, hated hot weather, and severely prone to motion sickness. And I got invited to the Pacific Islands that had only fish, hot weather, and boat travel. So, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:02:54", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was your reaction when, when you received your assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:02:59", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Where is this? Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:03:05", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right, so and how were you trained for that assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:03:09", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, the typical, I think, at least back then, it was three months of training with a host family, living, learning how to eat, talk, walk again. The culture, the language. Yeah. Hard core, three months in the islands. So we were trained in country. We weren't trained somewhere else. We were trained in the country. And, um, yeah, we learned on the job basically." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:03:42", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And to what extent to the training accurately prepare you for your assignment?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:03:47", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, hmm. It was very structured. The training was very structured. And when I got to site, it was very unstructured. So I think they may have told us, this was 19 years ago. I think they might have told us, you know, be aware that it's going to be a lot less structured than this. But when I got to site, school was not in session. And it was, I think I had a couple of days before school started. And there was, okay, go out and find the store, find the church, find people. And I didn't speak the language. I did, but I didn't. And it was it was a learning curve, a big learning curve.\n\nAnd then the kids came and it was even a bigger learning curve. I think the kids taught me more about how to speak Kiribati than I, like more intensely than I got in those three months because the kids can't speak English, like you have to do it. So sink or swim." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:05:06", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so what exactly did your, did your job entail then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:05:11", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was a teacher trainer in Abaiang, in my first. I was moved to a different island. Um. Something very bad happened and, um, to a volunteer. And they took all of us off and they tried to resolve the situation. So I was only at site for maybe a week, maybe a week and a half, before this terrible thing happened, and, um, it was never resolved. So I was moved to a different island very, very, very far away. And my job there was not so much a teacher trainer, but a teacher.\n\nSo I had elementary school students, the students that had the most trouble with English, and I would help them in small groups. So I would be like a resource teacher, pull them out and, and work with those students. And then I would also share what we were doing, obviously, with the teachers, and they would take some of what we were doing into their own classes and use it if they weren't getting through to their students that they were working with." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:06:36", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So being in a, in a location that was far away, where there are other Peace Corps volunteers close to you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:06:42", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my island, my second island I could ride across in less than a minute on the bike, maybe 55, 56 seconds on the bike from one end to the other end. And I lived on one end of that 55 seconds, and she lived on the other end of that 45, you know, distance. So it was really, really close. She was a health volunteer. I was the education volunteer. At the time, there was only health and education in the country, so. I was structured compared to her because I had a starting bell, a lunch bell, a closing bell. I had meetings with teachers. She worked in the community as a community health worker. And it was just, it was, it wasn't structured, not like mine.\n\nBut there was one other volunteer there on that island. My first island, we were, it was a bigger island. And when I say bigger, I mean longer. Coral atolls are not big and long, but there were four volunteers on that island and the distance between each one was probably about an hour bike ride. So it was much more conducive to having a closer Peace Corps volunteer on the smaller islands." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:08:16", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:08:16", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There were only three villages on the smaller island, and one of those villages was the government village where the schools were. So you can't really count that as a village because it was all the government workers, but they did count as a village. We had the northern and southern, that's where most of the population was. Probably about 700 people at the time." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:08:38", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For the island or for the village?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:08:40", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The island." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:08:42", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:08:42", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:08:45", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And so talk about what your living arrangements were like." + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "00:08:48", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I had my own house. I had the mansion of the, the Peace Corps, aside from the director, but I had cinder block tiles. I had a split level, I had a stairway, I had a concrete floor, I had a concrete hole for relieving myself. It was nice. It was a nice, nice house. I think I had the best house in the entire nation for a volunteer. It was on the teacher compound. So we lived with all the elementary school teachers. The JSS [Junior Secondary Schools] just had their own teacher compound, which was literally a few seconds bike ride and I wouldn't even bike it. I would just walk down that road.\n\nAnd the middle village is where all the teachers lived and then where members of Parliament or this island council had houses there. I had my own pump in my house, so I didn't even have to go to a well, I just pumped the water out of the, they call it a Tamana pump, but it's, I can't even describe it. It was so convenient. But I had the indoor, I call it my indoor plumbing, and it was nice. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "00:10:20", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So what was it like living so close to your coworkers than your host country nationals that were coworkers then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:10:29", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I got really close to them. Um. They're all on Facebook now. I go back to the country every year or every year and a half, and I still see them. I still meet up with them. Some of them are living in New Zealand right now. Some of them are in Australia, some of them are in the Marshall Islands. Some of them are here in the States. So I've been extremely involved after Peace Corps. But it all started with the idea that and I get roped into this. In Kiribati, family is everything and everyone is family. It's such a small community." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:11:16", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:11:16", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You can imagine, one minute to go from one end of the island to the other end. If you went the long way, it took me probably about ten, 15 minutes on a bike. But a lot of that was the airfield or like bush land, so not a lot of people live out there. But everyone is really close. And I became extremely close with my, everyone, with my teachers, with my, um, with Corey. Corey was her name, the other Peace Corps volunteer, so with Corey's family as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:12:04", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you see Peace Corps staff often and what was your interaction with them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:12:14", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't ever think I saw a Peace Corps staff come to my site just because to get there it was like a four and a half or five hour flight on the one and the only plane. So the time when I would see Peace Corps staff would be when I would go to the capital for, we had three meetings a year. So at the breaks of school, we would go in and have a meeting. That would be the time where we would buy food, stuff that we can't get on the outer island. M&Ms, eggs, bread, like the luxury stuff. Juice, toilet paper, stuff like that.\n\nThat's the only time that I saw Peace Corps staff on the outer island that I worked on. They did come to, when there was the incident, to the closer island. They did come out there and for obvious reasons, they had to meet with police and everything like that. But aside from seeing them outside of emergency responses? No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:13:40", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you talk about like your, your language capacity and what role did that play?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:13:47", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think my language is still horrible, but I can hold a conversation in Kiribati. But everybody else who hears me speak says it's good. I don't believe them. I think they're just being complimentary. Um. It was hard because I have, my mom and dad are Mexican, and so I have Spanish in my head and I would mix up Spanish with Kiribati, with English, and I would have a hard time. That was hard. But once I started being able to think in Kiribati, then it was a lot easier. And I don't I think I've reached that point of being able to think everything in Kiribati still today. I know I haven't. Yeah.\n\nBut language is, language is important. I mean, on the other islands, yeah, people spoke English, but it was almost, I don't want to say an embarrassment to speak English, but people made fun of you if you spoke English. Like there's a strong, the official language, if you look it up, is English. But that's only because of the Brits and they're a former colony. And a lot of people can speak English, but the people, they're proud of Kiribati, they're proud of their country. They're proud of their language. So they're proud of who they are.\n\nAnd so, yeah, I had to learn to Kiribati. And that's when I broke through. That's where, I guess you could say, I gained entry when I would be able to speak any Kiribati. And especially with the kids, you have to speak Kiribati. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:15:48", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And about how long into your service did you feel fairly confident with the language?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:15:55", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Maybe after a year. Yeah. Not in the first three months, no. That, uh, that prepped you for the bigger lesson and that would be going to site. But nowadays I can go to Kiribati and I'll be fine. And when I do go to Kiribati and I speak Kiribati, everyone thinks I'm like a half caste because I'm brown, but I don't have a flat nose, so I must have gotten that from someone else. So yeah, but then when I speak Kiribati, they're like, oh!" + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:16:40", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you, um, can you describe the school in which you worked? Let's start with like, what was, what was the building like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:16:47", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So the school is called Margaret Field Primary School. And it was, if you think about a row house, one level row house, it was just a long cinder block room with partitions for different grade levels. And on the top was a tin roof. So when it rained, it rained. And the tin roof made it sound like the world was crashing down on you. It was old. The chicken wire that held the windows, that barricaded the windows from things flying in, was rusty. It's new now. They rebuilt it and it's still called Margaret Field Primary School. But at the time it was just a cinder block house, row house.\n\nAnd there were no. Some classrooms had desks, but not like these, not like the desks that with a chair that you're sitting in. They were, I guess you could say what we would consider stools. And instead of sitting on the stools, they would sit on the floor and they would use that for their desk. Some schools, we got an AusAID donation of desks, and they were kind of like this, but metal bars framed and two seats per desk with a table up on top with a desk on top. That didn't come until like well into the second year. But, yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:18:34", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And AusAID, do you?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:18:35", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "AusAID is Australian AID. So there's NZAID and there's Australia, uh, New Zealand AID and Australian AID. And a lot of the donations or a lot of the support to the country come from those countries. They're like the big brothers of the Pacific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:19:00", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So how would you then describe like a typical day of, of teaching?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:19:08", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "As the sun rises, the chickens would crow. And then I would hear the clanking outside and those clanks would be bottles that the men of the village would carry up with, um, up the coconut trees. And they would set those bottles to capture the sap from the coconut trees. And that sap would be used to cook or to make drinks or for [inaudible], even to make candies, for a variety of reasons. Those clinking bottles would be in unison, in chorus with the crowing of the chickens. And that's how every day started. And then soon after, the sun would start to rise. And as the sun was rising, that's when you would hear songs from the men up on top of the coconut trees, singing, harmonize, harmoniously, harmoniously with other men in the village.\n\nAnd they would sing about everything, from famous Kiribati songs to made-up songs, from life on the land to lost girlfriends. I was like, man, that's a way to get your news out there, buddy. But that's how every morning started. And then I would wake up. I would pump my water in the bucket and take it to the bathroom and do a bucket bath. And then the night before, I would always. So I would boil the water, I would filter the water, and then I would put it in my Nalgene bottle to sit overnight so that when I woke up, I would have a cool-ish bottle of water to brush my teeth to and then to drink throughout the day.\n\nWhen I finished with that process of getting the water for my bucket bath, I would get the water for my boiling for the next night's water supply. And then I cooked tortillas. Like I said, I was allergic to fish. So there really wasn't food. There was flour, water. On the weekends at celebrations, people would save chickens for me to eat, sometimes pig. But the weekend is usually when I ate. Throughout the week it would just be tortillas and ketchup, whatever I brought back from Tarawa, from the main island at the conference, tri, tri-monthly conference. After I was set, I would make Milo. Maybe have some crackers, some biscuits.\n\nAnd then the students would start arriving probably at 8:00, and school would start and I would start work. And then I would have tea, which would always be Milo and crackers, and then teach in the afternoon. And by 2:00 we were done. And then after 2:00, I would prepare my lessons for the next day. And then, um, on certain nights I would go out with Ita. He was like my best friend, my, what, the wife of his was, I think, like the fourth grade, equivalent to like the fourth or fifth grade teacher. And they lived right next door to me. So he and I would go out and catch fish with all the village men at sundown, at dusk. And it was the most beautiful thing.\n\nThe fish that we caught were called flying fish or, well, in English, yeah, flying fish. And these fish actually flew and they would jump out of the water and they could fly meters, maybe 15 meters, 25 meters in the air. And then they would go back down. And we would have, the sun was setting and we're on the Pacific Ocean. And the ripples were fuchsia, were orange, were red. That was the most beautiful thing. And I'm out there with ten different canoes from the village, and we're all working together to trap schools of fish. And all we do is just dip our nets down, dump them out in our canoes. Some will jump out of the flap and they'll escape. And Ita always said those ones were the most delicious, the ones that escaped.\n\nAnd then we would go back, bring the fish to the village. The women would cook the fish. The women would also cook the rice. They would be the ones that made the food. So men of the ocean and women of the land is pretty much how it works. And then some nights people would get up at midnight and go out fishing. They would come back with two new loads of fish and they had loads of lobster or crabs or. It was just, it was a seafood diet. That was, that was great. Man, you're bringing back memories." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:25:07", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Good. Um. Let's, you know, I want to talk more about the school day and kind of what the, uh, how you actually taught. What did that look like as far as like materials that you used with the students? Or did they have, did they have recess? Did they have extracurriculars? What did, what did that look like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:25:31", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So when the kids came, so I had a pull up class so they would come actually to my house. I would pull them out from their classes and we would do teaching there, because they were the ones that needed the extra attention and it was too hard to have them stay in the classroom. So they would come to my house. I decorated it with letters, with the whole language teaching materials, pictures. And every day we would do lessons on, depending on where they were, maybe it was memorizing the letters, what they were called, or what they sounded like. The long sounds, the song, the short sounds, the diphthongs, the different, different parts of, uh, phonics basically from that language, and then put that together through a whole language.\n\nSo we went from letters to words, from words to phrases, from phrases to sentences. And this was a whole year long, year long curriculum to get them to recognize the letters, recognize the words, put the words together, and then being able to spell them and say them at the same time. Some were, they didn't make it past knowing the sounds of the letters. Some, they made it all the way to, hey, I'm reading in English. It just depends on where they fell in the spectrum of language acquisition.\n\nAnd every student had their own IEP, basically individualized education plan. And that was something that I talked about to the teachers, because then the teachers, it was basically rote memorization and spit back. And that was it, which worked for a lot of students, but didn't work for these students. So that was my everyday language instruction." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:27:54", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And did you ever get feedback from the head of the school?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:28:00", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, Vivianni. She, she loved what I was doing. And I was, I think I may have been the only one that assigned homework to the students. And they all had their own little Ziploc bags that they would bring home with the materials I wanted to do overnight. And they came back with the materials for me. But every night I would be assigning homework to them. And they did it because my mom and dad would go out to like McDonald's, Dairy Queen, and stuff like that and get Happy Meal presents that they didn't, and or toys that they didn't, and that they were going to throw away. And so I use those toys as incentives. And that, that worked. And then we had a big prize giving at the end of the year for the entire school. And whatever I didn't use, I saved up and used them for that too. So, yeah, I brought my capitalistic idea." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:29:13", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you have any secondary projects?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:29:18", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I run. So in college I ran and I, I took running shoes to Kiribati, but they got trashed after like one week. It is just, it was bad. It was like. And so I said, Mom, Dad, you sent me some new shoes? And I got a box at Easter. I opened it up. It said Merry Christmas and it was shoes that I had asked for. And I would just go run. And on a constant basis every day when the sun went down. When I wasn't out with Ita, I would go run in the field right by our house, right by the compound, and kids would chase me. And I'm like, all right, let's, let's work with it. Let's do two laps. Come on.\n\nAnd they started doing two laps with me. And then I got more kids. And pretty soon I had like a running team. And that was kind of what I did. And then also when I went to the main island, Tarawa, I would buy ping pong stuff. So we would have after school ping pong, we would have after school running. And then I would randomly help people, older people, that wanted to apply for SPMS, South Pacific Marine Services, so to work on ships. And help them with their essays and stuff like that. But mainly my work was in the elementary school." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "00:31:01", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm. So when you wanted to let Mom or Dad know you needed more running shoes or Happy Meal toys and that sort of thing, how would you communicate with them?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:31:14", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Letter, paper, pen, stamp. Mm hmm. But one time I was able to call them from a bush. It was, Peace Corps was doing some kind of experiment with LSAT phones, and they want me to test it from where I was, because where I was was one of the most remote islands in the Gilbert chain. And so I went out to the airstrip and I hid behind the bush because if the kids saw me with that phone, they would be all over me. So I called my mom and I talked to her and it was like I was calling her from next door. It was amazing. I didn't say any issues then during that phone conversation. I love you, Mom. Oh, can you also send me this and this and this and this?\n\nBut it was always. And they knew. They, they know, I, I. They knew I was a runner and I was always tearing up shoes. So they would always send a new pair every couple of months. So." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:32:31", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, looking back at your tour of service, what do you think were your main accomplishments?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:32:36", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Nothing. They changed me more than I changed them. And I, I can say proudly that I'm 100% wrong in thinking that because I have been in contact with the country ever since leaving. And one of my former students, two of my former, they married each other. One owns a business, an eco hotel chain, and another one is a climate warrior. So before she had her baby, she toured around and did climate activism. She was a very outspoken person. And she, yeah, she, she amazes me.\n\nA lot of my students are married, have children of their own right now, and I haven't gone back to my island, my island of service. But I have seen students from Tarawa who moved to the main island and thank me, come up to me. I took them out to dinner, met their family, their kids, held their kids. I'm like, damn, I'm old." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:34:05", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So when you go back every year, every year and a half, you actually go back to the main island rather than your, your site of service?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:34:13", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And my very first, where I was removed from. Because my host family that has become, for all intents and purposes, my extended family half of my life live on, are from that island. So I always go back. I always go back. I take care of Kiribati mom and Kiribati dad back to their island, and we stay at that eco friendly hotel resort." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:34:51", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did your Peace Corps experience influence your plans for the future?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:34:57", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, my God. It changed everything. I thought when I was going to undergraduate, I would teach elementary school and retire and I would stay in Ohio. That's it, game over. That was my plan. That plan ended before I even began because of Peace Corps. Peace Corps opened some many doors of opportunity to me that I didn't even think was plausible when I was an undergraduate. When I came back from Peace Corps, I went into AmeriCorps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:35:40", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:35:41", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I went from the islands in the middle of an ocean to basically an island in the middle of corn and soy in Iowa. And talking to. I worked at Central College in Pella, Iowa, as a service learning coordinator for one year, one academic school year. And then I ended up talking to an anthropology professor. And even back then I was talking about global warming and how I thought this wasn't good news for Kiribati. And at that time, um, a Kiribati relative of mine was sick. That was actually my Kiribati mom and I was visiting her and my Kiribati brother, Asia, who now has passed away.\n\nSaid to me, don't. Don't go over there. And he was pointing at a guy in a wheelchair and the guy that nobody was around him. I'm like, leprosy? What's, what's up? It's like, no, he's got HIV. And there was a big stigma against people living with HIV and AIDS. And prior to joining the Peace Corps, I worked with children and, children and families impacted by HIV and AIDS, and I knew the stigma and the problems that they were going through. So I got, I never went. I listened to him. I never went, but that stuck with me. And I knew that this was a problem.\n\nAnd so at Central, I started talking about HIV being an issue, and I knew it was always seamen, people at sea, rivers, people who worked on ships. And I wanted to do something about it. And that was my first master's in biomedical anthropology, working with HIV AIDS Task Force in Kirbati, trying to build more humanitarian views on HIV and AIDS and people living with the disease. And so I worked with the, I worked with UNAIDS and the HIV AIDS Task Force to create social awareness campaigns, educational campaigns, and doing kind of like what I was talking about earlier. Wilcoxon rank signing tests, pre and post survey exams, and data analysis with those with children, with youth in high school.\n\nAnd because it was something that nobody wanted to talk about because it was a taboo subject. But this American who can speak Kiribati was willing to talk about it. So I basically went on a HIV tour, HIV AIDS tour with them, the Ministry of Health and another Peace Corps volunteer who was working with HIV and AIDS Task Force at the time. While I was there doing it, the ocean. Well, no, my first day, my first week of my post volunteer visit. It was that when the ocean washed over. That was the first time. So this was back in 2000, November. It was a king tide, I think.\n\nBut, you know, the palm trees started waving back and forth. The ocean grew bigger and bigger and waves crashed deep down into the land. And I thought we were going to die that night. I thought all of us were going to die that night. When I got up the next day and we were all alive, looked out and I saw, you know, houses missing roofs, corrugated tin flown into the field, and men picking up downed tree parts and branches. Women weaving new thatch and young boys on top of roofs. You know, they all worked together to recover. They don't wait for UN or Red Cross. And there is none, none of that. None of that was coming. But the community pulled together to kind of rebuild.\n\nAnd the same thing kind of happened when I was in Tarawa doing my masters. And it got to me, I was like, man, this is, this is something serious. This is something that the world needs to hear and pay attention to. And that's kind of how my life turned into advocating for Kiribati on an international scale with global climate change. And that's about the time that the current, the former president took office and it got on his radar and he started talking about it. So while I was doing HIV AIDS work, there was this bigger issue of, hey, that village is now under water. It receded, but why are there fish swimming next to the hotel entrance, you know?\n\nAnd so that, that is kind of where it took an impact on me. I'm off of HIV and I'm looking at climate change, which impacts the health in a different way. I don't even know what your question was. I went off on a tangent." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:41:46", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Right, right. Well, it was looking back at how, how Peace Corps has just impacted like the future, your life after Peace Corps." + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:41:53", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. So I got that done. I got my master's and a year afterwards, antiretroviral treatment was implemented in the country so people didn't have to fly to Fiji anymore for treatment. They actually had something up and running and I was like, did I have something to do with that? I don't know. But I know that I put you in touch with Kiribati HIV AIDS Task Force, and I was there for meetings and stuff. So if I had a little part in that, great. If I didn't, great. I don't care, because people are getting treatment.\n\nI applied for, when I worked at Texas A&M, and then I applied for a PhD program and it was going to be to continue my work in HIV and AIDS and with the medical ministry. But then my first year, I lost my ability to walk, talk, and see. And it, obviously it came back, but I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And the treatment that I was on at the time was [inaudible]. It was submusculars, I think. And they're muscular shots. So the needles are like that long." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:43:29", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Like three or four inches." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:43:32", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "They're, yeah, like they're big needles and they need to be refrigerated. They need to be a certain temperature. They need to be injected in sterile environments. And they're like, Mike, you can't go and do PhD research for a year with MS. Because our treatment wouldn't be conducive to that. So I had to sit down with my advisor and say, you know what? I'm not going to do HIV anymore. He says, is there anything else that you would be able to give us? I said, well, there is this thing called global warming. And he's like, all right. Can we, could we do that in Kiribati? I'm like, probably not. I would have to do it in New Zealand and with communities, because I was looking at what happens to communities when they leave." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:44:29", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:44:29", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So migration as a result of climate change. And he's like, all right, let's go with that. Climate change it is, well, the global warming at the time. Global warming it is. All right. So I applied for a Fulbright and I got the Fulbright. They wouldn't pay for the medication because it was considered a preexisting condition at that time. So even though I got this great government grant, I couldn't accept it because I had a disease. And that's when the University of Pittsburgh stepped up and they said, Mike, you got this disease while you were a student at Pitt. We're going to step up and pay the cost of your medication. You just have to fly back from New Zealand and pick it up. So there I am flying back from New Zealand and pick it up.\n\nI go, I do the research on climate change, migration, and communities. Well, I lived with my family that I was with in Kiribati. My Kiribati, I call her a sister, but she's really like a cousin I think, migrated to New Zealand on a work permit visa allows everything. And so she was living in New Zealand at the time and there was about, I don't know, 40 or 50 families in the town. And so they all lived together. Like any diaspora group, they were all living together. So that's where the bulk of my research occurred. I did research on Kiribatis who lived in the USA, Kiribatis who lived in Fiji, Kiribatis who lived in New Zealand, and Kiribatis who were living in Kiribati, about their ideas of climate change. What have they seen, what has happened?\n\nAnd finished my PhD. And I do that, publish some academic texts, some articles. But no one's picking this stuff up because it's academic. No one's going to sit down and read a 300 page dissertation to find out about climate change. So what are they going to do? They're going to go to social media. And my Kiribati cousin is a great photographer, great, great videographer. He's just brilliant. And he and I get to talking like, have you ever thought about doing a Humans of Kiribati, like a Humans of New York? And I had to explain to him what that was. And he jumped on board. He was like, yeah, let's do it.\n\nAnd that started because, number one, I was frustrated at academia because nobody knew anything and no one would read that anything. Feels like Robert Mueller with the Mueller report. Why do I gotta go in front of everyone and explain it? Why do I gotta do a song and dance? But you have to because people won't read. And so we started Humans of Kiribati after Cyclone Pam hit. Now, in the Central Pacific, it's typically the calmest part. So you've got a little between the convergent and the northern and southern convergence zones. The winds go in opposite directions, leaving the middle very, very calm. And Pam totally disrupted that.\n\nPam came up to Kiribati, destroyed Tamana Island, which is where I was stationed, and destroyed Arorae Island, which was just south of us. And then the impacts of Cyclone Pam went all the way up to the northern Gilbert Islands. And so the main island was impacted. Abaiang, which is even further north of the main island, was impacted and other islands were impacted. So we are a couple inches to a couple of feet above sea level. And then when you throw a cyclone in there, that destroys everything. And so when that happened, that's when I was like, the world has to know.\n\nSo that's when we started social media. And I think we're up to like 164 or 165,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook combined, maybe 177. And every, three is the lucky number in Kiribati. Te mauri, te raoi ao te tabomoa. It's the health, the peace, the prosperity. It's like their national saying. So every three days we post a new story about Kiribati on Humans of Kiribati. And while I do highlight climate change, Kiribati is much more than climate change. And so it's. Yeah, it's a big focus. Yeah, it's something that scares the shit out of me because I've seen what it does.\n\nAnd my family has lost, my family. My cousin's friend has lost a child due to water borne illness. And so many after so many children get sick and pass away. And that's the real impact of climate change. It's not polar bears to me. The real impact is seeing babies die. That something that nobody talks about. They always talk about in the future. But to me it's not in the future. [Inaudible], where my Kiribati father is from, his village is gone, completely. And while people will say, well, yeah, [village] would have been gone, it's, it's, it wasn't a good village because it was built, you know, it was built in vulnerable place. But give that may be, it's still not fair that his village is gone. That still doesn't change the fact that it's gone.\n\nAnd most of Kiribati is, I see, in trouble. And it's not going to be the money that causes, it's not going to be the money that saves. Because money, greed, capitalism, pollution that is all linked together into what has caused the problem. And that's why I traveled around just trying to make people aware that, hey, this is happening. This has happened. This is not something in the future. Putting a human face to climate change really gets people more than charts and graphs and bars and predictions and things like that, scientific predictions. While the science is, I agree with the science, I think that people can relate to a face better than they can relate to science.\n\nAnd so, yeah, the Peace Corps has changed my life in so many ways. I was kicked out of the Peace Corps. I was, I was kicked out when I went home for a vacation in the USA. I came back and the plane wasn't flying. And they didn't know when the plane would fly again. So, you know, I have motion sickness." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:52:26", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm hmm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:52:26", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And I lived on an island, one of the furthest islands, four and a half hours on plane. It would have been two weeks plus on a boat. And I didn't want to be on a boat for two and a half weeks, dehydrated. And would I die on that trip? My country director said, if you don't get on the boat, you have to go home to the USA. And so I didn't want to die on a boat. I was, I was afraid. And so I hid. I had three days to say my goodbyes. I would not go back to my island. I hid with my family that I call my family now, my Kiribati family. And they, they hit me from Peace Corps. And they took me to the airport the very last day.\n\nAnd I'm not mad at what happened because I think the day my commitment, the day my service to the nation. No, what do I say? Oh, it's the day my service to the country ended was the day my commitment to the nation began. And I'm not mad at what happened because I never got to finish my service. So these 17 years has been a way for me to finish my service. And I honestly don't know if my service will ever end. I'm committed." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:54:04", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, on that note, is there anything else you want to add about your Peace Corps experience?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:54:13", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:54:15", + "speaker": "Edwin Blanton", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well, thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:54:17", + "speaker": "Michael Roman", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00021", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "Jennifer Nelson", + "description": "Jennifer Nelson held numerous positions at the National Archives including Deputy Chief Operating Officer, Special Assistant to the Chief Operating Officer,  Acting Executive for Research Services, Director of Archival Programs in the Office of Regional Records Services, and Web Program Director in Policy and Communications, among others.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/jennifer-nelson-2-24-2014-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "jennifer-nelson-2-24-2014-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:16", + "publisher": "U.S. NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION", + "date": "February 24, 2014" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Office Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Jessie Kratz", + "Ellen Mulligan" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Jennifer Nelson" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is February 24, 2014. My name is Jessie Kratz, Historian of the National Archives. I’m here with Ellen Mulligan. We’re interviewing Jennifer Nelson, Chief of the Records Division in the Enterprise Services Directorate at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in her office at 1200 First Street, NE, in Washington DC." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So my caveat is that everything I’m going to say is going to be rooted in my personal experience. I’m not offering this as concrete history or anything that I perceive to be utter fact, but my understanding of facts, things I’ve heard, or what I’ve experienced." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well, did you want to just jump right in then? We’ll start just with the questions but we’re not wedded to these questions, and if we veer off, that’s—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] All right." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Or if there’s something more interesting please don’t hesitate to steer us in that direction." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I thought we would start, even before the questions, for you to just give us some general background on you and your education and your experience leading up to your decision to have a career in the Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I always had an interest in American history. As a child even just seeking out the little kiddie history books, but always on the United States. And while my family, some of my family members had interest in European history, I saw it for myself as a distinction that I was interested in American history. And then in high school I took a course called American Civilization, taught by two men, Bob Johnson and Pete Lumer, who taught what I didn’t realize at the time was really an early high school version of something called American Studies, which is an actual field and has been for several decades. So American history and American literature became a great love of mine and I was going to go get a master’s and a Ph.D. and teach. And so I came from Los Angeles to The George Washington University in Washington, DC to get my master’s in American Civilization and American Studies, and I enjoyed it a lot. By the time I finished that degree, however, it just seemed to me the better thing to cast a broader net to get an understanding of what else there was to do besides teach. Not that I had any issue with teaching but I just hadn’t been very curious yet about what else there was. Plus, student loans start to, well, you start to feel there’s an “ouch” point. So I thought, well, I could come back and think about a Ph.D. if I want to. So meanwhile, a colleague—I was working part-time as a contractor at the Smithsonian helping to write abstracts for the African American Abolition Project. And so a colleague, Della Lehane, who was an archives tech working in the Center for Electronic Archives at NARA, who also was in the same GW program as I, and also working for the same professor, Jim Horton at the Smithsonian, said, “Have had you thought about the National Archives?” And beyond having come to NARA to do some field work for a class, I hadn’t really considered it. No one from NARA had talked with me; nobody had talked to the class. We just understood the National Archives as a source. So I said, well, not really, and so Della said, “I know a couple of people over at the National Archives who might be interested. They’re always hiring students for evenings and weekends working in the main search room.” And so she connected me to Sharon Fawcett, Cindy Fox, and Mary Rephlo. And so I interviewed with Sharon and she hired me. So I started, I was still finishing up my master’s paper for GW, but I started working evenings and weekends as a student temporary; this was before students were considered Federal employees. And so then I heard about the, what was unfortunately called then the CIDS program, Career and Development Services, but not meaning the other thing we sometimes unfortunately think about. So I applied to the CIDS program and I was accepted into it, and so I knew that I had to look forward to two years of intensive archival theory and practical training by NARA, which I saw to be an opportunity not only to learn what an archivist is and to decide if that’s what I wanted to remain doing, but to understand whether I wanted to remain with the Federal government, and a sense of just the culture of the place. So I started there and I took full advantage of the cross-training, which was, I think, really the most valuable aspect of the CIDS experience was the having a built-in, structured program by which you moved through, you know, topics, topics of learning, but also you could find people who might be mentors, or might be work friends, or might be supervisors, or might be colleagues. And so that was, that was very valuable. And so the career in archives and records really was, for me, sort of right place, right time, right connections, and desperately wanting to do something with my education that was pertinent to what I’d studied, I mean, with my next step, which was pertinent to my education, is what I mean to say. And I feel that I did that. I can’t say that I started out at any point in time saying, “I want to work in archives and records.” I wanted to work in a history field, and where the National Archives owns, the National Archives’ assets are the written record, that tied into my interest in literature and in documentation and in peoples’ expressions, or the, at least, if not the expression, it’s the historical record that people could use to create literary or artistic or, you know, fundamentally historiographical-based works." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have anyone who acted as a mentor over time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not early on. I sought that, and what I encountered at NARA, I think, were people who were experts in the processes of the National Archives, and maybe wanted to be mentors if they either felt they had the time or knew what mentoring really is, or were kind of personally suited toward that. I did not encounter, frankly, a lot of people who I could classify as being mentors. But I could say that there were a couple of people that stood out that were very, very helpful. One, not in this order in terms of impact, but in just chronologically speaking, Sharon Fawcett not only hired me as a student, but she saw a utility in a student learning a thing or two about the agency and would spend time talking with me about what the customer service division, which was what she headed at the time, what it was. And from time to time throughout my career, she would offer an opportunity, or, you know, help me get my hands on a tool or a resource so I could do my work a little bit better. And so, in that way, I could say she might have been a mentor. Another person, John Scroggins, was a long-time NARA manager, a GS-15 when he left. And I would say that he certainly had a wealth of information about the National Archives, and he also offered trust and opportunity. So, you know, I guess I could say that there was a mentoring that he offered me in that he would give me something to work on, give me some responsibility. For example, as a kind of a mid-graded person within the motion, picture, sound, and video branch, he headed the division; he needed assistance with someone who would help to run the research part of that branch. And while there were a lot of challenges, organizational challenges in the branch and the division at the time, it was an opportunity to begin to learn how to lead, to begin to learn what supervision is and what it isn’t. And I can’t say that John taught me what those things were but he invited me into a space where I could begin to learn what those things are and what they mean. And last but definitely not least, and I’d say actually foremost in terms of potential mentoring, it would be Tom Mills, who was the former Assistant Archivist for the Office of Regional Record Services and, at the time that he retired, the first Chief Operating Officer for the National Archives. I’d say Tom was more of a mentor, if I had any at all, in that he would pay enough attention to what he was asking me to do and watch how I was delivering what he wanted, and then give me feedback about it. And was flexible in allowing for my own style, but yet, at the same time, if he thought that I was, you know, heading in a direction that wasn’t particularly useful, he let me know that. And he wasn’t afraid of having that kind of a conversation. He would tend to be fairly quiet and reserved and immediate about it, but at least he would have it. So, so I would say those three people stand out in my mind." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, we want to explore some of your specific jobs—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Sure." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—but we want to go through chronologically through your various careers and then we can come back and hit some highlights." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So, we’ve left you where you were just hired as a student. When did you become full-time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. So I was a student starting in May of 1991 and I became a CIDS kid, as they called us—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Yes. Were you the first class of the CIDS or not?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, no, CIDS had been around." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was it around for a while?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, yeah. Oh, CIDS, yeah, CIDS had been around since at least the ‘70s.\n\nSome—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Why did they stop CIDS? Do you know?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that there were, well, there’s my opinion and then there’s, I mean, I can’t really tell you exactly why. I don’t think that the reasons for why CIDS was stopped was ever very clearly explained, ever. I think that, you know, I think it might’ve had to do with money. There was maybe a question about whether or not the program really developed people the way that the managers, or the leadership, wanted that to happen. And it may have been that someone realized that it had been a long time, if ever, that the program was properly evaluated. I have no idea if anybody knew exactly how to evaluate the program. But I do know that I think around the time that it slowed or then stopped was when we started hitting our budget crunches, and we started having hiring freezes. And so I think that that was just kind of a mechanical response to a budget problem, but then it became more of an organizational development question that I think few people really understood how to approach. That’s my opinion." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "But you felt that it was a valid program, and it was—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Absolutely. The only thing that wasn’t valid to me about it was the paper requirement. There was a paper writing requirement at the end. And something that I think was not particularly well-explained is that, one could write a paper that was, again, technically valid in terms of the need for that topic to be explored in the world of information management or archives, manuscripts, libraries, whatever. But if it didn’t sit squarely in a political sense or, I think, in terms of personal perceptions of the managers who were assessing the paper, things could get terribly bogged down. So the only advice I remember receiving that was at all useful at the beginning of writing that paper was, “Make sure you choose a bland topic that nobody cares about.” Once you chose something that somebody cared about—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Oh, geez. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "—that was actually the way it was put to me by somebody. And I’m not saying that all the topics were bland. I’m not saying that my topic was bland or any of my colleagues’ topics were like that. But it was, you know, kind of a shot across the bow to a young archives professional to hear that because it suggested that if you want to move forward, you have to stay safe. And staying safe means don’t come up with things that cause other people to think hard, or to have to deal with some sort of conflicting information, or interpretation that, you know? So it’s kind of hard to perceive yourself being in an organization that wants to move forward, if it’s not behaving in forward-moving dialogues." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] What was your research paper on? Do you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I don’t even remember. It had to do with privacy. It had to do with application of privacy, you know, FOIA exemptions. Most people ended up with something that they had to change or tweak. And then sometimes the papers just sat on peoples’ desks. You know, it just wasn’t always seen as, you know, sometimes I think that some of the CIDS applicants were kind of perceived as kind of like cogs moving through a program, as opposed to a program that could be very vibrant, and very mentoring in that way. So I’d say it was a mixed bag, but without a question in my mind, the huge benefit was getting people to move around in terms of their cross-training. And if I might project way forward for a moment, one of the massive distinctions that I’ve noticed first coming here to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is that whereas my experience with colleagues at NARA was that more often people at NARA would not move. They would remain, let’s say, a reference archivist at what used to be considered the civil records or military records, and they would specialize in that and they would stay with that. I’m not saying people didn’t move at all, but it, more often than not, they’d stay. Here at USCIS there is a massive value in people doing all sorts of kinds of work. And I’ve noticed in my conversations as I have worked to learn my new agency that so many people who are even in an administrative job were once adjudicators or what we call immigration service officers, doing interviews for naturalization or for green cards or for any other types of benefits people are asking for. So they know what it’s like to sit there, to work the process, to talk across the table with someone, to interview them to try to assess their situation and make lasting life-changing decisions sitting there at the table with them. And so, wow, what a difference. So I wish that the National Archives would put a premium on finding ways to move people through a system or some sort of a rhythm or a flow of different kinds of activities, decision-making requirements contributing to the life of the agency. I think that there would be nothing lost, and everything gained for that. And I think it would’ve made, I mean, so the way I did that in my career, the way I did that was to ignore advice I had been given which was don’t move around too much because then people will think you can’t hold a job here. I decided to try to apply as often as I could to keep moving and keep learning. You know, I’d stay working in a job for a year and a half I’d start to get bored with it. I’d start to feel that I’d learned the processes. I didn’t feel that I had to learn to be a records expert. I wanted to learn how service was delivered, and how decisions were made, and to get the broadest sense possible of the challenges facing the agency, and the best ways of asking questions about ourselves, about those challenges, and then develop approaches to begin to mitigate certain things, and to drive other agendas, mission agendas, forward. So I would work somewhere for a year and a half, and apply for a job, and get that. And most often it was a promotion. And all of that’s a pretty sweet part of the deal when there’s a promotion, that’s part of it. But, so you know, the automatic CIDS-related promotions, of course, end with the GS-11. But between the 9 and the 11, I worked at the Center for Electronic Archives and also for, I already mentioned, the motion picture, sound, and video branch. Then I lateraled to, because I realized that I had not done a lot of work getting to understand the processing and the service of paper-based records. I understood that from the cross-training I had had, but in terms of handling thousands of cubic feet of records around certain record groups, I thought that would be useful. So I lateraled as an 11 to what was called the textural processing branch and division. Worked there for about, again, about a year and a half. Then applied for a GS-12 promotion to the cartographic branch and worked mostly reference for maps and plans, as opposed to the aerial photography group, which sort of was a division of labor there based upon the media format. But I learned there the importance of how the different record format types intersect depending upon the research question that the customer is asking or that we’re asking of ourselves, because there would be maps. You know, let’s say Civil War maps, of course, that would have a very direct relationship to some of the textual records downtown. And understanding the relationships and the, and doing some systems thinking around the relationships of these records was something that became more and more interesting and meaningful to me as I experienced that. And I learned a lot from my colleagues there, particularly Debbie Lelansky taught me quite a lot, as did Bob Richardson, who was the Assistant Branch Chief when I started there, and then he became the Branch Chief. And then after I’d been an archivist at that point about for seven years, where things were getting really interesting and hot and sexy, I suppose, was with project management on the IT side. And so there was an office headed up by Reynolds Cahoon, C. Reynolds Cahoon, Ren Cahoon, who was responsible for IT project management and lifecycle issues. And so I applied for a GS-13 promotion as an IT project manager. Very different move from having been an archivist so I took on a number of challenges and tasks. I was team member there when the Y2K reared its very ugly head in government life, and so did everything from started traveling across country to meet people in the Presidential Libraries, and in the regions, elsewhere. You know, trying to assess their Y2K needs and helping with that, to I was the project manager that ended up delivering NARA’s first electronic-based researcher registration card system, which I think is still the system that’s in use at Archives II. And one of my other major projects was that I was to work with the contractors at the time to further improve and develop NARA’s agency webpage, which at the time was literally a laundry list of things. And that’s not anybody’s particular fault. The resources that the agency had put toward the website at that point in time was a few hours from one of their contractors. And we didn’t have an awful lot of information on the website. I think maybe 50 or 75 pages, tops. So everything was linked from literally just a list on a on a main page, the National Archives website, and people would come to NARA.gov, and that’s what they found. And I see you have some questions that go into more detail about that, but I’ll just try to do a quick overview of the career. So I was IT project manager for the Web program for about a year, a little over a year, year and a half, at which point we were beginning to encounter requirements from the Archivist’s office and from other parts of NARA where we needed an exhibit, an online exhibit for this or for that or for something to support an initiative, you know, an interface for a database, or for an electronic tool, or something like that. And so NARA started to realize that the utility and interaction with customers through the Web was more than listing the pull times on a webpage and posting that. That there was more interaction. There was more value to be had, but we needed a way of resourcing that and approaching those questions and seeing those things through. So there started to become some talk between the Office of Policy that was reporting to the Archivist’s office, and Ren’s office, about what that would mean. So money was pulled, as I understand it, from a variety of places in the agency, and cobbled together to create a Web Program. And that GS-14 Web Manager, Web Director position was posted. I applied for that. I competed hard for it, and I didn’t see anything wrong with that. I mean, for something so new, and so important to the agency, nobody should be just shoehorned into that job simply because they had some sort of a history with it. So I fought hard for that, and was very glad that I earned a place, and began to then, in the year 2000, cut my teeth on really understanding what it means, or beginning to learn what it means, to supervise and to lead people. Supervise, manage, and lead, I see those three functions as three different things. So got a budget all told of about $1 million between funding a Web contract design, a Web design contract, I mean to say, and about 10 or 12 staff members, ranging from I think a GS-7 is where the lowest grade of person started, although they ended up at a nine, and, you know, including GS-13s. So I proceeded, over seven years, to define that program. I wrote the P.D.s, I wrote the crediting plans, I wrote the job analysis for all of the staff. I hired the staff. I supervised the staff. I wrote the policy defining what content management roles and responsibilities in the agency are, and what Web content management means in the agency, and what content was and was not allowed, and what the processes were to conduct that Web content management work agency-wide, not just for the program, but how everybody had, who touched Web content or had a role in making sure that the website is what we needed it to be, what they needed to do and how they fit there. The Web, with my fantastic staff, we identified the electronic software tools needed for authoring, and for the metrics, you know, assessment of the website performance. We designed a number of exhibits. We created code and programming that was incredibly lean, and if I might say, elegant. And I’m simply quoting Haseen Uddin in saying that everything that we did, we passed by the Chief Technology Officer to make sure that as we were innovating new ways to deliver Web content as affordably as we possibly can, that it aligned with the IT architecture of the agency. That was necessary because one of the great failures for us at the time was the attempt to implement a content management system, which would have been, and is, a receptacle or a repository for content that then has a variety of views that users creating Web pages could use. So instead of having to learn HTML code, and scripting, and having to go and do deeply technical work, the idea was they would open up this application and they would cut and paste from a Word document that they had already authored, and dump it in this little window, and click a few things, and pick a few things from some pick lists that would control how that content appeared on the page and how it was delivered, hit a submit button. They’d never have to learn coding. They would be efficient, quick, and there would be a work process flow attached to this so that then the next person in line, let’s say the person who was designated as the Web content owner, would take a look at it. It looks the way they wanted, then they hit the okay button, and it just published. That was the idea. We had some serious, serious project management issues on the IT shop. We didn’t actually own that contract. We owned the requirements for it to make it happen, but there was terrible implementation problems with the contractor. It never ended up going live, and that was a real killer. We were really depending upon that working well to help us move forward, because what I’d envisioned was that we would have a Web program staff where the staff were able to spend more time being engaged with people across the agency, discovering what good Web content should be and helping to actually develop that content with people. You know, using the data that had come to us about the website to understand what people wanted or needed. Looking at the Web surveys that we had implemented, understanding what people wanted and needed, and then working directly with people across the agency to actually develop that content and get it onto the website, as opposed to doing technical coding work all the time just to maintain the website. And I imagine if the National Archives does not yet have a Web content management system behind the website, it is probably still operating as a very, very labor intensive coding operation." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It is." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And that was a huge disappointment to me, because I think that the agency could’ve been better served if we’d been able to move on that project and make it be what we had funded it to be. So 2006, I think I felt that I had learned everything that I could learn where I was. I thought that maybe there was a new vision that was needed for the program, and I was burning out on that particular topic. And I had actually, at that time, started to look around outside the agency, see what else there might be. And what I remember is having this kind of epiphany thought while I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next, that once upon a time, like, once upon a time, a year prior, I’d had this really interesting conversation on a train between Washington and Philly. I was going to go participate in the Philadelphia city level National History Day judging, as a judge for their multimedia topics. And I had this fascinating two hour conversation with this guy named Tom Mills. And I thought, well, it would be, maybe it’d be interesting working for Tom Mills. And then I felt embarrassed thinking to myself, you know what? I just committed the same sin that I have thought that many people in the National Archives do, which is that the regions are always thought of last or not thought of at all. Here I was thinking about going outside of the agency for my next step in my career, and I hadn’t even considered the regions. So I made an appointment with Tom’s clerical assistant to see him the next day, and we agreed that we’d find a way for me to come and work for him. And so in 2006 officially in August, I guess it was, I lateraled over into the Office of Regional Record Services as their senior archivist. Diane Vogt-O’Connor had been the senior archivist there, and she had just left NARA to go to the Library of Congress, so the timing was strangely fortunate for me, anyway, that that opened up. So I went into the Office of Regional Record Services, and began to learn the culture of the place, began to learn some of the programmatic challenges, some of the opportunities, their various strengths of the regional program. And then, I guess about a year later, I became GS-15 as the Director for Archival Programs for the Office of Regional Records Services. I was reporting directly to Greg Pomicter, but it was really Tom Mills that drove my work agenda. And the scope of what I did included, well, let me say this, and this might help clarify a few things. I directly supervised a small headquarters staff who supported the archival program. Having said that, though, the work assignments and the direct tasking that ended up being, you know, worked by each of the branches, field office branches, were, that actually happened through the tasking from Tom to the regional administrators, down to the assistant regional administrators, down to the GS- 13 directors. So one of the things that I continued to learn to do, which I had started with the IT project management work, was to try to define direction and to build buy-in and interest in certain kinds of programmatic direction through influence of others as opposed to direct chain of command. I could not go to the regional administrators and say, this is what we’re going to do. You know, do it or help me do it. I had to work directly with people and learn their management styles and learn what they thought was important. And certainly it helped that those people and I reported ultimately to Tom. You know, what Tom said he wanted would be the direction we would go. But we would all then work together to move ahead. So we worked on better defining the education program at the National Archives in the field offices. There were no properly graded, properly assigned in terms of position descriptions, people who were actually doing the work. We had to define the distinctions and the similarities between archival work and education outreach work. I worked with human resources to rework the education PDs to the proper series, the 1700 series, rather than having all the education people in the 1400 series. And then we worked on getting training for the people who needed it. And not everybody needed it. And everybody who was doing that work felt very deeply about, again, the value of education outreach work. So we built the education program. We defined it. We had a fascinating branding and messaging project, which resulted in a clearer, a clear identity for what the National Archives in the major metropolitan areas was. Instead of having brochures that said, you know, Regional Archives, National Archives, it was the National Archives at New York City, the National Archives at Fort Worth, for example. And all this was based upon professionally facilitated public conversations that helped us understand the distinction and the difference between how we thought we were presenting ourselves versus what people knew or didn’t know, and what we could clarify in order to help improve the understanding of the public about who and what we are, and then also to encourage, of course, their use of the archives. So, I’ll just pause there and ask if you have any questions about some of the things that I’ve mentioned so far." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You’re hitting a lot of the questions that we had broken out under regionalization, like your role as director, and some of their accomplishments. Do you think the existence of regional archives affects NARA’s relationship with agencies and researchers? And in what way?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, hugely. And actually, this was a point I wanted to make. I’m glad you asked that question. What it must be like to be in Chicago, you live somewhere in Chicago, and you hear from someone that there’s this place called the National Archives that might have some useful genealogy stuff, family history stuff that you might be able to use, and you look up on the website or you Google, and you find out how many different buses you need to take. And you take the time to go to that somewhat remote location and spend some time there. That is the agency’s face to those American citizens and to the public there nationally. Their view of the National Archives is that place. They’re not going to think Rotunda. They’re not going to think Charters of Freedom. They may think about it if maybe they were lucky enough to come through on tour as a child or bringing their kids through Washington, DC. But most people who are not in the Washington, DC area, who have direct person-to-person interaction with the National Archive staff, it’s the field office that is the face of the agency. So at that field office, if you remember the public and you’re doing that kind of genie research, okay, that’s the experience you’re going to have. If you are a lawyer in Chicago looking into Health and Human Services programs or Superfund things you’re going to come to the National Archives there at Chicago to access the accessioned records. Or if you have permission from the Federal agency to see records that have not yet been accessioned but are still in the custody of the Federal agency, you are going to go to a research room at that location also, and you’re going to look at those records. And of course, the agencies are directly, they work directly with the records management and with the FRC people at that location. So every one of those, whether they’re collocated or not in a building, if they’re collocated in a city, there is interaction all the time between the Archives and the FRC people helping to deliver services. And that is the hub of archival activity and records activity for people in that area or in that region. So if there is no regional face, or if there is no field office face or branch office face to our customers and to the public there, who still care about personal interaction, you know, that that immediacy is just incredibly important. And it can be lost. And I think that’s something that people crave. You know, I think we’ve seen sort of an ebb, or maybe the beginning of an ebb and flow in how people use digital resources and electronic resources. We’re starting to see that people want to use websites and information on the Web to make themselves smarter about what they can expect or how long it might take to do something. But they also, I think, have begun to appreciate that there’s a fine line between, depending upon everything being on a website, to get what you want versus having a phone number where you talk to somebody who’s an expert, because they want to interact with people often. They want to have somebody who’s an advocate who understands how to resolve a process problem. And human beings just like having other people do stuff for them. Often they don’t want to fully, completely rely upon a fully-automated system. If not only to at least toward the end or at some place in that process be able to check in with somebody to make sure they’re not missing something. Or there isn’t something else that hasn’t been put on that website or in that database yet. Or is there something I haven’t thought of that you guys know. So, so I’ve always personally and professionally perceived that effective customer service is delivered in a national respect and a local respect. Think globally, act locally, that kind of stuff. There’s this polarity. It’s not an either/or. It’s not everything on the website and nothing local. It’s a combination. It’s a combination of human interaction and electronic services. And we, all Federal agencies, too, this isn’t just NARA, have to continue to get smarter about what people really want and how they’re using those tools now, in order to be as effective as possible. And that’s a huge challenge when you consider, for example, you know, Federal budgeting. Let’s say you’re right on it in terms of your timing for doing requirements definition for customer service for IT resources and for knowledge management and transfer of knowledge and information among staff and employees. Let’s say you’re right on it. You really understand what those requirements are and what’s needed. But then how do you fund the services, the design services, the technical design services, the marketing. Marketing is not an evil word, I think, by the way, in the government. It never should be, because that’s what we’re doing. When we’re understanding what people want and we’re figuring out how to speak their language to them, and how to present ourselves in a way in which people are open to using the government as a valued resource, that’s marketing. And so being able to plan that and budget for it in a way that keeps us current and moving ahead so we’re not behind the eight ball in terms of finally delivering those kinds of services and behaving the way in which we want to, and enhancing our own knowledge, and transferring knowledge between employees and between employees and the public, that is a huge burden to bear. And it’s just a really tough challenge, I think, in the Federal environment, the way that budgeting is done and how we’re encouraged or not to, to plan how we devote those resources and then get support for it, speaking very broadly." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I had this is on the list, but it’s sort of related to what we’re talking about, is you mentioned when you started working for the regional archives that you hadn’t immediately thought about that and how lots of times the regions feel that headquarters kind of neglects the field. Do you feel that as you were leaving towards the end of your NARA career, when the Archives became “one NARA,” I guess, do you feel like that made a difference and the regions became more incorporated? Or do you feel like that really was just not the case, it wasn’t bringing the regions into the fold and they were still isolated? Were they still not getting the amount of attention or credit that they might need or…" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] That’s a very good question. So there was the “one NARA idea” that really, I think, was problematic in that I don’t know that we really defined what we meant by “one NARA,” especially in terms of what we intended to deliver and what people needed. What I can tell you is this. In my opinion, and in what I observed, while creating a “one NARA” idea and doing reorganization in the way in which we did, while we did do this idea scale, outreach, and collected opinions from people, and ideas, in terms of mature data and problem definition analysis to understand what we were trying to achieve and what was the best way in doing it, in terms of identifying strengths that we wanted to retain and specifically what we needed and wanted to change, and why, and how, in my opinion, I don’t think there’s a lot of data to point to right now that says that was a success. I felt that we did not do a very good job at all in understanding what we were trying to achieve. I think that we were doing a lot of planning and some good, broad thinking at the time, but based upon our personal and professional interpretations and our assumptions about what we wanted to achieve and why. So I don’t know now if much changed for the regions in the end, other than who they were reporting to. But what I do know is that many, many people felt, and I absolutely experienced, a breaking apart of established networks, professional networks that was, in my opinion, a travesty, and was not appreciated in headquarters. It didn’t quite fit the script of the direction where we wanted to go. But, you know, John Cotter’s writing and the writing of other organizational development and management gurus, you know, taught us a number of things, and say a number of things about how you proceed with change management. And NARA has mightily struggled with that, in my opinion, and in part led to my desire to continue to look elsewhere for agencies that would take a properly focused urgency, kind of an urgent approach toward change management, but would try to do that in a way that allowed leaders to lead a little more effectively and, and take responsibility for leading change. I don’t feel that NARA really taught its own leaders very well how, how to try to move forward with organizational change, other than pointing to a couple of books. And, you know, the National Archives Foundation paid a chunk of change for Cotter International to come and work with the leadership group at the time to get together a change management plan. And to my knowledge that was shelved, and that spoke volumes to me. It was discouraging. But you were asking about the regions. One of the great strengths and admirable characteristics, I think, of the regions, is they know their work. They know their jobs, and they just keep swinging. They are not easily distracted from their work by political discourse, by change in management. You know, there was an awful lot of upheaval with the reorganization, but people kept doing their work. They kept serving customers. You know, they kept chugging along. And I think that over time, with all of the various reorganizations and things that have happened impacting the regions, in the end, they’ve kept at it. And there’s something to be said, I think, for that kind of persistence and, and engagement. The other thing that I think is not well understood about the regions that I think kind of gets back to our point we were making earlier, and I’m just checking my time to make sure that we have it, is we were talking earlier about the opportunity to move around in the agency and learn. Well, at least in the regions, there’s a lot of shared responsibility. I’m not saying you’ll never hear someone say I won’t do that work in the regions, but they’re, at least the regional archives, depending upon the location, maybe six in some places, or at least it used to be as little as six out in Anchorage. It’s even fewer now. And, you know, including student employees, maybe, you know, 35 or so in other locations. Or maybe that used to be so. That might be a little high even now. But in any case, people would just be asked to do the work they needed to do, and they take, they’ll be working in the research room this one day, and the next day, go work on this scanning project, or go work with these records or a description project or whatever. And people just did what they needed to do, and learned, I think, more about what archival practices mean and can mean, and I think, developed a greater culture of sharing, and shared purpose. I’m not saying that there’s no sharing or shared purpose at, let’s say, Archives I or Archives II, and I can’t speak to the Presidential Libraries. I have no in-depth experience at all with the Presidential Libraries, I must say. But I know that there’s this perception that the regions are not, the knowledge and the skillsets that the, if there’s such a thing as an average person working out in the field offices has, because of the shared responsibility. That headquarters doesn’t quite get that and doesn’t, whether that happens in headquarters or not is another question, but that it’s not acknowledged and validated in terms of the value that the field office employees bring. I thought that was true, and whenever I’d go to visit, I loved traveling out and seeing what people were doing, and I’d, big quotes, \"trying to help.\" You know, headquarters were here to try to help you in the field. You know, and that was always, I think, looked upon, probably very rightly so, with some skepticism, but I always enjoyed seeing what people were doing, seeing the creativity and the ingenuity. Kansas City, for example, how that staff has managed to run a facility that’s twice as large as probably what that staffing can bear, the exhibits that they put on, the educational programs that they do, and the work that they do in, in partnership with the FRC. Shuttling records back and forth, storing records, preserving records. It is magnificent what Kansas City does, and New York City, too, has done a fantastic job, from what I understand once they moved, especially once they were faced with very similar challenges that New York, that Kansas City faced, New York City staff, once they moved from Varick Street down to the Bowling Green location, had their work cut out for them. And I don’t know that leadership understands it, because I never observed many leaders at NARA actually getting out from behind their desks, getting on the plane, and going out and spending time. They might go and meet with some prospective foundation partners, but the sense of being invisible and the sense of being underappreciated in many respects I think comes from an apparent lack of interest from leadership when they’re not going out and just saying, hey, who are you? What is your name? What do you do? What can I learn from you? Teach me something. Show me how you’re doing what you’re doing. And then just be quiet, except for asking questions, and give these people a chance to learn, to help you learn. Help them reverse mentor you, don’t be afraid to be reverse mentored by people. I think that the NARA culture would benefit greatly from some, some recognition of what reverse mentoring could mean for senior leadership, if I may say so." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "That’s a good idea. Well then, Jen, before we move on, what time is it? Do we have time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, so it is noon and we’ve got about 25 minutes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, let’s finish, and we can go back. Let’s finish your last your last couple years at the archives after the regional archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that’s pretty brief. So let’s see. Toward the end, it’s the summer of 2010, I guess, is when the taskforce, the transformation taskforce was pulled together and I was put on that. And so it took most of my time, and I had to ask my senior archivist, Michael Moore, to basically act as the Archives Director for the regional program. And so, you know, one thing turned into another. I mean, I was on that taskforce, and then in the following fall there was a second kind of taskforce- related effort that had to do with organization and values definition and, you know, action items to try to encourage peoples’ understanding and buy-in to the transformational ideals. And so I was a member of the steering committee for that effort, and I was also kind of a, kind of a junior co-chair under Jay Bosanko, who had the organization subgroup responsibilities of trying to define, at a high level, what a reorganized agency would look like. And so when that was up, then I was a transformation officer in that I helped to prepare some of the offices for that actual technical reorganization and the administrative things that needed to be done. So I would meet with the managers of those organizations for many for whom their senior leader was going to be hired. And so to try to lead them toward feeling positively toward that change while they didn’t know who they were going to be working for was an interesting learning experience for me, for sure. And so they would create these briefing books and talk with the staff and figure out what their communication plan was. And I just tried to help them with that. And so all of this kind of segued into then since at the point that the office of the Chief Operating Officer was created, and at that time also the Agency Services Office was stood up, that meant the dissolution of the Office of Record Services, regional record services. So I had to go somewhere, and it just made sense given the work that I had been doing for the previous year and a half or so, that I would go and be part of the office of the Chief Operating Officer. So I was special assistant for I don’t remember how many months. It wasn’t quite a year, I guess, but maybe it was almost a year. And then I became the deputy COO, but Tom was planning to retire. That job did not get particularly well-defined. Jay Bosanko became the COO when Tom retired, and in my opinion the job remained undefined. And so at that point, once again, I found myself interested in seeing where is my career going to go? And so then the position here for the Chief Records Office, for the records chief, for the records division here at USCIS opened up. I applied for it, and came here, and so I’m leading a division of 92 people. Responsible for the records policy, the records management training, and for records program evaluation throughout USCIS. And I have colleagues in ICE and CBP who are doing the same, but USCIS has the lead insofar as DHS is concerned, in terms of records policy. So it’s been a fun challenge, and I’ve got some great, great, great staff members, and a leadership that is very interested in seeing GS-15s move and work with authority. And I didn’t have an awful lot of that sometimes at NARA, particularly at the end I didn’t. So this is a very, very welcome change for me, personally and professionally, and it just kind of continues in my career vein of keeping moving, keeping looking around, and continuing to learn. One thing I’d like to add that I did during my career that made a tremendous impact on me, personally and professionally, and really helped me think about what my distinctions and my values were that, that helped me define what I wanted to do next was in 2011 I attended training at American University. I entered an eight-month certificate program of AU, which is called the Key Executive Leadership Program, and so began an eight-month intensive training with an executive coach assisting me. It was a classroom experience, learning the various characteristics of good leadership, and the difference between walking the walk and talking the talk, and talking the walk and walking the talk, and what it means to, as a public servant, to emphasize the work that your staff is doing to help develop them and to develop their own leadership skills. And what it means to do that rather than pointing to yourself as a leader and saying, a-ha, this is my agenda. This is what I’m doing. But what it means to truly develop buy-in among people who want to be engaged but perhaps have worked and lived in a chain-of-command kind of environment where they have not been invited to do that or trusted to, to step up and learn to lead themselves first and then lead others. And I learned that as a public servant and as a government leader, my first obligation is in developing and leading other people, and trusting that their expertise will help us get where we need to go, but not to make my agenda the driving factor in what constitutes an organization’s mission, or how we go about doing what we do. And that that is a major key in developing workforce satisfaction in the moment and in the future if people truly feel engaged and trusted. But what it takes to do that is to have a leadership that listens, that listens critically, and that does not have hidden agendas or something else that’s going on that is not transparent and not conveyed. To use a tired and possibly inappropriate phrase, that’s where we separate the men from the boys, or the women from the girls in leadership. When you have a leader who is willing to trust the expertise of the people around them to invent the solutions, and that what an excellent leader does is create space for people to do that by listening and asking questions, not by dictating and pushing. And there’s an awful lot of the latter in Federal work, you know? And I’m not speaking generally about NARA, just in general. So to me, one of the great takeaways from my work at NARA, and what I’m continuing to work on practicing and learning here at USCIS, is how to be that kind of leader. And I’ve got a long way to go. I mean, you know, it’s a never-ending quest to learn how to lead oneself like that and lead other people, but it is absolutely eye opening. And it gives so much more value and happiness to me when I come into work knowing that that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m not trying achieve a deadline. I’m trying to help remove the barriers from the paths of people who are trying to make that happen. I’m trying to create space where the right questions are being asked. I’m trying to develop trust so that people feel like they’re human beings and not cogs in a workplace environment. And every day has its successes and every day has its challenges." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I just wanted to follow up with one last thing, because, that you mentioned, and I could tell by your tone how you feel about the transformation a little bit. And part of the goal of these interviews are we want people to learn from them, and learn from the successes and learn from mistakes. I know that the Archives has gone through several transformations while you were there. Is there anything, not just maybe this last transformation, or that you would say, I guess positive and negatives. Things that people at the Archives should really take away if they’re thinking about doing a transformation again in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d advise and I think there’s plenty of management literature that advises that if you’re going to reorganize be as surgical about it as you can. What I mean by that is be as precise about what you’re trying to do and touch the areas that you’re pretty sure are the contributing areas to whatever the problem is that I hope you’ve already defined, and well understand. You know, sometimes, we reorganize things because we want things to look different, or we want to put our stamp on something. But there are good things and bad things about any kind of a reorganization. So the question is, what are we trying to do? I would encourage to really take the time and the effort to wisely understand what we’re trying to achieve. And it’s possible to do that with urgency, but we have to take the time and make sure that we’re asking the right questions. And then choose the change wisely and in bite size pieces. Choose a change that people can digest, that they can stomach, that they can perceive that will turn over a result within a reasonable timeframe so that people have an opportunity to kind of experience that and say, oh, well, that didn’t hurt quite as much as I thought it might. And I can see what that was intended to do, and it sort of worked and it sort of didn’t, but the things that didn’t work didn’t break us. I have heard so many people who have left NARA in the past couple of years say that NARA before was kluge and didn’t work too well, but now it’s broken. And I got to tell you, that’s the way I felt. And I didn’t feel that anybody was listening. But I felt that there wasn’t an environment so that the people who might listen could actually challenge themselves to listen. So creating a listening environment is important. We have to have leaders who will, who can walk the talk. They got to get out of their offices, learn what the agency really does and not assume that past experience defines the current situation. For me coming into my new job here, I’ve been begged by people here, please don’t draw conclusions about us based upon what you have heard. Please take the time to spend time with us and get to know us from who we are, not from our reputation. So I’ve started doing that. I’ve got my schedule the next two weeks is jam packed with these reverse mentoring opportunities where I’m just going to go and I’m going to learn whatever people think is important for me to. And I’m going to come to it knowing that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Just because I worked at the National Archives for 22 years or something, doesn’t mean that the way in which systems are used here or records are used here, that they’re the same kinds of problems or that people feel the same. I have to have very open ears and be willing to learn new stuff, rather than just kind of pile everything into boxes of knowledge and information that I’ve already created for myself and that are easy for me to access that way as a manager. I have to be flexible. And I think that in the future, if we’re flexible at NARA, and anywhere that we work, if we’re flexible, if we’re good listeners, if we’re willing to learn from people around us, if we will take the time to define the problem, to not make change because we want something to look different, or to make change because we imagine, based upon our assumptions about how things function, that magically people are going to take to a change if we just make it, make that change, that they’re just going to come along with it. People need to be encouraged. And people can’t be encouraged when managers sit in their offices and don’t circulate. We need to circulate. NARA needs to circulate. NARA needs to do all of the things, I think, that I suggested. And I believe there are individuals who have tried to do various bits and pieces of these things but not in a way in which the leadership team is perceived as coming at it from this place of behaviors that are so open, flexible, and learning. And transparency is important. I remember early on there being a lot of talk about how the leadership team meetings were going to have minutes posted and there was going to be information that people were going to be seeing. And so a lot of the things that were being discussed and were with the taskforce, the transformation taskforce, never got implemented. I think that once certain individuals and once certain needs and agendas kind of transferred over into implementing, I think there was a lack of understanding about how to do it and a lack of maturity in understanding how to do that kind of leading. Their hearts were in the right place, but the skill sets were not there. And that the senior team, so many members of whom are brand new to the National Archives, did not, I think, as a senior team, get the level of attention that they needed to have in order to gel to create that new vision of what a changed National Archives would look like from the top down. And I haven’t heard much about that changing recently. So, you know, I offer all of this with the hope that, knowing that it’s only my opinion, I suspect that there is some, I’ve heard some people say some similar things. But it’s because I love NARA. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t love NARA. It’s easy to love NARA, and I’m proud of having worked for NARA. But it’s had some painful, painful years, especially recently. What I will say is this. In secession, I think, starting with Don Wilson, and I’m just saying that because that was my earliest Archivist I knew in any kind of way, there’s been this progression where Archivists have seemed to understand the need to pull the National Archives out from under the rock it’s been hiding under and to help our stakeholders and our customers understand our value. And so I hope that’s continuing. I hope that your questions about customer service, and outreach and regions and digital services are part of that thinking. I’m not being harsh on NARA for the sake of being harsh, and I’m not bitter. I’m very happy where I am, but it was a tough experience for me personally and professionally. I know that, you know, and there might be some tougher times ahead. I don’t know, you know? But change hurts, but there’s good ambiguity and there’s very bad ambiguity. All ambiguity is not okay. And so maybe a little less ambiguity, a little more clarity, would help. Ad as I say that, I’m also thinking about what I’m trying to do here in my new job. You know, I’m ambiguous about things I shouldn’t be ambiguous about. There are things that I need to work on. So I’m pointing to myself, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Would you come back to the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not now. And again, it’s not about the mission. If I saw mature leadership that truly, truly knew how to seek and develop development of its own leaders internally, and I’m not talking about identifying an organizational development function and making sure that it’s doing well. I mean, all leaders at the top truly understanding what it means and what it’s like to look somebody in the eye in their own office space, for, say, out of the Presidential Libraries or in the field, and to truly say I hear you. And to take that time and personally connect so that people feel their validity, organizationally and personally, and then to begin a dialogue about what is truly our shared interest in this agency. And what will it take to achieve that rather than committing things, doing things through closed doors, doing things through electronic means because it’s easy or it’s cheap, or that’s the way everybody works today is, you know, no. People still talk. People still need to look eye to eye and to understand one another. I think from a place of true understanding is where that could start. If I saw that happening, I’d be delighted to come back. But I don’t see that happening anytime soon, the way things have been. But it’ll happen. Things will cycle around, and, you know, but by that time, I’ll just years away from saying to myself, gosh, I could retire in two or three years if I wanted to. And at that point, I’ll be in a different part in my career. But I have never personally returned to a place where I came from, okay? I have, for better or for worse, for whatever that means, I mean, a person doesn’t move from Los Angeles to Washington, DC at the age of 23 never even having seen the place she’s moving to, and, you know, and do that lightly. So I move with a purpose, and I don’t know if after this interview, I’d be wanted back, but under a, under a different kind of environment, yeah, I’d, I’d consider it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, Ellen, you might have another question, but this kind of falls in the same area—you talked a lot lately about the morale problem at the National Archives." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And some people say that it’s been there the whole time and we just didn’t notice it. And a lot of people say, no, it’s new. You were at the Archives for 22 years. Do you feel like the morale problem is new, or do you think it’s something that’s been there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "So I tend to say yes and yes. I would say that both of the responses are right. I’ve got a ton of assumptions that are packed into, you know, what you’ve just suggested. I would say its yes. Yes to both. And so here are my assumptions about what you’ve said and what I imagine people may have meant. So the morale problem that I remember, and kind of experiencing when I came in, and what I mean by morale, I don’t mean my morale, although eventually I started feeling one. So there’s a sort of a victimization and sort of a high school kind of environment thing where it’s you speak if you’re spoken to, don’t dream too big. You’re in your class or your silo or whatever. But I’ve always experienced NARA as not knowing how to encourage and then reward people for really trying to innovate and encouraging and giving true authority to GS-15s and GS-14s. And from a place now in a different agency, I can tell the main distinction is where I am not an SCS in my current position, but I am afforded the respect of an SCS. I have huge responsibilities, and I am expected to exercise my authority, you know, directly, and how I see fit, as long as I’m also, of course, seeking the guidance and counsel of my supervisor and my reviewing official. And, you know, checking with people to make sure that something that I want to implement makes sense, especially being a new person in the agency. So how does this compare to NARA? I have known too many GS-15s and GS-14s, I feel, at NARA who truly don’t feel like they’re the captain of their division, you know? And I think there’s an awful lot of passive aggressiveness in that. So I’m not saying that they are being unjustly done to. I think that it is an environment where there’s no expectation that people will really step up and really own, really drive like a general or a colonel, you know? Really develop a vision, and really drive it, and really own it, and here’s the money and the resources that you can have at your disposal to reward people. But I don’t, I never experienced a genuine clamor among the 15s and the 14s that, to lead like that. Where’s the fire? Where’s the fire in the belly to do that? I’ve not observed it. So when I say they’re not being unjustly done to, everybody owns at least 50% of the responsibility for their situation. And so they’re not bringing it, and it’s not being required of them. So I see that as a real distinction. Did I answer your question?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah, I’m—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Could you repeat the question?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—well, I was wondering—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Morale." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "—yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Morale." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Wondering, yes, I mean—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "[Interposing] Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that, so there’s this victimization when you see your 14, your 15, your 13 behaving that way, I mean, we’d love to think that we’re all self- commanding, that this is our domain, we’re adults. But the reality is we tend to, as human beings, react and respond and put ourselves forward according to what we see above us in an organization. And so leadership really, really matters. And so this victimization thing does roll downhill, and you end up, so that kills innovation. When people wake up kind of like, well, what can I make sure doesn’t fall on me today, rather than, how can I make a difference? And where does public service fit into my life? So I think that that is part of the ongoing staff morale problem. I think the more recent thing gets back to what I said, that people have a feeling that the agency is broken. There was this belief that if we reorganize, people will just make things happen. No. There were networks that were shattered. There were trusts that was shattered and not rebuilt. You know, the new leaders weren’t exactly put forward in a way that I think made it very clear that they were valued and trusted. And, you know, so what was new and what needed to be new was not defined by senior leadership in a clear way at all to give good marching, I’ve got quotes around this, \"marching orders\" to the SCSes that were hired in. But yet they were supposed to create something visionary and new, and again, and lead that change and communicate it downward. So I think that some of that stuff contributes to the broken feeling. And it will rebuild, but it’s going to take different people and a lot of time. Now your folks are really never going to want to have me back. But that’s okay. I, I own everything I’m saying. It’s my own personal opinion, professional opinion, like I said at the beginning of this tape. But I, you know, that’s what I feel for an agency that needs to work on its own sense of well-defined urgency. The current Archivist has talked about the need for urgency. Okay. What does that really mean? Is that a behavior? Is it, is it a value? Is it both? What’s important and can… Is it fair to people to say behave urgently? Do urgent things. But to what end, and what is the shared interest? What can people get behind? So I think that there is, in pockets throughout the agency, employees who understand that and they do see things that are going well. And they see things that energize them, and they want to contribute and contribute even more. But there is this massive gap between, I think, those individuals who are experiencing the agency in that way and probably have not been around more than five or six years or so. I’m just saying that. I’m just guessing, I don’t know, in terms of the number of years. And then there’s everybody else, who is of a certain age. You know, I think the average age of the NARA employee keeps climbing. It was some years ago something like 46, and I think it’s higher than that now maybe. But there’s the everybody else that remembers and has experienced this long-term staff morale problem. And those folks are really hard to turn around when you’ve been experiencing an organizational behavior for the majority of your career. But I refuse to personally believe it’s impossible to reach those individuals. I think it can be, but it takes, again, that concerted, personal effort from senior leadership to really engage people. One-on-one, if that’s what it takes. And up until the last day that I was at NARA, I didn’t see anybody really going out, you know, from senior leadership and trying to do that. And there was a lot of talk about that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "All right. Well, we’re running out of time, so is there something you really want to add, or…" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don’t think so. I think we hit most of the questions. We didn’t talk much about specific web things, but you gave us some good overview." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, the, like, for example, I mean, you know, NAIL, I can’t give an awful lot of insight— that’s Deb Wall, Carol Lagundo kind of question. First venturing in online services, you know, it was NAIL and that laundry list webpage…Hang on just a sec. We’ve got to run, huh? Okay, I’ve got to go." + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay, yes. Well, I mean, I think that your overviews were very helpful, anyway, rather than going to specific questions." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jessie Kratz", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So this was great. Thanks for your time, and we might want to follow up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Jennifer Nelson", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Not a problem." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Ellen Mulligan", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes. Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "jsc-oral-history-00990", + "metadata": { + "category": "Herstory", + "collection_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/DaltonBP/daltonbp.htm", + "original_file_name": "Dalton_4-23-02.htm", + "document_link": "https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/history/oral_histories/NASA_HQ/Herstory/DaltonBP/Dalton_4-23-02.htm", + "collection": "NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-12", + "subcollection": "NASA Headquarters Oral History Project", + "subtitle": "Edited Oral History Transcript", + "subtitle_interviewee": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "location_date": "Mountain View, California – 23 April 2002" + }, + "broad_source": "jsc_oral_history", + "collection": "jsc_oral_history", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Wright" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Bonnie P. Dalton" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is April 23, 2002. This interview with Bonnie Dalton is being conducted for the NASA Headquarters History Office for the Herstory Oral History Project. Ms. Dalton is currently the Acting Chief of the Life Sciences Division at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted by Carol Butler.\\n\\n Thank you again for finding time to visit with us today. We would like to start where you would like to start, maybe at the beginning of your time here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, actually, I’d like to go back a little further. As I commented when you came in—the step that led to my eventually being here, was going on for my master’s degree, and in obtaining that master’s degree. I was one of the first people at [the University of Montana Missoula, Montana] who had a fellowship in their doctorate program in microbiology. Of course, I didn’t go on and get the doctorate, and that was always something to do in the future, I got done with my paper, my research, and my orals, which is different from [programs] today. I think, in many cases, San Jose [State] University [San Jose, California, as an example, one does] either a paper and library research, or laboratory research. We had to do the same program practically that you have to do for a Ph.D., and of course, I was very nervous [after the orals].\\n\\n My advisor took me down for a cocktail afterwards, and we were chatting, and he said, “Well, now you’ve gone through this. Where do you think you’d like to work?”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, I’d like to work for the government eventually.”\\n\\n And he looked at me, and he said, “For the government?”\\n\\n And I said, “Well, I’ve had this Public Health Fellowship, so to me that says there are probably some really good programs in the government,” and of course, at that time, I wasn’t thinking NASA at all. This [was in] 1960.\\n\\n “Well,” he said, “I don’t think you really want to do that, because you’ll probably not go any further than a GS-11 working for the government,” and he was somewhat familiar [with government employment and programs] because he had grants from the U. S. Army.\\n\\n So I said, “Well, okay.” So my first job was for a commercial company, a drug company in upstate New York. [After 3 years there], I applied to NASA by responding to an ad in Science magazine in September of 1962.\\n\\n I did not hear a single thing until January [1963], when I [received a] form letter that I almost threw in the wastebasket that said, “Please fill this out for your rating.” So I filled out the letter, and sent it back. I didn’t hear another thing until July of ’63, at which time—and remember, we didn’t have e-mail, we didn’t have all those things—I got a telegram—big deal—from NASA at Ames [Research Center], Moffett Field [California, which read], “Respond in ten days or forget it.” [Laughs]\\n\\n Being in the government now, I recognize [the delays], because [of] what you have to do when you have hiring openings or you have freezes, and they were doing it even in that day. They [set up] a pool of names, and as soon as they have a window [for hiring] they go out right away. But you, [the inquirer], don’t hear anything in between. I was almost devastated, thinking, “Oh, I’m never going to hear from them.”\\n\\n So I came to Ames in October 1963, started the first pay week in October. Another interesting part about it was that my brother was out here at the time, working for Lockheed [Missiles and Space Systems], and I couldn’t figure out where Moffett Field was. You can’t find that on the map and of course, Lockheed [is] right across the street, so [the move] actually worked out very well.\\n\\n Another thing that has happened during my career is that before he came up to Lockheed, Sunnyvale, he was at Edwards [Air Force Base, California], next to Dryden [Flight Research Center], so the first time I ever went down there, that was sort of a nice link in the family. …\\n\\n [In 1963, when I came to Ames], 16 percent of the work force was female. That included administrative, researchers, and everything. Now we’re up to around 40-some percent, which is a big change. [In the] technical [area we still represent] only 16 percent of that workforce, but it has been a big change [from] where women were [20 years ago]. You would think [that] a research center, there wouldn’t be anything different about where women were; [all] was viewed very differently than now.\\n\\n I worked in research as a technician with a Ph.D., and again what happens in salaries, and what happens today [is different]. I came from a pharmaceutical company, having worked for them for three years with a master’s—and now don’t get shocked, because remember this is ’63, so I was going into a salary of $8,000. When I came to Ames, they offered me $7,000 and that was it. What they do now, if someone comes in with a bachelor’s, [they are offered] a GS-7, [and they have] a period of six months, to work on a special program in which [they] can then go to a GS-9. With a master’s in technical, you would be hired in automatically at a GS-9, you wouldn’t be at a GS-7.\\n\\n I have a feeling that the biology degree and [being a] female had a part in [the salary]. No one would ever admit that, but I have a feeling that was probably true, because at that time, biologists were at a lower rating than engineers, and of course, this is supposed to be an engineering center. NASA is an engineering organization.\\n\\n My research was in working with extreme halophiles. My research as an undergraduate had been in immunology and had been in infectious diseases, primarily working on salmonella, which is an issue of diarrhea in a lot of the military camps.\\n\\n So when I came here, I was working on an organism in the [local] environment, and working on an extreme organism [e.g. salt lover]. This organism is not infectious for people. In fact, when you flew in, you may have seen the red ponds out there. This organism lives in those ponds. It survives at 20 percent sodium chloride. If you took your blood and put it in sodium chloride at that level, you’d have these little coagulated blobs, and if you take this organism down to what people tolerate [(~1%) the organism] just lyses and bursts. We were studying that organism, because [as] an extreme [loving micro-organism], and [it would be] typical of something [one] might find in an environment like Mars. The studies in that period of time, here at Ames, in the Exobiology Division were geared toward looking at what we would do if we found extreme organisms on Mars and what would we provide as a medium in which to keep them growing.\\n\\n Rather interestingly, the clock always goes around, and comes back, [to its beginnings. So] as you know, astrobiology [was] started [several years ago], and there’s a lot of interest in the extremophiles again. [All of this again because of potential journeys to Mars.]\\n\\n All [the early work] was geared toward the Viking mission, which launched in 1975. The Director of the Life Sciences Directorate … was Harold [P.] Klein. Dr. Klein was a biochemist, microbiologist by background, and he was the science lead for the Viking biology mission. I’ll give you a couple of other numbers that are rather amazing. God forbid that they thought they were going to build that biology package for $5 million. They overran the budget, and they took it up to $40 million. Can you imagine? [Laughs] Forty million. [Compare that to today’s missions.]\\n\\n So when [the budget escalated there was insufficient] time for the researchers who had the experiments on Viking to really play with the engineering equipment that was being developed at TRW [Inc.]. Because [of the lack of testing] Dr. Klein wanted to bring the units back [to] Ames. He wanted to have a home for them here, and he wanted to allow time for the researchers to do some ground studies. So I applied for, and was selected as the lead for that program, because of the microbiology background, etc.\\n\\n I set up a laboratory with the three units here at Ames, and thanks to the expertise of a lot of our in-house engineers, our mechanics, and our electricians, we got those units to operate better than TRW had them operating. You hear [that] so much at many of the NASA Centers, [that] have shops (and I think this was even truer in [the] period from the sixties and up until more recently), they really had skilled artisans in those shops. [We] had craftsmen. Many of them were people who really liked to work with their hands, and they would work very hard at making something work. Some of them didn’t have college degrees but they were truly craftsmen. [Some support] people I [had] did have degrees, but the electrician that worked with me and the mechanical engineer that worked with me had those units operating [splendidly]; the researchers were very, very happy that they were able to do those ground experiments.\\n\\n Because some of them were using radioactives, they wanted to see, 1. whether they could detect carbon sources from organisms that they were using as models, 2. they wanted to be able to study the rate of decay of the radioactive materials they had in [the system], so they would really understand what their experiments were doing if they got data back. Unfortunately, they didn’t get anything that indicated that there was life on Mars, but for me, it was a very good experience [and started a career in operations].\\n\\n Immediately following that, we were starting to work on Spacelab activities, and several things happened. [Planning] was starting up that we had to have a life sciences facility at Kennedy Space Center [Florida]. Kennedy Space Center, at that time, had no one who had ever worked with microorganisms or who had ever worked with rats. Now, when I came [to Ames], I [did] not work with rats. When I was at the pharmaceutical company, all my work was with rats and with mice.\\n\\n So [since] one of the biggest users of Hangar L at Kennedy Space Center was going to be Ames, [management] said, “Okay, Dalton, go down there.” So I sat in on the design reviews and actually designed the laboratories for Hangar L and developed the whole list, casework and equipment that had to go into that facility.\\n\\n I have to relate another incident that several of the [KSC (Kennedy Space Center)] design engineers got very angry [about]. We came out of one of the design reviews, and the lead of [the KSC] science group who was focused on the crew health, [rather] than on what we might be doing in the life sciences, came out of the review and said, “Oh, we’re just building Bonnie’s dollhouse.”\\n\\n A couple of the engineers came and apologized to me and said, “He had no business saying that.” [Times have changed.]\\n\\n So, you know, it [was] ’78. [There] was still sort of the attitude, “What are women doing here in our territory?”\\n\\n So we got Hangar L [activities going in] 1978, [but] we were still uncertain in the agency on how we were going to do this operation of Shuttle and Spacelab; what would be the progression of activities? Would we send [all our hardware] through Johnson Space Center [Houston, Texas] and marry it there, or would everybody send their [hardware and biologicals directly] down to KSC?\\n\\n Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] people [who do] microgravity [payloads], [sent] their stuff directly to KSC. The life sciences [groups at Ames and Johnson] were under the same umbrella, even though [they] had the human side and [we had] the non-human side, so in ’78 [jointly conducted] Spacelab Mission Development Test 3 (SMD-3). Johnson had done a couple of these before but alone. We [assembled hardware and biologicals and] we timed ourselves on the time it would take us. We had a crew, and the crew was composed of a researcher from our life sciences group here [at Ames], a researcher from the life sciences group down at JSC [Johnson Space Center], and a crew person, Bill [William E.] Thornton. Bill Thornton, as you may or may not know, was one of the [astronauts] on Spacelab 3.\\n\\n [SMD-3] was a good experience; we unanimously agreed, both JSC and Ames, that we should probably send our stuff down [to KSC directly]. It really didn’t make sense to now have another encumbrance on JSC, particularly since they didn’t do anything with animals, and when we even did this test, we had to set up temporary facilities for our animals and go through all sorts of activities doing that.\\n\\n Researchers around the country responded to [the] first NRA [NASA Research Announcement]. You may remember, we were supposed to be flying Spacelab Life Sciences 1 [(SLS-1)] in 1982, which at that time was called Spacelab 4. We were getting our hardware together. Spacelab 1 occurred, I believe, in 1983. In 1983, we were down at KSC doing the integration for Spacelab 3, which was a Marshall-managed mission. We had not been originally slated to go on that mission, but they had some space open up, and we felt it would provide a good opportunity to exercise our system and go through all the paces of what it meant to take animals down to KSC, and to integrate them into the Spacelab.\\n\\n I forgot to mention, when we did the Spacelab Mission Development test, I was the operations manager for that. So I coordinated all the stowage and everything for our PIs [Principal Investigators] and [lined up the vans for transport to JSC. Then I lined up] a commercial C-130, and got the stuff down to [KSC for Spacelab-3]. It was a big experience [and] little bit different than doing research.\\n\\n [Interesting things happened when] we got into Spacelab 3; that was a very, very valuable experience. [In] everything we do, the agency revolves around engineering, and when [Ames] came and said, “But we cannot put monkeys into the facilities and leave them locked up in a Spacelab in their cages for thirty days, on the pad, without power,” it was like, “You what? Why didn’t anybody tell us this?” [Nowadays, I believe the expression is, “Duh!”]\\n\\n We said, “We’ve been telling you all along that we have to have late access,” so that was when the whole late access activity began, and they had to develop this boatswain’s chair. They were suspended down through the top of the hatch, and from the mid-deck down into the Spacelab, because, of course, it’s sitting [vertically with nose toward heaven]. You had to drop all this [gear], and the guy had to carry the cages, one by one, down into the Spacelab.\\n\\n We went down to KSC, [9] months before flight, getting ready to fly. One of the things that you have to do [is] go through IACUC at [Ames], an Institutional Animal Caring Use Committee, to make sure that you’re treating the animals correctly. At JSC, you have to go through the Human Resources Board to make sure that you’re not doing anything that will impact the crew health-wise or physically or emotionally.\\n\\n Well, about this time, there was an outbreak of an infection, and I don’t remember where it was, whether it was in one of the primate colonies in Georgia or whatever, but this strange organism appeared. Everybody started saying, “Oh my gosh, what if we have one of those in your squirrel monkeys?”\\n\\n So, six months before flight, we had people going all over the world trying to find healthy squirrel monkeys, and they had to test them, etc. We finally got a pool of three squirrel monkeys, and they had to be shipped directly to KSC, and go into quarantine. While we were there at KSC, away from home, I had to arrange for rides on the [lear jet] that they have at Glenn [Research Center at Lewis Field, Cleveland, Ohio] at that time. They had a small parabolic unit, so we could get [the monkey] accustomed to [the reduced G]. So these are all the kinds of things that were happening in those days.\\n\\n We also had to do something changed the whole lab animal supplier industry. We had to have our animals specific-pathogen-free. This didn’t mean that they were completely pathogen-free, because if you had a completely pathogen-free animal, that animal would not have a good immune system. But there are certain organisms that [the monkeys and rats] may take with them, [e.g.] salmonellas, some pneumococci that people could get.\\n\\n And remember that when we have animals or when we have plants in the Spacelab or in Shuttle, they share the air with the people in the vehicle. The air goes back and forth. Now, we have filters in there that filter anything out that the animal might send out, and there’s filters also that filter the air [from] anything that the crew might [bring] in. [People are] more concerned about the animals [transmitting to the crew]. …\\n\\n Unfortunately, in working with the contractor who built the research animal holding facility for the monkeys and the rats, we thought we had planned completely on the [behavior of particulates] in zero-G. We had an air curtain like you have when you use a hood in a laboratory [laminar flow], but it was not a heavy enough air curtain. You’re probably all too young to remember this. When they opened up the cages to do the food bar change-outs and the waste tray change-outs, guess what came out? Crumbs came out, feces came out, hair came out. So we were told, “You either change this, or you’ll never fly again.”\\n\\n We actually took the units back to Lockheed, the original designer, and the decision was made that we would not fly monkeys again, because there was always the potential that there would be a primate organism that could be a problem when you were in the midst of human primates, the decision was that we would only fly rats.\\n\\n We had some very, very good engineers who were watching this at the time. I was still in operations and had to work to arrange all the testing that went on, which meant getting the rats on board and the series of multiple tests, because Lockheed doesn’t have an animal facility and couldn’t do them there; we had to do those over at Ames.\\n\\n What happens in this kind of situation, when you’re doing all this testing, and when we were doing these things [together as] in the early days [are] where we would all be sitting around with the types of screwdrivers we needed, and everybody would be joining, taking the cages apart, cleaning them. Now we have set procedures and we have the techs [technicians], but this was really a very good learning experience, because it made those of us who might not be doing this later really appreciate the complexity and what had to go into the design of a cage. You start thinking about what you would be doing for a future cage in microgravity environment, [e.g.] you can’t be working with something where there are little parts that could be lost. [Other things you deal with are] the food bar--there could be warpage. You’ve got a food tray; if you think about a stapler that has staples going through it, now think of a great big stapler that [has] this long food bar, and this is the shape of them. [Dalton displays example.] This one is about fifteen years old now, and it’s hard, but this is the shape, and they’re very soft and malleable, and they have about 25 percent water.\\n\\n I redesigned the food bar, because the first one that the contractors had made for Spacelab 3 crumbed a great deal, and that added to our problems. So interestingly enough, when I started looking at it and talking to the people at Teklad, and trying to figure out what we would do, the first thought that came to me, came from farm experiences. What happens when you chew wheat? You chew wheat and it gets like bubble gum. It has a great deal of gluten in it, and gluten is a binding agent, so I said to Teklad, “Well, could we put some gluten in there as a substitute?”\\n\\n And they said, “Yes, that would be a wonderful thing to put into the diet,” so that’s how we got our [current] food bar.\\n\\n Now, talking about the experiences you have in dealing with the cages and working with them, there were some [MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts] student groups [at Ames] this past six months who were working with the Australians, and you may have seen this. They’re trying to get a flight going, an independent commercial flight, and they’re trying to design an animal-holding unit, and get it up, and they wanted the formula for the diet. The young man who was working on the mechanism for the food bar wanted to make a mechanism, and he wanted to make a nice thin food bar, and I said, “Don’t go there.”\\n\\n He said, “No, it’ll work.”\\n\\n I said, “Don’t go there.”\\n\\n The engineers said, “Don’t go there. She knows.” They would have gone down that path, because even if you get it harder, you still have to have a certain amount of moisture, and those things are just going to warp. When you get into a microgravity environment, whether you have it manned or unmanned in the Spacelab [or STS], the humidity was down to around 30 percent.\\n\\n Now, when you have an unmanned [vehicle], you’re going to have it even more dry, and you want to keep it dry, because you don’t want to have humidity build up and then louse up your electronics in the system. You can take electronics and you can put them through ethylene oxide sterilization, which is a dry gas, but you can’t put them through humidity or moisture.\\n\\n … We have another type of animal habitat that we’ve worked with for years. It started in the student program, which started out at JSC, [and is] called the Animal Enclosure Module (AEM). [It houses] six animals in a cage; [here] we just glue the food bars on the side. Now, the person on the outside would look at that, and they’d say, “Wait a minute. Aren’t those animals going to urinate and defecate? And what is that going to do?”\\n\\n Yes, they do, but in a normal laboratory environment, the rodent consumes a certain portion of their feces just in their normal metabolism, so it doesn’t bother them at all. In fact, I think sometimes [the reason] we probably don’t have as much issue with PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals], and so forth, about rats, [is that] when you think about rats, you think [of them as] a dirty animal. When the rats come back from flight, those animals have cleaned themselves, or cleaned each other so well. In a cage with six animals, they’ve cleaned each other. In the research animal holding facility, which had single housed [animals, the rats] had just one little yellow streak down their back, but in the time (three hours until we were able to access them), they had cleaned themselves thoroughly. So rats are really very immaculate. That’s a side story. [Laughs]\\n\\n In Spacelab 3, I participated in training the [ground] crew in the operation of those cages, procedures that we had never thought about, because this was the first time we had done the modular vertical access. KSC said, “Well, we don’t have any procedures for that. We know how we get on our boatswain’s chair, but we’re going to have to have some procedures for how we hand over the cage and what we do.”\\n\\n Remember that this is not the day of computers and so forth. It’s the day, still, of typing a lot of things out, and you can’t access your files. So we sat down at Hangar L at KSC and typed out the procedures for modular vertical access [a few hours before their use].\\n\\n When we were ready to launch, I was not able to see the launch because I had to keep in touch with the veterinarian. If they had an [abort launch and had] to come back quickly, the veterinarian had to stage herself out someplace. So [here again] was [a] really, really unique experience that I never experienced on later flights, because [the support group was expanded and because] I was sitting in the control rooms [for launch]. But it was a lot of fun.\\n\\n One of the other experiences that I always like to think about [relates to technology]. I don’t know if you read [Alvin] Toffler’s book [Future Shock] back in the sixties, when he likened technology to the fact that [technology is] like a pyramid; the closer you get to the top, the more rapidly you can go because the peak is getting [narrower and narrower], and you have so many tools behind you.\\n\\n When we did Spacelab 3, I remember trying to communicate with [management] back home, and I would send faxes, and people would say, “You��re sending a fax? That costs dollars, and that costs money on the telephone line. Be careful how many you send.” That’s [was] 1983 [to 1985].\\n\\n In 1992, when we were at KSC for Spacelab Life Sciences 1, we were just beginning e-mail. We didn’t have e-mail then, [but faxes were cheap]. A year and a half later, when they did Spacelab Life Sciences 2 [(SLS-2)], they had e-mail. I mean, look at the changes. And the fax? Who would waste their time on faxes? That was a waste of time, really. So, a lot of changes in that short time.\\n\\n So, Challenger happened. We flew Spacelab 3 in 1985. Challenger happened in [January] 1986. … We were scheduled to have flown Spacelab Life Sciences 1 the following December-January, which would have been December ’86 or January ’87. [Challenger] delayed all of our plans. So we continued working on the research animal holding facility, and doing even more changes to it.\\n\\n … The engineers actually put a vacuum cleaner [suction into the design]. We called it the single pass auxiliary fan, the SPAF, which we called our vacuum cleaner, so that when the crew opened up the door to go to the cages and change the waste trays of the feeders, this big “Pfooop” came on, and swooshed everything down to the back of the units, so there was no possibility of anything coming out the front. So we not only had the laminar curtain, but we also had this big blast of vacuum coming down to take things away from the Spacelab and keep things within the cages.\\n\\n So that settled all that problem, and allowed us then, without any hesitation, to fly the research animal holding facility, which housed the animals individually on Spacelab Life Sciences 1, on Spacelab Life Sciences 2, and on Neurolab.\\n\\n I was the payload manager for the Ames portion of the Spacelab Life Sciences 1, and that was going to be our “make-or-break.” If we had any failures with that research animal holding facility, it meant we probably wouldn’t be able to fly animals in Spacelab or Shuttle anymore.\\n\\n So as we went through the planning, and fortunately, we did have [the] time, [due to] Challenger and as the crew worked with us on the training, and they saw how well this SPAF was performing and how well the unit was performing, they said, “We want to put animals in there. We don’t want to just put crumbs and beans that look like feces. We want to [fly] animals [in the unit].” … So we flew animals.\\n\\n [Flying animals] was a very valuable experience, because we were able to get baseline data for all the following flights that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. Secondly, it gave the crew an opportunity to do some things that they weren’t scheduled to do. They weren’t scheduled to take the animals to the general purpose working station, and they did. And they took pictures of the reaction of the animals in microgravity, of course. At first, the animals they’re sort of fighting and then they just give in to the gravity, and they float around.\\n\\n [As a sidenote, Frederick D.] Gregory, who’s [now Deputy Administrator, NASA] when he was out [at Ames recalled,] “Oh yes, I remember. I was on one of those early flights, flying the student Animal Enclosure Module.” And he said, “I got really scared, because it was my turn to go see how the rats were doing, and I looked down and they were just floating around.” And then he said, “I went to the commander and said, ‘Can we get a closed line? We’re going to have to tell them they’re dead.’” And so he said, “We sort of whispered to the doctor, the flight doctor, ‘We’re not quite sure.’”\\n\\n And he said, “Well, tap on the unit.” He said they were alive, but he said they were just so comfortable and at ease and just floating around there. He said, “It almost made me feel like I wish I could be that much at ease.” And they do that. They readily adapt. Now, when you take them out of the cage and take them to the general purpose work station, which we also flew on Spacelab Life Sciences 1, [and] which the crew did, they’re now in this big case that’s about so big [Dalton gestures] with—oh, it’s about so wide by so big. We made these little things, in fact, for flights as mementos [Dalton displays model], after Spacelab Life Sciences 1, because we had all the little particulates and the fluid, and so forth, floating around to test the thing out. The animals grabbed onto them [the crew’s hand], so that was a predictor of what was going to happen in Spacelab Life Sciences 1 when they were going to do any dissections and any injections. They would have to be cautious of this, and advise the crew of how to handle the animals, because the first thing would be some fear, because they’re not in their little cage, which is about this long by so and about so big [Dalton gestures], and they’re not floating around in their own little environment.\\n\\n But they also tried something. They squirted water at them to see what they would do, and the rats reached out with their little paws and brought the droplets of water to their mouth. So they’re extremely adaptable.\\n\\n The only thing that I think will not happen [is flying neonates], unless we do some different kind of caging, (on Neurolab, we tried to fly very young animals). We did a flight before [Neurolab] in the mid-deck when we flew two-day and four-day, [and] I think it was fifteen-day-old rats. Two-day didn’t survive. Four-day, we had a 20 percent death rate, which isn’t bad, but when we went to a different cage configuration in the research animal holding facility, it did not work as well. The mother was able to [retrieve] the animals in the earlier cage. If the animal can’t get to the mother and there can’t be suckling, then they’re going to die.\\n\\n So if we ever do generational studies or want to do transgenic studies, that’s something we’re going to have to be thinking of in the future. And right now we are thinking of the future; an animal habitat was in the fundamental space biology program in the suite of equipment. Unfortunately, with all the station overruns, the science programs were hit. Our program was cut back by 65 percent, both in the utilization and the hardware, and so our animal habitat had to be delayed, and so our POP [Program Operating Plan] now has us doing a buyback [of funds] in ’07 and ’08. So instead of [an animal habitat] going up [to Space Station] in ’05 and ’06, it’ll be more like the ’08 timeframe.\\n\\n … In between Spacelab Life Sciences 1 and Challenger, we had [a needed] interval of time. We were starting work on Space Station, and having worked through Spacelab 3, having worked with the animals in various activities, I was named as Ames representative to the Space Station task force, one of the early task forces that we had in the agency. And people like Carolyn [S.] Griner [from Marshall] were on that. I don’t know if you ever knew Bob [Robert S.] Clark at JSC.\\n\\n We all fought very hard [to have the racks (flight)] under the control of the developers, and not at some central location at KSC. That was one of the things that led to the EXPRESS racks we have now, and to the individual racks that JSC has for their hardware, and also the individual racks that we at Ames have for our hardware. [This] was [the outcome of] the activities that happened on that task force.\\n\\n I’m still recalling back [in time], and so I’ll [go further back]. In the year before Spacelab 3, I went to Simmons College [Boston, Massachusetts]. I would say that probably getting out of the research lab and getting out of the class system that is in the research environment, ([e.g.] unless you are a Ph.D., normally you don’t have a program of your own), [led to a major career change]. When I went out of that class structure and came over to the operations, that was when I was able to be more independent and [move forward]. I was the first Ames woman at Simmons College in Boston, [which] was a good experience. At the same time, (1982), I had begun working on my MBA [Master’s in Business Administration], so that sort of came hand in hand.\\n\\n Also, in ’78, I [earned] my pilot’s license, [which I retained] five years, [also] a good experience. Unfortunately, work made me give it up, because being on travel, you can’t be flying readily every two weeks and [keep] up your skills.\\n\\n … But [now let’s] go back to Spacelab Life Sciences 1. In the period from 1991 to 1993, we flew [multiple] Spacelab Life Sciences 1 in [June 1991]; then the following January, we flew IML-1 [International Microgravity Laboratory-1]. Then the following spring, we flew Spacelab J, and then the following November, we flew SLS-2, so we had four major payloads in a very, very short time. A lot of sleepless days, a lot of sleepless nights.\\n\\n I think one of the most grueling, but one of the most memorable experiences in NASA, was being the payload manager for Spacelab Life Sciences 1. [Simultaneously,] I was Branch Chief for the Science Payloads Operations. When you get to flight—and this is true for [everyone], and probably even more so for the payload manager because of the responsibilities—you have shortened days, or lengthened days, shortened days in terms of any sleep.\\n\\n Because we were loading our animals at thirty [plus] hours before launch, we did that during the night. We would go out to the firing room at nine [p.m.] to go on shift until ten in the morning. Normally what I would do is go on shift and then stop by Hangar L just to make sure that everything was all right with the researchers and do those little interactions and those [needed] walk-arounds [with] the researchers, [to reassure them and respond to] problems, [and complaints], etc. [I’d] get back to the condo at about [noon], try to get a nap and someone [would] call [from the pad] and say, “Oh, we’re just loading [cages], and we heard something [happening] with one of the water units. What shall we do?” So they’re interrupting and you say, “Fine. Do this, [do that].”\\n\\n So you end up probably getting four hours of sleep and then you have to go back out [on console at the firing room]. You start out at eight, to get out there, to be on console at nine and do the shift change-over, and so forth, and you do that the next day. There were seventy-two hours of this until flight.\\n\\n So when it comes time for flight, you went on console at nine [P.M.], launch [at 10 A.M.], then catch a flight to Marshall. [With commercial flight schedules, etc.], you walk into Marshall at eight o’clock in the evening, and you’re on console until eleven. You go home, you go to bed, and you get up the next morning, so you’re back on console at six, and you stay until eight o’clock the next evening. You go home. You get up the next morning, you go to the bathroom, and everything’s gone. “Am I supposed to go out to Hangar [L] today? Do I go out [to the firing room]? Where am I?” [Laughs] [That] was a frightening, really a frightening experience, and it took me a while [to adjust]. In fact, I kept thinking, “How do I find my way to the bathroom? I don’t know where I am,” finally the adrenalin [of pre-launch] has [receded], I think, and your brain has to rewire in there someplace.\\n\\n But every payload manager has said they’ve had almost the same experience, because you’re just going, going, going, until you get that thing launched and get it into the air.\\n\\n Anyway, as I said, we went on to fly all those missions in that [short] period of time. [In 1996, we had IML-2 and several middecks in between and] then we had Neurolab in ’98. In 1994, it was decided that we would marry [the Flight Projects Office and the Life Sciences into] the Life Sciences Division.\\n\\n We were integrating those people, off and on, in various [tasks] whether it was the Shuttle missions or whether it was the Biocosmos missions with the Russians. And that [Life Sciences] Division, (as a division), was not equal to a division anymore [in terms of people size]. It was more like a branch.\\n\\n The other thing that was happening [was the existing life sciences group lacked] funding support. [NASA] Headquarters [Washington, DC] had put out the decree, in ’92, that the life sciences organization—and they were still separate—could not do RTOPs [Research and Technology Operating Plan] anymore. They had to compete for grants, on par with the university groups.\\n\\n So if you think about that, and think about the fact that when the [Headquarters] Life Sciences Group was [issuing] their NRAs, [and] awarding grants, [to only] 12 percent of [the approved and], if you have an organization that has five submittals, you may get [only] one researcher that has a winning grant. … [Thus, no funding base for a total of 15 people.]\\n\\n So we married—Ken [Kenneth] Sousa had been the lead for the Flight Projects Office. In fact, historically, Bill [William E.] Berry, who is now the Center Deputy, had been the lead before Ken, and when Bill went off to a Sloan, then Ken came over from the life sciences, and he became lead. Actually, that was in ’91.\\n\\n Headquarters then wanted to set up a Level Two [Office] at the Center. They didn’t have the program offices coming out yet, so Ken filled in that function, was in Building 200 [from] ’94 [to] ’96. So we had an acting division chief for ’94 and ’95. … In ’96, Ken came back, because the program office came out [to Ames], and that was the time when he asked that I come up from being the branch chief, ([a position I’d held] for ten years), and [became] his deputy in the division.\\n\\n Two years ago, Dr. [David] Morrison asked that he [Ken] come up to [building] 200 and be his deputy. [As a result], I’ve been the acting division chief ever since that time.\\n\\n I had applied in ’92 for an SES PDP [Senior Executive Service]. At that same time, Ken had applied, and he was awarded the [IDP (Individual Development Plan)] program, Career Development Program. So I applied again a couple of years later and didn’t get it then. I said something to [Ken] about, “Well, I’d like to apply, but where I am in age, is it worth it?”\\n\\n He said, “No, go ahead.” So I applied and I went into the SES program two years ago, and all the material was sent [to Headquarters] February [02]. Supposedly, I’m supposed to go up to 200, but we’ll see what happens with OPM [Office of Personnel Management], and how long that takes. Because [the division] has a research element in it, the Center wants to have a Ph.D. in the position [of division chief].\\n\\n Actually, when Ken left, he said that the Center Director wanted to have a Ph.D., because the divisions that have research have Ph.Ds, and I said, “Oh, so that means if we [have] an IPA [Intergovernmental Personnel Act] coming in here, (which means someone from the outside), that means that I’m going to have to stay here and run the division.”\\n\\n And he said, “Yes, because if someone comes in from the outside, they don’t know all the government functions.”\\n\\n When I went through my SES, I went ahead and I still filled everything out as if I were going to be the division chief, because I didn’t know what was happening. [I also told the assistant chief] that if I were division chief, I would [diminish the infrastructure.] That it would be a division chief [and] a deputy. The assistant is nice, but he and I have managed the whole division and [a third person is a] kind of frill.\\n\\n Well, now if an IPA comes in, I’ve told him, “No, you need to have an assistant because you’ll be in the same position that I am.” There’ll be two people that know all the government rules, and it’s just very, very hard to have one person doing all of the activities. The Centers—(and I think it’s not just Ames, I believe it has happened at all Centers)—[have] become extremely institutionalized. The government has, (with ISO [International Organization for Standardization], with VPP [Voluntary Protection Program and with full cost accounting), become heavily administrative]. These things are fine, but you have to also at some time look at the tradeoffs of what are you doing in terms of your productivity.\\n\\n I have three branches [in the division]. One is research and that’s a group of eighteen Ph.D.’s and two people with just bachelor’s; [a] Flight Ops Branch and [an] Engineering Branch. [The] engineering is [wholly] engineers with master’s and one has a Ph.D. The Flights Ops has scientists and Ops [people] and some engineers. It’s a mixture of Ph.D.’s, master’s and bachelor’s.\\n\\n If we look at what has to be done in terms of training between all the organizations, whether it’s in our Ops group or whether it’s [among] our researchers, those people end up spending [approximately one month’s time in training]. Between what they have to do for safety, what they have to do for IT [Information Technology] security, what they have to do for ethics, what they have to do for ISO, [and] everything [else] that is required of a Center [~one month is used up].\\n\\n Now, in that one month, a researcher could write a couple of good papers compared to an engineer [in other organizations] who figures that they have nine-tenths of a percent of their time. So [the research and engineering requirements are] very different. This is about 17 percent of the time for the researchers versus what an engineer spends. There is a big variability, and, of course, the researchers are hollering. They recognize there is [necessary] training. We have talked to Center management about this, it’s the balance of what you have as a training group who come in, who don’t sometimes have the knowledge that the researchers have. Some of this could perhaps be done on videos that they, [the researchers], could do [in] their own time [versus a required time which interrupts experiments].\\n\\n I do serve on committees [such as] Respectful Resistance Action Team. We called ourselves the RAT Patrol. [Laughs] We did surveys of people, and [the feedback on training was actual]. … The attitudes toward safety [among researchers] and, the personnel organization [are very different]. The science [people] recognize [training is] there, but they have to take so many things that it’s just eating them alive in time. The personnel group takes one class: office safety. That’s very, very different [in terms of time commitments].\\n\\n Other things that have happened [over the years]—oh, I have to tell you something clear back. Back in the seventies when I was still in the research lab, there was a bond drive, and with thirty other people at the Center, I signed a petition warning people not to submit to the bond drive because of the impact on the Vietnam activities. The last time I had my secret clearance, the guy came around, looked at that, and he said, “I can’t believe this is still in there.” [Laughs] He said, “This is ridiculous.”\\n\\n I said, “[Yes], I thought so. And I think you probably found the letter from Hans Mark that said I should spend my time in more worthwhile activities.” [Laughs] Little incidents happen when you’re in government service. They also had a speeding ticket from KSC for going 55 in a 50-mile-an-hour zone [in 1983]. [Laughs] I don’t know what other things [may have been in there], but those are the things that he [shared with] me which are kind of crazy.\\n\\n Other experiences? There are a lot of experiences talking to the public. You have different kinds of public. You have a public who isn’t aware of NASA. Generally, though, when you’re asked to speak to groups they’re fascinated with what happens in NASA and, I think, whether you’re at Ames [or] whether you’re at JSC [or another Center], there are some things that we do every day that we lose sight of. It’s really a unique environment.\\n\\n The Center and Dr. [Henry] McDonald, in ’95, instituted a peer review for each of the research divisions. Now, he knows that the people are working on peer review grants, or they are working on RTOPs, but he wanted to ensure that we are doing things [in alignment with] the Center’s mission [also], not just the alignment to the strategic plans [of separate divisions NASA] Headquarters. So [Life Science] was first on the docket. [For our review team], I got Barbara Horwitz from U.C. Davis [University of California-Davis], who [was] actually president of FASEB [Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology] and she’s [also] one of the deans [at Davis along with Stuart Kim] from Stanford [University, Palo Alto, California], a leader in genetics and has done a lot of work in C. elegans; Gerry [Gerald] Sonnenfeld from Morehouse [School of Medicine, Atlanta, Georgia], who’s known in immunology and been outstanding there; and Bernd Fritzsch from Creighton [University, Omaha, Nebraska]; and then Ken [Kenneth M.] Baldwin, who’s on the NASA BPRAC [Biological and Physical Research Advisory Committee].\\n\\n Ken has flown before; so has Gerry Sonnenfeld [as] researchers. The other, Bernd Fritzsch, flew one time with us on Mir, but Bernd has [also] come to use our facilities at Ames, [along with] Ken Baldwin. Barbara, who had not used our acceleration facilities, [and Stuart Kim] both remarked, “This is fantastic. Could everybody have this opportunity to work in an environment like this, where all these things [acceleration facilities] are available?” [This is] what our researchers revolve their research around [the effects of variable gravity on physiological systems]. And it’s been a very phenomenal study, I think.\\n\\n People still question sometime, “Well what do you do in NASA, and why do you do it, and why are we having these flights?” I often sit and think, would we have spurred the interest that there is now in osteoporosis had it not been for microgravity? Here we have an aging population, and it’s becoming more apparent how real this is, but would there have been the research going on, had it not been for what we found in microgravity, what we saw with the crews, what we’re now seeing with cell cultures, that we have to have this force, that we’re really kind of like granite has been for history. There has to be a certain force on the thing to make everything align and make molecules align and make the growth take place.\\n\\n I still think there is so much that we haven’t tapped completely. We know there are problems with the immune system, and I think there’s a lot we have to find out, but when we start finding more out about that, or even in genomics, it leads to some of these questions that we [may] have about hepatitis C, this new thing on the horizon that’s just causing so much trouble and what can we really get to take care of it if interferon is not doing the task.\\n\\n I think I’ve almost said it all. [Laughs]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You gave a presentation not too long ago, about women and space. Could you share with us what—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. In that presentation, I told a little bit of background about [M.] Rhea Seddon. Rhea, of course, had been working with us—oh gosh, she came on board [since] about 1985, after we did Spacelab 3. She worked with us a great deal and was around us when we were working on the RAHF [Research Animal Holding Facility] and trying to take care of our problems there. And of course, because she is a medical doctor herself, she was a prime candidate to be one of the first mission specialists on Spacelab Life Sciences 1 where we had life sciences activities [both] human [and] non-human. She actually continued working with us into Neurolab [even though she had] retired from the corps in ’97. She was with us in Neurolab and did the consulting there.\\n\\n When I gave that presentation, it was also interesting to talk about Shannon [W.] Lucid, who worked with us on Mir. Well, Shannon had been with us on Spacelab Life Sciences 2, and Shannon is a physicist by background, but a wonderfully versatile individual. … You can get some people, who it doesn’t make any difference what tools you give them, they just can’t do it right. …\\n\\n But Shannon was the kind of person, you just gave her a little inkling of training and she could do it. And this is what happened on Mir. We had a male doing the primary experiments, and he botched them up. He botched them up completely, and Shannon hadn’t had any training on them, and the samples that came back from when she handled them were just beautiful. … I think the wonderful story about Shannon was that when she learned she was going to fly on Mir, she took her teenage son out and said, “Come on, son, we’re going to take your car apart and we’re going to put it back together again, because this is the kind of a level of what I’m going to be facing when I go over to Russia,” and she did it.\\n\\n Several of our people, our crew trainers, became real familiar with her, and they said she is just such a down-to-earth person, but she will make something work. I’m really so happy that she is the Chief Scientist [of NASA] now, because she has that sort of common-sense approach to everything, in addition to being a wonderful person, I think.\\n\\n And Rhea is that way, too. Rhea has a very common sense—Shannon, I think, is probably a little more in the rough, and Rhea is a little more reserved. That’s just her southern lady style, but both of them are just fantastic.\\n\\n Those were the primary ones [I spoke about in the astronaut corps]. I also related the fact that if you look at what happens in our population here at Ames today, and look at women in the work situation, one of our women in SLO, who has been leading the science efforts in all of our payloads, did that while raising two young sons. Her husband is a researcher here, but she was still the keeper of the home, and her sons are in their teens now. But she continued to do all the work and did excellent work.\\n\\n [Another] of our other ladies, (actually she’s a contractor, but I brought her in as a NRC candidate) [has an interesting story]. This lady went back to school and got her Ph.D. at the same ceremony her son got his bachelor’s. So she’s been out in the field working. She graduated from the University of Kansas [Lawrence, Kansas].\\n\\n I think women are really very adaptable, and where they see an opportunity or a situation, they seize on it and they keep going.\\n\\n Other researchers, Muriel [D.] Ross. I don’t know if you know Muriel’s name. Muriel retired from the University of Michigan [Ann Arbor, Michigan], and she retired to Ames. So she was at Ames in civil service for ten years. For [a] part of that time, she was a branch chief. Muriel [finally] retired when she was seventy-two years old. She retired two years ago. She’s now down in Albuquerque [New Mexico], where she and her husband moved. She thought it would be better for his health. [Also] one of her daughters was living down there. But she’s very active, still doing telemedicine activities with the Navajo Tribe and with the University of Arizona [Tucson, Arizona], and connecting up with Cleveland Clinic [Ohio], and making sure that there are clinics that [the Navajos are] able to connect with so that they can do medical diagnosis clear out in the field.\\n\\n Emily [M.] Holton. Emily stepped down as Branch Chief for our Science Branch in the division. Emily is a year older than I am. [Last] fall, Emily and one of the other researchers submitted an article to the Journal of Physiology, which was on the whole technology of the Hind-limb suspension model. Emily first [developed] that [technique] about twenty, twenty-five years ago. … Ruth [K.] Globus, [with whom] she wrote this article [collaborated] on that. [Importantly], there have been over 800 citations on the Hind-limb suspension model [paper]. That is a fabulous number of citations.\\n\\n Emily is still working in the lab. She said, “I’m having an awful time trying to figure out all this molecular biology.”\\n\\n Ruth said, “Look, you can do these studies with the rats.” So there is still a place, regardless of where the research is. In fact, that’s one of the things that we have been trying to work with, within this division and in the research organization, is [to support these] people who are in their [sixties and] seventies and who are still here and are very active [as researchers]. …\\n\\n What is happening right now, and where the Center wants to go, is [toward] biotechnology, nanotechnology, [and] information technology. When you start talking bio and nano, you start talking molecular biology, more than you do the whole animal, and this is something that came out when we were doing our peer review, too.\\n\\n [The Kims] and Horwitzes and Fritzsches, all recognized the upcoming work that our young people are doing in molecular biology proteomics and genomics, but they commented—and this is a message that we wanted to get to the Center—is that you still have to have the integrated physiologists. One of their comments was, “We see a lot of people who may be nearing the age of retirement, but hopefully you won’t forget to bring in the whole organism, the physiologist that can look at the whole organism and how we bring this [story together].” And this is the mix that we’re trying to attain in our research right now. For some of our older researchers, that’s a whole new language when you start talking genomics and proteomics.\\n\\n In fact, in the SES [training] program, as you may know, you have to spend 120 days away from the Center, and half of that must be at [NASA] Headquarters. I spent the other sixty days at Affymetrix [Inc.], which is a DNA-array analysis [company]. I did that, because I was sitting here, not having actively done any research or done any microbiology since 1978, and here we’ve got a bunch of new researchers who are sending in these proposals, and I’m supposed to look at them with a somewhat sane eye and understand what they’re talking about.\\n\\n [Being at Affymetrix] offered me the opportunity to do a lot of reading and talk to the people down there, and really find out more about [their] tools, and compare the tools from company to company. You have the kind of array analysis tools that Affymetrix has versus the kind that Agilant [Technologies] has, and there’s really quite a variety, depending upon what you want to do that’s available out there, so it was a lot of fun [and informative]. I did that last September, October.\\n\\n Also along the way, in 2000, I [was] nominated by my mentor in college, [as] Outstanding Alumni, and I was awarded that from the University of Montana [in Missoula].\\n\\n What other things? Well, it’s a good [NASA] group. I always get feedback from my husband [who] says, “Oh, why are you doing this?” We were separated for fifteen years, which was kind of a natural clash of my wanting to go forward [in my career] versus—though he would not admit it—what should be the traditional role of a wife. I put him through college and then when he was finally settled in teaching for five years, I started expanding out of research. And I wasn’t spending [just] eight hours a day [at work]. When you go into program management, you do not have an eight-hour day. You just have to accept that.\\n\\n Right now, I’m in the office between 6:00 and 6:15, and when I don’t go walking, I leave at 7:00. If I go walking, I leave at [6:00], and that’s it. You talk to any manager, [it’s] true around the country, those are just hours [required]. I think that’s why Bill Berry announced he was going to retire, because he figured he was only making six dollars an hour. [Laughs] But it’s hard for a family to understand that, and I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t care for it.\\n\\n My husband [was] a high school teacher. He has been retired for two years, and he keeps wanting me to retire, but I said it’s not a fear of losing anything, it’s simply that I enjoy it. I’m not ready to go into that retirement community and do those kind of things, just like Muriel wasn’t at seventy-two. She was still very strong, and she’s still very strong, keeping the kind of associates even that she had at work.\\n\\n We, [my husband and I], got back together ten years ago, by the way. Actually, I think [when we had separated] that was probably one of the reasons I took flying, [it] was to gain back my own self-confidence. I went through high school, organizing clubs and doing things all the time, and I went through college as a sorority president. I finished college in three years and a quarter, and went on for my master’s and I worked while I was in college, and then I got married [and everything stopped]!\\n\\n I think if I look around, it’s very, very hard for men who are over fifty to accept that there is not this role that women traditionally must be at. It’s a different world. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things I faced, even in work, is making men understand that I don’t want to be intimidating. I want to work with you, but my skills are the same as your skills. Just because I wear a skirt or wear high heels doesn’t make any difference.\\n\\n Up until the last, what, five years ago, I wore high heels all the time. I have had five hip replacements in the last fifteen years, so I don’t do [that] now. But I found a very, very different attitude when I was working actively with the engineers and Shuttle management and payload management, when I went in my high heels and I was looking at them nose to nose, versus when I wore flats. That shouldn’t be, but I’ve had several women comment to me that they’ve felt a very, very different perception when you’re on the same eye level, and I think that’s true even if you’re talking to people. If people can look you in the face, there’s a different perception than looking up or looking down. And if you look around, and you think of some of the people, Shannon Lucid, very strong person, very self-confident person. Clark, who was at Headquarters, who was at Space Station, Catherine Clark, strong person, tall person, no problems, and I think it is a very real perception. Even Kathy Olson was fairly tall, some gentility there but—anyway, questions from you. Other questions?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I’m watching your clock, and I know that you have to go into a meeting at two. It’s almost two, so we’ll stop for now and we’ll see where we’re going to go from here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Okay. [Tape recorder turned off.]" + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Before you start again, so is that someplace where you want to start?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. I can start [with early Shuttle flights]. I can’t tell you a great deal. When we did that activity, the Plant Growth Unit [PGU] was constructed under our Flight Projects Office. It was under a contract with Lockheed Martin [Corporation], and there wasn’t a great deal of effort, as there would be with animals, because you don’t have all the restrictions in terms of animal care and use committees, and you grow plants, and they either grow or they don’t.\\n\\n So at that time, we had a [researcher, who] retired in the late eighties, and went to farm mushrooms, but he was the science person for that plant growth unit. I’m trying to think, I believe we grew wheat in that [first flight]. We also [set] up some flights in which we flew carrots in these pods that looked like milkshake shakers? They were a big heavy aluminum [can] with a lid that capped on. We just had these carrot stems on an auger base, in auger dishes, and they were stacked in these units. And the investigator was looking at them. Fortunately or unfortunately—but this is science—what he was trying to verify, [during his] three or four flights, did not pan out, but that’s research. You know, you fly it and you invest X amount of dollars, and yet it’s not always going to pan out.\\n\\n I might [add on] the same [note], we had [an] experiment in Neurolab and had a great deal of difficulty with this experiment. The experimenter came in, [Bruce L.] McNaughton, and he was on the cover of Science before Neurolab, very, very bright investigator, and working in neurology. He had a sensory [unit] implanted into the brain of the rat. Whenever you do any kind of activity, you turn your head or you respond, [and the brain cells/neurons start] firing. These neuron firings through the brain [are an] this impulse, just almost like an electrical impulse.\\n\\n So he said, “Well, I’ve got this room full of equipment. I’ve got this wonderful engineer. This won’t take much to do it all.” So then he said, “All I need is some guidance in safety.” And we got to the end of the first year, and he said, “No, I think I need a little bit more help.” And this is over a five-year period.\\n\\n By the time we got to the end, we had made a new cap for him that was half the size of the one he had, because the one he had would have interfered with the animal cage, and the thing would have gotten hooked [in the wire mesh]. We [took] his [four] racks of equipment, and condensed [them] down to about two lockers’ worth of equipment.\\n\\n … The experiment cost us about $15 million to get on board [Spacelab], but it really was an activity in miniaturization. The animal walked around this sloped piece of equipment in the work station and it got different sensations because [of the angular slope], so that it looked like you were going on the inside out, like a ribbon. You know how in candy ribbon how it sort of looks. That’s the feeling you had around the corners.\\n\\n [When] he got the data back [he] said, “I can’t believe it. My theory is incorrect.” But that’s research. You know, and you say, “Oh my gosh, we invested that much money.” But you don’t know until you go through all those processes.\\n\\n I’m sorry to have strayed, but when you [mentioned] STS-3, I think that may have been the carrot [experiment], because I think the PGU may have been closer to STS-7. We flew the PGU, I think we flew that two or three times, and then when we finished with it, because we were going to go into the Spacelab activities, we sent it down to KSC, and Kennedy Space Center has flown several plant researchers with that [equipment].\\n\\n Now, you [may] say, “Well, why did you do that?” When they proposed to do Spacelab 4, they had so many experiments on [the mission]. I believe they had they had around twenty [non-human] experiments. We had all these grandiose ideas, and people really didn’t realize how much equipment would be needed. As they started narrowing things down, they divided it into the green and the non-green things. So what that meant is, there was a plant experiment, that went to IML-1, and that was flown in the gravitational plant facility, which was a full top-to-bottom rack.\\n\\n That was one of the reasons we weren’t interested in doing the PGU anymore, because we were helping this experimenter on IML-1 getting that experiment on board. We said “green” things, but we sort of thought of everything that was sort of plant-related. There was a yeast experiment that went on that for flight, too. And so we did that at the time.\\n\\n [The] other green things were the frogs, and the frogs went to Spacelab J, so that was how we got activities on Spacelab J. It wasn’t planned. It just sort of filtered out, and again Spacelab J wasn’t completely filled, and, of course, the Japanese were flying the fish and the aquatics, and they were very, very interested in an experiment at this time, because they also supported the experiments, I believe it was in IML-2.\\n\\n They supported a new experiment for Dr. [Michael L.] Wiederhold, and that was one experiment that we were involved in, too. Whenever there [was] anything involving aquatics, it [was] always in conjunction with the Japanese. We also worked with them on Neurolab, and the toadfish. … And then STS-95, which was also the [Senator John H.] Glenn [Jr.] flight, we were involved in that because we re-flew the toadfish experiment.\\n\\n Now, some of the side benefits to an organization [as a result of flights] is Dr. Richard [D.] Boyle, who was one of the co-investigators on that toadfish experiment is now here at Ames, and he’s a part of our division. When Dr. Ross left, we wanted to rebuild our capability in neurology, and have someone who was interested in biovisualization and he [Dr. Boyle] is in that area, so he took over Muriel’s place.\\n\\n So when you do a flight, you also look at ways [of] encouraging researchers to come into your organization. And this is the same way, I’m sure they’re often looking at, you know, “Could I join NASA, too,” and sometimes they just say, “No, I don’t want anything to do with this.” [Laughs]\\n\\n After we did the early plant flight we got started in [the Animal Enclosure Module that was the result of] that student program that was in force, and actually JSC, with McDonnell Douglas [Corporation], built the first Animal Enclosure Module.\\n\\n And again, because JSC didn’t have any researchers who were known for working with rodents, they asked Ames to help, and so Emily Holton became an advisor on the first student experiments. Now, the first Animal Enclosure Modules had no watering unit in them, so what they did is [send] potatoes up for water for the rats, and it was a short flight. Unfortunately, they thought, “All we need to [do is] radiate those potatoes so they won’t get moldy.” [This] was probably the worst thing to do. The mold wouldn’t have hurt the animal, and [the potatoes] got all soft and mushy, so they really didn’t serve the purpose.\\n\\n After those first flights, actually, Ames went ahead and built the watering units, and after Challenger we were looking at what could we do until that time period in which we might be able to fly the Spacelab. So we started out with our first thought, well, maybe we can fly some of these Animal Enclosure Modules on some interim flights, because we weren’t really sure when we were going to get that Spacelab.\\n\\n As it turned out, Spacelab Life Sciences 1 was the first Spacelab for return to orbit. We did invest a lot of time, and we did have an experiment or two in [the AEMs] before the Spacelab, and we just totally revamped that Animal Enclosure Module.\\n\\n We [added] the food bars; I think they just had pellets pasted on the sides [before]. We glued them on the side walls. We built a watering unit, which was a very simple idea, great big spring with water in a blood bag, and as the water goes out of the bag, the spring is pushing to push more and more water out, and the crew can look through the window and see how far the spring is forward, to tell how much the animals have been drinking the water. So, a very, very simple idea.\\n\\n We had even worked in Neurolab where we were able to access that unit in flight, because we had Dr. McNaughton’s animals in that Animal Enclosure Module. We had two animals in there. We had a dividing wall. And because they had this little antenna on their head, we couldn’t keep them in the regular research animal holding facility. With all this paraphernalia on their heads, their little “Carmen Miranda” hats, they wouldn’t have worked very well [in the RAHF cage]. We had an animal access unit that we used on Neurolab so that we could actually bring the animal into a sort of a big glove, and then take them over to the [big] glove box, where we worked with them.\\n\\n So when you look back at flights and you look at activities, [in which one] thing [develops] from another. When we went into Mir, it was supposed to be a prelude to what we would be doing on Space Station. I think that it was a very good idea, but what we have found is that the Russian [operations are very different from us].\\n\\n Plus, we started Space Station with all of these operations, and because we had people still tied up in Spacelab and we had people doing Mir, we had a whole group of new troops who had never flown. So they were trying to set down the ground rules of how we would work Space Station. In some of the first missions [because of the new people, new roles], there has been some disappointment by researchers, saying, “Well, they put this on me, and I had to plan so far ahead.”\\n\\n In fact, there was a very caustic talk given at the Space Station meeting in Cape Canaveral last fall. As you may know, the NGO [non-governmental organizations] concept sort of arose out of this disappointment of the research community saying, “We think we could do it much cheaper and much easier, and so forth, and you need to commercialize Space Station.” Well the schedules have fallen behind. We had this mandate to do this, and we’re now starting to do this, where we’re starting to get up to speed with our increments, but there is still a lot of things to be put on. For instance, the whole suite of research equipment is not up there, for all research organizations. But the people who were back here, this young group who have gone forward and now has been infiltrated by people who were in Spacelab had looked at what are the things that we can do easier.\\n\\n For instance, they’ve got an agreement that we will get at least twenty hours a week from the crew, which is something everyone was very fearful of. They have gone from the thirty-six months that they originally said they would have to start having procedures for the crew down to twenty-four months, to now eighteen months, which is a significant change. And they’re still looking at how can we change things and make them easier for the developers, and who are then supporting the researchers who want to take experiments on board.\\n\\n I think one of the biggest things, if you talk about changes over the years, [is] the AEMs and how that started from a student experiment, and what we added to it. We have actually flown over twenty-five flights with that Animal Enclosure Module. Now, if you think of twenty-five flights, and the fact that that represents at least one experiment and, in some cases, it represented sixteen experiments, there have been probably close to seventy PIs who have gotten data from those twenty-five flights. So that’s fairly significant for a simple little mid-deck piece of equipment that could fly that many times.\\n\\n We could still be flying it, but we can’t do that and try to build Space Station and everything that has to go up there. And we won’t be having any animal habitats until ’07, ’08, ’09, so our real quandary is, as we’re looking at the research community, how do we satisfy that research community? How do we keep things going?\\n\\n Another item in line with all of this [was the plan to go forward] to Space Station—where were we? We did Neurolab. We had really gotten pretty good at this. What we did with KSC, what KSC was doing with the developers, how long it was taking us, was cut by about half from when we did Spacelab 3. It had become a very simple straightforward process, and what did we do? We decided to quit the whole thing because we wanted to do something else.\\n\\n Interestingly enough, when you look at the proposals that are submitted to the NRAs—(and I’m just familiar with those that are submitted for JSC for the human, and those that are submitted for our [non-human biology), many of the things] that are requested are things that they could be getting data in twenty-day missions. [But of course funding cannot simultaneously support Spacelab and building ISS.]\\n\\n And building on that, you may be aware that Yvonne [D.] Cagle has been working with the crew very hard, and they’re trying to push an extended duration orbiter mission so that you would take the Shuttle and park it up there, and you could do a bunch of these mid-deck experiments.\\n\\n Yvonne is coming to Ames in June, and she’s going to be with us through September, [supporting] us in some experiments we’re doing here, and also learn more about the hardware that we’re building for flights. We’re looking forward to that. She’s going to use her medical talents, in fact, to monitor some centrifuge studies that we’re doing with humans.\\n\\n I’m going to go away from that a little bit and also tell you about some of the other facilities we have, because this lines up with Flight 2, and it’s something I would not have realized had I not gone from the exobiology and gone to operations, which is now joined with all of life sciences. Within this division, we have what we call a twenty-four-foot centrifuge in which we can put about cages on arms and we can spin rats up to as much as five Gs. Normally the highest we take them is two and a half to three. We have a twenty-foot centrifuge [also]. Did you see Space Cowboys?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Remember the red centrifuge? That’s not at [JSC]; it’s here. It’s over in Building 221. And that’s what was going around, and that’s the centrifuge, by the way, that we’re going to do the studies in this summer, in which we’re taking individuals from one G up to two G, by quarter-G increments, and they will be at each increment for twenty-two hours. That takes close medical monitoring. You don’t frequently see too much [change] at 1.25. You may start seeing something at 1.5. You definitely start seeing some real reactions at 1.75. You have to be very careful at 2. All of this is looking at body adaptation and how well we can adapt.\\n\\n We also have a human [powered] centrifuge. We have several multi-access centrifuges. We have a thirty-foot linear sled. … One might say, “Why are you doing [all these acceleration studies]?” And we have an eight-foot, and we have the short arm. A lot of our cell culture studies are done on the short arm, because you don’t need a big [centrifuge] if you’re just doing cell cultures. The eight-foot is to mimic the centrifuge that’s going to go into Station, ultimately. So it will be used for ground tests [as a control].\\n\\n Why our researchers use these centrifuges is because there are many, many responses in microgravity that you can elicit when you go to hypergravity. In the same sense, some of the things that you see happening in microgravity, you can use hypergravity as a countermeasure, which is kind of interesting, particularly at the cellular level. …\\n\\n We have about fifteen extramural investigators coming through Ames yearly, who are using those centrifuges, and these are people who have grants, either with the BR&C [Biomedical Research and Countermeasures Program] program or with the Fundamental Space Biology Program." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Let’s talk some about the investigators and your involvement with them, how they’re chosen for their experiments or the whole process and how you have been involved in that through these years." + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The normal process for selection of a researcher against a grant now is the NRA. Many, many years ago, they used an RTOP process, and Flight Projects wasn’t united with the Life Sciences Division as such then, but when I looked through those RTOPs, they were like a grant but it was almost automatic that Headquarters would say, “This is a good program. We want you to work on it.” And they would have a small group review, and the investigator was funded.\\n\\n In the early nineties, Joan Vernikos went up to Headquarters as the head of Code U of [Office of] Life [and Microgravity] Sciences at [NASA] Headquarters, and as I indicated earlier, she said she wanted everyone to go through the NRA process. She was stopping the RTOP.\\n\\n Code S [Office of Space Science] out of Headquarters still uses the RTOP process. Code U, OBPR [Office of Biological and Physical Research], does not use that RTOP process. An NRA goes out. A NASA research announcement goes out. Our investigators respond, just like investigators from JSC or investigators from the academic community. There is a different NRA that goes out for ground activities versus flight activities. They’re very separate. Headquarters has a contractor who contacts researchers in the field who may not have submitted, but who are very experienced in the field, and they review those proposals for content.\\n\\n When our researchers submit a proposal … there’s an understanding that all these [proposals] have to be approved at the division level. [This is because we] need to know [how] does that [proposal] impact the division. Does this mean that [we’re] going to have to have more people over in the facilities group because this researcher wants to use the centrifuge every day? And as a researcher here at Ames, he doesn’t pay for it. We charge the people from the outside, but we don’t charge our people within our own organization. So does that mean [we’re] going to have to somehow get more funding to take care of that?\\n\\n So our researchers give a five- to fifteen-minute [presentation] at our Project Control Board, which is at the division level. I chair that, and each of the branch chiefs is in attendance at that. Though they’re not a voting member, we [also] ask the program office to sit in on [the PCB], so they’re aware of everything that’s going on and what might be [going] up. The proposals all go back to Headquarters, even though they [Fundamental Biology] may be the funding agency ultimately.\\n\\n So our researchers will submit a proposal. We work with them on the funding levels that they may need for contractors, because they don’t know what the current rates may be, or what the rates may be if they’re getting people through the educational associates program at Santa Cruz, and the proposal is submitted. This year, Headquarters [now] has this all electronically so that the researchers submit their program electronically. What I didn’t know until the researchers came and had their proposals on the last day [was that they are approved electronically]. They said, “Oh, you need to get online. You need to get online, because you have to approve it online.”\\n\\n I said, “What?”\\n\\n They said, “Yes, you’ve got ten minutes.” But, you know, you deal with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And what a change from the earlier days—" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Right. … They just started that this year, where previously it was all handwritten [approvals]. Now, they still have to send up copies because when the peer review group gets up there, they want to have the hard copies that they look at. We’re still living in a society where sometimes it’s hard to go through a bunch of [numbered pages on the computer] here, and then want to read. I like to have a hard copy out so I can hold the page and then come back this way [to review].\\n\\n So a proposal is passed on by the peer review. They have to have a score of seventy-two or higher for acceptance.\\n\\n Then if it is a ground proposal, it will go to the program manager and Headquarters to decide what they want to fund, because they won’t fund everything at that level, they just don’t have the funding. In fact, right now, overall, the funding is only 12 percent of those that are accepted.\\n\\n If it’s a flight proposal, the next step it that it goes to something called the integrated technical review. Ames has headed that integrated technical review, and, in fact, we hosted that integrated technical review for the last three years, and then this year we worked with the Japanese to set it up over there.\\n\\n The NRA for flight is now issued as an international document, so there is an International Space Life Sciences Working Group, called the ISLSWG. Headquarters has a representative member, and then the associated members have an individual, [e.g.] ESA [European Space Agency] has a representative, CNES [Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (French Space Agency)] has a representative, the German DLR [Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.] has a representative, I believe the Italians now [belong and] the Canadians [and Japanese (NASDA)] have a representative.\\n\\n So they also send their people to the international technical review. The technical review [is] not at a program management [level], although the program managers often come, but it will be [have] division chiefs. We start [the ITR planning] process almost simultaneously with the peer review. … The peer review might take a week. As soon as they’re done with their proposals, then they send them to us, and we distribute them electronically to all the other members of the ISLSWG, to their representative members, for this technical review. There [are] between four to five categories. [Last] year, there were 300 proposals.\\n\\n What had to be reviewed, that was in that 72 to 100 [range], was 120 proposals. The proposals are rated on their feasibility, on their costs, and on their manageability. For instance, you might get someone on [the] human side [who] may want to have thirty different runs of crews. Thirty different runs right now means ten flights, which means that could impact the ability for anyone else to do an experiment, so if they were demanding that many, we might say, “This isn’t feasible or fair to the others.” If it’s something very simplistic that wasn’t really time-consuming, like maybe just swabbing the tongue, then you might say, “[Yes], that doesn’t take a lot of time.” But if it was going to be an experiment that took two hours a day, and they wanted thirty crew members, which is ten flights now, that would be totally unfair. We might say four flights maybe or two flights; there would be that [limiting] parameter.\\n\\n Now, most of the people who look at [the humans] are the Houston people. What the Ames people look at is [non-human things]: microbiology, rodents, Drosophila, C. elegans, [or molds and plant experiments]. If we got an experimenter, [in which the] individual wanted to look at flying bees—we would review that and say, “Okay. What piece of equipment do we have that we could fly bees in?”\\n\\n The Canadians had an insect habitat. No, it wasn’t an insect habitat. It was a small aquatic, but it could be used for insects. Now, they [have] decommissioned that, but, potentially, we could put the bees in there. … [It would have to be negotiated]. Again, if the experimenter said, “Oh, I have to do ten different operations in a day,” which might be three hours a day, for four weeks, [and], if the crew only has twenty hours on Space Station to spend on science operations and you have an experimenter that says, “I want to spend three hours a day for four weeks,” that’s already blasted any other research. That’s already taking up a third of the science time, whether it’s for human experiments, non-human experiments, microgravity, or for the commercial world.\\n\\n So we would probably say, “Well, if they could live with x amount and part of that is based on people who have worked with insects in the organization and know something about it and sometimes that talent is in our NASA group, sometimes it’s in our contractor group. We do have our contractors working with those [proposals] and evaluating them, and in that kind of process, there are a lot of things that are coming up now with Drosophila, because that could be flown early. It doesn’t take a lot of space. [In fact], one of the things I’m looking at in terms of increasing the complement in the division [and], when the [hiring] freeze is over, [is] trying to pick up a gal who was recently graduated from Stanford [with] a background in Drosophila. She helped on STS-95 with [Haig Keshishian] from Yale [University, New Haven, Connecticut]. … She couldn’t help us with this proposal [round], because she had submitted a proposal herself with a [lady] by the name of [Kathleen M.] Beckingham, from Rice University [Houston, Texas]. …\\n\\n In the ground [proposal], there isn’t [an ITR], because there is nothing to impact it, [the procedures]. … There may be some researchers who want to use our acceleration facilities, and so they will get in touch with the [lady] who is the manager of our research facilities. She will get one of our researchers [assigned to the facility], and [work with them to] determine the [support] cost would be for [conducting] their experiment.\\n\\n For instance, if someone comes in who wants to put cell cultures on the short arm centrifuge, then Dr. Ruth Globus, who is our cell culture [person] and the science person for that facility, will work with the facilities manager and they’ll go over, “Well, would this be a good way for her to run this? Can we run this? How can we support it?”…\\n\\n [During] that initial [stage], we generally get about twenty inquiries, and there may be between ten to fifteen that finally come to fruition, and that ranges from things like Drosophila to rats.\\n\\n One of the other things that happens when a [ground] proposal comes in [is that] we have to take it [to] the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, [for a] preliminary guesstimate on [feasibility]. Will it not hurt the animals? Is everything being treated [appropriately]?\\n\\n The same thing is true for any flight activities. Any flight activities we do, if we send a piece of equipment out to a PI’s lab, say they’re going to fly with us on Space Station, but they want to test a piece of equipment, a cage in their lab, and they’re going to do ground test, that has to go to the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee because anything that has a label of NASA, NASA is ultimately responsible for.\\n\\n In line with that, I had told you earlier that we didn’t fly monkeys anymore after we did Spacelab 3. That was squirrel monkeys. Well, we did fly rhesus monkeys with the Russians on the Cosmos flights, and I think it was three different flights [in which] we had rhesus monkeys. The last flight, which occurred in ’98, there was an event which stopped us from going forward and doing any more Russian flights, but it was a truly significant event. As you may have remembered—remember Bonnie [J.] Dunbar had an incident where she responded [negatively] to a drug or something?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, this is the same thing that happened to the monkey. When the monkeys came back, you determine the dose of sedative you’re going to give them, based on their weight, just like you do in humans, and they were going to be taking biopsy samples. They gave the sedative to the animal, and the animal died. The animal responded differently, and what they believe is it was a response to microgravity and what the system could tolerate, but, of course, that disturbed PETA totally.\\n\\n I wasn’t involved in it. Ken was in the Level Two, so he worked with one of our [people] in PAO [Public Affairs Office]. But that was a very, very, very trying time. They spent about a year answering requests for information on the use of animals. I think it’s justified. I think PETA has done a lot to maintain good practices in the laboratory, but NASA has always been very careful [to abide by the rules of ethical conduct and humane treatment], and I think where we all get very concerned is that there is a lot that could be distorted.\\n\\n About that same time, we were in the process of [of preparing for] Spacelab Life Sciences 3, which never happened. That was going to be the flight of a rhesus monkey, and it was an activity that we were doing in conjunction with CNES. And what we actually did is we had trained the rhesus monkeys to respond to computer games, and there were two elements of that. It was for food response and, secondly, they had learned about eighteen different types of games, which kept them entertained. During this process, we went ahead and installed computers in the animal care facility for the animals to play with, because that’s something that has come out in the years, that you shouldn’t let these animals with that much intelligence just be bored.\\n\\n Well, all of [the Cosmos findings] came up a year before [the proposed SLS-3] flight. It was decided we would not fly the flight, and it was primarily because of the concerns with PETA, but the good thing that came out of this is that one of the researchers, and, in fact, he was featured in Newsweek about four years ago. … He lives in Georgia, and he actually started the Sonny Carter Center down there, [and] has been working with autistic children, and has used a lot of the methods that they used in teaching the monkeys, and has had a marvelous result with these autistic children. So even here, look at the benefits of a program like that. And here there was nothing done to the animals. There were no biopsies, nothing of that sort. They did have to have a penis sheath [for urine collection]. [Laughs] But none of the other activities. It was just all in training them. So here [were] some real worthwhile activities, and we had to cancel [them].\\n\\n What other things have come out of the flight program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Tell us some more about the Cosmos program that we were involved in, and how you were involved with that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I wasn’t involved with that, because Cosmos started [with] Ames’ involvement in 1978, [under Kenneth A. Souza, as Ames’ representative]. I told you that in 1975, I started working on the Viking Program. Actually when we started doing that, [it was] the nucleus for starting up a small division called the Biosystems Division, and it was out of the Biosystems Division that the Flight Projects grew, and then the Flight Projects became the Life Sciences Division. … We started the Biosystems Division to set up the [Viking ground] lab.\\n\\n We also had control of the Animal Care Facility [ACF], [Dr.] Richard Johnson was the head of that division. Richard was a biochemist, he retired probably about eight or ten years ago. Anyway, the veterinarian for the ACF was a military [person], that was his tour of duty. … One of the next members that joined was Bill Berry. He became part of that group [along with] John Tremor who worked with the carrot experiments on some of those early flights, and who was also a co-investigator with Ken, in the frog experiment on Spacelab J.\\n\\n Jan Kennard was another person [in our group, who] was our resources person. She had started at Ames about the same time I [had], and she was in Life Sciences, working with monkeys. She left Ames in about [1981], went back to work for Bionetics. [She is now] their vice-president for personnel. We had started doing all our work on our MBA together.\\n\\n Ken [Souza] was at Headquarters, and in ’78 he came back to Ames. Dr. Klein [Director of Life Sciences Directorate] had started discussions with the Russians about [the] Bio-Cosmos program. So Ken headed that up, and we had some of the early flights, [which] were just rodent flights. They were flights with academic investigators and with NASA Ames investigators; there were as many as sixteen investigators [along with cadres of] co-Is [co-investigators].\\n\\n How they managed these [was] that the hardware in the vehicle was all built by the Russians. The U.S. actually paid dollars to the Russians to go on their [flight vehicle]. I don’t know what those early flights cost, but the later flights, like the flights that flew in ’98, [were approximately] ten million [per] flight, which is really cheap if you think about it, and we had a monkey. We [did build the] equipment for the monkeys on [the later flights] but what the U.S. paid the Russians was [inexpensive].\\n\\n Our investigators went over to Russia. They went to the landing site, and they had a temporary setup at the landing site, where they were processing these animals, somewhere out in Siberia. When they were through processing, [they] took [their samples] to IMBP [Institute of Medical and Biological Problems], which is the Russian Institute in Moscow, and from there sent their samples back home where they processed them more. …\\n\\n … [The missions] were on two- to three-year centers, and then [the last three were] with monkeys in them. The last one was the flight in ’98. …\\n\\n What you will see happen over time is [that] you begin recognizing the names of some of researchers because [they have been on the list a long time]. … If you look at, for instance, the people who were selected initially to go on Spacelab 4, they were selected in 1978, and they were supposed to have flown in 1982. They did not fly until ’91, and their actual mission when they got their specimens and got their dissections in flight was not until ’93. They were distributed between IML-1, Spacelab J and Spacelab Life Sciences 2, so that was a long time.\\n\\n Now, Dr. Halloran and those other people who were supposed to have been on R-2, were selected five years ago, and it may be another five years [before they fly]. The first mission right now is being planned for ’05, so, eight years. That’s a long time. That’s too long to have a postdoc working. [Laughs] It’s a problem.\\n\\n … Now interestingly, a couple of the PIs that worked with the monkeys on Bio-Cosmos are not the same PIs that were going to be on Spacelab Life Sciences 3. One of them was the same, all the others were different PIs. They were looking at different things, like this learning capability. I think part of that stems from the fact that, in the nineties, and what was happening in the nineties; it was called the Decade of the Brain. That was why we had Neurolab. … [Even Nurolab] researchers were chosen in ’93, so it was a five-year ordeal until they got to flight.\\n\\n I know there is a lot of conversation, even today, about how long it’s going to take to get to Station. Once you decide you’re going to fly an experiment, now, I think it really doesn’t take much longer than it did on Spacelab. The real zinger in all of this is the changing schedules. We went from six missions a year down to four, and to three crew persons. When these things drag out, it’s really, really just a series of events. It’s not the time it takes to develop the experiments; it’s the series of events that go with flight. Every researcher has to realize what they’re signing up to when they put in a proposal. But sometimes [microgravity is] the only way they can get the research [answer] they want." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "During Shuttle-Mir, the development time was somewhat shorter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was much shorter, yes. We were doing this in about eighteen months. … It was a system in which they said, “Okay. We’re going to propose we’re going to work with quail. Anyone who wants to sign up experiment, here’s the door. And so that’s what they did.\\n\\n And actually the fundamental biology program is looking at perhaps using that as a method in some of the early flights to get the most science. … [They may say], “We’re going to fly rodents. We’re going to bring them back. We’re going to have a team dissecting them. What do you want the parts for?” We call that a bio-specimen sharing plan.\\n\\n We have always tried to have a bio-specimen sharing plan, even when we had researchers lined up. In fact, SLS-1 had one afterwards, because we didn’t have any experiments in flight but we had the parts available for the researchers who were ultimately going to be on SLS-2 afterwards.\\n\\n [In] SLS-2, they had a really big team. We had the researchers that were the original researchers from Spacelab 4 for the rodent experiments (fourteen researchers) and we had a team of, five Russians who came over and about ten Japanese and a couple of Canadians. So there was a big group that were [in] line end of the queue. …\\n\\n With all the new tools that have come around [for] genetic analysis [e.g.] DNA array analysis, one of our researchers, Cathy [Catherine A.] Conley, [was given] some of the testes from 10 year frozen SLS-1 rats. The program manager, in talking to her, said, “Well, could you go look at these things,” and he gave her some money and said, “Look at them and see what happened.” … She [showed] by her gene analysis that there had been an effect of microgravity on the testes of these rats.\\n\\n Between [Cassie’s] data, which had indicated there was lessened production of testosterone, [and the research of] April [E.] Ronca, who looks at what happens in terms of stress factors prior to birth.\\n\\n There is interesting data, which [coupled] with the concerns they have now about radiation for females, [one is tempted to say], “You know, if you want to be an astronaut, you’d better think a couple of times before you go ahead and do that. You want to have your family afterwards? Maybe you want to have your family before.” [The data is] interesting [from that aspect] but it also leads to looking at other things that we may not be aware of.\\n\\n I mentioned [Dr.] April [Ronea] who is actually a behavioralist and psychologist and has worked with the rat [hind limb suspension] model, and [is also] a rat physiologist. She is a researcher here now, and we first ran into her on a flight. She was one of sixteen researchers, and she was at Indiana University [Bloomington, Indiana] at that time.\\n\\n She was looking at what happens in flight, and she has found some very acute things happening when the animals are put under any kind of stress, pre-birth, in terms of the responses of the animals postpartum: weight changes, how readily they adapt to suckling behavior and even interacting with the mothers in the group. So it’s [quite] interesting data. …\\n\\n By the way, we can use that suspension model as a real model for hypergravity. I haven’t heard of people doing it on higher animals, because you’d have problems probably with them trying to get away, but it works very well [for the small rodents]. This is the one that I told you Emily Holton developed, and then Ruth Globus working with her, and they had over 800 citations." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The years that you describe, and all of the components that have major life in this life sciences field, sound to be so challenging and so interesting. As we’re coming close to the time that we need to finish today, is there an aspect of your job that you’ve enjoyed more than the other?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think what I’ve enjoyed more than anything else is being told, “No, you can’t do that,” and then proving that we could do it. One of the really fun things is when you get an experiment and you say, “How are you going to do that?” It’s one of the things I kind of miss right now, being in management, because I really loved working on Spacelab Life Sciences 1 and being Branch Chief in the Operations Branch. You sit around the table and you talk about an experiment. Just like this, “Why couldn’t you take that stuff?” It was like [wheat] bubble gum [story for food bars]. And you just start thinking about, what is there that we could do that might make that work. That’s the fun of it, of having something that hasn’t been done in microgravity, and you know there’s not a piece of equipment. How do you adapt that piece of equipment or how do you make the experiment work? What do you do? And sometimes it’s very, very simple little things, putting a piece of [velcro in a corner in] a simple way.\\n\\n What I find interesting [is the natural operations inclinator]. Probably a lot of women in technology and in the professional world will say, “Why did you have to bring that in?” I think there’s a lot of things that come from our home life that you get out of being a housewife and the manager of a household, and particularly if you find yourself doing the plumbing things at home, or trying to do them, that you see as simplistic ways to try and get some of these things done in flight, because the best thing you can do is to make it very simple and make it very inexpensive.\\n\\n You don’t want to burden a crew person who is trying to fight nausea, trying to keep all these experiment procedures in mind. You want to keep things very simple, plus you want to keep them at a point that if it breaks down, they can look at it. I always have to think back to—what was The Right Stuff [and then the Apollo 13] movie when they had the explosion. Remember, on the ground, they were thrown this big heap of stuff, which was the underwear and the socks, and [asked] now what can you do with this. That’s really, really very applicable, whether you’re starting from the beginning or starting from the end. You really have to think, what’s the simplest component.\\n\\n Unfortunately, I think that sometimes our young people [don’t] think that way, because they’ve been exposed to the high tech, but that’s the fun part for me, those times when we used to sit down and say, “How can we do this? What can we do? What can we make it simple?” Or even making it simpler for the experimenter when they come in, because, interestingly enough, you get into a field station situation many times, when you can’t have all the sophisticated equipment they have in the lab. In fact, you don’t want to do that, because you don’t want to ruin their [lab] equipment.\\n\\n You can’t afford to buy a $50,000 piece of equipment every time, for every different thing a researcher may do, so you talk with them. “Now what do you really need?” And that’s hard to drive out sometimes, because the first thing, and understandably, the researcher will come to you and say, “Well, I need this, this, and this.”\\n\\n And you say, “Well, what happens if we don’t have this?”\\n\\n “Well, yeah, we could do this.” And it’s that bargaining back and forth that is kind of fun. You never try to undercut what they need, but you really look at the reasonable approach and what can be done." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In all that you’ve done and all that you’ve accomplished, is there one accomplishment or a time that you feel like, of all the things that you’ve gone through, all the long hours that you’ve put in, all the sacrifices you made, it was worth it just so that you could be one part of this whole program?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think [of] one of the things—I’m going to go several steps back. I think something that happens with everyone, that I don’t wish on anyone, is that it’s hard to keep that balance between family and work, and I think that’s one of the things I regret. It didn’t help my marriage, and I feel sometimes I could have spent more time with my daughter. She was very understanding and wonderful, but she didn’t want to go into the space business, I think, because of that. I have a very dear friend at Marshall, whose daughter went into engineering but wanted nothing to do with NASA, and I think that’s partially because, [like my daughter, she sees] how much time [her] parent [was] spending in all [the SLS-1 crew training].\\n\\n If I look back at training—and I think things have changed drastically for a lot of young women—I wish that I had had more math in school. I remember when I had algebra, geometry, trig, I wasn’t going to take calculus. I took calculus when I did my MBA, and it was a snap. It wasn’t a problem, but I think it was the way it was viewed when I was in high school, like, “You’re a woman. You ever going to use that? What are you doing in this class?” In fact, I was the only girl in [high school] physics class, and I got the highest grades, and the guys were mad at me. So you have to apologize for that. [Laughs]\\n\\n I’m glad to see that those ideas have changed. I think that’s important. I don’t think there’s anything I would want to do over or that I would regret having done. I’ve always told the people, when I was in the branch, when I was in the payload, along the way, that the sin is not in making a mistake, and I think that’s something our educational system doesn’t look at correctly. [Yes], the sin is not in making a mistake; the sin is not using that mistake as a learning tool and admitting you made the mistake. And sometimes that’s hard to acknowledge. You want to impress everybody. But at the same time, you should just say, “Look, I’m stupid about the thing. What do we do?” And let’s go from there.\\n\\n I had to use that approach when I went into SLS-1, because I was coming [in] as a microbiologist when I entered the operations world, and I didn’t bring engineering [education]. I knew everything about laboratories, but I’d look at this piece of equipment and say, “Okay. How am I going to operate that? What am I going to do?”\\n\\n And most of the time, the engineers would say, “You know, that wasn’t a dumb question. We didn’t think about that part.” I think that’s kind of the test point that you have to have in any system, is to set a naïve person in there to ask the stupid questions. And that’s also something you have to remember about flight hardware, too, because again, you’ve got a [big] cross-population who’s going to be running that experiment, like Shannon Lucid, who is extremely bright. Here’s a physicist doing a life sciences experiment, and doing it well, who really learned everything and what to be careful for in dissecting animals and looking at all parameters of the experiment.\\n\\n So I think admitting where you made errors or not being afraid to ask questions, those are some of the biggest things. Even in management now, I know there have been situations [of doubt]—I faced a situation several weeks ago where I deliberated and said, “Okay. Am I going to look like a fool or what?” We were supposed to do this countermeasures and evaluation program with JSC, and we’ve been involved in this for three years. We did the integrated test regime last summer, and we were working towards doing the big bed rest study that was supposed to begin in December, January.\\n\\n We got a notice from Headquarters in December. Everything seemed to be moving kind of slow, but we got this notice from Headquarters in December and they said, “Stand down. … We’ll let you know in sixty days.” Well, they didn’t let us know, they didn’t let us know, they didn’t let us know.\\n\\n So three weeks ago, I was at Headquarters. I went in to the person at Headquarters and said, “You don’t have any money to do this now, too, do you?”\\n\\n And he said [whispers], “No, we don’t”\\n\\n And I said, “You don’t know if you even have money in ‘03, do you?”\\n\\n And he said [whispers], “No.” And he said, “But I want to keep those facilities open.”\\n\\n I said, “I don’t have any income to pay for 5,000 square feet of facilities for the next five years.” I said, “We can’t do it.”\\n\\n So we got the person from JSC on the line and he said, “I only have funding to pay those contractors to the end of April, and that’s it.”\\n\\n I said, “Plus, you guys haven’t made up your mind now, whether you want to do them at Galveston [Texas] or you want to do it at Ames.”\\n\\n He said, “You’re right. Even if we have money, now we don’t know where we want to do them, and we’ve got all things settling out.”\\n\\n So when I met with Dr. McDonald, I really hesitated. “Should I say something? Am I killing the program?” I said, “I think we need to address this, but I’d like your input, because you made the original agreement that we would be working with JSC to do more activities immediately.”\\n\\n [Dr. McDonald said], “Cut it.”\\n\\n The next day we had a fireside chat with Dr. McDonald. This is after these retreats that our managements had been having together. The first thing he said at that fireside chat is that the agenda for [NASA Administrator Sean] O’Keefe is to get Space Station on line. [I believe] HEDS [Human Exploration and Development of Space] is out of pocket for twenty years. There is not going to be any talk about going to Mars, [sending] a human to Mars. He said, “Plus, the military is building so many robotics.”\\n\\n That made perfect sense. It made perfect sense and why he said yes right away, but I was scared to say something because I thought, “Do I want to be the one that someone says, ‘Oh, she killed the facility’?” But it may not be used. And those are the kind of decisions that are hard to come up with. But if you don’t do them, you’re not much value as far as a manager for the group either. And you just have to look at all the inputs that are there.\\n\\n Probably other things that I find difficult in management, is working with your people, and I have found it more difficult in the research group than I have in the flight group. [That] is working with your researchers and your research managers to ensure that everyone is very fair to everyone. I think because each researcher has their own research grant, or whatever they’re working at, and they’re competing against each other, there is a tendency in the research field to be very, very competitive and to be pushing all the time. If you have someone who is managing [a] research organization whose interests are primarily [in one area], for instance, [e.g.], if you have someone who [is] managing who’s a physiologist, that person’s going to be more attentive to the physiologists than to the molecular biologists. So to try and bring that around so that you don’t have that, and so everybody feels on equal ground, I think is [extremely] hard [at times].\\n\\n The third thing is to be looking at the organization and what’s going around that organization, and to protect the people, [to] keep them productive. When we got this big cut on Space Station, the first thing my people in the projects [were] saying [was], “My gosh, 65 percent has been cut out of our budget? What are we going to do for the next couple of years?” And so we had brainstorming sessions last summer. “What can we do? Let’s not wait for fundamental biology. What are the things that could really be done?”\\n\\n A month ago [I] sponsored a Space Station workshop here at Ames to look at what could we do in the near-term science. What I’ve found, and this is where I find that I’m deficient, is that I have been away from research so I have to be constantly reading, myself, and it was one of the reasons I went to Affymetrix. What is happening out there? How do we balance this? [Unfortunately], you can’t have a total researcher in here, because they’ve tried that, too, and they didn’t have the business management skills.\\n\\n [There is] a fine balance, I think, in all of our NASA organizations, and I think when you talk to a lot of the people at the JSC, you find the same thing. It’s a hard balance, trying to manage the research, manage within the confines of what budgets are, what NASA expects, and to encourage the people that if they’re not in this area, that they redirect themselves to go in this area, because those are the pathways of the agency, the biotechnology, the nanotechnology, the information technology. Those are the three cornerstones at Ames right now. If you look at what’s happening out in the world there, that’s what’s happening in the world.\\n\\n So anyway, those are the challenges. But I love it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, it’s been most satisfying for you to keep enjoying challenges, because there seems to be so many keep getting thrown away." + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I think that’s true for managers at all the Centers. … I spent three years in industry, but, of course, I was just at a technician level at that time, and I often wonder, “Oh, wow, are they having this much [difficulty with budgets, directions]?” And I’m sure with all the dot-come failures that they are, although I read an article that said that actually the economy problems of a couple of years ago, and that are still continuing, were good. It’s like you have to have the forest fires every once in a while to weed out [the under brush], so I keep thinking about that in terms of our research.\\n\\n The meeting [I] went to today on the taxation structure at Ames right now is of concern primarily because we’re concerned about our researchers. The statement was made by Nancy Bingham, who is associate for Dr. McDonald, that we have hired more researchers and we have decreased our administrative NASA staff, so [that] means that we now have to spend contract dollars for them. Can we maintain the flavor of Ames, that is, a research community, if they’re being undercut by all these expenses to be maintained at the Center? So [we have] a real challenge. …" + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "It sounds like you have another large challenge in front of you, and we wish you the best of luck. We thank you for taking so much time out of your schedule to visit with us." + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’m sorry your time was cut short. I thought we would be able to have more." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’re used to forest fires, too. We’re very flexible, and we try to take the best that we can. We will be looking forward to sending this to you, and then maybe when you have a chance to look at it, we’ll see if there’s some more things that we need to visit about it. And now that you’re coming to Houston on occasion, if we need to fill in some other spots, we can do that. We’ll talk to you then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Sure. And you know, we could do telecom if you ever wanted to. I don’t know how effective that is. We could try that sometime, too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "We’ll see how this works out and then we’ll go from there. So, thank you again." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The Flight Programs [has] a really dedicated group of people, and in our research group [we have talented and good], a very good group of people. In the publications that we’ve been getting out in our research group, we’ve been averaging about four publications per person per year. That means some are doing more than others, but still that’s a pretty good average. So, we’re glad to do that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, congratulations. That’s great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "And it’s in peer review journals, and that’s pretty darn good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And that means, of course, that’s your enthusiasm across the division is still there, so that’s terrific." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "… We also had a really nice report from the peer review. One person had been on the previous panel in ’95, and we did that purposely so that we’d have that continuity, and they said [that our group was] much improved over ’95." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Wright", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, now you continue on this path. And good luck with that area as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Bonnie P. Dalton", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Thank you." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "returned-peace-corps-volunteers-00141", + "metadata": { + "original_file_name": "RPCV-ACC-2020-026.pdf", + "item_link_text": "Graham, Norman (1964-1966): Oral history interview", + "item_link": "https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/RPCV-ACC-2020-026", + "digital_identifier": "RPCV-ACC-2020-026", + "access_restriction_status": "Open", + "description": "Norman Graham served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil from August 1964 to August 1966 as a prison social worker. Prior to the Peace Corps, he had completed a degree in social work with a minor in criminology and an internship at a federal prison. Graham attended training at New York University (and in Rio de Janeiro) with a group of nurses. His technical preparation focused on health care and Portuguese. Graham lived in a satellite town outside of the new half-built capital, Brasilia, where he started a program in the local penitentiary (100-120 inmates) to show films on health care, literacy, mathematics, and Brazilian history. He then started a library, added carpentry training, ran a dispensary, and arranged for doctors to visit the prison. Graham also volunteered at the local boys' school. Interviewed and recorded by Randolph (Randy) Adams, August 22, 2019. 1 digital audio file.", + "dates_of_materials": "22 August 2019", + "extent": "1 digital file (audio; stereo; 52 minutes)", + "deed_status": "Deeded", + "copyright_status": "Public Domain (Donated to the United States Government)", + "collection": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection", + "series": "012. Brazil.", + "preferred_citation": "Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection. Brazil. Graham, Norman (1964-1966): Oral history interview", + "subjects": "Peace Corps", + "organizations": "United States. Peace Corps", + "places": "Brazil", + "use_restriction_note": "Consult with archivist to determine copyright holder.", + "accession_number": "ACC-2020-026", + "transcript": "RPCV-ACC-2020-026-TR.pdf", + "page_last_updated": "October 28, 2023 9:18:57 AM EDT", + "pdf_download_url": "https://static.jfklibrary.org/om8q738ycfs2w18t34ol0d71ksry175b.pdf?odc=20231115173651-0500", + "audio_download_url": "https://house-fastly-signed-us-east-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com/media/v1/pmp4/static/clear/6057940510001/35432595-2d78-42d1-a06e-de8daba33a04/861d1b2c-a59c-49f1-95d0-5a21406c7a01/main.mp4?fastly_token=NjdhMzI1NjNfMTVjYTM0YjlkZjI3OGYwMmU1NmNlYjg0ZDFjOGFkMWVhMjdiMzJiMmQ0MjI5NTVkZWRjNWZiYmYzZGE5NGQxYV8vL2hvdXNlLWZhc3RseS1zaWduZWQtdXMtZWFzdC0xLXByb2QuYnJpZ2h0Y292ZWNkbi5jb20vbWVkaWEvdjEvcG1wNC9zdGF0aWMvY2xlYXIvNjA1Nzk0MDUxMDAwMS8zNTQzMjU5NS0yZDc4LTQyZDEtYTA2ZS1kZThkYWJhMzNhMDQvODYxZDFiMmMtYTU5Yy00OWYxLTk1ZDAtNWEyMTQwNmM3YTAxL21haW4ubXA0", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04", + "location_of_interview": "Alexandria, Virginia", + "length": "18 pages", + "usage_restrictions": "According to the deed of gift signed December 11, 2019, copyright of these materials has been assigned to the United States Government. This interview is in the public domain." + }, + "broad_source": "jfk_library", + "collection": "returned_peace_corps_volunteers", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Norman Graham Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Randolph Adams" + ], + "respondents": [ + "Norman Graham" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "00:00:06", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Today is August 22nd, 2019. This is Randolph Adams. I am interviewing Norman Graham, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Brazil from August 1964 to August 1966. To start off, the most common question, of course, is why did you join the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "00:00:41", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think if you can remember back into the particularly early ‘60s and in the Kennedy administration, there was just a lot of hope in the world that that young people or this nation could make some really meaningful changes and in the world and with other nations and with other peoples. And you know, that call was very strong for me and that I can do something and make some contribution to another other people was just so appealing to me. And plus, I really wanted to travel. I never traveled very much. Never been out of the country except for Canada. And I thought that would be a very, you know, very interesting experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "00:01:33", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was life like before you joined the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "00:01:36", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I just finished undergraduate school and social work, and that was really that was very fulfilling. I was very active in student affairs and very active in my fraternity and had a really nice group of friends. And so it was a very fulfilling experience and that was kind of adding to my desire to make a contribution to other people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "00:02:02", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Where did you study and what did you study?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "00:02:04", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Ohio State University. I had major in social work with a minor in criminology." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "00:02:14", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were there any other life experiences that you could recall that may have also influenced you to think about serving in an organization like the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "00:02:26", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I just think my observations of the hope that was in the in the ‘60s, that this generation can make a contribution. And I was very strong on that and I'd been active in the civil rights movement and saw some changes in that too." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "00:02:51", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did you hear about the Peace Corps?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "00:02:53", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was on campus. Recruiters. There was in the news and the recruiters were around and I think, at the student union. I went over and signed up." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "00:03:06", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Was there a specific country you were interested in?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "00:03:09", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I was very interested in learning how to speak Spanish. So that was an interesting so I was my first desire was going to South America." + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "00:03:23", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was the timing like for the application process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "00:03:28", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "It was perfect because I had finished just finishing undergraduate school. I accepted an internship at the Federal Bureau of Prisons and there was a, where I was. I lived in Columbus, Ohio, at that time and there was a federal reformatory in Chillicothe, Ohio, actually the town that I grew up in. And so there was an internship that particular summer, and this project was not supposed to begin until August or late August, I believe. And so the timing was perfect because by the time I was informed early on, the project was going to be in Brazil again. Kind of a little joke because I wanted to learn Spanish, but that was a Portuguese speaking country. But it sounded interesting and it was the first offer and I took it. And I think I knew about the that right around the time I graduated in June and then with my internship and had a couple of days at home and off I went." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "00:04:53", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your reaction when you were accepted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "00:04:56", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I was very honored to be accepted because I know it was that time was pretty competitive and even more competitive now I understand, but competitive and I feel, you know, you know, quite honored. In fact, some of the some of the literature at that time about people who had to face adverse situations in their life, but people that were picked for the Peace Corps were, you know, right at the top of the list. So I felt, whoa, hey, I'm part of that group." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "00:05:31", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about your friends and family? How did they react?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "00:05:36", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The family was not, not too keen on it. I'm an only child, so my parents were not too keen on me going, but they didn't put any impediments in my in my way." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "00:05:51", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you have other friends that applied or no?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "00:05:54", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that was it. Actually, the fellow that I that I did the internship with at Chillicothe, Ohio, in the reformatory. He was also accepted for a project in Brazil and was going to, I think his training group was starting the same time as mine, but in a different location." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "00:06:21", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did you know before you left that it was going to be involved with prisons or did you find that out once you arrived?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "What's involved with what?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Your work was going to be involved with prisons?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "00:06:32", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I trained in New York, in the jungles of New York City at NYU and it was a health project. So I was with a lot of nurses and as a male non-nurse, I was being, you know, as a sanatorium and we were scheduled to go to the northeast Brazil. And so I learned about latrines and, you know, health care and lots of diseases and first aid and, you know, those kinds of things. And so that was that was the mission." + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "00:07:13", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you elaborate a little more about the training, how did how did you receive it? Did you think you were being properly prepared?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "00:07:23", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think so. You know, in terms of I had nothing really to, you know, to compare it to at that particular time. But you know, it was new information for me about, you know, tropical diseases. And I was really keen on helping people with latrines and maybe building some houses out of, you know, out of adobe and, you know, probably much more enthusiastic than knowledgeable. But I was ready to go. And I thought the instructors that we had, both the language instructors as well as the more technical instructors were, were very good, were really excellent I think." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "00:08:04", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "In retrospect, do you feel there were any particular weaknesses?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "00:08:11", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I can't. I can't recall any. No, no. Now, you have to understand it didn't train me for what I eventually ended up doing, but the intentions were all there." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "00:08:30", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Sounds like a story I've heard before." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "00:08:32", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, right?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "00:08:36", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So your style of training was at the university, so you didn't have much interaction with actual Brazilians." + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "00:08:42", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You know, instructors were mostly Brazilians, the language instructors. And we got tickets to see George Proyecto, so that's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "00:08:56", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Were any volunteers asked to leave during the training process?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "00:08:58", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think we lost close to 50 percent. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "00:09:03", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How many did you start with, do you remember?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "00:09:05", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I don't recall. But you know, most were lost at half time, halfway through. I know a couple of the women were there and they decided to go back with their boyfriends, you know, want to get married. So because I mean, the rumor was, those kinds of relationships didn't last over a two year period if you were separated." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "00:09:41", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "The next question would be, what was your initial entry into the country like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "00:09:48", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "We had some nice training in Rio de Janeiro. And that was really great to be in Rio. And we had some orientation, which I’m bit fuzzy on. I don't remember exactly what it was, but it was basically a scheduled for about a week, I think, to just get us used to the country, get a feel for the country and kind of relax a little bit and feel welcome. And so that was really nice. Now the whole thing got changed, as I said before I was, but I was supposed to, scheduled to go to northeast Brazil. And while I was there, a fellow came by the name of Phil Lopez, who was directing the project in Brasilia, and had seen my bio and wondered if I wanted to go to this project in Brasilia, which was the first group in Brasilia. So I said, sure, sounds great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "00:10:59", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I take it this was a staff person." + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "00:11:02", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, Phil was the director. Yes, it was a staff person. Yeah. He's recruiting and recruited from a couple of different groups." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "00:11:14", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So I guess he was the one that actually facilitated your moving into this position." + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "00:11:22", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yes, that's correct. Yeah. Going to Brasilia." + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "00:11:28", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you elaborate now on what the specifics of your assignment were like?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "00:11:33", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, it's kind of a long story. We got to Brasilia and at that time it was only half built, one side, and I don't know if you're familiar with Brasilia, but it's like in shape of an airplane. And one of the fuselages was the government buildings and the wings were commercial residential. And only one of the wings was built out. The rest, the other wings had some cute little wooden houses and lots of red dirt. You know, there's a lot of iron in the soil there. So first assignment was I was assigned with another female volunteer and we were assigned to a satellite town called Planaltina. Planaltina was a satellite town that was in existence before Brasilia was built. Most of the other satellite towns were new, and we were assigned to work with the social worker in that in that village. Yeah, for myself, the general community development, community improvement projects, what happened was, is that just as we arrived and the fellow who was the social worker and that township was promoted to being the chief of the whole social service foundation. And for the federal district. And so we went out there and he kept saying, well, I'll be out there, we'll get some projects going, I'll be out there, we'll get some projects going and some time passed.\n\nSo I was um looking for a mission, basically. The one which was really quite discouraging because I was out there to do something and I wasn't doing much. But in the meantime, I was befriended by a young Brazilian fellow who wanted to learn some English. So I was learning Portuguese, so he and he introduced me to a lot of townspeople and playing cards, and we'd go up and watch television in his friend's house, and he had a good time. And that was 50 some years ago, and we still have a really nice relationship. And I, I think I was somewhat influential in his in his career because he was a young fellow, one of 10 children from a farm family. And I kind of think that I influenced a bit about going to college, and he went to this agricultural college and eventually became part of the faculty. So yeah, I just, we just saw him last year we were visiting. So keep that up and telephone conversations when we can. So that's very gratifying relationship. But anyway, back to the main topic.\n\nSo I spent a month out there and I told our director Phil, I said this, you know, this is going nowhere. What else was happening? And it happened at that time, one of the social workers in the Social Service Foundation was with the penitentiary on the just outside of Brasilia. So he saw my background in corrections and filled in and asked me if I wanted to do that. Sure, sounds great.\n\nLittle did I know what it's getting myself into, but that happened very quickly. And what happened? You've got to remember this penitentiary is not one with, was not one with walls. It was two old barracks which were originally constructed to house single men that were there to build Brasilia. And it was an area called Vellia Cap, All Capital. And there was these barracks, and this is where the workers lived, single workers live. And then it was converted into this penitentiary basically. And then it just surrounded these old barracks with barbed wire and put these young guys out there with machine guns. And so it was very crude. Very crude. And what was fortunate is that there was right next door was a boys’ school. These are for kids that were either abandoned or orphaned, young boys that were, you know, in custody of the welfare organization. And so for exchange for board and room, I did some physical education with the kids and did some other activities with these young boys, which was which was kind of fun. So I lived there and I worked at the prison during the day and weekends.\n\nSo you're probably interested in what I did there?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Typical workday." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "00:17:24", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, nothing is typical when you're working in a prison. Well, there was not much going on there, actually. When I got there, the there was like big rooms. There were like 12 to 15 people in one cell and they were locked up 22 hours a day, had two hours afternoon outside in the yard. So I think I did have. The first things I did was to go to the Ministry of Education and they were able to grant me some free sports equipment. So I brought the sports equipment, you know, to the prison. So the fellows had had some, basically not much, there wasn't much room. So they had room for volleyball, you know, and a little bit of small, very small field, you know, soccer. And so that was fun. They were really very enthusiastic about that. Then I started a program with, I would go to the AID office and get some films and actually one their 16 millimeter projector. And I would get some films about brushing your teeth or good hygiene or something. And then I would go and rent, you know, I paid for that myself, go rent a feature film and we’d have like every other Friday night a movie night in the yard. So and then there was I started a program with a lot of the fellows were illiterate. So actually the federal government had a good program for teaching literacy. So I got some information from them and I started literacy program and I started, you know, said, well, they're literate. They I should know something about mathematics. They should also know something about Brazilian history.\n\nAnd I did that for like a month or so, and I said, you know, what am I doing? Teaching Portuguese to a bunch of people who are more fluent than I? And so then I taught a couple of the more educated prisoners to be the teachers. So we have a little school going. So, you know, some of some of the guys were more literate than others and we need things to read. So with the help of the social worker, you know, the Brazilian social worker, she made some contacts at schools and we got a lot of donated books. So the guy, so I started a library and so we had a little fun, actually. The lieutenant was in charge of the penitentiary slackened, and he was pretty tough character, slackened some of his rules and gave us a space. We can have our library. And so I, with the help of there were some librarian, librarian, Peace Corps volunteers. So I set up helped got some information and they helped set up by Dewey Decimal System to catalog these books. So we got a lot of books, not only just children's books, but we got some more adult books. But a lot of the books were pretty, pretty dilapidated. And then I was talking with the social worker, you know, my counterpart, and she said, well, you know, I think there must be something in the Department of Education. So we went there and yeah, there was there was a book binding course.\n\nSo we got some book binding teachers to come out. And then at the same time, they said, well, how about carpentry? And oh, yeah, sure. So we were teaching carpentry skills. And when I was leaving, I mean, then we got a lot of books that were really improved. And when I was leaving, there was there was a grant. We got a grant to buy some equipment for bookbinding, you know, because all you need certain kind of equipment. But at that time, a lot of Brazilians liked to have their books, all in one color on the shelf. And there was no bookbinding facility, except for government things, before you hit Rio or before you hit Sao Paolo. So it was a business opportunity. So and then the carpenters now were now building a little pavilion do that. Unfortunately, I never found out what happened because the volunteer who followed me, I don't know whatever happened to him, you know, he was supposed to be in there. So it was pretty tough duty. So he may not have been able to hang on there, but I had to. It was kind of a seven day a week job because there were a number of abuses in the prison. So I would just show up at odd times, weekends, evenings, and nothing happened while I was there. But I felt an obligation to, you know, be kind of a guardian angel to these to these prisoners." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "00:23:36", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How large was the prison? How large was it in terms of?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "00:23:41", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I’d say there were about 10 cells, anywhere from 100 to 120 probably max males. And there were there were about four or five females there also that were in a different, different barracks, but then not far away. But they pretty much kept to themselves." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "00:24:12", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So it was a seven day a week job. But did you have any leisure time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "00:24:18", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. I made sure I got together with some of my colleagues and I saw my friend got my friend in Planaltina and see him, or we could come in and we go to a movie. And I think, yeah, at one time I took a little road trip with him to see his family. His family lived down on a farm, in another, in another state. Spent a weekend out there with him and his family, which was really quite nice." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "00:24:57", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You said you were able to get some support from another volunteer. Was this typical of the group where you could reach out to other expertise?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "00:25:05", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Uh yeah, I don't think I did. I mean, with the librarians, which was pretty, you know, pretty, pretty obvious. I don't think I needed to. I think the only other thing I needed from the other volunteers was just, sometimes you just kind of blow off steam, you know, let your hair down, you know? And just be with colleagues." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "00:25:32", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How frequent was that? Was opportunities did you have?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 53, + "timestamp": "00:25:35", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, it kind of depended on what's going on. I know our director would pull us in every maybe six months for like a weekend or something, and we could take great showers and fax. So, I mean, maybe every other week or something like that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 54, + "timestamp": "00:26:00", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Can you elaborate a little more on your living arrangements?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 55, + "timestamp": "00:26:03", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Living arrangements I think were pretty decent. I lived at the boys’ school and had running water and they had two cooks for the children. Limited menu, of course, rice and beans or beans and rice, which I still love actually. And these two cooks were just male and female. They were very dark there. Yeah, black. And when I left in Thanksgiving, for what they've done for me or, you know, I gave them some gifts and I had the ultimate compliment from them and I still remember this. They said, Norman, you may be white, but your heart is black. And I thought that I said that I almost came to tears on that one. I thought that was just a wonderful comment. Yeah, but I had to get there before. My hours were so weird at the prison. Sometimes the kids would get the meal before I would. But they’re being kids, so I survived." + }, + { + "turn_id": 56, + "timestamp": "00:27:32", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How did, was this something that the service paid for, or was this part of your, coming out of your allowance? Payment for the food, payment for the?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 57, + "timestamp": "00:27:42", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh no, no, I got free room and board for, you know, in exchange for doing work with the children. I would do the physical education. And then on Sundays, over in the next little town, what's called Nuclear Bondaraunche, it's no longer there. Bondaraunche meaning people from the backlands and these were the people that from the Northeast that came down to build Brasilia and they were supposed to go back after they did their task, but they stayed. And that's why there's all these satellite towns around Brasilia. They said, hey, I’m earning some money. I'm going to bring my family here. And they built houses and stayed. But Nuclear Bondaraunche was something out of the Wild West, a little dirt roads and sidewalks made out of wooden planks, wooden sidewalks, raised up over the muck, over the streets. It's just like, you know, you'd see in the old Wild West. When I took the kids over there, they got a movie every Sunday, so I'd escort them over there and try to help them behave. No, they were nice kids for probably what they went through." + }, + { + "turn_id": 58, + "timestamp": "00:29:14", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Thinking of your full two-year period, did you yourself see an evolution of how you were engaging, how things were progressing?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 59, + "timestamp": "00:29:26", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think, you know two things. I think I gave the prisoners a piece of myself. And it gave them some hope. And it's somebody that cared to them, about them, as individuals and not criminals, because most of them were there for homicides. And really pariahs. And I think they appreciated that. In fact, I know they told me they did. The other thing is, when I left was that, as I said before that the prisoners were locked up 22 hours a day and when you have a tin roof in the summertime, yeah, it's not only stuffy, but anyway, the only time they're locked up is that after supper in the evening and then they got out at breakfast. Yeah, so they were from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM anyway or 8:00 PM. Oh, I think the other thing is I was at a party. I also ran the dispensary by default because the guy, was one of ex-prisoners who was also an ex-police officer, was running it and they wanted me to take over, so I had to. I knew enough about medication and then I'd throw stuff away after it was expired for three or four years. But I was at a party and then I was trying to get the fellows regular medical care, which was difficult. Because the transportation, had to take them in to Brasilia. And one guy, I remember a guy named Zed, crazy chap who was not only a bit psychotic, but, you know, he had really severe seizure disorder, and it just broke me. He’d go into a seizure and we couldn't, you know, couldn't get the kind of medical care to, you know, to get him stabilized.\n\nAnd remember, I was shown a movie one night, uh, Friday night out in the yard and towards the end of the movie, you hear this voice and it's coming from above. And Zed’s up in a tree. And I said, what the heck am I going to do here? So I grabbed a table or something and pulled it over to the tree and I was going up to get him. And he came right down, right next to me, on top of the table, broke his hip and that was sad. I mean, he was a bit crazy, but a lovable crazy. I mean, the fortunate thing is, you know, he got better, and then he was went to a psych hospital for a while. He eventually came back. And by that time I had been to a party and there was two Brazilian physicians and they basically asked me what I was doing. And I said about the difficulty in getting medical care. They said, oh, we'll come out. It kind of bowled me over, you know? Yes!\n\nSo they alternated. They would come out every other week and by their orders, you know, the guys started getting, the women too, you know, starting getting regular medical care. That was really gratifying, too. Yeah, that was nice. Because a lot of them had, you know, chronic. They never took care of themselves that much. Nothing super major. But some of the things that made me like some psychotic disorders that need to be stabilized.\n\nSo and I think the other thing is, I'm not I don't know if I made any major change or not, is that I think the custodial staff begin to soften in terms of their discipline. I don't know. It's tough when you give somebody a uniform and not much training. The authority goes to their head, and they think these people are hardened criminals and you know. But anyway, that's another story." + }, + { + "turn_id": 60, + "timestamp": "00:35:02", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "As you became more familiar and comfortable with the language, did you see that having an effect on your ability to do the things you wanted to do?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 61, + "timestamp": "00:35:14", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I never became really very fluent in Portuguese. Mainly because I was people around people who basically used the present and simple, past tense knows, you know, and I can never really get into some of the more difficult tenses to talk with people that are educated. So I talked on a very basic level. But no, I don't think. I think it probably was in a little bit embarrassing when I had to talk with some people that were educated. The mistakes I made, they thought were funny, so I went along with that. And that was good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 62, + "timestamp": "00:36:11", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Moving on to another area. What about vacation time, did you do that?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 63, + "timestamp": "00:36:14", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, oh yeah, I used that, that was great, because I was able to get around Brazil and I went I spent some time up in the Amazon, actually more than I know more than I expected. Not a whole lot, but because of plane breakdowns, I spent some time there and, uh, got around in the Amazon area and down through the coast, the west or the east coast of Brazil, visiting volunteers on the way. Some of the people that I had trained with, saw them. And then another vacation period, I went south to southern Brazil and actually saw one of the families of one of the prisoners, and took them some greetings that their son was OK. I didn't exchange anything else. And then got into Uruguay and Argentina briefly. Got spooked out in Argentina because I was on the street, and it's all these people turn speaking German, and it just freaked me out. It’s post World War II, you know? So but I was glad to get to southern Brazil because it's a different Brazil. You know, it's much different and it's quite beautiful. Quite beautiful. Yeah, as well as the Amazon is, and hopefully will be in the future." + }, + { + "turn_id": 64, + "timestamp": "00:37:47", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Looking back on your tour of service, you've mentioned a number of accomplishments and wondered if there's any other things you wanted to add or were there any things that you felt you failed at regretted?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 65, + "timestamp": "00:38:09", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think if I failed anywhere, it's because I didn't stay longer to see those projects through. But again, as I said before, I was an only child and had been accepted into undergraduate training at University of Pittsburgh, and I only had 10 days and I didn't know if I'd get another chance at that. I missed my folks. So if I had stayed another year, I'd see those projects through. Because I don't know what happened to them. I think the other thing is that, you know, it was pretty tough duty. And I was by myself, and, you know, that's that was pretty difficult so. But, you know, I handled it. But I had a lot, not a lot, but I'm sure it happens to most Peace Corps volunteers, lots of just, you know, somewhat disturbing dreams after afterward. Basically until 2004, when I went back to Brazil and we were touring around and I wanted to see where the prison was.\n\nIt wasn't there anymore because they were it was just supposedly temporary. They built a new one. And the whole area where that was not only it's been renamed, but it's built up, you know, it’s kind of working-class area now and with my Brazilian friend. And we'd asked, you know, where were the prison? Well, I guess there was one here. I don't know where it was. I think it's down that way, down below. So we were driving around, driving around, and we came to one area and I said, stop. This is the place. Not because I saw anything, it's because I felt something. And I walked around a little bit. And I walked through the little barbed wire fence and I saw where one of my prisoner friends used to play volleyball and soccer. No buildings anymore. But I saw the area and it just happened there was a policeman walking by and my Brazilian friend asked, does he know where the prison used to be? And he said, yeah right there. I don't know how I found it, but I just felt it so, but I haven't had a dream since." + }, + { + "turn_id": 66, + "timestamp": "00:41:26", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What would be some lessons learned that you may have thought about over the years?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 67, + "timestamp": "00:41:34", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think the big one is, it's really pretty, probably pretty healthy to have two volunteers together an assignment like that or at least living in close proximity or rooming together, you know. I may be overdramatic about, you know, some of the things that affected me and I could have maybe used some corrective action, you know. But I think what I did was very positive. It gave some hope to people and so I think that, you know, that's one lesson learned. But I was out there as far as I know, was the only volunteer I've ever done anything like that at least up to that time. I don't know about, but it's pretty rugged duty. It helped with some peanut butter." + }, + { + "turn_id": 68, + "timestamp": "00:42:40", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And how did your Peace Corps experience influence your plans for the future? Did it?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 69, + "timestamp": "00:42:49", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, yeah. I came out of it pretty arrogant, saying I can do anything, you know. I got myself into some trouble actually doing, you know. When I went to University of Pittsburgh, they had this community lab and which was really a good idea that you would have this one little class out in the community on Friday mornings. It was just basically, it was the whole War on Poverty opportunity, and so is the study of the community. Yeah, like we did in the Peace Corps, actually studying the community, what's its assets? So the professor that was there was so much into poverty and we were talking about poverty every week, poverty every week. So I said, after a while in my arrogance, I said, I don't see any poverty. What do you mean you don’t see any poverty? Well, people around here, you know, are not starving. I haven't seen any khwajaworcore, which I saw in Brazil. I haven't seen any kids running around with extended stomachs, with worms coming out their butt. But yeah, people look relatively healthy. They may have some medical problems, but yeah, actually some of them are obese. They can go to medical care, that's like a bus, maybe two busses, but they can get the medical care. There are screens on their houses, lots of TVs. You don’t see aerials at that time. And I went on about it and I said, there are lots of stores that people can walk to. And I went on about some other things. My only C in graduate school.\n\nAnd then I was interviewing for a job at the university. Fast forward about three years later. And I was recruited from, I was in the public health service after I did my master's degree out in Arizona with the Navajo Indians, and I got recruited and they'd be on the faculty of the university and I was going on about this experience that I just told you. And they said, who was this professor? I said, it’s Professor X. Oh, he's starting here this fall. I said, well, nice knowing you guys. Actually, it worked out well. The other the job I took, worked out really, very well anyway." + }, + { + "turn_id": 70, + "timestamp": "00:46:08", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Could you comment on the three goals? You may not have thought of them while you were in service, but you know the goal one of providing technical assistance where requested, promoting a better understanding of Americans, and then promoting understanding of other people by Americans?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 71, + "timestamp": "00:46:29", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Yeah, I think those last two, probably. You know, when I went to the prison, some of the prisoners there told me we thought you were with the CIA or the FBI. I said, what the heck would the CIA or FBI be interested in what's going on here? And oh yeah, we had a good laugh on that. But that was the time of you know, James Bond and all that stuff.\n\nSo but I think they were able to, you know, see me as an American, as just an ordinary person who was interested in them. And I think I've been, you know, able to convey that to, you know, when I, you know, when I had back in the States, when I had students, whether it be medical students or social work students or other students, I worked mostly work in the minority populations. Mostly all minority populations. And I would be very keen because these were mostly Caucasian students or medical students or residents or social work students. So what you're seeing in this chair, you know, when you're interviewing people, sometimes you play into stereotypes and you've got to remember these are some of the people who are not functioning that well. This wasn't mental health, chemical dependency. But there's a whole array of people you're not seeing out there that are well-educated, you know, like some just I had to keep that theme going, you know? So hopefully that rubbed off on someone. And then I think the other thing in terms of discussions I've had with either colleagues or neighbors or something about people in other countries, you know, hey people want the best for the kids. Education and so on, same things you do." + }, + { + "turn_id": 72, + "timestamp": "00:48:57", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "You mentioned you have stayed in touch with at least one friend. Had you maintained any other contacts with Brazil?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 73, + "timestamp": "00:49:07", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not that. Yeah, that's it. Yeah." + }, + { + "turn_id": 74, + "timestamp": "00:49:11", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What about with Peace Corps activities back here in the States?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 75, + "timestamp": "00:49:15", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I'm not a groupie. You know, I went to some NORVA Northeast Ohio folks, and when I went, everybody was telling war stories and I didn’t want to hear that. And I guess it would have been OK when I'm just, if I was just out, I'd been out. Because I went because when I got out of Brazil, I went right into graduate school for two years and then I went to a reservation for two and a half years and then I came back to. When I came back, I got recruited to Cleveland to help start the Department of Psychiatry. I really didn't, you know, the only people I've kept contact with some Peace Corps volunteers that I was with in Brasilia and maintained those contacts." + }, + { + "turn_id": 76, + "timestamp": "00:50:18", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I don't know if this is particularly a repeat of a previous question, but the last question in the guide is, what has been the effect of Peace Corps service on your life?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 77, + "timestamp": "00:50:31", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Oh, I think it's something I could be very proud of, number one. And it's a legacy I think I passed on to my daughter, who's a 1Z energy consultant. Because she did that stint in the Dominican Republic and Mexico. And I think she's going to be helping people for many, many years in terms of energy. Well, it's something to be proud of, and, you know. It was a life, life growing experience." + }, + { + "turn_id": 78, + "timestamp": "00:51:26", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Any final comments you'd like to make?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 79, + "timestamp": "00:51:30", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, I'm just so happy that somebody is interested in the story, that's all. And if it's helps other people or, you know, provides entertainment or whatever, and that's great." + }, + { + "turn_id": 80, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Very good." + }, + { + "turn_id": 81, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "If it makes the cutting room floor, I don't know. If it even makes the cutting room floor." + }, + { + "turn_id": 82, + "timestamp": "00:51:57", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Well, I appreciate you taking the time to meet with me." + }, + { + "turn_id": 83, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, thank you as well." + }, + { + "turn_id": 84, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Randolph Adams", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I found it very interesting. Thank you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 85, + "timestamp": "00:52:04", + "speaker": "Norman Graham", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "You're welcome." + } + ] + }, + { + "dialogue_id": "oral-history-at-the-national-archives-00024", + "metadata": { + "interviewee_name": "James “Jim” Zeender", + "description": "Jim Zeender first came to the National Archives in 1979, and after leaving for three years returned to the Office of Presidential Libraries. He became an exhibit registrar in 1985, a position he held until his retirement in 2020. In his oral history he talks about his 35 years working on National Archives exhibits and document loans.", + "file_url": "https://www.archives.gov/files/about/history/jim-zeender-final.pdf", + "collection_url": "https://www.archives.gov/about/history/oral-history-at-the-national-archives", + "original_file_name": "jim-zeender-final.pdf", + "retrieved_date": "2025-02-04 22:30:17", + "publisher": "U.S. National Archives and Records Administration", + "date": "November 8, 2017" + }, + "broad_source": "nara", + "collection": "oral_history_at_the_national_archives", + "domain": "oral_history", + "title": "Transcript of National Archives History Oral History Interview", + "elicitors": [ + "Rebecca Watford" + ], + "respondents": [ + "James Zeender" + ], + "languages": [ + "en" + ], + "turns": [ + { + "turn_id": 0, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "I am Rebecca Watford. I am an intern in the history office at the Washington, DC National Archives. Today is November 8, 2017. I am with James Zeender, who is a registrar with the National Archives in DC, and we are in the B5 Conference Room. So how did you come to work at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 1, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Wow, that's a good question. I was a, I believe, a junior at Catholic University here in Washington, DC and studying Political Science. My mother at the time was working in the library at the University of Maryland at College Park. She saw a posting for a position here at the National Archives. She called me up and said, are you interested in this, and I was, so I followed up on that. Some months later, I was working at the National Archives. That position was in the Office of Presidential Libraries. And so I was there for a while before I moved on." + }, + { + "turn_id": 2, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "So did you finish your degree at Catholic University while you were working here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 3, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I did. I did." + }, + { + "turn_id": 4, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And just stayed here for the rest of your life." + }, + { + "turn_id": 5, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, no, I did have a little interval. I was, like I said, I think I started in '79 and graduated from Catholic University late in 1980. And then, I went to Boston and was in Boston for a year, I'd say a year and a half. And then, I came back to the Archives and back to the Office of Presidential Libraries. Then, sometime in 1983, I was working in Presidential Libraries when my supervisor, Doug Thurman, the late Doug Thurman, very good man, good friend, had talked to Dr. Jim O'Neill, who was the assistant archivist for Presidential Libraries at the time, and was Chairman of the National Archives Committee for the 50th Anniversary of the National Archives. There was a big exhibition planned, and they needed a registrar, or someone to collect the and care for the items to be in that exhibition. Doug mentioned me as a possibility, and I got drafted into working on that exhibit. Kind of opened my eyes to the world of exhibitions and the opportunity to work with a lot of people throughout the agency. And so I was essentially on loan for that year, and then transferred over to exhibitions, permanently, sometime in 1985." + }, + { + "turn_id": 6, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "And you've been a registrar since then?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 7, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I've been registrar ever since. I started out probably when I transferred, I was probably a GS-5 or 6, but I remained a registrar all that time, but the position has kind of grown in scope and responsibility since then." + }, + { + "turn_id": 8, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What aspects of the work do you enjoy?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 9, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I think I eluded to just there—it's—of course, there is a direct access to the archive's records and artifacts and artwork, and being able to just be up close to them. With an interest in history and knowing all the stories that are associated with them, that could be very special. But it's also the opportunity to work with other individuals here at the National Archives, in the Presidential Libraries, in the Field Offices. As registrar, the other major responsibility I have is for loans from the National Archives to other museums, and so I'm able to work with other institutions and staff, individuals in other museums. So it's both that access, that up-close access, and the opportunity with a great variety of people." + }, + { + "turn_id": 10, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What's a typical day in your unit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 11, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "For myself, or for the unit?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 12, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "For you." + }, + { + "turn_id": 13, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "There isn't one. That's another thing that I think makes my job challenging and interesting is yes, there is a fair amount of routine activity having to do with processing archival and museum materials for exhibition or for loan for exhibition, but it's also the things that come out of the blue; questions, the contact for another loan, a new loan to go. Maybe sometimes it's Japan, maybe it's Presidential Library. But it's usually something—there's always something new. And that's why I get up in the morning and come here." + }, + { + "turn_id": 14, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What interesting discoveries have you made through your work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 15, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's hard to answer. But I'll tell you, I wouldn't exactly call it a discovery, but the end result, I think, was rewarding. Many years ago, I forget the context, but there was an archivist here by the name Dr. Milton Gustafson, who was our Diplomatic Archives Specialist, and he was in charge of, I guess it was civil textual records reference. And we were out at College Park at Archives II, and for some reason Milt said he wanted to take me into the stacks and show me something, show me a document. So we went into a stack, it was probably Stack 250, and he knew exactly where the records were. We walked down the row and he pulled a volume of State Department records. It was a series with miscellaneous letters, and he opened the volume and it was a letter from President John Adams to his Secretary of State, commenting on a passport application from a French philosopher. And Adams wrote back saying, \"We have too many French philosophers as it is.\" And so I think that was one of the things—my reaction to that came on several different levels; one was just the insight that I got into what it was, what the archives had, what records might reveal, and I'll leave it at that. Then stepping back and looking, what else was there, not at the moment, but over the years as I stood back, and I saw that this was part of a larger series that covered the State Department from 1789 going forward. And in those, I don't know, probably 20 or so volumes was chock full of original letters written and signed by George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. I'm sure there are others. But those, as far as I can tell, the Presidential letters tended to peter out and ended up going somewhere else, but they're not in that series so much. But there they were, this incredible series of letters, and they were in a regular stack area. I think it was Pat Anderson, who was an archivist at Archives II at that time, and we talked about moving them into the vault. And that happened sometime within a few months. Today those letters are—they're on microfilm, but they're in the process of being digitized and will be available in our catalog." + }, + { + "turn_id": 16, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your degree in? I don't believe you said." + }, + { + "turn_id": 17, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Political Science." + }, + { + "turn_id": 18, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you use your Political Science degree in archival work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 19, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, I mean, I would say the most important thing is having an understanding of the American Political system, the form of the United States Government, and how all that works, and how that is translated in the records themselves." + }, + { + "turn_id": 20, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What were your impressions of the agency when you started working here?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 21, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'll go back a little bit further." + }, + { + "turn_id": 22, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 23, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "My father was a Professor of European History, taught at Catholic University. He actually went to Catholic University himself, back in the 1930s. And then, was invited by Catholic University to come teach in 1959. I was born in '58, and he was then teaching at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In 1959, he accepted the position at Catholic University and the whole family moved down here. But growing up, first in D.C., and then in the Maryland suburbs, my parents would bring us downtown to see the monuments and the museums. And I don't have a precise memory of the first time I came to the archives, what I have a memory of is driving down Constitution Avenue, probably in the backseat of my parents' car, and looking up at those awesome neo-classical buildings on Constitution Avenue, of course, including the National Archives. I thought to myself then, and I was just a youngster, that it would be really cool to work there someday. So—and I'm sorry, refresh me again what the original question was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 24, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What was your impression of the agency when you began your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 25, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "When I started? Okay. Well, okay. So as a young child, I thought it was a pretty cool place to begin with. And so when I got the phone call from my mother, I was eager to apply. I knew, obviously, that the Declaration and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were there, but I didn't have a very deep understanding of what else was there at the National Archives, or what people did at the National Archives. And that's, really, something I've come to, you know, just learn over the years. But I knew that it was impressive looking, basically, and that it would be a good place to work." + }, + { + "turn_id": 26, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "What would you say was the most significant turning point in your career?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 27, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "The most significant..." + }, + { + "turn_id": 28, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Turning points." + }, + { + "turn_id": 29, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Turning points. Well, I think the first one was that opportunity to work on the 50th anniversary exhibit, which opened in 1984, and opened my eyes to the broader National Archives. And that I had the opportunity to work with curators at the Presidential Libraries that then existed. Of course, there are many fewer than there are today. So I would say that's one, but I would also, at the same time, it was a turning point. It was a turning point, not so much for me, but for the institution, was the whole independence from General Services Administration, which was all going on at that time, that I was—little Jim Zeender was busy working on exhibits. But the senior managers in the agency were focused on the independence movement, and which finally resulted in the 1984 act. And then, officially, I think we transferred some time in 1985. So those two linked together were very big. I would say the next major one would be—again, this is not so much me, it’s more Presidential Library, I mean, NARA as a whole—It's just the overall growth of Presidential Libraries which, when I started, I think there were maybe five or six at the most, and today we have twice that number. And so that institution has evolved a great deal in all that time. Another turning point, obviously, was the renovation of the Natural Archives building. I can remember back to 1985, there was something called the Shepley Bulfinch Study, which was an architectural firm that was hired to prepare a proposal on what would be the best use of the National Archives building here on the mall. Basically, they outlined a plan that, 20 years later, we've implemented. That was to maximize the public use of the building, leveraging its location here on the mall. And so that study set things in motion. Just to sketch it out a little bit further, the plan called for gutting six levels of stacks, which would be used for an expanded exhibition space, auditorium, conference rooms, et cetera. So it was going to be necessary to move a lot of records out of the building. So the first thing that had to be done was to have a new building, that process got started in the early 90s, we were building Archives 2 and then by, I think, '93, '94, we were moving records out there. And then along came—this is another track that, kind of, helped expedite the process, at least from my perspective, was that a conserver here noticed some deterioration on the glass of—I forget if it was the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. And so people took that very seriously, and it eventually—we realized that we're going to have to do a re-encasement of the charters. That merged with the need to renovate the building as a whole. With that, the vision of the original Shepley Bulfinch plan came together and we have the building that we have today. With a beautiful, permanent exhibit space for the public vaults and temporary exhibits gallery, the O'Brien Gallery, and now, also, the Rubenstein Gallery where we have the exhibition record of rights, and the Magna Carta, of course." + }, + { + "turn_id": 30, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Did changes in Presidential administrations or archivists of the United States administrations change the nature of your work?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 31, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, not really." + }, + { + "turn_id": 32, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + }, + { + "turn_id": 33, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I'm sorry, go back. Is it change of Presidents, change of administration?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 34, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Uh-huh." + }, + { + "turn_id": 35, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "No, that wasn't an issue." + }, + { + "turn_id": 36, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How would describe the intellectual and institutional value of the records with which you work? You don't have to answer that if you can't." + }, + { + "turn_id": 37, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "Well, that's a hard question. I mean, that's one of the wonderful things that we in exhibitions are able to do, is we're able to explore the great breadth of the National Archives. But at the same time, we're not—the individuals in the exhibitions office are not experts on any particular area, generally speaking. We're often dependent on the expertise of individual archivists, who work with a limited amount of records, that are limited, but they can still be very voluminous. Like modern military records, we're talking about tens of thousands of boxes and maybe more than that, so we're dependent on those archivists who've worked with those records over a long period of time, and developed an expertise, and we're very, very dependent on them. But, I mean, personally, I'm very interested in the American Revolution and the early Republic, and have, as I mentioned earlier, the early State Department Records piqued my interest even more, and so personally, that's the body of records that I'm most interested in. I would say they are the core of our government and American Democracy. The Journals of the Continental Congress, the Voting Record of the Constitutional Convention. You know, we debate a lot about what the founders intended, well, we can always go back to the record and see what they actually had to say. Sometimes they're contradictory, so history is sometimes messy. But what we have are the records, so we always have to go back to that." + }, + { + "turn_id": 38, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Do you feel you've made a significant contribution to the National Archives? And if so, what do you think that was?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 39, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I don't know. What I'm proud of is that I built the Registrar's position from a technician to a real professional position over the course of my career. I'm also just proud of the National Archives' loan program today, and being able to share records from the archives with museums around the country and around the world. I think that we, here in Washington, we're able to see great works of art, and we see these great records every day and we tend to be a little jaded. But it's when we get an opportunity to get these documents out of Washington and into museums around the country, and you can actually meet the individuals that the museums and also the people that are visiting those museums, and see their reaction, it's quite amazing and awarding." + }, + { + "turn_id": 40, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "How do you view your time at the National Archives?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 41, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "How do I view my time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 42, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 43, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "All my time?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 44, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Mm-hm." + }, + { + "turn_id": 45, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I mean, over the last..." + }, + { + "turn_id": 46, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Yes." + }, + { + "turn_id": 47, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I feel like I'm a very lucky person, and I've had one of the best jobs in Washington for all that time. That amazes me every day." + }, + { + "turn_id": 48, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything you would like to add to the interview? Anecdotes, stories, words of wisdom, et cetera?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 49, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "I would say anyone who's—I'll go back to before coming to the archives and being a high school student, and trying to decide what I was going to do. You know, my dad taught European History and I was interested in history, and my mother was a librarian, so, you know, coming here would've seemed very natural. But I remember that my mother did not think pursuing a career in history would be very valuable. Or maybe that's not the right word, but so when I applied to Catholic University, I didn't apply for the History program, and I didn't apply for a Political Science program. I applied for Computer Science. But I had realized within that first year that that's not really what I wanted to be doing. I had relatively good math skills, but I wasn't passionate about it and I was much more interested in Politics than History. And so I put myself on that track, and then I was just lucky enough to get that phone call, my mother seeing that posting. So what I would say is, when someone tells you that your English Degree is not going to help you, or that you really need to go one way or another way, take that with a grain of salt and give yourself the opportunity to take another path." + }, + { + "turn_id": 50, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Is there anything else?" + }, + { + "turn_id": 51, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "James Zeender", + "role": "respondent", + "utterance": "That's it." + }, + { + "turn_id": 52, + "timestamp": "", + "speaker": "Rebecca Watford", + "role": "elicitor", + "utterance": "Okay." + } + ] + } +] \ No newline at end of file